Ae Marika! 29 May 2011

Posted on May 29, 2012 by admin in Ae Marika

I don’t always agree with National’s Minister of Finance, Bill English, but he was dead right when he called the 2012 Budget a zero budget – because after you cut through to the guts of it all it was clear to see that it offered zero opportunity, zero growth, zero solutions and zero hope for the thousands of Kiwis wondering why they don’t just hop on a plane and zip across the ditch. Many already have of course and many more will follow, but most of us will stay because this is our home, this is still the best place in the world to live, and this is where we want our kids to grow up.

But it ain’t easy, and with the cuts being proposed in welfare, health and education, and the increased prescription charges, and the changing of employment law to give even more power to employers, sometimes it’s hard to see where we’re going.

That’s why it’s important that we have heroes, people that we can look up to and learn from. Not just the great historical figures from our past but real heroes from our own community, heroes from our world.

We know who they are but sometimes we forget them or forget to acknowledge them or just don’t want to see them because we’re jealous, but they’re there alright.

People who live good lives, who have principles and stand by them, who stand up for those that the rest of us look down on, people who have built organisations which will give us great service for many years to come and who are never recognised for what they have done.

People who fight for the rights of others, people who go next door to help the old lady get started every morning, people who run food banks even when they know there’s no food left.

We see a lot of those qualities in our kaumatua and kuia, and rightly so for they have come through some tough times and sacrificed much that we might enjoy what we have today.

I see it in Maori wardens standing in the rain every time there’s a big hui on, directing traffic and trying to keep people happy. I see young lifeguards risking their very lives to rescue drunks and tourists and poor swimmers.

We got our voluntary fire fighters and our ambulance crews racing around the far north putting out fires and picking up the pieces of human carnage. We got doctors and nurses working long hours, copping heaps of abuse and trying to stitch us all together with a smile and a prescription.

And then of course there’s our mums, who make the breakfast, wash the clothes, feed and change the baby, iron the kids clothes, make their darling a coffee when he gets out of bed, make the lunches, get the kids dressed properly, make sure they got the right books and their homework in the bag, get everyone out to the bus on time … and all that before 8am every day … they’re the real heroes.

I’m talking like this because we have some really good people amongst us. We should value them for what they do and the leadership and the hope they offer, and when we see them we should say thank you for whatever it is that they might have done to make our lives that little bit easier.