Welfare fraudster should be NZer of the Year!

Guy Williams writes:

When Metiria Turei stood up and made her now infamous speech, arguing that we need to change the welfare system and the narrative around those at the bottom, I was proud. It was about time.

It was also a ludicrous political strategy, and a surprising admission for a politician to make. She told us she was a young single mother so desperate, that she lied to get more money from WINZ to support her family. …

People called her a liar. She tried to respond: “I know, I’m the one who told you that! I did a speech admitting that on the news and everything! That was my point!” 

Criticism is always understandable, and the backlash was poorly managed, but this was something else. Why were people so incredibly angry? Do people really think she’s a criminal? Or a danger? A fraudster!

To me, the more she’s called a fraud, or a cheat, or a criminal, the more I feel like that reinforces the point she was trying to make. Many said that her controversy overshadowed the message, and for most New Zealanders it probably did. They’ll see the headlines and remember her as just that MP who did the “benefit fraud”, but to me, she’s a bit of a hero. 

Yep, what a hero.

Williams glosses over a key point. Turei didn’t just lie back in the 1990s about her income. She lied in 2017 about her situation back then. Her claims of desperation and a starving child did not hold water as the father’s family were very invested in the child’s wellbeing. She implied they were a family of deadbeats who left Turei unsupported. When they approached Radio NZ to put the record straight, that is when she resigned. She couldn’t afford to have them speak publicly about how much support she got from them.

She took her chance, and while she was a long way from sticking the landing (she fell off the landing pad, cartwheeled into the stands and knocked over the hotdog stand), she helped spark the most significant political change of the past nine years, and she helped open peoples minds and hearts towards our treatment of our poor. I hope people will remember her kindly, and that’s why Metiria Turei is my New Zealander of the Year.

It is amazing the bubble some people live in.