Recent letters have complained about special privileges for Maori. A privilege makes someone better off than other people. Maori are clearly not better off than Pakeha.
Most so-called privileges are not privileges at all but measures against discrimination.
They do not put Maori into a superior position, and their overall cost to the taxpayer is small. Maori schools, for example, are different not privileged.
We are a Pakeha dominated society, which favours Pakeha and discriminates against Maori. Those who want to remove racial privileges in fact want to remove anti-discrimination measures. They want a more unfair society that continues to favour Pakeha.
John Ansell has produced a list of special Government spending on Maori for 2012-13. Excluding Maori contracts for social spending and including Waitangi Treaty spending his total is $700 million. At 0.7% of Government spending this is trivial.
The local Waitangi Treaty settlement came about because of the eviction of about 1000 innocent Maori men, women and children from their homes and land during the land wars. They were evicted after their tribe resisted attack by the British army. Historians now accept that the eviction was injustice.
Compensation for local Maori will be $50 million for land that is now worth over $500 million. The taxpayer still keeps over $450 million worth of value plus all past and future earnings from that sum. This is not special privileges for Maori.
Peter Dey, Welcome Bay.
3 comments
Mr Dey's own definition of 'privilege'
Posted on 12-11-2012 11:36 | By Captain Sensible
Good morning Mr Dey; I don't know where you got your definition of "privilege" from but this is the one I got from the Concise Oxford Dictionary; "privilege ....(noun) a special right, advantage, or immunity for a particular person... " So going by the Oxford dictionary's definition, it is absolutely conclusive that Maori do indeed get special race based privileges that the rest of us do not get, due to our bloodlines. When you next get to a dictionary, I sugest you check out the word "apartheid" because NZ is already on the way there and we non-maori don't like being rated as second class citizens in our own country.
Posted on 12-11-2012 17:49 | By Peter Dey
So called privileges that do not make Maori better off than Pakeha but just help Maori catch up with Pakeha do not make Pakeha second class citizens. At the moment Maori are second class citizens. Improving the position of Maori does not make Pakeha second class citizens. It makes both Maori and Pakeha first class citizens, which is fairer for all.
equal1
Posted on 15-11-2012 11:40 | By equal1
Absolutely agree with you Captain Sensible. Peter Dey is talking rubbish. He needs to get out and about and he'd soon come across plenty of areas where Maori are clearly 'at a huge advantage' compared to the rest of us. e.g.My daughter-in-Law is training for her Nurses degree. It's costing her well in excess of $20,000-00.The few Maori people on her course pay nothing,Zilch.AND their costs don't come out of the millions of $$$'s already paid out to Maori but out of the Govt slush fund (taxpayers $$$'s). That's a fact mr DEY. You are fast losing any credibility in the letters you write as you are simply fantasizing and making things up as you go along.
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