Estimates Debate — Vote Māori Affairs

In looking at Vote Māori Affairs, we really are looking at a Government department that seems hell-bent on entrenching grievance and misery in this country—a department that does not seem to have any idea of where it is heading, or any idea of what it is supposed to achieve. One thing that really winds me up is that we are constantly told that Māori are special, are set apart, and have particular and exceptional rights inside this country, and that then there are the rest of us, who are, apparently, the Crown, and who have some obligation—in fact, a considerable obligation—to that other group. I want to make it clear that the National Party rejects that concept completely. I want the Minister to tell us this afternoon what positive things his department is doing, because I am struggling to see in the list of this year’s estimates just what those things may be.

💬 Hon John Tamihere: He will struggle all right!

There is Mr Tamihere coming into the Chamber, making smart comments again, and chipping away at anybody and everybody who disagrees with him. He has just presided last evening over an utter debacle up in the far north, involving a totally crook organisation of which he was once the chief executive. That is the sort of thing that those of us who are told we are the Crown—and who have, therefore, some obligation to Māori—cannot understand. We are, quite frankly, sick of it.

I want the Minister of Māori Affairs to explain to the Committee what the whānau development programme is all about. The 2004 Budget puts $14 million a year into whānau development. We cannot work out quite what that is all about, but we do hear that there are people in various Māori organisations who refer to that money as “the Horomia picnic money”—people can put in an application, get a few thousand dollars, and go and have a hāngi on Parekura Horomia. What is whānau development, and why do we have to have whānau development for Māori, when there is no such equivalent for other families in this country? Māori, of course, under this Government are different; they are not part of the community of New Zealand. Māori are the reserved elite, and this Government is determined they should be kept there. The sad deception is that Māori, under Labour, are still at the bottom of every social statistic that represents the worst aspects of life in this country. Māori still lag very significantly behind the rest of the nation when it comes to average income, Māori are the ones who die of the worst kind of diseases and of other diseases that could be prevented, and Māori families are the ones that struggle with the issue of poor housing in the far north and in various other parts of the country. But we have a Government that is utterly hoodwinking Māori into believing that it is on their side.

I want to know how a poor Māori family will get anything out of Te Māngai Pāho being given another $26 million this year. That organisation has just had an audit run over it, and there were no fewer than 40 discrepancies in the management of that organisation.

💬 Brian Connell: How many?

Forty discrepancies were picked up by the Audit Office. And I tell members that the Minister has decided to give Te Māngai Pāho more money. Not one Māori who is suffering from diabetes and not being treated, not one Māori kid struggling with his or her reading at school, and not one Māori living in substandard housing will benefit from that. But Māori should not worry, because Parekura Horomia is there, and if they write him a nice letter he will send them a few bob for a barbecue.

I want to know why we are spending so much money on the Māori television channel. There will be those who say that part of the Government’s obligation from the early 1990s is to ensure that the Māori language is preserved and has its place in broadcasting. But when I look at mainstream television, I see most of Sunday morning is devoted to Māori television. The children’s programme modelled on What Now is another chunk of such programming. I want to know why there has to be a separate channel for Māori. Why does there have to be a separate organisation for Māori, and why can that organisation not hold its management structure together? Why does it have to be so riddled with the sort of disasters that we have seen since the appointment of John Davy? Why did the Government not use its State broadcasting charter to simply insist that the goals of Māori Television were delivered through the State television already owned by the taxpayer?

I look at Māori Television programming, and I say that there are a couple of programmes that I very much enjoy, like Kai Time on the Road.

💬 Hon Parekura Horomia: Ha, ha!

I tell members that I am almost encouraged by Kai Time on the Road to write a letter to Mr Horomia myself, to see whether I can get some of his barbecue money. Those programmes are about New Zealand discovering its own identity. There is an easy transition between te reo Māori and English, but it is all done in the context of what happens in this country. I think the Government wants to create the illusion that by having a separate Māori television channel, that group of people is a separate nation. If there is a separate nation it is a pretty bad state, because the people who overwhelmingly represent the lowest and worst of our social statistics are part of that nation. So there is a long, long way to go.

I think this Minister has not done the sort of work he should be doing in order to make a difference. I still cannot get an answer from Te Puni Kōkiri about what capacity building is. What one receives are screeds of paper that generally rabbit on about all sorts of garbage. One is handed that and expected to accept that that is what capacity building is. I recently wrote to a number of Māori trusts, asking them whether they had received any funding from an assistance with management fund that was available to them. The answers I received stated that none of them had had any money, that some of them had had some literature from Te Puni Kōkiri, and that one had had a letter from Te Puni Kōkiri stating that the trust was not subject to the Official Information Act, so it did not have to reply to me, and that it should simply send my letter to Te Puni Kōkiri, which would write back to me. I am still waiting for that letter. I think that that Government department needs to have a serious rule run over it.

