Crown fronts Waitangi Tribunal on Covid response
The Crown defended its pandemic response for Māori before the Waitangi Tribunal on Thursday, arguing that equity has been a consideration at every step.
One of the problems many Māori and Public Health academics have had with Labour’s 90% vaccination plan is that Labour didn’t vaccinate Māori first and that the Māori Labour caucus didn’t push hard enough to force this issue.
Could you imagine what would happen if the Māori Caucus demanded all Māori get vaccinated first?
Can you imagine the nuclear explosion from pakeha being told their family members dying from Covid is acceptable because we have to vaccinate Māori first?
The NZ Herald would print maps of Labour MPs homes with recipes for Molotov Cocktails alongside while Mike Hosking would actually orgasm live on air.
If the Māori Labour Caucus had implemented the demands of the Māori Party, the Academics and the woke, they would have sparked an insurrection from the Right that would have triggered race riots.
The Māori Labour Caucus saved NZ.
Sometimes politics does trump strict public health focus.
High vaccination rates, low hospitalization rates, low mortality rates alongside revolutionary new treatments are working!
The Māori Party described Labour’s policy as ‘modern genocide’ and that it was designed to be a ‘Squid Game’ murder Disneyland. Those screaming Jacinda’s plan amounts to a modern genocide of Māori best be hoping there is a vast tsunami of death coming – I mean, Labour’s ‘genocide’ hasn’t reached triple figures yet, that seems a very, very, very small genocide.
This has become a race issue when it’s a class issue.
Last month there were 159, 810 Māori unvaccinated, 42, 183 Pasifika unvaccinated and a staggering 317, 544 Pakeha who are unvaccinated!
By constantly screaming vaccine hesitancy is a Māori and Pasifica problem, we let 317, 544 Pakeha off the hook!
Yes, proportionately these stats hit Māori hardest, but by allowing that to decide the entire focus of the debate we ignore the far larger numerical problem of those issues impacting poor White families and that allows an escape to scrutinize what’s really happening.
By constantly blaming Māori we can’t see that this is a failure of neoliberalism that cascades across race.
It’s not an identity issue, it’s a class issue!
Beating Covid requires us to beat poverty first.
Manufacturing a dozen deaths into a genocide is disgraceful.
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If Maori were to be first in the vaccination queue, and the same ones who are still not vaccinated did not bother to get the jab, would that STILL be a racist white colonialism at work?
Seems no matter what NZ does for Maori, it would never be enough for the ‘race baiter’ activists to cry foul.
OK but there is one thing Labour should have done and that as act on Hendy’s model which showed that Maori in their 50s are at the same risk to Covid as Pakeha in their 80’s. And that’s not about race but about class. This govt claims to follow the science but then ignores the reality that has been
bloody obvious for generations. It seems that colonial hangover is too threatening to the Labour government that appeases the racist mob because it raises the dreaded reality of class.
The Maaori Party “genocide” rhetoric is a hyperbolic extrapolation of the ideology that now pervades decision-making and policy in New Zealand: inequality of outcome in a given sector (such as health or education) = institutional racism (or sexism).
New Zealand tertiary institutions are being ordered to pass Maaori and Pasifika students at the same rate as Asian and European New Zealanders, on pain of fines https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/453303/tertiary-institutions-given-10-years-to-end-minority-pass-rate-disparity
The assumption underlying this extraordinary directive is that low pass rates of Maaori and Pasifika can only mean institutional racism in our universities. Never mind all the upstream factors that make it hard for many Maaori to even get to university (high rates of poverty and family dysfunction, low rates of school attendance etc) we’re going to blame the universities.
It would be interesting to know how universities are supposed to erase this achievement gap. Set less demanding tasks for the (on average) less well-prepared Maaori and Pasifika students? If you think I’m being facetious, you might be interested in the recent recommendations of a “task force” set up to combat “systemic racism” at one NZ uni. One of their recommendations is that Maaori students be offered alternatives to written assignments, including “oral or creative practice”.
Damien Grant elucidates the racism of divulging Maori personal health records to Tamihere’s business venture, fully endorsed by the Privacy Commissioner, in his latest column.
Jody. Yes. Damien Grant’s column was a very welcome and eminently reasonable comment. But it also applies to everyone of us who may not want private personal information about ourselves released to third parties without our knowledge and consent.
That tribunal is well past it’s use-by date and needs shutting down, along with the disestablishment of the Maori seats.
A modern democracy has no place for racism and tribalism.
This is as true for COVID vaccination as it is for everything else, ie healthcare in general.
Race based separation won’t address fundamental class based challenges that afflict all peoples. It will however enrich an already wealthy elite.
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