Matua Kahurangi: Oranga Tamariki’s race-based leave policy is indefensible

A clause quietly embedded in a collective agreement at Oranga Tamariki should alarm anyone who still believes the public service is meant to operate on neutral ground.

Revealed this week by Duncan Garner, the provision grants Māori staff discretionary paid cultural leave that is self-defined, open-ended, and explicitly protected from managerial scrutiny. Attendance at land court hearings, iwi or hapū meetings, cultural performances such as Te Matatini, and other obligations determined by the individual qualify. The list is deliberately non-exhaustive.

The crucial detail is simple. The entitlement applies to Māori staff only.

Non-Māori employees with community, religious, family, or cultural commitments must use annual leave, leave without pay, or whatever goodwill a manager is prepared to offer. One group receives an automatic, protected benefit. Everyone else manages as they always have.

That distinction matters. This is not flexible workplace policy applied evenly. It is a race-based entitlement written into a taxpayer-funded agency responsible for the care of vulnerable children.

The clause goes further than granting leave. It removes oversight. Managers are instructed not to define or limit what constitutes a cultural obligation. Decisions are to defer to lived experience. Declining leave is implicitly framed as breaching Treaty values. “Discretionary” exists in name only.

This structure creates pressure, not trust. It turns ordinary management decisions into moral tests and makes questioning the policy professionally dangerous. A current Oranga Tamariki staff member felt unable to raise concerns internally for fear it could cost promotions, opportunities, or their future in the organisation. That fear alone should have stopped this policy in its tracks.

Workplaces already accommodate competing obligations every day. Church leaders, volunteer responders, migrant families supporting overseas funerals, religious minorities observing non-public holidays, parents dealing with childcare emergencies. None of this is new. The difference has always been that these responsibilities were managed under the same leave framework for everyone.

This policy breaks that principle. It elevates one identity above all others inside the same organisation.

Supporters will call this equity. It is not. Equity does not mean granting permanent advantages based on ancestry while others absorb the cost. That is hierarchy, not fairness.

The setting makes the decision worse. Oranga Tamariki is not an academic institution or a cultural organisation. It is a frontline government agency funded by all New Zealanders. When it signals internally that some staff are more deserving of paid time off than others, resentment is inevitable. Silence follows. Good people keep their heads down. Institutional trust erodes further.

This did not happen by accident. The clause was negotiated, approved, and defended using language designed to shut down challenge. Someone at Oranga Tamariki signed off on it. Someone in government knew, or should have known.

The Minister’s initial reluctance to front on the issue raises further questions. Governments that campaign against race-based entitlements do not get to look away when one appears inside an agency they oversee. Responsibility does not stop at the edge of union negotiations.

Invoking the Treaty to justify this arrangement stretches its meaning beyond recognition. The Treaty does not require race-exclusive employment benefits. It does not mandate preferential treatment within the public service. Using it this way turns a foundational document into a shield against accountability.

When staff feel compelled to become whistleblowers simply to ask whether a policy is fair, something fundamental has broken. The outrage here is not about culture. It is about a state agency abandoning equal treatment and daring its own employees to object.

If the public service cannot apply the same rules to everyone inside its own walls, it has no credibility left to lecture the rest of the country about fairness.

Matua Kahurangi is just a bloke sharing thoughts on New Zealand and the world beyond. No fluff, just honest takes. He blogs on https://matuakahurangi.com/ where this article was sourced.