Let’s be very clear up front.
I don’t give a shit about ideology when it comes to the material well being and safety of children held in State care.
Our focus here should not be politics or ideology, it should be theesafety and well being of our most vulnerable kids being held in our collective care.
Nothing else matters.
The bullshit triumphalism by the right wing Trolls at the announcement that The Minister for Children can not be compelled to explain her rational to the Waitangi Tribunal for repealing Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act is shallow and ignorant.
Our colonised past has seen the same mistakes many colonised country’s have made when uplifting indigenous babies into State care.
7AA is an attempt to redress that social mutilation.
Instead of uplifting Māori babies into a State care system that abuses and damages them, 7AA forces Oranga Tamariki to work with Māori Community Groups and uplifts Māori children to those groups rather than State care so as to keep Māori kids culturally anchored in their identity while providing on going wider whanau support.
THAT was what 7AA was supposed to facilitate.
Māori children, uplifted by the State, would go to these Māori Community organisations and (most crucially) the funding for that child follows that child to the Māori Community Organisation.
This was going to be a means to fund Māori Community Support and provide material resourcing, this was an actual solution and a way to get the abusive State out of the picture.
Now.
Do I think Oranga Tamariki was infected with the woke virus and that they absurdly used critical race theory madness in their definition of 7AA?
Fuck yes!
The reverse uplift saga that OT embarked upon and Newsroom bravely reported on saw OT define 7AA as ‘no white foster family could raise a Māori child’!
OT didn’t start sending newly uplifted Māori children to these Community Groups, they started taking the Māori children who had already been placed with white foster families back to whanau!
These Māori children had been told that were in a forever home, and that they would be living with these foster parents forever.
These children had enormous jumps in physical well being, emotional well being and material well being.
The child psychologists were clear that removing these Māori children from their white foster families would be traumatic and damaging.
OT did it anyway.
Not only did they do it, they did it with the zeal of the woke.
Staff members lied to the white foster families about what they needed to do to retain cultural competency of the Māori children in their care.
Staff members deceived the white foster families, and Staff members falsified reports to fail them.
All of this came out in Court remember, and what did OT do once the scope of their falsehoods and manipulations were outed in open Court?
OT then privately went to friendly Judges and asked them to speak to the judge hearing the case in an attempt to sway Judicial Independence.
FFS!
The reason OT was willing to go as far as illegally influencing a Judge was because their woke critical race theory dogma had become established policy and they had done this 16 other times!
Now.
While we can righteously damn OT for the manner in which they defined 7AA, repealing 7AA would be throwing the baby out with the Marae.
OT policy towards Māori children being uplifted should be Whanau First not Whanau Always.
Any Māori uplift should go to Māori Community Organisations alongside the funding.
This needs to be established and established now because the dreaded Social Investment Model is coming!
The Social Investment Model uses big data algorithms to pinpoint when a child needs uplifting. For it to work properly and deliver the savings downstream to the State, the uplift must be as soon as Orac tells the State to uplift.
When they switch it on, it is going to generate an enormous tsunami of uplifts.
Removing 7AA removes the requirement for OT to talk to Māori, which is a green light for mass uplifts.
Placing uplifted Māori children into Māori Community Groups rather than the statistically likely abuse within State care is an actual solution (as long as the funding follows the child).
What ACT, National and NZ First are really fighting for here is to turn Orac on and let the magic of AI determine which child gets uplifted and which one doesn’t!
Think of it as a cross between Kindergarten Cop, Minority Report and The Handmaid’s Tale.
If the realty of this hard Right Government gaining the power to use AI to invade your life and rip children from parents doesn’t scare the bejesus out of you, I don’t know what will.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media
Section 7AA is a great example of good intentions leading to unforeseen consequences.
TBF to Labour who passed it, they probably didn’t know how badly the vicious muppets at OT were going to apply it.
Ada, your argument is false. Are you deliberately misleading?
READ 7AA ! NOW READ the whole Act.
