Thinking about the quake

In two hours time, as a nation we New Zealanders will stand still for two minutes and reflect on the shattered lives, property and dreams of those affected by last Tuesday’s earthquake. Two minutes to acknowledge in unity that this is the worst natural disaster in our living memories; that tens of thousands of Cantabrians are facing an uncertain future without their homes and their livelihood in the coming months.

Yet in this time of trauma and troubles, that great indomitable kiwi pioneering spirit has once again raised its head, rolled up its sleeves, tucked the sense of humour in the backpocket and got stuck in.

Says overseas experienced Urban Search and Rescue team leaders: “We’ve never seen anything so well disciplined and run when it comes to a disaster of this magnitude…”

Says the multitude of heroes who have dragged, pulled or picked people up out of the rubble before order could be organised, “Not a hero, anyone would have done it…”

Says clinical psychologist Nigel Latta, the maestro of un-pc sayings, “When it comes to aftershocks, just tell the kids the earth has farted…”

The Student Army, 14,000 strong, out there helping the sick, the frail, the elderly and getting on intimate terms with the business end of a shovel as the city tries to move 150,000 tonnes of silt in two weeks, much of it by hand.

The tens of thousands of kiwis who have opened their hearts, their homes and their wallets to displaced people or those whose trauma is such they simply need a break away. Some six websites and social networking media sites saw thousands of offers of temporary accommodation offered and Air NZ coming to the party by offering $50 flights anywhere from Christchurch.

The New Zealand Navy, thankfully berthed in Lyttleton harbor and able to cook and feed the walled in residents of the port which had been the epicenter of the quake. The Army and Airforce who got down there on the same day to help overstretched police batten down the hatches so the USAR workers could get in and rescue unhampered by frantic family members and sightseers.

That Rangiora lot, well, words fail me and many others. In less than a week, this driven pack of people have commandeered an army of helicopters, thousands of tonnes of supplies, have cooked, prepped, boxed, stored, packaged and distributed enough food and water to feel the many thousands who are unable to do it for themselves.

And the Canterbury Plains farmers. Never mind that their own jobs are full time. They’ve got in there with their shovels, cleared roads, come in a bit later with their tractors and diggers and cleared driveways, roadways and rubble as directed.

The Christchurch City council staff and contractors have worked beyond the call of duty to try and get as many of the city’s homes and businesses back in business as far as water and sewerage goes, knowing as they do that in Mayor Bob Parker’s words much of the infrastructure is “munted”.

Orion Energy’s tireless workers trying to get the power grid back up and running without causing more problems. Those who both lived in Christchurch and those who poured in from all around the district with their medical training, who were run off their feet trying to cope with bruised, battered, broken and simply traumatised Cantabrians from a medical perspective.

The huge heartfelt thanks to the 700 plus Urban Search and Rescue workers from more than 10 different nations who dropped what they were doing and got here within the first 48 hours – some, like the Australians, arrived the day it happened. These experienced people not only brought themselves, but they brought their dogs, their hundreds of tonnes of specialised equipment and the practical help and best wishes of each of their respective governments.

So many to thank. So many who have made a difference.

As time rolls on inexorably by, the real cost of this earthquake will become more apparent. We already know that the CBD will be closed for months, more than one third of the business buildings are so seriously damaged they must come down. Nearly one half of the rest are damaged enough to require remedial attention before they can be used again.

Some 10,000 people are without their home and the government is looking at ways to get this problem sorted forthwith, already stating that almost all big ticket projects in New Zealand this year will be cancelled or postponed in order for the money to go towards rebuilding Christchurch. Prime Minister John Key is calling on international governments for financial help – something we have never had to do before. Even with this, it is expected that those of us who own homes and pay insurance will find the EQC levy tripled.

This is hard going on our already straining economy, make no bones about it. In a time when the building industry in a critical position and many are heading to Queensland Australia where the work is swinging into place after the floods, it still will be months away before the real building gets going. The loss of big business in Christchurch can't be underestimated from a tax take perspective either.

There is a lot to think about and Christchurch will be on its knees for many months yet. It will be a big ask of New Zealanders, for like most people, once the first couple of weeks have gone by, we tend to get innured to something we do not have to live with. With this quake, no matter how far away we are, we do have to live with it; it will impact on us all for a long time to come. The beauty of it all is, Christchurch will rise from the ashes of this disaster, will become the beautiful city she is renowned for again and while some of our beautiful buildings can no longer be - well, if Gisborne could do it it 80 years ago as successfully as it did, so too can Christchurch. And the rest of this tiny nation will be right behind it.

