Was it because of what is happening up in Iraq and the sending of our troops to fight another form of religious-based hatred - as was the last World War? I think this has helped and will give the PM a new challenge when pushing the barrow of trade before the blood bucket of war.
Up until this last Anzac week Flanders had been more about fairytale fiction than the wickedness of war as has Gallipoli where we glamourised the heroics of our veterans with little understanding of the long-term inter-generational damage done because of what was witnessed on the battlefields.
If violence in its extremist form is the precursor to long-term damage to a person's soul then perhaps we can begin to understand what exposure to extreme violence does to our tamariki in our own back yard.
One such boy is Sunday, this is not his real name but very close. For the last four-and-a-bit years, Sunday has lived on the streets of Tauranga after a life being exposed to extreme violence in one form or another.
Ever-vigilant about who will exact their anger on him next, Sunday has more radars and antennae up than a Waiouru army base, from the moment he awakens until he turns off his lost lights - somewhere where no one can find him.
And he has lived like this for as long as many of our soldiers fought in wars overseas.
Sunday didn't choose this lifestyle of homelessness - it chose him.
Fortunately we found him. Well, the truth is, he found us and we whangai'd (adopted) him, and a bond of trust has been forged. Sunday is just one of a "youthquake" of lost kids coming our way here in Tauranga who cannot cope with living in a violent home.
So they walk out and wake up on the streets.
These are good kids who have been dealt a rough pack by their parents if they have them and have lost all sense of trust in whanau and family, as they have for society.
Hence they take to the streets in ever-increasing numbers and develop survival skills that many of us could well learn a lot from. Street kids, just like our soldiers know a lot more about life and the long-term damage that war and violence create than we may realise.
It is Sunday who is teaching us some home truths and last Friday we learned a lesson that none of us in our boardroom will ever forget.
We witnessed something very special from a young man, a boy we call in our casual conversation a "street kid". We watched him cry a river of tears as he came to terms with the raw realisation that someone cared and had given him a chance.
Sunday is going to work today and to the trucking company who gave him this chance, we thank you.
Surely in this time of coming to terms with what our ancestors fought for and the pure hell they went through for us, we can begin to look in our own back yard and start understanding what the same exposure to extreme violence can do to our tamariki, some of them having lived an entire life full of fear.
Today, Sunday gets a chance. A chance that someone, somewhere cares for him and has a belief in him to make something of what he had learned for the last four years living on the streets.
He will join five others, who over the past five months have been helped by the chief executives and chairmen of companies here in Tauranga. They see what we see as the solution for the lost and lonely, who can't find their place in life.
These kids aren't our clients or our cousins nor are they wards of the state. They are simply struggling in a world where survival has no horizon other than where they will sleep safely tonight.
To the companies who have or are about to give these street kids a chance, I salute you as I would the soldiers who went to war in Gallipoli and Dunkirk.
-broblack@xtra.co.nz
Tommy Wilson is a best selling author and local Tauranga writer.
