Working for Maori Youth: Insights from 30 Years of Whakairo and Ta Moko

Speaker: Mark Kopua

Mark Kopua is Te Aitanga a Hauiti, Ngati Ira and Ngati Porou (tribal groups) from the East Coast of the North Island of New Zealand. He is a tohunga (expert) ta moko artist and has been tattooing for around 16 years. Prior to doing ta moko, he did Maori whakairo (carving) for about 35 years.

Mark has been awarded the prestigious Toi Iho Maori mark of excellence in perpetuation, in recognition of his contribution to upholding the mana of traditional and contemporary Maori artforms.

Mark Kopau is an  master craver and ta moko artist and expert on Maori traditional art i.e. he was an expert witness for iwi on the Wai 262 claim, see http://tamokoake.wordpress.com   Mark has worked with disadvantaged Maori youth/apprentices for over 30 years and has some powerful coal face insights about what drives quality education and employment outcomes etc.  

The seminar is at:

St John’s in the City
Wed 30 May
5.30 pm to 7.30 pm

To attend, register with John Dickson, SSPA at info@sspa.org.nz or phone 027 510-1517.

A good example of how putting something in the wrong context, can change its meaning entirely.

And personally I think it is a great joke!

With the Government promising a “zero budget”  next week the choice for him was simple: ask people to  pay slightly more for prescription medicines or tell patients needing cancer treatment and elective surgery to wait longer. He has chosen to ask families to pay up to $40 more a year for medicine. Few, apart from those who like to pretend the Government has a limitless supply of money, will disagree with that choice.

The increase, which takes effect next January, will push the price of a single item up from $3 to $5. For a family the maximum payable in a single year will increase from $60 to $100.

That is 11c a day per family maximum.

Prescriptions for children under the age of six will remain  free and families that cannot afford to pay the increase will be able to obtain assistance from Work and Income NZ and primary health organisations.

The reality is this is a very minor changes, that reduces the drugs bill to the taxpayer by just 4%.

In Australia the average fee is A$35.40 (NZ$45), although  those on low incomes pay a lesser fee. In England the average charge is NZ$16 and in Finland, Labour’s utopia,  Mr Ryall says individuals have to fork out  $1107 each before the cost of prescription medicines is limited to about NZ$2.50.

So we have a cap 10% that of Finland.

The NZ Herald:

Much angst has greeted the Government’s announcement that prescription charges are to increase from $3 to $5 next year to fund reinvestment in the health sector. Opposition parties have warned that lower-income groups, the elderly and the chronically ill will be hit hard. The Mana Party leader, Hone Harawira, has gone so far as to claim it “will lead to children dying”. Such concern is vastly overstated. This is, after all, the first increase in prescription costs in 20 years, and could be justified merely on the basis of inflation.

Vastly overstated? More like insanely hysterical. And the charge was originally $15, reduced to $3 in 2004, so at $5 is still just one third what it once was.

For many people, the rise in cost will be easily manageable. They need prescriptions relatively rarely, and their families’ requirements will get nowhere near the 20 items of medicine a year, after which prescriptions for the rest of that year are free. Such people would not have been unduly perturbed if the increase had been more than $2. Indeed, it would have made more sense for the Government to charge a larger sum for each prescription but to lower the trigger point for free prescriptions.

Not a bad idea.

At its worst, the increased prescription charge will cost a family an extra $40 a year. That sum hardly tallies with the dire consequences predicted by some Opposition politicians. Even so, the move is predicated on the universality that so marred the previous Government’s early childhood and welfare payments. A more astute targeted approach would have served those with substantial medication requirements better and left little room for criticism. Unfortunately, the Government has missed that opportunity.

Subsidies should generally be targeted at those in need, not made universal as this is economically inefficient.

No sooner had the Banks/Dotcom story hit the headlines than Newstalk ZB decided to interview a bewildered blogger called Whaleoil.

Without a fact to fan his considerable self with Mr Whaleoil explained to ZB listeners that New Zealand First had been a beneficiary of the giant German.

