10 May 2002
The Government's announcement of Maori funding today is nothing more than a smoke in mirrors exercise, National Maori
Affairs Spokesperson Georgina te Heuheu said today.
"For example the announcement includes funding to primary health care that Annette King announced months ago and the
housing funding package it announced yesterday. A number of programmes it refers to are the downstream effect of similar
programmes from the 1990s under National.
"When this Government starts addressing some of the real issues like violence in homes to Maori women and children, the
rising tide of the diabetes epidemic and rising levels of drug and alcohol abuse then we can start feeling assured about
what they are doing. "The Government can talk about capacity building but this provides no answer for the real issues
that need to be addressed.
"Today's announcement shows a desperate Government if it has to line up a host of previous funding announcements to get
election year publicity," Mrs te Heuheu said.
Ends