Q+A: Metiria Turei interviewed by Jessica Mutch
Q+A: Metiria Turei interviewed by Jessica Mutch
Greens co-leader breaks down over self-confessed benefit fraud
An emotional
Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei has broken down on TVNZ
1’s Q+A programme recalling the time she illegally claimed
benefits as a solo mum in the early 1990s.
Speaking to
Jessica Mutch, Ms Turei said she was facing significant
hardship when she claimed extra welfare money.
“I had a
tiny little baby. My job was to take care of her 100 per
cent. She had nobody else. She had me to rely on, and that
was my job. And I had to be the best mum I could for this
little baby,” she said.
“I also knew that the only
way out of welfare was to get an education. I have no school
degrees. So I had to get a degree, and I had to get a good
one so that I knew we would be independent and okay for the
rest of our lives. I had to do it as quickly as I could, so
I went to law school. And it was incredibly hard work, but
my two priorities were taking care of her and getting my
degree as quickly as possible.”
The government has
confirmed a WINZ investigation into the matter is under
way.
Ms Turei says she is unsure how much money is at the
centre of the investigation but she believed it would be
between 20 and 50 dollars a week, possibly over a three year
period but she had lived in five different flats during that
period.
“They were the choices I had. I took care of my
baby, I got my degree, we got out of welfare. I think I made
the right decision at the time.”
She said she is
willing to co-operate with authorities and will pay all
money owed back.
She decided to tell her story after
hearing a story of a solo mother committing suicide after
being incorrectly accused by WINZ of fraud.
END
Q +
A
Episode
20
METIRIA
TUREI
Interviewed by Jessica
Mutch
JESSICA Over the next two
months, you’re going to be auditioning to be part of an
alternative government. After this admission, do you think
you could still take on the role as social development
minister?
METIRIA Absolutely,
and I think what we want in government is people who
understand what real life is like. And I’ve told my story
this week, and the response– you know there’s been lots
of criticism, but there has been overwhelming support for
having spoken out about what it’s really like to live on a
benefit. Beneficiaries are fighting back. They’re telling
their own stories. They’re supporting each other.
They’re saying, ‘We can have a more compassionate system
that takes better care of us and our kids,’ and that’s
what we want. That’s what I want to
create.
JESSICA As
minister, though, would you prosecute people who committed
fraud?
METIRIA I
would change the system so that it is much less likely and
certainly never necessary for anyone to tell lies to WINZ or
to commit fraud. We do that first, and we change the
culture. We make sure people are getting liveable incomes so
they don’t have to do work under the table or any of those
things. And then, if there’s major issues, we can deal
with that. But we have to fix the system that has been so
badly
damaged.
JESSICA What
message does it send, though, if you as minister didn’t
listen to the
rules?
METIRIA People
will criticise me, and some people won’t think that I’m
suitable for the role. I understand that. But the most
important thing is that nobody is in a situation where they
have to make these kinds of choices that I have to make. And
I have heard, this whole week, people telling stories in
public and to me personally about it. You’ve just had a
conversation about suicide. The reason that led me to tell
my story was because a solo mother committed suicide after
getting a letter from WINZ saying that she was guilty of
fraud. And that was proven to be wrong, but her kids are
still suffering for that. Her family is still suffering.
This is not an intellectual exercise about the budget or
about the rules. It’s about people’s lives, and we have
to do something about
it.
JESSICA But
given that, you are still trying to be a minister in the
next government. Does that affect your credibility and your
suitability for that
job?
METIRIA No, I
think what it means is that we would have a minister who
knows what it’s like, a minister who’s prepared to be
upfront about what it’s really like and who wants to fix
it. And I’m asking the country – please help me and the
poverty that drives people to this despair. Some of them are
committing crimes because they don’t have enough money.
Some people are committing suicide because they don’t have
enough to survive on. They are in despair, and we can fix
it, but we have to change the government
first.
JESSICA What
about the timing of this announcement? We’re nine weeks
out from an election. Why wait till now if it wasn’t to
clear the deck so you can be a
minister?
METIRIA It
had nothing to do with that. I was reading about the women
who had been jailed and the woman who had committed suicide.
And I thought, ‘Somebody has got to crack this open.’
No, we have not had a proper conversation about how damaged
the welfare system is and how it drives people to despair
and what that means for their families, and we have to,
because unless we do, we will not fix it. So I want to fix
it. I do not want anyone to be in that
situation.
