NZ First candidate challenges MAPAS assumptions in interview he says RNZ buried

Summarised by Centrist

Elliot Ikilei has published an interview he says RNZ did not use, showing a Pacific Waves interviewer repeatedly challenging his opposition to ethnicity-based medical admissions while largely treating the scheme’s benefits as established.

Ikilei, who describes himself as Tongan, Niuean, Māori and Pākehā, argues medical selection should prioritise capability over ancestry.

He argues that nobody would tell the All Blacks or Warriors they had “too many Māori and Pasifika” and require places reserved for other ethnicities. Medicine, he argues, makes selecting “the best person for the job” even more important because lives are involved.

When the interviewer asks whether academic grades “alone” identify good doctors, Ikilei replies that academic achievement is “a very big part of it”. MAPAS allows for Māori and Pasifika students to access medical school with lower grades. Ikilei had not proposed grades as the sole criterion.

The interviewer later asks whether removing MAPAS would mean there would not be “culturally competent doctors” to address Māori and Pacific health needs, assuming a connection between the admissions pathway and cultural competence exists. “We do not need ‘culturally competent health doctors’ to meet these needs,” he said. 

Ikilei recalls his family receiving care from Chinese and Indian doctors in Glen Innes. Their concern, he says, was the quality of treatment, not the doctor’s ethnicity.

Challenged over poorer Māori and Pacific health outcomes, he points to food affordability: “Deal with the economics. Don’t deal with the skin colour stuff.”

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