New Zealand government under fire as race relation debate rages
The New Zealand government is being accused of repealing key social policies designed to improve outcomes for Māori people. The Luxton Government has unwound legislation behind the plan to make smoking tobacco illegal, disbanded the Māori health service -- and curtailed the official use of Māori language in the public service. Some have described the changes as the worst decline in race relations since the early stages of colonisation.
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TVTranscript
00:00 What's happening is an all out attack on not just for Māori people, but Pasifika, basically
00:07 anyone poor.
00:11 It's really bad times over at the moment.
00:13 And as I sit in my food bank and having people begging for food and seeing how tough times
00:18 are for so many families heading into Christmas, there are so many more important things for
00:23 them to worry about rather than having to repeal the Smoke Free Act, changing the names
00:29 of government departments from Māori back to English.
00:32 It's just a really bad time to be poor.
00:35 And if you're brown and poor, it's even worse.
00:37 They can say they're a government for all, but everything they're doing right now is
00:40 not showing that.
00:41 I hope they come out and start to show some true leadership and start to show leadership
00:48 for everyone, not just a select few.
00:51 We represent everyone down at the bottom.
00:54 And this government is not for us so far, and I don't see anything coming our way.
00:59 And that's what gets me down so much.
01:01 I can't stress enough how tough it is for so many families at the moment.
01:06 We're going into Christmas period and it's tough anyway.
01:10 You add Christmas onto it and it's a nightmare.
01:14 Christmas to me is not enjoyable because we see so much pain.
01:19 We're trying so hard to help so many people.
01:22 It's like every person that we can't help that reaches out to us, it's like a dagger
01:28 into my heart and it just breaks it.
01:30 [BLANK_AUDIO]