The ZB people did not bother to check with Dotcom or New Zealand First.

To be fair to Whale and ZB, considering NZ First has a long history of not disclosing donations it was legally required to disclose, and that Winston himself was found to have lied about not knowing about Own Glenn’s $100,000 donation to his lawyer, then you could argue checking with NZ First would be a waste of time. However would have been useful to check with Dotcom.

A mischievous blogger known as Kiwiblog made up a story the Thursday before the election that New Zealand First was an incorporated society and that Winston Peters was an illegal candidate.

That story running as it did immediately before the Election Day is a corrupt practice under our election law.

Except that there is a NZ First incorporated society. My story is here. Winston claims that there are in fact two NZ First’s – one incorporated and one unincorporated. But as I blogged here, this is not something his own party officers agree with him on:

Contacted by the Listener, Catchpole, treasurer from 2005 until the party’s convention earlier this month, says: “They are one and the same really, the incorporated society and the party, because the party constitution and rules are all registered with the incorporated society. That basically makes it one entity.” …

Asked about the incorporated society, Groombridge says: “That’s the party itself.”

So that was both the party president and the party treasurer contradicting Winston, and saving the political party NZ First is the same entity as the incorporated society NZ First.

By sheer coincidence, this blogger is the paid pollster of the National Party.

I blogged at the time that absolutely no one in National knew of this story before I published it. I only wrote the story that morning because I received an e-mail from a (non-National) friend who had come across the rules.

What I can also now reveal, is that in fact National got a bit shitty at me for running the story. They told me the last thing they wanted was more publicity for Winston on the eve of the election.  Just as National didn’t like me describing their campaign opening TV spot as looking like an excitable eight year old filmed it

The foreign owned newspaper Dominion Post felt compelled to also publish this garbage and the story appeared to be taking off until some spoilsport presented the true facts.

I’m still waiting for the true facts. Whom do we believe – Winston or his own party president and treasurer?

That story could have been the difference between eight and nine MPs for New Zealand First.

And the publicity it gave Winston may have been what got NZ First eight MPs instead of seven. A possibility that may haunt me for decades

With one more we could have stopped the sale of state assets – and the National Party knew it.

I’d love to take credit for getting the Government back into office with a clear centre-right majority, as it means I’d never have to buy a drink again at party conferences!

For NZ First to have gained a 9th MP, they would have needed 153,819 votes or 6.86% rather than 147,544 or 6.59%, an increase of 6,275.

I hear from someone who was at the actual speech, that in fact Winston blamed me for not just NZ First getting one extra MP, but maybe several. If this is true, surely the PM could consider a knighthood for me?

On the 6th of November we decided that we had to break free from this coalition that we had never entered.

At a public meeting at Kelston we carefully explained that we would be going into Opposition.

Again, there is a credibility problem here. He basically promised the same in 2005, and promptly went into Government with the Foreign Affairs bauble.

In 2008 Barack Obama credited social media with getting both grass root activists and the normally apathetic people involved in his campaign.

In New Zealand politicians have been trying to play catch up.

We, in New Zealand First are learning.

There is no doubt social media provided a way for New Zealand First supporters and candidates to stay in touch and organise for the 2011 election. 

We are using it in Parliament. …

Most members of the press gallery monitor Twitter and Facebook.

News breaks on these social media sites and politicians get themselves into trouble on them!

The technology is amazing.

With the advent of smartphones and iPads, MPs are tweeting from the House to their constituents, providing an instant information service.

It’s interesting to look at the demographics of people of those that like my page on Facebook.

The highest percentage of people who like my page are males aged 18-24. 

There is no doubt that social media provides an unprecedented way for people to connect with politicians.

Good to see NZ First recognising the potential of social media.

The Council of Trade Unions says the changes to industrial relations laws being considered are the worst attack on workers’ rights since the 1990s

In fact the changes are very much around the margins, and fairly in-substantive. The Government should require unions to collect their own membership fees, rather than force employers to be unpaid fee collectors ofr them – then they really would have something to complain about.

