Nursing identity and Ngāti Porou Oranga rural health nurse Gina Chaffey-Aupouri spoke of the challenges facing nurses at a New Zealand Nurses Organisation’s public meeting. Below is an abridged version of her address.

“Pay equity is one of the biggest issues for nurses on the East Coast,” she said.

“We are underpaid. We are the lowest paid, even now after we’ve had a raise.

“We have a lot of work, 24/7 as rural health nurses.

“There’s five of us and we work hard.

“We do it — why? . . .  because we care about the Māori people.

“We do it here. We do it at the marae. We do it in the clinic. We  do all this vital work wherever our people want it.

“Now they’re getting rid of us.

They wait until they’re the sickest people — next thing, they’re calling helicopters.

“That happens on the East Coast. The nurses do that working with the doctors.

“Then they’re got to send the patients to Gisborne.

“Thank goodness our nurses from the Coast, who have done the hard yards, know them.

“We only have a handful of nurses at Ngāti Porou who are dedicated to the Ngāti Porou people and whoever else comes across their path.

“We ask, what is the vision from the Government with pay equity, also with training our own, training Māori and Pasfika?

“How can you do that?”

Ms Chaffey-Aupouri said nurses were valuable.

She urged the government to make a decision about the nurses.

“Make a decision for your nurses, not against your nurses,” she said. “We want nurses. Nurses have a specific and wide skill base. We want them to be supported from when they were rangatahi. I was supported by whānau, our hapu and iwi.

“What more can I do than to give back what they gave me —our whānau, our hapu, our iwi deserve the best.

“Our pakehe deserve the best . . .  our children deserve the best.”