You'll remember there was criticism of how the police dealt with some of the individuals in Ōpōtiki, mainly coming from the individuals and their families themselves. Now Ngāpuhi is saying bring it on. The leader of the country's largest iwi, Mane Tahere, said he asked the Police Minister for decisive action after recently seeing a group of youngsters smoking a meth pipe in broad daylight in the Main Street of Kaikohe, just down the road from the police station.
As somebody who has been going to the Far North for the past eight or nine years, I've certainly seen a change for the worse in Kaihohe. There are tiny little fragile grass shoots of hope, but the meth is a huge problem there, an absolutely huge problem.
Locals in Opononi stand outside the local dairy, the local shops on benefit day to try and stop the dealers from getting to the kids first. The community is trying to do what it can to stop the dealers getting a strong hold in the community, to try and thwart their attempts to get more young people hooked on the drug. But they are a tiny, tiny, tiny bastion against what is a multimillion-dollar business.
The cold, harsh reality is that Northland has the highest consumption of methamphetamine in New Zealand. Nearly 2000milligrammes per day consumed per 1000 people. And Mane Tahere has said we are doing what we can as a community, as an iwi, as a people but we can't do it on our own and we need the police to step in. He said a crackdown isn't the solution to all problems in Northland but it's a major part. He knows he is calling down a whole heap of criticism on his head by asking the police to step in, but he says our hard, staunch kind of hate for the police is not the future.
Compare his pragmatic, proactive hard line on drugs with the words of Green MP Tamatha Paul. You'll remember she criticised Wellington's beat patrols. She accused the police of rounding up the homeless, without providing any evidence other than the musings of a couple of street people themselves. She said some people felt less safe because of the police’s presence.
Right. This is a very bright young woman, Tamatha Paul has won numerous scholarships for academic excellence. She has graduated with the Masters in Resource and Environmental Planning. This is a very bright young woman talking to other very bright young people on a university campus, postulating and theorising and coming up with all sorts of grand plans about how a different world could look, and that's what you do at a university when you're young, when you're bright, when you've got all the answers, when you're at a peace action conference. You have the luxury of theorising.
I would venture to suggest most of the young people there were just like Tamatha Paul. They may not have started in a world of privilege, but they've taken the opportunities offered to them, they've worked to realise a future for themselves. And that's a future that looks very, very different to the lives of the same young people in Kaikohe. The sort of people that Mane Tahere is trying to help every single day.
He knows to combat the absolute evil of drugs, his people don't need to read another thesis on colonisation, Hauora and whenua in Aotearoa published in 2019, among many. He knows what they need are not the academics, but addiction and rehab specialists. They need to keep up that community involvement, that community fight against the drugs. And they desperately, desperately need police boots on the ground.
Kerre McIvor, is a journalist, radio presenter, author and columnist. Currently hosts the Kerre Woodham mornings show on Newstalk ZB - where this article was sourced.
As somebody who has been going to the Far North for the past eight or nine years, I've certainly seen a change for the worse in Kaihohe. There are tiny little fragile grass shoots of hope, but the meth is a huge problem there, an absolutely huge problem.
Locals in Opononi stand outside the local dairy, the local shops on benefit day to try and stop the dealers from getting to the kids first. The community is trying to do what it can to stop the dealers getting a strong hold in the community, to try and thwart their attempts to get more young people hooked on the drug. But they are a tiny, tiny, tiny bastion against what is a multimillion-dollar business.
The cold, harsh reality is that Northland has the highest consumption of methamphetamine in New Zealand. Nearly 2000milligrammes per day consumed per 1000 people. And Mane Tahere has said we are doing what we can as a community, as an iwi, as a people but we can't do it on our own and we need the police to step in. He said a crackdown isn't the solution to all problems in Northland but it's a major part. He knows he is calling down a whole heap of criticism on his head by asking the police to step in, but he says our hard, staunch kind of hate for the police is not the future.