But the “worst attack since the 1990s” line is now new. It’s exactly what the CTU said about the 90 Day trial periods in their 2010 submission:

 “The largest step backwards in workers’ rights since 1990.”

I guess they have a macro on their computers that just inserts that phrase automatically into releases and submissions!

A tradesman allegedly caught by TV3 cameras committing an indecent act at a customer’s home was granted name suppression when he appeared in court today.

The carpet cleaner at the centre of a hidden camera sting by the Target consumer affairs show appeared in Manukau District Court this morning on charges of burglary and wilfully accessing a computer.

He was bailed to reappear on June 6, TV3 reported.

What is interesting is that he has been charged for what some might say are the less vile offences, yet there is no charge for masturbating on a woman’s underwear.

But while vile, what charges could be laid? It can’t be indecent exposure as he was not in public. Any lawyers out there want to opine on what charges could be laid for what he did?

A Whangarei childcare centre is planning legal action against the New Zealand Aids Foundation (NZAF) for slander.

The centre said NZAF made false comments about it, which have ruined its reputation – but NZAF said the centre needed to acknowledge it has made “really poor decisions”.

I would note it is very very hard for an organisation to win a defamation suite, as if I cam correct they have to show actual damage, not just reputational damage.

The centre received “mixed messages” about the level of care the boy needed and had never “excluded, expelled, or shut out” the boy, but rather asked him to stay at home while a care plan was established, Tipene said.

I’m sorry but that is an exclusion. It is doublespeak to argue otherwise.

More than 20 other early childhood centres in Northland have offered a space to the boy, without having to develop care plans, a NZAF spokeswoman said.

Restores may faith in the basic decency of Kiwis.

Government cronyism is being blamed for delays in Employment Relations Authority investigations, caused by a 76 per cent turn over of its members in two years. …

The contracts of seven members had expired since 2010 and a further six would expire between June and the end of the year. They are appointed by the Governor-General, on the recommendation of Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson.

Labour’s industrial relations spokeswoman Darien Fenton said some members had wanted to stay on but their contracts were not renewed.

“The minister is clearly wanting to put her own people in there, what we would describe as cronies.”

How dare Kate Wilkinson appoint different people to whom Labour appointed. Just because they won two elections is no reason they should appoint different people to whom Labour did.

Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly said the organisation was consulted on appointments and had a policy of approving the reappointment of competent members, regardless of whether it agreed with their decisions.

I’m a bit cynical that the CTU doesn’t ever link their agreement with decisions with whether they think someone is competent. Are they really saying they regard someone as competent if they disagree with all their decisions?

As far as I can tell the vast majority of ERA members under Labour were former union lawyers. Now as far as I can tell, there are a few ex-union lawyers on there, a couple of ex-employers assn lawyers and the majority have just worked privately (for both employers and employees). That seems pretty balanced to me.

School class sizes are going up and the Government is working on performance pay for teachers, Education Minister Hekia Parata has announced.

In a pre-Budget announcement to a business audience in Wellington this morning, Parata said there would be an extra $60m invested over four years for boosting teacher recruitment and training.

“We will collaborate in the development of an appraisal system on driving up quality teaching and quality professional leadership.

Performance pay is but one of a basket of options to reward and recognise that,” Parata said.

“We are not investing in more teachers, we are investing in better teaching.”

Ultimately performance pay can only work well if you delegate funding to school boards and allow principals flexibility in deciding pay rates. You might have a nationwide collective setting minimum salary levels, but the funding should be flexible enough so that the best teachers could be earning say double the worst.

There had been “some trade-offs” so that the Government could afford the new investment, she said.

Teacher – student ratios in the mid-years of education (years two to 10) would be increased. Instead of the existing range of anywhere between one to 23 up to one to 29, there would be a single ratio of one to 27.5.

The ratio for students sitting NCEA at years 11, 12 and 13 would be standardised at one to 17.3, instead of the existing range of between one to 17 and one to 23.

“These ratios are a funding formula – they are how we as a Government fund schools. The actual number of children in a classroom is set by the school.”

