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South Seas Healthcare testing and vaccination centre staff with health minister Andrew Little in November 2021 (Photo: Justin Latif)
South Seas Healthcare testing and vaccination centre staff with health minister Andrew Little in November 2021 (Photo: Justin Latif)

PoliticsFebruary 23, 2022

New funding aims to tackle both omicron and long-standing health inequities

South Seas Healthcare testing and vaccination centre staff with health minister Andrew Little in November 2021 (Photo: Justin Latif)
South Seas Healthcare testing and vaccination centre staff with health minister Andrew Little in November 2021 (Photo: Justin Latif)

Leading healthcare professionals and government ministers hope new funding for Māori and Pacific social service providers will not only dampen the impact of omicron, but also resolve historic inequities faced by these communities. 

South Seas Healthcare has been running one of the largest Covid-19 testing stations in South Auckland almost non-stop since the start of the outbreak. The provider is among 160 organisations that will benefit directly from $140 million in new government funding announced yesterday to help bolster the omicron response, with $18 million of it going directly to Pacific providers like South Seas. The organisation’s chief executive, Lemalu Silao Vaisola Sefo, said this will enable them to make long-term changes to how healthcare is delivered in the region. 

“We can pay for more staff, we can pay the coordinators at churches who organise things, and we can invest into the churches to build their capability,” he said.

“If you look at the health reforms that are coming and you look at the role churches and community groups already play, this will only build their capacity.”

The funding, announced by minister for Pacific peoples Aupito William Sio, associate health minister Peeni Henare, Māori development minister Willie Jackson and children’s minister Kelvin Davis at Ngā Whare Waatea marae in Māngere, south Auckland, yesterday morning, will support providers, Whānau Ora commissioning agencies and local community services to get resources to those needing to self-isolate. It follows on from the $204.1 million Covid Care in the Community model introduced last year, and an announcement last week by social development minister Carmel Sepuloni that $140 million was being set aside to help people needing support to self-isolate. 

For much of 2020 and 2021, criticism mounted against the government for not trusting or sufficiently resourcing Māori and Pacific health providers, leading to much slower vaccination uptake rates among these communities. Funding that was allocated was often criticised for being difficult to access due to unnecessary layers of bureaucracy.

Associate health minister Peeni Henare speaking to media at Ngā Whare Waatea marae (Photo: Justin Latif)

At yesterday’s announcement, associate health minister Peeni Henare acknowledged Covid had highlighted these issues but said he hoped this funding boost was a sign the government was listening to those criticisms and responding. 

“What we’ve seen through the Covid response is huge inequities in the way that Māori and Pacific providers have been funded,” he said, in a press conference following the announcement. 

“So we’ve made sure that this funding will extend to the end of this year and beyond, because once we know omicron has come and gone, we need to catch up on regular health checks, child immunisations, and a whole heap of other work that our communities have put to the side while we focus on Covid.”

Te Whānau O Waipareira trust chief executive John Tamihere, who is also the vice-president of the Māori Party (Photo: Justin Latif)

Usually one of the government’s biggest critics, John Tamihere spoke to the large crowd of government officials, MPs, media and community services staff following the announcement. The normally confrontational former Labour minister was in a far more generous and reflective mood, thanking the ministers in attendance for finally putting some faith in Māori and Pacific providers after years of advocating for such an approach. 

“We’re all getting a bit tired [of this pandemic], but we have to hold our shape and our discipline,” he said.  

“And I just want to start by saying no other government leadership would provide the type of targeted funding to Māori and Pacific organisations as this government has,” he said, before he quickly reminded everyone how unusual it was for such praise to come from someone currently holding the position of vice-president of the Māori Party. 

“When we use words like kotahitanga, we can’t just lay false words on the marae ātea, and so I’m here today to practise our kotahitanga. I just really want to thank the prime minister and these ministers for acknowledging the mana of our communities and the ability they have for self-determination.”

Māori development minister Willie Jackson has been at loggerheads with his old mate Tamihere many times during this pandemic, but said he was pleased these tensions have been eased.

“First and foremost John is a community man, and he’s at the coalface,” he said. 

“I know what the brother does in the community, and I was really pleased to hear his tautoko and to see our people coming together.”

There are currently more than 6,000 active cases in South Auckland, and Māori and Pacific make up more than 50% of new infections. But minister for Pacific peoples and Māngere electorate MP Aupito William Sio reiterated that while this funding would reduce the impact of infections on Māori and Pacific people, this investment would benefit everyone.

“As we saw last year how quickly it moved from being focused on Pasifika to being right across this region. So even though we’re targeting Pasifika and Māori, make no mistake, this is about all of New Zealand and we’ve all got to do our part and support our providers – because that’s what will work.”

