Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Little wonder if Māori feel targeted
Despite talk about the divisions between rich and poor, the more intense social conflicts tend to arise between people on low income, as they compete with each other for jobs, wages and affordable housing.
Add race into that mix, and the situation can turn ugly.
It is easy to see why. People clinging to a precarious place on the social ladder can readily convince themselves that people from different races and backgrounds are getting special treatment.
All over the world, populist politicians have learned how to exploit these fears of displacement.
If the new government had been hoping to heal those divisions, it seemed to be doing the opposite last week.
As the scope of its planned changes to the Treaty partnership has sunk in, protests have broken out nationwwide. NZ Herald columnist Audrey Young compiled a list of the changes now in train to the relationship between the Crown and Māori.
The list includes reviewing the Waitangi Tribunal’s work, scrapping the Māori Health Authority and removing all references to Treaty principles from existing legislation.
As well, the use of Māori names for Crown agencies is to be curbed, and teachers will no longer be paid for upskilling in te reo.
On top of that, a public referendum will have to be held before local councils can create Māori wards. Ngai Tahu’s two seats on Environment Canterbury will be abolished as will Māori representation on RMA planning committees.
Also binned will be the Treaty clause limiting Orangi Tamariki’s power to uplift children, and a Court of Appeal decision on the foreshore and seabed will be overturned.
It is little wonder Māori are feeling targeted.
Yet to the politicians, the changes show there has been an intolerable mission creep in race relations. The ACT party, in particular, appears to regard any form of affirmative action to improve the health and education outcomes experienced by Māori as being a sign of separatism.
“Need not race” is the slogan being used to promote a sense of equality in health delivery.
Yet as critics have noted, “need” has rarely been the main driver of access to healthcare.
Routinely, it is being white, relatively wealthy and articulate – as Dr Lucy O’Hagan argued in a recent column in NZ Doctor – that will propel a patient to the front of the queue.
“Funding does not follow need,” O’Hagan wrote. “It follows entitlement.”
The health statistics on the higher incidence among Māori of type 2 diabetes (and their lower life expectancy overall) support her claim that the status quo is, in many ways, failing Māori.
“Nothing is equal or fair in our health service,” Dr O’Hagan concluded.
“We must give more to those with greater need – that is equity. We must let them decide what they need and how to deliver it. Healthcare will only be fair and equitable when those with the greatest need, who demand little, have a voice.”
That voice exists, she says, only because of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Currently, a lot of heat is being generated by the new government’s legislative programme. One can only hope that the heat will also shed some light on ways to improve the state of race relations in this country.