This is a critical time to act and deliver on a significant opportunity for our city.

We now have purpose-built facilities and services that we hope can collectively meet the needs of those who require support. People should not have to sleep on our streets or put their hand out for money.

We know that visitors do not expect to see so many people sleeping/begging on our streets when they come here. And we know that people care about the welfare of those in need.

If everyone who needs it gets the support they require, this will be a great example for our city to set and something to be proud of.

After significant public and private investment that we have both supported, we are hopeful that there is sufficient capacity currently to achieve this aspiration.

Not sometime in the distant future but now, before the situation gets worse and it is harder to turn around.

A number of purpose-built facilities have opened in the city centre in recent years, which offer housing and specialised wrap-around services.

The James Liston hostel for emergency housing was refurbished and reopened in 2019. Auckland City Mission's HomeGround opened in 2022, a shining example of housing and holistic healing facilities.

Then, just a few weeks ago, the Te Matawai facility opened at Grey's Avenue, which includes housing for rough sleepers and 24/7 on-site support.

These facilities offer a tremendous opportunity for thoughtful placement and care that has not previously been available.

Additionally, Heart of the City's Street Guardians programme, which started five years ago in partnership with Auckland City Mission, offers a positive alternative to begging that currently operates two days per week.

Now there are quality facilities like these up and running, we want to see an urgent and co-ordinated drive to ensure that everyone on our streets who needs help gets it quickly.

With social needs met by professionals, there also needs to be focused attention on addressing the bad behaviour that people do not expect to see on our streets either.

This has noticeably risen through Covid, and it needs to be addressed before it becomes entrenched.

It is another basic thing we must get right as a city, and it is particularly important to act quickly to attract more people to live, work and study here after the ravaging impact of Covid on the city centre.

We are calling on the Auckland Council to make urgent changes to its public nuisance by-laws and compliance mechanisms, so there are clearer standards of what is and what is not acceptable on city streets and how this can be effectively enforced.

While there is a growing community safety response, there also needs to be a much stronger police presence in the city centre to better reflect the number of people here.

A police station has been sorely missed, and we want it returned. This will send a clear signal that crime and violence will not be tolerated.

People want streets they feel comfortable and safe in, and by acting quickly, we can and must achieve this for everyone.

• Viv Beck is Chief Executive, Heart of the City - the business association for the city centre.
• Adam Parkinson is a spokesman for the City Centre Residents Group, which represents residents living in the city centre.
• First published in the NZ Herald. Republished with the authors' permission.

In particular, I would argue that many Maori whanau in Auckland do not enjoy the benefits of this supposed "liveability".

This is important, given Maori comprised 11.5% of the Auckland population in the 2018 Census. Roughly one in four Maori in Aotearoa New Zealand are living in the greater Auckland region.

The survey was conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, sister company of The Economist, and looked at 140 world cities. Auckland was ranked 12th in 2019, but took top spot this year for one obvious reason:

Alternative liveability criteria

Each city in the survey was rated on "relative comfort for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure".

Overall rankings depended on how those factors were rated on a sliding scale: acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable, intolerable. Quantitative measurements relied on "external data points", but the qualitative ratings were "based on the judgment of our team of expert analysts and in-city contributors".

The methodology, particularly around culture and environment, seems somewhat subjective. It's predicated on the judgement of unnamed experts and contributors, and based on similarly undefined "cultural indicators".

To better understand the living conditions of Maori in Auckland, therefore, we might use more robust "liveability" criteria. The New Zealand Treasury's Living Standards Framework offers a useful model.

This sets out 12 domains of well-being: civic engagement and governance, cultural identity, environment, health, housing, income and consumption, jobs and earnings, knowledge and skills, time use, safety and security, social connections and subjective well-being.

The Maori experience

Applying a small handful of these measures to Maori, we find the following.

Housing: According to recent reports, Auckland house prices increased by about NZ$140,00 on average in the past year. That contributed to Auckland being the fourth-least-affordable housing market, across New Zealand, Singapore, Australia, the US, UK, Ireland, Canada and Hong Kong.

