Speakers

Manutaki – Auckland City Missioner | Co-Chair – Kore Hiakai

Helen has devoted most of her life to addressing the social issues of Aotearoa New Zealand. She has a wealth of experience in social services, and a deep commitment to a more equitable nation, one where everyone has access to what they need.

As the Missioner, Helen leads Auckland City Mission to strive and advocate for a nation where wealth and opportunity are redistributed so that there is enough for everyone. Helen has been with the Mission for more than a decade in a range of leadership roles.

At the Mission, Helen is also known as Manutaki, a Māori title meaning the bird that leads. This is significant as she leads the Mission’s commitment to accepting and understanding the effects of colonisation on Aotearoa, and the Mission’s place in the restorative work needed to move forward.

Helen is also co-chair of Kore Hiakai, a national collective working towards a food secure Aotearoa

Alongside her practical work, Helen has published research into the measurement and experience of food insecurity in New Zealand.

Ayesha is an infectious diseases doctor and Labour list MP from Wellington. She is passionate about preventing illness so that every New Zealander can enjoy good health and live a free and full life.

Ayesha grew up in Te Anau. She attended medical school at the University of Otago and worked as a junior doctor at Wellington Hospital. Ayesha completed her specialist training in Singapore and researched tuberculosis in Indonesia.

In 2019 Ayesha was elected to the Capital and Coast District Health Board on a Labour ticket. She is an expert on vaccines, tuberculosis and COVID-19. During the COVID-19 pandemic response, Ayesha was instrumental in efforts to improve New Zealand’s contact tracing.

Dr Bourne is an experienced clinical and people leader with a passion for being the ‘bridge’ between policy and strategy, healthcare operations, and clinical standards to deliver tangibly better outcomes across Aotearoa. He is a proud generalist, enjoying the challenge of the variety of presentations that are seen in primary care. He sees relationships as being the foundation upon which good health care delivery is based and believes the value of continuity, which is at the heart of general practice, is vital in delivering better outcomes for people and their whānau.

Joe has worked in Te Puke since 2003 and is a practising GP, working in an inter-disciplinary team at Poutiri Wellness Centre, a kaupapa Māori practice. He also has extensive experience working for Bay of Plenty DHB including time as the Clinical Director of Innovation and Improvement and as Acting Chief Medical Officer.

From January to October 2021, Joe was the primary care lead for the COVID-19 Vaccination and Immunisation Programme, and in November 2021 he became the clinical lead for COVID Care in the Community.

Joe is a Fellow of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practice, and also has a Master of Public Health (Health System Management).

Dr Bradford is the College’s Medical Director, having taken over the role in April 2023. He is also a Tauranga-based GP working at Fifth Avenue Family Practice and became a partner at the practice in 2013.

He trained in Southampton in the UK and moved to New Zealand in 2008. Initially working in emergency medicine, Dr Bradford left the hospital system and travelled via urgent care to Hauora medicine, a Māori philosophy of health, where he worked at Ngati Kahu Hauora in Tauranga and was the GP for Matakana Island.

Dr Bradford is passionate about whole of life care and enjoys the continuity that comes from caring for multiple generations across families. A desire to help shape service delivery for patients and work with partners to better inform them of the value and excellence of general practice led Dr Bradford into governance roles and representative groups. In 2016, he became Chair of Western Bay of Plenty PHO for five years, and he chaired the Primary Health Alliance.

In 2021 Dr Bradford became one of the Chief Medical Officers at BoP DHB and looked after the surgical services, child, women and family teams and primary care work as well as being clinical lead for COVID-19.

Alan Chew, a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, is the founder of Houston Technology, a 37-year-old, 35-strong technology company in Hamilton. He created Houston Medical, one of the earliest PMS packages in NZ.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Alan and his team gifted the design of the NZ Covid Tracer App to the nation as well as developed Intellimed, a range of Business Process Automation tools for GP practices.
Alan can be reached at alan@houston.co.nz

Michael is Newshub's multi-award-winning Investigations Reporter.

Over the past 16 years in television, Michael has worked in both daily news and long format investigative current affairs. Michael has twice been named Reporter of The Year at the New Zealand Television Awards, winning the coveted category in 2020 and again in 2021. His coverage of the Samoa measles crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic also saw Newshub take out consecutive Best News Coverage wins in 2020 and 2021. He won the Best Coverage of a Major Event award at the 2021 Voyager Media Awards for his investigative work on the Government's response to COVID-19.

He has special interests in humanitarian issues, health, immigration, exploitation, aviation and the fishing industry. His investigative work in these areas has prompted law changes and sparked Government inquiries. Michael is also Newshub's expert in Pacific issues and has worked as the network's Pacific Correspondent for over a decade, regularly travelling abroad to cover environmental, political and social issues.

Michael has twice reported on the war and famine in South Sudan and produced a special series on the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh. He's spent time working for Al Jazeera English in Doha and is a graduate of the Canterbury University Journalism School.

Brooke is the Deputy Leader of the ACT Party. In Parliament she holds the roles of ACT Party Whip, and is spokesperson for Health, Housing, Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Brooke is qualified in international trade and economics, and began her career as a corporate affairs consultant, advocating for business clients facing policy challenges.

Her practical and political experience means she knows what big government and rushed laws do to people and businesses. Brooke left the private sector to work in Parliament where she has been credited as the brains behind the End of Life Choice Act.

Since being elected in 2020, she has been named the Herald’s top performing new MP and described as “making an impact quietly, forcefully,” and “proving her worth as a role model to many MPs older than her.”

She has been a voice for Kiwis concerned about health care in Parliament by leading urgent debates into both the Waikato DHB data breach and the COVID-19 deaths in self-isolation. Brooke successfully advocated for a rural health strategy in the health reforms and continues to hold the Government accountable on health issues such as worsening MRI/CT scan post-code lotteries and money allocated vs results regarding ICU capacity.