The Waitakere Way - Looking Back, Going Forward - Auckland Council

PAGE 13Community forums that work: why?‘That’s because, I think, it’s come bottom-up, instead of top-down. I’ve got a lot of questionsas to whether or not local body induced fora a work very well. They tend to be talking placeswhere not a lot comes from in terms of action or even money, maybe. That’s partly becauseCouncil is really, still, bound by a lot of the ‘rubbish; rates; and roads’ thinking. And if anythinggets slashed by a conservative turn in Government, it’s your Community stuff. It comes out ofyour own sense of cause or mission, as opposed to, ‘You have been invited to..’. There issome pressure to attend; even coming right off the appearances thing. You must appear to bepresent.. Well, it doesn’t go down that well with Westies. Westies see through the bullshit andsay: “Shit, I’ve got two families waiting to move into.. who are on the street. This better be agood meeting!”Taking on new problems‘People do appear to have an attitude to solving problems, which fascinates me. Andconsequently a lot of innovations have come out of West Auckland. If I look in my own field atDomestic Violence, say, it had one of the first, perhaps even the first, Refuge in New Zealand.This is about 21/22 years ago. The first men’s program which I was involved in setting up,which was 20 years ago. The first men’s house which we set up about 10 years ago – itlasted a couple of years – it was actually before its time and so it fell over. (Men as in menkicked out of their homes through domestic violence orders.) What else? Waipareira is aninnovation of its own – The Waipareira Trust. Hone Waititi is an amazing statement. And bothof those organisations had the idea of ‘urban iwi’, as opposed to traditional iwi. That fact, thatthose two – that’s their identification I think, gives a huge clue to West Auckland. We’re nothere under some sort of socio-economic hat as in the suburbs. We might be under some sortof whakapapa-iwi link. We’re here because we’re here. This is the ground. This is the place,and we do it. And we’re prepared to solve our local problems.‘So currently, we’ve got the Ranui Project which is an innovation. Last year I was talking tosomebody who was working out of the Department of Ed. in Wellington, trialling Valueseducation in West Auckland schools for a National project. We’ve got the Restorative JusticeProject running out of West Auckland Courts just at the moment; Family Conferencing as well.Effective Practice. It worked for us. The idea’s fine. But what would be interesting is to look atwhy, perhaps, that hasn’t worked. And for me, there may be some slight clue in that peoplebelieve that it’s going to create more case meetings. And West Auckland services are so flatout, the last thing people want is a whole lot of Case Meetings’.Getting community development into council‘The importance of that was to unite people, as much as the outcome. It demonstrated thatpeople could work together, that they could get results, that they would get coverage. It tooksix years or something – it was no short campaign. It was ups and downs and lulls and so on.By the time we finally won, it was under Tim’s terms. Political change, basically, took place tocreate the conditions whereby we could actually succeed in doing that.Council and community in the 80s‘In earlier days there were no government departments out West, they were all in AucklandCity so you had no people to talk to locally. There was no ethos of central government beingpart of a locality fabric. Those that did take a locality focus eg. the education department didso in such a way that looked at needs and then gave people information about the decisionsthey had made for them. Councils for example had no say in where schools might go.”‘They didn’t have such a defined role in the Community. They’ve become a lot clearer abouttheir relationship with the Community, although that comes and goes with what the politics areat the time. But certainly there’s been a lot more support about the Community. Like, I’vealways had a close relationship with Carolynne Stone, Penny Hulse and I think they’ve beenreally strong supporters of the Community. I’ve always felt valued by certain people in