spinofflive
The bill to dismantle Te Aka Whai Ora is debated in the house
The bill to dismantle Te Aka Whai Ora is debated in the house

PoliticsFebruary 28, 2024

Emotions run high in parliament over dismantling of Māori Health Authority

The bill to dismantle Te Aka Whai Ora is debated in the house
The bill to dismantle Te Aka Whai Ora is debated in the house

As the government attempted to rush through a bill to scrap Te Aka Whai Ora before an urgent Waitangi Tribunal inquiry into the proposal could take place, opposition MPs hit out at health minister Shane Reti.

The government has followed through on a key pillar of its 100-day plan, introducing legislation to dismantle Te Aka Whai Ora under urgency last night, before a scheduled Waitangi Tribunal hearing into the proposal was able to take place.

Following an afternoon and evening of heated and at times emotional debate, the house adjourned at 10pm last night with the Pae Ora (Disestablishment of Māori Health Authority) Amendment Bill having passed its first two readings. Debate will continue this morning when the house resumes at 9am, as the bill has its third reading and is expected to be passed into law.

The Waitangi Tribunal had granted claimants Lady Tureiti Moxon and Janice Kuka an urgent hearing to determine whether the proposed dismantling of Te Aka Whai Ora breached the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, which was scheduled to begin tomorrow, on Thursday February 29. The introduction of the bill means the tribunal has lost jurisdiction over the claim. Its inquiry can go ahead once the bill passes into law, but this will be too late for any recommendations that might change the government’s course of action (as unlikely as that would have been).

The significance of the timing of the bill – introduced on the same day as a bill to repeal planned smokefree laws – was not lost on opposition MPs in the parliamentary debating chamber.

“How can he [the prime minister] justify dismantling the Māori Health Authority in the same week as repealing smokefree legislation when Māori die seven years earlier, on average, than non-Māori and smoking is our leading cause of premature death?” asked Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer in question time. 

“Does he consider a government’s use of urgency to progress a political agenda without public scrutiny to be an abuse of the democratic process?” she asked next.

(The answers to the above were, to paraphrase, smoking rates were already going down and no).

Introducing the bill, Shane Reti, the minister of health, said, “While the particular version of the dream that the Māori Health Authority laid out is coming to an end today, I want to paint a different dream, one that will be outcomes driven, providing greater devolved decision-making that will deliver care as close to the home and the hapū as possible,” he said. 

“There is organisational expertise in the Māori Health Authority, and I want to retain that. I say to Māori Health Authority staff to please join me, guide me, and help us together to row a different waka towards better health outcomes. This bill enables that.”

As the bill was debated, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, said Māori were clearly seen as “expendable” to the current government. “And the politicking that is going on before the very nation of Aotearoa – and the world – is that you have determined that you know better what Māori want,” she continued.

“From day one you have carried on the kōrero that this is a two-tier system based on race… Well, excuse us. Excuse us for having to have a separate need to be able to have our wellbeing addressed, because we are dying earlier than everyone else.”

Green MP Hūhana Lyndon described the removal of Te Aka Whai Ora as the “recolonisation of hauora Māori” in New Zealand. “There is a strong feeling in our kāinga and within iwi that we’ve been ripped off by this government. Disestablishing Te Aka Whai Ora now… we’ve never got a chance to see the waka grow and reach its full potential. Te iwi Māori are ripped off,” she said. 

Labour’s Willow-Jean Prime, speaking entirely in te reo, was visibly emotional as she spoke directly to Reti – to whom she referred as a whanaunga – for his role in developing the legislation, saying the health of their family was in his hands. Both Prime and Reti affiliate to Ngāpuhi hapū Te Kapotai. Prime said her anger at the government was matched by sadness that one of her relatives was leading the bill in the house and cutting off the Waitangi Tribunal hearing. “Ko taku whanaunga he tangata arero rua,” she said. Arero rua, literally “two-tongued”, means deceitful or two-faced. 

Assistant speaker Greg O’Connor, listening to a live translation as Prime spoke, cut in twice to tell Prime that while he only had the translation to go on, it appeared her “personal remarks” were close to being out of line.

Former health minister Ayesha Verrall also directed anger at Reti, calling him “cowardly” for choosing to push the legislation through under urgency rather than face scrutiny from the public and the Waitangi Tribunal. “It is shameful,” she said. “We have heard repeatedly that Dr Reti has a dream for Māori. I don’t see any evidence of a plan, I don’t see evidence of anything that will actually change things. I see evidence of populism, actually.”

Labour’s Arena Williams and Kieran McAnulty called the bill “a huge regression” and “disgraceful” respectively, while first-term MPs Cushla Tangaere-Manuel (Labour) and Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke (Te Pāti Māori) referenced the Tohunga Suppression Act of 1907, which attempted to stop the use of traditional Māori healing practices.

“Knowing that they are going to replace mātauranga Māori, well, what is the plan?” asked Maipi-Clarke. “What is the strategy? What does that mean, by taking out mātauranga Māori? Is that Tohunga Suppression Act 2.0?” Tangaere-Manuel spoke of her mother, whom she said was treated inadequately because she believed in rongoā Māori. “We can only wonder what would have been if her beliefs were honoured and she was provided mainstream care to go alongside that.”

Parliament will convene at 9am to vote on the third reading of the bill.

‘Become a member to help us deliver news and features that matter most to Aotearoa.’
Lyric Waiwiri-Smith
— Politics reporter
Keep going!
WFW_ChrisBishop_buildings.png

PoliticsFebruary 27, 2024

A housing minister for the New City

WFW_ChrisBishop_buildings.png

In making an ambitious pitch for the future of New Zealand cities, Chris Bishop has teed himself up for his first test: the Wellington District Plan.