Next to that sobering fact, we can point to estimates that Maori made up more than 40% of the homeless in Auckland in 2019. We can only assume this rapid increase in house prices has made homelessness worse.

Poverty: Alongside housing affordability is the growing concern about poverty in New Zealand, and particularly child poverty. While there has been an overall decline in child poverty, Maori and Pacific poverty rates remain "profoundly disturbing".

Employment: As of March 2021, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment recorded a Maori unemployment rate of 10.8%, well above the national rate (4.9%). This is particularly high for Maori youth (20.4%) and women (12.0%).

Health: Maori life expectancy is considerably lower than for non-Maori, and mortality rates are higher for Maori than non-Maori across nearly all age groups. Maori are also over-represented across a wide range of chronic and infectious diseases, injuries and suicide.

The digital divide: The Digital Government initiative has found Maori and Pasifika are among those less likely to have internet access, thus creating a level of digital poverty that may affect jobs and earnings, knowledge and skills, safety and security, and social connections.

Making Auckland liveable for all

Taken together, these factors show a different and darker picture for far too many Maori than "liveable city" headlines might suggest.

I say this as someone who has lived in Auckland for the majority of the past 60 years. It is a city I love, and I acknowledge the grace and generosity of the mana whenua of Tamaki Makaurau, with whom I share this beautiful whenua and moana.

I am also part of a privileged group of Maori who enjoy job security, a decent income, a secure whanau and strong social networks.

But, until we address and ameliorate the inequities and disadvantages some of our whanau face, we cannot truly celebrate being the "most liveable city in the world".

• Ella Henry Associate Professor, Auckland University of Technology
• First published in The Conversation. Republished with permission.
• Photo by Dan Freeman on Unsplash

But it's also necessary.

As the baby boomers age, our population will become disproportionately elderly, with a dependency ratio of about 2.6 people aged between 15 and 64 for every person aged 65 and over in 2036, and 2.31 in 2061.

This "pig-in-the-python", as it's been evocatively described [pdf] by the Royal Society, will pass - but a productive workforce and more young people will certainly help it along.

The generation gap is considerably less marked amongst the Pasifika and Maori populations (which also have higher fertility rates), which means it's even more important to tackle issues like unemployment, poverty and obesity in which they're over-represented.

But with fewer women having children, the fertility rate is currently 2.0, only just above the "replacement level" necessary for the population to replace itself in the long-term without migration.

By 2030 it's predicted to eclipse five million, and so much of that growth is dependent on migration from other countries.

That change is already visible in Auckland, where half a million people were born overseas, and is expected to continue as migration encourages migration: people are more likely to move to places where they know others and where their culture is established.

The most rapid growth has been in the city's Asian population, with one in four Aucklanders of Asian ethnicity.

That's predicted to be one in three by 2021.

Dr Andrew Butcher, director of research at the Asia New Zealand Foundation, points out that statistic encompasses "multiple languages, beliefs, cultures, cuisines and all the rest".

"This isn't a homogenous group of people, and it's not a discrete entity of people, either," he says. "There are increasing numbers of Asians who are multi-ethnic … so there's this great diversity." Continue reading

Sources

• The Wireless
• Image: Found Directory

Have I left anything out? Oh, yes, there is the little matter of his conversion to Catholicism.

He said: "Were you surprised when you heard I'd become a Catholic?"

Of course I was surprised! Wasn't everyone? But why was I? he wanted to know.

Because it's weird, I said, lamely but truthfully, and we'd been talking about God for a good long time by then and we had both had enough of talking about Him.

Or at least we had both agreed he wasn't going to be able to talk me into faith — "You were raised an atheist? You poor thing!" — and I wasn't going to be able to talk him out of it.

He said, hardly smugly at all, really: "You'll probably, on your death bed, be screaming for the mercy of the Blessed Virgin." I most certainly will not.

"I shouldn't provoke. I shouldn't provoke," he recited, failing miserably at piety.

He can't really believe in the virgin birth, I said, but of course he does. "Absolutely."

He said: 'Why are we talking about religion so much?" Serves him right.

