Wednesday, September 19 2001

Derek Fox's appointment to the board of the new Maori television channel shows the lengths this Government will go to, to control their opposition.

"This is a drastic move to silence Derek Fox. Labour has effectively removed the biggest challenge to their domination of the Maori vote.

"New Zealanders are sick and tired of appointments being made for cheap political reasons. We've seen it with the People's Bank, and now we're seeing it with the ill-fated Maori television channel.

"The Government is wasting millions of dollars on this channel when it was offered a much cheaper and more effective option by private broadcasters. They're going ahead with this for the worst possible reasons. The saddest thing is that the channel will do nothing to help those Maori kids behind with reading, or in trouble at school," Penny Webster said.

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