This speech, from Pita Sharples, is a real disappointment. It's back to the old "blame somebody else" business.
"The poor are not the creators of poverty, the poor do not have an investment in being poor. If the poor did not create poverty we all need to ask each other, than who did?"
People who literally create poverty are those who keep having children while on a benefit, some 5,000 a year. People who smoke, drink or gamble away their benefit money create poverty. People who won't take a low-paid job to get on the ladder create poverty. Politicians who tell them not to take "dead-end" jobs create poverty. Politicians who tell people they are not the master of their own destiny create poverty, Pita.
"What sort of Government puts in policies which act against the 250,000 poorest children in Aotearoa? We know that more than one in five children live in low-income families - which is nearly twice the level of the late 1980s. What do we currently have - a ‘Working for Families’ policy which discriminates against beneficiary parents....That is why the Maori Party supports the Child Poverty Action Group for their landmark case to bring legal action against the Government over its discriminatory policies."
Why did I know these guys were going to go down this path? Exactly like the Greens and Sue Bradford. While the government is at least attempting to make working pay more than being on a benefit, these guys want to subvert that.
Remind me what Pita Sharples was saying just the other day? Something about vowing to wage war against welfare dependency;
Dr Sharples said there was too much dependency on welfare in Maoridom - something Labour had not addressed.
"It's like a kid - if you keep giving your kids everything, at the end of the day they don't have the skills and knowledge to do it themselves."
This man has a different tune for each audience.
Late last year he told parliament,"I need to remind this House that Maori have always questioned the handout mentality.
I recollect a song of protest by one of my Ngati Porou whanaunga, Tuini Ngawai, who in the 1950s, wrote a song of protest at the introduction of a universal benefit.
She said at the time, 'he patu tikanga, he patu mahara, he patu mauri'; that the benefit would undermine our customs of self-help, our concern for each other, and the very essence of our lifeforce. When I look around to some of our people, I can see the wisdom of the words of Tuini Ngawai. She warned against dependency, and she would turn in her grave if she knew that what she warned against, has now happened."
Sharples, sharpen up. One day you tell Maori they are "benefit-mad" and the next you demand more money for them. Decide what it is you really believe because at the moment you aren't helping anybody.
2 comments:
I hate to say I told you so, but...
But there no contradiction between his statements. As I said the other day, IMHO Sharples doesn't want to end welfare dependency for individual Maori so much as change who distributes it, and change hwo it's viewed.
In his view, as long as Maori are distributing 'resources' on a tribal basis then this is not dependency, it is self-determination. Rangatiratanga at taxpayers' expense.
It's illogical, and it's tribal, but it explains the apparently contradictory statements.
What does he mean by "creatve poverty?" Poverty is not created. Wealth is created. Poverty is simply what exists when you do nothing. He makes it sound like there were all these wealthy people and that someone robbed them. Poverty is the default status of man.
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