JESSICA But
you’ve had 15 years to have this
conversation.
METIRIA Yeah,
I have. And nobody ever wants to confess their wrongdoing.
Nobody ever
does.
JESSICA So
why
now?
METIRIA Because
it creates this conversation about the broken system we
have, the damaged system we have and the drive to fix it.
People have got to understand that children’s lives are
impacted every day from a system that keeps their families
in poverty. Their parents are under terrible stress that
drives them to do terrible things, and we have to stop that.
And we can. The thing is we can stop it if we change the
government and we have people there who understand what
it’s like and who are driven to fix the
system.
JESSICA Do
you feel, though, that your story, sharing your personal
story, has overshadowed the policy that you announced on
Sunday, perhaps not giving you as much airtime on it as you
would have if you hadn’t said
that?
METIRIA No, I
think the first thing to do was to talk about the stories
and the reality of living on a benefit so people understand,
and that’s what’s happened. There has been a huge social
media response, but also, I’m getting a huge number of
emails and talking to people on the street, actually, as
I’ve been travelling around. I met a woman this week on my
way south. Her flatmate is a young mother on the benefit
with a little baby who’s studying and who did exactly what
I was doing when I was
23.
JESSICA So
what’s your advice to her,
then?
METIRIA I’m
never going to condemn her for making the choices that she
made.
JESSICA But
doesn’t that make it really hard for you to take on a
ministerial
position?
METIRIA No,
it actually means that a new minister of social development
will fix the system so she doesn’t have to do that,
because it gives her decent
income.
JESSICA What
happens in a fraud case, though? Because what happens if
there’s a fraud case and they call the social development
minister as a witness? Doesn’t this put you in a really
difficult
position?
METIRIA It
may well. It may well in the future. And there’ll be an
investigation, and I will pay the money, as I’ve said I
will do.
JESSICA So
update us on that. Where are you at with
that?
METIRIA Well,
as I understand it from Anne Tolley, her public comments,
there is an investigation under way, and they’ll get hold
of me when they need to speak with me when they’ve looked
at it.
JESSICA Have
they contacted
you?
METIRIA Not
yet, but I am expecting them to do so. But look, the thing
is—
JESSICA But I
want to just get these details first. In terms of the
amount, what are we talking about here?
METIRIA I really,
genuinely don’t have any
idea.
JESSICA You
must have done a back-of-the-envelope calculation,
though.
METIRIA It’ll
be something like between $20 and $50 a week, depending
on—
JESSICA For
three
years?
METIRIA Well,
it depends. I don’t even know the period of time, because
it was three flats over the five flats that I was living
in.
JESSICA We’re
talking about under $10,000,
though?
METIRIA Well,
I really don’t know. And I won’t know until WINZ does
the investigation and looks at the overpayment. They’ve
talked to me, and I’ve given them the information I’ve
got.
JESSICA Because
the taxpayer union have said
$57,000.
METIRIA I
know, I know. But that’s them, and they do their thing.
Whatever the amount is, of course I will pay it. And I will
talk with them and work with them on the investigation. But
my point here, the reason why I went public with this – at
enormous risk, and I understand that – is because
there’s just no reason why we should have a system that
forces that on anybody. And the fact is it still is. There
are still people who are doing what I did because they have
no choice, and I can fix that if we can change the
government.
JESSICA Looking
at you now, this has obviously had a big impact on you. Has
it been something that has been weighing on your mind over
the last 15 years? Have you thought about it? You’ve
delivered nine other leader’s speeches. Did you think
about it during that
time?
METIRIA No. I
mean, I’ve talked quite a lot about my life on the
benefit, and when I have, I think about what it was like
then.
JESSICA So
what was it like then? Tell us about what kind of decisions
you were having to
make.
METIRIA Well,
it was just… You know, I had a tiny little baby. My job
was to take care of her 100%. She had nobody else. She had
me to rely on, and that was my job. And I had to be the best
mum I could for this little baby. I also knew that the only
way out of welfare was to get an education. I have no school
degrees. So I had to get a degree, and I had to get a good
one so that I knew we would be independent and okay for the
rest of our lives. I had to do it as quickly as I could, so
I went to law school. And it was incredibly hard work, but
my two priorities were taking care of her and getting my
degree as quickly as
possible.
