November 14, 2022
Māori health underfunding “racist”
Waipareira head John Tamihere says it’s time to call out the racists who have held back Māori health.
Wai 2575 claimants met with health ministers last week to discuss the recommendations of the Waitangi Tribunal’s Hauora Report, which found there had been systemic underfunding of Maori services.
Mr Tamihere says claimants have identified a multi-billion dollar shortfall in capital spending on Maori health facilities and a 20 percent gap in operational funding over many decades.
“The problem with that is they will argue institutional racism. There is no such thing as institutional racism. There’s racists that run institutions. Then they’ll argue ‘it’s unconscious bias. We didn’t mean to be prejudicial to you, discriminatory to you, we didn’t wan to put you down because we were unconscious about it.’ Well, that’s simply not true,” he says.