TU TIKA! STILL STANDING

Now that James Parker has plead guilty to all the charges of child sex abuse laid against him, and as a follow up to the Hikoi Against Child Abuse of all forms that we held earlier this year, a nationwide but informal group has been established of which I am a part. 

We are called Tu Tika and our goals are to be an independent lobby and voice for the rights of children, and to hold those institutions which are supposed to protect children accountable. 

The strategies and solutions that we are currently working on include holding silent vigils outside Courts whenever child abuse cases are being heard.  We want to keep the issue in the forefront of our own minds and those of our people.  Coupled with public awareness handouts, our vigils will be a reminder that the concession of guilt by one monster does not mean there aren’t more out there.

We will seek to meet with local school, church, sport and community organisation boards regarding their child protection policy development AND implementation.  There’s no doubt in our minds that had the employers and supervisors of James Parker implemented their school policies, many of his victims might have been saved.

We are asking local and regional newspapers to provide us a monthly column space  under the banner of ‘Tu Tika’ where we can raise and address the issues that give rise to the terribly high level of child abuse amongst us.

Additionally each of us are developing relevant resources that can be used by individuals, whānau, hapū, iwi and communities in our regions to educate themselves and others about the issues and what can help address them. 

We’ve set 13th March as an annual nationwide hikoi date to refocus attention on the fact that, although the problem and its causes are undoubtedly universal , the solutions have to be tailored, owned and delivered locally.  

To support our work, we’ve established an annual Tu Tika hui to review progress and revise strategies.  The first of these is planned to be held in Kaitāia this year.

On a personal level, right now I’ve chosen to undertake training via wānanga that are based on our Māori qualification framework and not on that of NCEA.  Why?  Because increasing the numbers of NCEA qualified Māori professionals hasn’t eliminated or even reduced the problem of child abuse one iota; in fact, quite the reverse. 

To my mind, NCEA qualifications don’t and can’t address the reality that, although the problem of child abuse is not a Māori problem, it is one that has hurt many of us and still does. 

Mauri Ora qualifications do address and penetrate that reality with the tikanga that we cannot usefully confront any problem until we confront ourselves, we cannot clean up someone else’s backyard if our own are paru, and before we work with anyone else’s whānau, we had better be prepared to work with our own. 

Tu tika!

DISCONNECTING FROM COLLECTIVE GUILT

The well-known Māori sense of collectivity has its roots in our worldview that we are connected with all things, are sustained by those connections, have a responsibility to maintain them, and wear the consequences if we don’t. 

With this worldview our tūpuna populated and managed an entire hemisphere where 80.9% of the space was comprised of open ocean.  Our collectivity clearly worked well for us.  Then the Crown colonised us. 

Today, instead of enjoying a general sense of collective greatness for any in-group achievements, Māori are more likely to feel a collective sense of guilt for any in-group failings. 

To illustrate, when the news broke in July 2012 that an unknown Kaitāia man was being investigated over numerous child sex abuse allegations, did one single Pākehā spend one single second hoping that the alleged offender wasn’t a Pākeha?  Probably not ay.  Yet I and many other Māori breathed a collective sigh of relief when it turned out James Parker wasn’t Māori.  What an unhealthy response to a truly collective tragedy!  It needs to stop.

Collective guilt is a psychological condition that results from “sharing a social identity with others whose actions represent a threat to the positivity of that identity.”  Many post-Holocaust Germans suffered it to a degree.

Victor Frankl (1905 – 1997) was a psychotherapist who lost both parents, his brother, and many relatives, in that Holocaust. Shortly after his liberation, he composed a stage play “Synchronisation in Buchenwald” full of psychological insight.  But nowhere in it did he blame Germans collectively for what the Third Reich had done to their fellowcitizens. Instead he affirmed that guilt can only be personal and can only be healed by a concept he called the “Will to Meaning,” in which all humans are motivated to search for, find and fulfil the meaning of life. 

