UNFORGETTABLE

No matter how old I get, I remember the examples of all my mātua for whom voting day was an exciting privilege and a family event.  My Pawarenga whānau were my most immediate influence and they always took us with them when they voted.  But our Ngātaki whanau were our most politicising influence.  

They travelled with Matiu Rata during every election campaign, and whenever he came to Pawarenga they all stayed in our home.  This meant we got exposed to whakaaro that we might not otherwise have encountered.  It also meant that, although I grew up questioning and challenging almost everything and everyone, including Matiu, I never ever questioned if I should vote.

This election, our eldest grandchild is eligible to vote for the first time.  He too has had politicising influences from all sides of his whakapapa and is likely to vote every chance he gets.  But we know from past and current trends that many rangatahi don’t share his experience, aren’t enrolled, and won’t vote.

The reasons for this are captured eloquently in a series of questions put by another whanaunga from my Ōwhata side, Robert McDowell, who asks, “Do governments create jobs other than [those] … that produce nothing of value [but] fleece ... people's personal wealth and [our] national assets?

“Do governments create industries; or do innovative people, who thereafter subcontract to governments according to specification?

“Do governments create opportunities for innovation; or do they assassinate our children's imagination with … years of trauma-based mind control?

“Do governments assassinate local opportunities so as to assimilate more rats onto their government job-scheme treadmill; or do they outsource our local industries to benefit the slaves in third-world nations?

“What value does government bring to the global table other than that which it has pilfered from the people's plate? Is it not our table, our food, our cutlery, our china, our chairs [but] only their appetite that feasts?”

Robert goes on to write, “In Reality, government is a psychopathic projection of collectivist force; i.e. ‘Do what I say or I will hurt you.’  Government does not even exist without the people’s belief in it. Through one form of coercion or another the people have been stripped bare of their self-belief and intrepid spirit. Government is the illusion of authority created by fear, self-interest, cowardice and greed.”

I can’t fault his analysis.  It’s very sound.  So is the ultimate question he poses to us all; to vote or not to vote?  

For myself, at this time when politics has never been dirtier, the answer lies in a simple, clean memory of sitting under the kitchen table listening to my mātua talk into the early hours of the morning about my future and the role that their voting played in it.  They gave me hope.  They still do. 

"Go ahead,” Robert concludes, “... make your own choice; but don't you ever presume that you can make mine". 

Yes, you are right my whanaunga.  Engari, maumahara noa ahau te tauira o ōku tūpuna.  So, although the example we leave our mokopuna may be different in detail to that of our tupuna, we honour them all by making sure it is as hopeful and unforgettable as theirs was to us.