I was shocked at the poverty in our regions
I have been on the road with Tamati Coffey helping promote our healthy home policy in Waiariki, but was shocked, angered and upset about how utterly guttered Maori dominated areas like Murupara have been allowed to become.
The shopping centre was empty, shops boarded up, graffiti and burnt out shop fronts were testament to how very little the Maori Party have managed to gain for our people by propping up the national Government.
Te Ururoa Flavell and Marama Fox need to stop wasting time trying to get ASB to boycott Mike Hosking and spend more time on trying to get those banks to invest in our local communities!
I have travelled through most of New Zealand, I know the poverty of our community, but what I saw throughout Waiariki was town after town left behind to rot. When National claim they are ‘delivering for all New Zealanders’ they certainly didn’t include the Maori community in that delivery.
It makes me angry to see so many New Zealanders going backwards because of neglect and furious that the Maori Party have done so little to rectify this.
Seeing this level of poverty first hand has made me more focused than ever to see a Labour led Government replace this terrible National one.
Yes Willie, and the same in Northland, Tokoroa, East Coast.
Low key reason why T boi remains isolated
This country needs a bomb under it and a kick up the arse to get it moving like decent society again. And we can start by getting rid of National and their hangers on.
They had no right to let so many areas decline and become run down ghost towns , so enough of Nationals lies. We have a right to be angry at all the social and economic woes this country now suffers under because of them.
But the good news is there’s a change of government coming , – the bad news is there will need to be a massive rebuild of govt dept’s, regional projects, Rail , education , health , housing , low wages at a time of large business profits … the list is endless.
And Pike River needs to be reentered.
We haven’t forgotten that , either .
The workload under Labour will be huge… to rectify Nationals
9 year long irresponsible management .
But as Adern smilingly implores us from the billboard , -” Lets Do This! ”.
for 9 years those nact bastards have stuck there heads in the sand and done nothing they sent 9 years denying, deflecting, deceiving distracting total wankers.
Towns aren’t always permanent. You don’t have to go back far in history to see towns that were once prosperous that no longer exist because whatever drove their economy has ceased to exist e.g. gold mining. For some reason we now seem to think that creating new towns and letting go of the old ones is a bad thing. Towns like murupara are dead. The jobs are gone. But in Southland the farmers are importing Filipinos to work the dairy farms. Simple solution. The people still living in murupara should go where the work is.
Off you go then , mate.
Enjoy the sub minimum wage on offer and don’t complain about having to live in a shipping crate either.
The difference with the lower educated in the old ways, commercial agro business and the rest, and 3rd world migrant workers is, migrant workers know they don’t own the land so will work there guts out to make life better and maybe one day, there children will have the same advantages there masters have. And I agree 2nd generation immigrants should have better opportunities in life. So f**k national, f**k the 3rd world loving farming lobby and f**k FRED.
And let’s have a BBQ
Northland’s young have been doing that for generations Fred. Anyone with any get up and go has gone. So we only have the rich and stupid and the poor and stupid left. Makes fora crappy society.Every body who can goes to Australia or Auckland from the North. My grandkids are all Australian born, most of family are onto the third generation now resident across the ditch. My kids are better off as second class Aussies than as the educated middle class pakeha that they are in NZ . Go figure!
Good article there Willie,
Wild Katipo,100% Correct there.
National need to be sent to prison for a very long time as they are subverting our whole society now, and the middle class are sliding towards also being in the ranks of the poor and dispossessed among us all.
National policy = causes human harm.
Finally getting out to the REAL New Zealand aye Willie? Well surprise surprise not everyone can afford a $1 Million home…..and thats right, where are these high paying jobs?
Still stuck up the Dippers arse.
Willie, it was very eye opening when Tamati got Flavell to admit he “didn’t know how the homelessness had become so bad” and he is propping up this Government.
The New Forest Service using wood for sustainability promised to Rotorua by Labour, may help revive the nearby towns.
Fred, many own a home in Murupara, can’t rent it or sell it ….so they are stuck. Your solution sounds like Nat party smarts!!!
But they can sing along, Marama and Te Ururoa:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcYFulF14yk
Happy go lucky slogans and singsong, that is all that is needed in their view.
Now Willie is shocked about the deprivation of his whanau will he and his colleagues really do something about it.
This abhorrent poverty has existed for decades and has never been addressed.
