Geoff Parker: Equality Before the Law - Why Equity Is Dividing New Zealand

RNZ's latest article on "equity versus equality" presents a familiar argument: because Māori experience poorer outcomes in some areas, New Zealand must embrace ethnicity-based policies rather than treating citizens equally.

At first glance this sounds compassionate. In reality, it raises a fundamental question:

Should government assistance be based on race, or on need?

Most New Zealanders instinctively support helping those who are struggling. The disagreement is not about helping people. It is about how assistance is targeted.

Equality versus Equity

The article argues that equality means giving everyone the same thing, while equity means giving different groups different levels of support in pursuit of equal outcomes.

That sounds reasonable until you ask a simple question:

How do you decide who gets extra help?

Under equality, assistance is based on individual circumstances. A poor child receives support because they are poor. A struggling family receives support because they need it.

Under equity as it is increasingly practised in New Zealand, assistance is often allocated according to ethnicity.

That means a wealthy Māori family can qualify for programmes unavailable to a poor European, Asian or Pasifika family facing exactly the same challenges.

That is not equality before the law. It is preferential treatment based on ancestry.

Equal Opportunity or Equal Outcomes?

The RNZ article's bird analogy sounds persuasive, but it quietly changes the definition of fairness.

Most New Zealanders support equal opportunity. We want every child to have access to education, every patient to receive healthcare based on need, and every citizen to enjoy the same legal rights.

Equity increasingly means something different. It is not merely about removing barriers. It is often about producing more equal outcomes between groups.

That distinction matters.

Equal opportunity asks whether the rules are fair.

Equity asks whether the results are fair.

The first focuses on individuals. The second focuses on groups.

If one ethnic group is underrepresented in a profession, has poorer health statistics, or lower average incomes, equity advocates often assume government intervention is needed until outcomes become more equal.

But differences in outcomes can arise from countless factors including age, geography, family structure, education, culture, natural talents and abilities, ambition, effort, personal choices and economic circumstances. Human beings are individuals, not interchangeable units, and differences in outcomes are not automatically evidence of discrimination or systemic bias.

A free society can guarantee equal rights and equal opportunities. It cannot guarantee equal outcomes without continually treating people differently according to their group identity.

That is why many New Zealanders support equality before the law but are sceptical of race-based equity programmes. They are not rejecting fairness. They are rejecting the idea that fairness should be measured by whether every group ends up in roughly the same place.

The bird analogy is also flawed because birds are biologically different species with different natural abilities. New Zealand citizens are not different species. They are individuals with varying circumstances, strengths and challenges. Public policy should respond to individual need, not racial categories.

The Forgotten Reality of Pre-European New Zealand

The article implies that Māori disadvantage today stems primarily from events following 1840.

History is more complicated.

Before European settlement, Māori society faced challenges that modern New Zealanders can scarcely imagine.

Life expectancy for Māori in the early nineteenth century is generally estimated to have been around 30 years. Intertribal warfare was common. Tens of thousands died in the Musket Wars. Slavery existed. Cannibalism existed. There was no modern healthcare, no literacy in the European sense, no advanced medicine, and no modern economy.

The arrival of European technology, medicine, literacy, agriculture and trade dramatically improved living standards over time.

None of this excuses historical wrongs. But it does challenge the simplistic narrative that Māori were thriving until Europeans arrived and then suddenly became disadvantaged.

The Treaty Was Not Broken by One Side Alone

RNZ's article repeats the common claim that "promises made in 1840 were not upheld."

The reality is more nuanced.

Many chiefs who signed the Treaty agreed to surrender governance to the Crown while retaining property rights and the rights of British subjects.

Yet in the years that followed, some chiefs and tribes ignored those commitments. There were attacks on settlers, armed rebellions against Crown authority and repeated challenges to the sovereignty that had been ceded.

History was not a simple story of virtuous victims and villainous colonisers.

Like most human history, it involved competing interests, conflict, mistakes and breaches by multiple parties.

The Myth of Universal Māori Disadvantage

A glaring omission from the RNZ article is the vast network of Māori-specific programmes that already exist.

Māori have access to dedicated scholarships, targeted health programmes, Māori education initiatives, Māori housing programmes, Māori business funding, Māori broadcasting, Māori development agencies, Māori cultural institutions and Treaty settlement assets worth billions of dollars.

While some targeted initiatives may exist for various communities, no other ethnic group has access to the scale of dedicated funding, programmes, statutory recognition and institutional infrastructure available to Māori.

If the argument is that Māori continue to face barriers, then surely we must also acknowledge the substantial advantages already available on the basis of ethnicity.

The question is not whether Māori receive support.

The question is how much race-based support can exist before equality before the law is compromised.

Housing, Health and Crime Are Not Determined by Ethnicity

The article points to disparities in health, housing and imprisonment.

But disparities alone do not prove discrimination.

Age structure, family stability, educational achievement, income levels, geographic location, personal behaviour and lifestyle choices all influence outcomes.

Men die younger than women.

Rural residents often have poorer access to services than urban residents.

People who smoke have worse health outcomes than people who do not.

Not every disparity is evidence of systemic oppression.

To assume that every statistical difference between ethnic groups must be caused by racism is not analysis. It is ideology.

The "Land, Language and Opportunities Were Taken" Narrative

One of the most emotionally charged claims in the article is that land was taken, language was taken and opportunities were systematically dismantled.

Certainly some land confiscations occurred, particularly following rebellion during the New Zealand Wars. Some were excessive and have rightly been addressed through Treaty settlements.

But the broader claim ignores important facts.

Most Māori land loss occurred through voluntary sales, often initiated by Māori owners seeking access to trade and economic opportunities.

The Māori language was never outlawed nationwide. Its decline was influenced by the widespread adoption of English, which Māori and non-Māori alike recognised as the language of commerce, law, education and advancement in a rapidly modernising society.

And opportunities were not "funnelled away" from Māori alone. Nineteenth-century New Zealand was a difficult place for almost everyone. Most European settlers arrived with little wealth, no privilege and no guarantee of success. They built farms, businesses and communities through persistence, risk-taking and hard work.

The suggestion that modern disparities are primarily the result of a deliberate and systematic campaign to suppress Māori opportunity ignores the complexity of New Zealand history and overlooks the agency exercised by Māori themselves throughout that history.

Need, Not Race

The strongest argument against race-based equity policies is not historical.

It is moral.

A child from a struggling family in South Auckland deserves help regardless of whether they are Māori, Samoan, Indian, Chinese or European.

A patient should receive healthcare based on medical need, not ancestry.

A student should receive support based on educational disadvantage, not ethnicity.

That approach unites New Zealanders rather than dividing them into competing racial categories.

The Path Forward

The real choice is not between fairness and unfairness.

It is between two different visions of fairness.

One says that people should increasingly be treated according to their ancestry.

The other says that every citizen should stand equal before the law and that assistance should go to those who genuinely need it.

New Zealand has already spent decades expanding race-based programmes. Yet many of the disparities cited by advocates remain.

Perhaps the lesson is not that we need more ethnicity-based policy.

Perhaps the lesson is that disadvantage is primarily a problem of poverty, family dysfunction, education and personal circumstances, not race.

If we genuinely want to help those who are struggling, we should focus on need, not ethnicity.

That is equality. And it remains the fairest principle of all.

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