Sunday, May 09, 2010

Whanau ora - why it will fail

John Tamihere writes that whanau ora risks sabotage by government bureaucrats and it will be "...the Maoris who cop the flak." That may well be but there is a more inevitable reason why it will fail.

Tariana Turia said the following when speaking about whanau ora last week;

For too long, there has been a confusion over the role of the state in relation to families. Government must never become the defacto head of the family by replacing vital functions that we would expect families to do for themselves in caring for their wellbeing as a whole.

But that is exactly what the state has become. Particularly prevalent amongst Maori families, it takes on the role of financial provider. The same happens in other countries and it is always the poorest people who are affected the most because the level of income the government provides is commensurate to the level of income a male would bring in. So the poorest families - blacks, Hispanics, native Indians, Aboriginals, Maori, - suffer the most disintegration. The men are dis-empowered and the women struggle.

My biggest reservation about whanau ora lies therein. With no fundamental change to the benefit system (Tariana is a strong advocate of the DPB) it will remain no more than a different way of picking up the pieces.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We don't need a fundamental change to the benefit system - we need a fundamental removal of the benefit system.

Nothing but removal, cancellation, termination will force the change in attitude the NZ so badly needs.

Nothing but removal will save the 500 MILLION dollars we are borrowing to flush down the toilet every week.

Nothing but removal will fix the problems of NZ.

Berry said...

You probably mean to say a way to finance the unsustainable, and to cover up the fact that a government can never replace the role of the family without becoming extremely totalitarian. The unavoidable end result of this Whanau Ora abberation will be ever increasing welfare dependency and a further widening of a racially determined schism in society. The maori culture is simply incapable of sustaining large cooperative constellations and the principles that underly the concept of social welfare. Without an ever increasing flow of money and money derived "mana" to elders and tribal leaders, it would quickly descent in its native system of war and slavery.