However, the pattern running through Moxon’s combative narrative, which outlines more than a dozen grievances, is that she starts in the middle of the story.
She omits the origins of policies (often race-based) that created separate systems, usually without a mandate, that often failed to improve outcomes and lost government support. Moxon recasts the changes as “discrimination.”
Moxon’s implied argument rests on the idea that middle New Zealand is acting out of resentment or racism toward programmes that have improved Māori outcomes, but that claim simply doesn’t stack up.
Who is Lady Tureiti Moxon?
Lady Tureiti Moxon’s background places her squarely within a government-funded ecosystem. Her own career trajectory sits at the upper end of the socioeconomic spectrum. Described as a “Māori health campaigner,” her professional roles would appear both privileged and opaque to the average person.
For more than 20 years, she has been managing director of Te Kōhao Health. This large-scale Hamilton-based organisation blends primary healthcare, social services, justice programmes, education initiatives and commercial ventures heavily dependent on government contracts. Moxon is also chair of the National Urban Māori Authority (NUMA), another organisation reliant on state funding, grants and political influence.
Alongside these roles, Moxon is a Chartered Fellow of the Institute of Directors, a credential that signals elite board-level status in the country’s governance community. Moxon has deep connections to Te Pāti Māori and its president, John Tamihere, who has been under significant political pressure in recent months.
She is also married to Sir David Moxon, an Anglican bishop and former representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Vatican.
Moxon claims: “We don’t talk about ethnicity anymore. It’s all based on the people who are invisible. So we’re all the same. We deserve the same. We get the same treatment… they’re invisibilising a hidden truth, really that Māori are worse off…”
With what may be considered rhetorical sleight of hand, she is reframing treating all citizens under the same rules as discrimination. In contrast to the government (and many others), it means one standard for everyone.
This reinterpretation lets her portray equality as hostility, turning a democratic principle into a grievance. It also conveniently protects the race-based governance structures that sustain her own influence. This is precisely what the US economist Thomas Sowell meant when he wrote: “When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.”
It is enough to examine a few of the most prominent claims from her UN complaint list to show how this selective framing works in practice.
Te Aka Whai Ora and the myth of separate systems as a cure
The first “grievance” is the disestablishment of Te Aka Whai Ora (the Māori health authority). Moxon presents this as clear evidence of anti-Māori discrimination. History tells a different story. The Māori Health Authority was created as a separate bureaucracy alongside Te Whatu Ora with its own leadership, funding channels and duplication of functions.
Te Aka Whai Ora was first proposed in 2019 and formally adopted by Labour in 2021, with about a year of active planning before it went live on 1 July 2022. It then operated for roughly a year before the new government moved to shut it down, arguing that the Ernst & Young review showed it was fundamentally flawed from the start.
Then-Minister of Health Shane Reti’s justification wasn’t that it failed to deliver outcomes quickly, but that it never had the systems, budgeting, governance or competent staffing needed to deliver anything at all.
He points to missing budgets, no implementation plan, breaches of the State-Owned Entities Act, board interference, racial hiring, hundreds of ineffective full-time employees and a complete absence of measurable health improvements as evidence.
Reti argues that the authority was structurally incapable and was “funding an ideology rather than outcomes,” making disestablishment the only responsible option.
For many critics, shutting it down had nothing to do with racism but was the result of the fact that the authority was incompetently put together and doomed to fail from the outset.
Notably, Moxon herself helped establish the authority in the first place.
Since then, the coalition has not abolished Māori health services. It has folded them back into a single national system with targeted programmes subject to standard checks and balances.
Section 7AA and the reshaping of Oranga Tamariki
Another centrepiece of the UN complaint is the removal of section 7AA from Oranga Tamariki. Moxon describes this as an attack on Māori children. In reality, the policy’s practical effect under section 7AA was to emphasise identity, with safety less of a focus.
The current policy Moxon takes umbrage with is that vulnerable children should be protected according to the same criteria, regardless of ethnicity. The “reverse uplift” controversies of recent years illustrated what can happen when ideology overrides child welfare.
Gang patch ban
Moxon includes the gang patch ban in her complaint as if it were an issue of indigenous rights. Families harmed by gang violence, most of them Māori, do not experience gang intimidation as cultural expression.
For a leader working within a generously resourced, publicly-funded environment, championing gang visibility as a rights issue shows how detached some advocacy can become from the daily reality of the victims.
Moxon’s exhaustive list of grievances never mentions the high rates of domestic and family violence within Māori communities, including the Baby Ru case that shocked the country.
