$1m for marae, everyone else gets a pat on the back
Firstly, I am going to start this off by acknowledging all the marae that opened their doors and helped communities affected by the recent severe weather. That help mattered. People were fed, housed and looked after when things were rough. No one sensible is denying that.
But do they really need a dedicated $1 million on top?
In the past, we have seen countless community groups step up in disasters. Schools have opened their halls. Sporting clubs have turned clubrooms into shelters. Churches have fed families for days on end, run on donations, volunteers and goodwill. I do not remember any of them ever being explicitly allocated a million dollars by the government afterwards, or even being singled out in press releases.
That is where this starts to feel less like gratitude and more like politics.
Once again, marae are not just thanked for helping. They are named. They are funded separately. They are elevated above every other community group that also stepped up without asking for anything in return. If the logic is that anyone who opened their doors deserves support, then fine. Apply it across the board. Do not carve out one group for special treatment and pretend it is about fairness.
We are constantly told that New Zealand should be one community, pulling together in tough times. That message rings hollow when the chequebook comes out and suddenly it is very clear who sits at the front of the queue.
The extra $1.2 million for mayoral relief funds makes sense. Local councils are dealing with real costs and real clean-up. The separate $1 million allocation to marae, however, raises eyebrows for a reason. It reinforces the idea that some organisations are politically untouchable, regardless of whether they actually need the money.
Before anyone reaches for the usual accusations, this is not an attack on Māori. It is a challenge to government decision-making and consistency. Questioning where public money goes is not racism. It is basic accountability.
As for Chris Luxon, maybe this is just clumsy optics. Maybe it is another example of National trying to prove it is not Labour while quietly copying Labour’s habits. Or maybe, now that Luxon has his free trade deal with India stitched up, he is trying to chase the Māori vote too.
Joking. That is pretty much an impossible task.
What is not impossible is treating all community groups the same. Say thank you to everyone who helped. Support recovery where it is genuinely needed. But stop pretending that explicitly naming and funding one group over all others does not fuel resentment and division. Because it does and from what I have seen on social media, people are noticing.
