This Labour Government is implementing a system where a person’s ethnic identity as Maori is more important than Democracy for all citizens.
The Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Bill passed its first reading in Parliament and a special Select Committee has been set up to consider the Bill and hear public submissions, Health Minister Andrew Little says.
“We are fixing a public health system that has, for far too long, failed Māori and many others who have been left out.
This Government is committed to building a new health system that provides better national coordination and more consistent support, so all New Zealanders can get the health care they need no matter who they are or where they live,” Andrew Little said.
“The special Select Committee will ensure we draw on a wide range of strengths, knowledge and perspectives when it comes to the next stages of the health reforms.”
The Pae Ora Healthy Futures Bill replaces the 20 District Health Boards with Health New Zealand – a new Crown organisation – to provide a national health service with a strong focus on primary health care. It also establishes an independent Māori Health Authority to work in partnership with Health New Zealand.
“The Māori Health Authority is about transforming Māori health outcomes which will be a game changer for our people,” Associate Health Minister (Māori Health) Peeni Henare said.
“This is our chance to address the disproportionate health inequities that have significantly affected our Māori communities. When we put people at the centre of the healthcare experience it is more likely that people including Māori will reach out when they need to – this could save more lives.”
The Bill recognises the role of Iwi-Māori Partnership Boards for the first time and also establishes a hauora Maori advisory group to advise the Minister of Health on exercising powers in relation to the Maori Health Authority.
It also establishes an expanded Public Health Agency within the Ministry of Health to lead public health strategy, as well as an expert advisory committee on public health.
The Minister of Health stated that the reason that he wants a special select committee, different from the Health Committee, to consider the health bill, is that this bill is about meeting Treaty requirements, and it seems to follow that somehow it will not be possible for the current Health Committee to consider the legislation and think through the issues.
So the Minister has asked Parliament to form a new committee to consider a piece of health legislation that is not the Health Committee because the legislation is about meeting Treaty obligations.
Mr David Seymour the leader of the ACT Party stated that a lot of people thought it was about healthcare, but the Minister says it’s about Treaty obligations. And the Minister wants to form a new Health Committee, or a Pae Ora Legislation Committee, actually, to consider this legislation, and it’s going to have some members from the Māori Affairs Committee and some members from the Health Committee.
Why was it not possible for the Health Committee—the committee that has been appointed by Parliament to consider health matters—to do it?
And this is what comes down to. They are saying that if you’re not Maori, you maybe aren’t qualified to think about this Pae Ora bill. And the only way that it can be properly considered is if they decide to have a new committee that has more Māori people on it, because they have insights that other people don’t.
Mr Seymour spoke in the house about the motion to form a special select committee and he said.
“Forming a new committee is not usually an extraordinary thing. It’s been done before. For example, it was done for the Abortion Legislation Bill. But I’m not aware that there’s been a committee formed in this House because it was thought that some elected representatives were incapable of dealing with some matters based on their ethnic background. That’s what they seem to be saying.
This is monumental, because the background of this country, New Zealand, is that people have come from all different places for all different reasons, coming towards one thing: they wanted opportunity. They wanted common humanity. They wanted the chance for tomorrow to be better than today and to be born free and equal.
Some people came to get away from the feudalism, from the class system of England that evolved in order to have an egalitarian society where people are born free and equal and have opportunity. People have come here from the People’s Republic of China to get away from the oppressive CCP regime. People have come to this country from India to get away from the remnants of the caste system.”
Mr Seymour also said: “I think the fact is that today, this Government is saying that there are more important things than the common humanity, that some MPs are more equal than others, that we have to have a special committee to consider an issue relating to Treaty issues because the people on the Health Committee, because of their demographics, can’t do it.
That’s what they’re saying. And where they’re taking us within the confines of this Parliament and its procedures is a massive shift. It’s what Elizabeth Rata from the University of Auckland says is the difference between a nation state filled with citizens born free and equal on the one hand and an ethno-state where you’ve actually got to look up your family tree to find out what your political rights are on the other. That’s how significant this motion is.”
I believe this is the first step in implementing a system of apartheid!!!
Back in the 1980’s New Zealand was in great turmoil over the Rugby tour by the South African Springboks rugby team. The turmoil came about in opposition to the official government program of apartheid in South Africa and it was felt by many Kiwis that showing support for the Springboks tour was in effect showing support for the system of apartheid. It was also said that as the Springboks were seen as a major flag bearer for South Africa, that to stop the tour would send an international signal from NZ that apartheid would not be tolerated/supported in any form, by New Zealand’s citizens.
There were riots on the streets of NZ in support of halting the tour and these were seen as playing a huge part in the international decrying of the system of Apartheid in South Africa and its eventual demise soon after.
Yet here we are under a Labour government that announces itself as the most open and transparent government ever, the one source of truth, implementing a system of apartheid.