New entrants (year one) would keep its one to 15 ratio.

The ratio changes would “free up” $43m, on average, in each year over the next four years.

In the last ten years, student numbers had grown by 2.52 per cent, but teacher numbers had grown 12.76 per cent over the same period, Parata said.

About 90 per cent of schools would either gain or have a net loss of less than one full time equivalent teachers as a result of the combined effect of the changes.

The changes look pretty minor.

The New Zealand prime minister ranks ninth in theGallup survey (see below) of leader approval ratings in 21 nations in the Asian region, with 72% saying they approved of Key’s job performance, 24% disapproving, and 4% confused or profoundly shy or something.

The survey by the Washington-based Gallup, which polled 1,000 people in each country, has attracted widespread coverage across the region, but as far as I can tell has been overlooked in New Zealand.

I only saw it myself thanks to the daily summary by Bryce Edwards. I was surprised that Key ranked only 9th, as I know his ratings are much higher than national leaders in the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany and Australia. But then I looked at the table:

Laos is a one party state. Cambodia has been ruled by the one party since independence as has Singapore. Sri Lanka is one of the most repressive regimes in the world for press freedom. Haven’t looked into details for Philippines, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Indonesia but I suspect in a fair few of those, criticising the head of state can be a risky thing to do

Would be interesting to see such a poll in say the OECD countries.

• Mitchell Baker -  instrumental player in the development of Mozilla and founding chairperson of the Mozilla Foundation, Baker helped legitimize Open Source Internet applications
• Tim Berners-Lee – invented the WWW
• Robert Cailliau - developed with Tim Berners-Lee, a hypertext system for accessing documentation
• Van Jacobson – his algorithms for the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) helped solve the problem of congestion
• Larry Landweber - helped establish the first network gateways between the US and countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America
• Paul Mockapetris – invented the DNS
• Craig Newmark - founder of Craigslist
• Raymond Tomlinson - inventing network electronic mail and choosing the “@” sign in emails
• Linus Torvalds - creator of the Linux operating system
• Philip Zimmermann -  creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)

No doubt many more names over time will be added to this category.

A petition has been launched over an adoption joke in the newAvengers movie that organisers have slammed as “insulting”.

The petition, which has 247 signatures, is over a line muttered by Chris Hemsworth’s character Thor, after Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow tells him his brother Loki – a villain – has killed “80 people in two days”.

Thor replies: “He’s adopted.”

Petition organiser Jamie Berke said scriptwriter Joss Whedon should have thought about how the line would impact on viewers who were adopted themselves.

“According to your scriptwriter, the fact (Loki) was adopted is the reason he is a bad guy,” Berke said.

Mr Berke is a moron. The media are also stupid for giving publicity to a moron with a global petion petition that has only 247 signatures. How is this newsworthy? Is every idiot with no sense of humour now international news.

I happen to to know a bit about Thor. I’ve read well pretty much all 700 issues of the Marvel Comic the film is based on. I also have studied the original Norse mythology.

Even if the film was suggesting Loki is bad because he is adopted, Mr Berke should lighten up.  It is a film. But what Berke fails to know is that Loki is not the child of other gods, adopted by Odin. He is the son of Fárbauti and Laufey. Fárbauti (or Laufey in the comics) is a frost giant – one of those evil creatures that generally kill men (and gods). So the adoption reference is actually a reference to Loki being half-giant.

Three high-ranking executives at JPMorgan Chase are expected to leave their jobs this week after a trading blunder cost the bank US$2 billion,The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

Only “expected” to leave their jobs??

The Journal, citing people familiar with the situation, reported that one of the executives is Ina Drew, who for seven years has run the risk-management division at the bank responsible for the loss.

Drew, one of the highest-ranking women on Wall Street, is the bank’s chief investment officer. She was paid $15.5 million last year and almost $16 million the year before, according to a regulatory filing.

So the loss was 120 times the annual salary!

Likewise we are now seeing reports that John Key “slammed” the media in his comments on NewstalkZB. Luckily they videoed the show, so you can judge for yourself whether this was a “slamming” or in fact a reasonable critical analysis.

