Labour has announced the establishment of a Ministry for Children - if it gets elected. Labour's chances of getting re-elected are small. They are the equivalent of a 20 to 1 shot in a small field. So a comment on this proposal is probably redundant. But what the heck.
It seems traditionally that the left purport to do more and care more for children. They appear to premise this less on the obvious, that children deserve protection from those who break laws intended to protect their safety or well-being, than on the idea that children are a public good. A public investment.
CHILDREN ARE NOT A PUBLIC GOOD. They exist for themselves. They own their own lives. They are not utilities for state investment as potential revenue generators.
Their parents are their temporary guardians and bear temporary responsibility for them (albeit a non-legally binding mutual responsibility lasts between 'real' parents and children across a lifetime).
So NZ does not need a ministry to advocate, or special plead on the behalf of children. To propose as much is more state interventionism, more usurping of the parent's role.
But Labour knows that the mere mention of 'children' evokes a warm fuzzy especially amongst its female voters. Voters who want someone else to make bad stuff go away or at least act like they can and will.
Won't.
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6 comments:
It's based on the principle that the children's parents can't be trusted to do their job - hell, some of them have openly admitted to having smacked their children at some point, so how can a Ministry not be needed to represent the interests of this oppressed minority?
Way better would have been a commitment to simply disband the Families Commission. It didn't need a replacement.
Way better would have been a commitment to simply disband the Families Commission. It didn't need a replacement.
Labour obviously don't expect Chauvel to knock of Dunne, then, do they?
See you just don't get it, do you Lindsay. There is not now, nor has there ever been, a problem (even one caused or invented by politicians) that cannot be solved with more, bigger government.
And anon, can you please choose your phraseology a little more carefully in future? The idea of Charlie Shovel 'knocking off' Dunne-nothing is nightmare-inducing.
Such control freaks. This is an outrageous suggestion, and it will lose Labour more votes then it gains them, I woiuld think.
Unsurping parents', making the word sound dirty. Oh boy, big brother stuff alright.
If not when, and a very big if, at that.
will Labour be putting Peter Davis or David Benson-Pope up for CEO?
I’m expecting the desperate and dateless Labour to announces a Ministry for Cats and Dogs closer to election time.
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