Awesome Experience With Mangere Maori Wardens

The word “awesome” has become totally meaningless; as a friend has observed, it is just as likely to be the response one gets when paying for a newspaper, as when confronted with a view of Milford Sound. Yesterday, Mike and I had an experience with Maori Wardens in Mangere which was truly “awesome” in the correct sense of “inspiring awe or wonder.” The reason for our visit was to explain the “three strikes” policy shorn of all media and opposition misinformation, and to take a first hand look at the Wardens’ work. After receiving a very warm Maori welcome into their offices, I was asked to talk about the meaning and effect of “three strikes”, and what it meant for their communities. I confess that with some hesitation as to how I would be received, I told them that contrary to media spin, it was their communities who were most likely to be affected by crime – both violent and property – than the nice areas of the North Shore I used to live in before moving out to the country. I was immediately greeted by nodding heads all around. I then asked one of the volunteers – all the Wardens are volunteers – if she had house and contents insurance. She knew exactly where I was going with the question, and sadly told us that her house had burned down last year and because she did not have insurance, she lost everything. Several others then told of house burglaries which were disasters for the victims because they were uninsured. Crime certainly does impact most heavily on those least able to afford its effects, and the people who live in poorer communities well understand that. We were then totally blown away by a couple of stories from individual wardens, one of them the woman who had suffered the house fire. She is on the DPB, but now that her one child is at school, she prefers to spend her days volunteering with the Wardens rather than watching TV at home, which she is legally quite entitled to do. If that wasn’t inspiring enough, a quietly spoken young woman told us that she was volunteering with the Wardens to enhance her chances of joining the Police, which was her dream. The kicker was that her family were all – with the exception of her nana – “involved in criminal stuff” and derided her for what she wanted to do. She said that her time at home was mostly spent in her room - to avoid taunts from the criminal members of her family – and so she spent as much time as possible with the Wardens. If helping provide a role model alternative whanau to such people was the Wardens’ only function, that would be enough. But the Wardens do much more. After our discussion, we accompanied them on their morning “beat” through the Mangere town centre. It was a wonderful experience. Everywhere they went, the wardens were greeted as friends, and when I was introduced I was given at worst a polite, and usually an enthusiastic hearing. It was fascinating that I never had to finish my spiel about crime affecting their communities most; they all knew it, and recognised that the “interventions” so beloved of the socialists were not working, and had actually made the problem worse. We were asked to come back, and we will. The leader of the Wardens told us somewhat wistfully that the only time they usually saw politicians was at election time – even though the office of the Member for Mangere was in line of sight of the Wardens’ office. I intend to break that stereotype.