This system is being implemented across many different sectors of government not just the Health Department.
This system is supposedly in the first place, being implemented to comply with some “interpreted” partnership outcome from the Treaty of Waitangi, and in the second place to comply with the requirements of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which NZ is a signatory to.
Let’s be honest for a change and state plainly that Maori, by their own proudly proclaimed history, are not Indigenous to New Zealand and there is no mention of partnership anywhere in the Treaty document.
Maori proudly tell of the journey of their ancestors to New Zealand by canoe from Hawaiki. This fact then makes them just an earlier immigrant species than the Europeans and others and under the definition of Indigenous this is plainly obvious.
The Cambridge dictionary definition of indigenous is as follows:
Indigenous
Adjective
used to refer to, or relating to, the people who originally lived in a place, rather than people who moved there from somewhere else :
used to refer to plants and animals that grow or live naturally in a place, and have not been brought there from somewhere else:
not foreign or from outside an area:
And in relation to the supposed partnership between the Crown and Maori, enacted by the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, there is nowhere in the Treaty document where a partnership is mentioned and in fact many revered Maori elder statesmen have over the years stated the opposite to be the case as shown in the speech copied below:
‘The Hon Sir Apirana Ngata -M.A. LLB. LIT.D’
(THE TREATY OF WAITANGI – an explanation published in 1922)
The acclaimed Maori Leader Sir Apirana Ngata explains the intent in the pages of this book, the “Treaty of Waitangi”. He concludes with the words: “The Treaty made the one law for the Maori and Pakeha. If you think these things are wrong and bad then blame our ancestors who gave away their rights in the days when they were powerful”.
The claim that the Treaty of Waitangi created a partnership between the Crown and Maori is not supported by any of the documentation of the Treaty although this latter-day reinterpretation of the Treaty is simply stated as a fact, without any acknowledgement that the assertion is hotly contested, and is flatly contradicted by many of the speeches recorded by Colenso in writing at the time (on 5 February 1840) and flatly contradicted also by speeches made by numerous chiefs at Kohimarama in 1860.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister went to Paris after the Second World War and signed the United Nations Declaration of Universal Human Rights. That declaration begins “that all men are born free and equal”.
This Government is passing legislation through Parliament with the assumption that all people are not free and equal; that some are more equal than others and that some are better able to consider how we get better healthcare, not based on the matters before them, not based on any particular expertise they may have, but based on ethnic background.
In the words of David Seymour:
“I’d appeal to the people who remember a time when progressive politics in New Zealand was about fighting for our common humanity; fighting for a time, fighting for an ideal that each person is bound by a common humanity that’s more important than any superficial difference between individuals. That’s what the old left used to be, but today the new left wants to make identity everything. It wants to commodify people into identities and it wants to say that your superficial characteristics give you insights and capabilities and perspectives more important than being a member of the human race and sharing that common humanity.”
The fact of the matter is that if we go down this pathway and we start saying that, actually, some members are better qualified based on their demographic characteristics to address a matter than others, then we are going to find ourselves in a very poor place. We’re going to find ourselves in a place where some members are not equally capable, and therefore some people who elect some members don’t have equal political rights.
This comes back to this simple idea of equality for all and Democratic Rights.
This government is setting us up to be controlled by a system of race based governance presided over by a tribal elite of unelected Maori representatives which will be bad for the majority of the Maori population and also New Zealand’s other races. An example of the feeling from a prominent Ngapuhi Kaumatua, copied from Facebook, is shown below:
David Rankin, Ngapuhi kaumatua.
Direct descendant of Hone Heke.
A part-Maori with mana.
It may surprise many New Zealanders, but a growing number of Maori are fed up with the Waitangi Tribunal, and the entire Treaty gravy train. There is a stereotype of Maori collecting millions of dollars in settlement money and living the easy life. The reality is very different. Here are a few facts:
Let’s be clear. The Tribunal exists to make lawyers and a few elite Maori very rich. It has deprived our people from their birth right and divided and destroyed many of our communities. The sooner it is shut down the better.
David Hone Heke Rankin
Te Matarahurahu hapu
Ngapuhi
The challenge now is for the government to defend their position based on their current apartheid based system they are promoting which basically states that people aren’t born free and equal; or
They could be honest and dump this system of race based governance, stop promoting policies of division and return to supporting the democratic rights of all on an equal basis.
There may be significant issues within the Health Ministry for Maori, but instituting an Apartheid system of governance will only make the division between Maori and other races get much wider. To treat Maori equally with other races does not require race based apartheid governance systems, although it may require specifically targeted programs to address the issues.
We do not need to destroy Democracy in New Zealand to achieve the desired results just use the resources that we have, wisely, for the benefit of all citizens equally. To that end I believe that the Pae Ora Bill should be opposed vociferously and retain the existing Health Act.
Andy Loader