Speech: 2008/09 Estimates - Tariana Turia
I’m going to focus on areas where the Maori Party believes the Government hasn’t done so well. That’s not to say that they haven’t done well in other areas.
But I acknowledge that the Government has resources to get out there and promote areas where they have done well so I’m going to focus on the things they need to improve.
We’re in a recession. That’s what Treasury tells us.
July wasn’t only bleak in terms of the weather that fell on the nation. The monthly overview of July economic indicators were also dreary.
Two quarters of GDP contraction are considered a technical recession.
But there are other signs which shaped the June quarter: business activity declined; consumer confidence deteriorated; retail sales were soft; the housing market remains weak, exports fell and the only thing that rose was consumer price inflation.
The drooping economy is not, however, just evident, in Treasury stats. Indeed the Appropriation (2008/09 Estimates) Bill was crammed full of doom and gloom.
It’s not just economic indicators that are declining.
According to the Local Government and Environment Committee’s report on Vote Climate Change in the last eight years the proportion of electricity generated from renewable sources actually declined from 72% in 1999 to 66% in 2007.
So not much of a transformation.
And yet while Government has invested $10.4 million in the public sector in their efforts to inspire leadership on climate change, the emissions of the Ministry of Environment have actually risen by 22 percent in the past year.
Other areas of the 2008/09 estimates are equally dismal.
Vote Education sang the praises of Schools Plus – the new flagship policy that will kick in, in 2011. But for those of us who are worrying about the ongoing issues of systemic failure, today, three years away is a long time.
Because for Maori students, even the Ministry of Education’s own research tells us that the educational system of 2008 is more aligned with Schools Minus.
Schools Minus can be seen in the Te Kotahitanga project, in terms of the experiences of year nine and ten Maori students in mainstream classrooms, which identified that
Deficit theorising by teachers is the major impediment to Mori students' educational achievement for it results in teachers having low expectations of Mori students.
This in turn creates a downward spiralling, self-fulfilling prophecy of Mori student achievement and failure.
The Maori Party has brought to the House, week after week, the evidence around Schools Minus as it impacts on Maori – the high rates of exclusions, early leaving exemptions and the national tragedy that only one in every two Maori boys leaves school with an NCEA qualification.
But there are other aspects of School Minus over and above the achievement and participation crisis.
Last week, a worried father approached me; telling us of the shameful life his boy was enduring, as a result of bullying.
According to the Youth 2000 survey of 10,000 secondary school students, one in three students are bullied at least once during the school year. Three percent of all students stay away from school, at least once in a month, because they were afraid of being bullied.
The father I spoke to was insistent that he not be named; his son having implored him not to make it worse for him.
And we must ask ourselves the hard questions. Why are our Maori students leaving in such high numbers? Why is school such a hard place to be? What can we do about it?
We need to bring back meaning to what is fast becoming a myth and that was that– ‘school days are the best days of your life’.
The Maori Party believes that our young people are the fresh hope of our future. We must invest in them, we must protect them from harm, and together we must work with them to plan a strong future.
The Estimates describe Schools Plus as a transformation of secondary schooling – and that’s all good. But no matter how flash the systems are to monitor truancy, it is more than a matter of keeping children in school.
It is about having a vision and a belief NOW that inspires every student to aim for success.
During this debate, we in the Maori Party have consistently raised the issues around poverty.
We have brought attention to the issues around price hikes in fuel, food and power while at the same time exposing the huge holes appearing in our safety net.
But there is a particular edge to our understanding of child poverty which must take us past what former Commissioner for Children, Dr Ian Hassall, calls the “sterile self-centredness and acquisitiveness” of a society that disregards the interests of children.
Every day we are reminded of the links between poverty, poor nutrition, over-crowded and damp housing and preventable infectious diseases. These are the families whose lives are always worst in a recession.
We now have one of the highest rates of children admitted to hospital in the developed world.
And yet, according to the Minister of Health, health expenditure has doubled in the past nine years, and New Zealand is beginning to see results from this investment. If that is the case let us see who the beneficiaries of this expenditure really are.
Are the beneficiaries of the increased expenditure the disproportionately high numbers of Maori and Pasifika children struck down by respiratory diseases and pneumonia?
Are the beneficiaries of the increased expenditure those patients who are being charged up to $250 to see a Doctor after hours? A recent survey revealed that more than forty clinics were charging high fees of more than $45 for children aged 6 to 17.
Health and well-being have been significantly eroded by a Government content to discriminate against children on the basis of their parents being in paid work.
And so, as our communities know only too well, 175,000 of the poorest children in our land have been left behind – and the most affected of this group being Maori and children of the Pacific. How can it be said that they are the beneficiaries of increased expenditure?
Are the beneficiaries of the increased expenditure the numbers of sleepers on the streets; those people having difficulty finding appropriate and affordable accommodation?
We heard this morning that the number of homeless sleeping within the radius of 3km of the Auckland Sky Tower has jumped from 65 last year to 91 this year – and over half of these people, unfortunate, are Maori.
No matter how generous the cash surplus, how affluent the wealth; no one can describe New Zealand as a prosperous nation when still so many suffer severe and significant hardship.
Madam Speaker, there are some immediate and tangible steps that the Maori Party would like to see brought to the nation. We are seeking to:
o extend the formula applied in the in-work tax credit to ensure all families with children can benefit from support;
o provide a universal child benefit;
o set a deadline to eliminate child poverty so that progress can be achieved;
o exempt those who earn $25,000 or less from income tax;
o We don’t believe that it is important that those on high incomes should have any tax exemption;
o raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour; and
o remove GST from food.
We believe that opportunities must be provided for every person in this land to achieve to the highest levels of their potential, regardless of the ability to pay.
Opportunities must be provided to ensure we give full regard and respect to the wellbeing of all people, as a priority for our social and economic planning.
We are tired of the false dichotomies which perpetuate inequality: rich versus poor; Schools Plus and Schools Minus; the well and the unwell; inwork and out of work.
The welfare of each person is bound up in the welfare of us all. This is not a choice we can opt out of.
Kia ora