Saturday, November 11, 2006

An 8 Hour Working Day? Yeah, Right.


Yesterday commemorated the eight hour working day, yet my workload last week was pretty typical for me and, I’ll wager, probably for a lot of you as well.

MONDAY:
• Leave for Auckland 5 a.m. arrive 9 a.m. Find a space to write and send the week’s column to the Age.
• Deliver speech to the Australasian Cemeteries and Crematoria Association conference titled ‘A Values Journey – Tangihanga and the Coronial Process.’

TUESDAY:
• Leave for Kaitaia 6 a.m. arrive 10 a.m. Meet to review a business option that needs more time and effort. We identify the mahi to be done, allocate personnel and time to it, and set our next meeting.
• Meet Police Iwi Liaison Officer [ILO], Te Uri Reihana, about the numbers of Ngati Kahu being apprehended, charged and processed through the District Court and find … what’s this? Is it possible that our crime rate is actually dropping? Well, it’s way too soon to tell if a trend is developing, so in the interim we’ll organise a separate hui with the District Court people.
• Teleconference with Waddy Wadsworth about training our marae delegates, executive members, directors and portfolio convenors and getting them to finalise the strategic plan. We’ll try for mid-November and see how it goes.

WEDNESDAY:
• Help mum draft her statement for Te Rarawa’s 20th Anniversary booklet. Oh, the tie that binds.
• Back to Ngati Kahu mode. Meet Te Puni Kokiri analyst, Keringawai Evans, about their new Maori Potential Approach. Looks good, but we’ll need another meeting to flesh out an application for some key workers, some tax and business development expertise and other needs.
• Meet Statistics New Zealand ILO, Telly Warren, about the upcoming roll-out of Census 2006 data. No work needed on this one – thank goodness!
• Meet Fire Services ILO, Willy More, about making our Ngati Kahu marae safer. Seems they must meet the same fire safety standards as a commercial enterprise. Well, what’s a life worth? Will need to work on reducing the costs though.
• Teleconference with Te Ohu Kai Moana about getting our amended constitution ratified. We’ll use a joint postal ballot / hui-a-iwi process, but have yet to set the closing date before sending out the public and private notices to our registered adult members. Still, we’re getting closer to our share of the Fisheries Settlement.

THURSDAY:
• Hold weekly staff meeting postponed from Monday. Have to reschedule the monthly staff supervisions as well. Promise I will. ASAP.
• Work on funding applications.
• Host our iwi radio show that night and get two calls – one to do with local, nitty-gritty stuff. The other from a Ngati Kahu person in Auckland listening to us via internet. Uplifting to my tired heart and mind.

FRIDAY:
• Review the week’s work and prepare for this month’s Land Claim negotiations and monthly Runanga meeting – the former in Kaitaia this Friday 27th, the latter at Te Paatu marae on the 28th.
• Take a call from Peter Jackson – due to it being Labour Weekend, can I get this column to him by midday Monday? Yeah, right.
• Send everyone home early at 4 p.m.

I’m not skiting or complaining – just reminding us all to take a breather, stop and go home when we should. In the end no success outside the home is worth failure within it. It’s an eight hour working day – that’s all.

Hei konei. Hei kona.

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