Speech: Te Whakaruruhau ki Otautahi AGM

Delivered by Julia Main of the Department of Internal Affairs on behalf of Hon Tariana Turia

Christchurch Community House
Te Whakaruruhau ki Otautahi AGM
Wednesday 22 April 2009
Hon Tariana Turia,
Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector


The concept of Te Whakaruruhau is one grounded deep in Te Ao Maori.

We think of it as the image of the tallest trees forming the upper canopy within our great forests.

Professor Ranginui Walker has described the original metaphor of ‘totara whakaruruhau’ as “the sheltering nurturing windbreak of the great forest of Tane Mahuta”.

It is a concept which clearly has currency across many of our communities.

The call for a sheltering, nurturing windbreak has been heard in the health, education, broadcasting, social services sector, just to name a few.

There is Whakaruruhau at the Starship Children’s Hospital in Auckland; Te Whakaruruhau o Nga Reo Irirangi Maori, or Te Whakaruruha was the first Maori women’s refuge to be established in Aotearoa – and for over two decades has been providing emergency safe housing and advocacy for women in Waikato.
 

Over in Rotorua, Te Whakaruruhau was a concept inspired by the iwi of Te Arawa to influence hospital and health services; and of course Kawa Whakaruruhau – cultural safety – has been a vital, indeed a revolutionary influence on the way in which health practitioners work with people whose life experiences and cultures may differ from the practitioner.

And so, coming here today to Te Whakaruruhau ki Otautahi, the Christchurch Community House, I was interested to see how the concept worked for you.

From what I can see the Christchurch Community House not only provides the shelter of the windbreak, but it offers so much more to support and nurture the wide range of organisations that fall within health, justice and education ambits as well as social service and welfare that come together under your roof.

I hear that there’s a range of practical support – photocopying, faxing, venues, whiteboards, conference rooms, the static display space, and the novel ‘room in a box’. This is a first for me – the opportunity for community groups to be able to have their mail redirected here; maintain a filing cabinet, or have access to committee rooms at no extra charge.

But of course, as important as these administration supports are, the most incredible aspect of Te Whakaruruhau ki Otautahi is the whole notion of sharing resources and bringing community groups together, for the ultimate benefit of the people of this area. This idea of sharing is particularly important as we find ourselves in harder economic times.

I am really inspired when I look at the list of all of the services and support offered by the 23 voluntary agencies that have come together under your umbrella. This AGM will be a time to hear from each of them – to make the connections that keep communities strong.

In some relationships there will be a natural partnership.

We would think that the Canty Pacific Safer Community Council; Restorative Justice Services, Tenants Protection Association and the Howard League for Penal Reform will be able to share strategies and build confidence from their collective efforts to restore peace and to achieve social justice for their clients.

The alliance between Cystic Fibrosis Association, DPA Christchurch and Rescare New Zealand will also be important as each group endeavours to work on behalf of people with disabilities.

For other groups, like Te Runaka ki Otautahi o Kai Tahu or Volunteering Canterbury and the Council of Social Services, the community they act for is far broader and the needs require a more comprehensive approach to cover the widest range of services.

In many ways when I look at this Community House, it represents many of the aspirations and priorities that I have for the Community and Voluntary Sector.

What I am most committed to is ensuring that co-operation and collaboration becomes what they call the M.O - the modus operandi for community groups.
 

I want the MO for this sector to be one in which the strengths of our community are fully utilised because we operate in such a way which enables their core service to be valued, and not caught up in the organisational clutter of restrictive accountability and compliance requirements.

Of course, I want to give priority to outcomes – and ensuring the accountability mechanisms are in place to know we have achieved these outcomes is vital. But it shouldn’t be the case that you can’t see the wood for the trees.

We need to know that what community and voluntary groups are doing is making a difference, and not just because the paper tells us so.

We need to see tangible outcomes – of a quality difference identified in the lives of whanau, hapu and iwi; in the capacity of communities to communicate with digital literacy; in the strength of the community in being able to access national, regional and local networks.

But of course it works both ways.

While I am speaking everywhere I can about the value of the joined up approach – I want to encourage Government to be singing the same tune.

What we have seen in recent years is far too much fragmentation and conflict with agencies providing overlapping services, rather than seeking to bring together a robust methodology which fully utilises whanau strengths and cross-sector collaboration.
 

We are tired of dealing with the collateral damage that results from a sector by sector, agency by approach which becomes fixated on the individual, and treats the problem rather than taking the opportunity for a developmental approach which builds the whanau and aspires towards longer term goals.

So Government has to come to the party too. I am encouraging all of the departments that I work with, to place priority on engagement with the peoples, the sectors of our community, and with each other.

We must strengthen Government’s commitment to strong community-government relationships, and that will require all of us becoming upskilled in the magic of engagement and dialogue.

I have already suffered the experience of going to a hui for Pasifika peoples, where the language of information was English. There appeared to be no recognition at this hui that the participants came from many different and distinctive Pacific nations; that the predominantly older population expected to be able to access the information through their mother tongue.

That is simply not good enough in my view.

We have to also clean up the policy kitchen, encouraging streamlining of the existing fund processes; integrating services; looking for opportunities in which we can achieve inter-sectoral and interagency collaboration.

And we need the inspiration of good practice funding examples; of models in which we can all see the priority given to measurable outcomes.

Finally, if there is one concept I would like us to leave today with, it would be the concept of manaakitanga.

Manaakitanga is the act of giving which literally, acknowledges the mana of others as having equal or greater importance than one’s own.

In the community and voluntary sector dictionary, we might define this as ‘promoting generosity’.

It is about a return to values such as aroha, hospitality, generosity and mutual respect. Values which can be promoted from birth; which can be mentored, taught and encouraged.

At the state level, we are doing all we can to support and communicate tax incentives for individuals, companies and Maori Authorities, to encourage the act of giving.

But, wonderfully, it is also a concept that each of us can nurture every day in the support we offer for those of our communities who volunteer, who give their time and self in mahi aroha, who are the unsung heroes that keep our communities afloat.

Te Whakaruruhau ki Otautahi, at its very roots, is driven by manaakitanga; motivated by their belief in generosity as a force to support and strengthen all those who come through these doors.

Your focus in becoming the sheltering nurturing windbreak for those supporting your communities, is to be commended.

I congratulate you all for your mahi aroha and I thank you for the efforts and the dedication of your service, in the pursuit of a greater goal of community wellbeing.