The Waitangi Tribunal has heard multiple, strong calls for an independent, Māori-run authority to replace Oranga Tamariki. Laura Walters reports
Māori leaders have told the Waitangi Tribunal they’re sick of waiting while the Crown fails Māori children and whānau.
The Waitangi Tribunal’s Oranga Tamariki Urgent Inquiry has heard a series of examples of “mana-diminishing practices”, carried out by an agency with a lack of cultural understanding and competency, which has led to long-lasting, and intergenerational, trauma.
Last week, Māori leaders, including those working as social workers and community leaders, painted a picture of Crown agencies that have failed their mokopuna and tamariki for decades.
The urgent hearing is one of a spate of reviews and inquiries launched in response to Newsroom’s reporting on Oranga Tamariki’s attempt to uplift a baby from its mother, following his birth in Hawke’s Bay Hospital in 2019.
The reporting highlighted the policies and processes that continue to lead to an overwhelmingly high rate of Māori children being removed from their parents, and in many cases their whānau.
In the 2019/20 financial year, 70 percent of children in state care were Māori.
In August, a report from the Ombudsman’s Office was scathing of the ministry’s misuse of the law and treatment of families caught in its routine use of ‘uplifts’.
The damning inquiry into Oranga Tamariki found in 100 percent of cases investigated by the Ombudsman the ministry used its most extreme powers as a routine way to remove babies, many of them Māori.
“In short, the system needs to be wiped clean and everything they think they know needs to be put in the rubbish bin.”
But these issues aren’t new.
There have been a slew of reports throughout the past century – in 1940, 1985, 1986, 1988, 2015 – all calling for a better model, which includes by Māori, for Māori solutions, the fair allocation of resources and funding.
Those who spoke at the tribunal hearing said they said they feared history was repeating itself.
They said they were sick of waiting for the Crown to fix its model. The only way forward was disrupting and dismantling the current system.
Social workers and councillors Brent and Huia Swann, who have 50 years of experience between them, said Oranga Tamariki (and CYFS before it) lacked cultural competency, compassion and the environment did not uphold the mana and dignity of the child, their parents or the whānau.
It was time for the Crown to humble itself and realise it didn’t know what it was doing, they said.
“In short, the system needs to be wiped clean and everything they think they know needs to be put in the rubbish bin.”
“Oranga Tamariki is broken beyond repair, and no matter of browning it up or tweaking it is going to change that.”
The Māori Party’s John Tamihere, with chair of the National Urban Māori Authority (NUMA) Tureiti Moxon and Te Kōhao Health chair Mariameno Kapa-Kingi called for the creation of a ‘Mokopuna Māori Authority’ as a constructive solution.
In-line with Māori Party policy, the authority would use a commissioning model based on Whānau Ora – potentially sitting within Whānau Ora – to provide care and appropriate wraparound services to the parents and children.
The entity would be entirely designed and implemented by Māori, backed by $600 million in funding.
“If they take $1.2 billion to stuff up, surely we get $600m to get it right,” Kapa-Kingi said.
The Māori authority would sit under its own domain, with its own methods, its own tikanga, its own reo and its own entity, and get to decide, deliver and know what’s best for Māori mokopuna, she said.
The time for tweaking and tinkering at the edges of a Crown agency was over. It was time to dismantle and disrupt the current system
“What’s currently in place is failing, and it’s killing us softly.”
Moxon, one of the claimants, placed a firm timeline on the devolution of the ministry, and the transfer of power to a standalone Māori authority: one year.
The Crown needed to immediately begin to co-design the handover process, she said, adding that this change would not take generations.
“Oranga Tamariki is broken beyond repair, and no matter of browning it up or tweaking it is going to change that,” Moxon said.
“It normalises the stealing of our babies, and it keeps them. It won’t give them back to their parents. It perpetuates the view that Māori are broken; that we are the problem, and that we do not deserve to have our tamariki…
“It rips our babies from the breasts of their mothers and from their whakapapa. This creates intergenerational trauma, pain and suffering that many never recover from. And yet they continue on with business as usual.”
Moxon said the lack of political will to recognise tino rangatiratanga and mana Māori Motuhake was at the centre of the failing and the solution lay in full expression of Māori self- determination.
“White men’s tools do not fix brown men’s problems.”
Tamihere said devolution was “to Māori, for Māori, by Māori – end of story”.
Like the others, he advocated for a brand new system, rather than more changes to the same agency.
He warned about the danger of falling victim to incrementalism.
“We must not accept tweaking with a failed system.
“We must not try and defend a dysfunctional Crown agency that reflects the modus operandi across all of government, by endeavouring to tweak what it’s doing to us and not with us.”
Tamihere advocated for an approach similar to that of the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency, using tikanga-based approaches.
Māori needed the power and the money to make decisions for Māori.
“White men’s tools do not fix brown men’s problems.
“How many tribunal reports and audits and reviews do we need to have to realise that?”
The only thing that had ever worked for Māori was self-designed, self-managed, self-determination, he said, referencing the models of kura kaupapa and whānau ora.
“The government has placed the care for Māori children firmly in State care and refuses to give up its control.”
Tamihere and others spoke about how the competitive funding model currently disadvantaged Māori providers.
In forming separate agreements with separate Māori groups, it fostered a competitive market of care, and thereby held the real decision-making power to itself.
