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'Bulldozer' Kelvin Davis backed by 'submarine' Matthew Tukaki

This week the Government said it would accept all the recommendations made by the group, including decentralising decision-making to communities and making uplifts an absolute last resort.Oranga Tamariki's problems have been well-documented over the past couple of years, such as its apparently racially biased targeting of Māori and Pasifika children for uplifts.The biggest change is arguably the move to decentralise much of the ministry's decision-making and funding to local communities. But so...

Henare says he's having 'uncomfortable conversations'

Whānau Ora minister Peeni Henare says the state of the Covid-19 vaccine rollout means we are "on the precipice of a future or a significant failure."Henare (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi) met with iwi health providers from across Te Tai Tokerau in Whangārei to talk mate korona, and lagging Māori vaccination rates.Less than 50 per cent of eligible Māori have received their first vaccination in Northland - among the worst rates in the country.The minister acknowledged the heavy workload for iwi provid...

Change Makers - High school students' website

Ten high school students from Porirua are hoping a new website they've made will help teach people how to pronounce Māori and Pasifika names correctly. Fa'amalosi - which means 'be strong' in Samoan - has been up and running for less than a month but already features more than 800 names in half a dozen languages and has around 650 subscribers.Fa'amalosi's co-chief executives, 16-year-olds To'e Lokeni and Mannfred Sofara, say the group of Bishop Viard College students was inspired to s...

Govt progress on welfare overhaul frustratingly slow

A law change to remove the subsequent child policy has passed its final hurdle in parliament, so from November, parents who have another child while on the benefit will no longer be forced to return to work when that child turns one.Introduced in 2012 as part of the National government's welfare reforms, the subsequent child policy was meant to get more people off the benefit and into work.But Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni said that didn't happen."The reality is that I got advice f...

The road is long

The sheer number of reviews, reports and restructurings has generated considerable cynicism about the capacity of Oranga Tamariki (and its many earlier configurations) to address the issues that have been highlighted since the 1986 Ministerial Advisory Committee Review and Puao Te Ata Tū report.This cynicism is felt by those within and external to the organisation. The last 30 years have been testimony to the power of mainstream organisations to perpetuate colonisation despite legislation that ...

Here’s How to Help Someone with Anxiety,

We’re not going to sugarcoat it: Trying to help a friend or family member who struggles with anxiety can be really tricky. Especially if you’re not a super anxious person, navigating what to say (and what not to say) is kind of awkward. You want to help, of course, but you have no idea how (you aren’t a therapist, after all). That’s why we checked in with four experts in the mental health field for their tips on how to help someone with anxiety, from listening compassionately t...

Wairarapa woman is hunter, forager and

“It isn’t something I take lightly,” says Jannine Rickards, winemaker at Urlar Vineyards in the Wairarapa, about her other passion – hunting.“For example, last week I saw a yearling in the bush but it just looked at me… and I had a connecting moment with this animal. I didn’t need to shoot it – and maybe I should have for environmental reasons – but it was just that morning, and the energy, and it looked at me and I looked at it, and it took off…”That moment, with...

Study identifies childhood traits

New research that compared the behaviour of children studied in the 1970s with anxiety rates once they had grown up, has identified which childhood traits may lead to anxiety disorders in adulthood.The University of Otago study found that children who tended to cry easily and often, appeared sad and miserable, and preferred to play alone appear to carry a higher risk of anxiety in adolescence and adulthood.The study found that children who were shy, fearful of authority and generally a...

Government releases Oranga Tamariki advisory board findings:

The government created the advisory group in January to help reform Oranga Tamariki, as part of its response to widespread criticism of the ministry's policy of removing vulnerable children from their families.The panel has this morning released its report and three over-arching recommendations, which the government has accepted.Minister for Children Kelvin Davis said the recommendations will see a major shift in decision making and will encourage communities to work with Oranga Tamariki to prot...

Oranga Tamariki to

Kelvin Davis on Wednesday said the Government has accepted every single recommendation made by an independent board set up earlier this year to advise on how the department - which has been heavily criticised over the past two years - can be salvaged, particularly when it comes to its treatment of tamariki Māori. "When I appointed the board, I asked it to get to the root of the problems with Oranga Tamariki and be completely honest with me about what it found. What they provided was a conf...

'We want uplifting of Māori children stopped altogether'

A Māori-led ministerial advisory board found Oranga Tamariki is:self-centredhas weak, disconnected systemslacks strong professional leadershipand is vulnerable to being blown off courseIt's the latest in a series of damning reports and reviews of the agency, and Children's Minister Kelvin Davis has dubbed himself the 'Bulldozer' who'll force change.Link to article and video: 'We want uplifting of Māori children stopped altogether' - Whānau Ora leader (msn.com)...

Hope mixed with cynicism

Even if the latest report into Oranga Tamariki contained little in the way of surprising revelations, its words would have stung nonetheless.The ministerial advisory board tasked by Children's Minister Kelvin Davis with assessing the ministry's culture and processes found a “self-centred” organisation with weak systems, failing to properly engage with Māori and too easily blown off course by unexpected events.Its solutions – a greater role for Māori and more emphasis on pr...

'Self-centred' Oranga Tamariki

A “self-centred” Oranga Tamariki with weak systems and a propensity for being blown off course must shift from reaction to prevention and share more decision-making powers with Māori, yet another scathing review into the ministry has concluded.The Government has accepted all of the recommendations of the report from its ministerial advisory board, including the development of a new, community-focused operating model and greater support and training for social workers.Children’s Minister K...

