KEY POINTS:
While most parties are pitching for middle-class votes this election, the Maori Party says that is not the group that needs looking after as the recession bites.
Co-leader Tariana Turia, MP Te Ururoa Flavell and candidate Derek Fox were in Flaxmere, near Hastings, yesterday to announce economic and social policies.
In part they are aimed at those on the bottom of the heap and include GST exemptions on food, no tax on earnings up to $25,000 a year and a reduction of the business tax rate to 25 per cent.
But policies aside, the Maori Party faithful - young and old - had come to see one person, Tariana Turia.
Party member Marewa Reti, 49, said, "She's our favourite and it's simple for most people. She started this. She walked the floor [when she was a Labour MP]. Nobody else did."
Ms Turia said the middle classes would always weather recessions.
"It's the poor people who don't, and that's where our focus is.
"Every time they [governments] say 'we've got no money', do you notice they find some - like the other day? I know that they always keep a bit of money in the drawer so they can do these things."
She also supported a call to abolish the unemployment benefit.
I'm opposed to the dole. I don't think it is healthy for the spirit of our people, to be getting money for doing nothing."
The party could not have picked a better place to launch its policy. Flaxmere is part of the Ikaroa-Rawhiti electorate where 53.2 per cent of Maori over the age of 15 earn $25,000 or less a year.
That was disgraceful and put Maori in a vulnerable position in a recession because of the high numbers in low-paid, low-skilled jobs, Ms Turia said.
"If you think back to the 1980s, we were the ones who were hit the worst economically. The Government should not be putting us in that position. They are the ones who should wear the economic recession, not the people."
The party's whanau ora policy has policies aimed at supporting children and families.
But its main plank is to eliminate child poverty by 2020.
It would also designate an official poverty line at 60 per cent of the median household disposable income.
Elsewhere in Hawkes Bay, people saw more of the leader, as she and Mr Flavell campaigned for Mr Fox.
The trio stood at one Hastings roundabout waving Maori Party and tino rangatiratanga flags as motorists tooted support.
Pakeha supporter Jean Maclean Young, 82, has been a member of the Maori Party since its inception.
She is the great, great grandchild of Henry Williams, who in 1840 translated the Treaty of Waitangi.
The Hasting's grandmother said Pakeha were coming to know the party, based on the four sitting MPs' performances over the past three years.
"I think they're respected across the House for the manner in which they've acted."
If that good work continued, support and respect would increase, she said.
