Table of Contents
Judy Gill
My young son and I travelled by ferry from Waiheke to Auckland CBD, intending to catch a train to visit family in Onehunga.
The trains weren’t running. Not in January. Not through the CBD. Not in peak tourist summer season. Not in cruise ship season. So the plan changed.
We decided instead to pay an essential visit to the School Uniform Centre in Epsom. But the buses don’t get you there. Well, not one bus anyway: you need two buses or walking at both ends – and it’s raining.
So I called a DiDi taxi. It was meant to be there in seven minutes, but we waited more than 20. It never came.
I opened the app again. The price had gone up from $11 to $17 while we were waiting. So we abandoned that plan too.
We went to eat. Four Square. A reheated bagel. Cold egg. Bacon. A hash brown still cold after reheating. And coffee.
No toilet. Next door to Daily Bread – still no toilet.
We went to the newly branded Waitematā train station – formerly known as Britomart. There is a toilet there, but four security staff were standing in front of it. We were told we couldn’t use the public toilet because the trains weren’t running. My son is getting desperate.
The security told us to go to Commercial Bay because “they have public toilets”. Seventeen minutes to find a toilet. Nothing at Commercial Bay for children. Not shops. No playground. We had another drink and my son took his action heroes out of his school bag and played at the table. That was the entire stop.
We headed up to our usual backup: Auckland City Library.
Walking up Queen Street, we saw homeless Māori lying on the footpaths – lounging, sitting, barefoot and dressed in rags, with cardboard signs and begging bowls out. Supermarket trolleys used as portable homes and mattresses and sleeping bags were everywhere.
The 21st-century rangatira never intended, from the beginning, to get rid of this Māori poverty – the papa Hone Tamihere and Wee Willy Jacksons of this world.
Māori poverty is the PR campaign. It is the justification. It must continue for Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Waitangi Tribunal gravy train to continue. The money flows to iwi, to Māori-led NGOs and corporations, to politically nepotistic so-called Māori leaders. It is never distributed to the people actually lying on the street.
Those people are not a failure of the system – they are the evidence the system requires to keep the gravy train going.
We reached the library. There were the usual Asian parents diligently reading to their children. There were also women and little girls in hijabs too. I was told that these are refugee families being housed in hotels in the CBD until a taxpayer-funded home becomes available in the suburbs. And there were a few homeless Māori sleeping on the couches.
We left the library to catch a bus instead of walking back down Queen Street because my son was tired but the buses were all marked “Out of Service”. So we walked.
We arrived at “Te Komititanga” – formerly QEII Square. Not just a committee meeting place, but a sacred tāngata one, dressed up as depth then ‘gifted’ back as something ancient – no doubt at great taxpayer expense.
QEII Square was land reclaimed from the sea by European settlers. But apparently Māori once held sacred komiti meetings in this once-aquatic he tāngata space.
The trains are due to start running again on 29 January. When the city reconnects, political marches become feasible again.
The lasting, departing impression of our day trip to Auckland CBD is of a third-world city dressed up and marketed as first world – an un-developing city living off borrowed prestige.
