Brash, Maori and "choice"

The Herald has finally published the opinion piece which led to Don Brash being called "evil". But rather than taking issue with his comments about how there are "few if any people in New Zealand who have only Maori ancestors" (which shows not only a failure to distinguish between race and ethnicity, but a a basic failure to grasp who the parties to the Treaty actually were), I'd like to make a few points about his other highly contentious claim: that the current position of Maori is a matter of "choice":

But it is quite wrong to argue that, because Maori are over-represented in negative social statistics, the “Crown”, or the government on behalf of all New Zealanders, has somehow failed to discharge its obligations under the Treaty. If Maori New Zealanders die more frequently from lung cancer than non-Maori do, for example, it is almost certainly because Maori New Zealanders choose to smoke more heavily than other New Zealanders do, not a result of some failing by the Crown.

"Dying more frequently of lung cancer" is a cheap example, because it has seemingly direct causation which can be directly blamed on the individuals concerned. Or does it? Quality of healthcare is also a factor, and there's some evidence that Maori receive poorer healthcare than Pakeha for the same disease, leading to differential survival rates - notably for cancer and heart disease. So its not as black and white and not his problem as Dr Brash would like to pretend. But more generally, Brash's implication is that just as Maori "choose" to die of lung cancer by smoking, they have also "chosen" to be over-represented in negative social statistics such as poverty, unemployment, educational attainment, and illiteracy. Decades of dispossession, marginalisation, discrimination and denial of opportunity are masked beneath that facile claim that the current state of Maori is a "choice". But it saves Dr Brash from having to wonder whether the government has lived up to its obligations (whether under the Treaty or as a decent government), and what it can or should do about it.