Labour’s M\u0101ori campaign chairperson Willie Jackson says he “personally” does not want to reintroduce the scrapped M\u0101ori Health Authority if his party is elected.<\/p>\n
Jackson, who is also co-chair of Labour’s M\u0101ori caucus, appeared on Q+A this morning, as his party launches its campaign to win back the seven M\u0101ori seats it lost six of in 2023.<\/p>\n
Pressed repeatedly on if Labour would bring back the M\u0101ori Health Authority axed by the National-led coalition, Jackson said the party was “still talking about” it \u2013 before he conceded his own view on the issue.<\/p>\n
“My personal position is that I’m not in favour,” he said. “We just started it, but we never got the funding and resourcing in place. That’s what they’re saying: ‘look, if we can just get the funding resourcing’, so I’m saying, well, what if we do that?”<\/p>\n
He argued M\u0101ori health providers themselves had told Labour that direct funding mattered more than the structure.<\/p>\n
“The primary drive here was that we were not getting enough funding, resourcing and devolvement to M\u0101ori health providers. M\u0101ori health providers are being starved.”<\/p>\n
Jackson pointed to alternative approaches which were more centred on “devolvement” \u2013 handing greater resourcing and control directly to M\u0101ori providers.<\/p>\n
The veteran MP was also probed about Labour’s strategy in the M\u0101ori electorates, where rival on the left Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori was seeking electorate votes while gifting its party vote, with hopes of creating an overhang in Parliament.<\/p>\n
Jackson rejected the suggestion his party was competing on the same terms, saying the party ran a “kaupapa, whakapapa M\u0101ori … strategy based around jobs, health and homes”.<\/p>\n
For the full interview, watch the video above<\/p>\n
Q+A with Jack Tame is made with the support of New Zealand On Air<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labour’s M\u0101ori campaign chairperson Willie Jackson says he “personally” does not want to reintroduce the scrapped M\u0101ori Health…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[81991,42,134,8028,43,135,40,38,41,39,10872],"class_list":["post-585244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-hauora","tag-headlines","tag-health","tag-labour-party","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-torangapu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}