While politicians march for attention and journalists scramble for headlines about colonialism and co-governance, a simple truth is going almost unspoken: Māori babies and children are being murdered. Not metaphorically. Literally. Beaten. Shaken. Slammed. Killed. Discarded in wheelie bins.
In one case, a newborn baby was found dumped like rubbish in central Auckland. In another, a three-month-old girl suffered nine fractures: ribs, arm, ankle. Not one incident. Multiple beatings over months or years. And a jury just found a Northland mother guilty after her four-month-old suffered brain damage from trauma only consistent with being shaken or thrown. Her explanation? She was grieving, under pressure, and ‘only tried to wake him up’.
Let’s be very clear: Everyone knows it’s wrong to hurt a child. This isn’t about poverty, trauma, or cultural nuance. Babies can’t defend themselves. They cry. They need care. They depend on adults for protection. And too often, in this country, that care is replaced with rage, silence, and death.
And where is the outrage? The media, so eager to cover Te Pāti Māori’s hikoi, their cries of racism, their demands for mana motuhake and tino rangatiratanga, suddenly go quiet when Māori babies are being tortured and murdered in their homes. Why? Because it’s not a comfortable narrative. Are they scared of being labelled racist? Are they scared of losing their special funding that they signed for in return for only publishing positive Māori stories? Because it doesn’t point the finger at the government, colonisation, or systemic racism. Because clichés and platitudes are easy when you’re only pseudo-journalists and pseudo-editors. The killers, the murderers, are not faceless institutions but whānau members—mothers, fathers, aunties, uncles.
John Tamahere and his little puppets, Te Pāti Māori, say they stand for Māori children. The Te Pati Maori MPs signed their oaths of allegiance promising to serve Maori children. So where is their voice now? Where are their actions? Where is their grief, their fury, their policy? It’s harder to confront the darkness within. Rawiri and Debbie wept when they spoke about being banned from Parliament, but they didn’t weep for the murdered Māori babies and children. Didn’t they soak up the viral attention from their aggressive and threatening haka! And maybe that’s the guts of this issue – it’s more valued in the Māori community to be aggressive and threatening than caring.
We cannot keep ignoring this. The murder of Māori children by their own must become the biggest issue in this country. Not just for Police. Not just for Oranga Tamariki. For everyone. Until we say, together and without excuse: enough.
eN-Zed 