NGATI KAHU LEADERS

Last Saturday, at the Hui-a-Tau (AGM) of Te Rūnanga-ā-Iwi ō Ngāti Kahu, Professor Margaret Mutu (Te Whānau Moana Te Rorohuri) was returned as Chair, and Tania Thomas (Ngāti Taranga) was returned as Secretary, while Rose Vazey-Roberts (Patu Kōraha) was elected to fill the office of Treasurer.  All three were elected unopposed.

With regard to the portfolios, the following people were elected unopposed. 

The Taumata Kaumātua Portfolio continues to be led by Ven Timoti Flavell (Te Whānau Moana Te Rorohuri).  Timoti also chairs Te Taumata Kaumātua o Ngāti Kahu which sits alongside the Rūnanga.  Their tikanga guidance locally, regionally, nationally and internationally in behalf and support of Ngāti Kahu is invaluable.

Reremoana Rēnata (Matarahurahu / Ngāti Ruaiti) continues to convene the Education portfolio.  Reremoana continues a lifetime commitment to the education of our people in this role, as well as in her role as Kaiako of the Taipā Kohanga Reo.

Zarrah Pineaha and Renee Murray (Tahaawai) were appointed to the Health Portfolio.  It was proposed that this Portfolio be combined with that of Whānau Ora.  They will work closely with the Social Services Portfolio Convenor, whose appointment was deferred to the Rūnanga’s December hui-a-marama to allow time for feedback from Te Iwi o Ngāti Kahu Trust in Auckland.

Arthur Tukariri (Matarahurahu) was appointed to convene the Environmental Resource Management Portfolio.  As the mandated iwi organisation, we UNDERSTAND and KNOW government legislation, but ADVOCATE and UPHOLD Ngāti Kahu tikanga. 

The Rangatahi Portfolio is led by Wīkatana and John Popata Jnr (Ngāi Tohianga). To ensure the ongoing ability to express our rangatiratanga and mana, Ngāti Kahu take our rangatahi with us everywhere we go and involve them in everything we do. 

And finally, the Communications Portfolio is led by Lisa McNabb (Te Paatu ki Pāmapuria).  Lisa is also Ngāti Kahu’s representative to Te Reo Irirangi o Te Hiku o Te Ika Trust.

Te Rūnanga-a-Iwi o Ngāti Kahu is an expression of the mana of Ngāti Kahu hapū.  Collectively their appointed delegates are the mandated iwi authority of Ngati Kahu.  Their job is to strategise for the wellbeing of the descendants of Kahutianui and Te Parata, while at the same time maintaining the mana motuhake (the paramount authority) of Ngāti Kahu that has come down to this generation, and will be passed on to successive ones. 

Nineteen years after the ratification of the first Rūnanga Trust Deed, like their predecessors, this generation of leaders continues to do the job and, on Saturday, the mandate for Te Runanga-a-Iwi o Ngati Kahu as the iwi authority of Ngati Kahu was reconfirmed unanimously. 

The current Executive Officers and Portfolio Convenors bring a wide range of ages, skills, life experiences and governance expertise to the table.  I feel humble and grateful for the opportunity to work alongside of these leaders and to oversee the operationalisation of their strategies.

No reira, tātou mā, ngā tāngata whai pānga ki ngā marae maha o Ngāti Kahu.  Mā te waahi ngaro tātou katoa e arataki ki te oranga tinana, ki te oranga wairua i roto i te ao hōu.

HARD WORK AND THRIFT

China's accumulation of foreign currency is a hotly debated topic amongst economists who blame the ongoing economic instability in the world on this accumulation of foreign currency in China’s hands.  

Given the arrival of increasing numbers of Chinese people and enterprises in our rohe, this is an issue I have taken pains to consider and understand how it impacts on us.  What I have found is that it all pivots on two practices that New Zealanders embraced religiously in the past, but today, not so much; i.e. hard work combined with thrift.

This is not a popular message, but it is true nevertheless.  For decades New Zealanders have been living way beyond our means at a terrible cost to our future, and to do so we’ve been borrowing.  

In 2011, our borrowing hit $380 million per week, the highest rate ever recorded.  By June this year that was down to $200 million per week.  But that just includes government debt. Add in household and corporate debt and your eyes will begin to water.

