Ethnic leaders call for more resources for social cohesion

By CathNews New Zealand

August 22nd, 2025

(Rufino Uribe/Wikimedia Commons)

Ethnic leaders are calling for more resources to tackle issues such as social cohesion and health disparities. Source: Radio New Zealand.

Representatives from the National Ethnic and Faith Community Leaders Network met Opposition leader Chris Hipkins and Labour ethnic communities spokesperson Jenny Salesa in Auckland on August 15.

Social cohesion was a topic of concern for Dame Ranjna Patel.

“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.

Dame Ranjna said the differences of all the ethnic communities are very 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 an 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.”

New Zealand Chinese Association Wellington branch president Debbie Chin’s area of focus was the health and wellbeing of Asian New Zealanders.

“We’re looking for improved access to services for our Chinese and Asian communities,” Ms 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, across workforce, across funding and commissioning and the people in the decision-making seats.”

Ms Chin pointed to a recent report that found almost half of Asian parents said their children had been bullied at school in the past 12 months and this was 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.

FULL STORY

Ethnic leaders call for more resources for better social cohesion (By Liu Chen/Radio New Zealand)