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Download AudioJustice reform advocate Sir Kim Workman says the late Moana Jackson opened his eyes to the position of Māori in the criminal justice system.
Mr Jackson died yesterday after a long illness.
Sir Kim says he first knew Mr Jackson as his children’s teacher and rugby coach at Wainuiomata College in the 1980s, but it was the release of his He Whaipaanga Hou report for the Justice Department in 1988 that revealed the depth of his thinking.
He says the government ignored the report, apart from attacking a section calling for support for Māori to develop their own solutions.
“The resistance of the government of the day towards of those ideas and the resistance today towards those ideas has not really shifted, but in the meantime, He Whaipaanga Hou has become a classic really,” Sir Kim says.
Kim Workman says He Whaipaanga Hou and the Puao-te-Ata-tu report two years earlier stand as benchmarks for Māori thinking and scholarship and wisdom.
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