Most of that borrowed money comes from the United States private banker, the Federal Reserve.  So, allowing for inflation, the $billion question is, where does the Federal Reserve get the money from originally? 

There are a range of mechanisms that explain how the Federal Reserve creates money.  But when you tease those mechanisms apart to see where the money we borrow comes from originally, whereas in the past you would have found a mix of sources, today you will find China.

Not less than a decade ago, China was an economic mess.  Now it’s the fastest growing economy in the world, and the United States third largest trading partner, behind Canada and Mexico.  

This turnaround was achieved on the back of two very Chinese practices; hard work and thrift.  It was also boosted by the west’s addiction to spending more than we earn. 

As a result China built a savings record and balance of payments which Winston Peters could only dream about, and it became the biggest lender to the United States.  

However, because the Federal Reserve continued printing money like it was going out of fashion, the value of the US greenback got more and more flakey. So in order to turn the rapidly devaluing American currency it held into things that would hold their value, the Chinese began buying solid assets wherever they could, including in our rohe. 

The current United States Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner, recently accused China of "currency manipulation."  Read Barry Ritzholt’s Bailout Nation and you’ll see what a hypocrite Mr Geithner is.  

From the 1980s onwards, western bankers like John Key and Timothy Geithner, shamelessly manipulated currencies around the world.

At the same time we happily spent trillions of dollars on cheap Chinese goods and services. 

This created employment in China, and the Chinese worked hard and saved.  Then they lent their savings to us so we could buy more goods and services.

As Charles Dickens may have put it, China ate a small cup of gruel in a cold dark room to save money. 

So, now that China is spending some of its foreign currency internationally, including in our rohe, will Chinese people continue to embrace hard work and thrift?  

More critically, for the sake of our future, will we again embrace those values ourselves?  

DELIVERING CONSTITUENCIES

Under the current constitutional arrangements in this country, or lack thereof, the governing party in Parliament can pretty much do what it wants to engineer the society that best promotes its interests.  Even the voting system supports that.

Under MMP, the government of the day can bypass the voter and hand pick much of the legislature and Cabinet.  The government appoint the judges, so if their legislative decisions run contrary to the judicial view, they rewrite the legislation.  If a caucus becomes argumentative, the PM can shuffle Cabinet and play his constituent MPs off against his list members. 

Yes, at the macro level, a government in power in New Zealand today can now pretty much do what it wants. And by and large the Pākeha majority will let them do it.

However, things become less clear in their dealings with Māori.  The Māori world is complex to many Māori; imagine how frightening it must be to Pākeha with little or no knowledge of things Māori.   In response to these fears from its voter base, government deals with Māori from a risk management perspective.  And to help them manage that risk they use two methods; advisory and mandatory.

The advisory method involves setting up and resourcing Māori to fill committees and positions that government can then call upon to advise them on how to manage and neutralise, if not solve, a particular Māori risk. 

The mandatory method involves mandating and resourcing Māori negotiators that the government can then call upon to deliver a constituency of other Māori into its hands, again neutralising, if not solving, particular Māori risks.

The success of both methods hinges upon the appointed Māori advisors and mandated Māori negotiators playing the game by the government’s rules and giving the government what it wants. 

With regard to Māori negotiators, what government want is to be forgiven the massive financial liability it carries over the numerous, well-founded claims that Māori have against it for breaching Te Tiriti o Waitangi.  And it wants to do so for as little as one cent in the dollar. 

It had aimed to complete this exercise of self-determined forgiveness by 2014.  It has now quietly changed that deadline to 2017, but its methodology remains the same. 

It mandates a group of negotiators who originally got their people’s support with stirring rhetoric such as, “100 percent and not an acre less.”  

It then isolates those negotiators from their people through confidentiality requirements, refuses to discuss anything outside its settlement policy, and threatens to send them to the ‘back of the settlement queue’ if they don’t toe the line.

Finally it resources them to take its cheapo offer back to their people and manufacture their consent by telling them, "Take the deal.  It’s the best we can do.”  And it watches the resultant backlash against those negotiators or their supporters with calm detachment because it too is playing the same game, but on the international scene; i.e. manufacturing our consent to deliver the New Zealand constituency into the hands of multinational corporates.

MANUFACTURING CONSENT

In this age of manufactured consent, the current government has shown a willingness to take extraordinary steps in using the media as a tool to shape political outcomes. 

