Jon Stokes: 'Special treatment' does not help Maori

There was back slapping a plenty among opposition MPs this week when Race Relations minister Trevor Mallard announced the results of a race-based funding review.

National Maori affairs spokesman Gerry Brownlee, buoyed in the knowledge his party's call for one law for all had prompted the review, however did not think the Government had gone far enough.

Mr Mallard said 37 programmes, receiving funding based on race, would be changed or removed.

Not enough, cried Mr Brownlee. He believes the Government had barely scratched the surface in uncovering perks enjoyed by Maori.

Act leader Rodney Hide labelled the changes a "brown-wash". A change in wording not attitude.

He rattled off the example of a new requirement that nurses working in Maori mental health have knowledge and understanding of Maori customs. Previously nurses needed to be Maori.

"The result will be the same," Hide said. "The racist basis to hiring mental health nurses acknowledges the racist policies of Helen Clark's Government."

Mr Mallard, aware perceptions of favouritism for Maori had in the past stung his party's popularity, insisted the Government's focus was need not race.

His announcement - as race issues tend to - graced the front page of most of the country's newspapers.

In contrast, a report released around the same time by Kaitaia based Far North coroner Robin Fountain on the suicide of nine locals in just five months provoked far less interest.

Mr Fountain found little to link why six men and three women, aged between 18 and 45, chose to take their own life between November 2004 and April this year.

That seven of the nine where Maori was perhaps coincidental. To seize on one example as being instructive would be mischievous.

What Mr Fountain did find was that "unrecognised and usually untreated depression" was consistent among the nine.

"In my experience people don't commit suicide to die. They do it to get themselves out of a situation they are in," he said.

The catalyst for ending their lives varied from despair at an unwanted pregnancy to relationship break-ups. The socio-economic circumstances also varied, as did the methods - from firearm to hanging, but the outcome was the same.

Maori make up one in seven of New Zealand's population, yet account for one in five of the country's suicides.

From last November it was for the family and friends of the nine deceased to grieve and struggle to come to terms with their tragic loss.

When those deaths are combined and analysed it is for the wider community to ponder and lament.

Whether more mental health nurses would have saved one of the nine will never be known. To speculate whether knowledge that the all embracing society we live in provides help for those when all seems futile, is also now useless.

For it is now too late. Now in death difference is gone. Advantage and disadvantage removed.

In life there is difference, sometimes embraced, more often decried.

With the election drawing near, political shots at a Government perceived as pandering special treatment to Maori will continue.

What is not appreciated is that Maori also welcome an end to a system of "special treatment" that sees the majority of Maori living in the world of negative social statistics.