Compare his pragmatic, proactive hard line on drugs with the words of Green MP Tamatha Paul. You'll remember she criticised Wellington's beat patrols. She accused the police of rounding up the homeless, without providing any evidence other than the musings of a couple of street people themselves. She said some people felt less safe because of the police’s presence.
Right. This is a very bright young woman, Tamatha Paul has won numerous scholarships for academic excellence. She has graduated with the Masters in Resource and Environmental Planning. This is a very bright young woman talking to other very bright young people on a university campus, postulating and theorising and coming up with all sorts of grand plans about how a different world could look, and that's what you do at a university when you're young, when you're bright, when you've got all the answers, when you're at a peace action conference. You have the luxury of theorising.
I would venture to suggest most of the young people there were just like Tamatha Paul. They may not have started in a world of privilege, but they've taken the opportunities offered to them, they've worked to realise a future for themselves. And that's a future that looks very, very different to the lives of the same young people in Kaikohe. The sort of people that Mane Tahere is trying to help every single day.
He knows to combat the absolute evil of drugs, his people don't need to read another thesis on colonisation, Hauora and whenua in Aotearoa published in 2019, among many. He knows what they need are not the academics, but addiction and rehab specialists. They need to keep up that community involvement, that community fight against the drugs. And they desperately, desperately need police boots on the ground.
Kerre McIvor, is a journalist, radio presenter, author and columnist. Currently hosts the Kerre Woodham mornings show on Newstalk ZB - where this article was sourced.
4 comments:
Here is NZ’s clone of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
She has a dream. A dream where crime vanishes because we stop noticing it. Where the police politely excuse themselves from existence. Where gangs become community choirs and justice is restored through a firm telling-off and a meaningful gaze.
“We must abolish oppressive structures,” Tamatha declares, pausing just long enough for her Instagram followers to catch the vibe. “We cannot arrest our way out of systemic harm.” Translation: if someone nicks your car, it’s probably your fault for having a car in the first place.
In this brave new world, youth offending would be solved with “wānanga and whakawhanaungatanga,” which roughly translates to “a group hug and a therapeutic zine.” When asked what the practical alternative to policing was, she muttered something about “community-led initiatives” and changed the subject to colonisation, climate collapse, and a vegan bake sale in Porirua.
Meanwhile, those pesky statistics showing rising youth crime and ram raids were dismissed as “Western data constructs.” After all, numbers are colonisers too.
When questioned about contradictions—say, campaigning for safer streets while undermining the people who patrol them—she gave her trademark sigh. “It’s about structural transformation, not contradiction.” Which was apparently code for “don’t ask hard questions.”
In sum, Paul delivered a tour de force of performative deconstruction, deftly arguing that if we ignore reality long enough, it will stop bothering us. The crowd (of three MPs and a bewildered intern) gave her a standing ovation.
Mission accomplished. Truth decarcerated. Logic defunded.
The NZ police are out of their depth (next to useless) these days when it comes to dealing with anything more than traffic duties.
There needs to be a separately armed military body to deal with internal terrorists especially organized drug dealing gangs.
Sending a soft mob of long-haired midgets to Northland will achieve zero results in the fight against this multimillion-dollar business.
Thank you Kerre and I enjoyed Anon. 3:39 am.
As I have said before academia that produces the likes of T, Paul are and always have been on of the main causes of the breakdown of society .
They propagate Marxist theory and that never produces anything more than bitterness and anger .
Better policing is not my only solution but a reformed education system that includes giving youth a moral compass as well as skills to build up society rather than break it down. This means the prospects of worthwhile and well paid employment through being taught with more traditional teaching methods that are effective as proven by recent science.
Beats me how they pursuade married with family police in particualr to work in Northland and like areas. At constant risk from dealers and indoctrinated crazies, a misfit in most of local company, an encumbrance and lure of danger to any close friends or associates.
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