Jeremy Tauri: Maori kids need more business mentors

Maori people need more mentors.

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the future lately. I guess that happens when you become a parent.

Like most parents, I don't mind what my son does when he grows up, as long as he is happy. It's likely there will be opportunities in 20 years that we can't even contemplate today.

I was interested to see a report from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, which looked at Maori in business.

As a businessperson myself, and working with other people who run their own businesses, I know the benefits and opportunities that striking out on your own can provide.

But the MBIE research shows that Maori are half as likely to be self-employed as the total population. That's been put down, in part, to the fact Maori are relatively younger than the rest of the population and have lower qualification levels.

In 2013, there were 21,700 Maori in business in New Zealand, of whom 14,900 were sole traders. The remaining 6800 were employers.

More than 60 per cent of those self-employed were in the service sector, an industry many Maori may feel a natural fit with their culture -- he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

The benefit for those who are in business is pretty clear -- the median income gap with the total population tends to be smaller for Maori who run their own business than for Maori employees: Maori employers have an income gap of 8.7 per cent compared to the rest of the population, employees earn almost 15 per cent less. That is an issue for another column but it shows there are benefits to owning your own business.

To nurture our next generation of Maori businesspeople (whether my son is one or not) we need to ensure we have good, strong role models for our young people.

When I became self-employed 20 years ago, my role models were my employer and certain clients. None were Maori but I brought with me values to add to the range I was learning.

A mentoring programme which took entrepreneurial Maori school students and showed them that achievement in the business world was a very real possibility, would pay dividends for the economy.

Perhaps this is something that could be fostered by those managing Treaty settlements, and to encourage not just development in the service sector but the development of Maori self-employment in manufacturing as well.

Jeremy Tauri is an associate at Plus Chartered Accountants.