ACT Education and Maori Affairs Spokesman MP Donna Awatere Huata today said the Budget contained a shameful message for Maori.

"There is no good news for Maori in this Budget. We have more Maori MPs than ever before, yet any hopes we had are dashed.

"This is a budget for bludgers and not for battlers, and that is a shameful message to give Maori youth.

"Maori education gets absolutely nothing, while pre-school education gets only a pittance.

"By aiming money at the tertiary sector at the expense of our youngest children, Labour's message is that kids do not count until they have grown up and can vote.

"Mr Cullen told reporters today that he hopes that his Budget is quickly forgotten. But I can promise him that New Zealanders will long remember," Donna Awatere Huata said today.

Ends

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>