Verrall AyeshaHon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour): Madam Speaker—Mr Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): You're allowed to look up when you make the call Ms Verrall!Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: What a challenge for our country the unacceptable inequities that Māori face in health—the fact that Māori as has been outlined by my colleague die seven years earlier in the 21st century when we have been working on this issue for about a century since the birth of our health system. There is no good reason for it. We must not accept it. As a health practitioner I have seen many health practitioners be confronted by that. In fact it's not uncommon working in a hospital to go and see your patients' data audited and to have your colleagues look over at you and point to the fact that the outcomes you are achieving are not good enough for Māori. That has been something I have seen my colleagues go through and many of them have recognised that they despite being totally committed to the health of each individual in front of them have none the less worked in a way that has been unable to see those benefits translate into health gains for Māori. For my colleagues for whom the idea that they are caring for each person to the best of their ability is the centre of their professional identity this cuts them to the core. I have watched many of my colleagues go through that realisation and that process of understanding that things had to be done differently slowly sometimes painfully sometimes with a lot of confrontation between activists within our profession or our health services and the professionals concerned. But our country has come a long way and when we consulted on the review of the health system in the first term of the Labour Government there was strong support for the development of a Māori Health Authority in order to make sure that the multiple ways in which the system was failing Māori could be systematically addressed.What is so disappointing is that something which is the culmination of so much study and work and consultation in Aotearoa is now being removed by a Government who refuses to listen under urgency with no opportunity for select committee and no opportunity for the Waitangi Tribunal to be able to comment on this thing of critical importance to Māori. It is shameful and Dr Reti my view is that your conduct in this is cowardly. It is a moral challenge for us to address health outcomes for Māori. We have heard repeatedly that Dr Reti has a dream for Māori but I don't see any evidence of a plan. I don't see any evidence of anything that will actually change things. I see evidence of populism actually of sacrificing the needs of the minority in order to gain a majority and to take up power. I think it's a disgrace.I want to turn to the issue of how we could make substantial health gains for Māori and for non-Māori and that is in community and primary care. That was the purpose of the localities which I see in this bill. Their roll-out is now deferred. That is the importance of the relationship between iwi-Māori partnership boards and localities. Unless we get that right we will not be able to generate the positive outcomes we want for the health of everyone. We will continue to have an uncoordinated messy system of primary care where the bits don't join up and people can't access what they need. Such an important change. I cannot believe the Government is sleepwalking into this without a select committee process.