Nicky Hager’s books, The Hollow Men and Dirty Politics, laid out in detail how the current politicians in power, from the PM’s Office down, manufacture consent by using the media to leak sensitive information about opponents, to attack them, and to then dictate talking points about them to mainstream media figures through bloggers and those they call Opinion Makers. 

Use of the media is not in itself unethical.  However when the user is the Government and the Media is Māori, the resultant imbalance for those they attack is hugely amplified, coming as it does on top of the Mainstream media either leading or joining the attack. 

Having seen how real investigative journalists in this country are uniformly attacked by Government and most Media, we can take it as a given that any Māori who oppose or stand in the Government’s way will be treated just as badly, if not worse.

An example is that of Minister of Treaty Negotiations, Chris Finlayson, who last week announced his recently conceived concerns over Tūhoronuku, the Ngāpuhi entity which he has for the past four years either defended or championed as the body with his mandate to settle all of Ngāpuhi’s claims. 

However, in spite of Finlayson’s support, Tūhoronuku failed to deliver its constituency to him, and in last Thursday’s Northland Age (Questions over Tūhoronuku’s mandate) he listed “an array of issues” he now has about Tuhoronuku, including its relationship with hapū and its financial status. 

Poor Tūhoronuku. It seems Finlayson may now be looking elsewhere for a cooperative body to deliver Ngāpuhi to him and to settle according to his and the government’s dictates, just like other iwi entities in the Far North have already done.

Curiously though, a Māori media reporter recently ran an ambush piece from a kūpapa airing the same kinds of criticisms about Te Rūnanga-a-Iwi o Ngāti Kahu as those now coming from Finlayson about Tūhoronuku.

Although the reporter’s producer apologised on air the very next day for her failure to check the kūpapa’s criticisms for accuracy and her failure to contact the Rūnanga for its views in order to ensure she ran a fair and balanced story, that same reporter again contacted Ngāti Kahu Chairperson Margaret Mutu late Sunday night for comment on an interview that she just happened to have done with Mr Finlayson in which he had stated “… that a pair of fresh eyes needs to look over Ngāti Kahu Treaty claims and the Rūnanga mandate ‘doesn’t last forever’.”

Poor Mr Finlayson seems to have forgotten that it was he who walked away from negotiations with Ngāti Kahu, and that it is his warrant that won’t last forever, while Ngāti Kahu’s rangatiratanga will.

In any event the Rūnanga don’t need his mandate to do what their people have already mandated them to do.   

Mr Finlayson’s forgetfulness aside, what is clearly at play here for both Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu is the ongoing efforts of Government, supported by a compliant Media, to obtain an outcome by manufacturing our consent.

SIGNED, SEALED AND SECOND CLASS

“All this criticism by left wing activists before the details were even released.  Pathetic,” wrote a New Zealand Herald reader last week about opposition to the TPPA.  

But isn’t that the precise point of the criticism?  Not only were the details not released, even the broad outlines were treated as classified secrets.  Even now neither we nor our parliamentarians know exactly what’s in it.  That’s a problem the world’s biggest corporations don’t have because, unlike us, they got VIP access to it from day one, and had abundant influence in its drafting and on its negotiations. 

Thanks to Wikileaks, we did learn prior to its signing that the TPPA had less to do with mutual lowering of tariffs, and more to do with enshrining the rights of United States corporates to operate in New Zealand with less regulations and controls than our domestic companies. 

That has huge implications for almost every critical issue from health, education, environment and privacy, through to access to medicines and public services. 

In July, John Key admitted the cost of our medicines would rise, but assured us that would be offset by the increased exports resulting from the deal.  Last week, his Trade Minister Tim Groser confirmed that tariff-free access for our dairy produce into US, Canadian and Japanese markets had been denied. 

It has also been confirmed that the agreement contains the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) which is a secretive international tribunal that allows corporations to sue states over virtually anything that affects their profits.  As a result, US corporations not only get to lock in their power, the TPPA makes it impossible for future governments to reduce or remove that power. 

If a protest affects their profits, a law reduces their profits, or a new regulation impacts what they can do with their profits; they can invoke the ISDS and sue.