The monopoly on money

The MOTH (Man of the House) has a peculiar habit of picking up the odd-bod things that slide by the rest of us. By that I mean he actually decides to grab the bod out of the air and do something about it. His latest escapade was in the dairy this afternoon when he had to buy a tub of margarine. He took it up to the counter, paid over $4 in coins and then told the poor dairy worker that he expected his one cent change.

“We can’t do that sir,” said the hapless worker.

“Why not?” said the MOTH. “If you are advertising something at $3.99, then I expect to get the change.” He said this knowing full well that our currency no longer supports the one, two and five cents it used to.

His reasoning was it is false advertising – and he is quite correct. No matter that even the supermarket giants do it, the bottom line is technically, it is not legal to use one, two and five cents as legal tender.

They may not, as of 1 November 2005, accept it from you. But you have to accept them charging you for it and if you cannot come up with the correct change – which of course you can’t; it’s not legal tender - then that is fine, they will charge you one cent more to round it up. How does this happen? It’s not legal tender, therefore they can’t charge you – and by rounding it up, they are falsely advertising the price of the goods you are buying.

This peculiar little loophole led me to wonder just how strong, then, are laws regarding legal tender if this one can be so blatantly broken even six years after it became fact.

If, for example, a group of us Home Executives of The Round Dining Table got together and decided to raid the kids collective Monopoly banks and start charging each other for half a dozen eggs from Susie’s backyard, or three kilos of plums from Helen’s front garden, or for a baby’s matinee jacket Melanie knitted, what’s the problem with this? And if enough of us did this, then how exactly, could say, the Inland Revenue have a problem with the accounting side of things? We could, using this loophole, pay GST if demanded – but in Monopoly money, because that’s the tender we are using.

I mean, in the past, paper money was representative of how much gold bullion one had in one’s respective Fort Knox. These days, with the removal a century ago of the Gold Standard, we’ve pretty much had carte blanche to print money. Yes, there are times when the overprinting of it didn’t work – which was why towards the end of World War 2, the cost of a pencil in Germany could be six million marks. But what’s a few million here and there between friends?

The thing that makes this whole thing mindboggling in its being as loose as Aunty Daisy’s drawers is that most people don’t even realise that electronic money, (EM) or digital cash (DC) which is what you use to pay things online for example is NOT legal tender either according to the NZ Law Commission’s 2001 report on electronic billing and E-payments.

So we are being billed – and paying for – something that does not even actually exist as legal tender. That’s actually quite scary, because what that means is that you could pay online for a bill, the payee actually can turn around and tell you they don’t want to accept that as it’s not real tender and theoretically, you could be charged again. You’d still be out of pocket for the ‘imaginery’ amount you paid however.

It’s past time that the whole system was looked at properly; I mean, it has been a whole decade since the above report was published – yet there have been no changes, other than those people alert enough to safeguard themselves by ensuring a clause that all payments made or accepted electronically shall be deemed to be legal tender.

Otherwise, there really is nothing whatsoever wrong with us HETRDTers becoming bankers – and having the Monopoly on it.

Divide and lose - the dilemma of Hone Harawira

At some point today, irresistible force is about to meet immovable object. Paradoxes aside, the disciplinary hearing between Hone Harawira and the Maori Party is one upon which much rests – but there aren’t going to be any winners.

I watched a conciliatory Harawira on Closeup last night and wondered just how the Maori Party can deal with this Ngapuhi man who is being labeled a redneck Maori because of his strongly racist bent. How are they going to find the balance between muzzling a renegade who has no interest in anything outside of his own people and who makes sure everyone knows this in the most offensive manner at times and enabling, through the party’s kaupapa, or constitution, the right for a section of the people who have voted them in, a voice.

There is no getting away from the fact that he’s one-eyed. He’s only interested in the fact that there are 15 percent more Maori unemployed since the year before. Never mind about the increased percentage of the unemployed right across the board. He also doesn’t believe that tangata whenua, people of the land, are that unless they can whakapapa back to their iwi. He firmly does not believe that the Maori Party and National can continue to work together and particularly over the Foreshore and Seabed Act, feels the Maori Party might well have been sold out over it.

I’ve got a lot of problems with this.