The Centrist is a new online news platform that strives to provide a balance to the public debate - where this article was sourced.
Moxon’s implied argument rests on the idea that middle New Zealand is acting out of resentment or racism toward programmes that have improved Māori outcomes, but that claim simply doesn’t stack up.
Who is Lady Tureiti Moxon?
Lady Tureiti Moxon’s background places her squarely within a government-funded ecosystem. Her own career trajectory sits at the upper end of the socioeconomic spectrum. Described as a “Māori health campaigner,” her professional roles would appear both privileged and opaque to the average person.
For more than 20 years, she has been managing director of Te Kōhao Health. This large-scale Hamilton-based organisation blends primary healthcare, social services, justice programmes, education initiatives and commercial ventures heavily dependent on government contracts. Moxon is also chair of the National Urban Māori Authority (NUMA), another organisation reliant on state funding, grants and political influence.
Alongside these roles, Moxon is a Chartered Fellow of the Institute of Directors, a credential that signals elite board-level status in the country’s governance community. Moxon has deep connections to Te Pāti Māori and its president, John Tamihere, who has been under significant political pressure in recent months.
She is also married to Sir David Moxon, an Anglican bishop and former representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Vatican.
Moxon claims: “We don’t talk about ethnicity anymore. It’s all based on the people who are invisible. So we’re all the same. We deserve the same. We get the same treatment… they’re invisibilising a hidden truth, really that Māori are worse off…”
With what may be considered rhetorical sleight of hand, she is reframing treating all citizens under the same rules as discrimination. In contrast to the government (and many others), it means one standard for everyone.
This reinterpretation lets her portray equality as hostility, turning a democratic principle into a grievance. It also conveniently protects the race-based governance structures that sustain her own influence. This is precisely what the US economist Thomas Sowell meant when he wrote: “When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.”
It is enough to examine a few of the most prominent claims from her UN complaint list to show how this selective framing works in practice.
Te Aka Whai Ora and the myth of separate systems as a cure
The first “grievance” is the disestablishment of Te Aka Whai Ora (the Māori health authority). Moxon presents this as clear evidence of anti-Māori discrimination. History tells a different story. The Māori Health Authority was created as a separate bureaucracy alongside Te Whatu Ora with its own leadership, funding channels and duplication of functions.
Te Aka Whai Ora was first proposed in 2019 and formally adopted by Labour in 2021, with about a year of active planning before it went live on 1 July 2022. It then operated for roughly a year before the new government moved to shut it down, arguing that the Ernst & Young review showed it was fundamentally flawed from the start.
Then-Minister of Health Shane Reti’s justification wasn’t that it failed to deliver outcomes quickly, but that it never had the systems, budgeting, governance or competent staffing needed to deliver anything at all.
He points to missing budgets, no implementation plan, breaches of the State-Owned Entities Act, board interference, racial hiring, hundreds of ineffective full-time employees and a complete absence of measurable health improvements as evidence.
Reti argues that the authority was structurally incapable and was “funding an ideology rather than outcomes,” making disestablishment the only responsible option.
For many critics, shutting it down had nothing to do with racism but was the result of the fact that the authority was incompetently put together and doomed to fail from the outset.
Notably, Moxon herself helped establish the authority in the first place.
Since then, the coalition has not abolished Māori health services. It has folded them back into a single national system with targeted programmes subject to standard checks and balances.
Section 7AA and the reshaping of Oranga Tamariki
Another centrepiece of the UN complaint is the removal of section 7AA from Oranga Tamariki. Moxon describes this as an attack on Māori children. In reality, the policy’s practical effect under section 7AA was to emphasise identity, with safety less of a focus.
The current policy Moxon takes umbrage with is that vulnerable children should be protected according to the same criteria, regardless of ethnicity. The “reverse uplift” controversies of recent years illustrated what can happen when ideology overrides child welfare.
Gang patch ban
Moxon includes the gang patch ban in her complaint as if it were an issue of indigenous rights. Families harmed by gang violence, most of them Māori, do not experience gang intimidation as cultural expression.
For a leader working within a generously resourced, publicly-funded environment, championing gang visibility as a rights issue shows how detached some advocacy can become from the daily reality of the victims.
Moxon’s exhaustive list of grievances never mentions the high rates of domestic and family violence within Māori communities, including the Baby Ru case that shocked the country.
The Centrist is a new online news platform that strives to provide a balance to the public debate - where this article was sourced.
No comments:
Post a Comment