He pushed back at the idea that Māori did not yet have the capability and competency to take over this responsibility from the Crown.
“The competency of our people; the capability of our people is beyond reproach. It’s our time to have resources transferred into our own hands without having pākehā clip the ticket all the time.”
Lawyer Donna Hall said a small number of organisations received a large amount of funding, and the majority were not Māori or iwi services.
This allowed them to continue to build capacity, with the help of government money, leaving them in a prime position to keep winning contracts ahead of Māori.
In the 2019/20 financial year, despite 70 percent of the children in care being Māori, only 25 percent of Oranga Tamariki staff are Māori – this is a lower percentage for staff who hold senior positions.
When it comes to funding, Māori or iwi providers were allocated 23 percent of the funding, or $81 million.
That amounted to 28 percent of all of Oranga Tamariki’s contracts.
Despite recent changes, and a new name, the whakapapa within Oranga Tamariki remained the same, Hall said.
“The government has placed the care for Māori children firmly in State care and refuses to give up its control.”
Many of those who submitted have been working in this space for decades, and have seen reports and recommendations come and go, without fundamental changes or improvements in the way children and whānau are cared for.
“I see no more good in waiting. I see no positivity in us inching our way out of this anymore.”
The 1988 report Puao-te-ata-tu was supposed to provide a watershed moment.
It was the culmination of 100 hui and many of the recommendations were similar to what was currently being talked about:
- Empowering and enabling Māori to exercise their tino rangatiratanga or self-determination by incorporating the values, culture and beliefs of Māori people in addressing institutional racism
- Allocating equitable resources, power and accountability
- Keeping the child within their whānau, hāpu or iwi, and placing children within a tikanga Māori and ideally te reo Māori environment where practical
- Establish Māori institutions drawn from local communities and funds to enable children from institutions to return to their whenua and whakapapa
Witnesses said there was an initial enthusiasm, and Kapa-Kingi said those working within the system were hopeful.
But the work, and the opportunity for change, “withered on the vine”.
“It just got too much for what essentially is still a very racist system. It just got too brown, too quickly.”
The Crown-run model was “doomed to fail yet again”, as seen by the latest reports, she said.
Māori were ready to take responsibility for their own mokopuna.
“We just need the resource and then people to step out of our way…
“I see no more good in waiting. I see no positivity in us inching our way out of this anymore,” Kapa-Kingi said.
“You walk away from it. You walk away from it, and create something that feels, sounds and beats like your own heart.”
As a social worker within the ministry, and outside it, she had witnessed the practices and said when people didn’t know you or understand you, they didn’t have to care about you.
There was no point in trying to fix the system, the culture or the training systems – “the -isms are so embedded… it’s far too much work and we haven’t got time”.
“You walk away from it. You walk away from it, and create something that feels, sounds and beats like your own heart.”
She asked the Waitangi Tribunal to make “brave recommendations”.
“It’s time to make that big step and be that brave, because we’re dying earlier, we’re being incarcerated faster, and our mokopuna are being taken away as though they don’t belong to us.”
Hall also spoke at length about the power imbalance, inequity and manipulation that continues.
She became emotional, wiping back tears during her submission.
“I feel like crying. I’ve been doing this for thirty years, and we’re still here.”
“Bold proposals and a clear plan are now needed to get things right. The time for polite discourse has passed.”
Hall said Puao-te-ata-tu articulated the heart of the issue with the child care and protection model as a “profound misunderstanding or ignorance of the place of the child in Māori society and its relationships with the whānau, hapū, iwi structure”.
But 30 years on, the clear direction to the government of the need to change and urgent action was ignored, she said.
Hall said Oranga Tamariki defeated the empowerment of Māori.
“Bold proposals and a clear plan are now needed to get things right. The time for polite discourse has passed.”
Last week’s hearings were the first week of the ongoing urgent inquiry being conducted by the Waitangi Tribunal.
The contextual hearing, which took place in July, set out three key questions that the inquiry aims to answer:
- Why has there been such a significant and consistent disparity between the number of tamariki Māori and non-Māori children being taken into state care under the auspices of Oranga Tamariki and its predecessors?
- To what extent will the legislative policy and practise changes introduced since 2017, and currently being implemented, change this disparity for the better?
- What (if any) additional changes to Crown legislation, policy or practice might be required in order to secure outcomes consistent with Te Tiriti/the Treaty and its principles?
The Crown is expected to give evidence in November, and the tribunal’s report will be presented to Cabinet.
Timeline:
June 11, 2019: Attempted uplift video story, NZ’s Own Taken Generation, is released on Newsroom
June 19, 2019: A broad inquiry by the Chief Ombudsman, Peter Boshier, is announced
Nov 7, 2019: an internal investigation into the attempted uplift finds numerous failures
February 3, 2020: Whanau Ora releases its damning report into the Hastings uplift attempt
June 9, 2020: Release of Children’s Commissioner review into “heart-wrenching” experiences of Māori mothers at the hands of Oranga Tamariki.
July 2020: The Waitangi Tribunal Oranga Tamariki begins its urgent inquiry with a contextual hearing
August 2020: The Ombudsman releases a damning report into the use of uplifts by Oranga Tamariki
October 2020: The tribunal begins its substantive hearings, looking into why there has been such a significant and consistent disparity between the number of Māori and non-Māori children being taken into state care under OT
