Kia ora, good morning and welcome to The Nation. I'm Lisa Owen. Today ` what can the government deliver for our regions? If there is a way through this fund to grow industry and grow people and have them in the work force, it's one of the most liberating things that I'll do, and I'm very focused on our Maori population in these blighted areas such as the Far North. We need to get the brothers mainly off the couch. This community is in crisis. All the services are on overload. We're in Kaitaia, talking to business leaders, community workers and locals about what Northland needs. Copyright Able 2017 We're coming to this morning from Kaitaia's Te Ahu Centre. Well, politicians of all stripes have long promised to boost the economy of Northland, but it is easier said than done. So how will the new government fare? I'm joined now by the minister Shane Jones, the Regional Economic Development Minister, Whangarei MP Shane Reti from the National Party, and the former Te Tai Tokerau MP Hone Harawira. Kia ora to you all. Can I start with you first, Minister? The billion-dollar annual regional redevelopment fund ` it's going to be a contestable fund, isn't it? Yeah, there'll be some robust criteria, but it will be contestable in the sense that people from either civic leadership, business leadership and obviously Maori development will have an option to apply, but never overlook the fact that there are four key regions that the last government correctly identified ` Tairawhiti, Tai Tokerau, Manawatu-Whanganui and the West Coast. And I tend to agree, largely because I'm not a capricious sort of chap, that they were on the right track and we should take the good ideas forward. So you'll be concentrating on those regions that you identified? To begin with, to begin with. Obviously we need a surge in those regions. Sorry to interrupt you, but will they be the only regions that are able to vie for that money? No, it's not exclusive. And I've said this to regional local government. But we've got to start somewhere. But they'll get priority. Indeed. So who will make the decisions about who gets the money? We're creating a pipeline, and cabinet ministers are going to sign off on the criteria. There'll be a selection panel which will be a blend of private sector expertise and the inevitable stewards of the public purse, the bureaucracy. It's my expectation that small ones can stay with the bureaucracy; mid-sized ones must be signed off by a group of ministers; and mega-projects will have to go to cabinet. What's mid-size? Well, at the moment, there is` Put a dollar value on it. At the moment CEOs can sign off up to, I think, 100 grand. It will be higher than that. It will be higher than that. Well, because you've been quoted recently as saying that you've given one project the go-ahead already ` the Opotiki wharf. So who was on the panel for that decision? Yeah, so, what I've said that that is a project that was quite well advanced by Steven Joyce and the last government, and I don't want to stop their momentum. But the inevitable sign-off will be by the full cabinet. But I'm very interested in nudging it along. But I don't have the authority exclusively to sign that one off. So did you misspeak when you publicly said that that had been`? No, I said that I'm a supporter of it, but the end of the day, the cabinet committee will have to sign it off. So are you picking favourites? Do you pick that one? No, I think you need to avoid being arbitrary. We need to acknowledge that communities keep going on with life whether governments fall or stand. And that is a project that had its genesis back in Michael Cullen's time, and I don't think it was reasonable for me to scotch it, and I was encouraged, quite frankly, by a number of the departing ministers from the last regime to be fair to such a project. Okay. Well, I'm wondering what you think. Mr Reti, do you think this sounds like a slush fund for the minister and his mates and cousins? No, we acknowledge it's a significant amount of money. From our point of view, it's mainly that it's a robust process, that there's really good, robust and transparent decision-making, and then we'll make our decision as to how we support it from there. So it's all about the process for this large sum of money that we're most interested in. Mr Harawira, does it sound like a good idea, as Shane Jones explains it? Actually, I couldn't care if it's a slush fun. It's the only time anybody in the last 10 years has offered anything into the regions. So I'm a supporter of it. I'm glad my cousin's in charge of it. I certainly expect to see some activities going on in the north, not just a feasibility study on the rail line up to Whangarei, but also in terms of forestry, in terms of carbon farming, hopefully in terms of community employment projects as well, because we really do need to get the brothers off the couch, back to work. And until the private sector's ready to pick them up, I think the Crown recognised the obligation to start making that happen now. Okay, if you could nominate one project that you could get funding from this fund from, what would it be? I'd have to say, right off the bat, carbon farming's a good one, because it's a simple one and it's a long-term one. It's about planting, but not just for planting so you can chop them all down again in 25 years. It gives us the opportunity to slowly regenerate native forest in a way that Maori want to see but also start creating a credit stream for whanau for years and years and years to come. It gives work immediately. Sound like a good idea, Mr Jones? Yeah, well, the Prime Minister has already identified that a significant percentage of the trees of the billion tree figure are going to be native. And I was in Kahungunu Heretaunga two days ago. They tell me they've got 200,000 hectares over a 10-year period, both the local council and the iwi. I think the most important thing, though, for people to bear in mind is that we are inverting the model of regional