However, we now know that that optimism was misplaced. Maorification continues and every aspect of the policy survives. Moreover, having demoted her, Hipkins reveals that he now feels he should have given more support to Mahuta as she advanced her tribal takeover schemes. On the Hui channel with that single-issue radical broadcaster, Julian Wilcox, the Prime Minister went out of his way to praise Mahuta, labelling her critics “racist”. He sat there and endured some absurd utterances from Wilcox such as the broadcaster’s assertion that Maori suffer “inequity of access to resources” in New Zealand. Hipkins didn’t bat an eyelid. Fancy, nearly six years after your government came to office, not questioning such garbage! If he’d reflected for a moment, he would realise that per head of the population, Maori access more state resources than any other ethnicity. The Health system spends disproportionately more money trying to track down Maori for child vaccinations and every other intervention that could assist them to live healthier lives. Maori have no problem with access to health services that isn’t experienced by everyone else. It’s just that too many Maori families care so little about their children that they fail to take them to services even when they are available in their neighborhoods. Same with Education. Any school will tell you that the services they provide are readily available to Maori. Access to education is racially blind. But too many Maori parents are feckless and don’t make sure their children go to school. In some areas as few as 37% of Maori children get to school. Too many of them leave home then drift off with junior gang affiliates, stealing cars and ram-raiding stores. When it comes to housing, there have also been special efforts made for Maori over many years. Today, many a successful Maori adult grew up in a Maori Affairs home or a state house. Any eligible person can access the state’s services. It just involves getting off one’s bum. However, Hipkins didn’t bat an eyelid as his foolish interviewer prattled on. Instead, the Prime Minister promised more and more unspecified assistance for Maori.
This Labour government would probably find the public more tolerant of its Maorification policies if there was evidence that ministers were facing up to the REAL problems existing within Maori society. Maori are sexually more careless than other ethnicities: 80% of Maori babies are born to unmarried mothers. An unknown number of those mothers are in cohabiting relationships but statistically, these are not as stable as marriages. Boys grow up without fathers as role models. In too many cases no one points out to them the benefits of getting an education. Having the government take a key role in family planning advice to young Maori women is therefore essential. But by itself, it won’t work. Carmel Sepuloni‘s incentives point in the opposite direction. Remember the young Maori lass who a few years ago blurted out “My sister’s had a pay rise: she’s had another baby”? The ready availability of welfare is too attractive an option for young Maori women. Until such time as the former strict limits on the number of benefits per woman are reintroduced the underclass will keep on expanding.
Today, of those on so-called Job Seeker Benefits, more than 40% are Maori, yet they are only 17% of the population. And there is precious little evidence they are “seeking jobs”. If they were, fruit lying on the ground as a result of Cyclone Gabrielle would have been collected by now. So far, the only answer that Minister Sepuloni has come up with is to pay “job seekers” more in benefits. Moreover, she removed the decades-long requirement for mothers to name the fathers of their children so they can be made to pay towards their child’s sustenance. Nothing is going to improve until all people understand that they have some responsibility for the offspring they beget.
Chinese New Zealanders, Indians, even Pacific Islanders with traditionally overlarge families, and other newer immigrants, manage to benefit from the services made available to them on the same basis as to Maori. Why? All of them value family responsibility more than Maori appear to do. As things stand now, those other ethnicities can’t understand Maori demands for special treatment. What those others also notice is that the more the government does for Maori, the more that Maori bite the hand that feeds them. The people the Police deal with every day are three times more likely to be Maori than non-Maori.
The idea that society will improve if more cash is poured over Maori obviously isn’t working, and hasn’t ever since the Domestic Purposes Benefit was introduced in 1974. Labour’s out-of-date answers to today’s problems are having the opposite effect to that intended. If Hipkins could empanel a group of experienced Maori along with a few other ethnicities to come up with proposals for streamlining access to welfare, while examining why so many current policies are failing Maori, there could be some cautious optimism. But first of all, Hipkins needs to acknowledge there is a problem that current policies are only making worse. The news that he has nothing new to offer is depressing in the extreme.
Historian Dr Michael Bassett, a Minister in the Fourth Labour Government, blogs HERE.
This Labour government would probably find the public more tolerant of its Maorification policies if there was evidence that ministers were facing up to the REAL problems existing within Maori society. Maori are sexually more careless than other ethnicities: 80% of Maori babies are born to unmarried mothers. An unknown number of those mothers are in cohabiting relationships but statistically, these are not as stable as marriages. Boys grow up without fathers as role models. In too many cases no one points out to them the benefits of getting an education. Having the government take a key role in family planning advice to young Maori women is therefore essential. But by itself, it won’t work. Carmel Sepuloni‘s incentives point in the opposite direction. Remember the young Maori lass who a few years ago blurted out “My sister’s had a pay rise: she’s had another baby”? The ready availability of welfare is too attractive an option for young Maori women. Until such time as the former strict limits on the number of benefits per woman are reintroduced the underclass will keep on expanding.
