National Party Policies 1999

This page last modified 29 October 1999

National Party Policies 1999

What National is doing for Maori

National has introduced a number of initiatives to assist Maori participate and contribute to New Zealand society.

Treaty Settlements

Unresolved Treaty claims are a major challenge to Maori progressing from a focus on grievances of the past to economic development and self-help in the future. National believes in the settlement of Treaty grievances by negotiation. During the past nine years National has been involved with the settlement of many treaty claims, including Waikato/Tainui, Ngai Tahu, and a number of smaller claims. Most recently the Taranaki iwi Ngati Ruanui signed a heads of agreement document, which outlines the Crown's proposal for a full, final and comprehensive settlement of all historical claims.

Business & Economic

Business Development Programme

National has introduced a Business Development Programme that is beneficial to small to medium sized Maori business enterprise. The programme gives Maori businesses and Maori providers the ability to determine their own needs, and determine the best way in which these can be met.

Maori Land

National is investing $8.2 million over three years to encourage the productive use of Maori land, stimulate the creation of Maori businesses and help young Maori into permanent jobs.

Poutama Trust

The Poutama Trust is a national, pan-Maori organisation committed to encouraging Maori economic growth by promoting and developing industry and commerce among Maori. Last year National announced an $8.8 million grant to the Poutama Trust.

Maori Television Trust

National has established a Maori television trust that will enable a reasonable number of quality Maori language programmes to be brought to air on both a Maori television channel and on mainstream television. Maori, through the trust will manage the assets needed to establish a Maori television channel aimed primarily at the promotion of the Maori language (reserved UHF frequencies and capital funding). National has given a firm commitment to Maori language television - funding has been confirmed for at least the next five years.

Welfare

Family Start

National has established Family Start - an intensive, early intervention service aimed at helping families to help themselves. Family Start is part of the wider Strengthening Families Strategy and was initially established in West Auckland, Whangarei and Rotorua, areas with high Maori populations. National extended the programme in 1999 and from next year it will operate in a further 13 locations across the country.

Justice, Law & Order

Prison Rehabilitation Programmes

Prison rehabilitation programmes which focus on Maori will be extended in an effort to help reduce crime among Maori people. $200,000 funding will extend Mahi Tahu < a successful programme within prisons that provided rehabilitation and support to Maori prisoners in particular > in 1999. The focus on Maori inmates will be to create a change in the offenderÕs lifestyle in and after prison by recovering traditional Maori principles, values and disciplines and helping them reintegrate into society with strong family involvement.

Maori Wardens

National increased funding for Maori wardens by 100 percent in 1999. The extra funding will help support Maori wardens working with at-risk youth in the community. Maori wardens play an integral role in the community working with both Maori and non-Maori, to keep the streets safe. Most of the work done by the wardens is voluntary, but National recognises the value of the work and the extra funding should ensure it continues.

Whanau Awhina

National will continue to support the Whanau Awhina justice programme of community assessment panels. Te Whanau AwhinaÕs community diversion scheme currently operates in West Auckland with the aim of keeping young offenders out of the criminal justice system and reducing Maori re-offending.

Education & Training

Kura Kaupapa Maori

New Kura Kaupapa Maori (Maori immersion schools) will be set up over the next three years, and capital provision of up to $10 million over two years will be used to buy accommodation for new kura.

Targeted Individual Entitlement

Under the Targeted Individual Entitlement (TIE) scheme $3.4 million over three years will help Maori students from low-income families to attend a private school or school outside their area. The scheme will provide 140 to 210 places this year, rising to 410 to 620 by 2001/02 depending on tuition, travel and boarding costs.

Maori Teachers & Learning Materials

The 1999 Budget provides for $1.5 million over three years to improve the skills of pre-school teachers working in immersion settings in the use of Te Reo. An extra $6.5 million over three years will enable the Ministry of Education to provide more learning materials including an on-line Maori language resource site, a television programme and materials for the early childhood sector.

Maori Educational Achievement

A $12.7 million campaign over three years will raise awareness about Maori education achievement, and expectations about what Maori children can achieve at school.

Maori Training Programme

A new Maori industry-based training programme will be piloted in two areas over the next two years to help Maori in to permanent jobs. National will place unemployed Maori into subsidised employment with an industry training agreement. The initiative will cater for 200 trainees in 1999/00, and 400 in 2000/01.

Promotion of Maori Language

Funding of $8.1 million over three years will enable the Maori Language Commission to promote the Maori language and develop the first Maori-only dictionary and instruments to measure the skills of Government employees in speaking and translating Maori. As part of the Maori Language Strategy, National is providing $1.7 million over three years for a comprehensive survey of the health of the Maori language. A further $21 million over three years has been allocated to monitor and evaluate the Maori Language Strategy.

Books in Homes

The Books in Homes programme targets schools in low income areas with high numbers of Maori and Pacific Island children. It currently provides 39,000 pupils in 150 schools with five books a year.

Health

Oranga Niho

Oranga Niho is a pilot programme that, from July 1999, provides integrated dental services for children and emergency dental care to low income adults.

