KEY POINTS:
Can we take a deep breath and listen to what Maori Party MP Hone Harawira has to say, rather than join the queue of those pounding him for visiting Aborigine people in Alice Springs?
Who, exactly, was "howling with outrage" at Harawira's side-trip? On whose authority was he
pronounced "absent without leave"? Where, apart from in the imagination of some media, was the "furore" he provoked?
There's no solid evidence for these accusations, but that didn't stop last weekend's TV reporters from wetting themselves with excitement, and pronouncing these condemnations as facts. One News preceded its 6pm bulletin by announcing Harawira had provoked "howls of outrage".
Then all we saw was Labour MP Shane Jones chuckling about his "bro" going walkabout, saying many of his whanau saved for five years to pay for trips across the Tasman. (How many years did they save to pay Jones's salaries both as director of the Maori Fisheries Trust, and as an MP?)
Other news reports stated Harawira was AWOL. Wrong - he had official leave from his party, and the select committee chairman did not prevent him from halving his official time touring Melbourne, and heading north for two days.
Later, we learned NZ First MP Ron Mark had raised these issues in the House. He was - on behalf of us all - greatly aggrieved. Well, Ron Mark would wrench off his spectacles, raise his voice, and call for heads to roll if someone knocked over his water glass.
At least National MP Judith Collins and Green's Nandor Tanczos had the grace to praise Harawira for his actions.
Okay, so he could have spent four days with the select committee, instead of two, and organised his own airfares, at a separate time, to the Northern Territory. The Speaker ordered him to repay $1100 for piggy-backing, but Harawira's jaunt was hardly personal business, unlike those who've peeled off to ride camels, go shopping, or sail in an America's Cup race. Nor like those planning on being around Paris when the Rugby World Cup is under way.
If you want evidence of MPs' junkets, look no further than the infamous "Speakers' tours".
I caught up with Harawira mid-week - the "firebrand MP" as TVNZ insists on labelling him - to ask about the Northern Territory night patrols. He may well be a hot-headed activist, but Harawira is also intelligent, articulate and has some ideas for ways to try to stop New Zealand's appalling family violence.
For starters, he says, we won't solve anything with the Prime Minister's "panic reaction to anything on the front page of the newspapers".
"Like this $14 million she's spending on questioning women who go to hospital. What's that gonna do? When women get the bash their husbands will say 'you're not going to get help you bitch cos you'll just dob me in'. So what will happen?" asks Harawira, rhetorically.
"These women won't end up going to hospital when they need to."
Australia's night patrols, he explains, are made up mainly of volunteers, "somewhere between our Maori Wardens and the police".
"They are Aborigine, they know the families. They pick up people who are lost, drunk, cracked on the head, in need of help, and they are bloody successful."
What makes him see red (and Harawira's accusations that John Howard is a "racist bastard" is what earned him front-page news before he departed) is the Australian government cutting funding for what is, essentially, a preventative service.
New Zealand, even in our most hardscrabble suburbs, is not as dire as Australia's shameful settlements. But we have no reason to be smug, as we read the dreadful details emerging in court over the deaths of Chris and Cru Kahui. The twins' mother, in evidence, described parenthood as "lonely and hectic". This, despite being surrounded by family.
Isn't it time we got preventative, and started our own night patrols, so we aren't reduced to the uselessness of three minutes' silence to try to stop child abuse?
Can't we organise some interfering busy-bodies, not daunted by the task of driving around rescuing the vulnerable from the violent, and at the very least fund their vehicles and petrol instead of paying for lengthy murder trials?
MPs from all parties wring their hands over the Nia Glassies and the Kahui twins, vowing to support cross-party talks and tougher action on abusers. Then they get tough on someone such as Harawira who actually gets off his butt and looks for realistic solutions.
Harawira should take his critics to a maternity ward, park them in front of the rows of newborns, then ask them to choose which babies should have their limbs broken, ribs crushed, and brains smacked, while they squabble over headlines.
