The tragedy of Moana: Oranga Tamariki’s woke ghost of Christmas past (you gotta cloak that woke)

Judge slams Oranga Tamariki’s ‘egregious’ behaviour, awards costs to ‘Moana’ foster parents

• “Moana” was 3 years old when Oranga Tamariki placed her with a couple in Hawke’s Bay after no suitable or available whānau could be found.
• Three years later, the organisation wanted to remove the girl as it did not believe the Pākehā couple could provide for her cultural needs.
• The couple won their case in the Family Court, then the High Court, and have now been awarded costs in an exceptional ruling that found Oranga Tamariki had acted egregiously.

The last sorry stage of this dreadful case finally vomits up on our collective shores. Thank fuck the case was never understood by wider NZ society or the Left would never have lived it down!

I have called for a very long time for Māori providers to take over Oranga Tamariki because I believe Tikanga values are far more healing and beneficial to all vulnerable children than the hollow costed values of our neoliberal welfare system that sees clients of their services as opposed to children in need.

The reverse uplifts of Māori children from pakeha foster families however WAS NOT  Tikanga, it was woke critical race theory, the dogma of which declares no white family can give a brown child a good life.

Put aside the disturbing racism in that position and also consider the attempt to disrupt and influence an ongoing investigation into Oranga Tamariki by having other Judges privately trying to interfere with this case!

Oranga Tamariki went to such extraordinary measures to hide their behaviour and inappropriately influence this case because it was a test case for a whole bunch of reverse uplifts they had embarked upon.

It was an action to not only corrupt independent justice, but also to hide the appallingly racist behaviour of a State agency using the most extreme powers a State has, that of uplifting children from parents and step-parents.

Let’s remind ourselves of the lies that the Social Worker used to justify psychologically harming a young Māori girl because you know, the heteronormative white cis male patriarchy…

There were some early signs, however, that the social worker might be out of her depth. The review filed in November 2018 said Moana had a close relationship with her grandfather. It transpired her grandfather had died five months earlier.

And while Social Worker 1 was filing these glowing reports, she was telling others in her office that the Smiths were stripping Moana of her Māori identity. She said she felt “incessantly undermined” by the Smiths and said the couple “attempted to sabotage whānau access” for Moana.

She pointed to the Smith’s “disregard for Te Ao Māori” (the Māori world view), and said they were incapable of providing Moana with the “cultural aspects” she needed.

The Smiths had no idea these conversations were taking place.

When she was asked in court why she didn’t include these concerns in her reviews, Social Worker 1 said she did but was told to remove them by her supervisor. (The supervisor would later deny this under oath, and said any changes he made were only grammatical).

Among the social worker’s concerns was an allegation that the Smiths had asked Moana’s daycare centre to refer to her by her nickname (an abbreviation of her name). This was “an attempt to remove her from her identity”, she said.

Social Worker 1 said the Smiths raised issues about Moana’s behaviour following access visits with her birth mother, and she saw this as the Smiths “making up issues to try and get reasons to have no contact”.

Another allegation concerned an access visit with Moana’s birth mother. Social Worker 1 claimed Mrs Smith pulled Moana away from hugging her birth mother and “proceeded to wipe her down with a cloth in what looked like an attempt to remove any germs”. She did not ask Mrs Smith what she was doing, but passed her concerns on to other Oranga Tamariki staff.

(Mrs Smith would later say Moana and her birth mother were not embracing each other, and she had used a wet wipe to clean Vegemite from Moana’s hands).

Separately, the Smiths held their own concerns about the social worker, and in May 2019 they complained to her supervisor.

A few weeks later the Smiths were informed that there were concerns around their attendance at access visits and the couple would need to undergo a cultural assessment. The couple were surprised about this and asked why it was required and what it involved.

Oranga Tamariki staff told the Smiths it was very rare – some had never been involved in one – and they were unable to provide any detail on the process or guidelines of such an assessment.

A meeting was held in late June 2019 in which the Smiths were told that Oranga Tamariki was concerned about their ability to provide for Moana’s cultural needs. The supervisor told the Smiths the cultural assessment would acknowledge “the good work you are already doing to promote [Moana’s] cultural identity”, and would hopefully provide some detail around Moana’s whakapapa.

When the Smiths asked why other Pākehā caregivers with Māori children were not subject to the same assessments, the supervisor responded that it was a good question, and all he could say was that there had been issues around access.

The supervisor couldn’t provide any brochures or pamphlets for the Smiths to inform them of what a cultural assessment involved. (The supervisor would later give evidence saying he felt the Smiths may have been directing “unconscious racism” towards Social Worker 1).

The Smiths believed the assessment was a ruse being used by the Ministry as a way to find them unsuitable and to have Moana removed from their care. They refused to take part.

