There is so much wrong with the recently published Health and Disability System Review. Before addressing it’s technical issues, check out the depth of character it pigeon-holes the majority of New Zealanders into.
The following description of New Zealand’s population groups is cut and pasted straight from the report.
Diverse populations
Aotearoa New Zealand is a diverse society. It has a large indigenous Māori population and other cultures, including significant Pacific and Asian populations, with the majority New Zealand European/Pākehā.
The characteristics of New Zealand’s ethnic populations vary significantly (refer Table 2.1).
As the indigenous population, Māori are highly connected through whakapapa and the wellbeing of individuals is strongly associated with the wellbeing of whānau. Their ability to access and participate in te Ao Māori (Māori world view) and their familial and cultural connections provide a strong and enduring sense of identity and are prerequisites to good health.
Pacific peoples are a young and diverse population made up of cultures from the many different Pacific Islands. There are more than 40 Pacific ethnic groups in New Zealand, with the eight largest populations being Samoan, Cook Island Māori, Tongan, Niuean, Fijian, Tokelauan, Tuvaluan and Kiribati. Pacific peoples share cultural values such as the central place of family, collectivism and communitarianism, the importance of spirituality, reciprocity and respect.
The Asian population is very broad, comprising ethnic groups from Afghanistan to Japan. Despite this diversity, Asian New Zealanders share common values, such as those based on family, education, and community ties. They also share the experience of negotiating between traditional values and those of the dominant Pākehā culture.
New Zealand Europeans/Pākehā are people of European ethnicity. The median age for New Zealand Europeans is 40.5 years, almost 20 years older than Pacific peoples. The New Zealand European population aged over 85 years is four to eight times higher than other population groups.
The Browning of New Zealand
Simon Chapple, back in 2000, wrote a fantastic critique of ethnicity, which is highly relevant for the world view described in the Health and Disability System report:
https://www.nzcpr.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Maori-Economic-Disparity-Simon-Chapple.pdf
Simon’s cut-and-thrust was discussion of Maori socio-economic disparity, back then, was unsophisticated and relatively uninformed. The Maori ethnic group is a construct of the mass colonisation of this country over the last 160 years by settlers from Britain, and has been promoted by government and societal groups the benefit from the government treating a group as a single entity.
“Ethnicity” is a recent post-World War 2 construct based on descent but born out of the process of post-war urbanisation and consequent population mixing, the growth of mass communications, and the often underestimated influences of world-wide trends of growing ethnic consciousness and assertiveness. The government and the larger non-Maori population focus on treating Maori as an ethnic group was a powerful impetus for a Maori ethnic identity.
“Entrepreneurs of ethnicity” perceived the possibility of an ethnic group and the benefits that it might bring and promoted it, often at considerable personal cost. Maori entrepreneurs of ethnicity work to expand the boundaries of the ethnic group and to solidify the sense of ethnic commitment by creating a world where increasing amounts of material and psychic rewards are offered to those in the group. They focused on, emphasise, and sometimes even exaggerate inter-group differences as means of constructing the collectivity.
The Measurement of Ethnicity
Simon’s major contribution from his paper was to slap around the concept for how ethnicity is measured. Rather than single discrete mutually exclusive ethnic groups, as the Report above suggests, New Zealand is a mix of peoples of different ethnicities. However, it’s through the measurement of ethnicity that the conversation becomes hijacked into an “us” and a “them” debate.
Maori are not an ethnically homogenous mass. By classifying themselves as both Maori and non-Maori, or acknowledging ancestry but not ethnicity, many individuals implicitly reject the common binary ethnic classifications and perceptions than underpin the standard disparity analysis and official ethnicity measures. In a sense this data is evidence that some Maori descended people, even as measured by the census, have a stronger ethnic identity and others have little or none.
Rather than considering Maori ethnicity as a rigid binary primordial dichotomy, as often current research and policy discussions imply, it is better to regard Maori identity (and by implication that of other ethnic groups in New Zealand too) as fluid, differing in degrees of interest and commitment, and constructed. Maori ethnicity (and very possibly reported ancestry) as it is conceptualised today also needs to be seen as responding to incentives offered to group membership, both in terms of physical and psychic goods. In addition, there are considerable dangers in reifying the census Maori ethnicity statistics: they can indicate little about the strength of ethnic identity.
Amen. Thanks Simon 🙂
If ethnic fluidity is a thing, then the community / family / spiritual ethnicity characteristics described in the Report must be absolute horse-shit, because people can move between those descriptions at will.
Ethnicity and Moral Hazard
If ethnicity is also something an individual can self-identify into, and ethnic fluidity is a valid identity choice then restructuring institutional structure around ethnicity may have perverse implications.
Offering ethnicity-based access to resources risks incentivising individuals to adopt an ethnicity purely to access those higher resources. Matching resource need to resource access is an equitable resource mechanism. But moving straight to health inequality based on ethnic identification alone is risky business.
Secondly, the report purposes entrenching decision-making rights into non-democratic, non-elected ethnic hierarchies with 50% Maori governance of the proposed Health New Zealand entity. However, you can bet the appointments will depend on Iwi affiliation not ethnicity identification.
One is an ethnicity, the other is a power heirachy.
Here be dragons.