It is interesting to learn that Peeni Henare would very much like to be the next Minister of Health. He evidently wants the job so badly that he is openly campaigning for it. He is of the opinion that if he’s given the job he will turn the health system on its head to the advantage of his whanau. That presumably will solve all their ills. He says during his fifteen months as an associate health minister he “truly appreciated the challenge for our whanau and also the opportunities to fix them”.
Here we have another deluded Maori MP who is quick to blame the system. It’s never the fault of the whanau, it’s always the fault of someone or something else. Henare says we can turn many statistics around with positive change, system reform and investment. How many so called positive changes, system reform and investment have we had over the years and yet we are continually told Maori are no better off. Why not? That is the question he should be asking himself.
He talks about others who share their knowledge and wisdom to turn around the lives of so many of our whanau. If all these wonderful people in Maoridom are turning so many lives around why do we need to upend the health system? Turning their lives around rather gets to the nub of the problem. That means how they live their lives, being able to live in a warm dry house, being able to put food on the table, being able to clothe their children properly. In short, all the policies that Labour was going to implement to fix these problems in their first term and failed miserably. As we all know, the reality is all the statistics in these areas have got markedly worse.
Labour Maori Ministers don’t exactly set the house, including the House of Representatives, on fire. Those in the last government, Nanaia Mahuta and Kelvin Davis, would be two of their worst performing ministers and that’s saying something. We mustn’t forget the equally useless Willie Jackson. As for Mr Henare, as Associate Health Minister, he was about as invisible during Covid as his boss, the exercising Reverend. He was nowhere to be seen and one could be forgiven for not knowing he was the Associate Minister.
You have to wonder about the Maori voter. Three years of a Government that failed them dismally and yet it got overwhelming support with more than sixty per cent voting for the party. Three years of a government that has them in a worse position than before. John Tamihere, presumably sharing his knowledge and wisdom, said the Maori Party would never go with National. I venture to suggest that if he did a little research he would find Maori over the years have had a far better deal from National than Labour. One statistic that stands out is the number of Treaty settlements National has concluded.
There are now fifteen Labour MPs. If they were all Ministers Maori would be no better off. Labour have used Maori time and time again as voter fodder. They are there simply to be used and abused. The last Maori caucus presided over a litany of failures for Maori. Maori stick to Labour like glue and in return wonder why they’re left glued to the same spot. If Labour were really sincere about helping Maori they’d face up to the real causes of their whanau’s ills and address the obvious problems. Many are within their homes. Many are due to the ineptness of the party they continue to vote for. Tamihere and co need to wake up to the fact that this is their first problem to fix.
Vote for someone who’s not going to take you for granted.
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