Representatives from the National Ethnic and Faith Community Leaders Network meeting opposition leader Chris Hipkins in Auckland on 15 August 2025.
Photo: Supplied
Ethnic leaders are calling for more resources to tackle issues such as social cohesion and health disparities at a meeting with opposition leader Chris Hipkins in Auckland on Friday.
Representatives from the National Ethnic and Faith Community Leaders Network attended the meeting, with the Labour Party’s ethnic communities spokesperson Jenny Salesa also present.
After the event that was closed to media, Hipkins said they’ve discussed issues concerning the general public, such as employment, health, homes and cost of living, as well as these specific to migrant and religious communities, such as immigration.
He said life has become tougher for the ethnic communities since he met the same group last year.
“Issues around the cost of living have gotten worse. I think issues around polarisation continue to be a real area of concern when I speak to our community,” he said.
“More tension within the communities and more overt displays of racism within the communities are something I’m very concerned about.”
Hipkins said “the many faces of our community” needed to be reflected in the way services were being delivered such as health and education.
When asked what would he do about the problems, Hipkins said it would be reflected in the Labour Party’s policies before the next election.
“Part of the reason that we’re here is that we want to make sure that we’re listening to New Zealanders as we develop our policies,” he said.
Dame Ranjna Patel, Chris Hipkins, and the Labour Party’s ethnic communities spokesperson Jenny Salesa.
Photo: Supplied
Social cohesion was a topic that concerned Dame Ranjna Patel the most.
“The social cohesion in the ethnic community and mainstream is very divided at the moment, and it’s just progressively getting louder and more of a problem,” she said.
Patel said the differences of all the ethnic communities are so wide and groups should come together for solutions.
“We do need to work together to give bite size problems with bite size solutions, not just say this is a issue, fix it. It’s too hard for every government to do. We have to have a budget that lets us do that,” she said.
“To get communities to develop themselves to be able to deal with these, we’ll need a lot more resources.”
Debbie Chin, president of the New Zealand Chinese Association’s Wellington branch.
Photo: RNZ / Liu Chen
New Zealand Chinese Association’s Wellington branch president Debbie Chin’s area of focus was the health of wellbeing of Asian New Zealanders.
“We’re looking for improved access to services for our Chinese and Asian communities,” Chin said. “That means that we need services that meet the needs of our population, and we also need to have providers who can… understand our culture.”
“We need diversification across all of those areas, across service delivery, cross workforce, cross funding and commissioning and the people in the decision making seats.”
Chin pointed to a recent report which found that almost half of Asian parents said their children have been bullied at school in the past 12 months often associated with racism.
“I hope [the government] will put investment in to ensure that our people are not bullied and that the children understand that’s not acceptable and that we build inclusion and social cohesion across our community, in our workplaces and in our schools,” she said.
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