Mana | Movement of the People

Ae Marika! 6 May 2014

The other day I got an email from a guy wanting help to get more access to his daughter. I didn’t bother reading it all, but given that he’d bothered to write nine pages (!) the least I could do was give the poor bugger a ring.

He and his partner of the time had split up. He’d been given only limited access with his daughter (a supervised couple of hours every fortnight) but after a while he’d been able to get that extended to a day-and-a-half every two weeks.

He applied to get even more time with his girl but the court said that current arrangements should continue. So he decided to take legal action to get more time and give up all access to his daughter until he got it.

But that was THREE YEARS AGO …

I talked to him for about an hour but in the end I couldn’t help thinking that while he might have every right to take legal action against his ex for not agreeing to further access, I couldn’t understand how denying his daughter any relationship with him and the rest of his whanau made any sense at all. It just seemed like this guy was so angry with everyone else he’d forgotten about his own little girl …

Moral of the story (for me at least) is that while partners might have disagreements with one another, the needs of our kids should always come first. I’ll follow up and see if we can help get this guy reunited with his girl.

This same scenario applied to another whanau I met with. The son had been suspended from school and the mum wanted to take legal action against the principal, but her boy had already been out of school for 3 months without any schoolwork and was likely to be out for quite a bit longer if the legal action dragged on.

So I said I would talk to the principal and the Correspondence School to get some schoolwork for the son until his suspension / legal action had been sorted out. I also offered to put him in touch with the local Rugby League club to make sure he didn’t lose touch with his sporting goals (he’d trialled with the Warriors Development Squad but everything had stopped since he’d been suspended).

Again, I’m not saying that mum is wrong to pursue legal action, but her son’s immediate future seemed to have become a secondary priority to her legal issues. I hope we can get her boy sorted soon and I hope she gets justice for whatever slight she feels has been inflicted upon her and her son.

One final word for the week. Shane is moving on and Kelvin Davis is coming back in on the list for Labour to replace him. Kelvin might not be the superstar that Labour is trying to make him out to be (to cover for their huge gaffe in letting Shane fly the coop), but he is a decent, sincere guy and a person I have great respect for as an educator. I look forward to his return to parliament.

AE MARIKA is an article written every week by Hone Harawira, leader of the MANA Movement and Member of Parliament for Te Tai Tokerau. You are welcome to use any of the comments and to ascribe them to Mr Harawira. The full range of Hone’s articles can be found on the MANA website at www.mana.net.nz.