Left to right: Greens leader James Shaw, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern, NZ First leader Winston Peters
Left to right: Greens leader James Shaw, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern, NZ First leader Winston Peters

ĀteaNovember 3, 2017

Government’s 100-day plan looks good for Māori

Left to right: Greens leader James Shaw, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern, NZ First leader Winston Peters
Left to right: Greens leader James Shaw, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern, NZ First leader Winston Peters

Scrapping of the “three-strikes” law will have a huge impact on Māori prisoners, and is just one new government policy which will have a positive impact on te iwi Māori, writes Mihingarangi Forbes.

This post originally appeared on RNZ.

Labour confirmed on Wednesday that the government would scrap the “three-strikes” law – which mandates increasingly harsh consequences for repeat offences – sometime next year.

New Zealand’s justice system prosecutes and convicts Māori at a higher rate than any other group.

At the other end of the jail journey, once a Māori prisoner is released, the numbers reoffending are just as disproportionate, so the move to abolish the “three strikes” will directly affect Māori and is welcomed.

With just a week under its belt, the Labour-led government has hit the ground running and the list of chores to be completed in its first 100 days will have a positive impact on te iwi Māori.

The Labour party’s Māori caucus after this year’s election. Image: RNZ / Jane Patterson

In housing, for example, since 1986 the proportion of Māori renters has grown by 88 percent while non-Māori grew by just 43 percent. Māori and Pacific people have the largest drop in house-ownership than any other group.

So the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill – which requires rental homes to be warm and dry – will affect eight out of 10 Māori who are currently living in rental homes.

It should also impact some of the 42,000 people who turn up at hospital each year suffering from respiratory conditions. With Māori and Pacific peoples making up more than half of all Housing New Zealand tenants, the promise to issue an instruction to Housing New Zealand to stop the state house sell-off will also benefit them.

Battling the Māori mental health crisis

There are two inquiries on the list, with the Ministerial Inquiry designed to fix this country’s mental health crisis looking at the over-representation of Māori within the mental health system. Māori youth are three times more likely to commit suicide than Pākehā kids, and while the government has been able to reduce suicide overall, it hasn’t for Māori in any age group.

Provisional numbers from the Coroners Office’s show 51 young people committed suicide in 2016 – 34 of them Māori.

The other inquiry to affect Māori will be the inquiry into the abuse of children in state care where 100,000 New Zealand children were institutionalised between the 1960s and 1980s. The large majority of those children were Māori and many experienced violent and sexual abuse at the hands of state caregivers.

Oranga Tamariki – the Ministry for Children – has the highest number of Māori children in its care today, with six out of 10 Māori, and the former government’s expert panel removed the “whānau clause”, which saw Māori children placed with Māori families where possible and where safe.

Banning overseas speculators from buying existing houses will also be welcomed by Māori trying to get their feet on the housing ladder. When it comes to home ownership, the age-adjusted rate for Māori owning their own homes is 35 percent compared, with 50 percent of the total adult population.

The increase to the student allowance, the KiwiBuild programme and the increase of the minimum wage are all areas where Māori will be better off.

The Clean Waters Summit on cleaning up our rivers and lakes will be welcomed by Māori living in rural areas and near marae. The opportunity to collect mahinga kai or traditional food has declined as intensive farming has compromised food sources such as tuna, watercress and freshwater crayfish in rivers and streams.

But the legislation to introduce a child poverty reduction target will specifically target the most vulnerable Māori, where twice as many are likely to experience income poverty than Pākehā.

Keep going!
Justin trudeau jacinda ardern

ĀteaNovember 2, 2017

Trudeau’s lesson for Ardern: Inspiring words are not enough

Justin trudeau jacinda ardern

Hope and rhetoric are a great tonic but it’s time to act, writes columnist Graham Cameron.

At the United Nations in late September, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave an impassioned speech about the historical abuses of Canada’s First Nations, stating that “for Indigenous peoples in Canada, the experience was mostly one of humiliation, neglect and abuse.”

When asked about why he choose to focus on domestic issues rather than the pressing international humanitarian and political crises of the day, Trudeau’s response was that Canada is willing to deal with the complexities at home as well as abroad.

Unfortunately, there is little evidence that his inspiring rhetoric is leading to real change for First Nations. Indigenous children in Canada who live on reservations receive less funding than those who are off reservation but despite a legal order, the Canadian government has not righted the discrimination. In another instance, the government opposed compensation for the 16,000 people caught up in the Sixties Scoop (their version of Australia’s Stolen Generation).

Even when they have taken action, it has disappointed many. For example, most of the CAN$634 million promised for child welfare in the government’s 2016 budget won’t flow until 2020. All the while, First Nations who managed to retain their own lands are forced into unenviable positions. Their land is sought after by mineral, forestry, hydro and oil companies; the years of negotiations with the government have forced those tribes into debt. But as a pre-condition for compensation, tribes are forced to extinguish their rights to nine out of every 10 parcels of their land.

The major gap between rhetoric and action is the grim reality that the Canadian government needs First Nations land to access primary resources to keep the economic engine ticking over. Tribes’ rights restrict the building of planned pipelines, dams and fracked gas terminals that are worth approximately CAN$650 billion to the government over the next decade.

From afar, Trudeau strikes me as a good person with excellent relationship and communication skills and a strong personal sense of justice. His cabinet seems diverse, talented and committed. Their inability to translate all those personal skills that into government action is a salient lesson for tāngata whenua in Aotearoa New Zealand.

I am thrilled to see a cabinet with 13 ministers who have Māori and Pacific Island heritage. I was proud to show my tamariki the eight ministers who were sworn in at Government House in te reo Māori. As my wife commented, “It feels like something is different now.”

I love communication. I love the effect it has on people. Good communication is often intended to move people, to effect their emotions and to inspire new ideas. However, good communication is not the same as good action. The challenge before our new prime minister and her fresh Cabinet is to bridge the gap.

There’s plenty for tāngata whenua to anticipate in this coalition government:

  • The $1 billion regional development fund. Iwi are large and innovative business players in many regions, so will be expecting to partner and lead initiatives from this fund;
  • A re-established Forestry Service with enormous forest planting schemes. Iwi are big players in this space and many Māori work in the industry;
  • the potential for Andrew Little supported by Nanaia Mahuta and Kelvin Davis to be a circuit breaker that allows Ngāpuhi to achieve an enduring settlement;
  • a stepped increase in the minimum wage to $20 by 2021;
  • an increase in the number of te reo Māori teachers as a step to te reo Māori becoming a core subject;
  • an increase in health funding, particularly mental health and youth access, both areas of poor outcomes for Māori; and
  • Kiwibuild and a Housing Commission to address the chronic homelessness and house prices.

In addition, it is the largest Māori caucus that we have ever had in a government. We’ve even got the first Māori woman Minister of Māori Development.

But after one week, of course the desperate needs are still here for tāngata whenua. I’ve a cousin lying on our marae. He smoked his whole life, got a cancer diagnosis, didn’t get a specialist appointment early enough and so any intervention was marginal. He chose to just manage his pain. I know taiohi in our community doing a roaring trade in marijuana. I know a Māori couple trying to figure out how to give away one of their two casual contract, minimum wage jobs to stay home to care for their child. I know a wahine with six children who just got told her landlord wants her out in a month because he wants to move into the house.

Hope and rhetoric are just the tonic we needed after nine dark years of prioritising the economy over people. But hope and rhetoric are not going to transform the lives at my marae or in my community. For that, the rhetoric needs to give way to integrity and tangible action.

Ātea