Always.
We hear the Māori incarceration rate. Then the explanations: institutional racism. Intergenerational trauma. Colonial hangover. The courts are the problem. The cops are the problem. Society is the problem.
The bloke with the fist disappears into social theory.
Ostensibly, this is compassion for Māori.
It isn’t: it’s disappearing victims.
Flip the question. Who is getting hurt?
Ministry of Justice figures for violent offences in the year to June 2026 have Māori at about half of those charged and about 56 percent of those convicted. Males make up roughly 83 to 85 percent of that traffic.
Now the survey the excuse makers skip.
The New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey (May 2026) estimates about 148,000 adult victims of violent crime. About 49,000 of them identify as Māori. Roughly one in three.
Māori are about 17 to 18 percent of the population.
So Māori are heavily over-represented among those charged and convicted for violence. And Māori are heavily over-represented among those who wear the bruises and worse.
That is not a mystery about "systems." It is a pattern about who hits whom.
Most violence is not stranger theatre for the six o'clock news. It is closer to home: partners, mates, family, the bloke down the street. When the offender pool is skewed, the victim pool is skewed the same way. Surprise is for people who never look.
Shift the focus from the dock to the ambulance and the question changes.
Not: why are so many Māori in prison?
But: what can we do to stop Māori being beaten up?
Racism seminars don’t bandage a busted jaw. Trauma narratives don't put a father back in the house. More apologies from the Beehive don’t keep a teenage girl safe on a Friday night.
Violence is a choice. Someone swings. Someone cops it. The incentives that matter are the ones that make swinging costly and looking after your own people normal.
Personal responsibility sounds cold until you notice who is bleeding.
If Māori are a third of the adult victims of violence while being under a fifth of the population, the polite story about "over-policing" starts to look like a luxury item for people who do not live next door to it.
Government cannot love your kids for you. It can lock up the thugs. It can stop pretending every punch is a policy failure and every victim a footnote.
The official frame keeps asking how society failed the offender.
Try asking how the offender failed the neighbour.
Then count the neighbours.
Rodney Hide is former ACT Party leader, and Minister in the National-ACT Government from 2008 to 2011. This article was first published HERE
Ostensibly, this is compassion for Māori.
It isn’t: it’s disappearing victims.
Flip the question. Who is getting hurt?
Ministry of Justice figures for violent offences in the year to June 2026 have Māori at about half of those charged and about 56 percent of those convicted. Males make up roughly 83 to 85 percent of that traffic.
Now the survey the excuse makers skip.
The New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey (May 2026) estimates about 148,000 adult victims of violent crime. About 49,000 of them identify as Māori. Roughly one in three.
Māori are about 17 to 18 percent of the population.
So Māori are heavily over-represented among those charged and convicted for violence. And Māori are heavily over-represented among those who wear the bruises and worse.
That is not a mystery about "systems." It is a pattern about who hits whom.
Most violence is not stranger theatre for the six o'clock news. It is closer to home: partners, mates, family, the bloke down the street. When the offender pool is skewed, the victim pool is skewed the same way. Surprise is for people who never look.
Shift the focus from the dock to the ambulance and the question changes.
Not: why are so many Māori in prison?
But: what can we do to stop Māori being beaten up?
Racism seminars don’t bandage a busted jaw. Trauma narratives don't put a father back in the house. More apologies from the Beehive don’t keep a teenage girl safe on a Friday night.
Violence is a choice. Someone swings. Someone cops it. The incentives that matter are the ones that make swinging costly and looking after your own people normal.
Personal responsibility sounds cold until you notice who is bleeding.
If Māori are a third of the adult victims of violence while being under a fifth of the population, the polite story about "over-policing" starts to look like a luxury item for people who do not live next door to it.
Government cannot love your kids for you. It can lock up the thugs. It can stop pretending every punch is a policy failure and every victim a footnote.
The official frame keeps asking how society failed the offender.
Try asking how the offender failed the neighbour.
Then count the neighbours.
Rodney Hide is former ACT Party leader, and Minister in the National-ACT Government from 2008 to 2011. This article was first published HERE
8 comments:
Well explained. And boy, are Kiwi's sick of it
Try to blame parents and families who are too thick to nurture children and set no boundaries so kids have no idea about consequences of actions. Kiwialan.
There are no consequences for self administered drugged up violence .
Our judges just deal out some home detention , and the victims bear the injuries for the rest of their lives.
The Maori warrior gene has been denied, but sure as hell there is something that makes their men violent.
I can tell from the news headline what race most perpetrators are, and it's confirmed when I read the name.
To make me really angry, tell me that these people should have the rights to co govern NZ.
Once were warriors.
Has anyone heard of the Pareto Principle? If memory serves, it describes 80% of a problem area as stemming from 20% of the possible originators. Deal with the 20% and your problem is greatly reduced. Why not set up, say, the equivalent of boy’s schools, taking in the likely next generation of criminals (Maori or otherwise). Train and educate these lads, full-time, for 6-7 years, and ensure they leave with a trade or other useful qualification. Perhaps we might have to select slightly more, or slightly less, than 20% of the targeted population. This would remove a goodly proportion of the feral youth presently causing trouble, and give them the opportunity to live a decent future life. Or, alternatively, just build more and more prisons and keep them there for, say, 20 years until they grow up. I know what I prefer.
Our Education system has to take a proportion of the blame . I have spent my adult life fighting in the 'Reading Wars '.Almost everyday I think of the failures of reading and the victims- the illiterates this country has produced of whom a disproportionate number are Maori. I relate to Maori radicals by saying to them '. Get into the jails and teach them to read '. I tell them, 'Marie Clay is the very worst child abuser this country has had and it went on for 40 plus years '. .
I have had Maori students who refused to participate in Maori activities and said to teachers ' Just teach me to read' '. .Everyday these students get abuse like being called ' Retard ', by other students. They start shoplifting. . Of course reading isn't the only issue but it is crucial. .Traditional Education , wisely made effective literacy the very highest priority in schooling . Marie Clay 's Progressive educationalists turned her method into an ideology , incorporated into social engineering . They talked about equity but damaged the most vulnerable .They persecuted viciously those who criticized them . But they were wrong. Where is the remorse, the regrets that world wide multi -millions of children had their futures smashed.? Maori are just a small proportion.There are also multi millions of other coloured children destined for welfare and to prison because of Clay's infernal method of reading .
Of course I don't discount other factors,.but too many people are omitting the fact we have the longest tail of underachievement. Gaynor
If I was PM I would channel significant resources into investigating and remedying the causes of criminality. Just as soon as I had identified through the court records, every victim of every crime for which the perpetrator had been caught and convicted, and satisfied myself that they had overcome their trauma and returned to the position they were in before they fell victim to the crime in question. So I do have compassion for the victims and the perpetrators. It's just that I would give priority to looking after the innocent before I turned my attention to looking after the guilty. In practice I suspect I would run out of time before I had accomplished the former. Still, you can't achieve everything.
Karen Chhour can't put everything right in a day, but i think she's making the best effort yet. She needs more resources.
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