He had said, about our God talk: "It was very Dawkins versus the Bishop of Canterbury ... but maybe scaled down a bit." Huh. Only on his side.

"On my side. More like a stammering convert up against a princess of atheism; a deacon of disbelief!" Continue reading.

Source: New Zealand Herald

Image: Greg Bowker/NZ Herald

Most people who consider themselves religious identify as being Christian, however other religions are growing.

The three that saw the biggest increase in followers between 2006 and 2013 are Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism.

Meanwhile, the number of people who say they have no religion has jumped 26 per cent to 1.6 million.

In a four-part series, Ollie Neas talks to followers of New Zealand's fastest growing religions and people who don't identify with any religion.

In the first episode, we talk to Hisham Zaoui, 28, about Islam. Continue reading.

Image:The Wireless

Youth organisation, Generation Zero, endorsed the moral leadership on climate change taken by the Diocese.

Generation Zero spokesperson, Kern Mangan-Walker, said "New Zealand has a strong history of taking moral leadership on the important issues of our time. And now again the Kiwi spirit is responding to our generation's issue of climate change, as organisations like the Auckland Diocese of the Anglican Church divest their funds in the fossil fuel industry."

The decision is a landmark event for action on climate change in New Zealand. The Auckland Diocese has become the first institutional body in New Zealand to join the global divestment movement.

The movement started in the US, where hundreds of universities, religious institutions and cities have divested their funds from fossil fuel companies.

"The move shows the Auckland Anglican Diocese living up to its responsibilities to young people and future generations by taking meaningful action on climate change" says Mr Mangan-Walker.

Generation Zero is supporting similar motions calling for fossil fuel divestment at other Anglican Synods across New Zealand in the coming week.

Source:

• voxy.co.nz
• Image: thinkprogress.org

On June 6, 1990, Fr Nguyen arrived in New Zealand to a life of peace and freedom, after a life of war, repression, imprisonment and torture.

Speaking of that day in 1990, he told NZ Catholic: "I was very happy, very happy, because I came to a free country."

Fr Nguyen was born in South Vietnam in 1943, when the country was under French colonial rule.

The leader of the communists, Ho Chi Minh, presented himself as a patriot against South Vietnam's French rulers, Fr Nguyen said.

"But after the French left our country, Ho Chi Minh brought the communists to Vietnam," he said. "He's worse than the French colonial thugs. He's a very cunning man."

In Fr Nguyen's first year at the seminary, in 1963, a coup d'etat killed the president of South Vietnam. South Vietnam sided with the Americans and North Vietnam with Russia and China.

"Two years later the Americans started to pour troops into Vietnam," Fr Nguyen said. At the height of the Vietnam War, the United States had half a million troops in the country.

Millions of civilians died, as well as 54,000 American troops and about 35 or so New Zealanders soldiers.

The communists destroyed Buddhist temples and Catholic churches, said Fr Nguyen. But he was lucky, because when he was young, most education was in the Church.

"My family was Catholic and [I] got a very good education from the Church . . . and secondary school was a Church school."

He was ordained in 1970. War was raging everywhere. "All my life that was war . . . all the time. I witnessed all sorts of crime through war — killings, beheadings.

"And war continued until 1973 — and at that time the Americans, they shook hands with China already and they sacrificed South Vietnam, because it means nothing to the Americans. Continue reading

Article and image:

• NZ Catholic

The initiative involves having a parent or guardian of every boy playing for De La Salle attend an educational evening about appropriate sideline behaviour.

The initiative, a combined effort of the Auckland Rugby Referee's Association and De La Salle College has been trialled and supported by the Catholic college before the season kicks off this weekend.

"This is a positive step in the right direction," De La Salle principal Myles Hogarty said.

"We believe that this programme, by involving parents, coaches, students and match officials and providing them with an opportunity to meet and share their knowledge of the game will enhance the pleasure and satisfaction that everyone gets from the sport," said Hogarty.

Auckland Rugby match officials manager Smudge McNeilage has been working with the college and the Auckland Rugby Referees Association (ARRA) to roll-out a programme of events.

