On not infrequent occasions Tariana outraged the public. The word 'holocaust', in relation to the Maori experience of colonisation, was first used by Turia in 2000 as a Labour MP. Later, in 2008, as Maori Party co-leader, she likened the banning of gang patches in Wanganui to the treatment of Jews during the second world war. Both comparisons provoked an outcry.
She was what Elizabeth Rata would describe as an ethno-nationalist and bitterly complained that Maori are the only ethnicity in New Zealand that cannot grow their share of the population through immigration (ignoring that 100,000 plus Maori choose to live elsewhere and not return.) Her strong desire to grow the Maori population was evident in a speech made to the First Maori Sexual and Reproductive Health Conference in November 2004:
"I am intolerant of the excessive focus on controlling our fertility. When I used to sit around the Cabinet table with [Labour]colleagues, one of the many hot topics I got into strife about was discussion around the 'problem' of teenage pregnancy. My objection was to the problemmatization of conception. So when Cabinet Ministers sat around tut-tutting the fact that the fertility rate for Maori females aged 13-17 years was 26.2 per 1000, more than five times that of non-Maori, (4.9% per 1000), I objected to their analysis of our fertility as a problem."
Then education Minister Trevor Mallard reacted by calling this irresponsible: "We must do all we can to educate our kids to avoid early pregnancy - whether through abstinence or contraception. We need to give them advice to minimise - not increase - teen birth rates. It is grossly irresponsible to argue otherwise."
Most Maori teenage births resulted in long-term welfare dependence, attendant poorer outcomes and heightened risks. But Turia would never acknowledge the growing body of evidence pointing to this. It is true that she and Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples would talk about welfare being bad for Maori but with an important caveat which Turia stressed to Scoop editor Gordon Campbell when campaigning in 2008: "We’re talking Maori unemployed. We’re not talking about Maori women on benefits." Sharples reiterated that saying, "... we have a culture of accepting solo parents, [and] we have to take care of them".
By implication, neither associated over-dependence on welfare with Maori children's poor health and educational outcomes or heightened risk of abuse and neglect.
She also took a position which would see her out of step with the current government: "I am totally opposed to children being raised outside whakapapa links.” For her, children should always remain with whanau. Regarding the uplift of Maori children by Oranga Tamiriki she told Ryan Bridge, then on Magic Talk radio, in 2019:
"In the last few years since 1993, we have had 83 non-Māori children killed, we have had 17 Māori children die, so the fact of it is this is an overkill when it comes to Māori families. Now if you don't want to call it racism, you can call it what you like."
Statistics from the Family Violence Death Review Committee show in the 14 years between 2002 and 2015, fifty-one child deaths were Maori. Turia seemed unable to deal with facts.
She was very firmly in the camp that continues today to blame Maori social problems on colonisation and what she frequently called ongoing "economic violence" against her people. "Cultural disconnection and dislocation" were blamed for acts of violence, even against children.
By all accounts Tariana Turia's personal attributes were manifold. But it doesn't follow that finding favour with her ideas is compulsory.
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Sources
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/make-work-for-dole-mandatory-to-break-habit-says-sharples/OC4L47G63MUFRC23AUX2JM7ZYA/?c_id=1&objectid=10421177
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/mp-likens-patch-ban-to-wwii-targeting-of-jews/ZK4QGXEAC4QGQPWZJOFMK3DK7A/
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/turias-comments-irresponsible
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/turia-whanau-best-to-deal-with-child-abuse/RQPXIHE46UFXQS6FKXOJQAIHXM/?c_id=146&objectid=158779
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Lindsay Mitchell is a welfare commentator who blogs HERE. - where this article was sourced.
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Click to view
Lindsay Mitchell is a welfare commentator who blogs HERE. - where this article was sourced.
12 comments:
If one was to follow the MSM since her passing, you would be forgiven in believing Tariana Turia was a saint and highly respected politician working for all.
Fact is, she was just another angry racist, hell bent on turning New Zealand into an apartheid ethnostate.
Thank you Lindsay. I always found Ms Turia's attitude to contraception grossly irresponsible and pig ignorant considering the overwhelming evidence available to illustrate the repeated failures of single parenthood available in our social statistics for anyone who bothers to search .
I am astonished how Lindsay assembles information. A pity the MSM cannot emulate.As I have observed elsewhere, and in view of Lindsay's observations, perhaps the MPs were fortunate in not delivering an inevitably hypercritical address..Turia's smooth English enabled statements for which hic maori woud have ben castigated. In maori eyes outrageous statements gain not diminish mana, hence the huge funeral turnout. I note that Turia and husband are responsible for 66 offspring. i wonder what net and unit govt expenditure/tax on that lot is, and how it compares with my not untypical non maori two.
Well and considerastely said Lindsay. In this world of woke, the truth is often lost.
No thanks.
Well, she might have been a 'nice person', but the veracity of what she espoused is, I believe, summed succinctly by her claims apropos the holocaust of Parihaka. Clearly, she wasn't one to let the truth get in the way of her goals - to promote Maori above everyone else and at any cost.
As for Robert's comment about the offspring, I would suggest any wonderment would last but a nano-second to determine the "take" very likely far exceeds the "give". And as for the profligacy - another indictment of her kinds purported concern for the environment. But, undoubtedly, her legacy will live on.
Just another Maori elite who did little for her mob, other than demand more benefit dependency and the right to spawn as many kids as they liked into dysfunctional families.
She oozed entitlement and was simply a more polite version of the aggressive, culturally superior bunch of yobs who make up today's Maori Party.
At the 2000 'Parliamentary Enquiry into NZ Literacy' Turia was a politician who chose or was chosen to be on the Committee to assess the submissions. ACT Donna Awatere , an educationalist was also another Maori there. Whereas Donna saw the importance of this issue with respect to all NZer's , including Maori Turia failed to turn up. This has always soured my attitude towards her. Someone else could have replaced her if she had given prior warning of her absence.
For me colonisation didn't contribute to the situation Maori find themselves in with respect to welfare dependence , criminal rate and economic hardship but rather our now insidious and ineffective Marxist education system as well as those factors Lindsay mention - solo mothers and teenage pregnancies..
Turiq has done Maori and NZ a great deal of harm . As I said very briefly in my submission on the treaty our education system before Marxist influences came in , about 1970, was the envy of the world with the highest scores in reading and NZ was considered one of the most egalitarian countries in the world. Now we have the worst statistics on these factors. Put the blame in the correct place.
Turia you were irresponsible and lacked wisdom in promoting the Marxist lobby.
While wearing her "El Che Guevara" beret.
Turia's main contribution is that she fully confirmed Clark's already held suspicion that maori act for maori and not for NZ. Sadly Clark's successors have not been so perceptive. I wonder if Clark was invited to the funeral. Any address woud have been fully as compelling as any of Turia's. I recently observed the funeral rituals with a semi employed polynesian/maori neighbour . Occupied a week and an enormous number of attendant hours.With a few of those each year eating into time and money, little wonder material equality is so elusive.
And our GDP is in the doldrums.
In the 1980's, during a holiday in the Mosel Valley, West Germany as was, we stayed in a zimmer (room) with a delightful wine growing family. One morning these good folks appeared at breakfast in very fine but sombre clothing and when we asked what that was all about it transpired that they had already been at the funeral of a relative before we had even gotten out of our bed. That struck us as very practical for a family which worked as hard as they did. They paid their respects but the deceased would have been fully supportive of not wasting time in pointless, virtue signalling rituals. know which culture I prefer when compared with the song and dance routine we see in NZ. Is it any wonder our economy is struggling to get off the floor?
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