Listen Now: 
Download AudioA participant in this week’s Waitangi Tribunal hearing into the government’s Covid response says the crown is quick to admit it’s not doing enough – and then it does nothing to fix the problem.
Simon Royal from the National Hauora Coalition says Māori health leaders told the government back in March it needed a more robust strategy for working with Māori communities.
He says earlier hearings of the Māori Health Outcomes Kaupapa Inquiry identified lagging Māori vaccination rates as a long term systemic problem, so that should have been factored into the Covid vaccine rollout.
“The Government needed to invest more, it needed to do more and it needed to do it early. Unfortunately, they have been slow on the uptake and I think this goes back to concerns Governments have about identity politics and dealing with issues of race avoiding the fact that an indigenous population is suffering,” Mr Royal says.
He says the trouble it took to get a separate break out of Māori Covid statistics shows how the government didn’t want to recognise it has a problem.
RELATED NEWS
