10 May 2002

The Government's announcement of Maori funding today is nothing more than a smoke in mirrors exercise, National Maori Affairs Spokesperson Georgina te Heuheu said today.

"For example the announcement includes funding to primary health care that Annette King announced months ago and the housing funding package it announced yesterday. A number of programmes it refers to are the downstream effect of similar programmes from the 1990s under National.

"When this Government starts addressing some of the real issues like violence in homes to Maori women and children, the rising tide of the diabetes epidemic and rising levels of drug and alcohol abuse then we can start feeling assured about what they are doing. "The Government can talk about capacity building but this provides no answer for the real issues that need to be addressed.

"Today's announcement shows a desperate Government if it has to line up a host of previous funding announcements to get election year publicity," Mrs te Heuheu said.

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