Hot on the heels of my previous post which opined that the gangs may be seeking to leverage off the government’s determination/need to raise the Covid vaccination rates among Maori by offering up members and whanu to be jabbed in return for koha at $1,000 per shot, no questions asked, now the news that Maori, emboldened by the success of Harry Tan, lifelong member of the Mongrel Mob and shrill for the Labour Party, in gaining several millions of dollars from St Jacinda to run a decidedly shonky methamphetamine drug rehabilitation programme for addicts, the victims of the drug, manufactured and pushed by the gangs themselves, have been successful in having Cabinet sign-off on a grant of $150,000 for a tattoo alteration programme for Maori gang members wishing to have ‘inappropriate’ tattoos removed.
Whats wrong with that you may ask … tattoo removal good … problem is that this is not about tattoo removal. Read on …
According to Harry Tan the problem is that many gang members now wish to remove the word ‘New Zealand’ from their gang patch tattoo and replaced with ‘Aotearoa’. One members of the Wellington chapter of Black Power wants the word ‘Wellington’ removed and replaced with ‘Te Whanganui – a – Tara’ which is the Maori name proposed for the capital city.
Kaum ā tua and Te R ū nangan ui o Te Ā ti Awa ki te Upoko o te Ika a Maui chairman Kura Moeahu says the Government should be congratulated for supporting such an important initiative. He said “The alteration of tattoos will ensure that no young Maori men continue to be embarrassed by the incorporation of colonial place names as part of their tattoos. The mana of ā moko is of critical importance to Maori culture.”
The header sez it all … un feekin believable. Your tax dollar hard at work. New Zealand, the way you’ve got it.
Hat tip to my old friend ‘The Realist’.
No Minister 
Hang on. It’s not April 1 is it ? To quote John McEnroe – you can’t be serious !
PR … Oh that it was April fools day but it ain’t and one suspects there’s more to come where that came from.
I have always had the suspicion that the reason why many left wing Maori politicians fail to condemn the gangs is that they see them as muscle for their cause, does anyone else have this suspicion? Anyway I have been a longtime reader of this blog but this is my first comment as I am getting increasingly worried about the direction of this country and I do not know what to do about it.
I reckon you can expect some pretty unusual incentives to boost vaccination rates.
Police, in supplying information to a parliamentary question of May 2021, said there were 8,000 gang members, with 77% being Maori. When you add in associates, prospects and family, probably 20,000 to 30,000 Maori under the age of 40 are living in a gang environment. It could be that 5% of the total Maori population under 40 are associated with gangs. Among Maori men aged 15 to 30, probably around 10% have gang associations, obviously concentrated in poorer communities and among those who did not succeed at school, for whatever reason.
It is not surprising that Maori make up 50% of the prison population when you consider typical gang behaviour. Just about all 8,000 gang members will have done a stretch.
Anyway back to the covid issue. it is not obvious that gang meanders and associates and whanau would be first in the queue to get vaccinated. Not really their thing to follow a suggestion by government. They will need incentives. And that means it could effectively channel money into gangs. Maybe that is a price worth paying if it lifts the Maori vaccination rate.
As The Vet might say, ‘Thank you but feekin NO.’
Wayne … are you arguing the end justifies the means? If you are then one can rightly ask where does it all stop. Giving public monies to societies ferals in order to buy them off and you are opening a pandora’s box.
I guess some might argue it started with Ihumatao and they might be right. He Puapua is the signpost and at some point Pakeha New Zealand will say enough is enough and rebel … and what then for race relations? Unbridled power (and make no mistake … that’s what Ardern enjoys) and it could well be that New Zealand is headed into a very dark place.
Sir Robert Muldoon’s government worked closely with gangs around job schemes. So I would expect something of that nature. Maybe in the realm of social services, sport or something similar. I don’t know what it would be, but the govt will need to do something specific to lift vaccination rates among gangs. There are too many of them as a percentage of the Maori population to do nothing.
Hell Wayne this Government does not expect the favoured ones to have jobs.
It is their right for them to be paid for sitting on their collective arses.
On top of hat the favoured iwi Tainui, Ngai Tahu etc don’t have to pay tax on their investment earnings from they `double dipping’ with treaty settlements – so I under stand it.
Holding up Muldoon as an exemplar is a bit rich. He was thrown out on his alcoholic arse because of it.
pdm,
Neither does Sanitarium. The reason being they are registered charities and thus don’t distribute dividends to individual members of the iwi. Ngati Whatua must be different, because they do distribute dividends, having a relatively small number of members of the iwi relative to the size of the corpus. I suspect Ngati Whatua have two seperate entities. One that is a registered charity that does the marae development, educational scholarships, social services and the like. And another entirety which does pay tax and distributes dividends to individuals.
Wayne Sanitarium are part of the Seventh Day Adventist Church (I think that is the right one). At least the money they invest is Church Money they grew from their congregations, business operations and investments – not charity by way of Treaty Settlements from New Zealand Tax Payers as I see it. I also understand other Churches do not pay tax either – eg: Presbyterian, COE, Catholic. Being the secular people they are I am sure Jacinda and Grunter have their eyes on them as well – so watch and wait.
Wayne … the gangs of half a century ago that Muldoon had dealings with were a far different animal from what you have today. They are essentially criminal organisations closely resembling the Mafia who have elevated drug dealing that that of a business with all the trappings including the buying of tame lawyers and accountants to give them a facade of legitimacy.
Pander to them and No, No No and thrice No again.
So what is your answer, do nothing? That does not seem credible to me.
When I was a young lawyer I represented some gang members arising out of the enormous affray that happened in Glen Innes. In fact there were about 10 lawyers involved, all on legal aid. At the time I was on the legal aid roster, although I worked in the office of John Collinge. It was seen by me as part of the pro bono roles of the firm. John accepted by way of forbearance and some amusement. It must have been around 1979/1980. The gangs were pretty bad back then, lots of serious assaults, lots of sex crime, some murders.They seem no worse now, although their meths dealing is much more pervasive.
Anyway the real point is that the govt has to have some way of getting gangs members to co-operate on vaccination. I reiterate my point that the Muldoon government did some social and employment things that were gang specific.
Wayne … creative solutions yes but at a certain point creative solutions devolve into the acceptance of ‘blackmail’ (no pun intended but …). The question remains (and you have not answered it) is how far do you go in opening up Pandora’s box.