After the billions paid out in treaty claims and other support these people are still living like this.
Even having a Maori party in government who keeps claiming they are delivering for their people after nearly a decade nothing really changes.
If Labour convince Maori to vote for it this time they have act and begin by having a strong regional economic plan that is enduring and puts an end to the appalling poverty that exists in these areas.
Willie should take control and drive this action and get results because hopefully he will get the opportunity in a few weeks.
How thin the social fabric, I saw it when I went back to Shirley, ChCh, where my mother brought up her family in the 50s and 60s , it’s now hoary with anaerobic breath. Like in America where poverty doesn’t matter politically.
But it is strange to me, ‘Labour Party’ over your headline lessens your credibility, Willy.
Fred said;
“towns aren’t always permanent.”
That is a stupid shallow neocon statement right there.
Study how these towns become dead zones at the hands of the “neo-con” right wing way.
Murupara was a timber town and had a reasonable wood production plant and industry building kitset homes for all over NZ and Murupara then flourished had a cheap rail transport system but through those years until the Muldoon National and Langley Labour Government’s helped to speed the demise of rail transport & the rail was cut, and building companies and wood product factories and mills closed!!!!!
So the business shrunk as similar to Kawarau did also.
Kawarau was recently rescued later but not Murupara.
So FRED get your Nactional Government to save all these declining towns or pay the price of your sigle policies of “empire building” of Auckland and Wellington exclusively.
Sorry, Cleangreen. Not National. Labour. Lange, Douglas, Prebble and Co who gleefully set up an underfunded Department of Conservation, hived off, sold off forests, and sat back while corporate knowledge walked out the door to early retirement or redundancy. Labour did that.
To be sure National did zilch to amend or ameliorate – followed by the Clark government which did nothing and the nastiness of the following National government that put retraining out of reach.
Completely related: another youngster died on the hill in a forest near Gisborne, last week. The second of his family to do so. Practical training is clearly missing – along with management skills to ensure logging staff don’t work tired, or without supervision for learners. And a few more ‘workplace inspectors’ simply cannot give the national cover of the old NZFS. Out in the regions. What will Willie do???
Kaingaroa township is smashed and trashed and the people there have neither the pride nor the skills nor wit to keep house or make enterprise. At some point, Willie might like to ask why the feckless few are lolling about – without the usual excuses/blame.
Fred is correct. Towns do die. The old forestry towns are terminal unless the people living there stop looking for excuses and start using the opportunities they’ve come into. They’ve had since 1987. More than time enough. Otherwise, put the bulldozers in and let the land recover.
The towns might die but not the people and we all need to come up with solutions not keep slogging out the same old issues.
Why should Willie’s message headline containing Labour lessen his credibility?
He left a group he didn’t consider was reaching the Maori poor to join Labour, because Labour have always worked to assist the poor.
His stated aim is to make people aware, Maori wealthy imo, of the critical nature of the neglect.
Willie expressed shock at the deterioration of the small towns ie Murupara.
Flavell when faced with homeless numbers while debating, admitted he “didn’t know how it got that bad”
Ofcourse, both these men bought into the Government line,
“it is a rockstar economy”, but at least Willie listened to and trusted Andrew Little, and joined Labour to oust the current mob.
So his credibility is fine. Yours, not so much.
‘Labour have always worked to assist the poor’?
Zero time for the Maori Party, which I take from your message Jackson belonged to. Even less time for Roger Douglas’s Labour Party. Willy is well aware of what they are and that the revolution needed to help the poor will be difficult to extract from them.
It’s a shame Labour won’t commit to lifting core benefit rates, which would bring some instant relief and help generate some economic stimulus while Labour works through improving employment opportunities in the region.
Come on Willie, let’s do this.
There could have been a chance for that but Metiria’s admission was handled very properly. Unfortunately Metiria has been made ineligible for ministerial position, specifically MSD. That just leaves Shaw for minister of Climate Change ect. And Julian Genter for minister of Transport and Gareth Hughs minister of energy ect. Not sure what Marama Davidson is into, personally I’d stick her in a woman’s portfolio. Atleast that’s what I would be telling em.
Glade that Wellington unicome team got purged.
A long shot would be Hone for minister of MSD. What he lacks in credentials he more than makes up for in experience. He’s journied all around MSD malpractice, got to count for something. Willie is only just noticing what Hone Harawira has been saying for decades.
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