Posts Tagged ‘Tariana Turia’

Maori support for Labour

Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, October 1st, 2014 - 56 comments

One of the few bright spots for Labour in the election was the renewed support of Maori. What now for the Maori Party?

Polity: Maori Party / Key fundraiser

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, April 15th, 2014 - 35 comments

The Political Anorak News is full of the $5,000-a-plate fundraiser for the Maori Party hosted by John Key at the Northern Club in Auckland… Nothing illegal about this at all, or really anything immoral either. Key wants to help the Maori Party help Key, so he’s putting in an appearance. No problem. These kinds of events make it crystal clear that a vote for the Maori Party is a vote for a National government.

Let it go Pita

Written By: - Date published: 9:19 am, January 24th, 2013 - 10 comments

Pita Sharples should step down as a leader of the Maori Party and let someone else have a go. A merger with Mana seems to offer the most viable way forward, but the possibility has prompted a hysterical reaction from the outgoing Turia.

Turia’s legacy

Written By: - Date published: 7:36 am, December 14th, 2012 - 34 comments

Tariana Turia’s on-again off-again retirement is on-again.  She will not be standing in 2014, and is looking to her “legacy”.  Unfortunately, Whanau Ora is profoundly flawed.  But if Turia wants a legacy to be proud of she still has time…

Too much stupid; too little time

Written By: - Date published: 8:37 am, November 15th, 2012 - 38 comments

I don’t really have time to write something, but there’s just too much stupid this morning to let it pass. Nathan Guy heads today’s list, but Craig Foss, Tariana Turia, Bill English and Hekia Parata also need mention.

The slow decline of the Maori Party

Written By: - Date published: 1:25 pm, October 28th, 2012 - 22 comments

In my opinion the MP signed their own death warrant when they allowed the split with Mana to happen. Coverage arising from their Conference paints a picture of a party in terminal decline.

Welded to National

Written By: - Date published: 9:01 am, July 19th, 2012 - 41 comments

The meeting between Key and the Maori Party leaders last night reached it’s predictable conclusion.  From his point of view Key has played this brilliantly.

Tariana’s final days?

Written By: - Date published: 6:49 am, June 29th, 2012 - 40 comments

Tariana Turia’s privatisation by stealth of welfare for Maori, known as Whanau Ora, was an open invitation to fraud. Money was signed over to groups with no track record and no plan. It’s finally caught up with her as New Zealand First, Women’s Refuge, and the Greens team up to reveal Turia’s lies and willful blindness over reported fraud in Palmerston North.

Resignation-watch: Tariana Turia

Written By: - Date published: 8:17 pm, February 7th, 2012 - 129 comments

Tariana Turia is making hollow threats to leave the government but she might be pushed first. Winston Peters has wasted no time showing how opposition politics is done, using his first question time back to skewer Turia, exposing the massive rorting her Whanau Ora programme. Turia made a slush fund for her mates with our money. She has to go.

Extraordinary attack on Maori Party

Written By: - Date published: 9:27 am, August 26th, 2011 - 8 comments

Waihoroi Shortland, the Maori Party candidate in the Te Tai Tokerau electorate, has been warned to “Watch your back, lest it be bitten by the Maori Party dogs”.  An extraordinary warning from an extraordinary source…

Turia knows the Maori Party is toast

Written By: - Date published: 12:42 pm, August 9th, 2011 - 48 comments

The Maori Party leaders have racked up the highest ministerial expenses after the PM – despite not being in Cabinet.  What is even more extraordinary is Tariana Turia’s response to being questioned on this.

Turia on Te Tai Tokerau

Written By: - Date published: 10:37 am, June 22nd, 2011 - 25 comments

Were Tariana Turia’s comments on her own candidate in the Te Tai Tokerau by-election some kind of cunning plan, or just a simple stuff-up?

More budget backhanders

Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, May 27th, 2011 - 5 comments

PEDA last year. Parents Inc this year. Ministers giving backhanders to their mates is a growing trend. $1.5m is being cut from the Community Organisation Grants Scheme that funds things like Rape Crisis. Instead of this democratic, accountable process, the money will go to four groups hand-picked by Turia. Dodgy as hell.

How rude

Written By: - Date published: 8:15 am, May 10th, 2011 - 106 comments

What a lot of fuss about Titewhai Harawira and daughter heckling Tariana Turia.  Perhaps those expressing outrage at yesterday’s events would do well to reflect for a while on the source of the Harawiras’ anger.

Pita’s poll: Maori Party death-rattle?

Written By: - Date published: 9:35 am, April 2nd, 2011 - 38 comments

A new Horizon poll suggests that Pita Sharples’ majority in Tamaki Makaurau has been slashed by 80% and he could be overtaken by Labour’s Shane Jones. There’s a bit of scuttlebutt that Willie Jackson might run for Hone’s new Left/Maori Party (if it gets off the ground). In that case, expect a real three-way race, which Sharples would almost certainly lose.

How not to handle a rebel

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, February 16th, 2011 - 38 comments

The Maori Party handling of rebel MP Hone Harawira has been a complete mess.  The latest bizarre chapter in the story is the gagging of Harawira with “a complete media ban” to be “strictly observed by the Maori Party”.  I’m trying to recall any precedent for such an extreme gagging of free speech by a political party…

You can’t mix oil and water

Written By: - Date published: 12:14 pm, February 8th, 2011 - 46 comments

Every new party faces an inevitable conflict between the ‘realos’ and the ‘fundis’ over how much principle can be compromised to make some gains through coalitions. The Maori Party made it far worse by supporting a party that is anathema to everything it stands for. That big mistake is at the root of collapse we’re now witnessing.