In 2017, the National Government made several amendments to the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989, and one of those amendments was the introduction of section 7AA by a former member of the National Party, the Hon Anne Tolley, who was at the time the Minister for Social Development.
FURTHERMORE if you read Section 7AA in context, AND including the ENTIRITY of the Act , the best interests and welfare of the children, is what section 4A of the Oranga Tamariki Act is about. 7AA does not stand alone nor exclude any other part. 7AA does not say either what Chour is claiming it says either!
Ms Chour is deliberately isolating and miscontruing 7AA and presenting it on the basis of selling the Libertarian’s myth that it is seperatism.
” Section 4A is very clear and is very precise, and that is the paramount provision, which is the basis for every other section under the law. It says, “In all matters relating to the administration or application of this Act”—which includes section 7AA—”the well-being and best interests of the child or young person are the first and paramount consideration,”.
Pre the election when Chour presented her amendment Bill , in Parliament, the National Party clearly stated they would not support her Amendment and commissioned empirical evidence had backed up why National had implemented 7AA.
Why does cowardly Luxon backtrack now ? Because he loves and values POWER above the interests of people and just like the fallguys of Lee and Simmonds he’ll throw children and Maori under a bus to kiss ass with Winnie and little David to keep Power.
Ada didn’t read anything, she gets most of what she says from her loo paper.
I don’t understand in this day and age why are we even having this conversation. Have we learned nothing from history. Chour unfortunately is Seymour’s puppet. Also unfortunately she is paid to do as she’s told. Seymour is her lord and master. This is the state of our politics today folks democracy out the window corruption and racism instead. Sad but true and if people can’t see what’s happening they must be blind and deaf or just plain bloody ignorant.
Is OT different from any other state or council run organization. I doubt it yet many on this post want these departments to grow in size and power and condemn National for curbing them and letting people run their own lives
When rampant immigration occurs of course organizations need to increase. Fuck are you thick and no that’s not a question.
“woke critical race theory dogma ”
Tucked away in a folder I have a response to people who – without knowing anything about it – criticise CRT. Time to take it out again. I usually post it in reply to idiotic conservatives.
‘So we’re back to Critical Race Theory again, interesting. I was just wondering though, have any of you people with your knickers in a twist about it read Delgardo and Stefancic’s Critical Race Theory, An Introduction?, Or listened to Crenshaw’s interview ‘The Battle over Critical Race Theory’ on the Daily Show? Have you had a look at Jones’s article in the New York magazine – How to Manufacture a Moral Panic? Have you read any of the academic criticism by Subotnik or Farber & Sherry? Have you read the interview by the journalist who started all this – Rufo – on how he deliberately set out to demonise and redefine CRT so that it represents anything about the teaching of race that you don’t like? Have you even listen to that conservative hero Ben Shapiro explain it to Bill Maher? He doesn’t like it, but at least he knows roughly what it is because he studied it at Harvard.
Rufo said in an interview that he wanted “… to have the public read something crazy and immediately think ‘Critical Race Theory’. We have decodified the term, and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.”
Of course you bloody haven’t, let me suggest a more typical trajectory – you went to Kiwi blog, you followed a link to an extreme right magazine run by the admitted anti-Semite Taki Theodoracopulos and you were sent to an article by that racist harridan Ann Coulter, who also doesn’t know anything about it, and inhaled her bile as if it was lifeblood. In other words you know sweet Fanny Adams about CRT, and yet you feel both qualified and obliged to criticise it. No wonder we need educational reform in this country, people are getting dumber and dumber.’
Or you could watch this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EICp1vGlh_U
It’s quite sad that comedians have to point out that critical race theory isn’t the terrible stuff you seem to think it is, but at least it might provide you with a few minutes of innocent amusement.
Thank you again GS for unpacking that and also pointing out that it is usually done for the illucidation of idiotic conservatives. You need to do it for the term ‘woke’ which is repeatedly used in blogs by MB and it’s very annoying and a word beloved of the rabid right. Hang on, I think there has been a discussion about that, so why is that stupid term ‘woke’ still being used?