development. This is something that's never been tried since the days of Rogernomics, i.e. the Crown is going to set aside a pot of capital, and it's going to intervene in cases where there's egregious market failure or business just no longer has either the tolerance or the interest in picking up the pieces. I want to talk to you about the trees. You've raised the trees. So this is planting a billion trees? Correct. So how many will that be a day that you're going to be planting? Okay, so the programme` How many new ones? Yeah, yeah. The programme is with the industry, okay? The industry already plants 50 million trees a year. They want to expand, but they can't expand until we improve the ETS signals and do some work with tax policy. That's happening at the moment. They tell me that in partnership with the Crown, they could go beyond 60-65 million a year, and the Crown will pick up the slack. So you're talking about another million hectares over nine to 10 years. Well, if you do the sums, it's 135,000 trees a day on top of what's already been planted, because as you've identified, half of these have already been planted. So how much is that going to cost the government? Well, we'd allocated a sum of between 185 million and 200 million at $1000 a hectare. Now, it depends` So that's coming out of your billion-dollar regional development fund? The key things are coming out of the billion-dollar fund. Obviously, we hope to be around for nine to 10 years, but that's up to the voters. But the costs associated with the forestry scheme, it's also a matter of training our young people. I'm quite hard-line in getting our young men and women up to work again, but I accept that you can't just invest in industry without investing in people, and Kaitaia's screaming out for the investment in people, not just in industry. Mr Reti, does that sound like a good idea? Or what would the one project that you would spend some of that billion dollars on be? Sure. I don't think this is a mystery for Northland. The Tai Tokerau Action Plan defined what the number-one economic driver for Northland is. And that had a range of stakeholders. It had every council on it. It had Northland Inc leading it. And they said the number-one economic imperative for Northland is four lanes from Auckland to Whangarei. There's no mystery or surprise in this. That would be what I would put up as the number-one economic driver that a fund like this might be able to be used for. So build a bigger road? Nah. I mean, jeez, we know how to get to Auckland, and we know how to get home again. Getting that rail line going up to Whangarei is going to bring millions of tons of products in and out of the Whangarei area, which is going to generate massive growth for people on an ongoing basis. You build a four-lane highway, all you're doing is creating more space for people to go faster. We don't need to go faster; we need jobs. I'll talk about infrastructure a bit more in a minute. But, Mr Jones, is the tree-planting scheme going to be work for the dole? Well, my personal preference is that you need the carrot and the stick. It's not government's policy to embrace the work for the dole, and I have been shot down by my own iwi people for being too harsh in that regard. But what do you think? What I think is that there's pockets of multigeneral dysfunctionalism. And the reality is people need a carrot to re-enter to workforce, but I'm Old Testament; you get up, and you start to look after yourself as well. And if you don't, don't expect me to give you a constant handout. So Old Testament ` is that code for Work for the Dole? Do you support Work for the Dole? I must confess I don't have the support of my cabinet ministers for that. But I'm from Awanui, Kaitaia, and it pains me to see what's happened in Kaikohe, Kawakawa, Kaitaia and Awanui. And in a funny way, we've contributed to that in the sense that we've all gone along and allowed an economic model to prevail, really, for 10 to 15, 20 years, and it has left a lot of our rangatahi on the side. Are you going to try and coax them around? You keen to make it happen? Yeah. Well, I think I should be judged not only on GDP, industry-wise, but on the growth of the people. There's a great saying out of the north ` 'He tangata, he tangata' ` 'The people, the people.' And I think that's a standard that politicians should be held accountable for. So if you had your way, you would have Work for the Dole? If I had my way, people that are on the benefit with some additional assistance ` some additional assistance ` they should be compelled to get up and get ready and go to work. That is my personal preference. So why do your colleagues have a problem with it? And who in particular? I'm the Minister of Economic Development; I'm not the Minister of Social Welfare and Training. You know my style. I'm upfront. And that type of robustness, I think, is what's needed in the north. We don't need an uber-liberal approach in the north; we need common sense. Hone Harawira, do we need Work for the Dole in the north? Well, I mean, let's take it away from the Work for the Dole. We need to get the brothers, mainly, off the couch, engaged in work in their community if there's no private work. If that means getting them working on their maraes, working on their schools, working on their sports parks, working on anything that gets them engaged in the process of work so when opportunities like forestry or like the rail line or like anything else come up, they're ready for work, then it's got to be a good idea. The fact that anybody is talking about it as the Work for the Dole ` I don't think Shane's talking about that, necessarily. I know that's not what his government's talking about. I don't even think that what National was talking about. But that is what the minister's talking about ` Work for the Dole. No, no, I think he said Work for the Dole with an extra bit of financial assistance. And when you look back at the community employment projects that we used