Smashed beer bottles from shattered lives
On Saturday night, my family settled down in the living room to watch a movie. Nestled in our couches with our ie afu / blankets, munching away on potato chips, it was promising to be an enjoyable family night. However our movie was cut short when we heard the sound of glass smashing from the road. Our house is no stranger to car crashes as our road is often used as a short cut through the Aukilani Saute / South Auckland suburbs and careless (often drunk) drivers would mis-judge the corner and the gradient slope of our hilly road, ending up in any of the front yards of the houses on our street, or attached to a fence, letter box, tree or even a power-pole.
As usual we and our neighbours came out to investigate the sound. But the smashing didn’t sound like a car crash. Instead we witnessed the end of a brief skirmish between two groups of young Polynesian youths, throwing beer bottles at each other. The youths must’ve been so drunk that they didn’t realise they woke up the neighbourhood (or they didn’t care). But my neighbour and I started shouting at the boys to stop what they were doing. At that point they all sprinted off down the road. Littered across our road were at least 15 beer bottles all smashed into hundreds of pieces.
The neighbours and my family got out our brooms and salu and began to clean up the mess. Even though those boys should be the ones cleaning up, it was going to be our cars that drive along that road, it is our kids that walk along the footpaths to school and back, it is us who mow the lawn verges, it is our neighbourhood that we live in every day.
As I was sweeping up the glass pieces into the dust pan, I began to think “why?”
A newspaper this morning reports benefit figures show that, once again, Maori and Pacific people are worst affected. Aukilani / Auckland’s Maori unemployment benefit rate rose 1.5 per cent in the past year to 3.4 per cent, and the rate for Pacific people rose a full percentage point to 2.1 per cent. In contrast, the rate for Asians and others rose only half a percentage point to 1.2 per cent and the European rate rose by only 0.4 percentage points to just 0.7 per cent. Unemployment benefit rates were higher in Aukilani Saute South Auckland - Manukau City (1.8 per cent) and Papakura City (3.2 per cent) than in North, West or Central Aukilani.
Today the Government announced it would change more labour laws which Unions believe points to a trend of re-introducing the three week annual leave for workers (instead of the four weeks guaranteed under current law). This is on top of recent changes made by this new Government, such as the 30-day trial period (ie an employer of a small company can fire any employee in their first 30 days of work, and not have to give a reason), introducing tax-cuts that favour the rich (who will most likely save it rather than spending it to provide a stimulus to the economy - all the while the poor struggle on to make ends meet), not offering to support workers in upskilling through their 9-day fortnight programme, but willing to pour millions into private companies.
Recently Samoans / Pacific Islanders have been making the news headlines for all the wrong reasons: robberies, assault, escape from police custody etc. In these strained economic times, more pressure is heaped on those already struggling at the bottom. Some feeling the only way out of their circumstances is a life of crime and/or drunkness.
It is our families and communities who are feeling the effects of this economic crisis. And it will be our families and communities having to sweep up the messed up lives and pick up their broken pieces.