frogblog

One of lamentable things about this Labour Government is that, when the pressure has gone on, it has refused to stand up for its principles. For one, it has refused to stand up for the Maori renaissance, and defend the race-based policies that contributed to it.

In the Herald this morning, Tapu Misa offers the kind of stout defence of race-based funding in health that Labour should have provided. She writes:

It isn’t easy making the case for ethnically based funding, especially when you’re sliding in the polls - but I wish they’d tried… Labour might have held the high ground on ethnically targeted policies, if it had just been more honest about them.

The truth is that race-based funding has always been needs-based - and disentangling ethnicity from need requires the kind of scalpel-like finesse that no one, anywhere in the world, has yet mastered. Race and ethnicity matters in ways we’re still discovering, and are more influential and complex than most politicians will concede…

Let’s not forget that it was National that pushed through the first major treaty settlements, and which brought us kohanga reo, kura kaupapa, wananga, and a proliferation of Maori and Pacific health providers. All fine examples of what National, Act, New Zealand First et al would today describe as race-based initiatives…

Take health, for example, and why Mallard’s tinkering with the ethnicity component of the funding allocation was vigorously opposed by Ministry of Health officials. No doubt they’ve seen the mounting evidence from both overseas and here which shows that ethnicity has a significant bearing on health outcomes.

Dr Tony Blakely, an assistant professor at the Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences … says we’re just fooling ourselves if we think ethnicity doesn’t matter. He says two facts support the case for continued funding on both need and ethnicity. One, that Maori and Pacific people have higher mortality rates than Pakeha people. And two, that Maori have higher death rates regardless of how much they earn.

Affirmative action is a live, and lively debate. But, instead of having it, and trying to convince New Zealanders of the value of the Maori renaissance and the policies that helped bring it about, Labour has ducked for cover. More the pity.

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