to have when unemployment was as high then as it is now, it was very much the dole plus enough financial assistance to make it worthwhile getting them out of bed, getting engaged in the process of work. Once people start to do that, they start to believe that they can be better than just that, and then the world opens up for them, opportunities open up for them. We are in a bad way up here in the Far North because we've been generations now without that kind of working mentality within our whanau. We have to bring that back, and any way that we can do that is going to be a positive. Mr Reti, you have said that unemployment is now down to 6.6% in Northland. And, in fact, you've issued a challenge this week to the government to do better, you say. So what target do you think that the new government should meet? 6.6% unemployment now. What should it be? Yeah, that's the best we've had in Northland for two years. 6.6% is a great starting point. Round about 4.6, 4.1, the rest of New Zealand. How about we were the same as the rest of New Zealand? That's a jolly good target. So this is a starting point. If they can do better than 6%, 6.6, well done, them. They'll have our congratulations and our thanks. But there's the benchmark right there. We're passing the baton on to a new government at 6.6% in Northland. Do better than that, and you have our 'Thanks. Well done.' Yeah, but those figures are fictitious. Go to where there's a high density of Maori families; it's a lot bloody higher than 6%. Northland as a part of New Zealand has a huge Maori population. Now, Shane, we can describe these things away with generic figures, but you come with me to your own people, and you'll see that it's in double figures ` consistently high levels of unemployment ` young men, young women. I happen to believe it feeds gross lifestyles; it often leads to suicide. So I don't care what label is applied to me; if there is a way through this fund to grow industry and grow people and have them in the workforce, it's one of the most liberating things that I'll do. And I'm very focused on our Maori population in these blighted areas, such as the Far North. But people need to measure your progress in some way. So there you have it ` a suggestion that you should aim for the national rate of unemployment, and, in fact, Grant Robertson is aiming for 4% unemployment. So do you undertake to achieve that goal in Northland too? Oh yeah, of course. We absolutely want to see a decrease of unemployment` To that 4% in Northland? Is that realistic? Well, who knows if it's realistic? We've got to drive in that direction. But, Lisa, I'm not going to let this issue go away. Go to the areas where there is a densely domiciled Maori population. It's a lot higher than 4% or 6%. And I'll take you to parts around Kaikohe and other parts of the Far North. I'm telling you it is 25%, it is 30%. So is 4% unachievable, then? No, I don't think 4% is unachievable. But so much of it is going to depend on the vagaries of international economics, not just a billion-dollar fund. So within what time frame do you think it would be achievable to get to 4% unemployment in Northland? I'm going to get my projects up and going with the officials, with private sector input, working in partnership with industry leaders and civic leaders. And as we train people and make them work-ready, then unemployment will come down. Are you frightened to set a goal? No. No, no, I think if Mr Robinson has identified that's our 4% goal, I would say to everyone that's a laudable goal for the north, but do not overlook the character of the north. You wouldn't be here if you didn't think that there were some stubborn issues, not the least of which is the cop-out rate amongst our young Maori men. And I hope to turn that around. Hone Harawira, you have said that Mana has got bigger fish to fry than being in Parliament at the moment. So I'm wondering ` do you think that traditional politics is failing this region. And if it is, how do you turn that round? Look, when I'm in Parliament, I talk about the things that I think should be done. When I'm outside of Parliament, I do the things I think need to be done ` open the curtains, the Tai Tokerau Rugby League, supporting guys like` I think you're going to be interviewing Ricky Houghton. Those kinds of initiatives which are helping people in really, really difficult situations get close to zero, because a lot of them are already way below the zero line. Our job is to try to get them up to that point. At that point, they are then ready to start becoming something else. So we're a long way away from that. We have kids that are genuinely starving. We have rampant diseases which could be fixed ` and Dr Reti would be able to confirm that. We've got homelessness all over the Tai Tokerau. We've got unemployment at huge levels. Suicide, as Shane keeps talking about ` we've got some good initiatives coming out of the north as well. Talking about those kids from Taipa ` what it is they're trying to do. So it's not just about economic development, and as Shane's rightly pointed out, it's about that at that level and about growing people as well. And in the growing people, we need to focus not just on those referred to us by the police or by the schools or by anybody else, but those who are in such a desperate need that they don't talk to anybody. And there's too many of them out there, so, yeah, that's the area that I want to focus on ` that at that level and community employment at a level so that from here, they've got one step up before they move up to the next level. I think the challenge, Lisa, which is what we're doing different from the last nine years and, indeed, different from what Helen Clark and them did` I mean, Helen and Jim Anderton had a regional development focus, but they sent Jim around the country without a penny in his purse. We have, through the coalition formation, taken a stance ` we are going to dedicate capital to the regions. Now, this is quite unheard