Hone Harawira, or as some offer, aka John Hatfield, is no different to a vast proportion of New Zealanders who have both Maori and pakeha bloodlines. Let’s repeat that – the vast proportion of our population. The argument as to whether we in fact have any full blooded Maori left is a moot one. It reminds me of a conversation with a young Ngati Porou radical a few years back who was spitting tacks at the thought of any of his children growing up and marrying someone who wasn’t Maori and his grandmother dryly reminding him that as much as he might like to forget it, his Scottish grandfather was very much a part of his ancestry. The reply was that he'd disowned his grandfather, therefore he didn't exist and he saw himself as a full blood.

This section of the population, the majority of New Zealanders, have no choice; they must either identify as one or the other, they cannot be both. Every single official form underlines this paradox. For all of us who fall in this section and who live comfortably in both cultures, it has become an increasingly difficult time to stand back and watch the repeated efforts of some Maori to divide the nation.

It is right and proper that Maori grievances be heard and sorted and to a large degree, that has happened. Maori now hold more than $16 billion in assets in New Zealand, some of which has been created through earlier efforts of colonization and some which individual iwis themselves have created.

But one has to wonder how much damage the by-product of all this has been in the ‘victim mentality” of “You OWE us” and particularly where young Maori in the low socio-economic groups are concerned.

Not only that, the considerably fostered belief that Maori do ‘own’ things they currently do not. As a fisherwoman, I’ve enjoyed throwing a rod out on many coastlines along New Zealand. But it’s only been in recent times that I’ve come across some fairly alarming happenings.

For example, my Tuwharetoa husband and I were out fishing at Maketu a year or two back, as was an Indian shop owner from down our way. A big local Maori lad came up and remonstrated with him that he wasn’t allowed to fish there, it belonged to the local Maori. The Kaituna Cut most definitely is public land and as my husband knew the Indian, he told the local quite forcefully where to get off. In another instance, my husband and a mate were heading down the coast towards Matata in a four wheel drive to a fishing spot they’d used many times before. A marae sits a little way back from the beach. They were met by a woman with a large rock, telling them the area belonged to the marae and they could not go any further. A look up at the marae and a few men standing there and the pair prudently decided it wasn’t worth the effort of arguing.

This must not happen and it is the reason why the Foreshore and Seabed Act must reflect that the coastline, all of it, belongs to all the people of New Zealand, represented by the Crown. Even those with riparian rights need to lose those – the beach and the sea must belong to us all. New Zealanders have had free and uninterrupted use of this for centuries now; who was here first has to be immaterial in the greater scheme of things.

Which brings me back to Hone Harawira and the large hole he’s dug for both himself and the Maori Party.

The Maori party has achieved a lot since its inception; the advent of Pita Sharples gave it a credibility it didn’t have before and they can ill-afford to lose members of his ilk. But even with the cultural need for a lot of talk before action, the art of politics is such that diplomatic strategy will get you a lot further than screeching like a fish-wife and throwing your toys out the cot verbally when things don’t go your way. It’s about respect, mana. Yet this Te Tai Tokerau MP appears, to me and a lot of others, to have none of that ability. Some strong politicians have come from up there, as too have the radicals. And it is this latter group to which I believe Hone Harawira very firmly belongs.

If the Maori Party are to survive this intact, I believe he needs to be sent on his way as an independent – and it needs to happen now while there are still 10 months left before the next election. They cannot afford a split and they cannot afford to keep him; he will not toe the line.

Whatever and however our nation’s governing structure is run, there can only be room for one, not two and should that event ever occur, it will lead straight to civil war. Racism can have no place in today’s society and Hone Harawira needs to forcibly learn that there are so many of us, both of Maori and pakeha blood, that we far outstrip the numbers in any other population demographic – and that we do not share his dream of Maori both owning and running New Zealand as of First Nations right.

It is time to put the grievances behind us and move on as a united nation with a bicultural balance.

The UN's condemnation of New Zealand

So the United Nation’s Committee on the Rights of the Child has condemned New Zealand for its ‘staggering rates’ of child abuse and poverty in its first report since 2003.

I’m somewhat ambivalent about that aspect – while I absolutely agree the two are an issue that should not be possible in the fruit bowl of the South Pacific, one has to wonder what the heck the UNCRC has been doing for the past eight years if New Zealand is the first it’s chosen to train its gunsights on since that time. There are many other countries where children are at far greater risk; England comes instantly to mind with its rampant poverty, the increasing trade in stolen children for pedophile rings etc ad nauseum.

So, one does have to ask as an aside, what was so ‘special’ about New Zealand that in its first report in almost a decade, we’ve got stung. Where we’ve been lambasted for ‘limited access’ to quality pre-school care, the widening disparity between Maori and non-Maori children when it comes to living conditions, health and education and our high teenage birth rates and conversely, suicides.

