July 11, 2022
Younger interest in Pāti Māori AGM
New Māori Party president John Tamihere says the annual conference at the weekend showed the party is regenerating itself with a younger base.
He says with 70 percent of Māori under 40, it was great to see how many young people made the trip to Rotorua, with some even getting in on a 2 am bus.
“The awakening has occurred. There is now an awareness of what can I do to advance my people’s interests in breaking out of what are the biggest problems we are ever going to have which is being locked into inequality. Then we get parties like the ACT Party which is the party of privilege and those that live off our inequality,” Mr Tamihere says.
In contrast to the Māori Party’s calls for mana motuhake, the ACT Party’s conference on the same day hears calls from leader David Seymour for dismantling what he called Labour’s ethnostate and the elimination of the Māori Health Authority and any Treaty of Waitangi-based partnerships.