One thing children who get murdered never seem short of is names. The latest example is Catalya Remana Tangimetua Pepene, the four-year-old Kaikohe child who recently met a violent death. Late 2023 it was Taita toddler, Ruthless-Empire Souljah Reign Rhind Shephard Wall. Or in 2016, 14 week-old Richard Royal Orif Takahi Winiata Uddin. Examples abound.
What they were definitely short of is love and care. That is what lies at the heart of New Zealand's high rate of child abuse and neglect. Not material poverty. Not a lack of money.
It's a fact ex Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern either willfully or naively chose to ignore. Her solution to the plight of too many suffering children was greater wealth redistribution. Inventing new payments for families with babies, lifting benefit rates and installing families in motels were three major policies designed to alleviate poverty. But the mayhem goes on. The Salvation Army Social Policy Unit recently summarised the trend:
"Violence against children is increasing. The number of children admitted to hospital with injuries because of assault, abuse or neglect increased sharply in 2024 to the highest number in at least a decade. Violent offending against children also continued to increase and was at levels much higher than five years ago."
In her heart Ardern must surely understand that what every child needs, above anything else, is at least one dedicated parent or caregiver who puts their child first every time. Who puts the child's needs above their own. As a mother, it must be obvious to her.
No New Zealand child is at risk of death from war, widespread disease or starvation. With the kind of extensive social system provided by charities, non-govt agencies and the state, a child death should be rare.
So we come back to the question of why do these children - only the tip of the maltreatment iceberg - die?
Because nobody has been their determined stalwart. Their uncompromising champion and defender.
Throwing money at people who become parents willy-nilly, who lack any financial or emotional wherewithal, who can't look after themselves let alone a demanding, time-intensive baby, is nothing more than a salve to the conscience of people who have misdiagnosed the problem. Led by the likes of Jacinda Ardern.
This is what Ardern's famous form of kindness and compassion actually looks like. Lecturing well-heeled members of society about how they need to walk a mile in the shoes of the poor and down-trodden, and graciously stump up tax for her to apply bigger and better band-aids on a suppurating sore.
It's no coincidence that these children often come out of communities where addiction, and the associated violence, is rife. Only the addict thinks the solution to his or her problem is more money.
I would never question Ardern's deep love for her own child. What I would ask is why does she think she can persuade other parents to care in the same fashion and to the same degree simply by putting more money in their bank accounts every week?
Poor families throughout the country do a fine job by their children in spite of their low incomes. Unskilled immigrants, refugees, those who have seen real poverty make their children the very centre of all they do. They care for them and are ambitious for them.
They don't load them up with meaningless, social-media inspired monikers which do nothing but reflect the immature fantasy worlds their parents inhabit.
So while we endure the massive media-hype around Ardern's biography, and most detractors focus on her horribly hypocritical claim to a compassion-driven Covid response, remember, her main reason for entering politics was to help children.
Not only did she fail, but she may have made matters worse.
5 comments:
Absolutely spot on.
Absolutely spot on. See also FB page Fake News and the NZ Herald.
She was no Trotsky, Mao or Castro, like some of her most vehement detractors would have us think. But the outcomes of her naive best intentions, caused plenty of harm none the less.
The New Zealand she left behind was a much poorer much less safe Aotearoa. Ironic for some, totally predictable for anyone who is awake to her brand of virtue signalling illogical politics.
That kind of childish imagination, firstly of a cause, then a cure to that cause, that inflicts her kind of comfortable middle age types with their self imposed guilt that led to the most absurd of outcomes. It's pure arrogance that presupposes that everyone thinks like they. If only it not for "the man" exploiting them or their parents, they too would make considered sensible decisions and not live in a swamp of dysfunction making abysmal decision after idiotic decision. If only they had money, like Jacinda, then they'd live their best lives. The truth is these persons who you rightly identify, cannot even remotely manage their own pathetic lives. More money meant more harm.
Each dollar given away by her only tightened the noose around their necks to take away whatever flicker of self determination and drive they might just have had.
She will go down as a very memorable PM, and one for all the wrong reasons. A leader who hopelessly made things much worse with kindness, proving that the results of despots and saints are hard to tell apart.
And like some of histories most infamous leaders, she now lives in exile, well away from the mess she helped create!
She only failed if you think she or any politician actually stand for anything other than their own self interest.
I don't. She was never out to 'save the children' any more than Grant Robertson was there to care for the finances. They're there to pillage everything they can take and let no crisis go to waste. To make changes that help their side and hurt their competitors; And make "change that sticks."
I agree. To me, her, Hipkins and Robertson, all career politicians, were in it to win the game. Hence they were never over any detail, only the superficial, enough to score and then move on to the next cause.
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