Petra Bagust
speaker
3,317 appearances
8 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 2d ago
Petra Bagust’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 4.
Appearances
Bear with me here, but when the latest life expectancy statistics came out in July last year,
For the five-year period that included the pandemic, 2019 to 2024, life expectancy in New Zealand stayed static, and that was a reflection of the pandemic.
There had been some excess deaths.
It had been increasing year on year prior to that, except there was one population group where it hadn't remained static, and life expectancy had increased by nearly a year for wahine Māori in a five-year period.
Which is remarkable.
Why is that?
It's almost certainly the result of years and years of work by those of us in the Ministry of Health and out in the NGO sector and the health sector by courageous politicians like the late Dame Tariana Turia.
And that work is now a pain to live in.
So imagine the intergenerational impact of that for Māori.
Yeah, your mother is alive for longer.
your mother's alive for longer so that's a profound change you might get a grandmother you might get a grandmother and I just so you know that's it's a long game public health but you do get the wins and that's one I'm really proud of again our efforts as a country to do that and it's a whole lot of people that were involved and it was lovely to be part of that
Is there something that you put it down to?
Because, I mean, there just have to be so, so many factors.
People don't think, oh, I want to die sooner, I'm going to smoke.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, as I say, I think everybody is doing the best they can.
And for some people, you know, smoking was something that might have been the only decent and good thing in their day.
Yes.
and this was really brought home to me not long after I started as Director General of Health, this is pre-Covid, so there were health things other than Covid in my time as DG but we had a lovely presentation on a number of initiatives that were aiming to help young Māori women to quit smoking and there was one particular presentation where they'd put a really amazing package of services around these young women
And it was profoundly moving because these were women who had, well, the first thing they needed was childcare to be able to even attend the course.
Showing 581–600 of 3,317 · page 30 of 166
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