Q+A: Willie Jackson and Kelvin Davis
Q+A: Willie Jackson and Kelvin Davis interviewed by Corin
Dann
Labour
launch $20m Māori housing policy
Te Tai Tokerau MP Kelvin Davis said it is “not good enough” that 14,000 Māori are homeless and 2500 Māori are on state-housing waiting lists.
Speaking on TVNZ 1’s Q+A programme Mr Davis told Corin Dann “we as Māori politicians just feel the weight and the burden of having to change this.”
“I don’t know if you noticed how cold it was last night, Corin. At 11 o'clock last night it was about 6 degrees. At 8 o'clock this morning it was 3 degrees. Now, you know, aren't we lucky and grateful that we are not sleeping in shop doorways and in garages and in cars with our kids?” he said.
“It is all part of our Kiwibuild policy. But we are having a specific Māori part to it. So like I say, we expect 17,000 Māori, based on our modelling, to take it up, plus the 2500 who are on the waiting list and 20,000 to 30,000. We are going to put $20 million into a fund to work with iwi and Māori housing providers.”
When asked about cutting a deal with the Greens Labour list candidate Willie Jackson said he’d like put the issue back on the table because “we might need a deal in a couple of seats, because the vote could split. Now, we don't want to put a National government back in, do we?”
However, Mr Davis had this to say “none of the Greens are going to win the Māori seats. So don't bother voting for the Greens.”
END
Q +
A
Episode
1721
WILLIE JACKSON,
KELVIN DAVIS
Interviewed by Corin
Dann
CORIN Welcome back to Q+A, and I’ve got Labour list candidate Willie Jackson and Te Tai Tokerau MP Kelvin Davis with me. Big campaign launch with Labour today. Kia ora to you both.
WILLIE Kia ora.
KELVIN Kia ora.
CORIN Willie Jackson, you are the
man in charge of the strategy here. What is the strategy in
the Maori seats? Are you going to sweep them all, are
you?
WILLIE We
are going to go close. We are going to go close. We are
pretty confident we are going to get six back. And we know
our young Tamati Coffey down there in the Waiariki is
running a heck of a
campaign.
CORIN Yeah,
but Howie Tamati is ahead down in Te Tai
Hauauru.
WILLIE Yeah,
absolutely. No, don’t get me wrong - there is about three
or four that are going to be quite tight. I mean, Kelvin has
got a bit of a job there in the north. Auckland is going to
be tight. Te Tai Hauauru is going to be tight. Because, you
know, you have got Mana and the Maori Party, who have done a
deal. So no, we are not taking anything for granted, of
course. Of course. But everything tells us that the people
are supporting our Maori MPs. They are sick and tired of
this National Government. In fact, they are really tainted
in the Maori seats. We have got to see that cross over in
the General
seats.
CORIN It’s
interesting, isn’t it? It’s
interesting, Kelvin, because Labour has
done well in the Maori seats in recent years, but the party
is not doing well. Why is there a difference? Well, why is
Labour struggling, yet the Labour candidates are doing well
in Maori
seats.
KELVIN Well,
we’re doing well because people like us and believe in us,
and they like what we stand for, the party itself. Yeah, we
have got work to do, there’s no doubt about it, to lift
things
up.
CORIN What
are you guys doing that is resonating and for some reason,
the rest of the party is
not?
KELVIN I
think people can see that we are out
there, working really hard on the ground.
And look, our Maori housing policy launch today out in
Mangere, it was a good example of the thinking that we are
doing. You know, I don’t know if you noticed how cold it
was last night, Corin. At 11 o'clock last night it was about
6°. At 8 o'clock this morning it was 3°. Now, you know,
aren't we lucky and grateful that we are not sleeping in
shop doorways and in garages and in cars with our kids? You
know, there are 14,000 homeless Maori. There is 2500 Maori
on state-house waiting lists. We as Maori politicians just
feel the weight and the burden of having to change this.
Because it is not good enough. So that is why we are
launching a policy
today.
CORIN You
can't change it, though, if you are not in government,
though, can
you?
WILLIE Well,
that’s why there’s an election in eight weeks, right,
Corin?