JESSICA How
poor were
you?
METIRIA As
poor as anybody is when you’re in that
situation.
JESSICA What
kind of choices were you having to make? Was it nappies or
food on the table you’re talking
about?
METIRIA It’s
all of those things you are talking about. Child care, the
cost of study, the cost of getting to study and getting baby
to child care, the rent, the power, the phone, food,
doctor’s visits, clothing. I mean, you know, it’s just
life, life costs. And people are making very difficult
decisions when they have an income that keeps them below the
poverty line. Remember, this was just after the 1991 cuts.
Benefits were cut. They were taken to the point where they
were the lowest possible to survive on, and then they were
cut 25%. So there was a whole generation of women just like
me who had babies then and were reliant on the benefit who
were just living in the most terrible poverty and making
really hard decisions. They are telling me their stories.
Their kids – I’m meeting their kids as I travel around,
and they are saying, ‘My mum was on a benefit. I’m 25
now. I’ve got this job and I’m doing this stuff, but
thank you for speaking out on behalf of my mum because she
was in the same
situation.’
JESSICA Critics
are saying that you shared this information because it gives
you currency when you’re
campaigning.
METIRIA I
know, I
know.
JESSICA What
do you say to that, then, if that’s not the
case?
METIRIA My
job is to serve the people who need a representative that
understands their life. That’s what I do for a living. The
people who need me most, to serve their interests most, are
those who are the most poor. They’re the 20,000
Aucklanders who are homeless. They’re the people who are
smoking synthetic drugs and dying on the street because they
have no other options. They’re the solo mums who are
having to do under-the-table jobs to keep their heads above
water. I have a duty to them to do everything I can to
change the system. This is my best chance in 15 years to fix
it, so I have to put everything into
it.
JESSICA It is
your best chance, as you say, and you also talked about it
being a huge political
risk.
METIRIA Yes.
JESSICA How
much did you weigh this up, and a week on, where do you
think you stand now with
it?
METIRIA I knew
the risk I was taking with the investigation. I knew that
there would be severe criticism. I had no idea there would
be the level of support. Like, that has been completely
overwhelming. In terms of would I do it again? Yes. Yes, I
would say this again, and I would create this conversation,
and I would take this again because for the first time in
two decades, we are having a deep conversation in this
country about
poverty-
JESSICA With
Paula Bennett as well. What did you make of her comments on
this?
METIRIA Well,
she is taking her political position. I
mean-
JESSICA Were
you surprised at the way she probably took a slightly more
softer approach than perhaps on another
topic?
METIRIA She
knows what it’s like to live on a benefit. She has her own
story and her own life. I mean, I’m not going to judge her
for that. I judge her for what she did as minister, because
what she did when she was minister is she made it worse.
Much, much
worse.
JESSICA Do
you regret doing what you did? Do you feel embarrassed
about it?
METIRIA I
know that the right political response is to say yes, but it
would be wrong for me to do so. I’m not going to condemn
anyone who is making the same decisions now that I had to
make then, and so, no, I
don’t.
JESSICA You
would do it
again?
METIRIA They
were the choices I had. I took care of my baby, I got my
degree, we got out of welfare. I think I made the right
decision at the
time.
JESSICA Has
your political gamble paid off, do you
think?
METIRIA I
don’t know. There are still many more consequences to
come, I’m sure. And there is still a long conversation to
be had with the country about what this means for me
personally, but, most importantly, how we fix a broken
welfare system that has been so badly damaged, that we have
this severe poverty, that we have suicide as a result of it.
I mean, this is a suicide case that led to this. We have
homelessness at record-high levels. This is the result of a
safety net that has been torn to shreds that we have to
fix.
JESSICA If
this admission takes a ministerial portfolio off the table
for you, will it still have been worth
it?
METIRIA Yes. If
I can make the change to the system, if we can get into
government and fix it, yeah, it’s a sacrifice. That’s a
fair
sacrifice.
JESSICA We’ll
have to leave it there. Thank you very much for your time
this morning. Really appreciate
it.
METIRIA
Thank
you.
Please find attached the full transcript of the
interview and here’s the Link:
Q+A, 9-10am
Sundays on TVNZ 1 and one hour later on TVNZ 1 +
1.
Repeated Sunday evening at around 11:35pm. Streamed
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