New Zealand leader defends the removal of Māori phrases from an official invitation

New Zealand's prime minister is defending the removal of basic Māori phrases meaning “hello” and “New Zealand” from a lunar new year invitation to an Australian official. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says it's not a snub of the Indigenous language by New Zealand’s government. Instead, he jokes about the intelligence of neighboring Australians. But his coalition government has prompted fraught public debates about race. One has been over ending initiatives that offer priority to Māori, who lag behind other New Zealanders in most health, economic and justice statistics.