Massey University is about to undertake a quiet revolution in the way we educate teachers. We are cutting our ties with the past and forging ahead with changes that will bring Massey’s teacher education in line with some of the best education institutions around the world.

From next year we will focus all our teacher education at the graduate/postgraduate level and phase out teaching in our three- and four-year undergraduate degrees.

For what it is worth, I think it is better for teachers to gain a general degree, and then a teaching diploma on top of that.

The changes we are making at Massey to focus on graduate/postgraduate teaching, will start to address these issues by taking the teachers to that next level. As graduates and postgraduates, our students will be able to progress to masters and doctoral degrees and will be well positioned to move up the career ladder and assist those entering the profession.

The advantage of graduate and postgraduate teacher education is that the students have already qualified in a wide variety of degrees – sociology, psychology, maths, science, technology, the arts, Maori studies etc – and they bring those specialist skills and the ability to apply them.

It is a long time since I was at university, but I do recall that the numeracy requirements for those doing teaching was massively below even first year maths. I would have placed it around school cert level.

One of the arguments repeatedly put forward against this move is that it is not possible to prepare a teacher in one year.

That misrepresents what we are doing. Those completing the graduate diploma path have already studied for a minimum of four years and will undertake a further two years of professional practice before becoming fully registered.

Around half of all graduates entering primary teaching come through the graduate diploma route; that rises to more than 80 per cent for the secondary sector.

We know graduates from our graduate diploma programmes are well-regarded. They have higher completion rates and higher rates of employment and registration than those going through undergraduate programmes.

Not often I have praise for Massey University Education Department, but I do think this is a good move.

A reader e-mailed his brother who is a geological engineer. He commented:

In an area that is prone to liquefaction the last thing you want is have more ponded water in the form of a lake.  Lake edges are typically worst affected by lateral spreading induced by liquefaction, often 10s to 100s m back from the ponded water. To create an artificial lake in the Chch CBD you would have to dig a large hole in the ground to hold the water.  This allows the surrounding lake shore and adjacent land to move (expand) under strong earthquake shaking – to spread laterally into the lake. But If the ground is still in place you get a lot of cracking and water and silt ejection, but not much ground deformation.  Its the ground spreading, often accompanied by subsidence, that is most damaging to buildings.  The best way to stop this from happening is to lower the general ground water table, and create a ‘non-building buffer zone’ (of land) along the banks of rivers, canals, and around the shores of other bodies of water bodies  - not dig more holes in the ground and fill them with water !!

So sadly not practical.

David Shearer’s decision to muzzle his rival, David Cunliffe, is deeply worrying.

Right now, there’s nothing Labour needs more than an open debate about its future.

That its leader and the coterie of courtiers with which he has surrounded himself were willing to go to the extraordinary lengths of preventing Labour’s spokesperson on economic development from appearing on TV3′s The Nation reveals how ruthlessly Shearer’s faction intends to stifle all dissent.

Shearer’s petty, politically self-destructive decision can only be interpreted as Cunliffe’s punishment for delivering a speech to his New Lynn electorate’s women’s branch highly critical of Labour’s fraught, 25-year association with neo- liberal economics.

Clearly, the disparity between the Labour leader’s three uninspiring “positioning” speeches, and the compellingly radical content of Cunliffe’s April 29 address, had rankled.

The disparity is probably what was worrying his staff. What if Cunliffe went on The Nation and shone?

According to Garner, Cunliffe’s critics described his speech as “stupid and foolish”. Labour’s “Leadership Group”, advised of The Nation’s invitation, then weighed the issue and decided Cunliffe should not appear. The Nation failed to change their minds.

This sort of overt factional squabbling has not been seen in the Labour Party for more than 15 years. Throughout Helen Clark’s record-breaking reign as leader, open dissent was almost always cast as treason. …

Labour’s full recovery as a vibrant, creative and politically relevant organisation cannot be secured except by a radical opening-up of the party. Interestingly, recent reports about Labour’s organisational restructuring exercise suggest this may be happening.

