A horribly good voice for the kids

By MICHELE HEWITSON

Cindy Kiro was a horribly good child. The new Commissioner for Children is valiantly casting about in the less-than-crystal-clear pools of childhood memory for some evidence that she was ever anything but the "sickeningly good" girl of her own description.

She is floundering. Then a memory surfaces. She gets quite excited.

"Oh, I spoke disrespectfully to my parents. I would go out to nightclubs and parties ... come back late. But I usually ended up driving because I didn't drink. I'm sorry about that."

Remembering what it's like to be a child is one of the duties of the Children's Commissioner, although it's not in the job description.

"As an adult," says Kiro, "it is very easy to forget the concerns of children because we grow up. We can't escape childhood quickly enough."

And we remember childhood "in a particular way. I think it's very slanted by adult knowledge, by adult insight and by adult concerns. Once you're an adult, you can't un-know what you know. You can't un-know things like sex and relationships and money worries".

Her reading at the moment includes some children's books. She is 45.

"I have to remember that I don't think like a child. That's why I have to hear children's voices."

From the outside looking in, one of the most difficult parts of being the commissioner is that it seems a nebulous sort of job. Formally, the commissioner has a statutory role to advocate on behalf of children.

Practically, it is harder to define its effectiveness.

How she will judge her own effectiveness is "a darn good question".

"The bottom line is that it has to improve the lives of at least some children who currently live in really poor circumstances or who are living in incredibly vulnerable situations. If it doesn't improve their lot in some way I will have failed."

Even before she sits down behind the commissioner's desk in Wellington, Kiro is under attack for her criticisms of past Governments' policy. The implication is that she is a politically correct Labour Government appointee.

She is adamant that she can be as critical of the present Government.

"It's my understanding that it's to be an independent role. I interpret that as being that I need to be able to comment freely on any aspect of society.

"If I see families behaving in a dodgy way that needs to be changed, if I see Governments making dodgy decisions that affect the kids, I need to be able to say something."

Poverty and violence are the big issues. She believes you can start addressing them by "also promoting children's rights as a first step - looking at how to increase participation in appropriate decisions about themselves".

Children, I tell Kiro, already have far too many rights. Take her sons. On the occasions Kiro is permitted to be seen in public with them, negotiations take place over what she can and cannot wear. They most certainly do not require more rights.

She grins and half concedes the point: "Yeah, but they're 21 and 18, don't forget."

SHE cites a national consultation with children and young people through a national policy reference group which heard loud and clear that "things are always done to them without asking them what they would like".

Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?

I suspect all of us turn into our parents. "It is hardly," I hear some old fogey say, "going to crush their spirit having to wear their hair a certain way for a few years."

"It may not," Kiro agrees, "but let me ask you this question: how do you prepare people to be citizens in a society which is ostensibly a democracy if you never involve them in decision-making concerning them? We've got an obligation to prepare future citizens. We're preparing them to live in this society and that doesn't start suddenly when you're 18, it starts from childhood right up."

She is not suggesting "we go crazy". She's a parent: "I'm not going to consult my kids on everything."

And she would rather not "hear a heap of opinions on everything under the sun".

Suggest that an alternative title for commissioner might be Omni-parent and she flinches but acknowledges there is an element of such expectation in the job. "There is a trustingness, there is an element of moral guardianship. I think that's quite a scary prospect because I'm only human and I'm not an infallible parent."

She did, by the way, smack her kids when they "were very young and I was very stressed out and a young sleep-deprived mother. I'm not proud of it." She's checked it with her boys and they don't remember.

"And I think most people distinguish between smacking and thrashing. If you're a parent and you use the tips of the finger or the palm of the hand to smack a nappy on the backside after somebody stuck a fork in the socket for the fourth time ... you can understand that's reality."

You suspect that Kiro has been chosen for the job for her composure as much as for her lengthy CV. She can be quite stern - "Good try," she says as she refuses to reveal what she is to be paid. You can easily imagine her sending staff for time-out should anyone be silly enough to muck about on the job.

S HE has had a bit of media training; her tape recorder meets mine on the table of the tiny, well-ordered office where she works as director of the Wairoa Centre for Public Health Research at Massey University. It's unlikely she needed much direction.

She has natural warmth and a sometimes disarming directness which should stand her in good stead. It is unlikely she'll find herself in a situation as farcical as her predecessor, Roger McClay, did when he publicly agreed with a children's rights lawyer who called for a national men's day of shame.

I wouldn't want to call her bossy - she says she is very good at delegating - but she is the eldest child of six, the responsible child. And most certainly the determined child.

Her English father - "an incredibly intelligent kind-hearted man" - was a truck driver; her Maori mother raised the children.

The family moved a lot. From Otara to Mangere, New Lynn to Te Atatu, where Kiro still lives, around the corner from where she spent her secondary school years.

She knew from an early age "what I wasn't prepared to live with. The sorts of things I didn't want in my life were violence, uncertainty, being moved around all the time, never knowing where your next meal was coming from".

She doesn't want to focus on the violence but "can't say we didn't [see it.] I'm talking about my extended family, not my immediate family necessarily".

SHE is the only person in her family to have a university qualification - she credits her teachers at Rutherford High School with showing her "there was another path".

"I keep telling everyone I'm trying to make up for the rest of the family."

She has a PhD in social policy and a clutch of impressive job titles. She has been the executive director of Greenpeace and a senior manager at the Auckland District Health Board, and is the acting chairwoman of the Public Health Advisory Committee.

She and her husband, Chris, an architect-turned-teacher, are both "way over-qualified".

In her spare time she does good works in the community.

But you could have guessed that she would.