…deceitful tricks and race accusations with no resources provided to enable the white step-family to help the little girls cultural growth…

The assessment was conducted by an independent cultural expert. His original task had been to assess the Smiths’ understanding of Te Ao Maori and their ability to provide Moana’s cultural needs, but that changed when the Smiths said they would not take part in the assessment, and he ended up looking solely at Moana.

His report was provided to Oranga Tamariki on September 11, 2019. It included scant information on Moana’s whakapapa, other than noting she had a distant relation in Taranaki.

The assessor, later giving evidence in court, would say a Māori child growing up in a non-Maori family would “not have the same opportunity in terms of inculcation of values,” he said.

He said it would be “extremely challenging” for a non-Māori family to raise a Māori child in the correct cultural manner, and failing to provide for cultural needs could result in a child’s health being compromised later in life. He said the decision on where Moana should be placed should lie with Ngāti Kahungunu.

…The ‘assessor’ uses critical race theory to deduce that this child will do worse with white parents, which seems an extremely limited view to judge this case on!

Look, if Oranga Tamariki can find whanau to place a Māori child at the point of uplifting that child – all fine and dandy.

The recent involvement of Iwi stepping in to be that whanau resource at the point of uplift is a great development but that’s not what was happening here.

In the ‘Moana’ case, as with many others, the Māori child has been placed with a white family for years and told they are staying with that white family permanently, to rip a child from the bandages of emotional healing and sense of security for some dogmatic implementation of woke critical race theory is the kind of zealotry that burns books!

The Judge didn’t bully this testimony out of Oranga Tamariki, and even if he did, what has been exposed is so damning that it justified that bullying!

To attempt to intervene in the sacrosanctness of our independent judiciary so racist practices by Oranga Tamariki can be hidden is so disbelievingly outside the norms of our system it’s almost a Donald Trump level molestation of due process.

To have this entire fiasco thrown out by the Court is a victory for due process, a victory against woke dogma and a victory for the little children who are just desperately needing someone to care and love for them.

Can we all take a moment to thank the Race Critical Wokies inside Oranga Tamariki?

Can we?

Can we pause and say, ‘Thank you wokies, your mad woke dogma critical race bullshit handed Minister Karen Chhour the ability to mutilate 7aa and we want to give you a really tight, tight, tight hug around your throats and sing your praises.

You just know these wokies are from Welly.

You just know.

Let’s remind everyone whet these dickhead Critical Race Theory clowns were doing that has handed ACT such a powerful win.

7aa was supposed to work like this:

It imposed an obligation on Oranga Tamariki to take uplifted Māori children directly to Iwi Community organisations instead of simply dumping them into a state care system that was recently found to have abused 250 000 children.

The beauty of 7aa is that it would require the funding for that child to follow that child to the Iwi community groups, that way it prevented more Māori children going into brutal state care that was culturally unsound and ultimately materially damaging.

But how did OT interpret 7aa?

To everyones shock and horror, the Critical Race Theory wokies inside OT (you just know they are from Wellington), the Critical Race Theory wokies inside OT decided to interpret 7aa to reverse uplift Māori children from white step families because the white step families couldn’t raise Māori children.

I know, it’s just so fucked up.

This all came to a head in a very public court trial where OT staff were caught out lying time and time and time again to the white step family to enable their pure critical race dogma.

INSTEAD of ensuring newly uplifted Māori children were taken to Iwi Community groups (alongside the funding), OT decided to reverse uplift all Māori children from white step families FFS!

It is this element that ACT are now weaponising.

Good one wokies.

We blame the Right for their abusive horrific social policies yet we NEVER look at how our very own woke middle class fanatical wokies handed the political right the culture war ammunition they would use against us.

I’ve only been pointing this out since 2016 and Trump used it to win 2024.

Look.

If you are a Left organisation, you gotta cloak that woke.

You will all have some radioactive toxic Outrage Olympics Wokie in your movement and you gotta cloak that woke.

You gotta get that wokie onto Bluesky where they can scream into a padded cell that no one cares about.

You gotta create cool new Wellington Consultancies where the names of your wokies are hidden behind cool logos and nameless websites.

You gotta hide that Tiso, that Mok, that Ngata, that Emily Writes, that Emmy – you gotta, because their message is so alienating and self serving it’s killing the Left’s ability to ever win again.

We hate on the Right for passing terrible social policy yet never look at how your own middle class activists have poisoned our well and handed the Right future war ammunition we can’t win.

Critical Race Wokies inside Oranga Tamariki interpreted 7aa as a reason to reverse uplift Māori children from white step parents because the white step parents couldn’t raise Māori children ‘safely’, despite the psychologists warnings and the fact the children had been TOLD by OT that they were in a ‘forever home’ with their white step parents.

As ACT run romper stomper on a policy that could have been the solution, ‘praps we should ask how ACT managed to gain so much ammunition in the first place?

Can the woke please go back to sleep?

 

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