Today, of those on so-called Job Seeker Benefits, more than 40% are Maori, yet they are only 17% of the population. And there is precious little evidence they are “seeking jobs”. If they were, fruit lying on the ground as a result of Cyclone Gabrielle would have been collected by now. So far, the only answer that Minister Sepuloni has come up with is to pay “job seekers” more in benefits. Moreover, she removed the decades-long requirement for mothers to name the fathers of their children so they can be made to pay towards their child’s sustenance. Nothing is going to improve until all people understand that they have some responsibility for the offspring they beget.
Chinese New Zealanders, Indians, even Pacific Islanders with traditionally overlarge families, and other newer immigrants, manage to benefit from the services made available to them on the same basis as to Maori. Why? All of them value family responsibility more than Maori appear to do. As things stand now, those other ethnicities can’t understand Maori demands for special treatment. What those others also notice is that the more the government does for Maori, the more that Maori bite the hand that feeds them. The people the Police deal with every day are three times more likely to be Maori than non-Maori.
The idea that society will improve if more cash is poured over Maori obviously isn’t working, and hasn’t ever since the Domestic Purposes Benefit was introduced in 1974. Labour’s out-of-date answers to today’s problems are having the opposite effect to that intended. If Hipkins could empanel a group of experienced Maori along with a few other ethnicities to come up with proposals for streamlining access to welfare, while examining why so many current policies are failing Maori, there could be some cautious optimism. But first of all, Hipkins needs to acknowledge there is a problem that current policies are only making worse. The news that he has nothing new to offer is depressing in the extreme.
Historian Dr Michael Bassett, a Minister in the Fourth Labour Government, blogs HERE.
11 comments:
Spoon feeding for life hasn't worked then?
'Positive discrimination' policies engender a sense of entitlement. The target group end up with greater 'rights' and fewer responsibilities than the rest of us, and that is how they believe it ought to be - and remain. It's high time for social liberals to wake up to this readily demonstrable fact.
Brilliant, Michael.
Of course those depressing statistics, which have been that way for as long as most of us can remember and which remain intractable despite successive governments’ having bent over backwards, are all attributable to colonialism and systemic racism.
That is what our kids are being taught indirectly in the history syllabus.
That is what we must all now atone for.
Work for the dole. No work-no benefit. No father - no benefit. Cards for food but not booze or tobacco.
Only way to achieve any of the above is to change to a government that will not bend over for the never ending demands of the maori Victimisation and Colonisation Corps.
As Thomas Sowell observed, those who have been used to special privileges in our society, fell discriminated against when treated as equal.
I was very distressed to read your article on Maori statistics. It is very necessary to have them stated.
As an educator I view things from the perspective of education. The good traditional system such as we had before Fraser and Beeby made the unfortunate change to progressive education, would have produced today literate ,numerate and independent citizens with a work ethic, moral compass and some ethical thinking. I acknowledge the necessity ,in the 1940s of the reduction of elitist classical education and stopping restrictions on those receiving higher education. However students of that era were much better grounded in the basics than any child now.
A pass in proficiency, the old exam for 12 year olds, was considered of higher standard than school certificate and certainly todays NCEA particularly in English. I do acknowledge the many good things the Fraser government introduced but for me it definitely receives a fail for education reform.
Education can make a difference but progressive education has neither the pedagogy , discipline or foundational beliefs to do it. It is founded on socialism rather than academic or intellectual achievement and eschews the metaphysical, entirely. Matauranga is not the answer.
Once again, if only this and the like of were to be published in the msm newspapers. I suspect most of the public have given up on near all information sources. Walking a dog around the suburbs I am astonished at the number of free weekly papers never uplifted (The occupiers assume if they leave them they will not get more). Yet about the only source of local info, and often covering national matters such as 3/10 Waters)
A very apt summary, especially given the purported 'refresh' of 3 Waters and how that has been received by the racially identified minority that will enjoy a huge financial windfall if it all comes to pass. Hopefully, a more pressingly urgent and overdue Govt. "refresh" will address this, and other issues that seek to divide our nation, along with the economic mess we now find ourselves in.
Maori like Wilcox can make any pro maori assertion without challenge. On their home ground of marae the audience is ever accepting and supportive and ousiders get no look in. And none would be so foolhardy as to challenge. On msm, and RNZ Midday Saturday is his spot, there is a parade of fawning encouraging, led, interviews of a succession of maori, notable and not. All permeated with much to reo and hyenic maori giggling, anathema to any who have been near PD gangsor neighbourhood maori partys. In the now established RNZ tradition no counter comment is ever heard.
Thank you Michael, you have said it all!!
Just wish everyone would read it!
I reckon the best idea is for ‘ more racism ‘.
Seeing as 17% of the population is claiming 40% of the benefit why doesn’t the gummint isolate the tax paid by the 17% and allow them to pay for their own benefit privileges, health, unemployment benefits etc etc.... I am sure they have heard of ‘ obligations, responsibilities aaand consequences.
It is not a ‘ colonial ‘ problem... end of...
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