There is plenty of activity in the Safety, Health and Wellbeing Action Hub.

An exciting development coming up is contributing to the Women’s Health Strategy emerged from the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Bill. Submissions continue to be a constant activity: preparing presenting, and monitoring legislation progress afterwards and we are grateful to Raewyn Stone who leads this work. Recent and upcoming submissions include the Birth Injuries Bill, Improving Surrogacy Laws, the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Amendment Bill.

The Action Hub has two work stream areas:

• maternal mental health, and
• improving legislative protections against stalking and harassment.

In the mental health area, we are monitoring relevant legislation such as the Birth Injuries Bill and everything that affects maternal mental health. We are keeping a close connection with the work led by the Helen Clark Foundation on perinatal and maternal mental health policy in Aotearoa New Zealand: Āhurutia te Rito - It Takes a Village. Deputy Director Dr Holly Walker of the Helen Clark Foundation wrote a summary document to help guide conversations on this topic: "Āhurutia Te Rito - It takes a village, Summary of Policy Implications" (May 2022) - you can download the .pdf file here.

There is a surge of interest and support to improve the laws and enhance protection for people against online stalking and harassment. We are engaging in developments in this work with Netsafe (New Zealand’s independent, non-profit online safety organisation) and with groups who want to improve and strengthen protections.

We meet every other month by Zoom. The Action Hub Committee and the workstreams groups meet in-between to progress their work. We are particularly keen to increase the number of people who prepare, write and present submissions. We are starting some training on this area in conjunction with the Parliamentary Watch Committee. We want to improve our communications and welcome those skills to the Action Hub.

Please connect with us if you want to join the Action Hub, get active and support the mahi.

Nā tō rourou, nā taku rourou ka ora ai te iwi
With your basket and my basket, the people will thrive

Eileen Brown, Convenor, Safety Health and Wellbeing Action Hub
[email protected]

To read more articles from The Circular (issue 636), click on the tag below.