Our leaders need to visit schools, frequently, so their smiling faces are familiar, and talk to the kids about aspiring, achieving, aiming high and being a good person. That's tribal leaders and Maori politicians and includes the Maori king who unfortunately says hardly anything on Maori issues or much else.
National is going to bring in military-style boots camp for the real bad boys. As a 15-year-old in Waikeria Borstal - now a prison - I got into a fight and was sentenced to seven days' solitary confinement on porridge, milk and potatoes for lunch and dinner.
First hour in the solitary cell two officers came in and belted me around. I neither made a complaint nor did I stop fighting. We youths had our own world of survival going on. Anyway, I thought fighting was normal and rather fun. Until some years later people I greatly respected told me it was unacceptable.
We had harsh discipline in borstal. That didn't work for many reasons, the main being we were lacking in love and many had been terribly abused as children. Military-style discipline is as far from love as it gets.
Young males' brains are not fully developed. The only way to get through to such damaged people is, before anything, love. Which wins trust - eventually. Tough love if you must. But forget boot camps.
A business mate asked me: "Why not set up trade training schools for bad boys? Teach them useful skills to both feel good about themselves and later play a meaningful part in society. Get them busy, occupy their idle minds. Don't march and run them off their feet, or scream in their faces. They've had that and worse at home."
Politicians promising boot camps displays a complete lack of knowledge on why kids behave badly. It panders to rednecks and the intolerant, as the vast majority of these kids are brown.
Left alone, or put through a boot camp, these troublesome kids are headed straight to prison. So why not train them to be tradesmen so they contribute tax and raise children with better values than they had?
On Maori culture in prisons, I know certain programmes are doing their best, especially those teaching males to respect females, be a good father, how to deal with situations without resorting to violence.
But no learned haka can hope to heal a broken heart. Only self-love helps and that can only come from learning something useful, expressing your pain without fear and thus feeling good about yourself.
Election desperation brings out the worst in our politicians. They can't see the wood is damaged for the trees of voters. As part-Maori, I'm sick of being told that going back to traditional ways is good for us. (Hey? Where are the books?)
Even the dumbest crook has a smartphone with more stored knowledge and information than the entire Maori history. Tribal warfare ended ages ago. We're faced with the challenges of finding ways to flourish in an ever-changing world.
To create a Maori prison concept is saying we're a bad race. Maori prison inmates need an emotional awakening and life skills taught, values instilled.
Two decades ago, after giving a talk to an audience of predominantly white people, a woman asked why I didn't agree that Maori should go back to their traditional way of living. I asked her if she advocated that white people go back to the Dark Ages.
The country is desperate for more tradesmen. Not boys whipped into shape. Maori culture should be part of who we are. But without chains on it, let alone under lock and key and meddling politicians.
