It'll End In Tears, Just Not Theirs

How The Debate About Section 7AA Has Reminded Me Of A Lifetime Of Hate

In this SubStack I have always aimed to be balanced and relatively dispassionate. In reality that's just the way I am about politics.

I pay my bills as one of those dastardly overpaid consultants you hear about, and in that game you can't afford to let your own views interfere with what the objectively correct strategic move would be for your client. You can't charge by the hour for your biases and grudges. 

This is why, mostly, I try to keep my analysis theoretical. I'll splash in some personal anecdotes but those are more for illustration. 

You've gotten my professional and reasoned mind - not my baggage - and I'll return to that after this post.

This blog is going to be a departure. If you don't enjoy it I respect your opinion and sympathise.

This is probably more for me than anyone else. 

The debate around the repeal of Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act, the cynical game playing around race, who is and isn't Maori, has made a productive or useful outcome impossible. 

We're seeing toxic levels of personal attacks that are also promoting a racist mindset widely. Lines are being drawn within Maoridom. Toxic gatekeepers have been re-energised.  

There are two issues with the debate that is being had around the repeal of Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. They are terminal for any hope that things get better for our most vulnerable. 

The first is that no one involved is looking to have a good faith debate about the fate of children in harm's way. 

How ACT has chosen to engage in this legislation change has been far too blinkered. There needs to be a place for nuance and acknowledgement that 7AA isn't the primary issue with Oranga Tamariki. 

The entire act and the leadership of the agency itself are the real problem. 7AA is just one element.

During a Parliamentary debate on the bill, Labour's Willow-Jean Prime accurately complained that the evidence provided by the government for the repeal shows much larger issues than just those around section 7AA. 

“Every example she gives is not connected to 7AA,” on this, she is correct. If she had kept it at that, I would be heralding her further. 

[Arrested Development narration:] She didn't. 

"The view that whakapapa, culture, connection to whānau, and whanaungatanga are not in the best interests of the child. We believe that it is, they believe that it isn't. They think it should be colour blind. I'm worried about how far they will go with their colour blind agenda."

Prime also called Chhour a “sell-out.”

This leads into the second, far more insidious, issue. The people claiming most righteous fury are only seeking to smear and degrade anyone who disagrees with them as attacking Maori, or not Maori enough. 

Prime was long considered the next big Ngapuhi political hope, after Kelvin Davis, but has failed to maintain her seat or achieve much in Parliament… much like Kelvin Davis. 

Her personal attacks on Chhour feel like deflection from her own failings and an acknowledgement that, while she was hand picked by her elders, that is both a gift and a curse. 

I have written previously about how Labour seek to divide and conquer Maori, how their selection process seems to be based on nepotism (see Peeni Henare, Willie Jackson, and previously, Rino Tiraketene) and gassing up young wahine to the point that they start acting like the entitled nepo-babies around them (see Kiritapu Allan, Prime).  

Labour aren't helping Maori, they are playing this deeply unmeritocratic game where the only Maori they support are ones with the right connections. Ones who won't seek to change the way this game is played. 

I'm not jealous, quite the opposite, I've had offers in the past but I chose to turn down such baubles. I sought to be my own person and organically grow my political mind. 

Sadly, Labour aren't the worst bad actors here. Not even close.

In the case of the current Te Pati Maori, steered largely by John Tamihere, I think the denigration is intentional. It comes from a place barely concealed contempt, bordering on hate, that scares me and offends me equally. 

Te Pati Maori have claimed that the very minor legislative change would lead to a “stolen generation.”

On Facebook, the official Te Pati Maori account responded to someone who pointed out that Karen Chhour has personal experience with the state care system and is only seeking to improve it, by saying the following:

“If Section 7AA were around in Karen Chhour's time, she would have been raised Maori, she would have been raised connected to her whakapapa and having a knowingness of her Maoritanga, instead she was raised Pakeha with a disconnection and disdain for her own people."

Raising children is complex, and being the perfect parent is an illusion. 

Being good enough, harmless, good intentioned, is all anyone can ask of a parent. That's not racially or ethnically exclusive. Even if hateful people want you to believe it is. 

Karen Chhour was brave to talk about her childhood in state care. Brave, but also a bit naive. 

Politics isn't a world for brave people. Ideally it would be, but ours isn't. It's one of deep cynicism and people who will take advantage of any weakness shown. 

You learn to never show a weakness, even a relatable one. 

I know this because I had an overly political childhood. 

Raised in Wellington, my first political event was a Labour Party primary for Wellington Central candidate when I was three years old. It is my earliest memory. 

I've been through enough therapy to understand that over exposure to politics at an early age is why I am relatively dispassionate generally, not just in writing. 

I had an unconventional childhood. Not a scary or dangerous one, or one lacking in privilege. But not a fully healthy one either. 

I was raised Maori, culturally and personally. I was raised connected to my whakapapa and having a ''knowingness'' of my Maoritanga around pioneering Maori academics. I attended Maori Womens Welfare League meetings regularly a year after that Labour primary. 

Other than the fair skin thing (which some people struggle to get over but I don't worry about) and not having my Reo (which I do plan on addressing), I'm deeply connected to Maoritanga. 

I was also raised a bit Pakeha. My Pakeha grandparents taught me many great things - like tolerance and honesty. They brought me to their rotary club and to church, and even though the churchgoing didn't catch-on with me their integrity and morals have shaped me just as much as my time with my kaumatua at Papawai. 

If that all was enough to fill my soul and keep me on the righteous path, you wouldn't be reading this - I'd probably be some kind of artist. Landscapes maybe. 

