DAVID SEYMOUR: “Need, not race” circular honours universal human rights

The government is issuing a Cabinet circular directing all public services be delivered according to need rather than race. This change marks a commitment to ensuring equal rights in the distribution of government resources and services, and reflects the values ACT campaigned on.

Under the new policy, all public services will be directed to those who are most in need, according to real analysis of all factors, rather than defaulting to race as a person’s primary characteristic. This approach is designed to target resources more effectively, addressing disparities and fostering a more inclusive society.

Policies like ethnicity-based surgical waitlists and university admission schemes are corrosive to an inclusive multi-ethnic society. They take the lens of ethnicity and look through it before any other.

The circular is sophisticated. It draws on the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, to which New Zealand is a signatory. The Convention forbids racial discrimination unless it is necessary, and even then it must be temporary.

The circular goes on to state the Government is concerned about public servants using race as a proxy for need. It says that, in establishing whether racial discrimination is necessary, it must consider all other variables before automatically using ethnicity to target services.

A colourblind public service is far better placed to direct its resources toward eliminating hardship and overcoming hardships that face individual New Zealanders.

Targeting services like healthcare and education based on race is lazy and divisive. The emphasis for the public service should be fitting services to the needs of every New Zealander.

As an example, the new approach means the public sector can’t simply assume Māori have shorter life expectancy because they are Māori, as Jacinda Ardern once infamously said. Instead, they must drill into the data and ask, is this related to living rurally, is it to do with poor housing, or other known factors? This kind of analysis not only avoids racial profiling, it allows practical insight into how health problems can be solved.

Policies like race-based surgical waitlists and university admission schemes run roughshod over principles of good policymaking. No-one should be moved backward or forward in a queue for services just because of who’s in their family tree. The public service has a wealth of data and evidence at its fingertips that can be used to target resources towards actual need, instead of making assumptions based on ethnicity.

Our population is more diverse than just Māori and non-Māori, but you wouldn’t know it from the way government departments have been operating.

Today we’ve also scrapped the so-called progressive procurement policy introduced by Labour that told departments that eight per cent of their contracts must go to Māori providers. Progressive procurement was a travesty that saw certain businesses gain unfair advantage just because the directors were able to identify the ‘right’ people in their family tree.

Government contracting decisions should be made on the basis of value for money, full stop.

David Seymour is leader of the ACT Party