Turia let opportunity to stand up for poor vanish

I've often admired the political skills of Tariana Turia and often, too, her stance on issues.

It's customary in a valedictory, when a respected leader departs, to speak only of the good they have done and to intone how much they will be missed. I'd go along with such conventions in the case of an average politician, but it would be disrespectful in the largest sense if I were to pretend I have no disagreements with her or that her record is only one of achievement.

On the positive side of the ledger is her passion as a tireless campaigner for the interests of Maori, a strength tempered by a moderate and disarming demeanour. I could well understand her anger and disappointment with Helen Clark over the foreshore and seabed legislation; an unnecessary act of pure provocation on Labour's part.

At the time, Mrs Turia expressed her disagreement by the principled stand of giving up her junior ministerial position. Later, we know, she severed ties with Labour and formed the Maori Party.

There was a good argument for stepping away from Labour which had begun to take the Maori vote for granted - or so it was being perceived. Independence is one thing. It's the power to help form a government. Joining with National was quite another and, in my opinion, a step too far. On balance National has gotten the better of the deal.

While Mrs Turia's project, Whanau Ora, is a basically good idea - the family is at the root of health, good and ill - its execution has yet to be completed and, given National's fiscal ideology, may never be fully implemented.

Likewise, the issue of poverty, especially child poverty, is one Mrs Turia has championed. Again the party in power, National, has given mere lip service towards serious work on the issue. The offered solutions relying on corporate largesse turn out to be weak tea indeed. Like the famous American ad, we can ask, plaintively, "Where's the beef?"

In many ways, John Key and National have shown little meaningful interest in the plight of the poor, among whom Maori are over-represented.

Even more, Mrs Turia and Pita Sharples have had to stand by and swallow hard as Key's Government, of which they form a part, continues its course of selling off our assets; selling back the taxpayer-owned power companies to 5 per cent of those same taxpayers and to large institutional investors from overseas.

If the concept of tangata whenua were to have real meaning, the Maori Party ought to have left government in protest. The court actions, the protest marches, the petitions were important in making clear that an overwhelming majority of New Zealanders were opposed.

Walking out of government might have toppled the whole house of cards. Sometimes a strong minority dissent may turn the tide. It was a great opportunity for Mrs Turia to stand on principle and her failure to do so is inexplicable. Worse, it gave fodder to her critics to claim that, in the end, she put self-interest above the interests of Maori.

I don't hold that view, but I do wish she had been willing to sacrifice her position for the benefit of the whole country. That would have been a fitting final act of statesmanship.

Ultimately, Mrs Turia, like many Maori leaders before her, missed the great opportunity, afforded by her position, to reach beyond the parochial. To argue strongly that not only is her concern the welfare and well-being of Maori but indeed the advancement of the interests of all the disadvantaged, be they poor whites or poor immigrants of whatever hue.

More than that was to make the case that social and economic justice is in the interest of the whole country, rich and poor alike. That kind of tide, if enacted by the political process, must lift all the boats. In its absence a lot of folks - even middle-class and richer folks - will see their boats stuck in the shallows.