Karen Chhour’s tears, Māori Party Identity negging and the abomination of removing 7aa to cause a tsunami of Social Investment Big Data brown baby uplifts

By
Martyn Bradbury
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49
1405

ACT MP Karen Chhour breaks down in tears over ‘unsafe workplace’

ACT MP Karen Chhour has spoken to Stuff’s ThreeNews about how she feels “bullied” at work.

The children’s minister broke down in an interview with Stuff on Wednesday, saying Parliament doesn’t feel like a safe work environment for her.

“Yes, I’m in a position of being a minister but I’m still a person, I’m still a person. And I feel like I’m getting that stripped away from me day by day in this place and I’ve had enough,” she said through tears.

The minister has been under pressure from opposition parties over contentious policies including the re-introduction of boot camps and the repeal of Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act – removing treaty obligations from the law.

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The tactic of a ‘Karen’ is to take criticism of their redneck actions or behaviour and claim it is an attack on them and that they feel ‘unsafe’.

Look.

The Identity negging attack by the Māori Party on Karen Chhour was as poor as Kelvin Davis’s attack on her.

I respect Karen Chhour.

To overcome the trauma she suffered at the hands the State, and to then become Minister of the very State Department that hurt you is a remarkable journey no matter her politics.

Her voice as a person damaged by that State is powerful and always worth consideration.

I believe that Karen is someone who very much wants the best for the children in State care.

However.

She is utterly wrong about repealing 7AA and bringing back military boot camps.

You can be wrong about something by being too far away from it AND by being too close to it.

Karen’s background can be an enormous insight OR it can be an enormous grudge.

Is she tearing this organisation down because she hates it so much based on her own personal feelings.

Has she lost insight for vengeance?

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.

Did OT egregiously misinterpret Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act to reverse uplift Māori children from pakeha foster parents?

YES!

Was that an outrageous abuse of power and total misapplication of this section?

Absolutely.

Is there a good reason to ensure newly uplifted Māori children have the option of being placed in culturally appropriate environments?

Of course!

One of the complaints about the uplift process has been a lack of decent research to find appropriate whanau to place the children with, and thanks to the Social Investment model, the focus is removing the kids immediately to save the State money downstream.

The issue is that the Māori providers are being resourced properly to ensure they can provide material well being and security for those children!

While we can righteously damn OT for the manner in which they defined 7AA, repealing 7AA would be throwing the mokopuna 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!

Wellington Bureaucrats worship their new Big Data Fascism, Orac

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.

Karen is caught between two worlds here. The world of knowing what the abuse feels like as a ward of the State and a Political Party whose philosophy is immediate removal over any cultural considerations.

Repealing Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act could see another lost generation of Māori kids once the imperatives of Social Investment kicks in and immediate uplifts become seen as a means of ruthlessly breaking the cycle.

The Minister needs to be clear about what her agenda is,  and that must be children in State care not being abused.

Attacking her identity doesn’t protect those children nor does it stop ACTs agenda.

And then the brave politician took food out of hungry kids mouths to give to the richest amongst us

49 COMMENTS

  1. The fact remains that nobody should be or feel bullied in any government workplace, including Parliament. The only workplace where I have been bullied was in a government department. No Shrinking Violet, but I finally quit, massively stressed.

    There are a thousand and one ways of bullying, both overt and overt, as any survivor can testify to. Parliament needs to up its game. Its juvenile delinquents need to tidy up, stop twisting truths, stop telling lies, smarten up, acquire a modicum of decorum and grow up or go away.

  2. Slip of the finger: There are both ‘overt’ and ‘covert’ ways of workplace bullying, and both are bad.

  3. It’s unfortunate that Chhour feels this way but I can’t help thinking if she was a Green (for example) she’d be labelled a snowflake. Perhaps some of her unease stems from her not being entirely onboard with little upstarts like David Seymour.

    • Yes Martyn is very generous about her, to the contrary of what she actually stands for as an Act poli with far too much power. Crying about being bullied is not humanising her. The young politician who seems to be picked on in parliament is the 21 year old Maipi-Clarke, most recently about her lap top sticker, and now for making Cchour cry. Pathetic.

      • Lone Comet The young allegedly picked-on politician could be a performative artist pollie wearing a sunfrock to work and a French beret indoors as one of the seemingly mad hatters of her party.

    • Maybe not. She gets clobbered by Maori party racists for not being the right sort of Maori, and if they think that they are, then they do Maoridom – and New Zealand – a disservice.

  4. Karen should tell her bosses to get fucked and put the child first .I think she is strugling because she knows this is wrong but is being pressured by Luxon and the other red necks in her party .

  5. If she was Green or Labour, she would be hailed as a brilliant example of a wahine who overcame her background to be a political success.

  6. When you implement catastrophic and racist policy and then cry wolf then it’s time for this wee snowflake to get out of the game. Simply appalling.

  7. I can understand how difficult it is to ensure that children from damaged situations get to enjoy their childhood & develop into successful people. Yet, we are still reluctant to admit that the best way for children to prosper is that they grow up in a long-lasting relationship based on love & not lust. When will we admit that just doing things because they feel good often has consequences that are not good?
    Poverty is a major complicating factor that seems set to increase with this government & I do not see how any amount of deck chair shifting with care situations will negate the desperation forced upon people by current economic conditions.

    • Bonnie A few kids along the relationship track and lust is likely to have vamoosed right out the window, with budgeting, sleepless nights, dirty floors, and cold homes, dislodging feel good things.