of over the last 25 years. Generally, we've relied on local government or private sector to treat it as a private investment, but we've come to the point that there are some areas that the public needs to partner with private and make it happen. Well, the thing is ` when you say that you've got the money, but already 800 million for a rail project in Northland. The trees, they're going to cost money. You've ticked off pretty much on the Opotiki wharf. Have you spent your first billion already? It's not actually going to be that easy to allocate a billion dollars a year, the officials have told me. And one of the departing ministers did warn me that officialdom's feet is covered in treacle, so it'll be a sluggish process, but the reality is in order to defend it to the level of the auditor-general and the public taxpayers, over a three-year period, we're going to have no shortage of projects. But unless they're robust, they're not going to be able to fly. We're almost out of time, but I want to as you, Mr Reti ` your government supported boot camp. Is that something you would like to see this government continue with? If I can just come back. Shane's very correctly spoken about the public and private working together in forestry. My question would be ` if we frame that as a PPP, is it also going to apply to education? Is it also going to apply to health? Because we're hearing in both of those instances it's not. So what makes forestry special that it gets to be a PPP-type format? Mr Jones? Forestry is special because Nick Smith committed New Zealand under the name of the National Party to a figure in 2030 that has a value of a $34 billion deficit ` 200-million-ton carbon deficit. Unless we pay that bill, it's going to cost you and I $32 billion. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said the best transitional thing New Zealanders and their government can do is plant trees. That's why trees are different. We're going to have to leave it there. One-word answer. To answer your question, I did army time, so, yes, I'm supportive of boot camp. All right. Thank you for joining us. That's Shane Reti, Shane Jones and Hone Harawira. Stay with us. We're in Kaitaia, finding out what the regions need from the new government. Back shortly. Welcome back to the regions special. The Nation is coming to you from Kaitaia today. Ricky Houghton is a well-known community leader in the far north. Just before the election, he said that any incoming government needed to declare a state of emergency here. He joins me now. Ricky, why did you say that? Why did you say that you need a state of emergency? What did you think would happen? Yeah, kia ora. I asked the government to declare a state of emergency because this community is in crisis. All the services are on overload. The key services have downsized, centralised outside the region. In terms of compliance ` health, housing, justice, welfare, employment and training ` there is nothing. The women from the far north now are going to prison at some of the most alarming rates ahead of men. We need help, and I've asked the government in the hope to declare a state of emergency, so all the compliance, all the regulatory allow the communities to take control and care of the problems that we see every day, to fix them our way. Do you think it helps to have`? I mean, that's a pretty severe move ` to declare something a state of emergency. Do you think to have a label like that will fire people up, get some action? I think what it will do is the government, to date, has ignored. When you look at this community, up to 85% of this community here is on some form of benefit. 37% are on single parent, and the average income is $21,000. If that doesn't mean something is going wrong up here, then nothing will. Well, you say` you name those welfare statistics, and you have said that welfare is killing Maori. So what is the alternative? What will kick-start economic prosperity for these families is real jobs. And, so our solutions aren't going to come out of a hole in the wall in the middle of Kaitaia. They're not going to come out of Wellington, but nor should they. We believe that we can solve our problem. It's not a government problem. It's not an outside of Kaitaia problem. It's all of our problem, and the sooner we all realise that and start taking ownership and responsibility for it, we'll be able to fix it. So, at the moment, one of the things under discussions is benefit sanctions, right? They're controversial. Do you think that we should ditch benefit sanctions altogether, or do you think there is some kind of obligation that comes with receiving a benefit? No, there will be some sort of public outcry and civil disobedience if you completely abandon any sort of benefit support, but there's no rationale for the benefit allocations up in the far north. I'll give you an example. A $300,000 mortgage in the far north is treated differently to a $300,000 mortgage in Auckland. Just in Kaitaia itself, a housing subsidy` a mortgage subsidy in Auckland will get you $175. In Kaitaia, it will get you about 40. So.... the utility prices in Kaitaia are the highest in the country. A unit of power in Kaitaia's 33c. In Auckland, it's 18c. So you have the most underserved and under resourced community in the country resourcing the people outside the far north. It's unfair. You said that people here need real jobs. Yeah. So is planting trees a real job? I mean, Shane Jones has been saying that they're going to plant a billion trees a year. Is that good work? So, planting trees is one solution. There's no silver bullet. I think it's going to need a combination. I'll give you another example. The green-lipped mussel industry is a $2.5 billion industry right through the country through Coromandel, Marlborough. The spat that begets that industry comes off Ninety Mile. That resource is stripped out of here. The far north is raped from any dividend from it. So you're not paid anything for that? We're not getting