Previous ISDS lawsuits include Swedish company Vatenfell suing the German state for $3.7 billion for phasing out nuclear energy; British American Tobacco (BAT) sued Australia for passing a law limiting cigarettes advertising; and the French company Veolia sued Egypt for raising the minimum wage.

Bear in mind that ISDS is available to foreign corporations alone.  Citizens, domestic firms and governments have no access to it.  Based on ISDS history, our sovereignty and democracy are at serious risk.  What, after all, is sovereign or democratic about an enormous imposition of power on this country when we, its citizens and parliamentarians, had no way of debating it or influencing governmental decisions on it? 

The history of these agreements shows that they’re very difficult to change unless people can see what’s in them, and that’s precisely why they’re kept secret until they've been signed and sealed.   

 We can now expect continued PR spin from the foreign corporates and lobbyists while, as Gerard Otto, another Herald reader wrote. "The New Zealand citizen still waits in line. Second Class. Relegated."

TIP OF THE ICEBERG

One of the biggest issues that will impact on all who live inside an iwi is the TPPA, which first came to my notice in 2010 through the Jane Kelsey-edited book No Ordinary Deal: Unmasking the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement. 

Although the TPPA is currently exciting this country’s opposition MP’s, it is just one of three trade deals being secretively brokered right now by the United States.  The other two are the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). Together with the TPP, they are known as the 3 Big T’s. 

In these three agreements, the US is rewriting the rules of the global economy for everybody.  Once signed they will cement a key part of the US plan to create a new global bloc that will ensure the dominance of its largest companies.  To understand why the US is pushing these agreements, we need to go back to the 1950s.

After the Second World War the United States accounted for half the world’s economy.  Because its influence was unmatched by any country, it was able to write the early rules of international trade to its advantage.

The World Trade Organisation was created in this context.  But as economies like China and India joined the WTO, it became a more democratised arena and eventually the US lost control.  Needing a new strategy to maintain its global dominance, in the classic American style, it went big. 

Bypassing the WTO, the US is negotiating the biggest international agreements the world has ever seen.  But when you look across all three deals, you see that Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) are all excluded.  Why?  Because those are the emerging economies which lead the threat to US dominance. 

The ultimate goal of these trade agreements is not the normal one of getting member states to mutually lower tariffs between them; the goal is getting ultimate control over everything.

In that context, the TPP, TTIP and TiSA can be seen as part of a new geopolitical war taking place between the United States and the emerging economies, especially China. 

Having moved to militarily encircle China through the Pivot to Asia, the US is now moving to economically encircle it and its fellow BRICS members by constructing a kind of reversed circle that very pointedly leaves them out. 

By integrating Latin America away from Brazil, Western Europe away from Russia and Eurasia as a whole, Southeast Asia away from India and China, and the African nations away from South Africa – the US intends to reorient those geopolitical blocs towards itself. 

To understand why and how this will impact every area of life that you care about, Jane Kelsey’s book is a good place to start.  But be prepared to delve deeper, because what was revealed in 2010 has since turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg.

A CAUTIONARY TALE

In the aftermath of the Crown’s recent Te Hiku settlement, the following adaptation of a cautionary tale, first told to the Waitangi Tribunal in September 2012, illustrates why it’s settled nothing.

Mr Trusting has a car. His wife has an interest in it.  He leases the car to Mr Crown for a certain price and on certain conditions. 

After a while Mr Crown decides not to return the car.  Instead he sells the wheels to Mr Crown Jr and gives the door panels to Ms Crown.

He then sells the engine to Ms Opportunist subject to return in case the police say it must be returned.  But he holds on to the internal workings, fittings, windows and chassis.

Mr Trusting complains to the police who say, “You have an obligation to fix this issue, Mr Crown.”

Mr Crown says to Mr Trusting, “I know I've done you wrong, but I need to provide parts of your car to other people I've also stolen from, so I’ll give you some money instead.  And because I don’t have much, if you still want parts of your car back, then I’ll have to deduct their value from the money I give you.”

Mr Trusting is the kind of guy who is happy to accept anything that comes his way, so he says, “OK, I’ll have the two front seats and perhaps the rear view mirror so that I can see what I used to have.”

Mr Crown provides the rear view mirror, front seats and windows, but nothing to wind the windows down with because it’s restricted by legislation.  So Mr Trusting can’t control the windows.

