a globe on a blue background" width="" height="" />The Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) seeks to reform New Zealand’s publicly-funded health system in order to achieve better and more equitable health outcomes for all New Zealanders. The legislation, if passed, will repeal and replace the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000 in its entirety and dramatically overhaul the country’s public health system.
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What is the bill about?
The independent Health and Disability System Review was released in June 2020. It was the most recent review of New Zealand’s public health system to find consistently worse outcomes for some groups, particularly Māori, Pacific peoples, and people with disabilities. It also found significant variations in availability and quality of service between areas and population groups.
The review identified the structure of the health system as one of the root causes of these inequities. This legislation is intended to reform the health system, and aims to build towards pae ora (healthy futures) for all New Zealanders. The goal of the reforms is to protect, promote, and improve the health of all New Zealanders and achieve equity by reducing health disparities among New Zealand’s population groups, particularly for Māori.
What will this bill do?
The major changes this bill makes will be to the structure of the publicly-funded health system. It will disestablish the district health boards and the Health Promotion Agency, replacing them with — and transferring all their assets, liabilities, contracts, and employees to —Health New Zealand and a Māori Health Authority.
The bill also provides a framework for recognising iwi-Māori partnership boards to work with the Māori Health Authority at a local level, and will establish a more cohesive system for monitoring population health needs.
Who might this bill affect?
This bill will impact everyone in Aotearoa New Zealand, but especially
What happens next?
The Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Bill was introduced on 20 October 2021. It had its first reading on 27 October 2021, and was referred to the Pae Ora Legislation Committee. This is a special committee, created on 27 October 2021 to consider and report on the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Bill, and any other associated business that may be referred to it. Submissions closed on 9 December 2021, and the committee presented its final report on 14 April 2022. You can read the final report here.
The bill was read a second time on 5 May 2022, and concluded its committee of the whole House stage on 2 June 2022. The bill was read a third time on 7 June 2022.
