Kerri Nuku, Kaiwhakahaere
NZNO Tōpūtanga Tapuhi Kaitiaki o Aotearoa

The new year kicked off with a political surprise – a new Minister of Health. Dr Shane Reti out and Simeon Brown in!

Since Dr Reti was appointed minister in 2023, we’ve made an effort to connect with him. We know that to get our members what they want and need, we have to be able to at least talk with those in power. Even if we disagree with their politics.

We never got from him what we wanted but the korero with him was always respectful.

We will not judge his replacement Minister Brown just yet. It is early days and we are yet to hear detail of his plans for our nation’s health system.

We have many questions for him. Will he move to deregulate the health workforce? Will he address the issues around pay equity and pay parity? How will he address issues of health justice?

What will he do to increase the shocking Māori life expectancy rate where tangata whenua live seven years less than non-Māori?

My questions may seem rhetorical but we will wait to hear him speak on these matters first.
The wider political environment in Aotearoa is concerning many of us.

We know the powerful influences on that environment are not of our land. They stem from Trumpism – ideologies grown in the United States and extracted from eastern Europe. They are right-wing, neo liberals where white supremacy rules and minorities don’t stand a chance.

That ideology can be found in the latest proposals of our country’s coalition Government, specifically, the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill (PTWB) and the Regulatory Standards Bill (RSB) which many are describing as the PTWB in disguise.

Over the next two weeks, I will verbally present NZNO’s submission on the PTWB to a parliamentary Select Committee.

Have a read of our written submission here.

You can also read our submission on the RSB here.

This Bill in particular concerns us because it has the potential to deregulate the health workforce, to diminish the mana of our professionals and tramp on mahi we have done as nurses and midwives.

If I were given a minute to speak to Minister Brown, I would encourage him to invest in the models and approaches tangata whenua have been using to try and heal their people.

Those models are working but due to no significant investment in them from successive governments, no one really hears about them. They need real support so they can be scaled up.

Just being Māori: Members of Te Poari, Te Runanga o Aotearoa-NZNO.

That homegrown thinking is of this land and all its people – Māori and non-Māori. Those tangata whenua ideologies aren’t just good for Māori, they are good for everyone in this land.

Our nation as a collective has benefited from many things taken from te ao Māori – the haka, te reo Māori just to name a couple.

Now it is time for decision makers to show some faith in that world and invest in Māori to bring forward their knowledge to heal our health system.