KELVIN But,
you know, people want to know what we're doing. And, you
know, we have developed a policy that we believe will house
between 20,000 and 30,000 Maori. We have modelled this on
census data from 2013 and Maori incomes. We believe that
there will be 17,000 Maori that will be able to take up the
scheme.
CORIN So
a targeted housing policy.
KELVIN Correct.
CORIN What is that going to
cost?
KELVIN It
is all part of our Kiwibuild policy. But we are having a
specific Maori part to it. So like I say, we expect 17,000
Maori, based on our modelling, to take it up, plus the 2500
who are on the waiting list and 20,000 to 30,000. We are
going to put $20 million into a fund to work with iwi and
Maori housing providers. The biggest blockage is finance for
our people. So we want iwi, Maori housing providers to work
to get mortgages and banks to work with them to get
mortgages. We will guarantee the mortgage insurance through
the Welcome Home loans that are already available
now.
CORIN This is right across the country, is it?
KELVIN Right across the
country. Look, Ngati Hine is a tribe in the mid north. Six
years ago they did an audit of the Tai Tokerau region. And
they found that there were 6000 substandard homes across Tai
Tokerau. Part of our policy is to identify who those people
are, their names, their needs, the numbers and use our
policy to help them make their homes weather-tight, warm and
dry. It is essential because the cost on the nation in terms
of Maori not having homes, there’s a health cost,
there’s education cost, the social cost, the waste of
human potential. We just can’t afford to carry
on.
CORIN All
right. So you’ve got a plan. We’ll hear
more details about that today. Willie
Jackson, do you need to cut deals with the Greens to win
your
seats?
WILLIE Look,
the leadership of the Greens and leadership of Labour met
last year and said there would be no deals. But I have put
it up, and I intend to have talked with our leadership about
it.
CORIN I think
the Greens tweeted yesterday, in fact, Metiria Turei said no
deals.
WILLIE Well,
she can tweet all she likes. All right? Tweet all you like.
I don't
tweet.
CORIN Well,
are you talking to Greens
independently?
WILLIE No,
I’m talking about our Maori MPs. I
haven't talked to Metiria, but things have changed. The
Maori have all come off the list since last year. And so
I’m saying, you know, I respect the leadership of both our
parties. But we will be putting back on the table that maybe
we might need a deal and a couple of seats, because the vote
could split. Now, we don't want to put a National government
back in, do
we?
CORIN And is
Kelvin one of those who needs a deal? Because you are facing
a double hit on the other side, aren’t
you?
KELVIN I am
working whether there is a deal or no deal. I am just going
out to win every vote I can. Oh, look, I am not going to
depend on any deal. Of course, it would be great if the
Greens absolutely said we just want the party vote for them,
you know.
CORIN There is no such thing as
a dirty deal now. Everyone is doing it. It
is
fine.
WILLIE Well,
no, I think it is fine. Bill English thinks it is fine. The
Maori Party and Mana Party think it is fine.
CORIN The problem is the Greens don’t want to do it.
WILLIE No, well, that is
right. And I respect the Greens leadership. And I respect
our leadership, but the political reality says to us,
particularly in somewhere like Auckland, for instance, that
if that vote splits, you know, we could see a Maori Party MP
joining up with National and National becoming the
government.
KELVIN None
of the Greens are going to win the Maori seats.
So don't bother voting for the
Greens.
CORIN Well,
what about Metiria Turei? She's standing in Te Tai
Tokerau.
KELVIN No, no
hope.
CORIN
Not even now that she has got a
profile?
WILLIE No
chance whatsoever. Rino Tirkatene’s got that all wrapped
up.
CORIN You’re sure of that?
WILLIE Absolutely sure. We'll put
your job on it, eh? Just in case I don’t get it and I need
a job after the
election.
CORIN Well,
funny you should mention that, Willie Jackson, because, you
know, Labour is struggling. I mean, a number of polls have
got them very low.
WILLIE Yeah.
CORIN You wouldn’t make it back in.
WILLIE Well, that’s okay. I mean, for me, my main concern is the Maori MPs. I am proud of the way they are working. See, we have got the policies for our people. I don't want our people to get less than 1% of funding, which is what the Maori Party got in the last budget.
CORIN You could have gone with the Maori Party.