any royalties for it, no. Should we? Yeah, I think we should. Do I think that in terms of trees` planting trees ` yeah, that's one form. I also think that 75% of all Maori is under the age of 30. I think that down Lambton Quay, there's three or four Crown call centres. I suggest why don't we move those call centres from Lambton Quay, move them to the middle of Kaitaia, give young Maori an opportunity to answer the phones up here in the far north for their different ministries and kick-start some economic prosperity and training. Why couldn't we give some New Zealand companies the opportunity to come to the far north, give them some tax breaks for up to 25 years, train a generation. OK, well, the government is currently` well, it's about to have a tax review, right? Yeah. It's pulling together a board to do a tax review. Is that what you would say to them ` give businesses company tax breaks to come to Kaitaia. Yeah. And to the far north. Yeah, for 25 years. If you were to say` You see, we're one generation off Maori, Pasifika and Chinese being the major tax payers from 2050 onwards. Now, if you say a generation is 15 years, say, let's get some companies up here, kick-start some economic prosperity, give them a tax break and get them going. So if they undertake to stay here for 25 years and do business here for 25 years ` give them a significant tax break. Yeah. The other thing you have suggest is that for every dollar you save by providing social services up here that the government should give this community back 50c. Yeah, so what happens is that ` I'll give you an example, eh? The government has a number of surplus fat within the services that it provides ` it's got three welfare benefit systems, it's got ACC payments, it's got a student allowance payment system, it's got a WINZ payment system. If we're being asked to downsize and flatten out our structures in terms of service delivery from a provider sense, so should the government. And what I'm saying to the government is, 'Hey, for every service that we provide ` costs you nothing.' I've given it to the` I've sent it to Treasury. I've sent it to ministries, and I've told them there that we will not provide` we will not charge the government one cent, but` For the social services you provide? For the services we provide. But what we do ask the government for is for every dollar that we save the government, how about going fifty-fifty? So how would you measure that? Well, yeah, so how you measure that is currently what happens is that the government's created a big conveyor belt that everybody` all these ministries feed off, so when somebody gets into trouble, they hop on a conveyor belt, and they start going along it. Everybody has a feed off them. What we're saying to the government is the accommodation, for example, that we've provided, instead of men going to prison, we say, 'Keep the family together. 'Don't put that man who's had some disruption with his family. Let him come down and live with us. 'We'll send him off to work. Keep mum and the kids in their beds, and he can go to work.' So this is providing housing for prisoners who are wearing electronic monitoring bracelets rather than going to prison. You're providing that up here. So should the government invest more money in doing that? We've got a burgeoning prison population. This is one way to keep them out. Does there need to be more funding in that area? Yeah. There definitely needs` We would like to be funded for that. We would like to say to the government, 'Hey`' Do you get not one penny for that? We don't get any corrections funding whatsoever for it. But it is a service that our community has told us we desperately need to keep our families together, to keep our men in employment and to avoid them going to prison rather than getting them post-prison. But getting back to this dollar, it's called Not One Cent More, the paper, and essentially, what we're saying to the government is 'Allow us an opportunity to show you what we can do.' And how do you measure it? That was one of your questions. We could say to them there are` We find a measuring point that everybody agrees on. So generally when people come into our service, we say, 'How many times have the police been called?' 'Five.' 'How many times has Mum been in refuge?' 'Five.' 'How many food parcels have you needed?' 'Four.' 'How many times have kids been kept home from school because they had nothing to eat?' '10.' 'How many times have you been in crisis?' So we have all these measuring points. Then what we do is three months later, we say to them, 'How many times have the police been called?' 'None.' 100% success. 'How many food parcels have you needed?' 'Two.' 50% success. So that's when you get your money back? That's how we get my money back. For every cent that we save the government, for every dollar, we're saying to the government, 'We will prove to you, evidence-based proof, that we have saved the government money. So does the prime minister have your paper, Ricky, on this? Pardon? Does the prime minister have your proposal on this? Prime Minister Ardern? No, she doesn't. But I hope` The ministries do. I hope to meet with the prime minister. I hope to meet with Carmel. I hope to meet with all the ministers to say, 'Hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained. 