Mr Trusting’s wife says, “Not good enough,” and complains to the police.  In the meantime Mr Crown has also given the chassis and the petrol tank of the car to someone else.

The police say, “Mr Crown, you must return the engine, chassis and petrol tank, because the Trustings need them to drive the car.”

Ms Trusting also wants compensation for the rest of the car but Mr Crown replies, “I've offered you the front seats, rear view mirror and windows, and I think that’s fair. Mr Trusting is willing to accept them, and so is everyone else I’ve stolen from.  You should as well.”

That is the end of the analogy.  To keep the benefits from his theft of their car, Mr Crown elevated Mr Trusting and undermined Ms Trusting in the settlement negotiations.  When Ms Trusting insisted on getting the car and compensation, Mr Crown walked away and blamed her for the breakdown of negotiations.

In the last years of her life, my mother was supported by Ms Trustings.  Few Mr Trustings and no Mr Crowns visited her.  On the eve of Te Rarawa’s settlement, one man made a rare visit to ask her to attend.  Graciously, she did. 

But for anyone to infer that meant she supported Mr Crown and opposed Ms Trusting?  That would be just another cautionary tale.

A WORLD OF CONFUSION

Whāia te mātauranga hei oranga mō koutou; seek after wisdom for the sake of your wellbeing. This whakatauki (saying) teaches that in a world full of noise and confusion, wisdom and wellbeing will come when we ask questions with a genuine desire to understand the answers. 

However, another whakatauki says, hanga te oko tahanga te haruru nui; the empty vessel makes the most noise.  This teaches that if we don’t really want to understand or even hear the answers, our questions will only add to the sense of noisy confusion and contention already in the world. 

All cultures and religions advance wisdom and understanding as virtues, while confusion and contention are universally seen as vices. 

For example, the Bible teaches, “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.”  And in the Koran we read, “God grants Wisdom to whom He pleases … But none remember except men of understanding.” 

On the other hand the great Chinese philosophers taught, “Settle a small conflict quickly, and you will keep a hundred others at bay,” while the Bible teaches, “God is not the author of confusion, but of peace.”

Whenever our status quo is disturbed, our natural impulse is to ask questions about it.  Whether those questions contribute to wisdom and wellbeing in ourselves and our world, or generate more confusion and contention, depends a lot on our inner state of being and on our motives for asking the questions in the first place.

To illustrate on the large scale; faced with the refugee crisis in Europe, some have asked, “Whose fault is this?” or, “What about our own homeless people?” with the intent of justifying why they choose not to help. 

On the other hand others have asked, “What caused this?” with the intent of working out how they can best help both here at home and in the world at large. 

On a smaller scale, faced with the direct action of Ngāi Tohianga and Patu Kōraha hapū at Kaitaia airport, a few have asked, “Why can’t those blankety-blanks just be New Zealanders?” with the intent of dismissing them and their cause out of hand. 

But many others have asked “What is behind this action?” without fear that the answer may discomfort them.

While we all have the potential to be vessels of confusion or seekers of wisdom from time to time, it is always better to be wise than confused.

So instead of imagining what might go wrong in the future while ignoring past wrongs, the wise acknowledge past wrongs while working to build a better future.  

And rather than attacking the personalities and downplaying the principles involved, they address both with respect. 

But most importantly, the wise mahia nga mahi ki runga i te tika, pono me te aroha, (they work in the spirit of truth, faith and love) to live in and at the same time transcend a world of confusion.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING

What is the most important and best thing a man can do for his children?  

Last week our beautiful mother, Gloria Herbert, died after many years of ill health.  This week I pay tribute to her and to our father, Jim Herbert, for his contributions to her extraordinary life and to the lives of their uri (descendants).    

Apparently when she married him, our mum could neither boil water nor milk a cow. But under the tutelage of our dad and his kuia and kaumātua, and motivated by her own drive for excellence, she became a confident farming partner, astute businesswoman, and skilled homemaker. 

Our mother was, by nature, an intellectual destined for public life.  Initially her sphere was our dad and us.  But at her funeral, Pa Henare Tate very appropriately based his kauhau (sermon) on the parable of the talents, because throughout her life she not only used and honed the God-given talents she was born with, she obtained many others besides. 

As she grew, her talents overflowed to bless her hapū and iwi until, eventually, she became nationally and internationally active.