BOP doc named

She left school at 16 and had four children before choosing to try for medical school, now Rotorua Hospital’s Dr Tawa Hunter has been recognised as New Zealand’s Junior Doctor of the Year.Staff at Rotorua Hospital honoured her achievement with a haka and presentation on Monday.The award is under the jurisdiction of the New Zealand Medical Council and Dr Hunter will now be considered alongside the Australian winners for the overall prize in a virtual ceremony next month.The 45-year-old said h...

Fears young Māori being targeted by white supremacists

Research shows many of the anti-vax memes circulating on the internet have been created by alt-right and white supremacist groups based in the United States. They have gone from 'stop the steal' to 'stop the vaccine'.Professor of preventative medicine at Otago University Sue Crengle told the Hui that "whanau have to think about why these groups might be comfortable encouraging Māori, who are more at risk from COVID, not to get vaccinated"."It suits their agenda to attract a whole new audience w...

Three wāhine Māori the first to receive

Jacqueline McRae-Tarei, Gloria Taituha and Rose Te Ratana joined forces and did their research through Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, in partnership with Auckland University of Technology's Te Ipukarea Research Centre.They studied and recreated mahi raranga from the past, present and future, starting the 1800s until now.AUT Professor Tania Ka'ai supervised the kairaranga during their doctorates and said their work showed how mahi raranga is a valid discipline of academic study."The work the kairaranga ...

Deaf Northlander Eddie Hokianga urges Māori

Northland sign language tutor Eddie Hokianga has taken up the task of ensuring the region's deaf Māori community is heard.Hokianga (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngā Puhi, Ngāti Porou) has spent the last three years teaching te reo sign language to help fill a national void of interpreters fluent in the discourse."It is really difficult for the Māori deaf community to access interpreters. We only have a few Māori trilingual interpreters who can speak te reo and sign – it has been like that for a long...

Becoming Tangata Tiriti

It was long ago that I first went to a hui on a marae, but the memory is still so vivid that it could’ve been yesterday.I was lying back against the wall in the corner of the wharenui at Whāngārā as each of us took it in turn to stand and introduce ourselves.There were those who were fluent in their reo, knew their whakapapa, and were able to paint a confident picture of where they came from and who they were. But there were also others who were clearly straining to present what little...

Privilege and language trauma

I’ve felt compelled to tautoko friends who were criticised in the media and online, while also taking my own share of attacks.I also reacted and dealt it out. Some of the criticism was fair, some was careful, and some was unkind — and just about all of us did a mix of all three.The kōrero that really cut deep, for me, went something like this: “If you’re privileged enough to speak Māori, you don’t understand language trauma.”There’s a really difficult intersection between tra...

Lack of protection sees 'sacred' pōhutukawa tree

Northland iwi and community members are upset a culturally significant pōhutakawa has been half cut down, saying the 200-year-old tree should’ve had more protection. The pōhutukawa, on Ahipara’s Wharo Lane, was the site of Te Rarawa’s original marae, as well as a former court, Catholic Church and post office, said iwi representative Rueben Taipari. “It’s one of the most scared areas for our history – more so than the marae – it goes back nearly to the wak...

Kāinga Ora to build thousands of prefabricated homes

Kāinga Ora plans to purchase thousands of prefabricated homes to address the country’s growing need for transitional housing, many of which will be built offshore and shipped over.Kāinga Ora general manager of construction Patrick Dougherty said a main goal of the project was to boost New Zealand’s domestic off-site manufactured (OSM) capacity and capability.However, in order to meet demand, many would be constructed abroad and shipped over as ready-built, weathertight one and two-bed...

Health provider falls out with iwi

A member of Destiny Church whose low-cost GP practices have been evicted from two Christchurch buildings says he will build his own medical centre at the city’s national marae.George Ngatai, who stood as a candidate for Vision New Zealand party in the 2020 general election, runs 12 medical centres, six Covid-19 testing centres and three vaccination clinics in Auckland, Northland, Lower Hutt and Christchurch.He has been given notice on his two health centres in Aranui and Wainoni.Link to articl...

The Only Native American ‘In America’

Korina Emmerich, the Puyallup and Nisqually designer behind the garment, didn’t know until attending the exhibition that she would be its sole representative of Indigenous fashion. And she didn’t fully understand why she was chosen. Maybe it was because one of her dresses was recently worn by Deb Haaland, America’s first Indigenous Cabinet member, on the cover of InStyle, or perhaps had something to do with the popularity of her Split Shot face mask, which has been in high d...

Plea for help from social housing agency

Central Hawke's Bay is fighting the scourge of homelessness as it faces a relatively new problem for the district - not having enough accommodation.In the hills behind the state highway, leaving Hastings heading south, Zack Makoare is building his dream - eight houses for his whānau.To get there he was living on site, roughing it."So I came from a house in Hastings, in Flaxmere, to where we lived in a beautiful home to now where we're living in a caravan with an awning and a few cabins and no r...

Workers left fearing for future and struggling to pay rent

Akhilesh Patti received a phone call on Friday afternoon saying he was losing his job – and was given just 10 minutes’ notice before being laid off.The Christchurch shop manager, who has a three-year-old daughter and a second child due in the next fortnight, is one of 20 people who lost their jobs when Nekita Enterprises was stripped of five off-licences after it was caught underpaying workers.None of the staff received redundancy pay and many are now worried about how they will pa...