Message from our GM – TSI ePanui March 2023

Mālō nī, fakaalofa lahi atu, kia orāna, tālofa lava, mālō e lelei, tālofa, ni sa bula vinaka, noa'ia, mauri, tēnā koutou katoa and warm Pacific greetings.

As we wrap up the first quarter of 2023, I don’t think anyone was anticipating the start to the year that we’ve had.

Here in Tāmaki Makaurau, we had the extreme weather events on Auckland Anniversary weekend and then Cyclone Gabrielle a little over a week later. Just a few days after that, we had further flooding in some parts of Auckland. Our thoughts are still with everyone affected, from Northland to Heretaunga, whose homes, communities and livelihoods were hard hit, and especially those who lost loved ones to the flooding and slips.

The community responses were amazing. In our neck of the woods, the community-led Māngere civil defence effort was a well-oiled machine, providing comfort, practical support and a place to rest for thousands of people over the few weeks it was open. Where I live, the ARK (Act of Roskill Kindness) Collective worked tirelessly in my local community.

The response reminded me of how good we are at organising quickly, at a massive scale and under pressure. As Polynesians, it’s a skill you learn from a young age; sometimes we only have a matter of hours to get ready for a tangihanga, to organise the marae and prepare to accommodate and feed hundreds of people.

The Māngere community mobilised whilst also right in the thick of it with flooding claiming whole neighbourhoods. Ka mau te wehi, ka nui te mihi ki te ngā iwi katoa o te Moana Nui a Kiwa. There are too many people to even begin to acknowledge here for their tautua and alofa but special mention must go to Cr Alf Filipaina and Māngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board Chair Tauanu’u Nanai Nick Bakulich for their incredible mahi in supporting this important response to happen.

What has most certainly contributed to the deft capability of the community are the decades of investment that Manukau City Council made in the social and human capital of its residents. Manukau City Council was the first local government in the country to introduce social and community development workers in 1966 (followed by Auckland City Council in 1970). It knew it had to: a place is only as strong, prosperous, altruistic, collectivised and resilient as its people.

We tend to take social cohesion for granted but ‘investments’ in the social contract and human capital need care and attention. South Auckland was at the epicentre of four of the five Covid lockdowns, still hadn’t recovered from the global financial crisis when Covid hit our shores and is now reeling from extreme weather events and inflation pushing up the cost of basics – it has been through the wringer.

We don’t know how quickly the next major challenge will come, but we can be certain that we will rue the day when we find out that our stocks of manaaki have been utterly depleted and our social fabric frayed beyond repair.

And we will rue the many times in which we have failed to tackle the climate emergency with the urgency and depth required. Are the last month’s terrible storms the visceral wake-up call needed? I hope so, and I’m also worried that the very communities in south and west Auckland that felt the riri o Tāwhirimātea will be left behind in transitions to a low emissions economy; there’s just too much historical evidence that shows, repeatedly, how this can so easily happen.

When the severity of the rains and winds became apparent in places like Māngere and Rānui we knew that the recovery for many of those communities would be decades. Some whānau and ‘aiga might not recover. And not because the physical or infrastructure issues can’t be resolved, but because of the burden of debt and low incomes that already exists in these communities. You can read the article in Stuff penned by Uptempo Manager, Anna-Jane Edwards, about the flood’s anticipated long tail of inequity for Pasifika peoples who were affected.

A few years ago, we did a study of all households in a 1km radius of one of the areas that was badly affected.

It’s a very young place, with every third person being 14 years old or younger (compared to just one in five for Auckland). And these are established communities – more than half of all residents had lived there for five or more years, and a third had been there for 10 or more years. A third of all households had six or more people, compared to just 8% across Auckland, and one out of every five households had multiple families living there.

Large households were normal and for good reason: three out of every five families had an income of $50k or less (pre-tax) even though most households drew income from wages and salaries. Added to this are the high rental costs (owner-occupied households had steadily declined) and the more recent inflationary pressures on basics like food and petrol (and the ongoing threat of a recession).

So, with large households with low and (increasingly squeezed) incomes the result is somewhat predictable. The probability that people had vehicle, contents or buildings insurance, a luxury of discretionary income, is low. The chances that some owed high interest debt on items like whiteware, cars, furniture etc. are high.

Ngā Tāngata Microfinance is a not-for-profit organisation backed by Kiwibank that helps people consolidate their high interest debt with fringe lenders and provides interest-free loans and other support.

The average income of their clients is just over $36k, with an average debt of $13k. But the kicker is the interest – the average interest rate is 35% (and the legal cap is a whopping 300%, albeit reduced from a previous 800%).

With so many people in places like south and west Auckland excluded from ‘mainstream’ financial services, organisations like Ngā Tāngata Microfinance must be part of the recovery effort if we are going to disrupt the intergenerational effects of unreasonable debt and give everyone a fair go at truly ‘recovering’. 

It’s also why our call for a Green New Deal and programmes such as Uptempo are so critical.

Climate change mitigations and adaptations that aren’t equity-centric run the risk of an ‘unjust transition’.

Executing basic active labour market policies whilst simultaneously failing to disrupt wealth inequality leaves nothing for a rainy day (or recovering from one).

We need more social equity options in the marketplace and to super-charge the ones we have, like Aotearoa’s first kaupapa Māori power company Nau Mai Rā (of which I am a proud tuakana) and Ngā Tāngata Microfinance.

There does need to be a reckoning of the social license of some markets, such as financial services (at one end, Māori businesses pay more to access capital than non-Māori business and as individual consumers, are more likely to have to resort to fringe lenders), but that’s a kōrero for another day.

Despite recent events and fears for what they mean in the future, Tāmaki Makaurau celebrated Pride month with gusto and hosting Te Matatini was the jewel in the crown. I hope you all got to partake in at least some of these fantastic events.

It all culminated for me at the final of Te Matatini watching my irāmutu in Angitū and their courageous performance, honouring their name taken from a whakataukī by my Tūhoe whanaunga the late, great Wharehuia Milroy:

“"Tū whitia te hopo, mairangatia te angitū!" (“Push past fear and strive for success!”)

It was a multi-whammy, pride moment. I muri iho e ngā paraawa, ka aho te āniwaniwa.

And it was fantastic to see the Pasifika Festival back last weekend. With 1,000 performances across the villages representing 11 nations in the Pacific and lots of food and retail stalls, Tāmaki Makaurau showed its pride in being the Polynesian hub of the world.  

And finally, I’d like to acknowledge the recent passing of the extraordinary Georgina Beyer (Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Raukawa, and Ngāti Porou). Georgina was an accomplished speaker, had a fast wit, was smart and beautiful. But above all she epitomised courage in the face of unspeakable trans and queer bigotry, and success, angitū, despite it. One of my favourite remembrances has been from Hon Chris Carter, chair of the Henderson-Massey Local Board and former minister, and he sums it up beautifully, “My friend, you were a remarkable person.” Ka tangi te ngākau, he murimuri aroha māu. E te rangatira, e te wahine toa, moe mai rā i tō moenga roa. E whiti ana tō whetū i te pō.

Nā, Tania Pouwhare, Kaiwhakahaere Matua/General Manager