..is the title of a Hawkes Bay Today editorial inspired by Judith Collin's constant railing at effect rather than the cause. This is my response;
Dear Editor
'Deadbeat dads' today are largely a product of the state. Having made itself a formidable replacement for fathers, via the justice and welfare systems, the state can hardly be surprised that redundant ones resist further financial responsibility.
MP Judith Collins is aggrieved at the increasing levels of child support debt yet National gave us the iniquitous Child Support Act of 1991 and would have given us the DPB (through a private members bill) if Labour hadn't beaten them to it.
Your editorial acknowledges the displacing role of welfare by referring to the fact that we have "made our bed" with "all-embracing state hand-outs."
If fathers are to be held irrevocably responsible then the state must relinquish its destructive interventionist role. We cannot have it both ways.
General Debate 06 November 2024
46 minutes ago
4 comments:
Well, if they are the products of the state, you’d have to go all the way back to the Destitution Act 1908, because that is the legislation that established a maintenance liability on husbands of deserted wives and fathers of children born outside marriage, not the act that brought in the DPB. And if you read Hanan's speech introducing the Domestic Proceedings Act 1968, you'll find the argumentation for more state support included the fact that many ex-husbands/liable fathers could not or would not pay. So-called "deadbeat dads" were not simply the result of the DPB at all. Time you did some real research, Lindsay!
Read my letter again. I wrote,"'Deadbeat dads' today are largely a product of the state." The words you have ignored are 'today' and 'largely'.
I am well aware that women have long pursued maintenance from liable fathers through the courts. How many maintenance orders were made in 1971, just before the introduction of the DPB? 1,233. Now we have tens of thousands of liable parents assessed for child support.
Anon...you got burrrrrrrnnned!!!!!
Lindsay, you are counting the number of maintenance orders made in a single year, and comparing them to a number that is an accumulation of orders made in each of many years. That greatly exaggerates the change over time.
Also, part of the reason for the large number of defaulters today is that the current child support regime is less coercive than the old court-ordered maintenance system, under which a maintenance defaulter's wages could be docked by court order, or he could be imprisoned for not paying. You are so determined to blame everything on the DPB that you are missing the full picture.
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