New Zealand's richest man has come under fire for saying the Closing the Gaps policy was for "poor people who might simply lack inner motivation and moral fibre."
Douglas Myers levelled a tirade of abuse at the Government during speeches this week that have drawn criticism from MPs.
Mr Myers, a member and former chairman of the Business Roundtable, also said he would rather not be known as a "Pakeha" and accused the Government of hijacking education to "become a tool of indoctrination of the young and a vehicle for social engineering."
He said Closing the Gaps failed to recognise that the causes of poverty were often "personal decisions and a poverty of culture."
"I don't mean the outward symbols of culture such as language, music, festivals, dance and foods, but the inner motivations and moral fibre."
Mr Myers criticised the Government's pursuit of a bicultural vision, saying the term "Pakeha" was politically imposed on people such as him who would rather identify themselves simply as New Zealanders.
This was also creating a class of "non-people" and would be detrimental to attempts to stem the brain-drain and encourage talented new migrants to come here.
He saved some particularly nasty barbs for the Ministry of Education - "one of the keenest, unelected proponents of biculturalism" - and its Tertiary Education Advisory Commission.
The commission "included several academics, and this trahison de clercs shows how far certain elites are prepared to go to in trying to subvert education for ideological purposes."
After the speeches, the Labour MP for Hauraki, John Tamihere, said Mr Myers was a "budding anthropologist" blaming the poor for their plight.
"He was so willing to be judgmental, rather than being willing to explore the holes in his freemarket theory."
Fellow Labour MP David Benson-Pope later hit out at Mr Myers in Parliament, saying people were sick of such a "condescending, pathetically arrogant attitude."
"This Government's social policies, for the first time in 15 years, are redistributing to those people who need assistance in this community and no New Zealander with any integrity would resent paying the small tax increase that has been levied past the election to provide the funding to support those people in need."
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