As much as we admire Karen Chhour for what she’s overcome in her life and achieved, I don’t think that makes her ideally suited to being the minister for Oranga Tamariki. If anything, it should disqualify her.
Having suffered in the system, she has her own personal memories to deal with which influence her feelings about the ministry.
It would be like making me the minister for Sport. I can’t be bothered with team sport, loathed having to do it and came to loathe the sporty kids because they were cruel and nasty about my lack of ability.
If you were only good at school work, you weren’t allowed to retaliate. We knew more about good sportsmanship and leadership than sporty people because we lived the humiliation every day.
Tracey Martin appears to not be in agreement with Ms. Chhour. Surely her opinion is worth considering.
We must all take a dim view of people who seek to influence judges. That should be a very serious offence and dealt with properly even if it’s a govt. dept. doing it.
These people who take a very hard line about things seem to be people who have had bad experiences themselves and think that makes them experts. That seems to apply to all of ACT in various ways.
We had 3 foster children who were siblings. This placement kept them together in care. Despite the past years of chaos and harsh ttreatment in their lives, everyday they still missed their parents and loved them. The birth bond attachment prevailed.
After a year they were ‘uplifted ‘ , no it was not brutal although we were very sad. Understood all along was the Court process , the Care of Child Act , the need for the biological parent/s to see them throughout ( as per Section 5 ) , and the understanding that the parent needed time to ‘ heal ‘ and be in a healthy state and environment.
Today, I still see these grown children and their children and they still have sadness that they were apart from their own parent even for a short time.
I too as a very young child was ‘ uplifted ‘ with 7 other siblings awoken in the night, and delivered to god knows where and to who , each of us seperated to different homes. None of those homes were our relatives. To this day , I still have clear memories, the fear and the overwhelming grief of that time of the seperation from my parents even though this was for a short time of weeks.
Years back in my classroom, had been a neat young kid who had been with his foster parents for some years (since he was four). He would talk about his sadness of being seperated from his twin brother, placed in another family in another town, whom he had not been with for those years. He liked his foster parents very much, they were great people; but one day he came to say goodbye as he was being returned to be with his twin. He was ecstatic, that’s what mattered to him above all, his brother.
Section 4, Section 5 and including Section 7AA are to protect against the detrimental impacts over the longer term to children from their detachment from the birth ‘family’ including siblings.
OToole – Thank you, and well done on helping kids.
You speak wisely and from experience. You have a firm grasp of the law and history which many of us don’t. Thank you for your enlightening and enlightened comments. We value them.
Many memories are still raw for you and you noticed that with other children too. So, it’s real and should not be ignored, especially after all the messes the system has made over so many years.
Maybe ACT suffers from too much ‘new broom sweeps clean’ thinking. Got to make their mark. They want to re-invent everything but they aren’t the people best suited to do it.
We all wring our hands about this stuff but we do nothing to fix the reason we have OT .Eliminate poverty and OT goes away along with its failings
TOO much time spent on the symptom and no time spent on the cause .
True . Mine was a bastard , controlling pakeha . His Viking genes to the fore when he delivered his ‘ messages ‘ !
A very moving story you tell O’Toole and of course siblings should never be separated, how terrible that happens and how frightening for children to be wrenched away from families and people they know to be put into strangers houses at a stressful time which brought about the need for removal. As much as possible needs to be done mitigate the fear these children have at such a time. Really appreciate you telling us your personal history here and you put the focus squarely back on the children who seem forgotton and least considered in of all this.
We all wring our hands about this stuff but we do nothing to fix the reason we have OT .Eliminate poverty and OT goes away along with its failings
Exactly. Every other action of this govt. is going to cause more of these problems in a few years’ time.
Narcissists always have to create drama.
Yes Joy, our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them. Seymour clearly has not learnt this philosophy. But why should he, he’s not a parent, he can’t know?
That image is a warning about not trusting strangers that should be shown to all grown-up children in NZ.