MEDIA RELEASE

No realistic action on Maori & Pacific Island Unemployment

MANA Leader and MP for Te Tai Tokerau Hone Harawira
Wed 13 February 2013

“Not good enough,” said MANA Leader and Tai Tokerau MP, Hone Harawira, following the Minister of Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment’s inability to offer any realistic commitment to ending the appalling rate of Maori and Pacific unemployment. “That rate has been nearly three times higher than the Pakeha rate for each of the four years of his government’s time in office.”

“In my view that signals a clear and abject failure of Nationals’ employment, education, skills and training policies for Maori and Pacific people,” said Harawira. “And while Minister Joyce was able to trot out numbers in education and training programmes, he said nothing about actual job creation to change these dreadful statistics anytime soon.”

Harawira added that National’s inability to deal with unemployment is made even worse by the revelation that only half of all Maori and Pacific Island people living in New Zealand actually have jobs. “Maybe National’s promise of a ‘brighter future’ and an ‘inclusive economy’ with ‘jobs for all’ wasn’t meant to include Maori and Pacific Islanders.”

Harawira also challenged the Minister for trying to use the global financial crisis as an excuse for the problem.

“The GFS has nothing whatsoever to do with the racial mix of the unemployment stats. That is entirely down to National’s policies, and makes a mockery of their relationship with their ‘mana-enhancing’ partners in the Maori Party and their ‘silently-suffering’ Pacific Island MPs in their own caucus.

ENDS

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