FRIDAY 11 APRIL 2008 MEDIA STATEMENT

East Coast Electoral Oblivion For Horomia

Parekura Horomia must prove he doesn't have double standards.

"The Maori Labour MPs are looking weaker and weaker," says Mr Aotearoa Digger Karauria, who helped organise the recent Treaty Tribes Coalition's Maori Fisheries Conference in at the War Memorial Centre in Napier.

"Parekura turns up to the conference, gives a very supportive speech to Maori fishermen and then leaves. Shortly afterward, Jim Anderton, the Minister in charge of Parekura, turns up and gives a completely opposite speech, telling Maori they are plundering the fisheries resource," Digger says.

"We know the Jim Anderton is just wrong and angry about it, but Parekura is really the meat in the sandwich. But it's time Parekura stood up to Jim Anderton to show he doesn't have double standards."

Digger says that with this performance by the two government bumbling Ministers, the Maori Party looks will be a shoo-in for the Ikaroa Rawhiti seat.

"This doesn't look good for Parekura. It's like his view, and that of the other Maori MPs in the Labour Party, is getting trampled on by Jim Anderton," Digger says.

At the Maori Fisheries Conference, and afterwards in the media, Jim Anderton said: "The way they [Maori] fish, from a recreational customary point of view is conservationist-minded. But when it comes to the commercial fishery, you hire chartered vessels - Maori do - and you put them into areas and you plunder the fish until there's none left, and then what's your Treaty worth then, what's the quota rights left then."

Digger said almost everyone at the conference took issue with the Minister's speech. It was an attitude that was undermining the relationship iwi has with the Ministry of Fisheries but mostly the Minister himself.

ends

© Scoop Media