A catalyst for social change

Broadcaster Carol Hirschfeld is pushing the boundaries in her own life - and taking risks with two nights of challenging television. Photo / Richard Robinson

This is a brave thing for a broadcaster to do, muses Carol Hirschfeld, head of programming for Maori TV.

Actually, she's never known a broadcaster to do anything quite of this nature, where prime time has been cleared for two nights in a row for something so socially important and serious.

This well-known face, who hasn't been seen in front of a camera since her departure from Campbell Live nearly a year ago, sits on a bench in the empty karaoke studio at MTV headquarters in Newmarket, the flashing stage lights strangely sober, and talks frankly about what she hopes is life-changing programming.

Hirschfeld is revealing about the changes in herself, too, since arriving from mainstream, largely Pakeha-dominated, current affairs.

Five hours of prime viewing time over the next two nights are being dedicated to an issue not just close to Maori but to all New Zealanders, she says.

The topic is child abuse/domestic violence and what we can do about it.

Despite the grave subject matter Tamariki Ora: A New Beginning is not depressing fare. Those featured bare their souls and the resulting viewing is compelling and fascinating, but not depressing, she says.

"I see so much inauthenticity on television that it's striking when you see people talking about real life stuff in their own words and how they found a way through.

"A lot of the material is incredibly uplifting. It's another view of the human condition, how people cope under the greatest stressful situations and how people triumph extraordinarily."

The concept wasn't her idea, but she wrote the proposal for New Zealand on Air, which gave nearly $400,000 of public money from its Platinum Fund - created to support high quality local content - for this intensive look at issues which are widely recognised to be so significant for Maori, but for which Hirschfeld says all of us can make a difference.

Maori do take a hammering every time there is an incident of child abuse, she agrees, and Tamariki Ora evolved out of some deep thinking about what can be done.

"I think the reality is that we as a broadcaster do want to show leadership in this area and what you absolutely can't deny is that Maori are very affected by family violence."

Hirschfeld presents and hosts panel discussions which are interspersed with a series of mini-documentaries, most of them well under 10 minutes but which show viewers the lives of those stuck in abusive lifestyles, those who have rescued them and those who have changed their lives and are now changing the lives of others, be they strangers or their own whanau.

She praises the bravery of all who appear, saying she is still amazed they open themselves up the way they do. These are all real people who have had real things happen to them, she says.

On the first night, among the many stories to be screened is one about Pat, a Pakeha woman who married into gangs and produced children of violence. A poignant moment for Hirschfeld in this mini-doco is a shot of Pat's son, where the camera creeps past an ankle bracelet and the penny drops he is on home detention, then pans to his little girl's bobby-socked foot as she cuddles her dad.

"There's this beautiful scene of him reading to her and I just thought 'wow' - it still gives me goosebumps when I think about it, because this is real.

"This family did manage to break the cycle and he's being a tremendous father and is being so because he's got a mother who is supporting him."

Another story is that of Denise, a Maori grandmother who took the painful step of removing her grandchildren from their abusive parents, the father Denise's own son.

One of her grandchildren says starkly: "I don't like living with my dad, cause he hits me."

Showcased, too, is the the work of Shine organisation crisis workers who visit women and children in the dead of night in situations where children have been trained how to escape out windows and women need to carry alarms wired directly to the police.

The second night specifically targets Maori and why they are where they are today.

Dame Anne Salmond, a professor of anthropology, talks through the major changes which have affected Maori over the years, from how in pre-European times children were never hit and on through the years of disease, war and the big flow to the cities to find work, and the statistics we have now.

This is followed by a piece on a book called The Spirit Level, where one of the authors, Richard Wilkinson, explains how income gaps are linked with violence and prison populations and how the problems of Maori and other indigenous cultures the world over are a response to low social status.

There is no point being scornful of such conclusions, says Hirschfeld. This is a reality which we need to confront and keep confronting.

"I think there's a tendency to think at times we can cure it in some way, or fix it up, but it can't be fixed in a single generation, it's constant work that will have to be done.

"I hope at least we spark some kind of change and reach out to people in a real kind of way, give them the ability to think there are ways that I can seek help, and they might not be the most obvious ways that I had thought."

Hirschfeld doesn't mind sitting on the other side of the interview fence to talk about these issues.

She admits she is on her own journey since coming to Maori TV, finding herself here at a time that is right for her. The rigours of daily news were taking their toll, she says, and she felt she needed to make changes.

She loved her old job and not working with journalists every day takes a bit of getting used to.

What she calls a slow rehabilitation is now taking place as she learns about working for a Maori organisation and realising and appreciating the differences in values.

For a start, Maori TV exists to promote the revitalisation of te reo and tikanga, so you're not chasing the bottom dollar all the time, she says.

And on a personal level, being here is helping her to not so much rediscover her heritage as begin to live it.

Hirschfeld's mother was Ngati Porou and a te reo speaker, but died when Hirschfeld was only 10. Her father was Australian and the family were city-dwellers.

She never learned the language and the family was distanced for a long time from their East Cape whanau, though are much closer now.

But she was not immersed in the culture, so along with taking te reo lessons, earlier this year she joined a kapa haka group.

She had to pull out because of other commitments but says the experience was a huge eye-opener - "apart from the fact I don't have the reo and I can't move, I don't dance and I can't sing [she's laughing], apart from that it was very enjoyable and I will go back, because for me it was a pathway into being Ngati Porou."

Maori TV gives a significant commitment to kapa haka which plays a huge role in Maori cultural life, she says, which is something she had not fully appreciated.

"Hopefully one day it will be seen in a national sense of what a vital role it plays - it sort of gives voice to an iwi's political and cultural well-being and the way they think of themselves."

Tamariki Ora, she hopes, will spark much debate and help lead to change for Maori.

Hirschfeld remembers the storm of media coverage which followed the deaths of the Kahui twins, Chris and Cru, and getting the first interview (she thinks) with their grandfather Bill Kahui. She was surprised how Kahui spoke for so long while the cameras were rolling and remembers being totally shocked when he said the night the twins stopped breathing his first response was not to phone 111.

That's when this country's inter-generational parenting failure hit her head on.

"You can think about these things in an abstract way but when you are struck by them viscerally, it's different. Something changes in you."

WHEN TO WATCH
Tamariki Ora: A New Beginning starts tomorrow at 8pm, followed by The Sounds of Hope at 9.10pm, and continues on Monday at 8pm, followed by The Sounds of Hope at 10pm.