WILLIE Well, whatever. I
am going with the party that I believe in. They have got the
policies for education, for health, for families, for
housing. What a fantastic policy! Okay, it is not quite
resonating at the moment. I don’t know why, but there is
eight weeks of this election left. We know if it is
resonating in the Maori seats. Maori voters are coming back
to Labour. If we have to be the catalyst, we will be. But I
can see the support that our members are getting. Kelvin
over here – everybody said oh, Hone’s going to walk all
over him. Kelvin is making a killing in Te Tai
Tokerau.
CORIN I
wonder why it’s not resonating, because the Greens are
stealing your thunder. Metiria Turei has walked into the
area of social justice and has set the place alight. People
are talking. Isn’t that what Labour was supposed to
do?
KELVIN It is what we're doing. You
know, that’s your perception, but we’re getting out
there and we are making a difference. We have got a lot of
policies. In fact, if you had an independent observer go
through all the party’s policies, they’d say oh, those
policies there are the best. And then find out oh, crikey,
they’re the Labour Party’s. Selling them is probably
where we are letting ourselves down and letting people know
that. We are right out there batting for them and fighting
for them every step of the
way.
WILLIE We are
not show-offs like his cousin Shane Jones, right? Shane
Jones comes out, ‘Oh, we’ll nuke all the Maoris, eh?
We’ll nuke all the gangsters.’ Oh, headlines, you know.
Corin talks to him - all nonsense, rubbish. Winston comes
out, ‘I’ll get rid of the Maori seats,’ forgets to
tell everybody that he started his political career in a
Maori seat, that he had all the Maori seats, that he was the
minister of Maori Affairs. We are not into headlines. We
have great policies. And I’ve seen this before - sometimes
the people are not listening and looking at them. They are
looking more at the
personalities.
CORIN It
is your job is a communicator and a politician to express
those policies, get them through, and something is not
working.
WILLIE I
want you to come to the campaign launch. You’ve got to
come to the campaign launch. We are just starting. A week is
a long time in politics. We have got eight
weeks.
CORIN The
conflicting messages, though - I mean, you look at charter
schools. We know you’ve had this debate. And Labour is
sort of, what, going to give you some sort of an exemption
on the charter schools that you guys are involved with. Is
that
right?
KELVIN No,
no, no. That's not it at
all.
CORIN It’s a
name change, is it?
KELVIN It is a name change, but also by coming in under the current legislation and special character school, it is going to iron out all the anomalies that are currently there for charter schools. Charter schools don’t actually like what I said last week, because they think they are going to be disadvantaged by what I said.
CORIN What you said was that you would resign, right, if the charter school in Northland, the two of them, are gone.
WILLIE It will carry on. It will still happen. Families, the whanau, the children won't notice any difference, but there will be administrative changes. But what it is doing is ironing out the anomalies that charter schools are perceived to have better conditions.
CORIN Because it is actually a fundamental issue here. Because it is about Maori want to be able to run these schools, don’t they? They want the control. They are sick of the government doing it for them, yet Labour is fundamentally saying no, we cannot have charter schools.
WILLIE See, that is because you media are block-headed. Right? You are not listening, Corin. I have been saying this to a few of you journalists lately.
CORIN Well, have another go.
WILLIE Listen to what we are saying. Labour support innovativeness. They support creativity. They have been to our schools. They have actually got nothing against our schools. What they are against is the charter school model that encourages big business, that talks about privatisation. We are not into privatisation. Education is a public good. Can you get through your head, Corin? Because you keep asking the same question.
KELVIN What Maori want, though, is to have a say over the education of their children. Everyone forgets that actually, every school in New Zealand is a charter school, but they are blocked, really, from actually having broad, wide-ranging charters and curriculum because of national standards.
CORIN So, will the schools that you guys still are involved with, will they be able to hire non-qualified teachers?
WILLIE Well, the rule now is
that they can do that. I am not sure about Kelvin’s one up
north - all my teachers are qualified. We follow the
curriculum.
KELVIN No,
but the schools up north, I believe that all of their
teachers are registered bar
one.
WILLIE Okay.
So we follow the rules. It is not
a problem. We need you at the school,
actually. We need experienced people to support our kids.
Are you coming to the launch or are you just going to go to
the tory launch? What is the story,
Corin?
CORIN I’ll
come to the launch. Thank you very much. Back to you,
Jess.
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