Back to Columns

25 June 2006

A column published in the "Sunday Star-Times"

THE KAHUI SHAME

This is not a good morning to be a Kahui.

The Maori surname will forever be associated with the brutal slaying of three month old twins. And this negative perception will only be reinforced by the arrest of an alleged rapist with familial links to this shamed whanau.

And a shamed whanau it most certainly is. Shamed by its initial act, and then shamed by its consequent inaction. By week’s end that shame had come to taint all Maori.

Which is unfair. But child homicide statistics do suggest that Maori are grossly over-represented. And over-represented to such an extent that the usual excuse about socio-economic deprivation cannot work.

Why? Because Pacific Islanders living in New Zealand, who have lower average incomes and greater rates of social deprivation, do not kill their kids at anything like the same rate. Indeed a child is less likely to be killed in a Pacific Island family than in any other major ethnicity represented in this country. Yes, including Pakeha.

But why Maori? What dark skein twists itself within that culture to produce rogue whanau like the Kahui? With 48 Maori children killed between 1990 and 2001 – almost half the dreadful sum of child victims. And are the Kahui rogue? Or are they symptomatic of an underclass within Maori who are resistant to both mainstream and Maori assistance?

I stray towards the latter conclusion. One of the mistakes that many Maori leaders have made this week – quite apart from their initial attempts to dissemble – is in suggesting that there is a Maori solution to this Maori problem. If there was, then it would have worked already.

The truth is that many Maori parents do not possess the parenting skills to properly care and cater for their children. That manifests itself in many ways – from obesity and health problems, through to violence and killing. Letting these people have kids is an invitation to tragedy.

In that respect, one could identify Pakeha, Pacific and Asian parents of the same ilk. As likely as not, they will have alcohol and drug issues. They will be beneficiaries. They will hover on the fringes of gangs or organised crime, if not be directly involved. They have low IQ, low literacy and no real skills other than to drink, smoke, bludge and breed.

This is New Zealand’s underclass and they are a direct result of both middle-class policy-makers and politicians assuming that all people think like them.

That normal social etiquette will prevail – that the market will eventually get its message through.

Or that Maori know best. That if you shift the problem to this ethnic group then they will provide a culturally appropriate solution.

The truth is that the underclass has never been equipped to look after themselves. Neither, in the main, could their parents or grandparents. But both the economy and society was more centrally controlled and highly directed in earlier days. This new liberalism – be it social, legal or economic – not so much unfetters this underclass as drops them entirely. They are the detritus of our collective success and excess.

So does that make us all responsible? Are the Kahui killings a national tragedy or not?

The honest answer is no. Every community has its weak, its rogue and its defects and kiddie killers tend to be all three. As a rule, they also tend to prey on their own. It is a crime that appals but rarely reaches beyond its sordid origins.

The Kahui twins are different though for many reasons. First, they were acutely vulnerable having been born premature at 29 weeks. Second, both Mum and Dad appeared indifferent to their care whilst alive – neighbours report regular parties, there were unexplained absences, and the Police discovered that other children at the house were dirty and malnourished.

Then there is the code of silence – this immediate recourse to legal aid lawyers. In death, these twins are abused too. Their fate not as important as protecting the selfish interests of the surviving adults. It reminds us – too much - of that other trash Wairarapa whanau who tortured and killed Lillybing but refused to finger the true perpetrator. We cannot comprehend either the cruelty or the callousness.

So although the shame need not be national, the reaction has been. What is wrong – we ask - with these people, these whanau, this culture? That Maori leaders are now asking the same questions suggests that the latter is not necessarily a contributing cause.

And it’s not as if rogue families like the Kahui have not had generous State assistance over the years. Free education, free health, free welfare, free legal.

Their problem is that they can’t handle such freedom. They are not equipped.

This week Australian health minister Peter Abbott suggested that Aborigine society was failing so spectacularly that it was unable to look after itself. That what was required was a new policy of State paternalism rather than the indifference and hostility of yesteryear.

As you would expect, Aborigine leaders and white liberals howled him down. They chastised him for his white man’s arrogance. For not allocating sufficient resources to ensure that Australian’s indigenous race could really go it alone.

But Abbott’s heart and head were both in the right place. And there are families and whanau in New Zealand who similarly can’t go it alone. Who have neither the wit nor wisdom to be anything other than a tragedy waiting to happen. And who only breed new tragedies with every passing day.

The Kahuis are one of those.

ENDS