The Maori Affairs select committee report tabled in Parliament today is a devastating indictment of the Government’s
confusion over closing the gaps, ACT leader Richard Prebble says.
“While the Prime Minister finds it convenient to forget she ever had a Closing The Gaps policy, the Maori Affairs
committee certainly has not forgotten.
“Helen Clark would have us believe she has canned the racially-divisive Closing the Gaps policy, whereas the committee’s
report shows exactly the opposite.
“It reveals that government departments are implementing radical policies which favour Maori and Pacific Islanders
instead of what she claims to have told them to do – to drop the policy in favour of social equity moves which would
help all people in need, whatever their race.”
Richard Prebble said the select committee, of which he is a member, had enormous difficulty in getting the government to
come clean on the status of closing the gaps.
“The committee had to use all the authority of Parliament in order to get Ministers, officials and departments to admit
that the policy is still being implemented by government agencies. Yet the departments are in the awful position of not
having agreed targets and no system of measuring progress.
“The Government should realise that the committee intends to continue to monitor the government’s confusion and lack of
progress over closing the gaps, and keeping the public informed,” Richard Prebble said.
ENDS