Kerekere ElizabethDr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): E te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe. Nā te mea tuatahi he mihi aroha ki te whānau pani o ērā tāne. Mauria mai ngā tini aituā hei tangihia hei maumaharatia. Haere ki te puna wairua ki te puna roimata ki te puna tangata. Haere haere haere atu rā.[Madam Speaker greetings. Firstly I would like send my condolences to the bereaved families of those men. Carry with you the many deaths that need to be mourned and remembered. Go to the spring of the spirit to the well of tears to the source of life. May they rest in peace.]I begin today by acknowledging the whānau and friends of these men—people who loved them who are mourning and who are rightfully angry at these tragic and seemingly completely preventable deaths. We'll take part in this debate because we want to honour their lives and all the people who have so far passed away from this pandemic. We hope that it will continue to be the wake-up call that the Government needs but we acknowledge the hard work of the Government. We acknowledge how hard our health workers our community people how everybody has rallied and Māori communities and Pasifika all our migrant people—everybody is working as hard as they can. They are tired. They are really tired.However some of this and the impact on Māori is because of some key strategic decisions that were made that from the beginning have impacted on us. So from day one the Government decided against an equity approach. An age-based vaccination roll-out inherently and completely disadvantaged Māori from the beginning because of our underlying health conditions that see us die on average 20 years younger because of overcrowded housing but mostly because of the institutional racism that the health system is set up on. That's just not me and the Greens saying that. In this report and I quote Most importantly the system design has not developed with equity at its heart. The combination of lower vaccination rates in Māori and Pasifika and the spread of COVID-19 in low socio-demographic and marginalised communities has meant that the burden of COVID-19 has fallen disproportionately on Māori and Pasifika communities. There is a risk that the current"—this is the community supported isolation and quarantine—"system could further magnify this inequity." So that is the place we start from.Every single Māori and even non-Māori expert that we have spoken to and that I have questioned in the Health Committee that has gone on record has agreed that even if the rest of the country has 100 percent vaccinations if Māori do not it doesn't matter. They will be fine generally; we will not. So we make up about half of the cases despite being less than 20 percent of the population. Nearly 85 percent of Māori have had one dose; that is great that is awesome—72 percent have had two. While nearly all DHBs have reached that magic 90 percent first dose and Tai Rāwhiti is so close only two DHBs in the country have got 90 percent of Māori that have had their first dose.And when we look at this report that has been done I was so so sad reading this because I know how hard people in our health workforce are working. No one there wants to make mistakes. No one wanted to be the person who realised that the call wasn't made because of the technology. Those are horrible horrible reasons and horrible things to deal with in your work. What struck me though in both these cases is it was not just one thing that happened; it was a succession of things that went wrong. Things escalated and in some cases the escalation that should have happened never did.So we acknowledge things are moving very very fast. We acknowledge we're trying to work things out with old systems. We acknowledge that the health system has multiple systems that do not speak to each other and that holds us back not just for this but in probably most aspects of health. And the new health system—we're looking and waiting for the magical IT unified system that will have no glitches that will speak to everybody and everybody's information will be updated their correct name and gender will be in the system their iwi perhaps will be connected to their name.So supporting our workforce. People need everything in place to do their job well. We understand the key times the key places where our most qualified people need to make the decision. People on the end of a phone who are not qualified cannot make those assessments. They can triage things they can tell you who to call but we need those systems in place. We need enough of those people with those qualifications. I absolutely agree with my colleagues who are saying "What are we doing about all those people who are waiting to come here but do not have an MIQ spot? Qualified health workers that we need right now in our system." We need to unify the families of people who have come here for that purpose because that's a health and wellbeing thing for our staff.We absolutely need the technology that allows people to do their job properly but we also need those strong local connections. My first thing when I hear somebody's self-isolating it's like "Where are they?" Lots of us are living in overcrowded spaces. Where have they gone to be by themselves? And it may be because we don't know all the details that these were people who lived alone but where were their families? Why were their families not told? So those local connections—who's stepping in to check on them? Who's coming to just see if they're all right even if they're standing outside the door to have a chat? Who's bringing them food? Who's making sure their cat's all right? It really disturbed me that thing about the oximeter because some of our people who are given these pieces of technology to use—and it said in the review that even though they were struggling with it and didn't know how to use it they were still sent away with them. Now that was critical to monitoring that person that it was used and updated because they didn't know how to use it the information wasn't updated so one of the ways the alert could have been raised never happened. A simple simple thing of someone going to the house and checking they know how to use it.I've spoken in this House before about whare tapa whā; that our health system mainly focuses on the tinana the bodily integrity what happens to our physical self. But I think one of those other aspects is around whānau. We have to stop treating each case as an individual and look at where they fit in their whānau who is their community of support around them and then helping resource those whānau those community people who will be the ones that will go in and check on them—their hinengaro; their mental wellbeing. These are unprecedented times but actually we've had things like this before because for Māori even though COVID impacts on Māori disproportionately it's just the latest thing. There'll be something after this. We're not designed for these Pākehā diseases. We are pinning all of our hope on the Māori Health Authority. There's a lot of burden going on this one little statutory authority to fix—centuries of problems with Māori health but this one is happening right now. So for the same reason that the Government knew they had to set up an independent Māori authority if they wanted to make an impact on Māori health for COVID for whether it's home isolation whether it's MIQ however things are rolling out if you want Māori to live you ask the Māori experts what to do and then you do it. Nō reira tēnā koutou tēnā koutou kia ora huihui mai tātou katoa."