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The Waitangi Tribunal are at it again.\xa0

This time it's with another of their \u201curgent reviews\u201d. This particular one is into the approach the new Government is taking to Oranga Tamariki.\xa0

Karen Chhour, who is the Minister for Oranga Tamariki, would be as invested and experienced in the matter as any politician before her.\xa0

She is a child of the state who rose to Cabinet level and, as such, is driven by the desire to contribute and give back and is a powerful reminder that the state is not all bad when it comes to dealing with kids and that you can in fact, have a tough start and not have it hold you back.\xa0

In broad terms, Chhour is not as convinced as some others that race should play quite the obsessive role it does.\xa0

In other words, if a child of M\u0101ori persuasion is removed from a home and is then placed in another M\u0101ori home that is directly connected to the home that caused the trouble in the first place, is that serving the child in the best way possible?\xa0

This is not a new debate of course. The \u201cwider whanau\u201d approach and angst has been raging for years.\xa0

What I think we all agree on is that Oranga Tamariki and its previous iterations have not served many kids all that well.\xa0

I personally hold the view that in many circumstances we expect too much of the agency. After all, they are a Government department, not a miracle worker.\xa0

The people they deal with have as challenging a set of circumstances as you would ever want to see.\xa0

The social worker's caseloads are too high, the dysfunction is too high, and the expectation that these issues get fixed like a magic trick is too high.\xa0

But the Waitangi Tribunal add nothing by yet again launching what appears to be an ever-growing level of activism and producing reports that, to be frank, will most likely, and rightly, be ignored.\xa0

They have no real power.\xa0

The original part of their existence, which was historic claims, is largely over and the stragglers should have been given a deadline decades back and the whole thing should be out of business.\xa0

But bereft of fresh historic grievance to wallow over, they have created a new work programme of interventionism, of which the Oranga Tamariki case is the latest example.\xa0

Taking a child out of a mess of a house and putting them on a path to success is the key goal.\xa0

The moment you overlay that objective with race, race and more race at all costs is partially why so little has been achieved for these kids.\xa0

Karen Chhour wants to get on with it.\xa0

The Tribunal revel in being the handbrake.\xa0

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