“New Zealanders need honest, healthy debate about policies that will improve health outcomes, not tiresome racial division from bad faith actors”, says ACT Leader David Seymour, responding to Rawiri Waititi’s interview on Q+A this morning.

“Te Pati Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi said this morning that ‘National and ACT want to see Māori die 7-10 years early’.

“We are disappointed but not surprised at Mr Waititi’s comments. Unfortunately, he has become the ultimate bad faith actor in New Zealand politics. Obviously, his comments are incorrect and offensive. On current polling, 20 per cent of ACTs MPs will have Māori heritage. We don’t want policies that will see us die early, nor do we want policies that would divide our country. Mr Waititi claims to speak for Māori but he does not.

“ACT opposes the Māori Health Authority because division doesn’t work. We believe in policies that devolve service delivery to communities, rather than divide New Zealand in two. Our comprehensive paper on this topic ‘Democracy or co-government?’ sets out how we would achieve more equal outcomes for New Zealanders of all backgrounds by allowing communities to deliver social services. Charter schools, which the old Māori Party strongly supported, were a good example of devolution in action.

“Data shows that the gap in life expectancy between Māori and non-Māori has declined from about 20 years to 7 years since 1952. Waititi says the current system is not working, but he is wrong on the most basic of facts.

"New Zealand faces serious challenges and needs honest healthy debate on what policies will overcome them. Honest debate would be accepting that other parties want to achieve better health outcomes for Māori, but have different policies to get there, rather than questioning their motivations.

“Mr Waititi would be better off explaining what he will do for Māori instead of divisively and dishonestly misrepresenting other parties’ motivations.

“ACT represents a growing number of Māori who want a better tomorrow from devolved social services that ACT supports and are tired of Mr Waititi’s theatrics.

“ACT will end division based on race so New Zealand is better equipped to meet the many challenges we face.”

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