Geoff Parker: Taxpayer Money Should Never Be Allocated By Race

The eyewatering 2024 - 2025 list of Te Puni Kōkiri investment recipients exposes just how deeply race-based funding has become embedded in New Zealand’s public sector. Tens of millions of taxpayer dollars are being distributed through programmes available only to Māori organisations, Māori trusts, Māori businesses, and Māori landowners.

This is not welfare based on hardship. It is not assistance based on income. It is funding allocated primarily on ancestry.

The document shows grants for housing, tourism, export businesses, technology ventures, cultural events, governance programmes, business expos, and even overseas brand expansion — all through Māori-targeted funding streams.

Examples include:

• $440,000 to upgrade a hotel owned by Ngātiwai Holdings Limited.

• $865,000 to explore green hydrogen exports.

• Millions for papakāinga housing developments restricted to Māori land structures.

• $2.46 million connected to Wai 262 mātauranga Māori capacity building.

• Hundreds of thousands for festivals, cultural celebrations, awards events, and Māori business promotion.

Meanwhile, struggling non-Māori families, businesses, and community groups — who also pay taxes — are excluded from these schemes entirely.

New Zealanders were once taught that public money should be distributed according to need and merit. Increasingly, that principle is being replaced by ethnicity-first governance, where ancestry determines eligibility before hardship, contribution, or capability are even considered.

A country cannot remain socially cohesive while the state openly favours one ethnic group over another. Equal citizenship means exactly that: equal treatment under the law, equal access to opportunity, and equal standing as taxpayers.

If a business grant, housing subsidy, or development fund is genuinely worthwhile, it should be open to every New Zealander — not reserved by bloodline.

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