The Whangaroa Community Trust along with the residents undersigned make a petition the Far North District Council plan and construct with urgency a footbridge across Waikare Stream, in the centre of Kāeo township. The Kāeo community needs a safer footbridge in the township for pedestrians to access local community facilities, schools, places of work and local businesses.

We call on the Inquiry into Mental Health and Addiction to recommend that all people with mental distress or addiction have open access to a full menu of services, so that no-one who seeks help is turned away and everyone is offered more than medication. Sign the open submission to support open access to a full menu of services. By signing you agree to be contacted by Peerzone and ActionStation about this and similar campaigns. To read or download the full submission, The Wellbeing Manifesto for Aotearoa New Zealand, go to: https://www.wellbeingmanifesto.nz/

We support Dame Anne Salmond's call for an Independent Waterways Commission and ask all political parties to sign a cross-party accord to establish it. We need an independent and well-resourced Waterways Commission. A Commission that can implement and enforce its recommendations, that puts the viability, sustainability and sanctity of our water at it’s centre, and that works with the diverse interests to create a national water strategy that protects, restores and sustainably manages this precious resource.

Photo Credit: Anna Swartz / Mic (https://www.mic.com/articles/162185/trump-s-newest-pick-is-a-defender-of-puppy-mills-an-industry-of-torture) We want the Ministry of Primary Industries to stop the sale of puppies at pet stores and online OR implement stronger regulations to ensure that puppies being bred and sold under these conditions are bred and cared for following the Animal Welfare Act and a new breeder licensing system. This system will require breeders to be fully responsible for the health and wellbeing of the puppies they sell, and provide a clear code that breeders must abide by in order to sell the puppies legally including policies overseeing welfare procedures in place and records of trading.

We are calling on the Government to urgently address the maternity crisis in Aotearoa, and to ensure that all pregnant people, parents and babies have the support they need to thrive. Our maternity sector is in crisis, with major under-staffing and under-resourcing putting lives at risk. A lack of capacity across the country is leaving maternity units unable to care for any more patients, and delaying necessary medical care to people in need. Suicide is the leading cause of maternal death in Aotearoa but our maternal mental health teams are stretched beyond their limits. Glaring gaps across the sector are disproportionately affecting Māori women and babies, who experience ongoing systemic inequality and a lack of access to healthcare. Our maternity sector is disintegrating under strain, and our midwives, doctors and nurses are burning out from over work. This is a crisis in the true sense of the word and we are calling on the government to act with urgency to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all birthing parents and babies in Aotearoa. We call on the government to: - Implement ALL recommendations from the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG) 2020 ‘Briefing to Incoming Ministers’ including the development of a collaborative Women’s Health strategy across the Ministry of Health and The Office for Women. - Implement ALL recommendations as laid out in the 14th Annual Report (Appendices B–F) from the Perinatal Maternal Mortality Review Committee (PMMRC), including all recommendations that create a Tiriti-compliant system where it is safe for Māori women to give birth in Aotearoa. - Ensure that Māori have equal voice in all decision-making and the development of health policy, process and practice in order to achieve equitable health outcomes. - Guarantee ongoing funding and strengthen the roles of advisory groups including the National Maternity Monitoring Group (NMMG) and Perinatal Maternal Mortality Review Committee (PMMRC). - Allocate adequate budget to fill the existing gaps, and to allocate further substantial budget to invest in staff training and retention, pay equity, and capital investment in maternity facilities across regional and rural centres, as well as tertiary hospitals. - Work with professional unions and representative organisations to understand and address the serious issues facing the sector, including ways to address staff under-resourcing, burnout, retention and remuneration. - Create sustainable pathways into the maternity workforce, including more supported training for Māori and Pasifika trainee doctors and midwives, specialty pathways for complex care midwifery, and clear frameworks for staff retention across the sector. - Remove barriers to care for pregnant people by providing financial assistance where required, and by ensuring that all maternity care is free including removing co-pays for scans. - Engage patient-advocates at all levels of decision making to ensure that changes made at the policy level reflect the need for change at the real-world level.

We, the undersigned, object to the application for a liquor licence for a new bottle store at 13-15 Ellis Avenue, . We object to the issue of this licence as another off-licence bottle shop in the area will reduce the amenity and good order of the locality significantly. We oppose the application for the following reasons: - there are already plenty of off-licence alcohol stores in the area - proximity to a number of sensitive sites such as schools, early childhood education centres, and places of worship - existing issues around anti-social behaviour in the broader area, much of which appears to be the result of alcohol consumption

We, the undersigned, call on you to permanently extend the Winter Energy Payment to all people receiving government income support.

My name is Gurdeep Singh Sahni, and I am not the first bus driver in New Zealand to be assaulted while at work, and unfortunately, I won’t be the last. But with better protections for bus drivers like me, we can ensure that we’re as safe at work as we possibly can be. I’m asking you to support bus drivers by signing and sharing this petition and showing your support for drivers’ safety on the job. Three things can be done by our employers and councils to ensure we are safer at work: 1. Install secure cabins for bus drivers for their protection (including retrofitting existing buses). 2. Significantly increase the presence of Transport Officers on buses to keep both drivers and bus users safe, including to be available to assist in de-escalating any issues that may arise. 3. Set up a Workplace Health and Safety Committee in all bus depots and make sure that representatives are properly trained. These three basic protections outlined above would help significantly in making us feel safer at work and being protected when something inevitably does go wrong – we cannot change passengers’ behaviour on our own, and that is a wider issue that New Zealand should separately be grappling with.

Dear Minister, Lake Horowhenua is a taonga. Despite it's awful treatment over decades - sewage, stormwater and other run off from the land - this is a place we treasure and have long wished to clean up. We are asking, firmly, for you not to exclude Lake Horowhenua from your National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, due to be finalised this year. It is a terrible precedent to set that when a lake has been polluted then we can just forget about it, let it become a dump. This is a slippery slope that we ask you not put Aotearoa on.

The Government has recently announced a commitment to halve net greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. This is a great start. However, two-thirds of this will be through buying carbon credits at the cost of roughly $1 billion per year [1]. It has to be done every year because if our emissions don’t drop we will still need to buy the credits. Instead of spending $1 billion on offsetting carbon emissions, can we please spend the money on actual emissions reduction projects here in Aotearoa New Zealand?