Rally encourages vote to end poverty
Former Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei has returned to her roots, determined to rally support to change the Government and eradicate poverty.
The Palmy Unites Against Poverty rally on Saturday was a crossparty event in Highbury intended to mobilise the community to take control, to vote, and ensure politicians confronted the issue of poverty.
Turei said her own political awakening happened in Palmerston North in the late 1980s when she was working as an advocate for the Workers Unemployed Rights Centre.
That experience showed her the impact Government economic ‘‘experiments’’ had on low paid workers, the recently unemployed and their whanau.
Turei stood aside from the party’s co-leadership three weeks ago after mounting pressure about her admission she had earlier withheld information about her circumstances to get higher benefit payments than she was entitled to.
She was reluctant to draw parallels with the public reaction to New Zealand First leader Winston Peters’ situation in having been overpaid national superannuation.
‘‘Part of what happened to me is what happens to beneficiaries every day. We saw the denigrating language and attitude towards me about what happened 23 years ago. People don’t feel that way about superannuitants, and that’s good.’’
Turei is standing as a candidate for Te Tai Tonga, but is not on the party’s list, and is campaigning more for the party vote than her own. She said the Greens’ slump in the polls after she revealed her past was more likely to have been a reflection of Labour’s resurgence.
Turei was optimistic about a Labour win, and said it was vital the Greens were a part of its Government.
‘‘There is a risk for our country and the environment if we do not have that influence.’’