Mike's Minute: Waikato-Tainui is a wonderful success story

My ongoing advice to the Government is: don’t make big announcements on a Friday.

I watched the Prime Minister from Waikato at the Ruakura Superhub.

This is what the Government lives for. It's what they dream of. It's what they preach.

The Superhub by the way is one of the great visions for this country. It services 45% of the population and 55% of GDP. It's part of what they call the "Golden Triangle" when it comes to business, servicing Hamilton, Tauranga and Auckland.

Anyway, at the press conference was a representative from the company with a trillion dollars in assets under management. I'm talking about the local tribe, Waikato-Tainui, with the Prime Minister.

Tuku Morgan from the tribe, who in another life became famous for expensive taxpayer funded underwear, spoke eloquently about what the Superhub means, how big it is, how massive the vision is and how transformational it all could be.

So, not just a miss for the Government in terms of coverage for exactly what this country needs, but also the chance for us to see a part of the so-called Māori economy we don’t often see.

Waikato-Tainui are a wonderful success. The sadness for me is I don’t see them as Māori. I see them as a business, and a good one. Race should not be part of business because performance is the key to business, not race.

But there is no denying their money came out of the Treaty settlement process and they have taken it and run with it.

Not only don’t we get to see the successful side of the Māori economy, we don't ask often enough how it is you can have that much success and yet still have so much Māori deprivation?

That’s the news we do hear a lot about - poverty, addiction, violence and bad health. It's all bad news. Why?

If Māori can do well why are we so obsessed with why they aren't? And if there is a way out for those who need it, and Māori have provided the blueprint, why is it still an issue?

Māori are held back, we are told. Are they? Why haven't Waikato-Tainui been held back? Or Ngai Tahu?

If you listen to the Willie Jackson's of the world, he will tell you colonialism has ruined the Māori dream.

I didn’t see that on Friday. Quite the opposite.

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