Turia support of teenage pregnancy 'extreme'

3.00pm

Comments by Maori Party co-leader Turiana Turia that Maori teenage pregnancy is not a problem and can help boost the Maori population are irresponsible and extreme, Race Relations and Education Minister Trevor Mallard said today.

Maori pregnancy among 13 to 17-year-olds is 26.2 per 1000 teenagers, more than five times that of non-Maori.

Mrs Turia was encouraging teenage pregnancies by saying there was no problem, Mr Mallard told reporters.

"They are a problem," he said. "It is not appropriate to encourage 13-year-olds to have babies. They are just about babies themselves. Most New Zealanders would say this is irresponsible."

Mr Mallard said he saw "far too many" cases of teenage pregnancy where the young parents did not have the support they needed.

While associate Maori affairs minister, the former Labour MP had indicated she believed increasing the Maori population was important, he said.

"Having a shorter gap between generations is, as she has said, a good way to do that."

Mr Mallard said, as a teenage father himself, he did not object to teenage pregnancies but policies should encourage teenagers to defer having babies out of their early teens and into their late teens, or preferably into their 20s.

With the average age of mothers in New Zealand over 30, population replacement could be an issue for discussion, he said.

"But the idea that you build a particular proportion of the population by having a shorter gap, when you come down to early teens, is not good for them.

"It's the sort of attitude that, quite frankly, is extremist," he said.

In a speech on Maori sexual and reproductive health on Monday, Mrs Turia said she was "intolerant of the excessive focus on controlling our fertility".

"I objected to their analysis of our fertility as a problem," she said.

The annual growth rate of the Maori population was projected to slow from 1.4 per cent in 2002 to 1.2 per cent in 2021, she said.

That would result in the number of Maori children aged from 0-14 years falling from 37 to 30 per cent of the total Maori population over the next 20 years.

"Maybe one of our policy goals in the Maori Party should be to go forth and multiply," Mrs Turia said.

- NZPA