That aside, it is very true that we have a major problem when it comes to kids who fall into the lower decile socio-economic areas. Each year as our population increases – and much of that increase from these same demographics – we find there are children born into families who not only cannot afford to feed, clothe and educate them, many of those same families have major problems with drugs and alcohol and most disturbingly of all, a repeated intergenerational cycle of extreme violence.

As the last three decades have passed, what I’ve seen is puzzling. We’ve put into place over that time the very processes that have created the problems we have today. We’ve allowed young teenage mothers to get pregnant willy-nilly and to actually pay them to do that, instead of offering the options of family taking care of the child – morals might be better instilled into youngsters if the families knew they had to pay long-term for the lack of them – or adopting out to families who are financially able to take care of a child in all ways that matter for the long term. One cannot use ignorance as an excuse here, the free Family Planning Clinic and high school sex education that have been in existence since the late 1970’s ensure that every physically mature young girl and boy know what it’s all about.

So the baby factory mentality has been well and truly installed.

Then we have the problem of the Children and Young Person’s Act of 1989. What a complete and utter disaster that one single piece of legislation has been, the one that gave kids all rights and no responsibilities – and parents all responsibilities and no rights; this later enlarged to include all teachers, caregivers and any other single thing that would have helped instill respect into these little monsters.

Our youngest generation has grown up with no boundaries and the fallout from that has been of such disastrous proportions that New Zealand is literally caught standing in the middle of the road like a possum in full headlights. Nowhere to go and no way to see ahead. Crime has escalated so far out of proportion it has become the norm, rather than the exception. And the UN thinks to condemn us because we want to lower the age where youngsters can be culpable for our most serious crimes; the ones these kids DO commit? What are we supposed to do with them? Hit them with a wet bus ticket? We do enough of that already.

When we couple all this with the ‘victim’ mentality that has become apparent as a by-product of our policies towards rectifying the problem of Maori grievances are concerned, it’s no wonder that the policy makers have become very quiet as to finding a long term solution to the problems all these things have created, both directly and indirectly.

Even worse, when we look at the way-too-large impact of our continued immigration policies, what hope have our young of finding their way in a society that has no jobs, thanks to the advent of multi-national corporates who take the job opportunities offshore and a lack of tax money to pay for the infrastructure that’s needed. And we wonder why our teenage suicide rates are so high? This, in an active nation that enjoys all manner of outdoor activities that many other countries don’t have access to?

I can’t give answers to the whole problem. But I do have some suggestions.

The first is to restructure the welfare system completely. Ensure that no young unmarried pregnant woman under the age of 21 receives any financial help outside of her medical care. The child born to her must be supported by her and/or its father, or by either’s set of parents or extended family.

Any woman on the DPB who becomes pregnant will not be paid any additional money for the sheer fact of having another child. It’s an unpalatable fact that in doing this for as long as we have, we’ve dumbed down the nation’s IQ. All mothers who fall into this category who are under the age of 25 must attend courses in parenting, family safety and basic housekeeping and cooking skills. Even with the influx in recent years of micro-housing, almost every New Zealander with a family has enough room on their sections to grow their own vegetables. Use a ‘ticket’ method; for those on the DPB or unemployment, the government gives them their benefit by having first taken out the money to pay the rent, utilities and food, with a set allowance available, but not accessible as money, for medical care. That way, the most important aspects are taken care of.

Next, scrap Working for Families and in its place, allow married – either legally or defacto - mothers (or fathers who wish to take on this role) who have had a career up until the time of becoming pregnant the ability to stay at home as a mother and be paid to raise the child until it is ready to go to pre-school at four years of age. The loss of the hearthstone of a mother figure being at home during a child’s formulative years is one of the primary reasons we have so many problems today.

Long term unemployment benenfits have to stop. Once someone has been unemployed for five years, they become virtually unemployable. So anyone who is in that position after two years must be made to work voluntarily – and there are many ways this can be done. Intergenerational unemployment has become a problem that is almost insurmountable. Whether they weed council gardens, work with Aged Concern or their local church is immaterial – work they must.

Absolutely batten down on immigration. Infrastructurally, we cannot afford to continually allow on average, the 100,000 a year we do let in here. I don’t give a tinker’s cuss what protocol we have signed with other nations as to how many we ‘must’ allow in. Charity starts at home and we need to fix up the mess we’ve got ourselves into before we worry about adding to it.

