I was fortunate to sit on two paepae this week – one for the funeral of the Māori King, Tūheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII, whose daughter, Ngā Wai Hono i te Pō, was crowned with a Bible soon afterward, and another for those who were abused by another crown, where the Bible was sometimes used not to bless but to curse, writes Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.
There’s a page in the paper that not everybody reads. That’s because it’s titled, the KidsPage.
The debate over chlorinating the Rarotonga water supply is a shambolic and sometimes shameful display of poor information, bad information and misinformation.
It was as if every element of nature joined forces.
Want to lobby a minister? Just hang around outside Te Aponga. Because there is only one place to charge their brand new Hyundai Ioniq Elite cars, and it’s up by the power station.
Our first reaction to crime is one of anger, resentment and hate. Our reaction is often measured according to the level of violence.
OPINION: It’s easy to embrace lazy catchphrases like “tough on crime”. It’s far harder to take the humane approach: tough on the causes of crime. Today, lawyer Norman George announces plans to set up a local branch of the Sir Peter Williams QC Penal Reform League, to help address the poverty and abandonment driving people into crime. Acknowledging prisoners are not innately bad, but often just made bad choices under the influence of hunger or addiction, the League would provide support behind bars for their rehabilitation. This sits well alongside the leadership group being convened by the Cook Islands News to address the health challenges around meth and other addictive drugs. The prison lacks funding to feed all 47 inmates. Some have fallen ill drinking the water. Others suffered intimidation. READ MORE:* Norman George: Please pause, look at our young people* Prison work gangs ‘pay for jail food’* Second inmate complains of heavying It’s easy to write off prisoners as mad or bad and lock them away without thought, but this only plunges them further into the cesspit; it will not rehabilitate them to rejoin society as decent citizens. As Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Pearl Buck once said, “the test of a civilisation is the way that it cares for its helpless members.” There are some good people working in police and corrective services; they need the support of an engaged community to help those who might fall into crime, and those who have already. Not an archaic approach of lock ‘em up and throw away the key.
As Maori we are caretakers not owners.
The first we knew was when the shrub on the old landfill site was ripped out. Like an oversized plough, an excavator dug deep trenches the length of the Ara Metua property.
Here’s the maths. About 100 people are found guilty of drink-driving on Rarotonga every month, and forbidden to drive. That’s more than 1000 bans year – in a population of about 10,000 men, women and children.
There are many archaic features of the UK Parliament that seem anomalous in a democratic 21st Century.
No excuses. That was the message handed down by the Court yesterday, in sentencing a woman for assaulting her little sister at school drop-off.
Oh, my nation of green fields, palm trees, waving in the breeze, with long stretches of white sandy beaches snaking into the distance, with a hinterland of undulating hills and rugged mountains, silently watching, weeping, weary of waiting for changes not yet coming.
My family and I marched against the apartheid-backed Springbok Tour – so what stand must we take on Israel Folau?
Welcome home James!
This is not a post mortem examination of the Cook Islands-New Zealand relationship. The relationship is not dead.
// On the back road away from the sundrenched verandahs and swimming pools, many of our people are struggling from week to week
The Meth Menace Campaign has captured good positive reactions from the public.
The vaka is us, and we are the vaka.
In a Cook Islands News poll of more than 100 Cook Islanders last month, most vowed to stamp out drink-driving, speeding and riding scooters without helmets.
IN THE supermarket on Saturday, our fiery four-year-old son threw an absolute cracker of a tantrum.
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