Robin Grieve: The Medical Council's Shocker of a Consultation Document

Simeon Brown was right not to renew the terms of the Medical Council's chair and deputy chair, but he should have gone further. The Council's consultation documents on its proposed cultural competency requirements suggest an organisation more interested in social engineering and promoting critical race theory than in setting professional standards relevant to the delivery of healthcare.

Geoff Parker: Improving Māori Health Requires Facts, Not Narratives

"The health system is dangerous for Māori." — Dr Lance O'Sullivan

Dangerous in what sense?

That is a fair question, because "dangerous" is an extraordinarily serious accusation. It suggests that Māori are placed at risk by the health system itself—not by illness, not by lifestyle factors, not by socio-economic disadvantage, but by the doctors, nurses, hospitals and institutions entrusted with caring for them.

If that is the claim, then it demands equally serious evidence.

Barrie Davis: MHA Disestablished! Yeah … Nah

Maori health authority has not been abolished. All the roles and functions of the disestablished MHA have been transferred to Health New Zealand except for a few going to the Ministry of Health. Although ‘co-governance’ has been reduced to ‘engaging’, the Iwi Māori Partnership Boards and the Hauora Maori Advisory Committee that were established with the MHA in 2022 will remain along with their funding. Of the Hauora Maori Advisory Committee, present Minister of Health, Dr Shane Reti said “I'll be powering them up to do even more.”

All the Maori Party need do is wait for the pendulum to swing in 3 to 9 years time and reinstate the co-governance provision. They could leave the transferred roles and functions within Health New Zealand, out of public perception, or maybe set up another MHA when it suits them.

David Lillis: Educational Racism?

Postmodernists and, by extension, most identity politics theorists draw on social constructivist epistemology. Social constructivists argue that all human knowledge is ‘socially constructed’ from extant cultural raw materials, and we cannot know anything outside our shared cultural frames of reference. This means that they reject any notion of truth or objectivity that exists ‘out there’, as all meaning is ‘internal’ to human perception.Doug Stokes in Against Decolonisation, page 86.

Don Brash: A pathetic attempt to justify co-governance

A day or two ago, I read an attempt by a Minister in the present Labour Government to justify “co-governance”, a word now used to mean governance where Maori New Zealanders share, on a 50/50 basis (sometimes with a veto), the governance of public services or natural resources with those without Maori ancestors.

David Farrar: Reviewing the evidence behind the claims on Maori health

Ian Harrison of Tailrisk Economics has published a paper analysing the evidence behind the claims that disparity in health outcomes between Maori and non-Maori is due to colonialism and racism. His summary is: