February 19, 2024
Policies driving Māori into gutter says Tamihere
Māori Party president John Tamihere says it’s hard to grasp the amount of legislation that is going to adversely affect Māori.
He says nearly two in three Maori children are in a household receiving some sort of benefit, so they will be hit by changes to the way benefit increases are calculated.
Other changes from boot camps to taking away the Reserve Bank’s requirement to consider unemployment while setting monetary policy will have an impact, especially as Maori are increasingly looking for ways to control their own destiny through programmes like Whanau Ora.
“Te be a good tangata whenua and to manaaki manuhiri you can’t have hundreds of thousands of manuhiri dropped on you when you are not resourced enough to look after them, without any conversation, so wherever we go with this Government, there’s just us being driven back into the gutter so to speak, and it’s making it very difficult on the street,” he says.
Mr Tamihere says National is allowing itself to be driven by the ACT Party, which has no mandate for its policies.