Submission

Directions on government policy to statutory entities and Crown entity companies

Rural Women New Zealand represents the interests of 20% of rural women recorded by Statistics NZ as working in or have business interests in the farming sector. RWNZ has over 300 branches located in rural areas throughout New Zealand. As an organisation, we make submissions to government on issues relevant to our four portfolio areas of Health, Education, Land and Social issues.

Over the last year Rural Wards within the District Health boards have been removed and replaced with a STV voting system that assumes rural health issues are the same as urban. With greater distances, centralised hospital services and reduced GP’s in rural areas this is certainly not the case. Furthermore the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) have changed their rural affairs section from being a watchdog over rural issues to dealing with skills and economic issues. Therefore rural health and education issues are not on the agenda.

How does an organisation such as RWNZ, which has invested in research on rural access to health services, get action to accommodate the needs of the rural sector? A legal clause such as Clause 148 Public Finance (State Sector Management) will allow further derailment of rural access to health services. There will be no incentive where rural is not mentioned in policy to provide any information associated with rural health. Minority groups not mentioned in mainstream health policies will be disregarded as rural were when the analysis of the District Health Boards was conducted. The analysis included Maori, Pacific Island and Asian cultural groups but not rural. Rural represented a total population of 385,000 close to 16% of the population base of DHB’s. As rural we cover all cultural groups based in a rural area.

We strongly object to the proposed clause.