Lindsay Mitchell
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.
Dame Tariana Turia has been well-remembered by many over the past few days. She was warm, had a great sense of humour, and was, above all, highly principled. People I trust have said so and I believe them. Having never met her, however, I knew her only by the thoughts she publicly expressed.
On not infrequent occasions Tariana outraged the public. The word holocaust, in relation to the Māori experience of colonisation, was first used by Turia in 2000 as a Labour MP. Later, in 2008, as Māori 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 Māori are the only ethnicity in New Zealand that cannot grow their share of the population through immigration (ignoring that 100,000 plus Māori choose to live elsewhere and not return.) Her strong desire to grow the Māori population was evident in a speech made to the First Māori 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 problematization of conception. So when Cabinet Ministers sat around tut-tutting the fact that the fertility rate for Māori females aged 13–17 years was 26.2 per 1000, more than five times that of non-Māori, (4.9 per cent 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 Māori 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 Māori Party co-leader Pita Sharples would talk about welfare being bad for Māori but with an important caveat which Turia stressed to Scoop editor Gordon Campbell when campaigning in 2008: “We’re talking Māori unemployed. We’re not talking about Māori 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 Māori 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 whānau. Regarding the uplift of Māori 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, 51 child deaths were Māori. Turia seemed unable to deal with facts.
She was very firmly in the camp that continues today to blame Māori 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.
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/turias-comments-irresponsible
This article was originally published on the author’s blog.
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