Man with the child in his eyes

We once called him the children's champion. As Commissioner for Children, Roger McClay was prone to making gushy statements in his unique, child-like way, and to welling up with tears at an injustice, or an unexpected favour, or the murder of another innocent child.

He still visits the Hawke's Bay grave of James Whakaruru, the 4-year-old beaten to death in 1998 by his stepfather for not calling him Dad.

"He's up there on the hill. I didn't know him," McClay says, then falters as more tears start wetting his bright blue eyes. "But it's a good reminder that there are children who have never had a chance, and from them we can learn a lot."

The deaths of tiny strangers such as James, Lillybing, and Saliel and Olympia Aplin have marked McClay's life. Yet it's the precarious existence of live children that have haunted him. He used to wake up at night, thinking: "Maybe I should have made that phone call."

He's since moved on. But only so far. Children are still McClay's world. At age 61 the former MP, ex Youth Affairs and Associate Education Minster and grandfather of nine has gone back to the classroom, after a 25-year absence, to relief teach primary schoolchildren. It was a spate of child deaths, especially the fatal stabbing of 14-year-old Manaola Kaumeafaiva, outside Avondale College last Sunday that reawakened the children's champion in him.

And though it's not really politic of him to speak about another commissioner's handle on the job, he's worried that the voices for children have become a little too quiet.

We are in room 19 at Cornwall Park District School.

"What makes you really angry?" the grey-haired grandfather asks 30 entranced 9-year-olds. Hands immediately shoot up.

"When you are forced to move to another country," says the girl in blonde plaits with the thick Australian accent. "When you have to have a shower and you don't want to," a slightly grubby little red-head pipes up from the back.

McClay, their relief teacher, has been telling them about Manaola's slaying and how he had been asked by the media to talk about kids getting angry. "And I told them that I notice sometimes, at schools where I have been teaching, that a lot of people seem to get very angry. I didn't notice it at this school. But at others, some people seem to be very very troubled."

So troubled, in fact, that he very nearly didn't return after that first day back in the classroom.

Within the first hour of that first day at another Auckland school three months ago, McClay was facing off with an 8-year-old boy who told him to "f*** off" when told to sit down.

"Teaching has changed a lot," McClay concedes. "Maybe it was a bit easier for teachers back when they could have just smacked the kid and taken them outside and supposedly it was all over. But it wasn't, because the aggression didn't solve the problem."

Indeed, it is the problem, he reckons. Kids like the ones turning to knives and violence often grow up in an environment where anger is the most common emotion.

Combined with youth and drugs, that can skew reality.

"I don't know if that boy the other night thought that the other boy would die. Did he want to kill him? He'd never spoken to him ever before.

"Did he not know about life, living and love and all that? Maybe it's a whole range of things that weren't sort of taken care of at an earlier time.

"I don't know."

All the more reason why teaching can be so tough. After his first day back, he thought, "At this stage in life why be angry? I don't need to. But then good things happened. Even the little boy who swore at me, as I got to know him, and I know him more now, he might still swear at me sometimes because that's his mechanism, but he's quite a nice little fellow."

So why go back to class? He became an MP after only "half a career" - 15 years - and always hoped to return. Besides, he was doing other work, lobbying and advocating for World Vision and the Heart Children, and there was some time left over so, why not? Of course there might be a chance to make a difference, to teach some kids to read, for example.

"It's remarkable how many people in prison can't read," McClay says, then he sighs. "Of course that's where Manaola's killer will end up next year... and he'll probably get worse. But I don't know what we can do with him at the moment. He can't be allowed to walk around killing people."

The trick, McClay reckons, is for adults to treat children better so they don't end up as criminals. "We should have a big hard look at why children are acting the way they are now."

He often gives speeches about Taffy Hotene, and how he killed journalist Kylie Jones after he followed her off the bus six years ago.

"I tell people about this little boy and what his life was like. And you can actually have people crying about the unfairness of what happened to this poor little Maori boy. How some people rubbished him. How he was kicked around and nobody loved him.

"Then you say, 'Now I want to tell you another story, about a young woman.' And you tell Kylie's story and they get angry about what happened to her. And I say, 'Well, the person who did that is the person who you were crying for a while ago.'

"So, it's not rocket science really ... but we could do a lot more to have more families doing a better job for their kids."

If he had his way there would be a Minster for Children. A proper one. Not like the Minister of Youth Affairs, a position outside Cabinet, which he once held with little authority to make changes. "You get a bit carried away in government about all the other things. And I don't mean a woolly woofter-ish sort of approach about mollycoddling children but they have rights. A right to be disciplined."

Oops, he cringes. There goes that word. "Right." It often gets him into trouble, especially with the pro-smackers, who think that by acknowledging children's rights you're taking away those of their parents.

He was a controversial Children's Commissioner. Most are, in fact, with their banging on about children's rights. But McClay's brand of media-friendly, quotable, tear-jerking lobbying was never officialdom's cup of tea.

Towards the end of his tenure he joked his replacement was likely to be a paraplegic, Maori, academic woman - in essence, everything he wasn't.

He got it partly right. Cindy Kiro, a physically able former academic, is the current commissioner. She is also a passionate advocate for children - but with a very different style. McClay reckons he respects that. "I just wish," he pauses, as if he doesn't really want to say it, "I wish the voice was a bit louder publicly for children."

Yes, Kiro probably gets a message to Parliament through her academic approach. "But sometimes I used to find it was better to tell the public and let them tell the politicians."

Take the deaths of the Kahui twins. "I would have been making a lot more noise and I would have been a bit angry that nobody's been arrested for killing the twins." (One day later Chris Kahui, the twins' father, was charged with their murder.)

Then he reels off names of dead children, Chris and Cruz. Manaola. Staranise. And his eyes once again fill with tears.

"I'm not hardened to it... We shouldn't be forgetting. We should learn something from them."