Ae Marika 10 June 2014
Posted on June 10, 2014 by admin in Ae MarikaLast week I chaired the Tai Tokerau Kohanga Reo review held at Tumatauenga Marae in Otiria and attended by representatives of the 10 districts from around the north.
The meeting had been called to respond to options for a new governance structure for the National Kohanga Reo Trust, presented at a hui held at Turangawaewae a couple of months ago, to seek a way forward following months of public dismay at the way in which Kohanga’s business had been managed.
Three of the four new governance options involved some trustees chosen by Kohanga and others elected via an Electoral College and a representative of the Maori King (who is the patron of the Kohanga Reo Movement). The fourth option was based on reps chosen from the 10 regions from around the country.
There was unanimous support for Kohanga to remain independent of government control and a call for formal legislation to be put in place to safeguard that independence.
There was also general support for a structure which included broad representation from the 10 Kohanga regions, but the final decision was to not recommend any changes to the current Board structure until after the report of the Independent Adviser was made public.
That report is likely to be critical to the future of Kohanga because it came off the back of a 2012 Waitangi Tribunal ruling that government had failed to support Kohanga Reo’s Maori language strategy. The report was to consider an urgent programme to overhaul policy, increase participation, improve quality, increase funding and provide the support necessary for upgrade and maintenance of Kohanga facilities.
And while Kohanga clearly has problems, they also have a future based on broad support from whanau naitonwide, which can’t be said about John Banks, ex-National party MP, ex Minister of Police, ex-mayor of Auckland, and ex-leader of the ACT party, who added to his resume by becoming the ex-ACT MP for Epsom at 5pm on Sunday 7 June 2014.
Banks’ latest and final fall from grace came after he was found guilty last Friday in the Auckland High Court of electoral fraud for accepting massive political donations from Kim Dotcom and others for his failed mayoral campaign of 2010 and calling them ‘anonymous’.
The case only got to court because a Graham McCready took a private prosecution against Banks for electoral fraud after the NZ Police decided they didn’t have enough evidence to prosecute – which says a lot about how our cops treat rich white guys.
John Banks was the National party MP for Whangarei for about 20 years last century. During his time he was a Minister of Police and routinely made nasty, vicious and deeply racist comments about Maori and Pacific Islanders. He also hosted a talkback show on Radio Pacific while he was a Minister, during which he and the current mayor of the Far North District Council, John Carter, used to hold a “conversation” with Carter impersonating a Maori on the dole – again, a nasty piece of racist broadcasting featuring two National Party politicians, one of whom was masquerading as our Minister of Police.
We can all forgive but some things are difficult to forget … and life goes on …
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.
Tania says:
Post Author June 13, 2014 at 11:55 am“Unanimous support for Kohanga to remain independent of government control and a call for formal legislation to be put in place to safeguard that independence.”
Where does Kohanga funding come from? The Government?
In past years there have been a number of Kohanga that have been ‘ripped off’ by whanau members and what happens in these cases? More effort seems to be put into brushing things under the carpet then dealing with the issue and putting processes in place to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
When A Kohanga I was involved with was ripped off for $40-50,000 by our Admin/Secretary, the Chairperson and I went through records and seeing the enormity of the situation, which had been going on from the start of the persons employment five years earlier, and talking to the bank regarding a large number of cheques, notified the police and the District Tari to whom we were affiliated. The advice from the Tari was “don’t bring in the police.” When advised that this had already happened the sh*t hit the fan and the Tari didn’t want to know about us. They supported the person involved and sent someone up to awhi her and her whanau.
All of the above is done and dusted now, the person ended up being charged on hundreds of offences, a lot of the stuff they purchased (groceries, car seats,clothing, car alarms, tyres, weedeater – whatever a family night need over five years we paid for it, was found at their whare) and she got 100 hours community service and had to pay $30,000 back to the Kohanga.
How/why did this happen? The kaupapa of how Kohana units are run enables all of this to happen
I would like to say here that I know there are Kohanga out there run to perfection, strong whanau support, excellent admin in place and accountability to both Whanau members and the Distict Tari.
