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The Whanau Ora taskforce report has been released and like all aspects of this policy it offers a curious mixture of hope and frustration.
I'll start with the hope, because a new approach is desperately needed. Since urbanisation, beginning in the 1950s, many Maori have become members of what Tariana Turia calls the "unders and overs club" - under represented in educational achievement and good health outcomes and over represented in the prisons and dole queues.
If you are worried about private providers mismanaging money under the Whanau Ora policy - think of the billions wasted now by state agencies which have failed to turn those negative statistics around.
So, trying something new isn't really the risk at all. What is risky is to keep going with a failed approach. The failed approach is one where a multitude of state agencies each deal separately with several members of the same family without considering the needs of the family as a whole.
The Whanau Ora taskforce report provides a useful scenario of the gaps in the modern welfare state. It offers the example of a whanau where a sole mum has a part time job and her kids are getting into trouble. The 16-year-old son has been caught several times for driving without a licence. He's stopped going to work because he doesn't want the boss to know about the court convictions. The 12-year-old daughter is absent from school and the eight-year-old has been picked up by the police for roaming the streets late at night. The police, Work and Income, Child Youth and Family and the local school are all dealing with the family but in a fragmented way.
Under Whanau Ora a case manager is the first point of contact and tackles the problem in its entirety: Help mum find a job allowing her more time at home with the kids; help the son get his licence back and explain the situation to his boss so he can start earning again.
Sounds like common sense to me, but of course it isn't that simple. And here's where the frustration comes in, and the politics too, because if you take the key elements of this issue - race, money, welfare and state versus private provision - you have a potential powder keg.
Firstly I think both the politicians and the taskforce have done a poor job in selling the policy. The Prime Minister didn't help by saying Whanau Ora was like a water bed. I understand his analogy - push down on one side and the other rises up, much like the interconnected needs of a family - but it allowed opponents to treat the policy with derision.
The taskforce report isn't helpful in that regard either. In part it reads like a motivational self-help guide with banal slogans spread across its 71 pages. "Whanau Ora - well that's us, it's who we are," reads one. "Whanau have to describe success in their own terms," reads another. My personal favourite is: "Whanau ora is going to take us there and it has been since the beginning of time."
Sometimes even the main text descends into complete psycho-babble: In searching for what Whanau Ora actually means the taskforce concludes that "whanau ora is distinctive because it recognises a collective entity, endorses a group capacity for self determination, has an intergenerational dynamic, is built on a Maori cultural foundation, asserts a positive role for whanau within society and can be applied across a wide range of social and economic sectors."
It really doesn't have to be that hard. I liked Matt McCarten's description on Q+A last weekend. He described Whanau Ora as a one stop shop for social services. Certainly the Whanau Ora policy needs a salesperson and no-one in the Maori Party or National has filled that role.
The other problem, as usual, is money. Of course there is no new money, so Whanau Ora is to be funded by taking money from mainstream budgets. Fair enough. As I said earlier the state solutions aren't working. Trouble is, with many government departments starved of new funding for at least three years, I can't see them putting their hands deep in their pockets when the Whanau Ora hat is passed around the public service.
Thanks to leaked documents we have already seen the police reaction which, effectively, is: We support the policy but don't want to help fund it.
But the biggest threat to Whanau Ora is the very force which has given rise to it implementation: politics.
There are those in politics, and in the media, who will see Whanau Ora as separatism - a separate Maori welfare system. They will leap on any example of money which has been poorly spent by private providers of social services (ignoring the state failures in this same area).
If the attack is strong and sustained enough the main stream party will buckle, the policy is then scrapped and we start again from the same point of failure.
I saw this happen over Labour's decade in power. When Helen Clark came to office in 1999 she laudably wanted to close the gaps between Maori and Pakeha outcomes in health, education and employment. She chaired a Cabinet Committee called Closing the Gaps. Hundreds of millions of dollars was spent on that goal. The National opposition lampooned and attacked the policy and it was quitetly shelved.
The gaps are still there. Those gaps are not sustainable financially or socially. So the challenge for the proponents of Whanau Ora is to explain how it will work and then to prove it does work. The challenge for the critics is: Have you got a better idea?
Do you have a better idea? Or do you think Whanau Ora is the way to go? Share your throughts on the messageboard below.
Read more of Guyon Espiner's blogs .
Add a Comment:
Post new commentTinHB said on 2010-04-09 @ 21:37 NZDT: Report abusive post
Sorry Zaniabar, but you sound much too like your just perpetuating "Lets protect the white liberal constructs, come what may" assumptions. Isn't it time to just be honest with ourselves that European solutions just aren't solutions for Maori?
life changes said on 2010-04-09 @ 20:54 NZDT: Report abusive post
Concept sounds great, the how will be interesting. There appears to be some cross over with the Strengthening Families process. In your example the SF could have produced a great outcome. More buy in from Government agencies to SF needed
navygreg said on 2010-04-08 @ 23:26 NZDT: Report abusive post
The current CYPS / WINZ / Police tri umvirate simply arent working for some Maori . Surely a pilot program in a provincial city for 1 year or so would be a start. 1 year would be long enough for a good program to start showing the way ,but not too long as to be wasteful if it isnt working.Similar to what small business operators do
Zanziabar said on 2010-04-08 @ 22:47 NZDT: Report abusive post
Hi TinHB, I don't have a better idea to magically fix the massive disparities between NZ Europeans and Maori, But I fail to see how this programme, maori input or otherwise is going to make any sort of difference at all. It will need a social change, as well as an economic one. It's going to take a massive shakeup to get any sort of positive change, And I certainly don't think that taking already sparse cash from organisations that do good in the community will help it.
allforone said on 2010-04-08 @ 22:23 NZDT: Report abusive post
Just when i thought the government had no extra money left to spend,they go and create another government department, (whanau ora),i guess that's why they cut state sector jobs and put mainstream beneficiaries on notice,maybe they, iwi, should fund it themselves from the millions they have been given already.