Peter Allan Williams
Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines although verbalising thoughts on www.reality check.radio three days a week
peterallanwilliams.substack.com
Supporters of the Maori Health Authority or Te Aka Whai Ora say that we must have a separate agency to ensure Maori have equitable health outcomes because the previous public health system was systematically racist.
There is actually no evidence of “systematic racism” although the statistic regularly quoted to support it involves life expectancy.
The most recent calculation of Maori life expectancy at birth, according to the Stats NZ Infoshare database, is that Maori die seven years before non-Maori.
Numerous medical professionals, economists and researchers have pointed out that health outcomes are more often related to lifestyle, living arrangements and income than ethnicity.
Even the Waitangi Tribunal in 2001 alluded to similar ideas with this comment in its Wai 692 report on Napier Hospital: “For many Ahuriri Maori, the health outcomes remain poor. A significant proportion of the ill health suffered by Ahuriri Maori was preventable but was not prevented.”
The same report went on to say “we conclude therefore that while the Treaty did create an enduring right to transitional protection against particular adverse effects, it did not establish a permanent Maori entitlement to additional health service resources as district from that of New Zealanders as a whole.”
The Waitangi Tribunal, under Judge Wilson Isaac, was therefore saying 22 years ago that there was no obligation for the Crown to establish a separate health authority for Maori.
But attitudes have changed – radically. So have health outcomes for Maori.
Let’s return to Infoshare.
The life expectancy for a Maori male increased from 66.6 in 1996 to 73.4 in 2018, which is the most recent year for which numbers are available. That’s an extra 6.8 years of life, an improvement of just over 10 per cent.
At the same time, non-Maori men have increased their life expectancy from 75.4 in 1996 to 80.9 in 2018. That’s just over 7 per cent.
So the increase in life expectancy is faster for Maori than for non-Maori.
For women, the numbers tell a similar story. The life expectancy for a Maori woman increased six years or over 8 percent between 1996 and 2018.
For non-Maori women, the rate of increase was 4.7 per cent or just under four years.
Now let’s consider the country’s death rates. As I reported recently the general population is dying at the fastest rate in a quarter of a century. In the year to June 30 this year we died at a rate of 7.43 per 1000 of population.
But the Maori death rate was much lower at 5.35.
Five years ago the numbers were 6.91 for the population as a whole but only 4.9 for Maori and all the way back to a decade ago, the 2013 figures were 6.78 and 4.18.
So I don’t get this. We are told that we need at great expense a separate Maori Health Authority to improve Maori health outcomes.
Yet we have Maori life expectancy increasing at a faster rate than non-Maori, and Maori dying at much slower rate than the population at large.
Am I missing something?
Those numbers suggest the National and Act Party’s policy to disestablish Te Aka Whai Ora is sound and evidence-based.