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Protesters on parliament lawn in 2022. (Photo: MARTY MELVILLE/AFP via Getty Images)
Protesters on parliament lawn in 2022. (Photo: MARTY MELVILLE/AFP via Getty Images)

PoliticsFebruary 21, 2022

Balancing police independence and public accountability at the Wellington protest

Protesters on parliament lawn in 2022. (Photo: MARTY MELVILLE/AFP via Getty Images)
Protesters on parliament lawn in 2022. (Photo: MARTY MELVILLE/AFP via Getty Images)

The largely hands-off response to the protest risks creating a full blown crisis of confidence in the NZ police, writes Dominic O’Sullivan. Yet there is little the government can do to change the force’s approach.

Today’s action to cordon off the occupation of parliament grounds and prevent it growing might go some way to restoring public confidence in the police, which has appeared to be eroding since the protests began a fortnight ago.

So far, police have pursued a de-escalation strategy, but there have been calls for firmer action. The whole event has raised important questions about the relationship between the police and government, and about police independence and accountability.

With local businesses unable to trade, and the neighbouring university closing its campus for eight weeks, the political consequences are potentially serious.

From the government’s perspective, there is a direct relationship between its own public support and public confidence in the police. The political and legal impasse between the rightful independence of the police and public accountability is not a simple issue to resolve.

Constabulary independence

The relationship between the government and the police has come a long way since government minister John Bryce – armed and on horseback – led the police invasion of Parihaka in 1881. Bryce decided who would be arrested and personally ordered the destruction of property.

Supporting the political objectives of the government of the day was a function of the police. But New Zealand was not a developed liberal democracy 140 years ago.

Armed constabulary prepare to advance on Parihaka in late 1881. (Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library)

By 2018, that relationship had evolved enough for the solicitor-general to advise the prime minister that “constabulary independence [had become] a core constitutional principle in New Zealand”.

The solicitor-general explained the constitutional subtleties of the Policing Act thus:

The Police are an instrument of the Crown […] but in the two principal roles of detecting and preventing crime and keeping the Queen’s peace they act independently of the Crown and serve only the law.

This is reinforced in the oath police officers swear to perform their duties “without favour or affection, malice or ill-will”.

Who is accountable?

Constabulary independence means governments can’t control the police for political advantage. At the same time, police accountability to the public is as important as for any department of state. Independence should not mean the police can do whatever they like.

However, the lines of accountability are complex. Constabulary independence means the ordinary process of accountability to parliament through the relevant minister, and through parliament to the people, does not fully apply to the police.

The police commissioner is accountable to the minister for “carrying out the functions and duties of the Police”, but explicitly not for “the enforcement of the law” and “the investigation and prosecution of offences”.

As well as “keeping the peace”, “maintaining public safety”, “law enforcement”, “crime prevention” and “national security”, the Policing Act requires “community support and reassurance”.

This might help explain why, for security and tactical reasons, the police won’t fully explain their tolerance of the occupation, beyond the police commissioner saying the public would not accept the inevitable violence and injury a harder line would entail.

Despite clear public concern, the police are not required to give further explanation of why they haven’t prosecuted people for intimidation and harassment, for threatening MPs, public servants and journalists, or for failing to remove illegally parked vehicles.

Truck drivers and their supporters block streets during the anti vaccine mandate protest in Ottawa, Canada on February 15, 2022 (Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Canadian comparisons

The situation in Canada may be instructive. There, the police have seemingly abandoned a de-escalation strategy that had lasted three weeks, with the protest in Ottawa cleared in the last few days.

As in New Zealand, public tolerance was low. Rejecting a claim that the repeated sounding of 105-decibel truck horns was “part of the democratic process”, a Canadian judge said: “Tooting a horn is not an expression of any great thought.”

In both countries, the protests are being viewed less as expressions of political thought than as simple acts of public nuisance. The difference lies in the Canadian federal government invoking special powers under its Emergencies Act.

The first time it has been invoked since it was passed in 1988, the law allows the government to use “special temporary measures that may not be appropriate in normal times” to respond to “threats to the security of Canada”.

Banks can freeze accounts being used to support the protest. Private citizens and businesses may be compelled to provide essential services to assist the state – tow trucks, for example.

Political calculation

Such significant constraints on freedom can be justified only if they are proportionate to the emergency. But on Friday, the Canadian parliament was prevented from scrutinising the decision to declare an emergency because protesters had prevented access to the debating chambers.

Ironically, the debate began on Saturday when police cleared the obstruction (without needing emergency powers) – suggesting “freedom” is a wider concept than the one protesters claimed they were defending.

The ability of people to go to work, to study, shop, drive on a public road – and (as in Ottawa) the ability of parliament to function – are democratic freedoms the protesters are curtailing.

Whether Wellington goes the way of Ottawa remains to be seen, but the New Zealand police commissioner says a state of emergency is among the “reasonable options” being considered to stop more protesters entering parliament grounds.

For now, the political question is what happens if the evolution from protest to public nuisance to crisis of confidence in the police continues.

Given the constraints of constabulary independence, and the democratic need for accountability, what political responses are available to the government to ensure any crisis of confidence in the police does not become a crisis of confidence in the government itself?

For both police and government, there is much at stake in the de-escalation strategy.

 

Dominic O’Sullivan is adjunct professor at the Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and professor of political science at Charles Sturt University  in Australia.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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