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

PAGE 37what the depts are doing anyway, part of their normal work. Our understanding from thecommunity point of view from when the programmes were set up was that it was anopportunity for us to identify new ideas, new initiatives and then whichever dept picks it up asnew things to add to whatever they’re doing, you know, building on enhancing it but it didn’treally turn out that way and that’s why they’re confused because they were saying, “what’sCRG” and each of them will have Pacific Advisory bodies. I know in education the Ministryhas got at least two I think Advisory bodies for Pacific before CRG came on board - reportingto the CRG, reporting, you know it’s confusing…’Keeping going in face of rising big picture problems‘I don’t know if that’s just reflecting my own personal ‘where I came to’. This is a bit radical.My sense is that level of cynicism is there in the community, and people like myself who werepioneers have seen that things have not got better. Things aren’t really improving. Where I’vecome to in myself is that it’s a bottomless pit, that we’re actually creating social problemsbecause of the bigger distance that we’ve got operating, like Capitalism whatever, that we’renot living in a sustainable way on the planet. People are not able to live sustainably. They’reworking too hard. Children aren’t being supported well in their family homes. So socialproblems are being created because of that materialistic drive. Also the rift between the socialproblems, the rift between the rich and the poor is bound to create social problems and socialdistress. So that’s why I fell back from working in the community the way I do it, because ofmy sense of hopelessness about ‘I can keep doing it, I can keep counseling but women andtheir families that have been part of domestic violence - it’s not going to go away until weaddress it up there.Still need to address bottom line issues, including housing, local service access‘I still feel in Waitakere, you see one of the things I’m not sure of is how many Pacific peopleactually own their own homes in Waitakere? You know because some of those data willactually give us some idea of our people. You see during the years of my working with Pacificcommunity I have come across some families that are very very small percentage that I knowown their own houses but also they were in arrears with the Council with their rates. So I don’treally know what is the percentage of Pacific people who own their own home in Waitakerebut I mean a few of those families that I work with I find that they didn’t really understand thewhole process of owning their own homes and that was the other thing that the AdvisoryBoard was pushing with the Council of actually doing translations of their information thatgoes out to the community. You know like translating the rates stuff and also anything to dowith like the rubbish collection. They brought some people to actually do all those translations.. . and you know that was what was happening like two of those Samoan families that I wentand see you know they were saying but well we didn’t really understand and having to takethem through that process you know sort of, that was a sort of outcome for me to whether thatwas something that we need to actually discuss it with the Council and you know mayberesource that and that’s what happened.’Effective Consultation? Filling the gaps?‘There’s another sort of edge that came in. Funders used to do all of this sort of communityconsultation stuff for a while. I remember spending hours at community consultationweekends when the funders were looking for the gaps. I gave up after a while. So frustratingin that the Community would say, These are the gaps that we identify. There’s a big mismatchbetween what the Community is identifying and the funding’.Avoiding a confusing local messAnd government departments are confused as well. For example, each of the depts, themain ones anyway, like WINZ and Health, each one of them have got Pacific strategies andPacific staff working with programmes and so on but when you look at the programmes ofaction and compare with what they are doing, they are very much the same…. They’re verymuch the same as what the depts are doing anyway, part of their normal work.