Cabinet has issued a new directive to create a "colourblind" public service that focuses solely on need, not race, and doesn't prioritise Māori businesses when awarding government contracts.
Public Service Minister Nicola Willis made the announcement on Friday, which meets commitments in both ACT and New Zealand First's coalition agreements with National.
The public service circular issued by the Cabinet Office, to prioritise need, can be read as both a rebuke and a ruling: it says the Government is concerned that public servants have been using race as proxy for need. The new policy says: no more.
It comes after the health minister stepped in this week to scrap a Hawke's Bay health initiative granting free GP visits to young Māori and Pasifika based on their ethnicity.
Willis says without the circular the government has been concerned "agencies may use ethnic identity or other forms of personal identity as a proxy for need, and therefore a justification in itself for targeted services".
"The circular makes clear that when considering proposals for services targeted to specific population groups, agencies must provide a strong analytical case for any targeting, recognising that many variables can be used to identify and assess need, and that all variables should be considered before ethnic identity is automatically used to determine need."
The coalition commitment was meant to be fulfilled in the first six months of the new government, but it has taken almost a year.
Speaking to Checkpoint on Friday afternoon, Willis said the directive - a government policy - was a result of National being in coalition with ACT.
"Well, this directive is a direct result of the coalition agreement… The reason we are doing this is that we are in coalition with the ACT party, and this is government policy."
Services should be delivered on need not race - govt
Willis said funding would be considered for services that targeted certain ethnicities if they had a "strong analytical case… based on empirical evidence" that explained "why such an intervention is necessary, like the disparity in the outcomes between the target and the general population, why general services are not sufficient to address that, an assessment of the opportunity cost in terms of the service needs of all New Zealanders".
"What is the service that you are then going to deliver, and what is that going to look like? And who is it going to reach and why are they not being reached now? And what is the specific thing that you're going to do with them?
"I'd want to see that approach, and I think actually, you'll find that that is actually what a lot of people - when they are targeting services - want to do already. They want to make sure that resources are going to those who most need it - who in the population is missing out? Where do they come from? Which geographies? What age are they? Are there specific reasons relating to the way they live their lives that means that they are not getting the services that others are getting, or that they have greater need for the services?
"So all of those things need to go into the way that we deliver services, not just assumptions about people."
She admitted there were some areas in health where need and ethnicity "can be correlated", but "we should not make assumptions about people based on their ethnicity".
"We will consider proposals for services targeted to specific population groups. It will continue to be the case. When we do so, we want to see a strong analytical case for that targeted investment."
Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
'Technical and challenging'
ACT leader David Seymour said there was no scandal, rather it was "more important to get it right than meet a particular deadline".
He told media in Auckland on Friday that the work was "technical and challenging" and he made it clear to Cabinet he was happy to wait in order to get the directive right.
It required government departments to analyse data more intensely to find out what, other than race, was contributing to social and health issues.
Seymour said the country's public service was a "professional" group of people who he expected would "heed the directive" set out by the Cabinet Office.
"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."
Seymour said the circular drew on the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, of which New Zealand was a signatory.
"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."
High health need goes beyond just race, and Seymour said there were plenty of Māori - like himself - who did not have high health needs, and those who were not Māori who did.
He said gone were the days of only using an ethnic lens to determine how best to provide public services to New Zealanders.
Coalition scraps 'uneven playing field'
The coalition was also scrapping Labour's policy encouraging departments to give at least 8 percent of their contracts to Māori providers.
It was an initiative introduced under the previous Labour government - first at 5 percent, and later lifted to 8 percent in March last year.
"This target risked a perception of discrimination and gave the impression of an uneven playing field for suppliers," Willis said.
"We continue to encourage and expect Māori businesses to bid for and win government contracts."
Willis said more could be done to create opportunities for a wider range of small- and medium-sized businesses to receive contracts, and a group of ministers - including Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka - will report back to Cabinet next year on how to achieve that.
Seymour said government contracting decisions should be made solely on what was the best value for money.
"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."
'One size doesn't fit all'
Labour public services spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said decades of evidence showed that in health, education, housing and other public services, there were huge disparities to access.
"Labour's goal was to fix this. Equity is about acknowledging we don't all start from the same place.
"New Zealand is a wealthy country and there is enough for everyone to have what they need and deserve. One size doesn't fit all, and services need to work for New Zealand's diverse communities.
"What the National government is doing here isn't actually about addressing need. They're more focused on doing what's politically palatable than ensuring the genuine need in our society is addressed."
Green Party public services spokesperson Francisco Hernandez labelled the directive a "dog-whistle" designed to kick Māori while they were down. He said it ignored the reality of racism in New Zealand and the evidence backing a more targeted approach.
"This is just another example of the kind of shallow politics and hollow policies that this government is dishing out on a near daily basis."
Te Pāti Māori said need and race were intertwined when it came to Māori and Pasifika, and the coalition had it wrong focussing on one over the other.
Co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said the evidence pointed to Māori and Pasifika disparities being so overwhelming they had to be seen through that lens.
"It's an absolute embarrassment when we've got governments trying to whitewash and make it look like we don't have a problem in Aotearoa when every evidence, every academic, tells us that we have."
Ngarewa-Packer said it was unhelpful the coalition was using need over race language, because it did not speak to the transformation that was required in public services.
You can watch RNZ's livestream of the event at the top of this page.