For sittin at home. Fuckem. They stupid enough to pay, a man ain't so stupid not to collect" (47). The government in New Zealand is not helping the situation of the Maori people in this community because they are just giving them money without direction or encouragement to find another job. The money is handed to them every week and it just furthers their self-destructive path that they lead. It is a two way street in overcoming poverty and it seems that the Maori people don't have that drive to get out. Jake's wife and mother of the Heke family, Beth thinks; .
Maybe it's us, Maoris, our whole damn race, we"re just a bit lost when it comes to this money thing, how to get things, how to go about borrowing the bread, mortgages and that, to get them. Maybe us Maoris got caught with our pants down and it's just taking a while to gettem back up again (93) .
Poverty is something that needs to be attending and worked on in order to make changes.
Change was something that didn't occur within Pine Block. Grace, the eldest girl in the Heke family, knew that there was no hope for her and her brothers and sisters. When she would go over to the other side of the city and watch the white people in their homes she wondered what it would be like to live as they do. When Grace was spying on a family she saw a girl, her age, playing the piano and when the girl was threw her parents gave her a hug and a kiss goodnight. Grace doesn't know what that is like to have that relationship with her parents because every time she comes home her parents are either drunk or at the pub getting drunk. She has no affection from her mother or father, which forces her to be self-reliant and take care of her siblings. Grace's parents were caught up in the fact that they had no money and were stuck there with no way out. This negligence shows when Grace admits, "I just want to know I"m loved" (82). She is scared of her father and ends up hating him for the abuse he inflicts on her mother as well as she resents her mother for giving into her father's will and his anger.