The party’s constitutional review committee is rumoured to have recommended that rank-and-file members be given a deliberative voice in the choice of party leader, as well as an effective veto over sudden, caucus-inspired, leadership spills.

Unsurprisingly, it is also rumoured that Labour’s caucus is doing all it can to prevent such changes coming into immediate effect. The party’s annual conference in November promises to be a bloody affair.

I’m tempted to register as media and attend with popcorn

Courtiers make poor campaigners. As Game of Thrones addicts know, power is not always to be found among the wielders of swords.

As often as not it lies in the hands of eunuchs and whoremasters: the manipulators, tricksters and casters-of-shadows who keep their daggers hidden and seldom venture beyond the palace gates.

Heh, as a former parliamentary staffer I might fall into that description. I’d prefer to be a whoremaster than a eunuch I have to say

If Shearer believes the country will be best served by turning the Ship of State’s tiller hard to starboard, then let him say so, and let him and his faction spell out clearly what the policy implications of such a rightward shift would be.

Cunliffe has made it clear that he believes a sharp leftward turn to be in order. How exhilarating and liberating it would be, not simply for the Labour Party, but for the whole country, to see this debate played out.

How depressing, therefore, to learn that, instead of welcoming Cunliffe’s offering, his jealous courtier colleagues described it as “stupid and foolish”.

I think the time for that debate was when there was a leadership vacancy.

Stuff reports:

Prime Minister John Key has sounded off at the media, while insisting he is is not worried about what he sees as its more aggressive mood towards him.

Speaking on NewstalkZB this morning he singled out television news, the Sunday Star-Times and the NZ Herald for particular mentions.

He said the media are “in a more aggressive and hostile mood towards us”.

He did not worry about the media “despite what they think”.

“I am not that bent out of shape about that – I expected it,” he said. Former prime minister Helen Clark had warned him it would happen after the first term in office.

Pressure came on Governments more, because the media becomes more antagonistic.

He said he was not moaning about it – it was a matter of fact.

And the headline:

Key bemoans ‘hostile’ media

Really proves the point.

Key said over time the NZ Herald had become more tabloid under its new editor, with sometimes only one big sensational story on the front page.

“The Herald has turned more tabloid – that is an absolute statement of fact.” …

For instance, the Sunday Star-Times a few weeks ago had run a headline saying he had locked in former prime ministers’ entitlements.

“I am not locking anything in – it has been in the Civil List Act as long as I have been on this Earth.”

I differentiate between the Herald and the Sunday Star-Times.

The Herald is definitely more tabloid. It is a deliberate strategy, and to give them credit it is working. Their readership and circulation are both doing comparatively well from what I can recall. The impact of being more tabloid and sensationalist is that you tend to end up beating up on the Government more, because most issues are about the Government. If Labour was in Government, they would probably be bemoaning the Herald also (as Clark did – something Key specifically cited).

The Sunday Star-Times does take a very left-wing view on most issues, and is basically anti-National. The example of the MPs perks is a classic example. It was a total nonsense story. John Key has actually done more to reduce MPs perks and introduce transparency that the last ten Prime Ministers combined.

It is fine for a newspaper to be left-wing, so long as people understand that. Just as NBR tends to be centre-right on most issues. I think the few remaining SST readers are of the same persuasion as the paper.

It was trying to lift circulation, especially casual sales at dairies, and had brought over David Fisher (from the Herald on Sunday) as “an investigative journalist, so-called”.

He said former TVNZ political editor Guyon Espiner had left for TV3, and that was a loss.

Personally I think David Fisher does good work, even though on some issues such as the secret tapes, we agree to disagree. I prefer journalists who investigate things, to those who rehash press releases.

Bill Ralston just tweeted that having Key praise Guyon is probably the kiss of death for him. Heh. He is sort of right, but I don’t think it would be fair to conclude that Key thinks Espiner was in any way soft on him. I can recall many instances where he has pushed Key hard. I think it was more a comment that he thought Guyon tends to avoid sensationalism.