I have been incredibly patient, quite frankly, for almost 6 months now, while trying to get my understanding of these things upskilled a bit, but I cannot see anything positive coming out of Te Puni Kōkiri, at all—nothing. What we get is—[Interruption] There—did members see that? I want that comment to go in Hansard. That was the senior Government whip, from the Labour Party—the Labour Party, mind you—once again offering my trade background as a sort of derogatory comment. That is why that crowd will be slung out of Government. That is why Whanganui is a dead seat for Labour, and why that member will not be on the Government benches after the next election. Those members have no respect for working New Zealanders, and they have no respect for Māori New Zealanders, who just want to get on with their lives.

The tragedy of any estimates is that the majority of money spent on Māori is spent by others, and mostly inefficiently and ineffectively. But I do want to recognise the importance of the funding that has been allocated in the new initiatives for strengthening whānau and community Māori language use. We believe te reo Māori is the cornerstone of all that is Māori, and, given this, it would have been great if the Government had in fact made a more significant commitment. What our party would like to see is that all te reo Māori courses offered by tertiary institutions are freely available to our people. Our people should not have to pay to learn their own language, given that it was successive Governments’ policies that prevented our people from using the reo from some time ago, and I think of my own mother as an example of somebody who ended up losing her mother tongue.

It is a matter of great pleasure for me today that when I stated my affirmation in the House in te reo, I did so as the first member of Parliament to deliver the affirmation in our own reo without it having to be translated into English. Te reo Māori is not my first language, so I have a personal appreciation of the desperate need for our language to survive. Language is about identity, which is why I respect the right of other nations to retain their languages as they live in this land. The next step for te reo Māori would be for all members to pronounce each other’s names correctly in this House. That is about being respectful.

I want to refer to four other areas targeted in the Māori affairs portfolio—three pertaining to State bureaucracy, and the whānau development package. When analysing the appropriations of new initiatives, I was concerned to see the level of funding dedicated to propping up departmental and agency infrastructures. Budget 2004 sets aside funding for Te Puni Kōkiri, Te Māngai Pāho, and the Māori Trust Office. All of this will be greeted with cappuccino and cheers along Lambton Quay, but I wonder how many of the people who journeyed down to sit in the public gallery yesterday will benefit from the $6 million to enhance the capability of Māori affairs. I wonder how those mokopuna who looked down on our proceedings yesterday from the gallery will appreciate the importance of the $1.4 million for technical and development funding for the Māori Trust Office, and the $2.036 million for capability funding for Te Māngai Pāho. It is the people who need to be invested in, not Government agencies.

My key focus today in looking at the Māori affairs portfolio is more to address one specific aspect of this year’s estimates, and that is whānau development. While I can appreciate that the honourable Gerry Brownlee does not understand what whānau development is about, it is a very important plank for our people. The Māori Party has no doubt that our people are our greatest taonga, and, in this regard, we are delighted that the work I had commenced over 2 years ago, with the national whānau development hui, followed by 13 regional hui, has seen good results in the $14 million allocated for whānau development. The Māori Party is delighted there will be support for whānau to achieve their own aspirations. Only our whānau know what is best for themselves, and our role is to ensure that any Government intervention is one that resources and empowers whānau to address our own social, cultural, and economic aspirations. We will no longer tolerate others looking from afar and determining the solutions and, frankly, the problems for our people; we can decide that for ourselves.

We are particularly delighted to note that there is $8.5 million dedicated to action research programmes. Action research is designed to achieve change. The focus is to take action to improve a situation, and the research is the conscious effort, as part of this process, to build on our knowledge. Whānau development action research programmes will therefore achieve change, improve situations for our people, then continue to inform and guide them in their ongoing planning processes. Whānau will be doing this for themselves, and we will all be watching to see that no outsiders looking in are taking the lead. The critical component in all of this, of course, is whānau.

I want to take a short call to respond to the honourable member who is a spokesperson for the National Party for matters Māori, Mr Gerry Brownlee. On a number of matters, and in every speech he has made since his appointment, we have yet to know what that party would do in power with regard to some of the difficulties that are being managed by this Government with regard to our communities. At no time do we hear any detail. One hears the buffoonery and all the rest of it, but one never hears any detail, substance, or policy. [Interruption] That member is always very good, like the member for Rakaia, at screaming and yelling across the Chamber. [Interruption] There he is, yelling and screaming at me again, for the listeners. The reality is that he is one of the cheerleaders for Gerry Brownlee, which is probably why he got into the caucus.

But let me just point out a number of things. Under this Government—a Labour-led Government—Māori have surged forward in the last 5 years, more so than they ever did in the previous 15. Māori unemployment, with regard to which these estimates are very well calibrated, will continue to drop. It is now down to its lowest level for the last 16 years, and it will continue to drop. In terms of the whānau development fund about which the great Mr Gerry Brownlee opined he knew nothing, I agree with that—he knew nothing about it. Let me just disclose for members what that budget might go towards—and it is not “might”; some of it will. We know in our communities which families are in difficulty, and we know in our communities exactly where our babies who are in difficulties are. At the moment, we will ring fence them by way of a wrap-around care plan, and look at the whole family’s difficulties—not just when they come to the attention of the care and protection or youth justice agencies, or are managed by our criminal justice system. Early intervention, early risk identification, is where that funding is going. It will drop youth offending overnight, once it hits the communities that it can roll out in. Māori families will start to lift their performance, as they are doing right now.

