Giles
Dexter, Political Reporter
A petition
calling for the government to urgently fix the health system
– which organisers estimate is New Zealand’s longest
petition ever – has been delivered to
Parliament.
Unfurled across Parliament’s lawn, the
petition stretched down the steps, and past the
Cenotaph.
Patient Voice Aotearoa spokesperson Malcolm
Mulholland estimated it was 276 metres long, stretching a
few metres beyond the length of the Suffrage
Petition.
Mulholland said it weighed somewhere between
150 and 200 kilograms, and said it “quite literally” felt
like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
“I
can’t lift it myself, I need more help. But for me, the
first part of the journey feels over.”
The 90,000
signatories were signing up to what Mulholland called the
Buller Declaration – an assertion that the health system is
in crisis, that Māori, rural, and low-income populations
are disproportionately impacted, that the government must
act urgently to address the crisis and meet its Treaty of
Waitangi obligations to protect Māori health, and that it
must allocated additional resources to train, recruit, and
retain more nurses, doctors, and specialists.
“The
call was made that our health system is broken, and because
it is broken, people in Buller are missing out on the health
care that they need, and in today’s age that is just
unacceptable,” Mulholland said.
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“It should be the
priority of any government, regardless of colour, be they
blue or red, that they look after the health of their
people.”
Mulholland said his travels around the
country had made him realise that what he at first thought
was just a Buller problem was then a rural problem, then a
Māori problem, then everyone’s problem.
The petition
was also supported by groups such as the New Zealand Nurses
Organisation, the Association of Salaried Medical
Specialists, the Royal New Zealand College of General
Practitioners, and the New Zealand College of
Midwives.
It was accepted by MPs from the Greens,
Labour, and ACT.
New Zealand First leader Winston
Peters watched from a distance, but the Health Minister was
absent.
Simeon Brown said he had a Cabinet committee
meeting and so could not attend the petition handover, but
he accepted there were “significant” challenges in the
health system.
“I accept that too many people are
waiting too long to be able to get the care they need. I
hear the concerns of New Zealanders every single day, I meet
with staff on the front-line when I’m visiting hospitals on
a regular basis, and I’m focused on making sure we address
these issues,” he said.
“We’re investing record
funding into our health system, we are hiring more doctors,
more nurses, and we’re focused on reducing those wait-lists
which is why we reintroduced those health
targets.”
Mulholland was not disappointed with Brown’s
absence, saying it was more important that “the people” were
present.
For now, the petition will stay in Green MP
Hūhana Lyndon’s office.
But Lyndon was keen to get
the petition into Te Papa, to serve as a constant reminder
to whoever is in power of the importance of the health
system.
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