Letter to the Editor - Tuesday October 16, 2012

Poverty of spirit

Many of us have been short of money, many of us are. When I've wondered how I'm going to pay next week's rent, I didn't make the worry go away by striking my child. When my mother opened a power bill she didn't have the money for, she didn't stick me in an electric clothes dryer and turn it on.

We do have a poverty problem, but money won't fix it. We have become mana-poor. Our spirit has been slowly coaxed from us and we've stood by and allowed it to happen.

If Paula gave all households an extra $200 a week would all children then roll up for school with full bellies, neat and tidy clothes, sporting burning desires to learn? I fear not. In our problematic households I believe we would be merely providing an increased budget for what ails the household rather than helping children find their wings.

Lots of us are short of cash, but a lack of money can never be justification for hurting a child. Having no money is a by-product of our core poverty. Over the last two or three generations we have slowly become increasingly mana-poor, our 'get up and go' slowly seduced from us.

There lies the paradox of Hone's Mana Party. If the things his party stands for were all set right, there would be no reason for his party to exist. Fixing the platform problems diminishes the party's reason for being. Stealing and suppressing our personal mana creates strength for the Mana Party and their catch-cry, 'Woe is you.'

Long before Hone there was Sir Apirana Ngata, the bloke on our $50 notes. Apirana was a politician aligned with the commercial advancement of iwi interests. Farming, fishing, forestry, transport. To this day, still our country's GDP backbone. He was one of 15 children born to a money-poor, mana-rich Ngati Porou family. As a Cabinet Minister he travelled the country seeding hapu business ventures. He was a totara of Jack's beanstalk proportions.

Towards the end of the great depression, Kiwi families were literally starving to death, something had to be done. When Michael Savage, the Labour Prime Minister of the day, presented his government's 1938 grand plan for social welfare reforms to the house, Sir Apirana is attributed with the quote, "This will be the end of my people."

We don't need money. We need to relearn how to spring out of bed at 6.30am. We need to relearn how to quietly say to ourselves, "I am important and powerful. I never quit and I am overflowing with aroha." We need to rediscover how to believe we can achieve anything we set our minds to.

When we tackle these issues, poverty will fix itself. We've never had it so good, and we have fallen into the trap of becoming reliant on the path of least resistance, a path peppered with mana thieves.

VIT MANAIA

Doubtless Bay