The kids are Huntly’s great resource
Yesterday, Waikatotimes reporter Alistair Bone visited Huntly to get the view from the street about Government plans to provide free contraception to beneficiaries. Today, he gives his opinion about what he saw.
Yesterday’s piece in the Waikato Times, where Ben Curran and I went to West Huntly, didn’t tell the whole story. Space and time limits meant it missed out large parts of what we saw. There were people who love living in even notorious sections of Huntly because it’s a strong community and they know their neighbours. Others were trying, off their own bat and at their own risk, to put the gang-kids back on track with streetside counselling. There was the nurse for a child-care provider who told us many parents are doing an incredible job with next to nothing. But the lack of parenting of the youngsters was cited again and again by people on the street. And the overall feeling was that the Government’s plan for free contraception for beneficiaries was not enough to fix the problems.
The most striking thing we left out about the kids we met, Maori and European, was how sharp and aspirational they were. They are smart and want up and out. From what we saw, their root problem is their lack of legitimate rules and strategies for doing that. The sort of thing usually handed on by parents.
The educated classes call the Government plan ‘‘paternalism’’. In the context of a comfortable middle-class suburb with options available it does seem an affront. But in the context of an area both statistical and empirical observation say is severely deprived, it seems to be a flawed first step for many people who need parenting from someone other than the gangs.
These are not downtown academics with a million opinions, they are children left to run wild and they need practical training in the most basic forms of life management – compulsory if necessary, but paying them to attend would be much better.
If that happened, we think many we met would quickly be on the way to springing themselves from a sad intergenerational trap.
We’ve been digging up Huntly ever since we twigged it was largely made of coal. But we’re letting an even greater natural resource there get wasted.