Metira Turei is a Green MP. Unfortunately, she lives in my town. She’s never been particularly smart, honest, or humble. She’s known as a Green princess, looking down on the peons while living in a castle outside of the town.

And she has now confessed that she ripped off the social welfare system. She has not paid the money back. She is doubling down: this is from the Guardian.

If you are going to deal with social welfare, first get your own stuff sorted out. Work and Income NZ prosecutes those who defraud, as they should. But I have seen them work hard to ensure people can pay their rent, get them food parcels, help people into work. One of the reasons NZ has a very low unemployment rate is that the social workers in WINZ do a very good job.

They should be thanked, not considered disposable peons by a confessed fraudster.

Last weekend I revealed a lie, a lie that I decided to talk about because of the situation we as a society find ourselves in.

I am the co-leader of the Green party of Aotearoa New Zealand – the third biggest political party in our small democracy. We are two months from our general election, and we’re in a tight tussle to change the government.

Over the weekend, at our party’s AGM, we launched an incomes policy which would create the most significant changes to New Zealand’s welfare system in a generation. It’s a comprehensive piece of work that rolls back many of the benefit cuts and sanctions that have been put in place by successive governments in New Zealand (some of which are mirrored in other countries).
New Zealand’s most shameful secret: ‘We have normalised child poverty’
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I decided this weekend I would tell supporters, the media and the country that two decades ago I lied to a government ministry while I was receiving a benefit.

This is why I did it.

I had my daughter, Piupiu, at 22. I was a single, young mum with no formal education qualifications. After she was born, I knew I needed to forge a career for myself so that I could financially support us and give my girl the best life possible. I made the choice to go to law school.

Over five years, I received a training incentive allowance (a benefit that has since been ditched by our current government), as well as a payment for single parents. I also had help from my family, and my daughter’s father’s family.

Despite all that support, which is much more than many people in similar circumstances have, I did not have enough money to pay the rent and put food on the table. And so, like many – but not all – people faced with that choice, I lied to survive.
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I lived in a few flats over the years with a few different flatmates. I didn’t tell the government department in charge of my benefit about some of those flatmates. If I had, my benefit would have been reduced, and I would not have had enough money to get by.

Of course, I had no idea that when I made that decision that 20-odd years later I’d be a politician, campaigning on benefit reform, two months out from an election.

I am in a privileged, fortunate position now; I have a voice and I have a platform. Thousands of other New Zealanders who are on a benefit don’t have that. In fact, they’re routinely silenced, marginalised and persecuted for the mere fact that they are poor.

That came into sharp focus a couple of weeks ago when we were preparing for our policy launch. I came across a news story about a woman who took her own life after she was accused of benefit fraud and told that she was to be prosecuted. It was eventually found that she had committed no offence but it was too late for her and the family she left behind. Reading about that case is what spurred me to tell my story – the whole story, not the redacted, PR version.

Some people have asked why it took me 15 years as an MP to do it. To that, all I can say is that nobody wants to be defined by a lie – I certainly never wanted to be. But the outrage and the urgency I felt after reading that woman’s story was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. For me, it felt like it was now or never.

This is going to bite the Greens. Hard. You cannot talk about the environment and social justice when you yourself have a carbon footprint the size of a blue whale (all those free flights to wellington you get as an MP) and have ripped off the taxpayer. A beneficiary emailed Whaleoil this: it sums it up.

I was like you once…I was a single mother on the DPB. But that is where the similarity ends.

Unlike you, I was married to the father of my children, and unlike you I told WINZ who the father of my children was.

Unlike you I did not steal from the New Zealand tax payer and lie to WINZ by not declaring income.

Unlike you I didn’t blame WINZ for “making me poor” as you did. I blame myself for my poor choice of husband and my subsequent decision to leave him.

Unlike you I am grateful to WINZ and for having the DPB to help me in my time of need, and for the ability it gave me to improve my life and those of my children.

Unlike you I managed my finances in such a way that I was able to run a modest home and care for my children without resorting to lying, cheating and defrauding the system.

The incongruence of simultaneously studying law while breaking the law is breathtaking, and characterizing all beneficiaries as liars and cheats by saying “everyone does it” is an insult to all honest beneficiaries. I am neither a liar or a cheat yet you have told the world I am. No Madam, you are the liar and the cheat. Do not try to justify your moral bankruptcy by heaping blame on others.

On behalf of all honest, law abiding beneficiaries, you disgust me.

Merita is now a liability to the progressive government. She could face investigation from the police as she has acknowledged this. Politicians are not immune in this country: Chester Burrows was in the dock for less, and Trevor Mallard once had to defend an assault charge laid by an activist. Both were found innocent.

If she is convicted she cannot serve as an MP. At all. She will have ruined her life.

Her best move would be to resign, pay the monies back, and accept this with gratitude that she was not shown the full weight of the law. But that is not the way to bet. She is more likely to brazen it out.

She has alienated many by this: those who were thinking green — working, honest folks who want justice and fairness. But those people hate cheats.

She is now tainted. She will go, willingly or not. And she is now saving the Labour party, for the Greens are now electoral poison, tainted by her.

UPDATE

The story has progressed. Shot:

Metiria Turei says she’ll pay back benefit money she wasn’t entitled to receive.

Metiria Turei says she will pay back the money she owes to Work and Income after admitting she lied while she was a beneficiary.

Comment from Cam Slater:

Paying it back is fine, but she should be prosecuted and convicted for such a deliberate fraud.

She has realised her stunt has backfired and their internal polls must be clearly showing that. She has been forced into this position not out of guilt or remorse, but the stark political reality that it has cost the Greens votes.

What the silly cow had also failed to realise is that she has now exposed the baby daddy to recovery of liable parent contributions from IRD…for 18years of missing payments from the dead beat dad.

On top of that her changing stories have revealed she also received money from her family, the baby daddy’s family, as well as the boarders. I’d say she has bigger problems than just her benefit fraud.

There is a National MP who is not standing — Scott Barclay — because he recorded a conversation with his electoral secretary without her permission. He did not trust her (with good reason). He is resigning for less. Many politicians have resigned for less. Metira has just bankrupted a man, caused her family to be investigated, and destroyed her career.