OPINION
At a meeting last month, in a church in Ponsonby, Margie Tukerangi and Hannah Andrews gave a talk about their work. They’re not politicians and it wasn’t even a political meeting. They’re the co-chairwomen of the board at the inner-city Newton Central School and they were talking about their school’s 25th anniversary of co-governance.
That’s right. Twenty-five years.
Act leader David Seymour insisted over the weekend that his party’s call for a referendum on the Treaty of Waitangi would be a bottom line in this election. He might benefit from a visit to Newton Central.
In their talk, Andrews and Tukerangi said the school has an ongoing debate about how the articles of the Treaty of Waitangi, both versions, relate to their work. They’re always evolving ways to do better, within both tikanga and the legal framework schools must operate under.
Progress has not been smooth. In 2007, some parents complained about the use of powhiri in the school. In 2020, an idea took root that co-governance existed only by favour of Pākehā. That “nearly collapsed the whole thing”, before a code of conduct and a new constitution were adopted.
Through it all, what has brought the different world views together are common goals and a belief that consensus decision-making works.
“We grow our tamariki to become critical and creative lifelong learners and positive participants in their communities,” the school declares.
Hard to argue with that. Most children in the school learn in English. Some are enrolled in Te Akā Pūkaea, which provides two “Māori medium pathways”: one a runanga with full immersion in te reo, the other using a mix of te reo and English.
As happens in most schools in New Zealand, all the children participate in a wide range of cultural and social learning experiences and have some tikanga practices integrated into their daily lives.
The school has strong relations with Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei and is especially proud of its vegetable gardens and urban ngahere. The forest was first planted 30 years ago and continues to grow with seedlings from the iwi’s nursery at Takaparawhau (Bastion Point).
Co-governance at Newton Central doesn’t run itself. “There’s a lot of ‘social work’ to get everyone up to it, to get a high level of buy-in,” said Andrews.
And consensus-based decision-making takes time. They like to say they dig deep to uncover what’s really worrying people. If you disagree with the majority, it’s your job to bring another solution.
Nor is it just for Māori and European ethnicities. “We have a much wider diversity on the board,” said Tukerangi, “and everyone is enriched because of this model.”
“It’s a partnership that brings everybody along,” said Andrews.
And that is the secret to its success. Co-governance in a school only works if the families are committed to it. They share their goals, their decision-making, their ways of seeing the world. It requires co-operation and trust, which in turn builds strong community bonds, and that helps with everything.
Co-governance doesn’t divide communities, as Seymour, Winston Peters and other panicky critics claim. It bonds them together.
Nor is Newton Central a “special character school”, like a charter school. They’ve created a model any school could use.
This is now at risk. National says co-governance is fine in a Treaty settlement context but not in the public service. Which, presumably, includes education.
And Act says the big problem is that word used by Hannah Andrews: “partnership”.
“The Government is reinterpreting the Treaty as a partnership between two collectives where our rights depend on who our grandparents were,” says party leader David Seymour.
“So many of Labour’s policies are incompatible with liberal democracy. Control of areas as diverse as education, health and water are being converted to co-governance … It’s reminiscent of feudalism or the caste system where certain groups get the inside running.”
This profoundly misrepresents what Newton Central and others mean when they talk about partnership.
They’re not trying to set a legal trap. It’s good the concept of “partnership” is usually informal. It means different things in different situations and at different times. Newton Central has engaged in a living process, in good faith all round, and it’s still evolving.
As for “certain groups” getting “the inside running”, that’s just absurd.
“Numbers don’t matter in the end,” said Andrews, “because we don’t vote.” Consensus prevails.
“This model is based on love and giving,” said Tukerangi.
The clue to what they’re doing is in the name they give to it. The partnership, said Tukerangi, is a waka hourua: a double-hulled, ocean-going canoe. They’re on a journey.
Everyone knows Māori are on the short end of almost every social statistic. We don’t have an equitable system now. To pretend in the name of “liberal democracy” that we do is nothing short of malicious.
There are lots of people like Margie Tukerangi and Hannah Andrews in this country. I think of them as heroes. As well as education, they’re working in healthcare, justice, welfare programmes, policing, civic administration, the law and commerce, sport, culture and the arts, volunteer agencies and charities. Everywhere.
They’re committed to doing the hard work and building the open-hearted relationships necessary to success, in a society that sometimes feels like it’s crumbling around us. And they offer so much for us to learn from.
And the evidence suggests we do learn from them, do value their work. Survey results from CoreData, released late last month, revealed more than half of us are now worried about almost everything you can think of: the economy, cost of living, crime, climate change, healthcare, education, trust and integrity, the calibre of our political leaders and more. But not co-governance.
Only 7 per cent of respondents said co-governance worried them, while 37 per cent “completely” support it and 51 per cent “somewhat” support it.
And yet Seymour, Peters and others continue to beat that drum as loudly as they can.
Tukerangi said something else about their evolving partnership: “Co-governance often stems from a place of trauma. It’s a cloak.”
A way of spreading an inclusive, protective cover over everyone. This is the diametric opposite of what critics want us to think co-governance is.
That talk in Ponsonby, by the way, was a Bishop Jim White Memorial Lecture, commemorating one of the people instrumental in getting the Auckland City Mission’s new home on Hobson St built.
HomeGround, with its safe and secure apartments and wraparound services, is a cloak spread over people in trauma. It’s a magnificent testament to the power of hope, determination, positive thinking and collective endeavour.
And to something else: it could not have happened without a bipartisan funding commitment by National and Labour.
They did it and they could do it again. But not if all we’re going to hear is that kids need old-fashioned schooling, hours and hours of basic learning, damn it, sort ‘em out, make ‘em behave and lock ‘em up when they don’t.
What a choice we have. Everyone wants change and that’s what this election is all about.
But while Labour has proved it should not be allowed to govern on its own, that’s an argument for giving them partners. It’s not an argument for the other lot. Just look what they’ve been up to.
Fresh from the financial incoherence of their tax policies, National last week released a “100-day plan”. Matthew Hooton called it “little more than a montage of waffle, PR stunts and special-interest pleadings that National has Sellotaped together”. Ouch.
And then party leader Christopher Luxon had another go at salvaging his position regarding Winston Peters. He tried to talk Peters down but managed only to talk him up.
It was like listening to National during the pandemic in 2020, when it tried to find something to say and kept coming up with all sorts of panicky oppositional tosh.
What’s Luxon going to be like if he’s PM in an emergency? We all know there will be more emergencies over the next three years, right?
And does he have it in him to act for the greater good? Margie Tukerangi said, “We’ve come too far not to go further. We’ve done too much not to do more.”
She wasn’t talking about politics. But it’s her achievements, and those of so many like her, that are on the line this weekend.
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.
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