'Give me a go. Give me a go. It's not going to cost you anything to invest in me.' Ricky Houghton, great to talk to you. Thanks for joining us this morning. Thank you. We're in Kaitaia with our regions special. We'll be back after the break. The big question this week ` did you know the translation of 'Kaitaia' is 'ample food'? Oh, is it? I always thought it meant 10 make-believe bridges. Northland, the birthplace of our nation, where our treaty was signed, home of our first capital, boasting all that wonderful scenery. Yeah, I mean, it's nice scenery. I like the 144.8km beach ` that's nice, but they haven't maintained a lot of the other scenery ` a lot of the rocks up there got big holes in them. True. They must be a bit confused in Northland post-election. They voted Winston out, yet he ends up deciding who runs the country. Yeah, a bit like when you don't invite granddad to Christmas but he shows up anyway, and then decides who gets all the presents. Still, Northland will benefit from this billion dollars for the regions. Oh, as Bill English says, 'Billion dollars ` that's pathetic, a billion. Miniscule. (SCOFFS)' What about the government's plan to plant a billion trees? A billion? Yeah. That's a massive number. That's not possible. Back in Wellington, there's that group that's gonna be working on tax. Ooh, what are they called? I'm not sure, but they're looking at things like taking GST off fruit and vegetables. Good luck with that. Hard enough getting the stickers off. Isn't it? And possibly removing GST from sanitary products. Oh, so as long as I list it as a Libra flat-screen TV, I should be able to claim back on it. Welcome back. The small Northland town of Morewa has had its fair share of challenges since the meatworks there downscaled in the 1980s, new MP, Willow-Jean Prime is born and bred there and says the little town still had spirit. She showed Mike Wesley-Smith around Morewa. (JOHN MELLENCAMP'S 'SMALL TOWN' PLAYS) It's morena in Morewa, and one of the town's littlest members is lighting up the local's newest MP. Morena. Kia ora. While it's recess week for Willow-Jean Prime, it's time now for her coalition of carers to tend to little Hihana. Ko Bottomley Potts noa, koe iraira katoa. And, of course, Heeni, who grabbed headlines by doing what few MPs have achieved ` she kept Speaker Mallard, well, mum. As grandma Adrieanne recalls, the memorable appearance was actually accidental. I was just handing Willow the baby so she could introduce her to some of the folk, and they carried on walking past and straight into the house. (LAUGHS) One of the parliamentary services is jumping up and down going, 'We're making history!' Adrieanne, what was it like to see Willow-Jean stand up in parliament? I think I just cried, didn't I? Pretty much. For Willow-Jean Prime, representing her community is a huge honour and a massive responsibility. You are now there. This is your job, and the weight of expectation and hope of my community's that you're gonna do something that's gonna make a difference for us. A difference for a community that still bears witness to industries lost and infrastructure rendered silent, like the local railway line where Willow-Jean's father used to work before it closed. So, the first thing I learnt to drive naturally with my dad working here at railways was a train. And he used to teach us all the signals. Of course, he was driving, but it made us feel like, you know we could. He would often drive past us at home and pick us up and take us a couple hundred metres to school and deliver us there, and whoever was walking with us to school that day, and a lot of people remember how cool it was. We didn't have a school bus; we had a train. (LAUGHS) Uniquely Morewa memories that she wants for her kids and their kids for her return to the rail line to the town. A hopeful benefactor of the new government's plans for greater regional investment. What are the savings to the damage that's done to our roads? What is the opportunity that having this type of infrastructure could be the catalyst for more industry and more work in the area? And then, you know, you put a finger on that. Such projects take time, but making a difference to people's lives doesn't always require a think-big approach, which back at the Prime home,... Two twos. Oh, that's a one. ...brings us to Willow-Jean and her sister Season's initiative to address what they call 'period poverty'. There are young women in our communities who are missing school because their families cannot afford sanitary products. And the answer? You know, we've just discovered these Mooncups, and aren't they amazing? A menstrual cup that is an alternative to tampons and pads ` necessary supplies that can be expensive. On average ` $20 each a month. That's almost $240 per person per year. This is real money that these families don't have. A cup, on the other hand, is $40, $50. They now run a charitable trust and have raised enough money to so far hand out 212 cups to local women. 212 ` we're over $50,000 of savings within our community. Over the lifetime of period management for those 212 people ` $1.9 million. Of course, around here, there's no big sales department. The trust instead works on good old-fashioned Moerewa marketing ` word of mouth. So, we went looking for women to educate. I won't lie. Cameraman Dean and I were way out of our depth. But Willow-Jean's not a person to be deterred. Absolutely. Just not accepting the status quo. Yeah, always working to make it better. And before we knew it, we ran into one of Moerewa's biggest Mooncup fans. Yeah, cos you converted, didn't you? Yes, I did. I did after 30 years of using tampons. So now I'm getting them for my children. I have four daughters. It's about now that some local teens overheard talk of moon cups, saw the camera, and naturally an impromptu feminine hygiene class was soon taking place. OK, girls, so I'm gonna have a chat to you today about Mooncups. Do you know what Mooncups are? Have you heard about Mooncups? So, we've got these things here called Mooncups. Whoa, what the heck? Ha. And they last for 10 years. 10 years. 