Kaea Takiari was 14 when he says he had a gun held to his face. He was sleeping at a friend’s place when police raided the home.
“His dad was an underworld figure and we always used to go back to his house after school just to hang out, chill, be with the older boys and stuff,” Takiari says.
Kaea Takiari has recently joined Target Zero as an ambassador to tackle youth crime in Melbourne’s west. Credit: Penny Stephens
He says police kicked down the door. When officers realised Takiari and his friend were children, they told them to stay in the room and then arrested the father.
“Getting raided is scary; having a gun to your face is scary.”
Takiari, who moved to Melbourne from New Zealand when he was eight, had a troubled childhood growing up in Melbourne’s west.
“The saying goes when there’s trouble at home, the streets become paradise. I didn’t have a father figure around so I found a lot of comfort being around mates who did, but their families weren’t the best of families. ”
He had stints of homelessness, was dealing marijuana and says he was racially profiled by police when he hung out with Maori friends at Moomba.
“The influences that were around me were also on heavier drugs, going out stealing cars, selling them for money. In my mind now, it’s all very stupid, but looking back on it, everything was real.”
Takiari believes he would be in jail if he hadn’t become involved in Nga Matai Purua, a community organisation in Melbourne dedicated to preserving and sharing the heritage of Maori people through performing arts and cultural workshops.
“My mother actually put me into this group because she saw the huge disconnection I had from my culture, me not knowing my identity, who I am,” he says. “Nga Matai Purua for me is home. If I didn’t have the support and people in it, I wouldn’t be here having this interview, I would be locked up.”
Kaea Takiari and Boudene Hauraki.Credit: Penny Stephens
Takiari, now 21, is a youth ambassador at Target Zero, an alliance of organisations that aims to prevent young people from Melbourne’s west from getting caught up in the criminal justice system.
Currently, children as young as 10 can be arrested, charged and jailed in juvenile detention.
Last week, the Victorian government abandoned its promise to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14, following a drop in Labor’s primary vote and a series of high-profile violent crimes.
Instead a reshaped Youth Justice Bill, which is almost passed through Parliament, will raise the age of criminal responsibility to 12. Premier Jacinta Allan last week said there were currently no kids aged under 14 in custody in the state.
Crime Statistics Agency figures released in March showed a 22.5 per cent increase in the number of offences committed by 10- to 13-year-olds in the year to September 2023 and a 29.4 per cent increase in the number of offences committed by 14- to 17-year-olds.
The 2022-23 Youth Parole Board annual report found 64 per cent of young Victorians in custody were victims of abuse, trauma or neglect as a child.
Takiari believes young offenders need positive mentors, not prison sentences.
“That was one of the big issues navigating through my childhood. I was going through a lot of stages where problems would have been solved easier if I had someone like a mentor,” he says.
Boudene Hauraki, the community engagement lead for Target Zero, said the project aimed to address the over-representation in the criminal justice system of First Nations and multicultural young people, and young people in residential care.
Target Zero is working with schools, police and parents to deal with some of the complex factors around the criminalisation of young people, including homelessness, drug use, mental health issues, police profiling, migration settlement challenges, family violence and disengagement from school.
“We’re really thankful to have Kaea share his story because these are the unheard voices,” Hauraki says.
One of Target Zero’s initiatives, Project 100, involves working with a school in the western suburbs to bring its suspension and expulsion rate down to zero.
“If we can help the schools to keep young people in school, then that’s a lot,” Hauraki says.
“We want to see young people have a good start in life and not be put into prisons because we know that doesn’t work.”
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