A fatal shooting in a Christchurch home. Four young lives lost to motocross accidents. (as reported by RNZ, February 2026) The news cycle moves fast, but here's the question nobody's asking: Why do 32,916 Māori workers end up seriously injured or dead on the job every single year?

That's the 2024 figure from ACC's serious injury data — and it's not an anomaly. (Source: Stats NZ / ACC, fatal-serious-injuries) It's a pattern that's held steady for years, even as overall workplace injuries have declined dramatically across New Zealand.

Put it in perspective: Māori make up roughly 17% of New Zealand's population. But these 33,000 annual injuries represent a vastly disproportionate share of workplace harm. We're not talking about minor incidents — ACC classifies these as serious injuries requiring significant medical intervention, or fatalities.

The trajectory tells its own story. In 2020, the number sat at 72,756 — alarmingly high, but COVID-19 lockdowns meant fewer people at work. When workplaces fully reopened in 2022, injuries dropped to 34,086, then held around that mark: 33,675 in 2023, 32,916 in 2024. The numbers have stabilised, but at a level that should alarm anyone paying attention.

This isn't about individual recklessness or bad luck. When tens of thousands of people from one demographic group are getting hurt year after year, you're looking at systemic patterns — the industries Māori workers are concentrated in, the types of jobs they're doing, the safety cultures of those workplaces, the training they're receiving.

Construction, forestry, manufacturing, agriculture — these are the sectors where Māori workers are overrepresented. They're also the sectors with the highest injury rates. A forestry worker in Murupara faces different risks than an office worker in Wellington, and the data shows who's bearing that risk.

Compare this to the broader picture: overall serious workplace injuries in New Zealand have been trending down for years. Safety has improved dramatically in many sectors. But that progress hasn't reached everyone equally. While some workplaces got safer, 33,000 Māori workers still ended 2024 with serious injuries.

When a coroner orders a joint inquest into four motocross deaths, we rightly examine what went wrong in that specific context. (as reported by RNZ, February 2026) But the ACC data demands we ask a bigger question: What's going wrong across thousands of workplaces that leaves one demographic group consistently, predictably, at risk?

These aren't abstract statistics. They're 33,000 people who went to work and got hurt badly enough that ACC tracked it as serious. Some didn't come home at all. The data has been sitting there for years, telling the same story. We just haven't been listening.