By 3 News online staff
In 2007 when John Key was in opposition, he used 12-year-old Aroha Ireland as a poster child for victims of suburbs “destroyed by alcohol and P”.
Five years later, she’s become the unofficial poster child for another epidemic: The brain drain.
Aroha has joined the exodus of Kiwis leaving for Australia, and says there is nothing left for her in New Zealand.
Mr Key famously visited Aroha and her family – a solo mum and four siblings – on McGehan Close in Auckland during the build up to the general election which he won a year later.
He took her to Waitangi Day celebrations to show her a life different from one where “pizza flyers passed like literature”.
But the publicity from Mr Key’s visit left Aroha feeling embarrassed and she was bullied at school. She was later expelled from Mt Albert Grammar School and put into the care of Child, Youth and Family.
The now 17-year-old Aroha is living in Melbourne where she has a job and is engaged to be married. Her soon-to-be mother-in-law, Lisa Spashett, says National did nothing to help her daughter.
"As far as they are concerned, no, they [the National Government] hadn't done anything for them,” she told the New Zealand Herald.
She says the Government has failed people like Aroha and there was nothing to temp her to return.
"I can tell you that straight up and that's why they are in Australia,” she says.
Aroha’s mother, Joan Nathan, told Campbell Live during Mr Key’s visit in 2007 that her kids would not live a life of reliance on the Government like she had.
“My kids are going to get somewhere,” she said. “Maybe not the high paying jobs but I’ve always put into my kids that I don’t want to see them on the dole queue like me.”
3 News
source: newshub archive
