Date/Time
Date(s) - Thu 23 July
12:00
In health, education and Pacific wellbeing, we often already know what works. The harder problem is staying the course long enough to see it through.
New Zealand’s biggest social challenges are rarely about a lack of good ideas. In health, education and Pacific wellbeing, we often already know what works. The harder problem is staying the course long enough to see it through, when reforms are routinely introduced by one government and reversed by the next.
Moderated by Peter Bale, this webinar brings together three contributors to Facing Up to Our Future: Challenges and Choices for New Zealand to examine the structural choices in front of us. Professor Robin Gauld on stabilising a health system weakened by underinvestment and the 2023 centralisation; Professor Stuart McNaughton ONZM on an education system with real strengths but widening equity gaps; and Professor Jemaima Tiatia-Siau on Pacific futures, equity, belonging, and the aspirations of Pacific peoples in an increasingly complex and interconnected world.
A single thread runs through all three contributions: the decades-long work of health, education and belonging sits awkwardly inside a three-year horizon. The discussion turns to what New Zealand could do differently in these areas, and how reforms might be designed to survive a change of government.
Speakers
Professor Robin Gauld
Professor Robin Gauld is Executive Dean of Bond Business School at Bond University on the Gold Coast, Australia, and an Honorary Professor at the Otago Medical School. He is one of New Zealand’s foremost analysts of its health system.
Earlier in his career he was a Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow, working with colleagues at Boston University and Harvard, and held teaching and research posts at the University of Hong Kong, City University of Hong Kong, the University of Texas, and Harvard. His research focuses on comparative health policy, health system and quality improvement, clinical governance, primary care, and health information technology.
Robin has authored more than 85 peer-reviewed articles and several books. His book The New Health Policy won first prize in its category at the 2010 British Medical Association Medical Book Awards. He holds a PhD in public administration from the University of Hong Kong and a master’s degree with distinction from Victoria University of Wellington.
In Facing Up to Our Future he writes, with Peter Davis and Dylan Mordaunt, on stabilising New Zealand’s health system.
Professor Stuart McNaughton ONZM
Professor Stuart McNaughton ONZM is New Zealand’s Chief Education Scientific Advisor, a role he has held since 2014, and a Professor of Education at the University of Auckland. He also holds an honorary position as Senior Research Fellow at East China Normal University in Shanghai.
He joined the University of Auckland in 1976 and was awarded a Personal Chair in Education in 2000. Over his career he has served as Head of Department, acting Dean, and Director of the University’s Manukau programme, and was Founding Director of Te Pūtahi / Woolf Fisher Research Centre. He completed his master’s degree in education at the University of Auckland and his doctoral studies in human development at the University of Kansas, earning his PhD in 1978.
His work has been widely recognised. He is an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit and a recipient of the Royal Society’s Dame Joan Metge Medal, the University of Auckland Research Excellence Award, and several international honours in literacy research, including induction into the Reading Hall of Fame.
In Facing Up to Our Future he writes on education, performance and equity.
Professor Jemaima Tiatia-Siau
Fonoiā Professor Jemaima Tiatia-Siau is Pro Vice-Chancellor Pacific and Professor of Pacific Studies at Waipapa Taumata Rau, the University of Auckland. She is an internationally recognised scholar whose research and leadership have significantly influenced Pacific health and mental health and wellbeing policy and practice. Jemaima was one of six panellists appointed to the New Zealand Government’s 2018 Mental Health and Addiction Inquiry and subsequently served on the inaugural board of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission.
Her expertise spans Pacific health, mental health and wellbeing, suicide prevention and postvention, health inequities, climate change and mental wellbeing and youth development, She has held numerous governance and advisory roles across the health, mental health, and suicide prevention sectors, including two terms on a Health Research Council of New Zealand Health Research Committee.
She is also a Foundation Fellow and Council member of the Pacific Academy of Sciences, reflecting her standing as a leading Pacific academic and thought leader.
In Facing Up to Our Future, co-authored with Seiuli Angel Timali Tiatia-Siau, they explore Pacific futures, equity, belonging, and the aspirations of Pacific peoples in an increasingly complex and interconnected world. Jemaima’s work continues to shape national and regional conversations on wellbeing, equity, leadership, and the future of Pacific communities.
Peter Bale
Peter Bale is a New Zealand-born journalist and media executive with a career spanning more than four decades and several of the world’s leading news organisations. After starting out on New Zealand newspapers and covering politics for the Wellington Evening Post, he spent fifteen years with Reuters reporting from Europe, Asia and the Middle East, including on the fall of the Soviet Union and the first Gulf War. He went on to senior digital and editorial roles at the Financial Times group, The Times of London, Microsoft and CNN, where he was Vice-President of CNN International Digital, and later led the Center for Public Integrity in Washington during the period of its Panama Papers investigation. Now based back in New Zealand, he writes and comments on international affairs and the future of New Zealand media, and is a well-known commentator on the health of the country’s news ecosystem.