Launch of Family Violence Programme of Action
te-pati-maori
Tue Sep 01 2009 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Launch of Family Violence Programme of Action
Tuesday, 1 September 2009, 10:06 am
Speech: The Maori Party
Launch of Maori and Pacific Island Family Violence Programme of Action
Hon Tariana Turia, Associate Minister of Social Development
Monday 31 August 2009; 5pm
To all of the dignatories; to those from government agencies; to my ministerial colleagues, and my parliamentary colleagues…it is a wonderful day for us to come together to celebrate the essence of who we are; as tangata whenua and as the people of Te Moana nui a Kiwa.
I don’t think there is anything more thrilling than the call of the Cook Island drums. The energy of that drum beat is the ultimate expression of the rhythm of life.
It is a drum beat handed down from generation to generation; keeping the stories alive; sustaining the heart of the people.
Today we celebrate the beating of that drum, that reminds us we are all born of greatness.
We look at the faces of our tamariki from Nga Mokopuna and we know they are the legacy of all those who walked before them.
He kakano ahau i ruia mai i rangi atea...
And I can never be lost I am the seed, Born of Greatness
We hear the tight harmonies of the singers from Aotea College, showing us there is no reason why our future can be anything but brilliant.
So they are our inspiration; to bring our collective courage to the task ahead, to restore all our families to the greatness they were born of.
This event today is a perfect opportunity to say to ourselves, we are going to change the world, our world.
We are going to put a stop to the violence that for far too long has shattered the worlds, of families throughout Aotearoa.
I hate saying these statistics but I think we need to consider where we are now.
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In 2006, there were 32,675 offences recorded by the Police as being family-violence related. These incidents created shock waves throughout the homes of thousands of New Zealanders.
The deaths of our most vulnerable children have been exposed in a mass media frenzy which spares no mercy. Over and over again the graphic photos are featured; the roll call of names repeated; the horror of deaths re-lived. Innocent children are deprived of their rights to rest in peace; those who bear their family name are forever vilified.
But there are other instances of violence which occur day-by-day, ‘normalised’ as a slice of life in every community.
Some of us have woken to the piercing scream of a neighbour or have rushed to intervene as a drunken party gets out of hand.
Teachers, social workers, doctors, police officers, counsellors, prison guards; nurses; community health workers; refuge workers; are part of the cast of thousands embroiled in the industry of misery associated with family violence.
And there are so many more casualties that we may not even know of:
the frightened children huddled together, hoping that Dad will just stop;
the disabled woman, abused by someone in a position of responsibility;
the corporate wives who take a sudden trip overseas rather than let anyone in to the horror of their nights;
the tormented woman, slowly slipping away without a single bruise to her body to reveal the extent of her nightmare;
the sad young man, terrified to tell of the sexual abuse meted out behind closed doors.
We all know too much, to close our eyes and ears to the crisis that we are in.
And so today, the drums have called us to a different way; a better way, to restore our families to the greatness they all deserve.
I am so very proud to be asked to launch these significant strategies in the context of the Taskforce for Action on Violence within Families.
Today we have an opportunity for a new start based on old ways.
Both strategies started from the place of no return.
They tell me of whanau seeking to address ways of being that have developed over generations; of situations of stress that have been heightened through the impact of poverty; unemployment; health and housing concerns; cultural alienation; being separated from home and loved ones.
Both were driven by the call of local ownership; knowing that the solutions lie within our own hands.
I am not one who believes in Wellington thinking up plans to then impart on the people. My focus has always been to focus on the potential of the people to be the navigators of their own journeys.
And that is why I am so excited about these strategies which move the debate along from talk to action, from crisis to solution.
They promote a framework for change, consisting of five high level actions:
effective and visionary leadership;
processes and services to keep families safe; to stop the violence; and to restore the wellness of whanau;
changing attitudes and behaviour;
effective, sustainable support services; and
understanding what good practice looks like based on the indicators for whanau ora
E tu whanau ora is a programme of action developed by the Maori Reference Group; and I thank you all.
It takes its genesis from a summit called at Hopuhopu to discuss the impacts of family violence on Te Ao Maori. Following that hui, iwi leaders passed a resolution that family violence was an issue that all iwi needed to address and take action.
I absolutely applaud those iwi who have got out there and made it happen – the cluster of eight iwi in the North who form the Amokura project; the Kahungunu Violence strategy; the iwi who have made the commitment to achieve Mauri Ora for all their whanau.
And I challenge all whanau – and our leaders – to invest in whanau ora so that it is within the realms of our possibility.
We must be able to see it, touch it, feel it, know it, and most important of all, to believe it.
The Programme of Action is grounded in a vision of wellbeing. That vision is painted in such a way to inspire us all to take responsibility and to act now.
The strategy also says what it doesn’t want – it doesn’t want quick fix programmes; inefficiency and duplication of services; external research; or programmes that divide whanau and communities.
This is a fundamental aspect of both strategies – knowing what works and what doesn’t.
A key complaint has been the rigid deconstruction of the family group into victims; perpetrators and children.
Another concern is that specifying that the solutions to family violence fit within sixteen standard sessions simply doesn’t work.
What they are looking for instead, are strategies and solutions which fit the unique needs of very distinctive communities.
The Programme of Action for Pacific Peoples says it clearly – the vision for nurturing, strong and vibrant families needs to be driven from within the Pacific communities.
In the Pacific strategy a story is told of an old man of Polynesia who was asked, “so you come from one of the smallest nations in the Pacific”. And the old man replied, “No, we come from the biggest ocean in the world”.
This is the Pacific Pride that pounds in the hearts of the people from Kiribati, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Fiji, Niue, Tonga, Cook Islands and Samoa and of Maori. We are all bound together intrinsically by the waters of the Pacific nation and we must never forget that.
It is the same pride and resilience that we find throughout our communities. Our histories, our genealogies are the lifeline to our future.
We are noble people with aspirations to be here forever.
We must now draw strength from our past to face our present and to make the changes necessary to achieve a future free of violence.
I recently attended a graduation ceremony in South Auckland – thank you Betty for the invitation. Family members shared their stories of the violence that had destroyed the very foundations of their family home. They spoke with such courage and honesty; of the decisions that they had made, to repair family unity and restore peace.
The most powerful symbol of this change came from a painting that I was given which featured the hands of a stunning silhouette of a man.
Those hands were meant for tilling the land; for planting vegetables; for creating works of art; for holding a newborn baby; for hard physical work; for caressing; for nurturing; for loving.
Those hands were not designed to hurt or to hit.
It is time for us to join our hands together now, to reorient ourselves to the messages of our ancestors, to relearn the skills and values that will take us from crisis to solution.
We have everything that we need to plan our way forward; to teach our children well; to achieve our survival.
As Ida Malosi said to me one day, we must restore the village in our lives.
Let us keep the rhythm of the drum beat proud, and strong and consistently proclaiming the message of whanau ora through every village in the land.
ends
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