“Do what’s right!”
Tēnā koutou,
Two years ago, Wellington’s health leaders reached out to Ngāti Toa and asked us to look after all the people of Porirua during the darkest days of the Covid pandemic. Providing kai, pastoral care, health care and trusted voices, faces and places to achieve targeted vaccination levels was the ask. Ngāti Toa said yes and delivered as required.
Two years before that, Ngāti Toa formed a strategic partnership with Oranga Tamariki under the provisions of section 7AA to co-design and deliver support and services to safeguard our mokopuna and enhance the wellbeing of them and their whānau. Under its provisions our partnered mahi has seen positive reductions in Reports of Concern, Further Actions Required, and Re-notification after no further action required.
We have codesigned with Oranga Tamariki a Family Group Conference model for whānau that explicitly aims to prevent mokopuna from going into state care, focus on early intervention and family group conferences, and provide whole of whānau support.
We have created a practice model that has been informed by mātauranga-a-iwi and produced an increased awareness and appreciation of how Ngāti Toa tikanga can effectively operate in statutory social workspace.
This has been successful with whānau remaining together and not being placed in state care. Whānau have attributed that outcome to early intervention and mana-enhancing whanau-centred approach…all enabled by 7AA. Whānau have said of our processes:
I felt supported, like I had a blanket wrapped round me. I don’t have much family support….they were my help.
Took my mind away from thinking the worst to thinking things would get better if I just let them help
We see them thriving (our tamariki)
Kaimahi have said:
Working in collaboration, whānau getting support in their most vulnerable time
Being able to work alongside OT to create positive outcomes for whānau that differ from the past experiences for both whanau and support agencies.
All of this has been enabled and supported by section 7AA!
Just two weeks ago, our nation was shocked and shamed with the release of the Abuse in State Care Report. The revelation of horrors perpetrated on the most powerless in our society over decades was and is a stain on our State and our collective consciences.
Much has been said about systemic drivers of the harm done and rightly so. However, more should have been said about personal responsibility by all involved because systems don’t abuse children, people do.
Why did they do it and why was it allowed? Were they monsters? Some were, but most were just ordinary people placed in a position of extreme power imbalance, with little visibility or accountability for their actions, and so they abused their power, for various reasons, because they could! It was allowed because nobody in the hierarchy of accountability ensured those tamāriki were safe.
Why didn’t they? When all is said and done, the truth is they just didn’t care enough, nobody with power did. If they did, it wouldn’t have happened!
Ngāti Toa is here today because like you, we share responsibility for our nation’s tamāriki, past, present and future. Like you, it is incumbent on us to say and do all we can to bless their lives. Unlike you, it is not our responsibility to decide if section 7AA stays or goes. Today is your turn to remember those victims and to be personally responsible for ensuring the lessons of Whanaketia are learned and not repeated by a repeal of section 7AA.
It has been argued that the repeal of 7AA is required because some practice decisions made by Oranga Tamariki regarding long-term care may have been harmful to the safety and well-being of tamāriki in care.
Government officials have clearly stated in cabinet briefing and supporting Regulatory Impact Statement that repealing section 7AA won’t achieve what the Minister requires and there is no robust evidence to support this view. The United Nations Conventions of the Rights of the Child support that view, indicating that full or partial repeal would be worse than the status quo.
There is no evidence to show that 7AA is creating the harm the Minister has defined. 7AA supports a higher level of care for mokopuna Māori in a way that enables us to participate effectively and meets the obligations of Te Tiriti, words echoed by others including Mana Mokopuna – Children and Young Peoples Commission, the Association of Social Workers (the professionals working with these whānau), Community Law Aotearoa, survivors of state care, care givers with decades of experience, and even a social investment expert who highlighted the cost to the nation of a repeal!
Section 7AA is first and foremost though a mechanism to ensure visible accountability on the coercive power of the State exercised on the most traumatised whānau in our society. By coercion their tamariki are ripped from their bosom. By coercion their tamariki are held in the hands of strangers or not, at the discretion of the State. By coercion the State can maintain this profound separation until an arbitrarily aged, teenaged young adult – with or without familial connection – is left alone to navigate the rest of their troubled life. Potentially without familial support or connection!
Section 7AA ensures all decision-making associated with all the State’s coercive power is visible and accountable to those most entitled to that visibility and accountability, the whānau and their whānau who were forced to relinquish their family member.
And what of the tamariki in question, the primary focus in this legislative process? What child ever, anywhere, was better off for having no familial connections or relationships or care? None! The profound need that every human being has to know who they are, who they spring from, and to have meaningful relationships with those they share whakapapa with, is universal and essential to human wellbeing and we all know it.
Section 7AA ensures that the State must explicitly remember these things; must act to the best of everyone’s ability to ensure those connections are available, made and nurtured, because it is always in the best interests of children that they exist, and it is always the inalienable right and responsibility of families to create and honour them. Always.
Ten years ago, Parliament unanimously voted for inclusion of the following statement in Ngāti Toa’s Settlement Act:
“With this apology and settlement, the Crown seeks to atone for these wrongs, restore its tarnished honour and begin the process of healing. The Crown hopes that this apology and settlement will mark the beginning of a new, positive, and enduring relationship with Ngati Toa Rangatira founded on mutual trust and co-operation and respect for Te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi and its principles.”
This is not the first time Ngāti Toa has dealt with words solemnly signed off by the Crown being reneged on. However, we invite you as current representatives of the Crown to honour these words of apology and commitment to continue the healing already begun, to maintain the positive enduring relationship based on trust, co-operation and respect.
Repealing section 7AA accomplishes none of these things, none of them. Do what’s right, and if any of you can’t because your personal experience means you cannot objectively consider other’s lived experience, preferences, Tiriti obligations or objective evidence, then stand aside.
“It’s time to do what is right!”
Oral submission presented to the Select Committee by Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira Tumu Whakarae, Helmut Modlik supported by Trini Ropata-Tawhiri and Paranahia Broughton.