Katene Rahui: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
Katene Rahui: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:654;Page:3804] 
RAHUI KATENE (Maori Party—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 It would be a relatively easy task to drill down into any social policy to ascertain the relationship of dysfunctional families to policy responses. We can learn about the effects of low income poor housing and alienation in rates of educational achievement. We are told that the most severely dysfunctional families may constitute no more than 10 percent of the population yet are responsible for 70 to 80 percent of serious criminal offending. We will see ghettoisation effects with pockets of poor health associated with low-income communities—and so it goes on. Yet when we come to the 2007-08 financial review of the Families Commission we read “results are difficult to measure or evaluate”. The lack of logic appals me. How is it that we can report on the evident states of crisis and trauma within some families that we can reveal the chronic the chaotic and the destructive lives their members live and that we can identify families that society would say are failing yet we cannot measure and evaluate the state of well-being that we in the Maori Party describe as whanau ora. It is this uncertainty—long before Christine Rankin’s appointment was even announced—that has made us seriously question the capacity of the Families Commission to live up to its statutory commitment to act as an advocate in the interests of families generally. 
In the same breath as it discloses that the commission is unable to describe the good results it believes it has achieved the report states that the It’s Not OK campaign against family violence has been very successful to date. The concept of success needs further explanation. Is it really successful when there has been a significant rise—39 percent—in family violence notifications? Although more people are evidently reporting family violence would real success not be yielded by a reduction in family violence statistics reflecting an actual reduction in family violence overall? If we are to go on reports we receive from providers and community organisations it appears to be one thing to have an increased demand for services but quite another to have the capacity to respond. So the Maori Party welcomes the Community Response Fund for being able to specifically have the means to channel the increased demand for family violence services. 
In much the same way Age Concern using the Families Commission’s research on elder abuse and neglect in its work with rest homes is surely only partial success restricted by a focus on outputs and activities rather than outcomes. 
This is why the Maori Party has been advocating for work to achieve outcomes emerging out of whanau ora. If we are to really see results in whanau ora we will see a developmental approach that promotes whanau capability. Whanau ora focuses on the whanau as a whole not children elders women or parents as individual subsets of the whole. Why can we not pool the Children’s Commissioner and the Families Commission together to really focus our efforts on whanau ora? 
We went into the relationship agreement with National to achieve significant outcomes in whanau ora and we hope to see the first foundations of this approach laid in a couple of days’ time in Budget 2009. The Families Commission is legislatively required to have regard for the needs values and beliefs of whanau Maori and to the factors that enhance and maintain whanau strengths and resiliences. These are issues we would absolutely support but we do not believe that wonders can work in isolation. We want to see whanau-centred policy that facilitates positive and adaptive relationships with whanau. We also want to recognise the interconnectedness of health education housing welfare employment and lifestyles as elements of whanau well-being. If the debacle over Christine Rankin has shown anything it is that we need commissioners who are totally committed to whanau ora and to respecting the needs values and beliefs of whanau Maori as an essential part of their work. New Zealand does not need cheap shots such as that Maori abuse their children more than anyone else.