The Minister of Health, Dr Shane Reti, wants to lift child immunisation rates, particularly for Māori children. This health target may even result in improved health outcomes. It’s also an uncharacteristically forward-looking move by the coalition government to ensure there’ll be enough healthy smokers to help pay for future tax cuts for landlords.
As is the case so often with National, they’re quick to criticise alleged opponents and even quicker in claiming their ideas if not achievements as their own. And the recent announcement of “a two-year $50 million package to help Māori health providers lift immunisation rates” is true to form.
In July 2022, a report of the Māori Influenza and Measles Vaccination Programme (MIMVP) on Māori health equity was released, which made a number of recommendations.
The report makes a series of recommendations around how immunisation and vaccination rates could be further booster, some of which are being addressed by the establishment of the Maori Health Agency. [my bold]
One of its recommendations was:
identifying the need for the Ministry, HNZ and MHA to develop the capacity to engage, contract and fund Māori health providers directly. [my bold]
In April this year, another report came out from the independent Immunisation Taskforce entitled “Initial Priorities for the National Immunisation Programme in Aotearoa”. The Taskforce’s remit was, among other things, to provide advice to Te Aka Whai Ora – Māori Health Authority [MHA], which was the key (and equal!) partner that was crucial for implementing the recommendations. However, Dr Reti couldn’t wait to amputate the MHA.
Those recommendations again bare, of course, an uncanny resemblance to Reti’s announcement. The only difference, which is more optical than substantive, is that the Taskforce recommended a website for information on immunisations of tamariki and Reti launched an app.
This coalition government’s conduit for delivering healthcare to Māori appears to be Whānau Ora. This was the love brainchild of, mainly, Tariana Turia and John Key, with Winston Peters being the ever-grumpy and belligerent Godfather.
In 2018, the Whānau Ora Review Panel was appointed to assess how well Whānau Ora was doing. The findings were positive.
Affirmation of approach
The most compelling finding of the report is its affirmation of the Whānau Ora approach, as an approach that works.
This is a powerful finding which therefore creates the platform for other findings regarding greater investment from government and increased collaboration across agencies to expand its implementation. [my bold]
Besides the inevitable need for more funding it is highlighting the call for better coordination and collaboration, which is exactly what the Māori Health Authority was set up to do.
In 2022, the Labour government established the Māori Health Authority and in Budget-2023, it committed $168.1 million over four years to Whānau Ora. However, Whānau Ora did and does not fulfil the much broader function of the Māori Health Authority and the new coalition government has opted for a less efficient fragmented approach in which decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, without the coordination and collaboration provided by Māori Health Authority, and guided by meeting targets, not outcomes, that make for easy political point-scoring.
The coalition government was quick, and premature, to scrap the Māori Health Authority (covered here and here) but has as yet not allocated any funding to Whānau Ora, for example, except the aforementioned $50 million for jabs. This is another textbook example of right-wing parties robbing Pita to pay Paora and a cynical divide & conquer tactic purely for political advantage. The coalition government can arguably claim that it kept its election promises of abolishing the Māori Health Authority, better management of taxpayer money through targeted funding (i.e. pretend to be fiscally responsible), and lifting health ‘outcomes’ for all New Zealanders without preferential treatment based on race or ethnicity.
None of this will genuinely uplift and empower Māori who are treated as a proverbial piñata, stabbed in the back, and then offered a jab and an app (with te reo and in-person options?).
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