There were challenges and tragedies along the way for our mum, the hardest being having to deal with the backbiting and gossip that all public figures in New Zealand endure at times.  However, endure it she did, with dad’s support.

At the end of mortality, mum’s resume is broad and deep.  To reflect that, we chose Proverbs 31:10 – 31 as the reading for her funeral because it describes her to a T.  He wahine purotu, he wahine humarie, he wahine matauranga, he wahine toa (a pleasant, gentle, skilled and strong woman).

Those who came to the tangihanga bore witness to what our mother had done, endured and achieved.  But our father’s presence beside her bore witness to how she had done it. 

Shortly after her own father’s death in 1986, mum wrote in her diary, “Jim is the anchor who both grounds me and allows me to fly high and far.” 

If there is one incident that epitomises that, it was at a hui in the 1960s when, in the middle of her korero, a man told mum, “E noho! Turituri!” (Sit down! Shut up!)  And then pointed at our dad and said, “Kei kōnā to mangai!”  (There’s your mouth!)  At which our dad stood and said with uncompromising steel in his voice, “My wife has her own voice.”

Kahore tō mātou pāpā e kī mai ki a tātou, me pēhea te tū o tō mātou wairua. He wairua kē tōna, ōku noa i titiro ki ōna pūāwaitanga.  Our father never told us how our spirit should stand. He had a spirit of his own, and we simply watched its actions blossom.

The best thing our father ever did for us, his daughters and his sons, was to steadfastly and faithfully love our mother.  

We will continue to love and honour him as he loved and honoured her.  That is the most important thing. 

DESCENDED FROM GREATNESS

E kore au e ngaro, he kākano i ruia mai i Rangiātea.

I will not be lost, I am a seed descended from Rangiātea.

Many years ago I chaired Te Kao Area School’s Board of Trustees and one of my fondest duties was supporting our rangatahi (youth) to spread their wings and fly.

 

In 1992 one of our students took part in the inaugural voyage of Te Aurere.  On the day of his departure, the school held a poroporoaki and I was called to attend at short notice.

I was conscious that the occasion required more than for me to simply turn up.  It required giving our rangatahi something to remind him of where he came from and who he was becoming in the greater voyage of his life.  But what that could be and how to find it at such short notice was beyond me.  So I prayed.

For those who know Te Wairua Tapu (the Holy Spirit), it will come as no surprise that I was led into the ngāhere (forest) where I found an unusually smooth piece of tangiwai (serpentine) that had no business being there other than to be found and given to our rangatahi.

Fast forward several weeks to the pōwhiri for our returning rangatahi who amazed us all with his mature telling of tales from the voyage, including a landing made at Ra’iātea from whence comes the whakatauki above.  There he was prompted to lay the tangiwai at the long-deserted but still sacred temple of Taputapuātea.

I know there were reconnections and awakenings that needed to be made that were helped by the symbol of that tangiwai as it journeyed from its source in Aotearoa to our earlier source in Ra’iātea. 

I know that this was just one occurrence of many occurrences in one life of many lives that happened for an unknown reason at the time, but that became known at the right time. 

I know we all unconsciously have such experiences every day and that they are reminders that all things work together for good to them that love God. 

These knowings are what God meant when he told the imprisoned Prophet Joseph Smith Jnr, “If thou art called to pass through tribulation; if thou art in perils among false brethren;

… if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way;

… if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou … that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good. 

The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?”

For Maori, these knowings are consciously summarised as follows:

Kei te mahi tahi ngā mea katoa i te pai mo te hunga e aroha ana ki te Atua.

All things work together for good to we who love God. 

He kakano tātou, i ruia mai i Rangiātea

We are seeds, descended from greatness.

THE CHOICE TO CARE

I have written in the past and at length about child abuse.  Today my focus is upon elder abuse, especially where those elders are no longer able to care for themselves.

Age Concern defines neglect and abuse as a single or repeated act, or lack of appropriate action, occurring within any relationship where there is an expectation of trust and care, which causes harm or distress to an older person. 

Because there are more examples of abuse and neglect than there is space in this post, here are only four representative, but real, cases of physical, emotional, financial and sexual abuse of elders.

The whanaunga (relation) who has barged into the home of a kuia to verbally abuse and physically intimidate her over some perceived offense; that whanaunga is a bully and an abuser.

