Fact Sheet 13 : Maori

This Fact Sheet was prepared for the July 2002 General Election campaign.

Progress made under the current Government

Maori workers, especially those on low-incomes, have benefited from increases to the Minimum Wage and improved rights under the Employment Relations Act. Many other areas of progress for Maori relate to better provision of health, education and housing; or policies to support the development of Maori communities.

More than 15,000 Maori households are in state housing and benefited from the restoration of income-related rents. This year's Budget allocated over $70 million for an extra 360 state houses in the next four years and over $50 million to tackle substandard housing in Northland, East Coast and the Eastern Bay of Plenty. A number of regional economic development programmes have also focused on predominantly Maori communities.

The Labour/Alliance Government has established a Maori development programme within Te Puni Kokiri. This includes a capacity building fund that has provided over $17 million to support whanau, hapu, iwi and Maori communities. It has also created a Maori business facilitation service that has helped the development of over 300 new Maori owned businesses.

The Labour/Alliance Government have held national and regional Hui Taumata Matauranga to ensure Maori play an important role in shaping the future of New Zealand's education system. Within the tertiary education sector this has seen Te Rautaki Matauranga Maori emerge as the second of 6 overall strategies. Its aim is to meet Maori communities' high expectations and aspirations especially around education, employment and fluency in te reo Maori.

The Labour/Alliance Government also consulted on and produced He Korowai Oranga, the Maori Health Strategy and ensured references to the Treaty of Waitangi were included in the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000.

What else needs to be done?

The overarching kaupapa for Maori is the ability to be Maori in all aspects of their lives. For many Maori workers there is a huge tension between balancing paid work and responsibilities to whanau, hapu, iwi and Maori communities. Maori people make a huge unpaid contribution to the social fabric of New Zealand, and this needs to be both better valued and resourced.

Revitalisation of te reo Maori must be a key part of Government policies supporting Maori development. This includes addressing the threats to intellectual property and cultural independence posed by international trade treaties, including the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).

An ongoing commitment to acknowledging and supporting Maori responses to the educational, health and social/cultural needs of their people will need to be another important feature of Government policy development and implementation. This would include a commitment to kaupapa Maori health, education and social/cultural strategies, that acknowledges the right of Maori to determine as a people, and as iwi/hapu/whanau, their priorities for ongoing development.

New Zealand has an appalling record of workplace deaths especially in industries such as forestry which employ many Maori workers. . The Labour / Alliance government has supported amending the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 to make our workplaces safer. This legislation, which was not passed before the election, would also extend greater protection to railway workers who currently don't fall under this law. Many of those railway workers are Maori.

The Government has just released a discussion document on pay equity, asking for suggestions about how to remove the gap between what women and men earn. That gap is even higher for Maori women who, on average, earn only 74 cents for every $1 earned by a New Zealand man. This is because Maori women are more likely to be unemployed, underemployed (wanting to work more hours) or work in lower-paid occupations. The pay equity strategy being developed by Government must address both the gender pay gap and the ethnicity pay gap that exist in this country.

Many Maori women and men lost jobs during the downturn in the manufacturing sector in the 1980s. Significant numbers of Maori men, in particular, were not able to take those work experiences and skills and get work in the expanding services sector. This means that ongoing training and recognition of prior learning are particularly important for Maori workers.

What could be lost under a National/ACT Government?

National and ACT have opposed the Health and Safety in Employment Amendment Bill on the basis that it will increase compliance costs for employers. ACT has repeatedly said that accidents are caused by workers' own carelessness and stupidity.

ACT want to abolish the Maori seats and any laws that require government "to discriminate against, or to favour, any New Zealander . . on the basis of race". This is likely to undermine both any growing recognition of Maori rights as tangata whenua, and the progress made under EEO legislation. National also opposes putting any legal requirements on employers to achieve EEO or pay equity.

Both parties propose cuts to taxes with ACT saying that they will reduce public provision of health and education services and increase competition from the private sector. ACT also plans to sell off state housing.

National would reintroduce a work test for those on the DPB and generally supports 'work for the dole'. ACT will make those on benefits work 40 hours a week. ACT have also signalled possible cuts to benefit levels so that "people on welfare do not end up better off than people in full-time work".