It's not. 

I was raised in luxury by two highly educated policy analysts/managers/chief executives, but I was never given the luxury of being naive to the world around me and what it really thought of me as a half-caste. 

Too Maori for some, not Maori enough for others. I knew that old blind before I could read.

I was raised with eyes forced wide open. Like the protagonist, Alex, in A Clockwork Orange. Eyes unable to look away from the horrors of the world.

My parents met while working at an international aid organisation that no longer exists because, according to academic research which analysed changing public sentiment towards it, it became dominated by a self serving Maori elite whanau who sought to move it away from providing aid to war torn countries and towards a type of culture war we're seeing re-emerge. 

I was also told, at a very young age, an anecdote about a former colleague of my parents, the daughter of Titewhai Harawira who was also a colleague and who shared this sentiment as well, just not so graphically. 

She explained to my mother that my being of mixed race was a stain on my mother's Maoridom, and that I should be aborted - violently, down a flight of stairs, if required. 

During that same year, 1988, two of Titewhai Harawira's children were convicted of assault. This wasn't an entirely idle threat.

When, years later and as an MP, Hone Harawira said he wouldn't want his children to have pakeha partners, I believed him. That is how he was raised, and how he was raising.

I shouldn't be glad anyone is dead, it is not a decent way to think about another human being and goes against my values. 

But I'm glad Titewhai Harawira is dead. I don't feel good about this, I hope to get over this one day, but I am. 

To her ilk I am a mistake, a blemish on our entire race. Not because of any crap about not being raised in Te Ao Maori, it's never been about that, but because I am pakeha at all. 

I was born with an original sin, one I will never be absolved of.

Several people I know, even a few friends, have vocalised support for members of this whanau in front of me or online. I've never told them, but I resent them for this and have intentionally distanced myself from them afterwards. It's not great.

This is unhealthy. I am holding a grudge that I need to bury, but at this point I don't want to. 

My hate for these people fuels me. The knowledge that there are people out there who hate you for just 'being' brings out powerful feelings of spite. 

This is why I see the appeal of hate, but it is not conducive to being a happy person or creating a healthy society. Hate is toxic. 

Sadly, when it comes to this important debate around how Maori children being abused should be handled, hate and personal animosity are overpowering adults from acting in these children's best interests.  

We're seeing and hearing nasty divisive things when we should be trying to find practical solutions. 

It is bitterly ironic that the disappointing people leading the former Maori Party are the ones most championing racial division. 

This is a party Dame Tariana Turia founded to fight against the divisive anti-Maori rhetoric she was seeing at the time. It is a denigration of her legacy that the current co-leaders are now using this party to cut people out of Maoridom. 

To divide us, not unite us. 

When people say children deserve to understand their whakapapa and the beauty of their Maoridom, I see it. Up to a point. 

When people say children deserve safety above all else, that good intentioned and harmless upbringing, I see that too. None of this should be an either/or proposition, and yet it is being framed as such. 

The way Karen Chhour has been treated disgusts me, but it doesn't surprise me. I can relate to what she's going through, and what she's likely gone through her whole life. 

It won't get better. Some people, like Rawiri Waititi, are too ingrained in this quite hateful mindset to be able to see the damage they are doing. Some people, like Willie Jackson, are too unintelligent and entitled to know any different. 

I shudder when people talk about Maori elite, not because I don't know they exist, but because Maori gaining positions of influence is not the problem - the ones who get there off the last name (or who their father-in-law is) alone.  

I have my Pakeha father's last name. One given to him by his father - a deeply community minded and caring man who never sought to get rich off others and never was. 

For Keith Gray, living his morals and helping people when he could was enough to have lived a good life. 

For the people who disdain me for being his grandchild, there is never enough. They seek attention, money, and power like leeches seek blood.  

First, colonisation and urbanisation displaced Maori from their whakapapa, now it is fellow Maori - ones born to a higher caste - that seek to do exactly the same.

In an interview Dame Georgina Te Heuheu explained that her elders told her we needed Maori voices across the political spectrum to ensure we're not isolated or pigeon-holed. She said Te Ao Maori was strengthened by a diversity of opinion. 

I believe she was right, I believe the future for Maori can be bright if we can allow ourselves to grow beyond the old ways of a chiefly caste system. Of calling people with whakapapa 'not Maori enough’ for the sin of disagreeing with their historical rulers. Of crabs in a bucket. 

If you have made it this far, thank you - and I'm sorry this got a bit self indulgent. 

As a reward here's my balanced and relatively dispassionate solution - scrap the entire Oranga Tamariki Act. It is a poorly drafted, terrible piece of legislation. 

Start from a blank slate - acknowledge the important part whangai adoptions have always played within Maoridom, but don't pretend that some Maori, some people, aren't unfit to be parents. 

Some children need to be uplifted, before something incredibly tragic occurs. It's not always perfect, it is the government after all, but safety needs to be priority one. 

The real solution, beyond all this side show and playing Maori off against Pakeha and against each other, is painfully obvious. 

The issue with our state care system is that it is chronically underfunded and relies on the goodness of a small number of households who aren't well supported. 

It's that bloody simple. You spend the money to make facilities better - to provide better training, to keep good people running services, to keep monitoring tight - all of this becomes academic. 

I believe Karen Chhour means well, but isn't going to solve enough being so narrowly focused. 

I believe this version of Te Pati Maori, on this issue and many others, actively doesn't mean well. They are picking up the Harawira baton of racial division and are only gassing up people who share this hateful mindset. 

It'll end in tears, just not theirs.