Te Pāti Māori says the Government’s repeated refusal to acknowledge Māori health inequities in the house yesterday exposes its contempt for Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Māori lives. “Māori are dying seven years earlier than non-Māori. That is not a statistical glitch, that is a state-sanctioned failure” said Te Pāti Māori Co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.

“The Prime Minister failed to name a single new initiative under his leadership that is reducing this inequity. Instead, we got recycled talking points and a hollow obsession with ‘targets’ that ignore the reality of Māori health.”

Te Pāti Māori grilled the Prime Minister and Minister of Health on:

• The removal of ethnicity from hospital wait-time decisions.
• Cuts to kaupapa Māori and Pasifika immunisation providers.
• The scrapping of bowel cancer screening for Māori aged under 50.
• And the dismantling of Te Aka Whai Ora, the Māori Health Authority.

“The Prime Minister says he governs for all New Zealanders. But when Māori are dying earlier, waiting longer, and being silenced in their own health system, he’s hiding behind a one-size-fits-all approach that ignores historical and systemic disadvantage. Universalism isn’t equity. It’s a lazy political smokescreen.”

Ngarewa-Packer also called out the repeated mischaracterisation of equity as “racial preference” in Ministers’ responses. “Te Tiriti isn’t race-based. Its rights based. When Ministers twist questions of equity into ideological debates about ‘treating everyone the same’, they erase our rangatiratanga and rewrite the truth.”

“The cost of this Government’s ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to the health system is Māori lives” Ngarewa-Packer concluded.

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