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Summarised by Centrist
Documents circulated to doctors this week show the Medical Council is consulting on a new statement requiring practitioners to actively advance “hauora Māori” and address “unfair systems and power imbalances” within the health sector.
Does pursuing race-linked outcome equity cross from professional standards into political doctrine?
The draft statement, titled Statement on Hauora Māori (Māori health and wellbeing), was posted on X by political blogger Cam Slater.
The consultation document from Te Kaunihera Rata o Aotearoa, the Medical Council of New Zealand, states that doctors are “professionally responsible for taking meaningful action to advance health equity for Māori”. It says doctors must understand “inherent Indigenous rights” to “health, self-determination and equity” and recognise how colonial history and institutional structures shape health outcomes.
Doctors are told they should engage in “critical self-reflection to identify and address bias”, advocate for responses to the wider determinants of Māori health, support Māori participation and leadership in the workforce, and use their “professional privilege and influence” to work in partnership with Māori to dismantle unfair systems.
The draft also requires doctors to ensure care results in “equitable outcomes for Māori compared to non-Māori”, with equity-related measures potentially assessed through recertification programmes.
The document defines equity as the absence of “unfair, avoidable or remediable differences among groups of people” and describes mātauranga Māori as encompassing spiritual, cultural and environmental concepts alongside clinical care.
The council says the statement recognises Māori as tangata whenua and aims to address persistent disparities in access, treatment and outcomes, citing colonisation and socioeconomic deprivation as drivers of poorer health statistics.
The proposal is out for consultation and, if adopted, would embed explicit equity obligations and cultural expectations into nationwide professional standards.
