The Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Amendment Bill repealed previous anti-smoking laws on the same day. Associate Health Minister Casey Costello cited survey results showing a decline in daily smoking rates from 8.6% to 6.8%.
A coalition of Māori health experts and advocates, Te Rōpū Tupeka Kore, told RNZ that the repeal would cost Māori lives, as smoking remains the most significant preventable cause of death among Māori, representing 25% of Māori deaths.
Prioritising English names first for government departments delivered a blow to 50 years of te reo revitalisation. Māori names were a particular bugbear of NZ First leader Winston Peters, while Māori Language commissioner Haami Piripi described the move in June as degrading.
“What the Government is doing is trampling all over our language but also our ancestors,” he said.
The Treaty Principles Bill, part of Act’s coalition agreement with National, seeks to redefine the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. While his interpretation focuses on equality, it does not consider equity. Equality gives each individual or group of people the same resources or opportunities. Equity recognises that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome. Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: “It is the idea that everyone has the same rights and duties. Everyone should be treated the same.
“On the surface, this might seem like a harmless or even noble point of view to have. But while the coalition will fail in its attempt to redefine the principles of Te Tiriti, they have already succeeded in redefining the meaning of equality.”
A group of licensed translators sent an open letter to the Government early last month, arguing that the bill was based on a translation of te Tiriti that was “deeply flawed” and failed “international translation ethical standards”.
The repeal of Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act, which removes the requirement for Oranga Tamariki to consider tikanga Māori and the Treaty of Waitangi in decisions regarding child placement and treatment, is seen as a significant blow to Māori rights. The section was introduced to ensure that Māori children in state care remain connected to their ancestry, following numerous cases where Māori children were removed from their families with little transparency. Care decisions should not be based on ethnicity but on individual circumstances. The Waitangi Tribunal conducted an urgent inquiry into the repeal and found it would cause harm to vulnerable children. It also said there were apparent breaches of the guarantee to Māori of self-determination and the Treaty principles of partnership and active protection.
The Government’s decision to defund Section 27 reports – commonly referred to as “cultural reports” – has raised concerns. The reports, used during criminal sentencing, provided judges with insights into a defendant’s personal, family, community, and cultural background in relation to their offending. While the reports could lead to reduced sentences, that outcome was not guaranteed. The Government justified the defunding by citing high costs and limited returns.
Throw in measures like the three strikes law and youth boot camps. While the coalition Government may argue that these policies do not explicitly target Māori, they have nonetheless had significant consequences for Māori communities. The focus should be on addressing historical and systemic inequities, not deepening them.