Long before Frankl, Meringāroto of Te Aupōuri understood this concept when she responded with these words to her Te Rarawa husband’s stated intent to destroy her people, “Hutia te rito o te harakeke, kei hea te tauranga o te kamoko e ko?  E kii mai koe ki ahau, he aha te mea nui? Maku e ki atu, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.”    

And long before both Meringāroto and Frankl, a man named Jesus looked down from the tree on which his oppressors had crucified him and pled, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.”  Different paradigms, same principle – collective guilt is unnecessary and unhealthy.

I don’t blame Pākehā collectively for the wrongs that the Crown has done to their fellowcitizens. Engari, kei whakapohehetia koutou; kahore te Atua e tinihangatia: ko ta te tangata hoki e rui ai, ko tena tana e kokoti ai. 

From now on, as I fulfil the meaning of my own life, I will enjoy the collective greatness of all my peoples.  But I will no longer do collective guilt for the actions of any one of them.

FREEDOM FROM TERROR

I bear testimony regularly to the reality of a loving father in heaven and his son Jesus Christ, but the story in Saturday’s New Zealand Herald about the hunger strike taking place in Guantanamo, has made me question how much I know about that reality.

Guantanamo is the infamous detention centre run by the USA where terrorists are held.  Five years after Obama said he'd shut it, over 100 prisoners are still chained inside, and when Herald reporter, David Jones, visited last month he was horrified by what he found there.

Mr Jones first visited Gitmo (as it is nicknamed) in November 2002 when “memories of the Twin Towers atrocity were still raw.”  Today he writes, “Few doubted Bush [in 2002] when he told us that the men who were flown there had been caught in the act of waging war on America and its allies, and that among them were the worst of the worst.  More than a decade on, we know the truth to be very different.”

“Only a handful of the 779 detainees who have passed through Gitmo have been put before the dubious, perpetually delayed military commissions staged in Camp Justice, the hill-top courthouse.  They include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his cohorts in the so-called 9/11 Five who, it seems certain, plotted the World Trade Centre attack.”

“These rock stars of Gitmo, as one young serviceman ill-advisedly described them, are held in Camp 7, an unreachable, unmapped secret prison on the naval base, which officially doesn't exist.  As for the others, nine have died (seven by suicide, two of natural causes) and almost 600 more have been freed without charge to return to their own countries or others that have agreed to take them off America’s hands.”

Today 100 men are dying inside Gitmo as a result of a hunger strike that began on February 6^th. 

What is happening in Guantanamo is an utter disgrace, and as a Christian I oppose the USA and its allies continuing their criminal War on Terrorism. Our leaders have averted their own eyes and done their best to stop our eyes from seeing the unfolding tragedy, but they have failed.

Now that media such as the Herald have obtained first-hand reports of it, we can see how hopelessly stained with innocent blood our own hands, hearts and souls are. Will we hear the warning words of the prophet Ezekiel to ancient Israel over its idolatry and militancy and tremble for that of our own?

February 6^th has always meant Waitangi Day for me, but from now on it will also be a symbol of the reign of blood and horror perpetrated in the name of ‘freedom from terror’ upon these men who still feel to pray to the God of their understanding.  They know more about the reality of God than I may ever.

DUNNOKEYO

Last month The Standard published a list of inconsistencies that have come from John Key in the past seven years.  As I read I recalled a line from Nicky Hager’s ‘Pundit’ blog during the 2008 election campaign.  “There’s actually only one John Key, just not the one on show.”

The Standard’s list starts two months before the 2008 election with Key telling Paul Henry on Close Up that he would always be honest.  At the time his nose barely wobbled.  However since then it has grown considerably, along with the scope and impact of the inconsistencies.

22nd May 2008 on Campbell Live Key said, “We are not going to sack public servants, the attrition rate will reduce costs.”  

By September 2011 his government had slashed 2400 public service jobs, and announced another 1000 were set to go within two years.  Using phrases like ‘ongoing changes in staff positions’ or ‘a reflection of the change programmes which have been undertaken,’ more than 3000 positions have now been cut. I wonder if local DoC staff affected by these cuts can tell the difference between being changed and being sacked.

