Awatere Huata role
Disgraced former MP Donna Awatere Huata has secured a top job advising Ma¯ ori on climate change. Awatere Huata was on Monday appointed Ma¯ ori Climate Commissioner by the Sir Mark Solomon-led Ma¯ ori Carbon Foundation, a private carbon trading business which plants forests on communal Ma¯ ori land. The foundation’s board includes former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully and former National Party president Michelle Boag. Her role would include providing advice and Ma¯ ori-focused research, which would help New Zealand in meeting its target under the Paris climate agreement. Awatere Huata said she would focus on three main “pou”: representing landowners’ interests, bringing Ma¯ ori worldview into the climate change discussion and sharing conversations with indigenous peoples around the world. Awatere Huata was found guilty of fraud in 2005 and sentenced to two years and nine months in jail. She and husband Wi Huata were found to have taken $80,000 from a state-funded trust she founded to improve literacy in underprivileged Ma¯ ori children. “I asserted my innocence all of the way through,” Awatere Huata said.
Adisability law described as a “shame on society” looks likely to be quashed, with a high-level government committee to consider its repeal today. Families who care for their disabled loved ones have been fighting to overturn Part 4A of the NZ Public Health and Disability Act since 2013, when its introduction banned them taking discrimination cases over the Government’s family care policy to court.
The Herald understands a proposal to revoke the law will go before a Cabinet committee today, and if approved will come before Cabinet next week.
If the repeal goes ahead it would be a huge win for the families. The law’s removal will mean the Government would have to pay all carers — including spouses and parents of the disabled, who are currently unpaid — or it could face yet more legal action.
“I hope they get this right,” said tetraplegic Peter Ray, whose partner Rosemary has cared for him unpaid since 1999. “The [courts] talked about disabled people being ‘entitled’ to funding for necessary supports. The ministry still insists I and others with very high support needs are ‘entitled’ to nothing.”
Part 4A was rushed through under urgency by former Health Minister Tony Ryall in 2013 after the then Government lost a succession of discrimination cases in court.
Outrage ensued, with law professor Andrew Geddis labelling the legislation “constitutionally outrageous” and a “shame on society” as it effectively places the Government above the law.
In its pre-election manifesto, Labour said it would repeal the legislation, and that it would ensure all family caregivers could “provide and be paid for assessed care for their disabled adult family member”.
Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter since called it “one of the worst human rights violations of the previous Government”.
However, in the year since the Government was formed, little progress has been made.
Genter and Health Minister David Clark said a review of the policy was under way, but refused to say what advice they had received from officials, Treasury or Crown Law.
The Crown’s argument, outlined in a succession of court cases since 2000, has been wide-ranging.
Firstly, it said families should be covered by “natural support” — that there is a social obligation that requires family to look after each other.
It also said paying family members could taint relationships within families, and there was potential for fraudulent financial gain.
Most strongly, however, it argued changing the policy would have wide fiscal implications, costing up to $593