Hardship and Hope

This is essential reading from journalist Aaron Smale, on the explicit policies of the Crown that deprived Māori children of the right to thrive educationally. "[T]he damage goes far beyond that inflicted on children for speaking Maori. Government officials from the country’s earliest days have explicitly held views and instigated policies that limited the academic opportunities of Maori students, simply because they were Maori. New Zealand had race-based policies for over 100 years. Even when those policies were no longer official, they have persisted unofficially."

This is a wonderful analysis from Kate Frykberg, who led the Todd Foundation for ten years, and chairs Te Muka Rau charitable trust. She lays down the challenge to philanthropists look squarely at how wealth is enabled by colonisation, environmental exploitation and privilege, and to ask themselves how they have benefited from these forces. And then to return money to its source by funding indigenous, environmental and equity causes.

Denis O’Reilly writes from rich experience about the community-building that’s missing from the current wave of medium density social housing, and fears the emergence of new slums as a result. He also talks about his own involvement in social housing at Waiohiki Marae in Hawkes Bay, and the need to involve prospective tenants in discussion about how to build community in their new homes.

Taurus Taurima grew up in the Hastings suburb of Flaxmere, and by his own description lived in a world that resembled scenes from 'Once Were Warriors'. He has done time in prison and been a patched Mongrel Mob member; he is also razor smart, hard working, innovative and humble. In 2016 he and his wife Tinaya set up a company, Topline Contracting, and they lived with their children in a tin shed while they got established. Now Topline employs 60-plus, and Taurus has set up an academy to provide workplace training and pastoral care to build the skills and job prospects of workers and families who are trapped in poverty.
I got to know Taurus over several conversations this year, spent a day meeting some of his workers on sites around Napier and Hastings, and talked to his advisors and mentors. He is a remarkable young man, determined to unlock and nurture the untapped talent in deprived communities like the one he grew up in. As he told me: “There are people in there who have the ability to do amazing things. The life they live might be all they know from when they were a child. They’re just born into it. They haven’t seen another option.”

There's now a large pile of research on the harms of educational streaming, and its role in blocking the learning of Māori and Pasifika students. This piece from academics at the University of Canterbury is another useful contribution. Māori and Pasifika students told them of the feelings of "belittlement and shame" when stream placements denied them the opportunity for learning and extension. On the other hand, those who ended up on top streams "face a different emotional dilemma and often feel out of place or are made to feel out of place. While they aspire to succeed and embrace their position, they also battle self-doubt and feelings of otherness."
The researchers say streaming is a "mirror to structural racism", amplifying the message from "Kōkirihia - The plan for removing streaming from our schools", released by Tokona Te Raki Māori Futures Collective in late 2022. That report lays out an action plan for the elimination of streaming by 2030. As Core Education's Hana O'Regan points out in Kōkirihia, streaming in New Zealand has its roots in the deeply racist beliefs of educational leaders, who determined that schooling for Māori should be limited because they were - according to a school inspector to the House of Representatives in 1862 - "better calculated by nature to get their living by manual than mental labour". According to the Director of Education in 1931, "education should lead the Māori lad to be a good farmer and the Māōri girl to be a good farmer's wife".
"The practices and beliefs that lead to the streaming of students hurt not only the learners, but also the communities and ultimately the economy," writes Hana in Kokirihia. "They impact a learner's perceptions of themselves and their abilities, and create tangible and intangible barriers that perpetuate inequities that have been designed into our communities."

An important read here from Eugene Bingham at The Post, about the enormous scale and pernicious impact of debt owed to government agencies, which is pushing poor families further into poverty and locking them there. Some 550,000 low-income earners, mostly on benefits, owe $3.5b to the MSD, Ministry of Justice and IRD. In many cases the debt is due to overpayment or mistakes in payment by the agency.
As budget advisor Heather Lange tells Eugene: “Clients will come in and they can’t afford food and now the car’s broken down or they’re behind in their power or whatever the crisis is and we’ll say, ‘Go to [MSD]’, and we know that what is going to happen is their debt will just grow and grow,” she says.
“It just diminishes any hope they have of ever getting out of their situation. All it does is make the hole bigger, all it’s doing is saying, ‘Hey, we’ll give you this little bit of help’ – but it doesn’t help, it’s just more debt.”

With the election over and the likely formation of a coalition government with a “lock ‘em up” approach to crime, now is a good time to tune in to this outstanding presentation from JustSpeak, a youth-led movement for criminal justice reform, and Amnesty International Aotearoa. Listen to Tā Kim Workman – a former policeman, head of corrections, and passionate criminal justice advocate – talk about our previous “crime waves”, and the criminalisation of young Māori through abusive state care residences, racist policing and crowded prisons. By 1971, one in nine Māori males aged 17-19 were in prison. “The lesson is clear enough,” he says, “when you increase the imprisonment or institutionalisation rate of young people, you can reliably expect crime will continue to increase over the long term.”

It’s well worth setting aside the 54 minutes to listen to this part of the JustSpeak/Amnesty event, in which an outstanding panel of frontline experts bring deep knowledge and insight to the debate about youth justice. Their commentary puts the “tough on crime” political soundbites in the shade. The panel features youth workers Aaron Hendry and Wasa Ali, youth forensic psychiatrist Enys Delmage, incoming Chief Children’s Commissioner Claire Achmad, and Corrina Thompson, head of Pillars, a charity devoted to supporting the children of prisoners.

And hear Dean Wickliffe, one of New Zealand’s longest-serving prisoners, describe a life of incarceration that began in a state care residence at the age of 15: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tr5GEFLr58&t=620s

The trip from Wadestown to Waitangirua tells the story of lethal inequality in New Zealand: a short trip that moves from the very richest New Zealand to the very poorest. It brings to life the NZ Index of Deprivation, the statistical atlas of our inequity. "By the time I reached Porirua," writes Max, "crossing over the highway and entering the city’s east, the atlas in my mind was a blotch of angry scarlet. Islands of deprivation had become a sea. And life expectancy had plummeted, to 74 for boys and 78 for girls. From Wadestown to Waitangirua, in a trip that took just half an hour, 10 years of expected life had ebbed away."
Note: As a companion read, have a look at the article titled "Embrace and Innovate" (posted here on the site) about grassroots action in those poorest streets of east Porirua to make a difference for families and children. RM

This is a small, powerful book from Horowhenua GP and writer Glenn Colquhoun, about the life-shaping harms inflicted by society on the young people he sees in his clinic. As ever with Glenn, it's beautifully and softly written, but devastatingly urgent. As I wrote to Glenn after I read it: 'I want to send it to every politician seeking votes in this election and make it the law that they are not allowed to open their mouths about anything to do with anything until they have read it.' I recommend you have a few copies up your sleeve to give to those who think the answers are prisons and boot camps. RM.

From E-Tangata, a moving and important insight from the long-standing principal of Tamaki College. Soana Pamaka speaks of the enormous challenges her students face, and how she has seen them repeated across generations of students in her time at the school. She talks about the practical steps her school takes to make learning possible for them. "We'll never break the cycle for our young people if we don't go outside our little school," she says of the need to address the student's whole environment. "Before we even think about how are students can do well at school, we have to deal with their underlying basic needs."

In one of the most deprived suburbs of South Auckland, once-struggling whānau are taking the lead in building strong community bonds, and helping siloed government social service agencies understand what families need to thrive.