Housing minister Chris Bishop just laid out the most unabashedly urbanist vision for New Zealand we’ve ever seen from a cabinet minister. In a speech to the Wellington chamber of commerce on Tuesday, Bishop labelled the housing crisis “state neglect on an industrial scale” that has “shattered the Kiwi dream”, and pitched a future of New Zealand as a primarily urban country. “Bigger cities are better cities,” he said. 

The balance of political power throughout most of New Zealand’s history rested in the provinces. We’ve never been an urban country. This speech marked a clear shift. It recognised that our next great economic leap won’t come from milk or wool, it will come from cities, by making Wellington and Christchurch the size of Auckland, and Auckland the size of Sydney. 

Phil Twyford, housing minister in Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government until he was replaced by Megan Woods in June 2019, had similar urbanist ideas, but never sold them quite as well. Bishop is a better communicator, and his National Party affiliations help him win over the business and property owners that were always sceptical of Twyford. Perhaps more importantly, this speech signalled that two successive governments see urban growth at the centre of this country’s future, although they are using different tools to support it. 

Last week, I wrote about the Old Town and the New City, two amorphous political factions that divide Wellington, broadly defined as people who want the capital to stay a medium-sized town vs those who want it to become a dense urban centre on a global scale. Bishop made it clear which camp he belongs to: “I’d say to people in the so-called Old Town, many of their kids live in the New City, and they want to be able to buy a home. And I suspect many of the people in the Old Town want to keep their kids in New Zealand, not in Sydney or New York.”

“Our housing market is practically standing at the departure lounge at Auckland Airport and big neon writing is telling them to just get on the plane and… telling them not to bother coming home,” he said. 

Bishop made his case for housing reform based on three arguments: First, larger cities are more powerful economic engines. He pointed to one study showing that doubling a city’s population increases the per-capita productivity by 15%. Second, more housing supply would reduce the $5-billion-a-year cost of government housing subsidies. Third, a moral case, that a housing system that results in thousands of people living in cars and massive intergenerational inequity is simply wrong. 

A new cabinet paper, released in conjunction with the speech, is full of similarly ambitious rhetoric. “Housing affordability is arguably the single most pressing economic, social and cultural problem facing this government,” he wrote. “My goal is to flood urban housing markets for Tier 1 and 2 councils with land for development.”

Twyford’s plan for growing cities was to remove council’s abilities to block housing. That’s the function of the NPS-UD (National Policy Statement on Urban Development) and the MDRS (Medium-Density Residential Standards), forcing councils to zone for growth. Bishop is taking a slightly lighter approach; he’s focused on shifting the incentives to make councils see new housing as a benefit rather than a burden, by offering financial bonuses if councils allow more housing, and introducing new infrastructure funding tools. 

a stylised image of a row of red townhouses mirrored horizontally by a row of blue townhouses

There are, however, big questions about whether it’ll work. The financial incentives treat councillors like business executives, not elected representatives. In reality, councillors’ strongest motivator isn’t keeping the council in the black, it’s getting re-elected, which often means bending to the will of anti-housing residents’ associations.

The MDRS will continue to be a thorn in the side of this government’s housing policy. National has walked back its support of the bipartisan “three townhouses of three storeys” bill, and replaced it with a counter-offer to make the MDRS optional for councils as long as they provide for 30 years of housing growth. 

That’s going to be a tough policy to enforce, especially against councils who really don’t want to allow new housing. Population growth projections are notoriously hard to project and easy to manipulate. The Wellington District Plan, for example, is based on projected growth of 50,000-80,000 people in the next 30 years. The independent hearings panel has shown it considers that figure to be a maximum, not a minimum, and suggested zoning for any extra housing is unnecessary – and may even have negative outcomes. 

The problem is, that growth prediction is extremely conservative. Wellington city has added 53,000 people since 1996, despite strict restrictions on new housing. Over the same period, Auckland added 623,000 new residents (although that figure covers the entire super city, while Wellington’s only covers the Wellington City Council area). If Wellington truly wanted to embrace Bishop’s idea that bigger cities are better cities, it could plan for hundreds of thousands of new residents and embark on an active campaign for growth, promoting the city to property developers, businesses and immigrants. 

The Wellington District Plan will be Bishop’s first chance to prove himself on housing. He announced he would be the final decision maker on the plan, responsible for deciding between the independent hearings panel recommendations and any council amendments. He’s made it clear he isn’t happy with some of the panel’s reports. “The idea that zoning and land supply does not affect housing affordability is, frankly, nuts,” he said in his speech today, a targeted dig at the panel, who sided with an economist who made that exact argument. Responding to a question from the crowd, he referenced a study showing rents had dropped in real terms after upzoning in Auckland. It was one of several studies that were presented to and dismissed by the panel because “the authors of those studies were not before us and we could not therefore discuss with them or the relevance of their findings to current conditions in Wellington City”.

After Geordie Rogers’ byelection win, Wellington City Council now has a (presumably) safe majority of votes in favour of upzoning. It can push far more permissive zoning, with taller height limits, smaller character areas, and thousands more homes. Bishop will be expected to back that up by approving the changes. One interesting part to watch: if the council recognises the Johnsonville train as “mass rapid transit” it will automatically trigger upzoning in the National Party strongholds of Khandallah and Crofton Downs, a move that is deeply unpopular among its residents’ associations. If it comes to it, is Bishop bold enough to hold the line?

‘Hutt Valley, Kāpiti, down to the south coast. Our Wellington coverage is powered by members.’
Joel MacManus
— Wellington editor

Politics