Māori health workers and community leaders are hoping tomorrow's Budget will address urgent social and health needs, with hints at a significant spend for Māori health.
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Finance minister Grant Robertson has already dubbed it a 'health budget', saying there will be significant investment - including for the Māori Health Authority.
Last year saw $1 billion invested in Māori initiatives, but since then there's been Delta, Omicron and a vaccination rollout, which brought Māori health providers and their years of inequities and underfunding to the fore.
The Budget is expected to continue those projects, with more funding for Māori health expected.
University of Auckland associate professor Matire Harwood said the developments are exciting, after years of advocacy. But the needs are also more pressing than ever.
Dr Harwood, who is also a GP at Papakura Marae, said she is wrestling with an ever-increasing waitlist, more whānau struggling with mental health issues, and a crisis made worse by an exodus of desperately-needed health workers.
GP and Professor Matire Harwood Photo: Supplied
"We're struggling," she said. "We've carried what has been the pandemic on top of everything else and doing the best that we can. But I am seeing colleagues who are burnt out, who are leaving the profession."
Robertson said the budget will lay the groundwork for dramatic changes to the health system, including the Māori Health Authority.
But Dr Harwood said while it's desperately needed, that's all big strategy and still months away.
There are pressing issues that need funding now.
"With the winter approaching we're still not out of Covid and I'm seeing increasingly people getting a reinfection, on top of other viral illnesses including the flu."
For all the talk of post-Covid and recovery, Māngere's Te Puea Marae is still seeing heavy demand, with thousands of kai parcels going out the door as isolation and the cost of living crisis bites.
Māngere's Te Puea Marae chairman Hurimoana Dennis Photo:
Last year saw significant money poured into projects for whānau Māori services and housing, which marae chairman Hurimoana Dennis said was slowly starting to bear fruit.
But he's sick of going cap-in-hand to government agencies to ask for more money every year.
"Taumata Korero, our rōpū, has supported 26,000 whānau across Tāmaki with food, medicines. That's ongoing, although it's dipped a little bit.
"Covid and its māuiui and stress is still there, it's not going away in a hurry," Dennis said.
He said he is already seeing the long tail on the pandemic, and he wants funding to get ahead of what may become a significant issue for his services.
Already, Dennis is seeing people with long Covid who cannot return to work full time; rangatahi who've dropped out of education; and whānau who have broken down and need ongoing support.
"I am saying that the agencies need to be more innovative and responsive to the long tail, the four legs, the two heads of this māuiui."
Also due soon is a long-awaited plan for under-funded Māori media, which for decades has been run on barely the smell of an oily rag.
Radio Waatea chairman Bernie O'Donnell said he is hoping for something sustainable and empowering in tomorrow's Budget.
Radio Waatea chairman Bernie O'Donnell Photo: Supplied
"It gives us an opportunity to start to look at what mana motuhake looks like in terms of by Māori, for Māori," he said.
"If we think about the previous investment into Māori radio it's all been about the reo, and while that's fantastic because the language was close to disappearing that's just one aspect of what we should be talking about in terms of Māori broadcasting."
These are all calls Māori have been making for months, calls they've raised with ministers.
Tomorrow, they'll be watching to see if the government has listened.