He commended the De La Salle staff for their proactive stance and said practical measures have been put in place for the start of the season.

Warning any unacceptable on-field or sideline behaviour would have consequences, Smudge McNeilage said, "A school rugby community needs positive role models and encouragement on the sidelines."

"Parents who step outside acceptable behaviours only hinder their child's rugby opportunities as the child will be removed from playing for their school," he said.

As part of the initiatives, Smudge McNeilage will also run a "You Make the Call" course at De La Salle for student leaders and others who would benefit. The students will be required to referee at three tournaments during the year and when they pass the course will receive 10 Level 3 credits. Continue reading

Each day a giant lever will open individual doors to the 12m-high calendar at Silo Park to reveal a Kiwi Christmas scene. Local businesses, artists such as Dick Frizzell and school children are contributing to the project.

The Advent calendar will sit beside the base for the Auckland City Mission Christmas campaign. The organisation will pull the last lever on December 25 and plans to host children at the park for fun activities before the annual dinner for 2500.

Waterfront Auckland is co-ordinating the project.

Chairman Bob Harvey said the calendar would be part of a Christmas trail that moves up through a lit-up Beaumont St, crosses over to the Telecom Christmas Tree in Victoria Park and winds its way up the decorated homes of Franklin Rd.

"It's a gift from Auckland to Aucklanders and I encourage everyone to come down to see what will be a magnificent artistic creation and to pause and reflect on what Christmas means to them and how they can give back to the less fortunate."

Source

• The New Zealand Herald
• Image: Campbell Live

He said he really wanted everyone's thoughts and feedback on the issues, and in some cases, for churches to come up with constructive ideas which could provide input to the Council, maybe even with joint projects.

"I really see the churches being significantly involved in housing, as it is well into helping in education. I want churches to assist our young people to improve…we saw what happened in London with the riots," he pointed out.

He said there were about 200 different ethnic groups in Auckland City, and churches and schools were particularly significant places in helping bring about multi-cultural understanding and harmony.

Source

• Challenge Weekly
• Image: Conger

The call to march came from the Auckland City Council appointed Pacific Peoples Advisory Panel, which says it wants to stop being a "rubber stamp" for council policies and create an independent Pacific forum.

The chairman of the Advisory Panel is Reverend Uesifili Unasa, Auckland University chaplain. He said the march is a community initiative to give visibility to the growing inequality of people, families and communities in New Zealand society.

"The decision by the organisers to march is a reluctant one. However, such is the concern and frustration by our communities for our families, children and communities that remaining silent or doing nothing is no longer an option," said Uesifili.

Church youth leader Harry Toleafoa said of the march: "My generation is standing up for our parents who have cleaned this city and worked its factory floors."

When the protestors gathered in Aotea Square, one of the speakers, Efeso Collins, from Advance Pasifika, called for the ministers, priests and MPs in the crowd "to come forth so the people could see their leaders." The The Auckland Now reporter did not say how many did so.

The March which, has been called "the march for the poor", attracted about 1000 people.

The organisers hope the march will lead to specific council initiatives to help Pacific Islanders and create better representation at council level.

Source

• TVNZ
• Auckland Now
• Image: Pacific Art Stuff.co.nz

There also will be local activities in each of the dioceses. In Auckland they will begin on August 19 and include praying stations of the cross and adoration, says Teresa McNamara, co-ordinator of youth and young adult ministry for the Auckland Diocese.

The following day will be for undertaking community service. Cathechesis, prayers and musical concerts will also be held in Auckland city and in south Auckland.

A highlight of the Auckland celebrations will be the Pilgrim Walk, a feature of World Youth Day celebrations. "We are going to start on the outskirts of the city and walk towards St Patrick's Cathedral," says Ms McNamara. "It would be a public demonstration of our faith."

The walk will come from different directions to form a cross. Then, the pilgrims will hold hands and pray.

The weekend will conclude with a mass celebrated by Auckland Bishop Patrick Dunn. Ms McNamara says the World Youth Day "encourages you to look at your faith in a new light and think about how faith plays out in our lives today".

Source:

• The Aucklander
• Image: NZCBC