The paid caregiver who has told a continent but non-ambulatory kuia to mimi and tiko herself instead of asking to be taken to the toilet, thus breaching the HDC Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers' Rights Regulation 1996; that’s not a caregiver, that’s a bully and an abuser.

The people who have pressured an elder for financial gain, such as giving a loan, selling their house or letting a family member move in for free; those people are not caregivers, they’re bullies and abusers. 

Predators who have exploited the elderly for sexual gratification are not only abusers, they are criminals worthy of the harshest penalties enforceable. 

What can you and I do about elder abuse?  First of all we can get really clear about what it is and what it looks like.  Age Concern and others have published some of the signs to watch for. 

Any unexplained injuries, bruises, fractures, or even something like broken spectacles can be a sign of physical abuse. 

Sudden changes in behaviour by an older person that mimic dementia such as rocking, sucking, or mumbling to oneself can indicate emotional abuse.

Bruises around breasts or genitals, vaginal or anal bleeding, torn, stained, or bloody underclothing; these are consistent with sexual abuse. 

Sudden changes in the elder’s financial condition like unpaid bills when they have enough money to pay, or ATM withdrawals when the account holder is bedridden, these may signify financial abuse.

If you suspect elder abuse is happening, please tell someone you trust, because silence can be a killer.  And if you see or know an elder is being abused, do not hesitate to call Age Concern and the Police.

In their 2004 paper, Drs Mere Kēpa, Paul Reynolds and Ratana Walker of Ngā Pae o te Maramatanga at The University of Auckland, argued that if a community cannot care for its most vulnerable members, then the community has lost the capacity and capability to care for itself.

We cannot be ‘a little bit abusive’ or ‘a tad neglectful’ of our elders.  We can be either givers of trust and care to them, or bullies and abusers of them.   Which will we choose to be?

DESPERATELY SEEKING SOMEONE

In his speech last month during the third reading of his Te Hiku Claims Settlement Bill, Chris Finlayson signalled his hopes that in the not too distant future, someone will do in Ngati Kahu what his friends in other iwi have done; settle all our claims right up to 1992 in a spirit of cooperation.

Whenever a Minister utters his hopes in his House, you can bet dollars to doughnuts that steps are already being taken by various public servants to transform those hopes into the here and now. 

But in this case, there are some serious obstacles to the Ministerial hopes.  First, the head claimants of Ngati Kahu’s well-founded claims have consistently refused to turn their backs on the full and final settlement their tupuna instructed them to get.  And second, the majority of Ngati Kahu’s marae have steadfastly declined to accept the Crown’s 2013 settlement offer as full and final. 

So, how are the public servants doing so far on removing those obstacles?  Well, they’re trying.

Last year Ngati Kahu’s marae were asked by their negotiators whether they would accept the Crown’s 2013 version of a full and final settlement, or stick with their tupuna’s instructions as laid out between 1997 and 2000.  Because the Crown offer when measured against the tupuna’s instructions can only be negotiated as a partial settlement.

But instead of framing the question accurately, local public servants manipulated it to make it seem like it was a straight out choice between either a full and final settlement or a partial settlement. 

What’s the bet that marae who opt to answer this manipulated question will be encouraged to believe that full and final looks like the Crown’s offer, and not their tupuna’s instructions? 

With respect to the head claimants, on Sunday 27^th June, a high-powered team of Wellington-based public servants arrived at a hui on one of our marae.  Neither the head claimant nor the kuia of that marae (all of whom are actively involved in their claim) had a clue they were coming until they walked in the door.  

The result was not a happy one, especially for the public servants who were told by the head claimant, “It’s not often you get things right, but you got it wrong this time,” and more forcefully by the kuia, “Ngati Kahu will not settle.”

On a lower level, another local public servant recently used an appointment with one of Ngati Kahu’s kaumatua to pass on a scurrilous lie to him about his iwi’s Chief Negotiator. 

Under the Public Service Code of Conduct, all public servants are required to disclose any conflict of interest, or potential conflict, before they commence employment and during employment if such a conflict arises.  

While most public servants have enough integrity to steer clear of claims against the Crown, because they know they are conflicted, the same cannot be said about those who are desperately seeking someone to cooperate and settle Ngati Kahu’s claims on the Crown’s terms.