Hutt Valley Family Violence Network Community Hui
Thursday 29 April 2010; 11.30am
Risk Church, Stokes Valley
Hon Tariana Turia, Associate Minister of Social Development and Employment

Working Together – the Key for Change

This is a fabulous day to be here in the Hutt Valley, challenged with the theme of working together – the key for change. No not John Key!

I was drawn to your panui advertising this event, with the picture of a great big key, surrounded with the words ‘working together, mahi tahi, the key to change’.

The concept of a key has long been used as a source of inspiration for people right across the world.

The great Spanish painter, Pablo Picasso, described ‘action as the foundational key to all success’.

American rapper Eminem said ‘I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism’.

While the Turkish has a proverb, a small key opens big doors. I have a mokopuna who must have Turkish ancestry because he is always opening locks!

Here in the midst the Hutt Valley, what will be the key to achieving the goal of violence-free communities?

As we think of this valley as the gateway to the river, the hills and towering mountains of the Rimutaka Range, it is an apt metaphor to think about the enormous potential out there for change.

So, will it be rap music that makes the difference? If it is action, what is the right action that will be the foundation for success in the Hutt Valley?

You have decided that the key to change is in working together and I want to publicly congratulate you for having the vision and the resolve to make that decision.

I have to say I’m not shocked easily, but when I looked at your background material and found there were approximately eighty groups of family violence service providers within the Hutt Valley Region I was quite staggered.

This is an enormous network with which to work and I am so very proud to be here at this launching to know that you have realized the importance of working together, for the good of your families.

The potential for overlapping services, for duplication of mahi, for confusion and lack of cohesion is clearly high. A system of so many providers competing in the same space could be really problematic.

And I am thinking particularly of how the needs of families and whanau would be addressed when there are so many different agencies working in a close region.

I want to particularly acknowledge, then, the initiative of Kokiri Maori Women’s Refuge who last July came up with the brainwave of the establishment of a family violence network.

Since that time a core group of agencies, consisting of fifteen people, has been laying the foundation for the way forward. They have come up with a very impressive mission – to develop a collaborative community network to promote and support a family violence free community.

I am truly convinced that a co-ordinated, integrated and comprehensive approach is indeed the key to ensure a much stronger focus on whanau outcomes.

This, in essence, is the key to Whanau Ora.

And I want to return to that notion of a small key opens big doors.

The doors we are opening today, are not just the doors of over 80 service providers.

The doors must first and foremost be those which work to create the family home as the site of safety and protection.

They are big doors indeed, because so many of our families face big challenges in their pursuit of wellbeing.

I want to focus on just two that come to mind.

This week there has been a lot said about alcohol.

I have no tolerance for those who would seek to make millions out of misery, and I am thinking in particular today, of the link between alcohol and violence.

In the Law Commission’s report they refer to a study published this year in New York, entitled, Alcohol : no Ordinary Commodity.

In that study it describes the link between alcohol intoxication and aggression, identifying that violence against intimate partners is strongly associated with the amount of alcohol consumed. The Law Commission concludes, and I quote

“This finding is significant, suggesting that independent of other social factors, reducing levels of intoxication in society should reduce levels of violent offending”.

You may have heard of the events in the last 24 hours, in which Parliament was called into extraordinary urgency, and all parties across the House worked together to address tobacco use.

With the exception of four ACT Party MPs, all other MPs throughout Parliament agreed to a range of measures to put the price of cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco up enough to save hundreds of lives

It was an incredible moment for me – demonstrating the power of the collective force for good, when we work together with one aim in mind.

It feels to me a pretty good tohu of things to come – a sign if you like of the value of the collaborative effort to achieve a shared vision.

It would be wonderful if Parliament could also turn its attention now to addressing the excessive consumption of alcohol as a means of reducing the potential for New Zealanders to suffer from a range of serious harm.

The other big door I want to fling open is that of sexual violence.

This morning while I am here with you in the Hutt Valley, the Minister of Justice, Hon Simon Power is opening a national conference on Working with Sexual Abuse.

At that forum Minister Power is announcing that the Minister of Social Development, Hon Paula Bennett and I will be working together in leading the Government’s response to sexual violence.

We have been inspired by the collaborative efforts of Te Ohaaki o Hine – the National Network Ending Sexual Violence Together – and realize that for our work to really make a difference, we must join hands and focus on the vision we all have for whanau to benefit from healthy, respectful, stable relationships free from violence of all kinds.

To realize that dream we must speak out about the horrendous cost to this nation of crimes against the person.

I am particularly mindful that an estimated ninety percent of sexual offences go unreported. We all know the lifelong impact of unresolved trauma; the psychological horror of ordeals most frequently occurring behind closed doors.

And I have one final quote about a key which I thought might be useful to think upon.

The comedian Bill Cosby once said, I don’t know the key to success but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

We can not continue to allow a culture of silence to operate when we know the injustices that are occurring to family members within.

If we are really committed to creating a family violence free community – and I know that you all are – then it takes courage; it takes moral fortitude and it takes that sense of absolute integrity to know that when you intervene in a situation of violence, you are part of a pathway forward.

When you step in to save one child; you create the staircase for generations to follow.

Ultimately we must focus on those horizons reaching upwards and outwards – enabling our whanau to experience their greatest potential; to flourish and to fly.

There is one more detail I wanted to point out about your panui inviting us here today, to work together, in the key to change.

At the head of the key is a great big heart.

I am delighted that you are so powerfully motivated by the love of your families, by the greatest love of all, that you have taken this big step to establish a network in the Hutt Valley.

May you all experience the greatest success imaginable in the creation of a family violence-free community.

ENDS

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