Claim Lodged for Maori to Receive Half of Benefit System Resources

Lindsay Mitchell has been researching and commenting on welfare since 2001. Many of her articles have been published in mainstream media and she has appeared on radio,tv and before select committees discussing issues relating to welfare. Lindsay is also an artist who works under commission and exhibits at Wellington, New Zealand, galleries.

Lady Tureiti Moxon, on behalf of the National Maori Urban Authority (NUMA), has lodged a claim with the Waitangi Tribunal.

According to the Child Poverty Action Group, who provided evidence for the claim, Moxon maintains, “The only way we can change the whole [welfare] system is by allowing Maori to take care of themselves and by sharing resources by splitting it 50-50.”(P59)

It’s difficult to know how to respond to such an outlandish proposal. Is this the realisation of what ‘Treaty Partnership’ actually means? 

Maori presently receive rather more from the benefit system than matches their share of the population. 36 per cent of working age beneficiaries are Maori.

But some are not satisfied with that. 

From Te Ao Maori News:

The claim addresses the Crown’s failure to acknowledge the historic issues of loss of land and culture and the overarching effects of colonisation.

She [Moxon]says the benefits system and processes have been harmful to Maori over generations.

“For a lot of people going on the benefit is actually quite a traumatic experience. It’s quite traumatic. And yet they’re made to feel even worse about that, that they’re undeserving of a benefit, undeserving of being able to participate,” she said.

“It’s how we’re viewed, how Maori are viewed, that we’re just takers, we never give anything. Cripes, we gave this whole country over,” she says.

This riles me no end. Non-Maori being told what they think of Maori.

Any rational person is presented with evidence of employed Maori working all around them every day. Yes, I think there are some poorly motivated Maori just as there are some poorly motivated non-Maori. Yes, some Maori on benefits are deserving and some aren’t; and the same goes for non-Maori. It shouldn’t need to be spelled out.

But the likes of the ‘Dames’ and NUMA CEO John Tamihere (who yesterday launched this childish rant at David Seymour)  constantly seek to stir up racial division and animosity.

The original concept of the Waitangi Tribunal was worthy but it’s now being abused. And in the current climate members may just capitulate.

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