"Undoubtedly the number one thing that people want to talk to me about is meth [methamphetamine], interestingly, no matter what we start the conversation talking about; housing, health, meth kind of threads its way through there and in Taupō and Tūrangi I've been engaged by some of our marae social services saying 'this is a real problem, we need to do something about it'."
Coffey says he's committed to doing as much as a government can to try to turn the problem around. First steps include boosting mental health and addiction services at Taupō and Rotorua hospitals and supporting social service agencies, but there's no silver bullet.
"But we need to keep engaging with people on the ground, engaging with our hard to reach families, we need to listen to the teachers that say kids are showing the effects of what's going on at home and in housing as well, we still hear from landlords that it's still prevalent in our communities and we need to take a health-based approach not a criminal approach."
Housing is another issue and Coffey says it can be particularly frustrating.
"As Māori we are landowners, we have significant land interests and shareholding interests but can't still seem to tackle that problem of getting into our own homes. We've become a culture of renters and that's not good enough. One of the things I'm pledging to do is to provide home ownership options.
"We want to be our own rangatira, own our own home and pass on our own home and we don't want to be in a rental, that's very much not what we see rangatiratanga as being."
Coffey rattles through a list of things the Waiariki electorate has achieved in his three years (a mussel factory for Opotiki, water storage for kiwifruit operations in Te Kaha are two examples) but says one of the things he's most proud of advocating for is food in schools, which has the spin-off of also creating extra jobs.
"Every teacher, parent, principal I speak to tells me how much of a no brainer it is for kids to be learning. I'm proud to say 54 per cent of all schools in Waiariki will be rolling out or have already rolled out healthy free lunches in schools so that we can really help to relieve some of that poverty in our areas. "
Coffey says his goals for next term are to work with others to create more opportunities for Māori.
"Then I will have contributed to making Waiariki a better place, not just for this generation but for future generations too. "
