Editorial - Tuesday March 11, 2014

Peter Jackson, editor, The Northland Age

PETE SMITH exposed a fundamental truth in this newspaper last week ('Manning up' to elder abuse). He reckoned the children and young people who are the cause of so much grief these days have been failed by their elders, the same generation that's doing the complaining. And he's right.

Increasingly over recent years we seem to have adopted the philosophy that kids will grow up under their own steam, coming to understand, by some process akin to osmosis, perhaps, how to behave as a member of a civil society. They don't. As Professor Lord Robert Winston has been wont to say, children, like puppies, need training. Manners and all the good things that stem from them, like respect for other people, don't come naturally. They have to be taught, and are best taught by example.

So we have some kids now who are little more than feral. They have been allowed to grow up without guidance, and don't know any better than the appalling behaviour they display. It's not only kids who need correction though. A sorry little scenario played out in Kaitaia, just a few metres from the main street, last week when police found a man sitting on a public bench with a bong and a container of cannabis in plain view. This was at one o'clock in the afternoon, and even the officers, familiar with what some locals regard as normal behaviour, were somewhat taken aback. So was the dope smoker. He, by all accounts, was genuinely bemused to hear there was a problem.

That's what people do in Kaitaia on a sunny weekday afternoon, it seems. They find a comfortable spot and fry their brains.

Incidentally, those who persist in claiming that our prisons are full of people who have done nothing worse than break archaic cannabis laws might like to note that this drongo was released with a pre-charge warning, a very different response to what he might have expected 20 years ago. And quite frankly it might be argued in 2014 that he deserved more than that. All he will have learned from this is that he needs to be more discreet.

Pete Smith, meanwhile, says kids are growing up without any knowledge of how they should behave within their families and communities because no one is teaching them, no one is leading by example. The result of that was obvious, and, he might have added, inevitable.

This leads to an illogical reaction, but one the writer is guilty of. One can look at a child of three or four years, already angry and disrespectful, and know, without doubt, that they have no chance of escaping the repercussions of a bad upbringing. It is easy to feel sorry for them, knowing what life inevitably holds for them. Sympathy soon dissipates though; look at the same child at 12 or 13, and any empathy or understanding of how they came to be who they are has gone.

"The kids whose behaviour has people calling for Kaitaia's skate bowl to be bulldozed aren't going to come right of their own accord. They need massive intervention, and even that's a forlorn hope."

Their behaviour will deteriorate, their abuse of alcohol and drugs will escalate, and sooner or later they will find themselves at Ngawha. And the people responsible for that are those who brought them into the world and/or have guardianship of them now.

Pete Smith is right therefore to suggest that efforts to effect change should be aimed at those who are failing the younger generation. It is they who he is calling on to 'man up', and hopefully he will be heard.

People like Mr Smith have a great deal to offer, and while the cynic will say he's heard it all before, this approach would seem to offer greater hope than all the time, money and effort spent on reaching out to kids who in many cases are damaged beyond repair.

Never lose sight of the fact, though, that there are plenty of kids in the very Far North who are well cared for and will grow into decent people, not only respectful of others but actively interested in learning who they are, where they have come from and where they fit into their community.

Last weekend provided two great examples of that, both at Ahipara. On Saturday kids probably outnumbered adults at the releasing of two turtles into the sea, after lengthy rehabilitation in Auckland, and on Sunday they were out again, at the unveiling of pou marking a wahi tapu and a beach sanctuary, home to birds including a tiny colony of the endangered New Zealand dotterel.

These kids - Saturday's crowd included a big contingent of Kawakawa Primary School pupils, identifiable by their school T-shirts - represent the big hope for change in the Far North. They are growing up with a degree of respect for their environment, in every sense, that was never taught to their parents and grandparents, not because of failure on anyone's part but simply because their natural environment has assumed much greater importance over recent years than ever before. Once it was taken for granted; now it is benefiting from a much greater degree of care, an attitude that these children will take into their adult lives, and teach to their children and grandchildren.

It would be unthinkable that any of the children who were at Ahipara on Saturday and/or Sunday would be found drunk at the skate bowl, or would burgle for the money needed to buy alcohol or drugs. Whatever their families' financial circumstances, these children are the lucky ones, because they are growing up surrounded by positive examples.

Kids like this are to be found everywhere, but Ahipara probably has more than its fair share. In terms of the natural environment it really kicked off when children at the local school put a stop to the dumping of rubbish in a dip in the sand dunes north of Kaka Street, known locally as The Bowl. The children prepared a case to take to the Far North District Council, but the campaign took on a life of its own once it became public knowledge. Businesses offered to help with the clean-up, as did some Ahipara residents (although if memory serves men were conspicuous by their absence), wilderness was restored and the dumpers have never gone back.

Now there is a bird refuge on the beach in that area, the hoons are gradually learning that their two- and four-wheeled machines are not welcome in that particular area - still a work in progress but progress is being made - and two more dotterel chicks are now in the process of fledging, and will hopefully return one day to breed.

If they do they will be watched over by a growing number of Ahipara residents, including a small army of young dotterel champions who will carry the torch long after those who began the process have gone.

Ahipara is making a massive investment in its younger generation as the only realistic means of effecting long-term recognition of the community's culture and magnificent natural environment. There might be some work for Pete Smith and his Man Up Movement to do there, but not as much as in other communities. Ahipara is a wonderful example of how values can be passed from one generation to the next, and we would all do well to learn from that.