Today's Dominion Post editorial is about the Kahui twins and the Kahui family. It runs through the all too familiar list of high-profile child murders and concludes;
Many of their cases have common features: alcohol and drug abuse, lifestyles fuelled by crime and benefits, mothers with children to different fathers, delays in seeking medical help and a refusal to cooperate with police once a crime has been discovered. Many, too, occurred within Maori families.
Maori are not alone in abusing their children. Every culture has its dirty secrets, but there is no escaping the fact that Maori children are disproportionately represented among the victims.
Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples says this is because Maori are over-represented in poverty-stricken and under-achieving communities.
He may be right, but that is an explanation, not a solution. The killing will not stop till relatives and neighbours of mistreated children recognise that they owe their loyalty to society's most vulnerable members, not to those who abuse them.
Again this misses the hub of the matter. Again we are seeing the responsibility shifted to people other than the mother and father. The killing will not stop until those individuals bringing babies into the world make a commitment to them. But too often they are too young themselves; too consumed with having a good time whether that's getting on the piss, partying, taking off to play the pokies, smoking P. It's all about escaping life and responsibility. What is the reward for behaving any differently? Loneliness (a baby isn't much company), ostracism (you can't hold your piss) hostility (you're a nark).
It is no good appealing to the cuzzies when it is quite likely they are the source of malevolent 'peer pressure'. Where the whanau is any good the babies have long gone usually to grandma.
It takes an incredibly strong individual to raise a child well in this sort of environment and the fact is there just aren't that many to be found. Lifestyle welfare has created a feckless and inhospitable setting for children. Caring 'relatives and neighbours' can't compete with it.
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3 comments:
Which is why we need a family responsibility bill
We really have no idea how far to the left NZ has gone.
If the twins had been workers or customers in a company, NZ's crazy nanny-state health and safety laws would mean that the managers of the company would have been criminally liable for murder and they would have been jailed for it: the standards and responsibilities are absolutely clear!
This is yet another example of state interference and pointless red tape - customers and workers are adults, choose to work, choose to take the risks, and are paid a salary.
But the twins are not adults, they are children, they don't choose their parents, don't choose the risks, and receive no advantage for the upbringing (at least if they survive to turn 18 when they get paid by the government for being "disadvantaged" for the rest of their lives).
Corporate nannyism, OHS RMA etc should just be abolished
But the same standards need to be introduced for family responsibility. Your kids die when you're looking after them? You're guilty by definition: go to jail. Your kids don't behave, tag, beat people up, happy slap? you're guilty by definition: go to jail. Your kids can't pay for their school fees or drugs or are bludging. Your responsibility!
We don't need another law! What we need is to stop giving these guys a free ride. Don't pay them to have babies, don't pay for their idle life-style and charge and punish them for breaking the law and drugging. There are enough laws to do this.
In the long term we will be doing them a favour.
And it is time to get rid of the white man's burden, of guilt about darker races. They are just as capable - although less willing in the face of all they can get for nothing.
Hello ... I worked in the then Valuation Dept (Now Quotable Value)
from 1959 to about 1981. During this period thousands of poor people got into a State House. I put many of the subdivisons on the Valuation Dept plans helped by a Valuer. He turned to me one day and said "Ted ... This will create a breeding ground for crime."
How true this turned out to be. I am not putting the State Tenants down merely recording what happened.
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