In the case of the one I have mentioned we had a group of parents that came in off the street to enrol their tamariki, mostly related to each other, from varying aspects of life, with little or no education/solo parents/beneficiaries to those who were educated/ worked full time and sent tamariki because there are no other ECE places in the area and they used it as a childminding service.
When you enrolled your tamariki you also became a member of the whanau committee that ran the Kohanga and were obliged to attend the monthly Whanau Hui so people that were having problems coping with their own lives were now expected to be involved in running the Kohanga and its’ day to day activities, also being available to do your rostered days as parent help (so many days per month). A large percentage of these members were involved with drugs/alcohol/domestic violence – personally I didn’t want some of them around my child, hungover/stoned, (and to this day parents are feeling like this and another private ECE place has opened locally, where all staff and caregivers are vetted, and it is flooded with enrolments that would have gone to the Kohanga). We had one parent/Dad that had been recently released after 8 years in jail for armed robbery and had brutally beaten an old couple up in the process of robbing their store. Done his time you might say?? Still beating his partner and been investigated by Child protection but as a parent is allowed to come to Kohanga.
When it came to Whanau hui each month it was the same few people attending and when my boy started, the Admin that ripped us off had been in place for 3 years and was fairly well established, two tamariki enrolled, friends with everybody and related to everybody else by marriage. In a small rural community you tend to take people at face value, especially when they volunteer to do a lot of the mahi eg offering to put in more admin hours than funded for, for free, if they could do it at home. This person volunteered for lots of things, did all the shopping for the Kohanga, took the van for it’s W.O.Fs, tyres etc, and for every cheque that had to be accounted for at monthly hui they had an explanation and a receipt. Eventually the stress of it all must have started getting to them and they started getting sloppy making some of us suspicious as to some of the payments going out/ decreasing bank balance. When asked, their answers weren’t convincing, I myself had a couple of run ins with them over financial matters until we had a hui that several of us weren’t happy with and a couple of days later when the tamariki had been taken for a road trip, some of us broke into the filing cabinets and found all sorts – doubled up receipt books, two sets of minutes for hui, one set that whanau members received and the set that was sent to the Tari, various rubber stamps and invoice templates with the names of various businesses we dealt with (tyre co, carpet cleaning etc). The lengths they had gone to so that they could cover their tracks/thieving was unreal, and it had all been done right in front of everyone moreless because the whanau committee did not have experienced people dealing with the issues that needed to be dealt with, most of them didn’t understand how to read a financial report, meeting protocols, that they had the right to speak up and be heard. As young mothers a lot of them were to shy to speak up and were basically led by the nose and did whatever the admin told them.
Small communities where you are related or friends with everyone also makes it harder for people to speak up when things aren’t right, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Over the years there have been too many irregularities/mishaps/lack of accountability within Kohanga and these need to be addressed, loopholes need to be closed and accountability needs to happen before Kohanga can operate successfully in these small communities and overall if Kohanga are to remain independent of government control and to safeguard that independence.
A once in a while visit from the Tari over 100 miles away did’t do it for us and when they did show they never picked up on anything happening within our Whare and they were supposed to be the experienced people in the set up.
Another issue was the smacking of the tamariki by the Kaiawhina. We had so many hui over this issue, signs around the whare ‘kaua e patu nga tamariki’ but the Tari didn’t want to deal with it because Aunty was old school, had brought her tamariki up ‘that way’ and had been at the Kohanga for 16 years (and had still no qualifications/completed her kete as a Kaiawhina) – Whanau members were divided because Aunty was an aunty to all of us and ‘out of respect’ for her age. Aunty was also not fluent in Te Reo after all this time, another issue that the Tari let go.
Who is accountable to who?
Over the years there have been too many irregularities/mishaps/lack of accountability within Kohanga and these need to be addressed, loopholes need to be closed and accountability needs to happen before Kohanga can operate successfully in these small communities and overall if Kohanga are to remain independent of government control and to safeguard that independence.
The independent report coming out needs to address what is not working and what needs to be working better for the ongoing survival and funding of our Kohanga for our tamariki