Geoff Parker: The Mythologising of the “Māori Economy”

The assertion that the “Māori economy” sits at the centre of New Zealand’s future prosperity is not just exaggerated — it rests on a category error. There is no separate Māori economy. There is only the New Zealand economy, within which Māori individuals and entities participate like everyone else. Rebranding a portion of ordinary commercial activity according to the owners’ ancestry doesn’t create a new economic engine — it creates a political narrative. And like most political narratives, it thrives on selective numbers, romanticism, and the avoidance of basic economic reality.

The often-repeated “$100 billion Māori economy” figure is not a measure of annual output, productivity, or value creation. It is a book-value estimate of assets held by Māori trusts, incorporations, land blocks, and iwi settlement entities. As an asset-stock figure, it tells you nothing about profitability, efficiency, or real economic contribution. If we applied this logic consistently, every demographic group — Pasifika, rural New Zealanders, Catholics, left-handed people — could announce their own “economy”. But we don’t, because it makes no analytical sense. Sectoral economies exist; ancestry-based economies do not.

A second weakness in the argument is the claim that Māori enterprises “outperform” national averages. There is no consistent evidence for this. Many Māori entities, especially iwi statutory bodies, hold large portfolios in low-risk, low-yield assets such as commercial property and forestry — sensible investments, but hardly the drivers of a new economic frontier. Several major iwi portfolios lag behind comparable private-sector funds. And Māori-owned land, much of it multiply owned and legally restricted, remains chronically underproductive compared with general freehold land. Far from being a powerhouse waiting to be unlocked, the structural constraints on Māori land are a long-recognised drag.

These performance claims also overlook a basic fiscal reality: a significant share of large Māori corporate structures pay little or no tax. Many are registered as charities, giving them full income-tax exemption. Those that are not registered as charities generally operate under the Māori Authority tax rate of 17.5% — far below the 28% company tax rate paid by ordinary businesses. When political advocates celebrate the “Māori economy” as a national asset, they omit the fact that much of its commercial activity contributes less to the public purse than non-Māori enterprises.. A genuinely national economy rests on a universal tax base; a preferential one does not.

The original article also claims, with a straight face, that “Māori land makes up a large part of New Zealand.” This is simply false. Māori freehold land accounts for around 5–6% of New Zealand’s land area, depending on how it’s measured. That is not a “large part” of anything — except perhaps political storytelling. If your economic case requires inflating land area by a factor of ten, that tells you everything you need to know about its credibility.

The argument that tikanga-based management is a solution to climate change, productivity, and intergenerational planning is equally weak. Long-term thinking is not unique to Māori organisations; every successful company, farm, and superannuation fund in the country operates on intergenerational horizons. Nor is sustainability a cultural monopoly. New Zealand’s most advanced agricultural, horticultural, and environmental technologies were developed by universities, Crown research institutes, and private innovators — not iwi boards. The idea that national resilience depends on adopting a spiritualised resource-management philosophy is cultural marketing dressed up as economics.

Demographic arguments fare no better. Yes, Māori are a younger population, but a young population is only an opportunity if educational attainment and workforce participation are strong. Decades of data show lower literacy, numeracy, NCEA achievement, tertiary completion, and labour-market attachment. These are solvable problems, but their solutions lie in education policy, social policy, and labour reform, not in pretending Māori constitute a separate macroeconomic growth engine. Youth is valuable only when matched with skills, productivity, and mobility.

The suggestion that New Zealand must treat Māori as “true partners” in planning, investment, and infrastructure is a political claim disguised as an economic one. Partnership implies co-governance, veto rights, and statutory power based on ancestry. None of that has been shown to increase productivity or improve capital allocation. What it does do is entrench a dual governance system. That is constitution-building, not economic strategy.

New Zealand cannot afford policies built on identity categories rather than performance. The success of Māori individuals and businesses matters enormously, but as part of the national economy, not as a parallel one. Prosperity comes from open markets, strong education, innovation, investment, and productivity — not from ethnic branding or inflated claims.

The future of the New Zealand economy is not “Māori”. It is New Zealand — built by all New Zealanders, under the same rules.

Geoff Parker is a passionate advocate for equal rights and a colour blind society.