Pride cometh

Written By: - Date published: 7:41 am, January 27th, 2011 - 17 comments

Senior Maori Party staffers have been deserting the party in droves in recent months, including chief of staff Harry Walker, repulsed by the leadership selling out to National. It’s gotten so bad that they’ve had to out-source their spin doctoring to the Tories. You think I’m joking? I wish. This illuminates Hone Harawira’s fight with the leadership.

Why are Turia & Sharples cuddling up to Key?

Written By: - Date published: 9:53 am, January 25th, 2011 - 22 comments

At this stage in the electoral cycle, government support parties are usually looking to try to differentiate themselves from the main governing party. They need to do this to show they still hold true to their own values and have a separate identity that is worth voting for. The Maori Party is doing to opposite.

Hone’s motives grow murkier

Written By: - Date published: 10:37 am, January 21st, 2011 - 17 comments

Why did Hone Harawira pick a fight if he wasn’t prepared to see it out? One News last night had him saying he wants to stay with the Maori Party. Patrick Gower reckons Hone’s assault on the leadership is all about building cred to take over next year but Hone’s saying he would support Te Ururoa Flavell for male co-leader. Curiouser and curiouser.

Hone the victim or the playmaker?

Written By: - Date published: 8:44 am, January 20th, 2011 - 106 comments

Hone Harawira is many things but stupid isn’t one of them. He has cleverly created a situation where Tariana Turia and her lackeys have had to attack him for daring to speak truth to power. It’s Hone who has been the protagonist. It’s he who has fronted to the media while Turia has hidden. He’s been planning this and he knows how it will play out.

Hone: Maori Party has lost its way

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, January 18th, 2011 - 61 comments

Wow. The first edition of Hone Harawira’s new opinion column in the Sunday Star Times is a jaw-dropping read. He frankly states the party has sold out it values for cabinet seats – put coalition before kaupapa. It’s a brazen attack on Tariana Turia, and confirmation he intends to stay with the Maori Party and, some day, lead it back to its roots.

Time for Turia to go

Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, December 11th, 2010 - 65 comments

Labour has opened the door on cross party negotiations to achieve a true consensus on the foreshore.  But Tariana Turia is too locked in to ancient personal hatreds to do anything but reject the offer.  In doing so she has become a huge obstacle to progress on the very goals that she claims to support.  It’s time for Turia to step down.

Turia vs the Maori Party Left

Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, November 1st, 2010 - 41 comments

The problem with any identity-based political movement is it pre-supposes that the common identity of its members surpasses their conflicting class interests. This has been brought to the head at the Maori Party national conference as Tariana Turia angrily denounced criticism of the Maori elite from the Left faction.

Harawira off foreshore committee

Written By: - Date published: 9:06 am, October 28th, 2010 - 7 comments

Select committees are very important. They take Bills after first reading, hear submissions, and recommend alterations. Ministers do not (usually) sit on them and they are not meant to be mere rubber stamps for the government. But Harawira’s removal from the foreshore committee shows this government doesn’t care about good lawmaking.

Labour policy Maori policy

Written By: - Date published: 8:18 am, October 23rd, 2010 - 20 comments

In a press release last week Tariana Turia claimed that Labour’s new policy directions are all Maori Party policies.  That puts the Maori Party in an interesting position after the next election.  Will the major party that they support be dictated by their policies, Labour’s policies, as Turia claims?  Or will their support be dictated by other, non-policy factors?

Key tells Maori Party to shove off

Written By: - Date published: 1:09 pm, July 19th, 2010 - 25 comments

The Maori Party’s support has been a vital element of the sheep’s clothing this rightwing government has worn until now. It has been the fig leaf behind which the true nature of the rightwing agenda of the National Party has hidden. Key’s speech shows, National will no longer be willing to compromise to gain its support and does not particularly want it.

Maori Party won’t take Key’s F&S deal

Written By: - Date published: 1:34 am, June 12th, 2010 - 42 comments

‘We don’t know if we can support this’.
It’s a very delicate title for the Maori Party’s press release on National’s foreshore and seabed offer but it reveals much. On the one hand, they know they can’t accept a deal that doesn’t give title to iwi. On the other hand, the co-leaders really don’t want to leave government.

The courage of his convictions

Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, May 20th, 2010 - 56 comments

Hone Harawira does not want to vote for the ‘don’t be jealous’ budget and he doesn’t think the Maori Party will be standing true to its principles or supporters if it does. Harawira sought permission to vote against the Budget. Tariana Turia, who is awfully comfortable in the back of her Crown limo, refused. Let’s hope Harawira has the courage cross the floor anyway.

One more straw & the final one’s about to come

Written By: - Date published: 11:26 pm, May 11th, 2010 - 56 comments

You can’t mix oil and water. You can swirl things about for a while and it may appear you’ve mixed them but there is an essential difference that can’t be crossed. Likewise, there is an illusion that John Key, like some alchemist of old, has magically transcended fundamental political facts to make a National/Maori Party relationship work. But illusions can’t last forever.

Whanau Ora fizzer

Written By: - Date published: 1:36 pm, May 6th, 2010 - 25 comments

The budget for Whanau Ora, which has been billed as a magical, ineffable revolution in social welfare will be just $33 million a year. What a joke. Whanau Ora’s budget will be less than twice that of that other great fizzer, the John Key Memorial Cycleway. I predict it will have about twice the effect as well.