Manawatu Standard

Radical change on way for Ma¯ori as Little to reveal new health authority

- Joel Maxwell joel.maxwell@stuff.co.nz

To point to an individual Ma¯ori person walking out of a hospital, cured, is to miss the abiding truth that collective­ly we die more, and earlier, and get sicker, than those non-ma¯ori strolling in and out around him.

On average, Ma¯ori die seven years earlier than non-ma¯ori. In 2015, the heart disease death rate for Ma¯ori per 100,000 people was double that for non-ma¯ori. (Both excluding Pasifika people)

Cancer, infant mortality, suicide. I could go on. Believe me when I say the stats are appalling and longstandi­ng.

On Wednesday, Health Minister Andrew Little will reveal the Government’s plans for its new Ma¯ori health authority.

The authority was part of a series of recommenda­tions from the Health and Disability System Review released last year.

The toughest thing will be understand­ing what it all means. I digested the report myself and was struck by the thought that reading about health shouldn’t force you to selfmedica­te.

This maddening love of technical words, jargon, forms like a poisonous crust at the top of the health system.

What is a ‘‘commission­ing tool’’, I wondered, reading the report? A pen? A baseball bat? Politician­s love this zone: a dark pocket where you can say anything, get away with anything, because nobody really understand­s you.

It is the worst kind of code to decipher as a journalist: draining your will, and leaving you a passive vessel – much like navigating the health system itself.

Where am I going, you ask yourself? How do I get there? It would be nice to relax, but as an outsider you worry that once the dust settles from your vaporised kidney stone, you’ll limp out with a subtracted gall bladder as a bonus operation.

It is a maze where you are hemmed in by the expertise of others.

The review was completed in March 2020 and aimed to offer a clear path forward for the Government. One of its main jobs was to ‘‘ensure improvemen­ts in health outcomes of Ma¯ori’’.

This problem was crystal

clear, but the panel behind the report couldn’t even keep a lid on its own splits when it came to offering solutions.

Tucked away towards the end of the report, a faction proposed an alternativ­e model for the Ma¯ori authority.

Thesemembe­rs said thema¯ori authority idea was good, but had a stingy budget and limited purchasing power. It needed to go further.

As far as I can tell, their authority as proposed would bema¯oriowned, governed and operated.

It would get a hefty budget so it could pay for services on its own, and work with iwi and Ma¯ori and district health boards at regional and local levels to support their purchasing as well.

It would start by beefing up kaupapa-ma¯ori workforce numbers, facilities and services. Setting the infrastruc­ture in place, I presume.

Over several years it would then start paying for the likes of screening and disease prevention services targeted at Ma¯ori, and a swathe of frontline health services, like GPS and maternity services, community pharmacies and radiology.

Like a game of reverseMon­opoly, where one person owns everything at the beginning and then loses it, we might finally see the money (and thus, power) flow to the people who need it.

In one of the worst-kept secrets of the last few months, it appears the Government has thumbed through to the back of the review and now leans towards the alternativ­e proposal.

It will hand over increased purchasing muscle to the authority.

I think this is good news. Let’s be clear, Ma¯ori are hyper-capable organisers (myself withstandi­ng). There is nothing iwi and hapu¯ and wha¯nau cannot do – and do with the clear, big-hearted morality of our ancestors.

Successive Government­s have obstructed our developmen­t thanks to the complaints of a fearful Pa¯keha¯ minority.

On Wednesday, what Health Minister Little owes us, everyone, but especially Ma¯ori, is a clear explanatio­n of what the new health authority is, and what it will do.

He will face the task of boosting its credential­s with Ma¯ori, while reassuring other parts of the community that it is anything but radical.

Don’t be fooled though, by jargon and complexiti­es – if done correctly, it is something radically new.

But that is a good thing and will make a bracing departure from decades of radical failure for Ma¯ori.

 ??  ?? Health Minister Andrew Little
Health Minister Andrew Little
 ??  ??
 ?? ROBERT KITCHIN/STUFF ?? Associate Minister for Health (Ma¯ori Health) Peeni Henare has fronted the Government’s work on the Ma¯ori health authority.
ROBERT KITCHIN/STUFF Associate Minister for Health (Ma¯ori Health) Peeni Henare has fronted the Government’s work on the Ma¯ori health authority.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from New Zealand