Maori Provider Development Fund

A Maori Provider Development Fund has been established to contract the deliverance of a range of social services contributing to whanau and community development. The Fund, allocated $10.5 million over the three years from 1999, will develop skilled Maori providers who can create and deliver services required by purchasing agencies. The Fund will cover those social sectors or service areas where discrete development funds do not currently exist and it will complement the existing work on development of health providers in other areas such as employment and training, justice and family support services.

Home Visit Programme

New Maori mothers and their children will benefit from home visits from health professionals. Up to 30% of Maori families will be covered under the home visit programme. It will operate in 19 centres around the country and will include preventative dental health services and funding to reduce paediatric waiting times.

Waiting Times

Money is being directed into reducing waiting times for Maori children needing surgery such as grommet operations.

Other

Low Deposit Rural Housing

The Low Deposit Rural Housing scheme, run by TPK and the Ministry of Housing, will have a significant positive impact on Maori living in rural Northland and remote areas of the East Coast where lack of housing for Maori is a major problem.

Maori Performing Arts

The 1998 budget announced that National would support for the first time for the Aotearoa Traditional Performing Arts Society. The Society receives over $1 million a year from 1998/99. New Zealand audiences now, more than ever before, will be able to see the very best in Maori performing arts.

Maori Registration Service

Funding of $799,000 over two years has been provided to help establish a national Maori Registration Service that will help link Maori with their tribes, and assist tribal groups in compiling comprehensive and accurate registers of their people.

NEW ZEALAND NATIONAL PARTY
PO BOX 1155, WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND
PH: 04 472 5211 FAX: 04 478 1622
E-MAIL: hq@national.org.nz

Road Reform Update

Proposals set out in the Better Transport Better Roads consultation will allow New Zealand to be smarter about running roads, streamline road management, improve road safety and help protect the environment.

The way we fund and pay for roads is often untargeted and unfair. For instance, in some areas 60 percent of people's rates go to maintaining roads regardless of how much they use them. The focus of the funding changes is to make the way we pay for roads more efficient and fair - not to make people pay more. Better Transport Better Roads would benefit New Zealanders through improved investment efficiency, lower administration costs, reduced congestion, and improved safety and environmental outcomes.

The proposals will ensure that:

roads would not be privatised - roads currently under public ownership would continue under public ownership
the present network of roads would be retained
communities would continue to have a say in road management
everyone who uses the roads, including motorists, cyclists and pedestrians, would continue to have the same access to roads that they do today.

The Better Transport Better Roads proposals would produce a range of benefits.

Road management would be streamlined and administration costs reduced.
The way roads are funded would result in much wiser use of our roads and investment in building new ones.
Road safety would improve for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians.
The environmental impact of roads would be reduced.
There would be more options for dealing with congestion.
The roads New Zealand currently has would be retained.
The way we pay for roads would be fairer because it would reflect actual use.
Local authorities would continue to play an important role in running roads.
The access motorists, cyclists and pedestrians currently enjoy to our roads would not change.

[See PANZ's comments on road 'reforms']

Proposals in the Better Transport Better Roads can be grouped into four sets.

The first group would set up streamlined, specialist roading organisations.

The roading activities of New Zealand's 74 territorial local authorities would be amalgamated into four to eight local road companies to run local roads (i.e. all roads except state highways.)
Those local road companies would be owned entirely by local authorities - not even the Crown could have a shareholding in them.

The second group would establish more flexible and fairer ways of paying for roads based on how they are used and what that use costs.

Rates would no longer be used to fund roads.
The current use based payment system of Road User Charges on heavy vehicles and light diesel vehicles would be retained.
Individual road users and groups of users would be given greater choice in the way they pay for their road use.
Public road companies would be able to introduce tolls on specific roads and facilities and to introduce congestion prices to restrain traffic demand on heavily used routes.

The third group proposes ways to continue improving road safety.

Better Transport Better Roads proposes establishing a safety management system setting out engineering and traffic management safety standards. Road safety will be built into all aspects of public road companies.

The fourth group proposes ways to help protect the environment.

Roads contribute to air, noise and water pollution and they have affects on the landscape. The proposals would make sure charges better reflect the environmental costs of road use.
Unlike the present, the proposals would make sure the operation of our roads was fully subject to the Resource Management Act.

Submissions on the document closed on 30 April this year. A high level of public interest in the Government's proposals for changing the way our roads are funded resulted in more than 1000 submissions on the proposals.

Many of the submissions acknowledged there is a vital need to change the way roads are currently managed and funded. While there is a lot of support for many parts of the Government's proposals, a number of submissions also raised issues of concern and suggested possible alternatives to Better Transport Better Roads. The Ministry will now analyse submissions and report to the Government on the major issues arising later this year. In the meantime, the Ministry will continue to liase with Local Government, road users, other interested groups and with Maori, to discuss their submissions further.

NEW ZEALAND NATIONAL PARTY
PO BOX 1155, WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND
PH: 04 472 5211 FAX: 04 478 1622
E-MAIL: hq@national.org.nz