MEDIA RELEASE: Climate and health advocates condemn Select Committee’s recommendation that the anti-democratic Regulatory Standards Bill be passed

Friday 10 October 2025

The Aotearoa New Zealand Climate and Health Council, OraTaiao, condemns the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s recommendation that the Government’s anti-democratic Regulatory Standards Bill be passed. The recommendation was made public today with the release of the Committee’s report on the Bill. 

“The Regulatory Standards Bill threatens to undermine our collective well-being, our people’s health, our work to respond to climate change and will worsen inequities by eroding the democratic and social fabric of Aotearoa New Zealand,” says OraTaiao Convenor Dr Summer Wright.

“The process of the Bill’s development and subsequent consultation have been cynical and disgraceful.” 

“And now the Coalition members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee have essentially ignored the vast majority of the public, including more than 150,000 submitters, who oppose this anti-democratic bill and sought to make themselves heard by the Government.”

MEDIA RELEASE, 18 August 2025

Submissions closed today on the Government’s Healthy Futures (Pae Ora) Amendment Bill and OraTaiao, the Aotearoa NZ Health and Climate Council, is warning the Bill proposes to profoundly damage an already weakened health system.

OraTaiao, representing more than 1000 health professionals, workers and researchers, says the Bill proposes to restrict the work of our health system to the provision of services to those who are already sick rather than continue vital work that aims to keep the public healthy and well.

“The Bill proposes to rip the guts out of our health system, which is already suffering under the Government’s harmful cuts,” says OraTaiao convener Dr Summer Wright. 

MEDIA RELEASE, 9 April 2025

OraTaiao calls on all of Aotearoa to take a stand for climate health at this Friday’s Climate Strike on Parliament Grounds.

“As health practitioners, we know that the health of our environment is fundamental to human wellbeing” says Dr. Steve Grimson, executive member of OraTaiao. “That’s why we’ve issued medical certificates for people of all ages, across Aotearoa, to join this Friday’s call to action”.

MEDIA RELEASE, 19 November 2024

Over 1000 health organisations, professionals, and advocates have signed an open letter calling for united health sector opposition to the Treaty Principles Bill. 

OraTaiao: Aotearoa New Zealand Climate and Health Council released the letter last week. National health organisations including The New Zealand College of Public Health Medicine, New Zealand Nurses Organisation, Te Kāhui Manukura o Kai Ora, New Zealand College of Midwives, Midwifery Employee Representation & Advisory Service, and the Association of Psychotherapists Aotearoa New Zealand (APANZ) support the letter.

MEDIA RELEASE, 4 September 2024

Aotearoa Healthcare Workers for Palestine, OraTaiao Aotearoa NZ Climate and Health Council, and Te Kāhui Manukura o Kai Ora (NZ Māori Dietitians Association) together call for Pharmac to stop buying New Zealand’s medicines from Israeli-based company Teva and choose other suppliers.

Their submissions to Pharmac highlight how Teva, an Israeli global pharmaceutical company, is involved and profiting from Israel’s system of apartheid in the Palestinian Occupied Territories (OPT; encompasses Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem).

MEDIA RELEASE, 3 April 2024

OraTaiao calls on all of Aotearoa to get active and take a stand for health this Friday, by joining the School Strike for Climate Strike to be held in at least 20 locations around the country.

MEDIA RELEASE, 26 February 2024 

OraTaiao is appalled by Government plans to introduce legislation abolishing Te Aka Whai Ora ahead of an urgent Waitangi Tribunal hearing on the matter on Thursday. 

MEDIA RELEASE, 22 September 2023

A Health election scorecard, released today by OraTaiao: The New Zealand Climate and Health Council, shows significant room for improvement from all parties. Representing more than 1,000 health professionals and health organisations in Aotearoa, OraTaiao is part of a worldwide movement urgently focusing on the health challenges of climate change and the health opportunities of climate action.

MEDIA RELEASE, 19 September 2023

Protection from adverse effects of climate change has been affirmed as a right for all children under international law by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. 

Launched yesterday in Geneva, the Committee’s General Comment No. 26 (2023) on Children’s Rights and the Environment With a Special Focus on Climate Change places new legal obligations on States, like New Zealand, which have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. 

“As a contributor to the UN Committee which issued this statement, OraTaiao welcomes its wide-ranging verdict and we urge the New Zealand Government to now honour its obligations to act for our children”, says OraTaiao Co-convenor Summer Wright.