myths

Kupe, and the discovery of Aotearoa (New Zealand).

Although Maui fished up the North and South Islands, it was the great Polynesian navigator Kupe who discovered them. Kupe lived in Hawaiiki, mythical ancestral homeland of the Māori. In Hawaiiki lived a canoe maker by the name of Toto.
Toto fabricated two huge ocean going canoes from a large tree. One canoe he named Aotea and the other he named Matahorua. Toto gave his canoe named Aotea to one of his daughters, Rongorongo, and the other canoe named Matahorua to his other daughter, Kura. It happened that Kupe desired Kura very much. However, Kura was already the wife of Kupe's cousin Hoturapa.
When Hoturapa and Kupe were out fishing one day, Kupe ordered Hoturapa to dive down and free Kupe's fishing line, which had become tangled. When Hoturapa dived into the sea to free the tangled line, Kupe sliced through the anchor rope of the canoe, and began to row furiously back to shore. Hoturapa drowned, but his family were suspicious of the circumstances surrounding his death. It was, in fact, a plan on Kupe's part to take Hoturapa's wife Kura.
In order to avoid vengeance from Hoturapa's family, Kupe and his own family left Hawaiiki in Kura's canoe Matahorua. After some time of navigating, Kupe's wife Hine Te Aparangi sighted the islands of New Zealand, which appeared as land lying beneath a cloud. Because of this, they named the islands Aotearoa, Land of the Long White Cloud.
As Kupe and his crew were sailing along the coast of this new land, they disturbed a giant octopus, who was hiding in a coastal cave. Terrified at the sight of a strange canoe filled with human beings, the huge octopus swam rapidly in front of the Matahorua and took flight, passing through the strait between the North and South Islands. Kupe followed the octopus, and discovered modern Cook Strait.
Kupe and the Matahorua eventually caught up with the giant octopus. In defence, the octopus whipped its enormous tentacles around the canoe, intent on devouring the whole canoe. During the furious battle which followed with the sea monster, it became obvious that the Matahorua was in great danger of breaking up.
However, Kupe suddenly had an idea, and threw a large water gourd overboard. The octopus, thinking that a man had fallen over, released it's tentacles from the Matahorua and turned to attack the gourd. Kupe seized this opportunity, and waited until the octopus was entwined around the gourd. Kupe then attacked the head of the octopus with his adze, and the octopus died.
With his adze, Kupe then cut several islands away from the South Island, and several islands away from the North Island, including the island of Kapiti. He remained for a short while in modern Wellington, before continuing northwards up the coast of the North Island, naming various islands, rivers and harbours on the way. Kupe then returned to Hawaiiki, telling everybody of this distant cloud capped and high rising land which he had discovered.
He gave instructions on how to return to this new land, but said that he himself would not be returning

Crime rates

Crime is a topic of great public interest and concern. For many, the concern comes from the perception that rising levels of crime constitute an increasing threat to their safety and their property. The public's perception of levels of crime is often influenced by media reports. As the media tends to focus on certain types of crime it can distort the public's perception of crime in our society. This report provides an overview of the actual levels and types of recorded crime in New Zealand.
Although it is commonly accepted that the actual number of crimes committed is higher than the number of crimes reported to and recorded by police systems, the data recorded by the New Zealand Police remains one of the best indicators of crime in New Zealand.
Crime in New Zealand is the first of a series of web-based analytical reports Statistics New Zealand will produce during the next three years.
crime in New Zealand: 1996–2005

The impact of crime on public safety is an issue of enduring interest and concern.Crime rates attest not only to the safety of our persons and our property but also to theoverall health of our society and to the effectiveness of the institutions that arededicated to crime prevention and the administration of justice.Crime in New Zealand: 1996–2005 provides a descriptive overview of trends inrecorded crime in New Zealand. The report examines how the total rate of offendingand the proportion of recorded offences that are resolved have changed since 1970.The report also describes changes in offence rates for particular types of crimebetween 1996 and 2005.Building on previous crime trend reports produced by Statistics New Zealand, thisreport complements both the New Zealand Police annual crime statistics reports andthe Ministry of Justice's annual reports on conviction and sentencing of offenders.

Violent crime
Although violent crime has traditionally aroused the most public concern and comment, it constitutes only approximately 10 percent of all recorded offences. While the media attention given to violent crime may be out of proportion in terms of its contribution to overall crime levels, the effect of violent crime on the victims and the general public's perception of community safety contributes to its high profile.

shows that serious assaults, minor assaults and intimidation or threats together account for about 88 percent of all violent crime. Over the period 1994 to 2000, the contribution of serious and minor assaults to the total number of recorded violent crimes fell, while all other classes of violent crime increased to varying degrees. Owing to the small number of homicides, kidnapping and abductions, and group assemblies, these crimes have been combined into the 'other' category in figures 10 and 11.

There was little change in the offence rates for all classes of violent crime between 1994 and 2000. The largest overall change occurred in the serious assaults class of offence. The rate for this class decreased from 4.2 to 3.5 offences per 1,000 population in 1998 before increasing slightly to 3.7 offences per 1,000 population in 2000. More than half of all serious assaults were assaults by males on females. The police practice of arresting perpetrators of family violence, developed since the late 1980s, is likely to have had an effect on the number of recorded assaults by male on female. The second most common type of serious assault was miscellaneous common assaults, 20 to 30 percent of all serious assaults were classified as miscellaneous common assaults between 1994 and 2000. There was also a small rise in the offence rate for intimidation or threats over the period.

The resolution rates for all classes of violent offences remained steady from 1994 to 2000. Robbery offences had a resolution rate of about 35 percent over the period. The resolution rates for the other classes were all between 68 percent and 83 percent.
Homicides rate high in the public's concern about violent crime, but such crimes made up less than 0.4 percent of all violent crimes recorded between 1994 and 2000. The low numbers of homicide offences recorded make it impossible to identify any trends in the offence rates for any types of homicide over the period. Between 1994 and 2000, the number of recorded murders ranged from 40 to 66 per year, attempted murders (31 to 61), manslaughters (8 to 23), infanticide (0 to 2), abortion-related offences (1 to 6) and aiding suicide and pact (0 to 7).