10 years. You only buy one. And you reuse it? Yep. There was some scepticism and clear as day demonstrations. You push it up inside like this, and you let it go. But what seemed kind of awkward at first ` who am I kidding, it was really awkward ` suddenly, amazingly, became normal through doing something cunningly simple ` talking openly about periods. What if it, like, gets sucked up? It can't. What if it goes in and you can't pull it out? No, it can't. The muscle in your body won't allow it to go any further than that. Can you see how it's helpful when people talk about it more openly? Yeah, like, heaps of people, not just one little human. (LAUGHTER) Soon even the local lads had gathered, and talk soon turned to how Moerewa's young see their home town. If there was one thing that you would like the new government to focus on, what would that be? Um,... get meth out of the country. Really? That P shit, yeah. Yeah? How big an issue is that here? Oh, too big. Mostly see it every day. How old are some of the youngest people doing it? 12, yeah. 12, 13. Far, what about all those people with suicide? That's a problem too, eh? And why do you think we have so much suicide? Bullies. Bullying? Bullying, yeah. Family issues and stuff. Yep. One korero in the park won't solve everything. But at least teens are talking. That's a vital step for a town used to getting together to overcome local problems. It is more straightforward. It's quicker. They can do it in their own way, in a way that they know is working for their community. And you see reminders of this togetherness everywhere. This here, the hall, is an example of a community fundraising effort. There's a recycling plant built on land donated by the local mechanic. $4.90 all together. The low-cost fruit and veg shop providing affordable food. And the housing trust repairing damp homes. We could go on. There is still a lot of work to be done, but there's also a lot of hope and a lot of opportunity and people who are resilient and not giving up, won't give up. And our final stop of our tour was Moerewa Primary,... Great to see you again. Kia ora. Good to see you, mate. Kia ora, Mike. Thank you very much for having us. You're very welcome. ...where principal Jason Tane oversees Moerewa's future, including whaea Josie's class, whose energy levels would benefit the national grid. Tena koe. Wow. Kia ora. Look at you. You're gonna be on TV. Hello! You can see in that camera? Hello! What's your guys' favourite thing about Moerewa? Um, playing at the waterfalls. And why do you like the marae, Lewis? Cos it's fun to play. And nice kai. What's your favourite thing about Moerewa, guys? Playing. Oh, yeah, we go out and that. Nice. And we love Transformers. Transformers are cool, eh? In a way, these kids have their own local Transformers working as hard as they can to transform Moerewa for the better. Stay with us. After the break, we'll hear from community groups in Kataia about what they want from the government. Kia ora and welcome back to The Nation in Kaitaia. Well, the Far North sometimes hits the headlines for the wrong reasons. Our next guests, though, are working very hard in their community to make things better. And joining me now are Dr Lance O'Sullivan; Dee-Ann Wolferstan, who works in social services; Marihi Langford, who works with young, unemployed people; and Haami Piripi from Te Rarawa. Good afternoon to you all. ALL: Kia ora. Kia ora. I want to start with you, Lance. In the past, you have said that we need to improve the lot of Maori, and you've suggested some quite radical changes ` stuff like banning smoking, getting rid of pokie machines, limiting alcohol. So what do you think is the state's job, the state's responsibility, versus personal responsibility? Okay, so, look, that's quite an easy answer. The state's responsibility is to set the context and the environment by which people can make the right decisions. So, yes, I agree that individual responsibility and decisions that they make are important, but that's in the context of the environment that we as a country and a society set for them. So when I see... when I see child poverty in Kaitaia... and then I see policies that allow a proliferation of pokie machines that take probably $100 out of the households of these children per week and millions out of the Far North community, I'd say that's our government, whether local or central, not showing the leadership and courage that's required. So those are tough decisions, especially if you're in politics, which is somewhere you may be moving to because do you get voted in on those kinds of platforms? Look, I think if you go back to` The point I was making was is there a link between pokie machines, alcohol outlets, cigarettes to the poverty that children in Kaitaia and communities like Kaitaia experience? And the answer is absolutely yes. There's a very direct link between the people that are using or practising these lifestyles and the fact that children are going without food, kai, in the evenings. And so the... Sorry. So you think that these tough decisions do need to be made by people in power ` politicians? Yes, they do need to be made, yup. And I think New Zealanders` The point I was trying to make was New Zealanders actually think child poverty's important and most New Zealanders don't think pokies are that critical. Marihi, your programme focuses on high-risk young people, and you offer them wrap-around services, help them get into work, and help them stay into work. Do we need to hand-hold young people like that? Do we need to do that for all young people? We've got about 80,000 of them who are not in education, not in training, don't have a job. I think the circumstances here in Kaitaia are totally different. I think this is a unique community. I don't see us as actually hand-holding these young people, but actually putting the supports in place and also giving messages to these young people that there is more to life than sitting on a benefit at $3.56 an hour when they can actually get a job. One of the biggest issues for them is that a lot of their issues are generational and they don't actually feel that they can add value to this community. So I believe that the work that we're doing, which is supported by Work and Income, is to actually help these young people find their dreams, their aspirations, but also keeping it real, and some of those changes that we've seen for these young people through this manaakitanga is that they want to work. They change. They've got these issues where... They've