In a wide-ranging interview with Mata with Mihingarangi, the New Zealand First leader described the endorsement as a “statement of respect”.<\/p>\n
Asked what was separatist about Te Aka Whaiora, the now-defunct M\u0101ori Health Authority established by the previous government to address disparities between M\u0101ori and non-M\u0101ori health outcomes, Peters responded, “because your plan does not close the gaps”.<\/p>\n
He continued: “It just has a whole lot of elitist M\u0101ori at the trough in which the mass M\u0101ori, the majority of M\u0101ori in whose name they make these demands, get absolutely nothing”.<\/p>\n
He pointed to funding allocated to the Waipareira Trust and an investigation into Manurewa Marae as examples of what he called “electoral corruption”.<\/p>\n
Peters also declared that the Treaty of Waitangi had become the “trough of Waitangi”.<\/p>\n
Challenged on whether needs-based funding had succeeded in closing the gaps between M\u0101ori and non-M\u0101ori in health, education and justice, Peters insisted it had.<\/p>\n
On education, he argued that improving M\u0101ori achievement began with getting children to attend school but rejected the suggestion that poverty and a lack of transport were contributing factors in truancy.<\/p>\n
However, when asked whether funding for the M\u0101ori wardens and the M\u0101ori Women’s Welfare League was itself race-based, Peters argued it was needs-based.<\/p>\n
He said the work of M\u0101ori wardens was a matter of commonsense, not separatism, and that a M\u0101ori warden telling a young person, “look son, I don’t think that’s the right thing to do”, had a better chance of success than a police officer delivering the same message.<\/p>\n
In a quick-fire round, Peters chose Whananaki over Whirinaki and crayfish over oysters. He named the late Labour MP Kerry Burke, who served in Parliament from 1972 to 1990, as the best Speaker of the House.<\/p>\n
He also told Mata with Mihingarangi that he would still refuse a knighthood, did not support blanket pay equity for women’s sport, and maintained that his iwi, Ng\u0101ti Wai, had ceded sovereignty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a wide-ranging interview with Mata with Mihingarangi, the New Zealand First leader described the endorsement as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-645099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}