Covid-19 could spell another economic downturn for Māori, report warns

Wednesday, 8 July 2020

Returning to kura kaupapa can empower young Māori into higher-skilled and higher-paid careers.

Māori at risk of being further marginalised by the Covid-19 economic downturn need to '’emerge stronger than before’’ in high-skilled careers, a new report says.

Indigenous New Zealanders had become a minority ‘’struggling as the backbone of the blue-collar workforce’’ in past economic slumps, the Business and Economic Research Limited (BERL) Whano report found.

''History illustrates that crises don't impact unequal people equally,’’ it says.

Harmony King-Te Raki, 21, says she was known as ''that Maori girl'' at her mainstream school, but completed NCEA 3 with the help of kura kaupapa and family support.

The report – created in partnership with Ngāi Tahu’s Tokona te Raki and Waikato-Tainui – highlighted previous downturns for Māori like urbanisation in the 60s, the economic reforms of the 80s, the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, and the Christchurch earthquakes.

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Key ways to avoid further inequality was having an authentic Treaty partnership between Māori and the Crown, a system that delivers and measures skills and competencies rather than just qualifications, and equal access to life-long learning would help Māori prosper, it said.

Covid-19 was a chance to reset, and have Māori rangatahi (young) lead the country to prosperity and build immunity to further inequality.

Employers should be incentivised to invest in training workers at all skill levels and throughout their working lives.

‘’It’s about constantly filling your kete (bag) with new skills … to help you adapt as the economy changes,’’ Tokona te Raki executive director Eruera Tarena said.

The ‘’constant bombardment of doomsday predictions’’ – climate change, water pollution, the takeover by robots – creating a growing unease about the future for Māori had been exacerbated by Covid-19, Tarena said.

‘’We want to emerge stronger than before, and we want to never be this vulnerable again.’’

Māori, previously channelled into certain jobs like manufacturing and labour, were ‘’good with our hands, but also good with our heads and our hearts’’.

But they were underrepresented in technology, science, engineering and mathematics, health and education, he said.

'’It’s about supporting Māori where they want to go, not where someone else thinks they should go.’’

Harmony King-Te Raki is now working to empower young Maori into higher skilled and paid careers.

The most pronounced pay gap was for those aged 35 to 54 years old, with Māori earning $10,000 a year less than the average.

Closing that gap would result in Māori earning an additional $2.6 billion a year, a 2017 BERL and Tokona te Raki study found.

The Māori workforce grew by 50 per cent between 2013 and 2018, as opposed to 20 per cent among the general population.

‘’That growth is the source of strength and opportunity,’’ Tarena said.

Rangatahi ‘’just wanted a future where everyone could get a job and make enough money to look after and feed their whānau, and to have a home’’, the report says.

Harmony King-Te Raki, 21, felt unsupported in mainstream schooling.

‘’I thought, everybody knows me as that Māori girl, so I may as well be that stereotype.’’

But she completed NCEA 3, with the help of kura kaupapa and a mum determined she would do well in life.

She is now helping to inspire others to prosper, as an intern with Tokona te Raki.

‘’Success to me just looks like happiness.

‘’If you’re doing whatever makes you happy, then I think that’s successful.’’

Increasing robotics could mean fewer jobs for whānau, but ‘’robotics can only go so far because a robot doesn’t have feelings’’.

Maui Brennan, 22, a research analyst intern with Tokona te Raki, said with whānau in the tourism industry, Covid-19 had been a ‘’bit of a shock’’.

‘’Jobs can be lost so easily, particularly in our community.

‘’You have to look towards ambitious projects or you can’t survive in this environment.’’

Māori values aligned well with careers using face-to-face skills, like consulting or social work, he believed.

He hoped a future education system would incorporate kaupapa Māori in learning tools, which could be as simple as providing mentoring.