The decision to leave the gang was,he told RNZ, “one of the most difficult things that I’ve ever done”.
After visiting scores of companies seeking a chance with no success, he ended up working for free for a concrete crew at work near his house. That crew gave him his break.
When he established Topline Contracting he also went on to create an academy to assist young people who were, in his words: fit but lazy, lacking direction, and almost always on drugs.
He works to straighten these people out and then gets them a job. This would never happen, he said, if they grew up in benefit-dependent families such as his.
And he’s right, far too few do. Very often they drift towards gangs and prison. And so, the cycle continues.
Here, then, we not only have a success story about one individual, but also a recipe for success for many more.
But did we miss a wonderful opportunity during peak Covid spending, and an unquenchable demand for workers, to implement such ideas? Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston certainly thinks so.
Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston. Photo / Michael Craig
Last month she said: “It’s a disgrace. There have been massive opportunities when there have been businesses everywhere desperate for staff.”
I agree with her. And this isn’t just me being critical with the benefit of hindsight. I recall a conversation I had about this with Black Power’s Denis O’Reilly as the fallout from the pandemic was occurring and the lack of workers was becoming acute.
He was pitching to government agencies a drive to bring unemployed gang members together to give them opportunities to work. It was, to his mind, a classic win-win.
Denis O'Reilly.
It would assist the desperate labour market, but also provide an avenue for those long divorced from work to be re-socialised into pro-social – and taxpaying – endeavours. He reckoned there was much talk of funding shovel-ready projects, but we needed more attention on shovel-ready social policies to run alongside them.
But the stain of the uproar around funding a gang drug rehabilitation programme was enough to ensure it was never taken up. The public backlash, and all that.
Denis’ thinking wasn’t new, and indeed it stretches back to the 1980s, when high unemployment began, starting the downward spiral of intergenerational anti-socialisation and dysfunction. Fear of this outcome was recognised at the time.
The Muldoon Government set up schemes – make-work schemes – to keep people employed until the labour market corrected to ensure people didn’t lose their work ethic. The schemes died, and so did the work ethic of many deprived communities.
Taurus Taurima. Photo / Paul Taylor
Some years ago, one gang member said to me, “when we had work, crime was part-time”. Of course, when there’s no work, crime becomes a way of life.
But to suggest that work is the answer is not quite right. The people who have grown up not knowing work, have most often also grown up with a swathe of social and economic problems leading to drug and alcohol abuse, a lack of motivation, poor impulse control, and a lack of longer-term thinking. This means that work alone is not the answer.
A good example comes from a mate of mine who ran a large roofing company in the pre- and post-pandemic world. Starved by Covid restrictions of the migrant workers he once relied on, he gave a lot of Kiwis a chance to work – on excellent wages – but was regularly let down. With wages in hand, many ran off to drink or take drugs and not return to work. Or they simply wouldn’t show up for days at a time.
It’s not just work skills that need to be learned, but life skills as well.
This is what Taurima, the Mongrel Mob member turned construction company owner, knew from all too real experience.
That’s why he wraps around the young people he brings through his academy to get them off drugs and give them the skills needed to successfully begin their employment journey.
That won’t work every time, changing deeply ingrained ideas and behaviours is extremely difficult, but without an attempt, any efforts relying just on work are doomed to fail.
With migrant workers welcomed back to the country in high numbers and Covid spending well and truly over, the country has surely missed a trick in tackling this intergenerational issue, which creates an enormous amount of community harm.
But the story of Taurima is a shining example of what can be done if there is a will – and the smarts – to do it.
· Dr Jarrod Gilbert is the director of Independent Research Solutions and a sociologist at the University of Canterbury.