On 27th July 2008, Key said, “We are not going to cut Working for Families [payments].” 

Less than three years later he announced that cuts to the Working for Families payments of ‘high earners’ would kick in at $36,350 p.a.  He who once earned $96,000 a week considered those on $36,350 p.a. to be ‘high earners’.  How richly ironic was that?  Read on.

During the 2011 election campaign, Key claimed that international credit rating agency, Standard and Poors, had told him a credit downgrade would be more likely with a change of government in New Zealand.  A week later S&P contradicted Key’s claim saying, “It is something we just don’t do.  We don’t rate political parties, we rate governments.”

And yet when the double credit downgrade had happened a month earlier Key had said in the House that it didn’t “really matter” because “hey it’s just private debt.” That was more than an inconsistency, it was an out and out untruth and a particularly pernicious one, because most people didn’t understand what it meant when he said it, and most media commentators and economists have never explained nor contradicted it since. 

In the simplest terms, Key was concealing the true level of New Zealand’s indebtedness, which is calculated on a combination of household, business and government debt.  Our true level of indebtedness is what determines our credit rating as a nation, which in turn impacts on how much our money is worth, how many jobs we need to hold down to pay the bills; and so it goes on.

It’s true that politicians in general are “economic with the truth,” but The Standard’s full list, which can be read online at http://thestandard.org.nz/an-honest-man/#comments, shows that John Key has taken that economy to a whole new low.  Combined with his serial brain-fades, he has now earned a new nickname. 

Someone owes Pinnochio an apology, while Dunnokeyo just owes us the truth. 

CONSTITUTION-LITE

There are two different and anomalous constitutional conversations going on right now which most Pākehā are missing out on because they either don’t care or don’t know.  And the main reason for their ignorance is a totally inadequate education that hasn’t taught them the true history of our country, doesn’t even mention our constitution, and hasn’t prepared them to hold this conversation.    

But instead of educating them, the current government has set up the ‘Constitutional Advisory Panel’ (CAP) to review the size and length of term of Parliament, and whether or not it should be fixed; the size and number of electorates, including changing the method for calculating their size; the integrity of electoral legislation; the Māori Electoral Option and participation in elections; Māori seats in Parliament and local government; and the role of the Treaty of Waitangi and the Bill of Rights.

That would be all well and good if parliamentary and local government politics were all that a constitution had to cover.  But they’re not.  In fact they make up less than one third of a constitution, and to review only those aspects amounts to little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the sinking ship of state. 

Where is the review of the state itself; its distribution of sovereignty and lines of accountability?  When do we talk about the relationships between the three main organs of that state?  And, alongside the role of the domestic Te Tiriti o Waitangi, where is the review of the role of He Whakaputanga o Ngā Hapū o Nu Tirani as well as that of the international agreements to which New Zealand is party? To not include these issues and many others in the review is a farcical anomaly. 

Meantime the CAP and its terms of reference have produced some farcical anomalies of their own, including the demand by at least one group of Pākehā that ‘the Treaty’ be expunged from the conversation altogether.   I’m reminded of a cartoon during the National government’s infamous Dawn Raids of the 1970s against Pacific Islanders which showed a woman of colour coming through New Zealand Customs, and an officer pointing to the snake rising out of her luggage while his boss yelled at him, “Never mind the snake!  Check if she’s Samoan!”

Another anomaly is that the CAP has a budget in the region of $3 million and a reporting deadline to Parliament of September 2013.  Meantime, Mātike Mai Aotearoa has held about 150 hui around the country in the past three years on a budget of $300,000 and will report back to the Iwi Chairs Forum in November 2013. 

It’s clear that, until we are able to talk maturely about our constitution based on knowledge rather than on ignorance, the anomalies are set to multiply.  Because it’s an undeniable fact that if current constitutional knowledge was measured in calories, there would be no obesity problem amongst New Zealanders who have been, and continue to be, fed a diet of ‘constitution-lite’.