New Zealanders voted Yes, New Zealand is a racist country in the groundbreaking second episode of national debate programme The Vote, which screened tonight on TV3.

Guyon Espiner and the Affirmative team were declared the winners of the debate at the end of the hour-long show with the votes tallied at 76% YES, 24% NO.

Viewers voted from around the country and overseas. During the broadcast #thevotenz trended at #1 in New Zealand on Twitter.

Race Relations Commissioner Dame Susan Devoy joined Duncan and Guyon LIVE in the TV3 studio directly after the debate. She said "New Zealanders should probably feel ashamed that they perceive themselves as a racist country … It is staggering. I think it just highlights the issues we’re facing." She also commented: "I think this shows that New Zealanders really care about race relations."

Viewer votes:

Facebook - 76% YES, 24% NO

Twitter - 66% YES, 34% NO

Website - 75% YES, 25% NO

Text - 76% YES, 24% NO

TOTAL - 76% YES, 24% NO

The theatre audience voted before and after the debate. The results are:

Theatre audience vote - prior to debate - 52% YES, 41% NO, 7% UNDECIDED

Theatre audience vote - end of debate - 40% YES, 57% NO, 3% UNDECIDED

A snap studio poll during the debate asked: Are we more opposed to Chinese investment than other investment? The theatre audience voted Yes 82% No 13% Undecided 5%.

Tonight’s episode of The Vote saw a coin toss determine that Guyon would lead the Affirmative team arguing that ‘New Zealand is a racist country’.

Guyon was joined by John Tamihere, broadcaster, activist and CEO of the Waipareira Trust, and Associate Professor of Pacific Island Studies, Damon Selesa on the Affirmative team.

On the Negative team, Duncan had lawyer academic Mai Chen and politician Phil Goff to make the case against the moot. Referee Linda Clark kept order in a ground-breaking debate that was informed, informative, passionate and personal for all the debaters.

The arguments for:

Guyon Espiner’s team argued that New Zealanders have a romantic notion that we have ‘perfect’ race relations, but the realities and statistics paint a different picture. They said New Zealand is structurally racist with large discrepancies when it comes to indicators like life expectancy, unemployment, and treatment by the justice system. They pointed to a growing racial segregation in our communities with Pakeha living in separate suburbs to other ethnic groups.

"What you have to say to yourself is why should a poor brown kid be treated differently by the criminal justice system?" - John Tamihere

"It’s a national catastrophe in that there are 15 per cent Maori in society and we make up over 50 per cent of the prison population, this cannot give us any comfort as a country." - John Tamihere

"We’re already very far down this road of very enhanced residential segregation. In some parts of Auckland, two thirds of Pacific people for instance, have no Pakeha or European in their neighbourhood. Now is that the kind of New Zealand we really think we want? Is that the kind of New Zealand that we think we live in?" - Damon Selesa

"I know in my own family, that my relatives couldn’t get places to rent, right, until they had to send someone out who was not a Pacific Islander in order to get a house rented and this is the kind of thing you will never realise unless we make it visible." - Damon Selesa

"If a Maori person goes to hospital and they are diagnosed with cancer and a Pakeha person goes to hospital and they’re diagnosed with cancer and we take that sample and we standardise it for age, we have every possible control, co-morbidity - that Maori person is far more likely to die. There is no other explanation for why that person is more likely to die and that horrifies me." - Damon Selesa

The arguments against:

Duncan Garner’s Negative team said that individual cases of racism didn’t add up to New Zealand being a racist country overall, and that while New Zealand race relations are not perfect, our laws are colourblind and our inequalities are along social-economic, not ethnic lines. They insisted racisim of the past had gone and our race relations were continuing to improve.

"I have suffered a lot of discrimination but just because New Zealand does have people with racist attitudes, doesn’t make the whole country racist." - Mai Chen

Story continues