December 20, 2012
Housing, heath and decent wages needed
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters says policymakers have lost touch with the needs of Māori.
He says the sort of programmes coming out of Te Puni Kokiri and other agencies don’t match the reality of families who are looking for decent affordable housing, decent education and health systems and first world wages.
"Those four things are what everyone around the world wants and we have departed from the essentials that make people happier in their lives and gone off on a lot of esoteric experimental policy and is of no value to anyone and it may please the policy wonks who sit and try to review it and have no idea what is going on because they don’t get out on the street and the marae and the modern world and as a result there is a huge disconnecting between what is being said in Wellington and what is going on in the heart land of Māoridom," Mr Peters says.