Maori must front up on abuse, says minister

The grave of Chris and Cru Kahui yesterday. Picture / Dean Purcell

Maori Affairs Minister Parekura Horomia yesterday stepped into the child abuse debate, calling on the family of the Kahui twins to reveal who killed the babies and seeking a cross-party meeting on family violence this week.

He said those who were covering up the truth were as "gutless" as those who had perpetrated the violence.

Mr Horomia will discuss the cross-party approach with his Cabinet colleagues today and fine-tune a proposal to take to other parties.

"This is a thing that needs to be owned by Maori families and Maori leadership. You can't let it damned well carry on, not in this day and age."

But he said it was dangerous to characterise child abuse as only a Maori problem and was concerned that it was being used as "the next rod on Maori".

He was prepared "to confront the Maori dimension" of the problem but he did not want another review.

"I am talking about action and getting on with it and building on what we have been doing."

Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia backed the initiative and believed Mr Horomia was committed to dealing with family violence.

"It is such a significant issue among our communities, we need to deal with it."

But she also believed Child, Youth and Family could do more.

"I'm not going to blame Child, Youth and Family. I think their job is very difficult, but they have to stop trying to protect their little patch.

"They've got to realise that in a lot of instances there are other people out there who may be able to do better for that family and they should step aside and let it happen."

Mr Horomia said the deaths of the 3-month-old Kahui twins last week were partly the catalyst for the cross-party meeting.

But it was also clear from question-time in Parliament last week that the Government was vulnerable on the issue of child abuse and a degree of cross-party co-operation could blunt the National Party's attacks.

The Labour-led Government vowed to improve CYFS but after seven years was so concerned about the social work agency that it decided to merge it into the Ministry of Social Development.

New Zealand has fallen to third worst in the OECD for child deaths from sixth worst in 1994.

Mr Horomia envisaged the meeting being a combination of Maori Affairs and social welfare representatives.

The move was cautiously welcomed by National social welfare spokeswoman Judith Collins, who said yesterday that she would be happy to attend.

According to police figures compiled from the 103 children killed in the 12 years to 2001, the overall rate of deaths per 100,000 children was 12.2.

Broken into ethnic groups, Maori had double the overall rate rate at 24.4. Asians were on 11.8, Europeans 8.6, Pacific Islanders 5.7 and others 6.