Waatea News Column: Minister Chhour’s defence of cutting Section 7aa will usher in a new stolen generation of Māori

I have been a defender of Minister Chhour since she took over the role as Minister for Children.

I believe a ward of the state who has been abused in that system should have voice and her journey from abused child in state care to being the Minister is a remarkable one no matter the politics.

I have also disagreed with the manner in which those critical of her have attempted to de-Māori her and write her off culturally.

I have also disagreed passionately with her decision to remove section 7AA from Oranga Tamaiki but was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt to hear her explanation.

My patience however with the Minister has officially run out after I watched her appalling interview on Q+A with Jack Tame defending these new powers to arrest 14 year olds without a warrant for breaches of a new Serious Young Offender category and send them to military boot camps that don’t work.

Karen Chhour: My job is to stop abuse in care.
Jack Tame: How do we stop abuse happening in boot camps?
Karen Chhour: To be fair, that’s not the point of boot camps.

There isn’t even a formal process for young people to complain if they are abused inside these new Boot Camps which seems to be feeding the very system that the Minister claims to be concerned with.

Her explanation as to why Section 7aa must be removed is nonsensical and comes across like pandering to ACTs ant-Māori agenda rather than a serious social policy.

Section 7aa was supposed to create partnerships between Community Iwi and OT that would ensure any newly uplifted Māori child was looked after by them with the funding moving to the Community Iwi, but instead a few zealous OT staff sought to use 7aa to uplift Māori children who had already been placed with white foster families.

While that misinterpretation caused enormous problems, it doesn’t justify removing 7aa, especially with the new Social Investment model being implemented here.

The Social Investment model takes big data and tells OT which child should be uplifted based on how much downstream savings an uplift will generate. Without 7aa in place, the Social Investment model will dictate an enormous spike in uplifts which will cascade through as another generation of stolen Māori children.

I respect the journey Minister Karen Chhour has walked, but I can not accept her conclusions.

Her actions will cause more damage, not less.

First published on Waatea News.