Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency says the Budget has some good elements, but "it doesn't address some significant issues we have in our communities".
Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
For Māori, the Budget includes $580 million in spending across health, social and justice sectors.
The Māori Health Authority will get $168m over four years to directly commission hauora Māori services.
That's only about 1.5 percent of the $11 billion of new health spending.
The budget also includes $167m for Whānau Ora to support kaupapa Māori approaches to wellbeing.
Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency health reforms director Lance Norman told Checkpoint there were always good elements of a budget, but "then when you look behind the proportionality, it doesn't really address some significant issues we have in our communities".
The $350 payment to those who earned less than $70,000 a year or did not receive the Winter Energy Payment was a good thing, he said.
"What's not good is it excludes beneficiaries, and that excludes people who are on ... winter subsidy already.
"What is good is there is some investment in the Maori Health Authority and there is some investment in the Whānau Ora budget.
"But when you look at the proportionality ... $180 million, which sounds like a lot, but if you divide that by four years, and then we divide that by 800,000 Maori living in our country, you get to about $50 per person to address some of the health discrepancies we have. And then when I look at $11.1 billion going into the whole healthcare system, you'd have to say that's quite disproportionate relative to the need we have in our communities."
Whānau Ora had administered more than 600,000 vaccinations in the past six months and 10 percent of those were Māori, he said.
"So what that shows to me is not only have we been reaching out to our own Maori communities, we've actually been reaching out to other communities.
"Now the announcement today, there was no Covid rollover, and we still have Covid in our communities. We still have home isolations there was no Covid money rolled over for those providers who have been working their absolute guts out for the last 12 months to protect all of our communities not just Maori communities.
"So there was no recognition of their hard work or be the fact that had their hard work is still required post 1 July of this year."
