Todd Stephenson: ACT health spokesperson wants Health NZ to ditch karakia for staff

The ACT Party wants Health NZ to stop encouraging staff to incorporate a Karakia - or prayer - into their daily routine.

A leaked email revealed the organisation wants staff to include more prayers into their work - and included instructional videos. 

ACT health spokesperson Todd Stephenson has labelled this a 'distraction'.

"We want a culturally and religiously neutral public service... and we believe that these prayers or rituals are actually a distraction from what the public service should be doing."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Either du for c L.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
The ACT Party wants Health New Zealand staff to stop
saying katakia, which are prayers every single day. In e
leaked email that was sent to Health New Zealand staff,
the organization has encouraged them to incorporate prayers into their work,
and has even sent them some videos to help them
learn some prayers. Todd Stevenson is the Act Party Health spokesperson.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Hey Todd, Hi Heather, how are you.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
I'm very well, thank you. So who's been told to
do this? Are we talking about like at the frontline level?
Nurses and doctors and so on?

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yes, I mean this is an email that went out
to all Health New Zealand staff and I should say
actually other government departments also been in contact employees and
another game I've been in contact and today also hear it.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, so I've got a text from somebody saying they
work at MB they are required to pray. Pray where else.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
I've heard from the Ministry of Justice. If you look
at the websites of some of a lot of the
departments like FARMAC, the Ministry of Maried Development, etcetera, they
will have a lot of information about correct here.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
How did they justify.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
I don't know. I mean, we've got two objections really here.
Hither one is we actually want to culturally and religiously
mutual public service. But my other big issue too is
we believe that these prayers or rituals are actually a
distraction from what the public service should be doing.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
What can you do about it other than sort of
just embarrass them for it? Is there anything you can
actually do?

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Look, yeah, I'm obviously a first to an act in
calling it out and saying look, we want.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
To yes, but Todd, you've got you've got a minister
like the deputy Prime Minister shortly running your party. So
what can you guys do? Can't you issue some sort
of a notice for something?

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Look, I know that the cabinet ministers are discussing that.
It's part of the coalition agreement was to actually give
some more guidance around how some of these things should
be interpreted and actually what the public service should be
focused on. So I'll definitely be advocating for that, continue
to that with an act, because yeah, we want to
make sure that public servants are actually delivered on the public.
So you know, living in the public services, Kii's need.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
So the only criticism that I've seen. I mean, you're
going to get a fair bit of criticism of this obviously,
but the most stinging criticism that I've seen is that
you can't really stop them doing a prayer when you
people do a prayer every time you sit down to
do parliament. Are you open to cutting that?

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah, absolutely, personally. I've already got on the records saying
it's something I would like to look at, you know,
Parliament and steeped lots of traditions and rituals. That's exactly
a ritual we have every day, and I'm very hoping
to making that as an issue.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Todd, thank you very much, really appreciate your time. That's
Todd Stevenson, who's the Act Party Health spokesperson. For more
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