‘Whānau Ora is a love story and it is about falling back in love with ourselves’ - Helen Leahy

Whanau Ora Minister Tariana Turia, of the Maori Party, in her office at Parliament, Wellington, in 2014. Photo / Mark Mitchell

• Whānau Ora was created in 2010 by the National-led Government and under the leadership of the late Dame Tariana Turia.
• Three commissioning agencies were established in 2014 - Te Pou Matakana, for the North Island, Te Pūtahitanga o Te Waipounamu in the South Island, and Pasifika Futures, which worked with Pacific families.
• Four new entities, including Ngāti Toa and Ngāi Tahu, will deliver Whānau Ora services following a government tendering process.

A simple waiata, composed by Whaea Inupo Farrar, was sung at each of the 22 hui held around Aotearoa in 2009 to answer the question, what is Whānau Ora?

Its message – to listen to the call of our whānau – was answered in multiple ways. There had to be minimal bureaucracy; “it should not be a structure that oppresses”.

We heard “the whānau is an expert in their own experience”; that “whānau have to describe success in their own terms”; that whānau require someone with a multiplicity of skills; not a multitude of people”; the themes were consistent: “well that’s us; it’s who we are”.

Whānau Ora staff were on the front line of Covid-19 vaccinations and helped vaccinate thousands of Māori and non-Māori during the pandemic. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Whaea Tariana Turia was faithful to the call. For her, the origins of Whānau Ora had begun in a policy sense with her introduction of He Korowai Oranga in 2002 and the subsequent “whānau development hui”.

But it started well before Parliament in the lessons she learnt at the feet of her aunties and grandmother; the village that she called home.

“It seemed to me such a simple thing to put in place a practice to restore our rights, our responsibilities, our obligations to care for one another.”

She saw it as a means of maximising our survival through a model of transformation based on taking up our collective responsibility.

It was never, ever, about services, programmes, providers.

Indeed, she often castigated officials for their inability to look at anything outside of the status quo, “provider ora”; ignoring the importance of whānau being in the driving seat; steering their own pathway to maximum wellbeing.

Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency (formerly Te Pou Matakana) chair Merepeka-Raukawa Tait and new Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke.

Over the 23 years since Whānau Ora was launched, we have shifted the focus of delivery from the individual to the collective; we know that it is aspirational; strengths-based; locally driven; intergenerational in its scope; collective in its approach.

When asked by her son once to “mind her business”, Tariana retorted, “you are my business, son”.

The business of raising good people who lead healthy lives; who are self-determining; who are confident to participate in society and in te ao Māori. The opportunity to be financially secure; to be resilient, nurturing and cohesive; to be guardians of our landscape. These broad outcomes couldn’t be further away from the inputs and outputs of conventional service delivery and programmes.

Whānau Ora has been a paradigm shift; a lifeline; an incredible movement of change which for the first time enabled the “trickle-down” of funding to place resources directly in whānau control.

In Successful Public Policy: Lessons from Australia and New Zealand (2019), an entire chapter focused on “Whānau Ora; an indigenous policy success story”.

The writers shared that the key to building whānau capability was found to be “a commissioning model which provided a purpose for capability to be built and that whānau led their own capability building in the pursuit of their aspirations”.

Other publications, such as 2020’s An indigenous self-determination response to Covid-19, report the Whānau Ora approach led to increased “community resilience, agility and importantly, the quality of life whānau enjoy within those communities”.

In fact, the evidence is overwhelming: that even a relatively small investment of public sector funding in indigenous concepts of wellbeing can disrupt the trajectory of intergenerational disadvantage.

There is consistent and compelling proof of greater social and cultural connection and increased ability of whānau to support one another.

But perhaps its most significant achievement was the shift from social engineering to participatory change. Traditional governments prefer social engineering (top-down) approaches which demand compliance through controlling the way in which data is gathered; the types of activities that should be reported; the pre-determined outputs delivered.

In contrast, participatory-based approaches (flax-roots) enable whānau to create and measure their own progress; to invest in building capability, courage and innovation which deliver on outcomes they want to see.

It has taken years to create the infrastructure to embed the dream of Whaea Tariana; to establish the platform by which whānau leaders, whānau champions are emboldened to be the change they want to see in the world.

The decision to dismantle this system last Friday; to demolish the building blocks from which transformation has occurred is against all evidence reported by the three Whānau Ora Commissioning Agencies: Te Pūtahitanga o Te Waipounamu, Te Pou Matakana (Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency) and Pacific Futures.

It is also contrary to the multitude of reviews conducted by the Office of Auditor-General in 2010 and again in 2023; by the Productivity Commission in 2015; by a ministerial panel in 2018; and the scores of independent evaluations conducted by each agency.

Countless reviews emphasised that the commissioning approach has resulted in positive change for a large number of whānau, measured by a change in outcomes, and that “whānau themselves have been instrumental in driving the change”.

Where fault was consistently found and as recent as December 2024, was in the failure of government agencies to adapt “their systems and processes to enable whānau-centred ways of working (for example, by modifying their funding, contracting, and reporting requirements)”.

In 2018, the Whānau Ora ministerial review found that government agencies lacked an understanding of Whānau Ora and were opting out of their responsibilities.

Public service barriers were described as the “Terrace culture including a lack of trust in innovation and systematic racism”. There was also concern raised around the singular focus that agencies tend to take, characterised by a siloed approach to government service delivery.

Interestingly, despite the accumulative and robust evidence, there is little inclination, it seems, for government to address its own policy failures. The changes announced last week are not about holding government to account … instead it’s about renegotiating Whānau Ora.

Rather than celebrating the unique leadership of whānau; the changes are driven by the collection of data for the machinery of government; and change for change’s sake.

To date, no rationale has been provided for the shock disestablishment other than the country is being taken back to the era of “delivering services to whānau”. Not by whānau; not with whānau; but services and programmes to, for and on behalf of whānau.

Helen Leahy with Dame Tariana Turia.

It has been bruising; demoralising; destabilising.

Yet we know that Whānau Ora will continue to burn bright in the eyes of all who have seen its impact.

We will continue to speak of Whānau Ora; we will continue to place our faith in whānau; to believe that they are the greatest ambassadors of their own future.

And while we dust ourselves off, and prepare to start again, we have to keep telling ourselves that Whānau Ora is a love story – essentially it is about falling back in love with ourselves. Believe it. Be it. Live it.