Te Pāti Māori president John Tamihere says maths or te reo Māori is an unacceptable choice.
He says the diversion of pūtea from Te Ahu o te Reo Māori professional development for teachers by Education Minister Erica Stanford is an example of race-baiting and pandering to the underbelly of the electorate.
It’s a message Maori read loud and clear.
“There can be no compromise over the reo because it’s an official language. Just as teaching our babies mathematics and arithmetic is an essential right, so is the right our language so what this Government does is consistently trains us as being in the negative – we’ve got to fund mathematics rather than Maori,” Mr Tamihere says.