Change the curriculum at secondary education – use the spatial intelligence method and work towards getting young ones into the areas that suit them best, some towards academia, some towards trades, some towards services – this has to start at the time where it is most important. Why we keep trying to fit the square, hexagonal, octagonal pegs that our students are into the one round hole I will never know. And while on the subject of schools – and councils for that matter, I know of only one school in our area that has lots of fruit trees that are designed for the students. We have hungry kids – instead of planting oaks and liquid ambers that are major headaches for the ground staff, why not provide food from Mother Nature? If councils did the same in their many pretty parks and reserves, this would have to help. I cannot understand, why, in these times of increasing poverty, we are asked instead to simply enjoy ornamental fripperies that provide nothing but cost ratepayers an arm and a leg. The same goes for milk – if we have to, bring school milk back in. And that reminds me – someone I know works at a local college. He sees the canteen staff putting food, still in its plastic wraps into the bins at the end of the day. He also sees kids scavenging through those bins, which are supposed to be for the local piggery to pick up. He asked canteen staff why hungry kids couldn’t have the food without having to scrounge for it. The response? They wouldn’t make a profit if they gave it away. When a dollar via a pig farm is more important than a child’s hungry belly, you know there is a problem.

Absolutely create incentives for companies to retain their manufacturing here; it’s not that difficult to do. Company tax of 28 percent if all is processed in New Zealand – 45 percent if any of it is sent off shore for production or services.

When it comes to family violence or sexual abuse, these need to be made major crimes. Lock the perpetrators away, even the first offenders – for long enough so that the children grow without having to witness it, without having to think it’s ‘normal’. So that the many, many millions of dollars spent of medical care, counseling etc etc are lessened because the deterrent is such that any person thinking of raising their fist, or thinking that a physically immature child is prime prey for sex will think again.

To fix all this, there has to be a hardening up of how we do and see things. And until whoever is in government realises this, the problems will only get worse. One wonders at the naivety of the UN at times. Do any of these committee members have kids themselves? Are any truly aware of the ‘warrior’ society our very young country is still in? Most obviously not.

A racist slap on Waitangi Day

I was absolutely incensed to read the news that if you are representing non-Maori media and expect to get onto Te Tii marae, the 'official home' of the Waitangi Day celebrations, then a payment of $1000 would be demanded. If you refused to pay it, you are to be refused entry.

Just over $270,000 a year is paid to a variety or organisations every year to help hold the celebrations of what is supposedly our national day. Of this, more than $180,000 is paid to the Waitangi area and $140,000 of that directly to the marae trust to do this. That is taxpayers money. All taxpayers of New Zealand, including the media. So how dare the Trust spokesperson Hama Apiata tell the media, "You don't pay, you don't get in."

Ngapuhi elder David Rankin has publicly revolted at this - and rightfully so. It is utterly racist. One has to wonder how any government official can accept this by attending the 'celebrations'. What's your take on this John Key? Do you ever hear of media being charged to cover Anzac day celebrations - anywhere?

I find it mindboggling that our country's leader has had nothing to say about this - and doesn't seem to get it, that by attending the event with this tag attached, he is subliminally condoning it.

The statement by some that the media are there only to cover the disruptions doesn't cut the mustard with me either. The media cover what happens. If the Maori radicals of this world choose to use the marae as a way to circumvent the system - one that is working and has been for some decades now - then who is to blame for that? Clean up the actions of some of your troublesome iwi, Mr Apiata. The whole day is supposedly about manaaki, the ability to welcome onto a marae all visitors. Not ever to blatantly exercise racism to this extent. Me, I'm only one - and of the iwi Ngapuhi at that - but I WILL distance myself from this by simply not watching any broadcast from media at the marae.

And that brings us to the next step. We've listened and watched last week as our neighbours over the ditch joyfully celebrated their Australia Day. I lived over there for seven years and if I know one thing, boy do those patriotic Aussies know how to throw a national party.

Yet we don't here. Many people tend these days to view Anzac day as our national day. It is the one day where we completely unite as a nation and remember how we got to be here and remember those who fought for that right. Isn't that what a national day is supposed to commemorate? It is a day when we can be justifiably proud of who we are, where we've come from, where we are going.

Maybe it's past time we renamed our day New Zealand Day and brought the national celebration of that out of Waitangi to all of the people, not just some. We are a major melting pot these days, but it seems to me that each and every February 6, all we are reminded of is that 14 percent of our population still are not content with what has been achieved in recent times; that the resentment of many of the rest of the population is growing. And that actions like this from the Te Tii Marae only serve to continue the festering.