Coffey: ‘Families need the basics’
Tamati Coffey says three more years of Te Ururoa Flavell isn’t ‘‘going to change anything’’, so he’s standing for government.
Coffey is the Labour Party’s candidate for the Waiariki electorate – one of seven electorates in which people of Ma¯ori descent can choose to cast their electorate vote.
Coffey said Ma¯ ori were overrepresented in negative statistics and he wanted to solve some of the problems facing ‘‘te ao Ma¯ ori’’ [the Ma¯ ori world].
‘‘You’ll be sold this picture by the current government that you need this economic growth to help that stuff. But we say, well, at some point you’ve got to make a call.
‘‘If we don’t address this imbalance, it’s just going to keep getting worse,’’ he said.
‘‘I don’t think another 3 years under the current regime is going to change anything, so I’m calling out for a change.’’
Coffey is of Nga¯ ti Tu¯ wharetoa, Nga¯ti Porou, Nga¯ti Awa, Nga¯ti Whakaue and Tu¯ hourangi descent.
Coffey worked as a television presenter from 2005 to 2013 and currently owns Ponsonby Rd Lounge Bar in Rotorua. In 2014, he stood for the Rotorua electorate seat.
Coffey said parts of the New Zealand economy were going well, but the economy wasn’t everything.
Labour was focusing on health, housing and education, he said.
‘‘One question I get everywhere is, where is your funding for mental health?,’’ Coffey said.
’’We will ring-fence money for mental health and it won’t be sucked into the big budget for health,’’ he said.
‘‘We will put a health professional into every secondary school in New Zealand, so they can intervene early if there is a young person with issues that they need to [share].
Housing was also a ‘‘huge problem’’, he said.
‘‘We’ve got the ‘silver medal’ in Rotorua, for the second highest rate of homelessness, in Rotorua.
‘‘But it doesn’t need to be like this.’’
Labour has pledged to build 100,000 affordable houses over ten years to help relieve the pressure on the housing market, he said.
Labour will offer first-time students three years of industry training, polytech or university study, with the course fees paid for by government.
‘‘We think that because the nature of work is changing so much, with digitisation.
‘‘What we’re saying is, we need to make an investment in people, so if you find yourself out of a job, you’re able to retrain,’’ he said.