December 07, 2022
No seats for Māori on Covid bus
ACT leader David Seymour says he’ll fight any special treatment for Māori coming out of the Royal Commission into Covid-19.
Terms of reference for the Inquiry include consideration of tangata whenua and how consistent the response was with Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the Māori-Crown relationship.
Maori health professionals want the successful Maori mobilisation against the virus to be factored into planning for future pandemics.
Mr Seymour says he doesn’t want to see any new governance positions for Maori.
“If it means people get different positions on the bus based on their ancestry, ACT is completely opposed to that,” he says.
The COVID19 Royal Commission of Inquiry will be chaired by Melbourne-based epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely, alongside former cabinet minister Hekia Parata and former Treasury secretary John Whitehead,