puff 512

Saying of the week
Humans say that time passes
Time says that humans pass
Aotearoa Waka question of the day
Where are all the teachers going and why?
Rugby
Bay of Plenty with Mike Delaney back were too good for North Harbour. The guys up front were better organized. Playing at home in Rotorua might have helped.
Media watch
'Maori have duty to fund their own,' says Fran O'Sullivan in the Saturday 28-08-10Herald- this story will be updated as the week goes by. Editors comments in brackets below.

(Is Fran O’Sullivan just rabbiting on in the right wing corner or does she represent a deeper undercurrent of feeling? She works off a stock of iwi bashing questions and rounds up the usual suspects but the mere fact that her article is given serious space in the New Zealand Herald shows that it has some editorial significance or support)

Mute response to Minister’s call for iwi to support abused kids grates, given growing level of tribal wealth says Fran.

(O’Sullivan sets out the distinction between iwi and state in her opening paragraph. And then there is the inversion; Paula Bennett is, like Winston Peters, a Maori advocate for the state)

The Maori aristocracy has turned a deaf ear to Paula Bennett’s plea to them to stump up some of their own cash so abused kids could be placed in iwi rather than state care.

(In her next paragraph she takes iwi leaders to task for being tardy or indolent.)

True to form, the tribal leaders haven’t bothered themselves sufficiently to make a collective response to Bennett. (Although her office says she is going to explain her proposals further at the invitation of some individual iwi.)

(Then it is a matter of establishing that the iwi owe the government money. Are Treaty Settlements ‘found money’ or are there strings attached?)
The young Cabinet minister went up in my estimation with her blunt message to the iwi leaders’ group to ‘put your hands in your own pockets’ to help find families who could take on children from their own iwi’ because the government doesn’t have the money for it now quite frankly’.

(Next the Key government is accused of being craven and the claim by Maori for the foreshore and seabed as corrupt.)

After months of the Key government’s craven behavior towards all things which Maori are corruptly claiming as theirs- like the prized and mineral- rich foreshore and seabed which we all own as Kiwis- it was refreshing to see a Cabinet minister give the tribal chiefs a rev-up.

(Then it is the Maori professor as space cadet. This calls into question the scholarship of Treaty claims and the general sociology and anthropology of race relations. The idea is that these academics live in a one dimensional world and this is usually hard anyway but in a small society like New Zealand it is very difficult).

Ngati Kahu Chairwoman Professor Margaret Mutu- one of the more disturbingly remote leaders- said Bennett’s suggestion that iwi provide funding and resources was ridiculous.
‘We can’t. We don’t have them. It’s a state responsibility. We know how bad it is. We know the helplessness and hopelessness of it, and that we are the only ones who can save ourselves. But we also need resources and the support of the state to do that.’
(The notion of ‘disturbingly remote’runs into the idea of psychological problems touching on pathology as Fran O’Sullivan accuses Mutu showing ‘learned helplessness’ and suggests that she is elitist. The underlying idea in the elitist suggestion is that Treaty Settlement money goes into education which promotes an the children of an elite but does nothing for people at risk).
This display of ‘learned helplessness’ from a university professor is deeply worrying. Or does Mutu cling to an outdated belief that only tribal elites- like herself- are capable of bettering themselves?

(Then O’Sullivan sets out the idea of a game.)

I very much doubt it. Mutu is one of eight tribal chairs who are very much focused on playing a double game to get ownership of a considerable lump of those assets that are either owned by the Crown on behalf of all New Zealanders- such as the foreshore and seabed-or are tucked up in state owned enterprises. Or have yet to roll off the Government’s drawing boards.

It is indeed true that child-abuse deaths for Maori were on a par with the rest of New Zealand in the mid 1980s. It is also true that Maori jobs vanished out of this economy as the 1980s Labour government demolished the railways, post office and forestry departments of that era.

(Fran O’Sullivan seems to not want to overstate things here. In fact there is something of a ‘negative sovereignty’ happening where Maori are in the majority in prisons and elsewhere in the justice system.)

But the Treaty of Waitangi settlements have also ensured a considerable shift of cash and assets into tribal hands since that time.

A couple of weeks ago I listened as the head of Ngai Tahu’s property company told a bunch of fascinated infrastructure investors how the South Island tribe had grown its portfolio from $2 million to $450 million since 1994.

Tony Sewell (a Pakeha) presented on Ngai Tahu’s behalf because its chairman Mark Solomon, pulled out at the last minute.

The basic gist was that Maori were- contrary to myth-making-relatively rich at the collective level. Maori equity could be as much as $25 billion although much of it was passive investments tied up in trusts.

Ngai Tahu was itself focused on building an inter-generational portfolio. Their perspective was a 50 to 200 year horizon.. But the aim was to have $1billion under management within a relatively short space of time.

Maori were a pivotal part of ‘New Zealand Inc’- major shareholders in dairy giant Fonterra, pastoral farming and the fishing industry and about to be in the preferred position when this government gets around to selling the deals on public-private partnerships.

‘Collective capitalism is the future, it is our past, it will deliver our potential and now is the hour’ was the mantra on the forum’s website when it hosted yet another gabfest on how Maori can become major infrastructure investors in New Zealand.

Don’t get me wrong here.

I am not against Maori having a slice of the pie. What I don’t like is the notion which is increasingly prevalent in government departments that Maori should be in some sort of preferred position because the assets- whether new infrastructure or a slice of an existing Government asset- will always remain in New Zealand ownership and be held for the longer term.

The message Maori are making to the smart money is this; pony up with us if you want a slice of the Government pie. At a superficial level- the same level which persuaded the Cabinet that our foreshore and seabed should be confiscated by statute and tucked into nebulous public domain-this is attractive.
It enables ministers to free up some cash for other purposes knowing that they have some inbuilt cheerleaders in the form of Maori who will clearly be in accord with any move that is in their commercial interest.

The play with long and short or immediate term is a significant part of this analysis.

It’s obvious that Maori are playing a very long term inter-generational game. But it is time Solomon, Mutu et al took their eyes off the asset grab and exerted some leadership in the interests of the current Maori generation.

SO THERE READERS- WHAT DO YOU THINK OF FRAN'S COMMENTS?


Health
There are currently eight major GM food crops on the market, so memorizing this list will help you avoid any and all food products that might contain GMO’s:

1.Soy
2.Corn
3.Cottonseed (used in vegetable cooking oils)
4.Canola (canola oil)
5.Sugar from sugar beets
6.Hawaiian papaya
7.Some varieties of zucchini
8.Crookneck squash