Issue 88 - editorial

Black Days

Each of us will likely have had some highs and lows over the past couple of months. We’ve maybe lost loved ones, or like me, had a lovely new mokopuna who has quickly taken over the hearts and minds of the whanau.

On a national front recently there have been two matters that have stood head and shoulders above everything else.

One was the shooting of senior constable Len Snee followed by the suicide of Jan Molenaar in Napier.

The other was the decision by the National Government to ram through a form of unified local government in Auckland - not the one recommended by the Royal Commission of Inquiry - without the chance to debate its merits.

The tragic shootings in Napier were played out on TV, radio and in the papers during the four-day siege. In the end two men sharing a common whakapapa lay dead. We’ll never really know what went through Jan Molenaar’s mind on that fateful morning. No doubt we will hear much from the investigators on what they think happened in the months to come.

But there is one question it would be nice to have an answer to. Did the three officers who went to Jan Molenaar’s house that morning know that he had been a licensed firearms owner? That in fact he’d held a ‘special’ licence which meant he could own hand-guns and automatic weapons depending on his licence? But that he hadn’t renewed it when the gun licensing rules were changed? And if not, why not? Because they didn’t appear to have this information, two whanau, their friends and supporters are in mourning.

The other major story will affect one third of all New Zealanders and has the potential to make National a one-term government. The Royal Commission set up to investigate the governance arrangements in Auckland spent many months deliberating. But within a few days of the release of its report the government had decided on a radically different form of local government getting rid of local councils and rejecting the Royal Commission’s suggestion that there be dedicated Maori seats.

And at the time this issue of Mana was going to press, the government began pushing through the laws it needed to get the formation of one ‘super city’. That led to the biggest filibusting session by opposition parties in Parliament in recent memory.

Manawhenua groups in Tamaki Makaurau are annoyed that National has rejected the three reserved Maori seats recommended by the Commission and a hikoi is planned in Auckland on 25 May. But more than Maori are annoyed by National’s ‘super city’ plans and its method of ramming the move through. Grave questions are being asked about how you can govern a city as large as the ‘new Auckland’ with just 20 councillors especially if you consider that it will contain a third of our citizens. Line that up with the fact that the country as a whole has 120 members of Parliament.

Kia ora