End Maori quotas says Tamihere

By AUDREY YOUNG


Associate Maori Affairs Minister John Tamihere, who agitated for affirmative action programmes 20 years ago as a student, no longer supports quotas for Maori.

"I no longer support that because we have come of age," he said in a speech to the National Press Club in Wellington last night.

"There was a time when our numbers coming through were so narrowly defined where we needed to engage in a number of sectors, and we didn't have the opportunity or the capacity, where affirmative action programmes were arguably okay.

"Now our demographic spike is coming through, our numbers are okay and we can start to succeed on merit rather than through quotas."

Mr Tamihere also predicted that the Maori seats would go.

"It's a matter of when, not if. They will go as the maturity of our community and society and MMP continues on."

He said his attitude was "to counterbalance what I call iwi fundamentalism - which will lead to separatism.

"The pendulum has swung through the 1980s and 1990s that has affirmed people who suffer from 'iwi-itis' too much."