A new generation of Māori nurses is entering the health workforce backed by a Southern Cross scholarship fund designed to cut through financial stress and help more students graduate.
The money targets the exact moments when students struggle the most. It gives them a $5,000 annual contribution toward course fees, a $500 weekly stipend to help pay the bills while they are away on clinical placements, and covers their final Nursing Council exam fees.
The fund is already making a major difference on the ground, with Māori students making up 23 of the 49 scholarships handed out across the country so far this year.
A vital lifeline
For second-year Māori nursing student Mallory Ahmu, the financial backing was the final push she needed.
“The scholarship was kind of that big ‘yes, I should do it’ because it gives me that financial stability so that I can focus on my studies while also being able to live life, Ahmu says.
First-year student Kylah Presland-Rudolph was driven to the job after losing her kuia to cancer. Watching the care her grandmother received opened her eyes to what she wanted to do.
“Just during that time while she was in hospital and that time I spent with her, it honestly opened my eyes into what I could see myself doing and also what I could see myself changing,” Presland-Rudolph says.
Changing rules create friction
While these new nurses are ready to hit the wards, they are entering a system undergoing political change. The coalition government is currently moving to change or remove Treaty of Waitangi clauses across 19 different laws, including rules around health.
Right now, public health services must actively give effect to the Treaty. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says those rules have become too confusing.
“Having open-ended Treaty clauses that say ‘give effect’, ‘honour’... ” You know, a whole mish-mash of things that have been built up over 30 to 40 years, it doesn’t make sense to us,” Luxon says.
The law changes face strong pushback. Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson called the move a political distraction that “tramples all over Te Tiriti in law”
Kerri Nuku, Kaiwhakahaere of Tōpūtanga Tapuhi (New Zealand Organisation of Nurses), strongly backed the Southern Cross investment but warned the Government that dropping government Treaty responsibilities risks hurting health outcomes for Māori.
“What we’ve said could fix the problem is that ‘by Māori, for Māori’ service”, Nuku says.
“But if you remove any of those obligations, then there is definitely no commitment to have to do anything in this space”
Keeping cultural safety alive
With the political landscape shifting, Southern Cross Healthcare has launched its own internal safeguards. This year it released Kawa Whakaruruhau, a new set of cultural safety guidelines that explicitly build Te Tiriti obligations directly into their private hospitals.
Dean Cowles, Kaiārahi Hauora Māori for Southern Cross Healthcare, says the framework provides clear direction so that Māori nurses can bring their identity into their clinical work.
“That guideline there really gives some guidance and some direction for our nurses, our Māori nurses, to really live up to what kawa whakaruruhau means in clinical practice,” Cowles says.
For the students out on the hospital floor, the focus is simple, turning up for their people and changing the narrative.
“There is a lot of focus on Māori deficit out there, and I want to focus on Māori strengths,” Ahmu says. “So that other Māori, like patients that come in, can see someone that looks like them, that thinks like them, that understands them.”
