Letter: Village voters

Te Tuhi Kelly on 27/02/2024

Whomever wrote this piece is so bent they can't lay straight in bed at night if they tried. Our nation is riddled with the village choices dipping their dirty mitts into the public purse, this is your village democracy at work and you expect me not to write about this. Since Albert Henry was caught rorting the system, we have had decades of village favourites using the village democratic process to rort the system for their own selfish needs. What? You expect me not to write about this and you call me offensive and racist. Think again buddy. I went campaigning in my village of Nika’o and what do I get, “when was I putting on a kaikai, when was I going to hand out the cartons of chickens, when was I going to do this that and everything else that they wanted”. They could not get to grips with, the benefit comes after the hard work and not before. By perpetuating this village lifestyle, you and others like you, have created and continue to support a generational noose around the village. A nationwide welfare system that denies the very people who need help from reaching their potential by keeping them in a perpetual hand out, what is in it for me situation rather than promoting a hand up, that is not the connection for sustainability or resilience of our people. My final point goes back to the beginning of the anonymous writers opening comments that what I wrote was, “highly offensive and racist”, one cannot be offensive when the truth is evident in my response, in social media, in the local news media, in the court system and one cannot be racist to one’s own race, unless the letter writer thinks I’m a honky. I may look like a honky to some but my DNA tests out at 87.5% Polynesian, with a smattering of Scandinavian and Celtic.