Voting is now open for the Tāmaki Makaurau by-election, to find a new MP for the Auckland Māori seat in Parliament following the death of Te Pāti Māori MP Takutai Tarsh Kemp on June 26.
Re: journalist Te Ahipourewa Forbes spoke with candidates Oriini Kaipara (Te Pāti Māori), Peeni Henare (Labour) and Hannah Tamaki (Vision NZ) to talk about the issues relevant to youth.
Watch the full Q+A with the candidates on TVNZ+
What’s your plan to address youth homelessness and housing insecurity?
Peeni: We’ve made it clear to a number of those youth homelessness providers and supporters here in Tāmaki Makaurau, we can do real action on legislation and support them with the resource.
Oriini: For Rangatahi specifically, is investing significant amount of money into kaupapa that work. Currently, in Tāmaki Makaurau there is a really great programme… it’s the only one of its kind, kaupapa Māori-driven, Tiriti centric and that is Mā Te Huruhuru in conjunction with Manaaki Rangatahi.
And that’s an area that I’m willing to just pursue, because it takes tamariki rangatahi off the streets, puts them into a whare manaaki where they are being reconnected to who they are as Māori and so there’s a wraparound service, but it’s led by rangatahi for rangatahi.
Hannah: If you can be with your whānau and they can assist you, then that’s good.
But to be honest, there are some that don’t want to live with whānau, don’t want to live with people.
They don’t have enough money now, and they think that if they’re going to have to pay money for board or for food, they feel that they’re going to have less in their pocket, and somebody else is going to have more.
I think you can’t make false promises. You can’t. There’s not just one solution.
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including nurses striking again, Aussie police have a message for anyone helping accused police killer, and social media shame for a tennis fan. (Source: 1News)
What policies do you have to address the rise in anti-rainbow hate?
Peeni: Look, we can do lots of things to keep our whānau safe in those spaces. Legislation is only one thing, but actually, what we need to do is support the services that do look after our whānau.
But remove the nasty politics that we’re seeing in our community so that our whānau feel safe. That’s what we can do and we should do.
Oriini: One possible solution is to arm communities with more capabilities and abilities to challenge people who threaten them, with words or otherwise.
Anti-hate speech law needs to come into play.
Hannah: People should be able to live their life the way they choose to live it, without enforcing it on others, but also giving people the opportunity to be them, be different.
I don’t think it really needs a policy or anything, it just needs a mutual respect and understanding of how things would work.
How should Aotearoa respond to international conflicts such as Gaza?
Peeni: Our foreign policy should always be independent. We should be able to be mature enough as a country to make our decisions based on what our people here in New Zealand believe in, and that’s challenging at times.
But it continues to show that, one, New Zealand’s a global citizen, and we have a role to play. But, two, that, you know, we don’t mind standing up to big bullies. We’ve done it before, we did it on nuclear energy. We stood up against it. We were laughed at, at the time but look how awesome that worked out for us.
Oriini: I think response is really, really important. But so as a reaction, you know, I think Aotearoa, we have a tendency, our governments have a tendency to drag the chain and lay responses and the excuses that they come with, come up with actually reflects on all of us as a country that, you know, it’s like Israel’s war on Gaza, for example, the fact that we are still waiting for our own government to make a decision and call it for what it is, a genocide, and to immediately sanction Israel is unacceptable.
Hannah: Well, I think we just got sort our own stuff out, to be honest.
Maybe get with the leaders of those countries and talk about it. But to be honest, we’ve got so many things here in Aotearoa that we need to sort out.
Who are we to actually give advice to other countries? We’ve got to do it ourselves. But then those in power, they may have to make some big decisions, some tough decisions.
And I suppose that as long as they’ve got the backing of the people, then they’re to go ahead.
Watch the full Q+A with the candidates on TVNZ+