  8. Perhaps Ms. Chhour didn’t expect that she’d be given the job of implementing mean and unfair policies by this govt. Her leader is possibly unsupportive because it’s him who wants mean and unfair policies implemented the most.
    Ms. Chhour should not expect opposition parties not to be critical of her govt’s policies when they appear to be wrong and cruel. That’s their job.
    She may feel, in her heart of hearts, that what she’s being asked to do isn’t what she thought she’d be able to do. She may be feeling disillusioned with her party and what, she now realises, they stand for.
    Perhaps she’ll be the next waka-jumper.
    Either way, crying over milk you have spilt yourself, is pointless. Get stuck in and clean it up.

    • Agreed she would have been better joining the mob like all her other mates that went through the system at the same time as she .Actually she is in a gang of thugs that enjoy bashing kids ,the sick and the brown people .The skin head gang leader will be treating her like shit because she is a woman first and brown second ,and he boss wont care because he will just get another sucker to do his rasist shit for him .
      I agree that she may not be enjoying what she is doing BUT she could woman up and say no .If she has kids I hope they are given more respect from her than every other kid in NZ is getting right now

  9. ACT maori bashing is even affecting paaart maaaaris like ‘Karen Chhour’ ability to distinguish good from bad policies. How can you claim on helping the vulnerable majority being maori than cut the funding that will help those vulnerable communities?

  10. Unfortunately Karen is but a pawn in the David Seymour et.al playbook. He uses her lived experience to justify these appalling decisions to wipe Maori off the face of Aotearoa under the guise of fairness and non racism. He is a dangerous little man who cries foul at every opportunity when people don’t agree with him. BUT the most dangerous man in the government is Luxon who is weak and is letting both Winston Peters and Seymour get away with murder. Remember these 2 with the most power have approx only 14% of votes in NZ. We should rename them the toxic twins . This government needs to fail before its too late .

  11. My family also has some (genuine) trauma inflicted by the State, so as I watch this unfold, I can empathise.

    I believe Karen’s distress is 100% real and I’m watching a real psychological trauma response. Adrenaline + Cortisol = Amygdala hijack. This is real, not fake political theatrics (though Seymore will likely use it as fuel for some fake theatrics). Yet somehow we expect her to stay articulate, rational, emotionally regulated, and persuade us with her facts and logic.

    I also believe 100% that Karen wants better outcomes for children. Authentically, from the bottom of her heart.

    I also believe 100% that ACTs policy on this is very very bad, and very very dangerous. We’re just buying ourselves the next 50 years of high population prison muster here, with all the human, cultural and fiscal wreckage that brings.

    I believe that section 7AA is a pretty good solution, by far the best of all options I’ve ever seen.

    But also that all groups of people are flawed, and that there is a darkness that lurks in many concerns of NZ society, and that we still need checks and balances and oversight. Sometime those checks and balances involve financial audits based on (western) double entry booking keeping standards, or recorded interviews with lawyers and formal stuffy sounding reports detailing “failures of governance”. These tough questions tend to get asked, answered and reported in English, because…. well, we havn’t figured out a better way yet.

    If there was a safe, calm, forum out of the spotlight, for Karen, child and disability advocates, mana whenua, academic experts, other victims of the state etc to have a real hui and figure out what to do, we could come up with something better than any of us have yet seen.

    But, we can’t, ‘cos parliament is a toxic cesspool, and Seymore values clickbait and political oxygen more than he values children.

    This is a FKN STOOPID way to run a country, and more kids are going to die because the adults can’t figure out how to adult.

    • Climate Womble I agree with you, that Karen Chhour wants better outcomes for children from the bottom of her heart. She appears to be a throughly decent person, unlike some MP’s. Boot Camps trigger much animosity, but if they differ constructively from past ones, they’re worth trying.

  12. Yes, I have absolutely no sympathy for her the party she is in and represents is downright nasty, racist bigots appeasing a small minority and their very rich backers. She is a front and she is very much a puppet of the right-wing tory party she represents of her choice. Too cry wolf after her policies are hurting the very people, she claims to care about is sickening, she has no sympathy for the many NZers suffering at the moment and I aren’t just talking about the OT kids and their whanau as her parties damaging policies have wider implications.

      • Whatever. The woman has joined a party that wants to cut wage, benenfits, and destroy public services, which will make things for the people that come from her background WORSE.

    • NZ has a bad track record of abusing children not just Maori families, churches, the state, wealthy and powerful people, cults, step parents, teachers, babysitters, religious groups and it’s still happening,Glorivale.

  15. Good to see the level of discourse supporting racist bullying. Shows many of you are as angry and willing to sell out human decency because someone has policies you disagree with strongly. Shows how low things are getting.

    • Andrew2 you seem triggered yet the irony is you don’t see the carnage this Minister and her policies are creating.

      Hypocrite.

    • Yep that’s how they do it, completely ignore act’s angry racist, anti poor bullying, then flip it around and use decency as weapon despite the societal damage they’re causing showing precisely the opposite, then end up minimizing the only sane response options available of disgust and outrage and ready us all for the next round of trust funded gutter politics.

      Why do you think the donors wanted David as party leader if not to fend off the obvious return fire they take when implementing the policies they’ve bought and paid for.

      So not all dopey fucknuts, are we? Discourse that – Cunt.

  21. NZ has a bad track record of abusing children not just Maori families, churches, the state, wealthy and powerful people, cults, step parents, teachers, babysitters, religious groups and it’s still happening,Glorivale.

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