Under fire for lack of Ma¯ori staff

Just three of Pharmac’s 130 staff members identified as Ma¯ori last year, despite the country’s drugbuying agency vowing to prioritise Ma¯ori leadership and uphold the Treaty ofWaitangi as a way to ensure better health outcomes for Ma¯ori.

There were more staff members who identified their whakapapa as ‘‘British/Irish’’ and Chinese – five staff members apiece – than Ma¯ori, according to the agency’s annual report.

The lack of Ma¯ori representation, particularly within its senior leadership team, was ‘‘unacceptable on every level’’, said Leanne Te Karu, associate dean (Ma¯ori) at Otago University’s School of Pharmacy. Patient Voice Aotearoa chairman Malcolm Mulholland described it as ‘‘absolutely appalling’’.

Pharmac’s inaugural chief Ma¯ori adviser, Trevor Simpson (Tuhoe, Nga¯ti Awa) – the only Ma¯ori voice at the agency’s top table – said the organisation had ‘‘already recognised [his appointment] wasn’t enough’’ and said the number of Ma¯ori staff members had risen to five since the report’s publication last month.

The statistics were included in Pharmac’s latest annual report, and coincided with a briefing to incoming Health Minister Andrew Little that highlighted evidence that Ma¯ori received medicines at lower rates than non-Ma¯ori.

‘‘We consider inequitable outcomes for Ma¯ori unfair, unjust and avoidable, and we are actively working to eliminate them,’’ ministerial staff said in the briefing.

There were no Ma¯ori in the highest echelons of Pharmac between 2014 and Simpson’s appointment in October.

Te Karu said the numbers of Ma¯ori staff remained woefully disproportionate. A total of 16.5 per cent of the population identified as Ma¯ori during the 2018 Census.

‘‘It’s great that they have got a Ma¯ori senior leader but he is a single person with a team of nobody,’’ she said.

‘‘Until we see some really big changes across the board, it’s

going to be a lot of swimming upstream.’’

Te Karu said there were Ma¯ori professionals ‘‘competent and capable’’ to work in the organisation, and could help Pharmac achieve its ‘‘bold goals,’’ including an end to inequitable access to medicines by 2025.

Mulholland, whose petition calling for the external reform and immediate doubling of Pharmac’s budget has attracted more than 85,000 signatures, questioned how the agency could meet its aims without greater Ma¯ori representation.

‘‘Given Pharmac’s huge focus on addressing equity issues between Ma¯ori and non-Ma¯ori, one wonders how they are going to address that,’’ he said.

He successfully campaigned for cancer drug Ibrance to be publicly funded, including for his wife, Wiki, who has advanced breast cancer. Her struggle to access the drugs she needed was a problem affecting countless other Ma¯ori, further enforcing the need for more Ma¯ori in the agency.

‘‘Being a government agency, there should be a high Ma¯ori representation as part of their staff due to their Treaty obligations,’’ he said. ‘‘Second to that, because there are such a huge number of issues regarding Ma¯ori and medicines, it comes as no great surprise that Ma¯ori are high-end users when it comes to medications,’’ he said.

‘‘It’s vitally important that throughout Pharmac’s processes, they have Ma¯ori staff advising them every step of the way,’’ Mulholland said.

Pharmac recognised that Ma¯ori staff numbers fell well short of what was needed, Simpson said.

‘‘We’re going to be actively recruiting to increase that capacity over the next six months to a year, and that’s largely connected to Te Whaioranga,’’ Simpson said, referring to Pharmac’s Ma¯ori strategy released in December, which has five key priorities including developing a plan to recruit more Ma¯ori for the board.