Peters hits at system

Press, 7 December 1988, Page 1

Peters hits at system

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

A growing class system militates against a partnership of the races, according to Mr Winston Peters.

The Opposition spokesman on employment and Maori affairs was speaking to a public meeting of nearly 1000 in Hastings.

He said New Zealand could not accept a situation where 19 per cent of fourth formers were Maori but less than 3 per cent of Maoris were university graduates.

It could not accept a failure rate where only one Maori student in 20 got an “A” grade in School Certificate while one European student in five did. “These differences will so heat racial tension that major confrontation is inevitable if the process is not reversed,” Mr Peters said.

From Maori society that required the resetting of agendas and concentrating on educating the young; for European society it required generosity of spirit and an acknowledgement that assistance had to be immediate. The evolution of a growing class system in New Zealand was not based on strength, birth, money or even race — but solely on education.

The overwhelming proportion of university students today came from relatively wealthy homes, he said. Research had shown clearly that academic success today, both at school and at the higher tertiary levels, had more to do with the background of the student than their intelligence. So it was with the children of Maori or Pacific Island parents, Mr Peters said. That was not because of some genetic defect but because children from a lower socioeconomic background had much lower chances of academic success. The reality of 1988 was that education determined the choices for young people, and the better the education the better the choices and opportunities. Children of Maori parents under-performed mainly because they came from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, he said. Maori children from higher groups out-performed the average European child. Marrying the two concepts — that education was the key to economic prosperity and that children from lower socioeconomic groups, regardless of intelligence, did not perform as well as children from higher groups — pointed to the trap for Maoridom and for race relations. No matter if the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi were honoured, no matter how much money the State poured into Maori Access and other schemes, if the cycle could not be broken the Maori race was doomed to underachievement, Mr Peters said.

Condemning a race to underachievement would bring in its train unemployment, higher crime, even poorer health and suicides among the young. "It will not be any wonder if race riots and race hatred grew in such an environment,” he said.