Deborah Coddington: Time for a clear Maori message

Even rednecks must admit the behaviour of the Maori Party has thus far been exemplary. Cassandras who hoped to see them disgrace themselves at Waitangi are probably disappointed their parliamentary presence is credited with the fact this year's celebrations were peaceful.

But as I said in this column late last year, clever teachers know if they promote the schoolboy trouble-makers to duty monitors and give them responsibility, then classroom disruption dissipates.

Similarly, dress Hone Harawira and Pita Sharples in suits, surround them with a bit of Westminster discipline, and they find more persuasive ways to effect change.

So hopefully the Maori members will use this positive reinforcement to their advantage and move on to another area where they could make a change for the good.

For starters, they could shout loudly against cannabis abuse by Maori, and the appallingly highrates of violence towards childrenin Maori families. The weed andthe bash - two issues too often directly connected.

The names of the abusers and the abused say it all: Wharewera, Tito, Karaitiana, Tawa, Whakaruru, Manukau.

Yes, non-Maori beat and kill their kids too, but the fact remains that Maori children are four times as likely as non-Maori to require hospitalisation from domestic assault, and Maori women between the ages of 15 and 24 are seven times more likely than non-Maori to be hospitalised for the same reason.

In the past few months this country has witnessed some truly macabre cases, so bad it almost contorts the brain trying to imagine such brutality. Try this one from Whakatane: a two-year-old boy being forced to eat dog faeces, taken to a cell and pummelled like a punching bag, and jumped on from windowsills by two "men" aged 23 and 24.

All while the boy's mother did virtually nothing to save the child.

Where the boy's father was when all this went on, or even if the wretched mother even knew who the father was, we do not know. Suffice she'd already had one child taken off her by authorities.

Do those same "authorities" sit down with women like this, and their parents, and lecture them on the realities of parenthood? Tellthem they don't have a right to breed, that children are a gift and a responsibility, not a two-legged pitbull-cross?

If that fails, try marching them down to the local doctor and getting them injected with a long-acting contraceptive.

And what, if anything, was done about the parents of these two abusers (one hesitates to call them men, and animals don't behave as they did), one of whom admitted he'd had the bejesus beaten out of him as a child? The Statute of Limitations doesn't prevent prosecutions being taken against whoever inflicted such violence, which in turn begat more violence.

One 13-year-old reportedly witnessed some of the abuse but was too scared to report it in case someone else "got the bash".

Well it's time someone in Maoridom, someone with mana, stood up and called for an end to "the bash", and who better than a politician with a big megaphone.

Nearly six years ago one man made a difference when he stood up for the rights of children from his culture to be free from violence. In the late 1990s, violence against Pacific Island children was excused as a tradition, and a politically correct media was cowed into acceptance. But then along came Fa'amatuainu Tino Pereira, broadcast journalist, chairman of the Samoan Council, who called on the Pacific Island community to stop "beating the shit out of" their children.

He told of a childhood filled with memories of beatings and fear, and of his mother who, he said, was a victim of domestic violence. Pereira's message had resonance. Here was a politician of sorts, quietly spoken and looking no more violent than a golden hibiscus, admitting that he thrashed his three-year-old daughter. "With a screaming six-month boy and a three-year-old girl, all that stuff about the most gorgeous object I had ever laid eyes on had vanished."

Pereira got into trouble with his elders for speaking out, but he refused to back down. He'd sought help in parenting, why couldn't others do the same?

Today he's reluctant to take any credit for the shift in attitude brought about by his stance, saying instead there are many others in the Pacific Island community who took up the cause for kids.

Nonetheless, he had the guts to make a start.

Some eminent Maori have spoken out - Alan Duff and Merepeka Raukawa-Tait to name just two. But in Parliament it's been the Green Party leading the charge when it comes to protecting children against violence from adults. Sue Bradford's Members Bill seeks to repeal section 59 of the Crimes Act, which allows adults to repeatedly bash children with pipes or pieces of wood. It's time for Maori MPs with street cred, like Sharples and Harawira, to publicly support Bradford and do for Maori what Pereira did for Pacific Island kids.