got all these social issues, of course, and then, of course, we've got drugs. The Employment and Work Act has now changed employers' ways of thinking. They now have to make sure that when an employee comes in, they're going to be safe. So drug testing is one of those main things that we encourage our young people to do so that we can put some services in place to actually help them overcome the addiction of drugs. Dee-Ann, you're involved with a number of social services providers in the Kaitaia area. What do you think is the benefit of having decisions that are made at a local level rather than at government level? Oh, that's pretty simple. That's around local solutions. You have the ability, like Lance's and Marihi's programmes, to localise; they know their people; they see their people; they live in the community, and so then they're actually building services that relate directly to the whanau that they're dealing with. When you have central making decisions with evidence-based international programmes, they're actually just plotting a programme over people that it's not going to suit. And so it's really critical for Kaitaia that you've got kaupapa Maori programmes that have the infusion of clinical practice with it. And I think that's what's being delivered up here at the moment, and it has to be recognised by central government. So, Haami, you are about to actually launch a localised programme in conjunction with the police ` an anti-violence programme. What do you think this can do that other programmes like that haven't been able to do? Well, what's different about this programme is that it's a combination of local and iwi-based information and input combined with what has been an orthodox approach by the New Zealand Police, and both parties are looking to develop something that's new and innovative and much more effective. So it's really the processes of cultural-capital ` cultural understandings about the individual, about the whanau, and about their circumstances. I agree totally with what people are saying, but values, norms, and practices often develop as a result of your socioeconomic circumstances, and so if we're going to attack those inappropriate values and norms and practices, I think we have to approach it from an area of understanding. My experience has been that if people understand why, then it'll be much easier to work with the how. So in terms of this programme that you're launching, are there going to be plain-clothes people, non-sworn people, going into homes where domestic violence is an issue? Yes. So the focus is on family safety as opposed to domestic violence, which is another way of looking at it, I guess. And, yes, it's necessary because the normal approach that has been taken in the past hasn't led to much of a success, and so we need to change that approach. And I know the police have already been quite responsive in that respect. And we need to combine that change with local responsiveness, local responsive groups and organisations that know families, understand families, and we put the two together to create a result. We're going to have to go to a break shortly, but I'm interested that a couple of you have raised the issues of drugs. So I want to ask you ` there's going to be a referendum this term about whether cannabis should be legalised or not. What way will you vote? Will you vote for legalisation or against? Lance? I'd vote for decriminalisation. But not legalisation? But not legalisation. Not legalisation. Decriminalisation. Not legalisation, I don't think, but I think decriminalisation, because, to me, it's a bit like gangrene; you've got to chop off the bit that's not going to kill you, you know, and dealing with the rest of it is a really important issue. I think drugs is a really important issue for us. It's a destructive thing, and in order to address it, we have to get it into the right context. So that context is from you saying decrim is a health issue, then, obviously, you're coming at it from? Yeah, absolutely. But also social impact there. We spend way too much money on policing marijuana, and it's really a health problem. And the Misuse of Drugs Act sits under the Ministry of Health, or came out of the Ministry of Health. It is a recognised health problem. How do we get the people the health needs that are associated with an addiction rather than a police or a justice response? So redirecting resources? Yes. All right, we need to take a break now. We'll be back with more shortly. Welcome back. Well, this morning we've heard from politicians and community leaders about what they think the regions need, and in particular, Northland. But what do you think? Well, we went out on to the street to find out. WOMAN: Knowing that there's so many from Northland that are in Labour in those key positions, I'd like to see better access to the areas, to the roads ` road development. I'd like to see development for the youth ` transition into employment. I'd like to see better employment, therefore an increase in economy. Jobs. Just, yeah, roading. Everything's just up to shambles. I'd like to see more employment, more things out there for our people. Yeah, just fix the roads and more jobs. Environmental. Really wanna see some change on that ` our waterways. Especially for our small community. And, you know, our health services at the moment. Healthy eating plan. People are struggling with minimum wage, and yet you've got politicians on these big wages, but they seem to want more every year, like getting pay rises, whereas the ones at the bottom struggle. Up north, we have been... disregarded. And what we want from Labour is, if they can, stimulate our economy... in the way of jobs. Just pure support of the area. Well, that's all we've got time for this morning from Kaitaia, but we will be back at the same time next week in the studio. See you then. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2017 This programme was made with the assistance of the NZ On Air Platinum Fund.