Cultural Competence is one of the competencies required of all Health Practitioners in New Zealand since the enacting of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act in 2003.

This dissertation examines what relationship there is between this concept and Bioethics and Health Law. The dissertation argues that the need for the concept of Cultural Competence comes from the failure of the Bioethics community to adequately address the fundamental ethical issue that non-dominant cultural groups frequently receive inferior care, and have significantly worse health outcomes, than people who are part of the dominant cultural group.