April 29, 2024
Chhour Māori purge ‘arrogant and conceited’
Te Pāti Māori MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi is calling for Children’s Minister Karen Chhour to resign over her handing of Oranga Tamariki.
She says every position in the child protection agency with the words Maori, treaty or culture in the title is being dumped.
Minister Chhour has also refused to front up to the Waitangi Tribunal to explain her reasons for scrapping section 7AA of the act, which sets out the responsibilities of the chief executive to uphold mana Tamariki and the Treaty of Waitangi.
Ms Kapa-Kingi says that disrespects all the work done in the previous National-ACT Government a decade ago to come up with 7AA.
“All of that discussion, all of those stories, all of that real ground-truth experience from our mokopuna matters nought because of her own personal story – ‘I’m a survivor of Oranga Tamariki (or whatever it was called before) and I did OK’ is such an arrogant, ignorant, conceited way of acting as a minister,” she says.
Ms Kapa-Kingi says Karen Chhour is a weak minister who is supporting a pakeha narrative that we are all New Zealanders and Maori don’t exist.