Te Puea Memorial Marae chairman Hurimoana Dennis has named the South Auckland lenders and retail outlets whom he says are most commonly owed money by homeless families coming to the marae for help.

They include KiwiOwn, Cash Converters, UBuy, Red Rat Clothing, G-Mana/Kiwi Auto Finance, Fair Value and Lelei Finance.

The businesses have denied any wrongdoing, saying they lend and sell responsibly.

But Dennis said debt was a problem with each of the 30 homeless families that Te Puea had helped over the past year.

New measures to control businesses offering loans have been recommended by Commerce Minister Kris Fa'afoi, in an MBIE discussion paper reviewing the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act.

The recommendations include increased licensing for money lenders, and introducing "more prescriptive" requirements for affordability assessments.

Fa'afoi said it was becoming clear the 2015 amendments to consumer finance laws didn't go far enough, and it was now time to "finish the job" to protect the most vulnerable.

He said ethical lenders and agencies such as the Salvation Army tried to help people, (but) the laws needed to have the right settings to stop people getting into terrible situations in the first place.

"Ensuring the credit settings are right, so that people can borrow appropriately when they need to but are not dragged into a long-term debt spiral is another way we will ensure all New Zealanders benefit in a strong and inclusive economy."

Source

• nzherald.co.nz
• nzherald.co.nz
• Image: nzherald.co.nz

Te Puea Marae in Mangere Bridge says it is now full and has 12 families on a waiting list.

"We really would like those in authority to lift this to another level," Marae chairman Hurimoana Dennis told reporters. Continue reading

It should have been considered urgent. Perhaps the indignity of that day was generally dismissed as mere farce, since Waitangi had by then become such a pressure-cooker pantomime and Clark's tormenter was Titewhai Harawira, who is not widely respected.

But the practice of silencing women and relegating them to a secondary role, which pervades other marae including that at Parliament, was and remains deeply offensive to most New Zealanders.

It has taken years of further routine humiliation of women at powhiri, hui and the like, most of it unreported, for someone in a position of leadership to cry enough. Continue reading.

Source: The Listener

Image: NICVA

Kaua Te Rangi Tuhura, known to most people as Reverend Kuzie, moved with his family from the small East Coast settlement of Hiruharama in 2011 to Bunbury just south of Perth.

Since shifting there he has become a highly respected Maori elder and was ordained as a priest in the Anglican Church of Australia.

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