Government breached treaty principles in Covid-19 response, Waitangi Tribunal finds
Monday, 20 December 2021
The Government breached Te Tiriti o Waitangi for “political convenience” in its response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Waitangi Tribunal has found.
On Tuesday, the Tribunal released Haumaru: the Covid-19 Priority Report, finding the Government’s Covid-19 response had breached Treaty principles such as active protection, equity, partnership and tino rangatiratanga.
The report followed a week-long urgent inquiry into the Government’s handling of the response, where about 40 claimants – which included Māori health professionals, data experts, iwi, hapū, and health providers – presented evidence of the Crown’s failures.
The Tribunal recommended the Crown urgently provide further funding, resourcing, data, and other support to assist Māori providers and communities with localised responses.
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Those included continuing vaccination effort including the paediatric vaccine and booster vaccine, targeted support for disability communities such as whānau hauā and tāngata whaikaha, self-isolation and managed isolation programmes, care for Māori infected with Covid-19, and testing and contact tracing.
The report said Cabinet breached Te Tiriti principles when it rejected advice from officials, such as Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield and the Ministry of Health, to adopt an age adjustment for Māori in the vaccine roll-out due to the population’s greater risk of infection and health inequities.
It also breached the Treaty when Cabinet ignored unanimous calls not to move into the Covid-19 Protection Framework from Māori health leaders and iwi that the Crown consulted, as well as advice from Te Puni Kōkiri, the Ministry of Māori Development, and Te Arawhiti, the Office for Māori Crown Relations.
“The rapid transition into the framework – which happened faster than the Crown’s officials and experts recommended, and without the original vaccination thresholds for each district health board being met – did not adequately account for Māori health needs,” the report said.
Under Te Tiriti, the Crown has a duty to adopt rational, scientific and equitable policy choices for Māori, the Tribunal said, and a moral and ethical duty to defend those choices against unreasonable public backlash.
“It cannot simply find ways of avoiding these duties by coming up with less equitable alternatives; it must make those choices that sustain Māori well-being, and then explain and defend them as long and as vocally as is required.
“Failing to perform these duties for the sake of political convenience does not reflect the Treaty partnership and, in fact, threatens the fundamental basis for it.”
The Tribunal rejected the premise of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s letter to the New Zealand Māori Council in November, that said the Government was hesitant to set vaccination targets for Māori before the nation moved into the traffic light system.
Ardern said the Government was concerned the target would risk creating a perception among some that “that group is preventing the country from opening up more quickly”.
The report said: “We [the Tribunal] suspect that similar concerns informed Cabinet’s decision to reject an age adjustment for Māori in the initial vaccine roll-out.
“Given there was a clear public health rationale for the prioritisation of Māori in the vaccine roll-out, fear of a racist backlash against Māori is not a good enough justification for failing to take all reasonable measures to ensure equity.”
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The report also stated that this backlash Ardern was concerned about had fallen onto Māori due to the delay in the vaccine roll-out to Māori which could have been avoided.
“We observe that the Crown bears some responsibility for the misinformation and vaccine hesitancy present in Māori communities now, and the fact that some members of the public see these factors as primarily a problem with those communities rather than a problem with how slow the vaccine roll-out has been for Māori.”