Barry Smith and Martin Tolich

Recent changes to health ethics oversight in New Zealand has presented a number of challenges for the way in which health and disability ethics committee (HDEC) members handle Treaty of Waitangi responsibilities. Informants suggest that indigenous research ethics has either virtually dropped off the table or taken a “cultural turn” in the sense that the meaning of consultation has been “trivialised”; however, this fate is not indicated uniformly across all HDECs.