We are in a wonderful stage of our evolution, and we will move on from the victimhood and grievance policies being suggested by the Māori Party. We are moving on, but not from the deficit model of the Māori Party or the National Party—in fact, I now know why Tariana Turia gets on so well with Don Brash, after that speech. We are moving forward in a positive and progressive framework. We understand the latent and wonderful potential of our communities, and they have to be talked up. Our children will start to march for things; they will not be told by leaders of the Māori Party to march against things. They will be told that they are as good as every other baby, and that they have the same opportunities as every other baby in this country to be wonderful and positive Kiwi citizens moving forward, albeit Māori and with a love of their heritage and their culture. They are still Kiwi babies, but they are Māori in terms of their culture, their reo, and their tikanga.

That is the sort of estimates and Budget that are being brought down, and that this Minister of Māori Affairs will champion on behalf of our people. A huge amount of money has gone into the retention of our reo and our tikanga. It is now time to feel and understand the fruits of that victory, rather than always be grasping for something else in that regard. Let us start standing up now, and let us deliver. These estimates commend to the leadership in our communities that they start to stand up and take some ownership of our problems, to acknowledge that they have responsibilities, duties, and obligations, and to stop putting them off on other communities or on others. That is why, when the scrutiny comes on a number of the leaders in our communities, they run to the Māori Party, because they understand control and victimhood but they do not understand solutions, at this particular point in time.

I commend the estimates, and I also commend my colleagues in the Māori caucus who have held the faith and held true to the Labour Party, which has a history of always delivering to all communities, but, particularly, of lifting Māori performance.

I heard the prattle from the deputy leader of the National Party. It suggested—like his leader, Don Brash, who mirrors Don Quixote in the sense of tilting at windmills—a whole lot of hot air in relation to what we have not done for Māoridom. I say to Mr Brownlee that he is mirroring the practices of Dick Whittington in looking back too much. We are not into the deficit model and we are not into Māori remaining in dependency. We are certainly surging forward, and the last 5 years have shown as much.

I pick up in relation to Te Māngai Pāho, as he suggested, that there were 40 recommendations and 60 percent of that has been done. Māori Television did get started, whereas that party failed even to consider it. These estimates provide for substantial investment in realising a positive future for Māori through whānau development, enterprise development, partnerships, education, employment, and housing. Key areas of investment include new initiatives, strengthening whānau, investing in sport and cultural activities—where our people are at—and promoting whānau and enterprise activities. We are clear about the differentiation between mana and moni. Mana, our tikanga, our culture, our inheritance, tuku-ed to us—passed on to us—by our ancestors as the first indigenous people of this nation. We do want to make money. We do want to get into commerciality. There are just some people who want to keep us behind false mirrors and in a make-believe world in which we have to be dependent on the Crown and those things that take us backwards.

We are strengthening Māori language. This is the week of Māori language. I tell that lot to try harder. It is encouraging when one goes overseas to understand that most people recognise indigenous languages—that they do have two or three languages under their belt. What is wrong? Why do that lot fear it? That is the problem. All that we do is do the haka and get macho, encouraged by the dastardly game of rugby.

We have really tried hard to ensure that the expansion of the Māori Business Facilitation Service goes forward. The Labour Government continues actively to demonstrate its commitment to accelerating the advancement of Māori. Our focus is on Māori succeeding as Māori wherever, and in whatever field, they choose. We have provided a real platform for Māori to reach their potential, not stymie it. The appropriations contained in the estimates for Vote Māori Affairs demonstrate the commitment of this Government to Māori development by providing the resources necessary for Māori to reach their aspirations. This Budget is designed to provide a pathway for Māori, to elevate their profile from dependency to vision, and from grievance mode to economic and social opportunity.

Without a doubt this Government has a lot to be proud of in relation to its achievements with Māori. Māori unemployment is almost at its lowest for 20 years. That is progress! There are 40,000 more Māori in work, and in the last 10 years there have been more Māori in trade and industry than there ever has been. Māori participation in tertiary education has almost doubled. The Leader of the Opposition prattled on, suggesting that Māori qualifications are less significant than their Pākehā counterparts. What a lot of rot! That was what the Ōrewa speech was about—scratching that itch, which some of those members are well practised at doing. That was what that speech was about. Do not make believe that it was about something else!

Māori Television and Iwi radio stations are a great asset. Māori are now managing an increased proportion of the commercial assets in the fishing and forestry sectors. Thanks to this Government, Māori are now living longer and enjoying life more fully. All that the deputy leader wanted to talk about was eating—opening his mouth and going to barbecues. He should lose some weight! This Government is demonstrating a real commitment to supporting Māori in their aspirations to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. We will be the people of the future. We will become healthier, wealthier, and wiser. We aim to strengthen Māori whānau, and to ensure that all Māori have a secure sense of culture and an opportunity to participate in this great nation. We are not a divisive or a separatist Government. We believe in recognising the rights of the tangata whenua in this country.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Emergency Management