Blancmange and navigators

Yesterday Annette King likened whanau ora to blancmange; when you try to get a grasp of it, it slips through your fingers. When the recipe for whanau ora is considered, that's no surprise;



But what about Labour? It's not as if they weren't just as capable of producing wibbly-wobbly recipes for whanau and hapu outcomes;



And here's another none Maori-specific just for good measure;



How many talking heads does it take to come up with this reverse rocket science?

Speaking of which, who can stand up and take a bow for the breathtakingly clever name for whanau ora providers - navigators?? Then again, it was probably the result of a collective brain-storming session.

"What are we going to call these social workers?"

"We need a name for them?"

"'Course we need a name for them. Otherwise how will we tell the difference between them and all the other social workers?"

"So what do our guys do that is different?

"They find a way."

"Oh, and the other ones don't."

"That's it. So what do you call someone who finds the way?"

"An explorer?"

"Nah. He looks for a way but he might not find it."

"An inventor?"

"Sort of but he makes something rather than finding a way."

"Um. I've got. A navigator. He finds the way. Without the navigator we won't know where we are going and if we don't know where we are going, how will we get there?

"Exactly!"

"So, er, what's the Maori word for 'navigator' then?"

"I'll google it. Urungi."

"Fantastic. So we will call our social workers 'urungis'."

"No. We can't do that."

"Why?"

"Because it has to be for Pakeha too. And they won't know what urungi means. Like, I didn't know what it meant till I googled it."

"So it has to be navigators. Like Kupe eh. What about whanau ora kupes?"

"Nah. There was only one Kupe. Anyway they called a tug Kupe. We don't want people thinking our social workers are tugs."

"I guess. Navigators it is then."