Hard to swallow

The innocent pay while the guilty get it for nothing. What is it?
(hat tip Reason)

'Child ' offending

Ron Mark, responding to criticism over his bill to reduce the age of criminal responsibility;

“The current youth justice system is not working to reduce repeat and serious offending, and all the while those with vested interests within the system ignore its failings and continue to applaud it as a ‘flagship’ and ‘world leading’ system."

I tend to agree with this. While Principal Youth Court Judge Becroft says there are no statistics showing 10-13 year-olds offending is "spiralling out of control", the violent offending of 14-16 year olds is worsening. 13 year-olds don't suddenly become violent when they turn fourteen. And it is very difficult to find justice statistics that show they are a problem when they can't be charged in a criminal court!

Here are apprehension trends (Which Becroft also rejects because they may only be telling us about police resourcing, practices and recording)



On the other hand, I have reservations about lowering the age of criminal responsibility. Sending a child to court (and whatever ensues) can have the opposite of the desired effect and entrench his criminality. It's a debate that never goes away. Whether to be harsh or lenient. And there is no black and white answer because we are dealing with human beings. No two are ever the same.

Bravo Judy Turner

Well said United Future's Judy Turner. I couldn't even be bothered blogging about this silly bunch of meddlers, the National Council of Women. But Judy Turner has given them and the 180 degree party (National) a good burst.

“So a report written by the National Council of Women will tell the United Nations that New Zealand is experiencing ‘marked change for the worse’ for women,” she says.

“What a load of hogwash. This is simply representatives of the women’s industry trying to justify their roles and push for more funding. They argue that sexist jokes are increasingly common, and more needs to be done.

“National had a ‘PC eradicator’ two years ago. Now they are chasing the women’s vote and proposing that the taxpayer fork out to increase the funding given to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to expand their role and mandate.

“I have to say when you look around the world at countries where women are sold and traded like commodities; and rape victims are murdered by their own family in the name of ‘honour’, it’s a little embarrassing that we have a delegation heading to New York to say that sexism is an increasing problem in New Zealand and sexist jokes are common place.”

Bugger the bureacrats

I see Rodney is shaking a few trees. From a speech he delivered in Auckland today;

Since the beginning of time our capital city has resented the fact that, while it is the one busily making the rules, it is Auckland that is making the money. It is Auckland that provides New Zealand with its beating industrial and commercial heart; it is Auckland that keeps the lifeblood of money, trade and commerce pumping through the veins of New Zealand.

Auckland is where the nation's economic might lies - and it is because of this that Wellington has always viewed us with a 'divide and conquer' mentality. United we stand, divided we fall - and with eight councils, seven Mayors and 6,000 bureaucrats there's not a whole lot of standing going on.

In essence, the plan itself is very simple - the best plans always are - set them up to squabble amongst themselves. That way they will never be united enough to demand their fair slice of the national pie - because, God forbid, they might actually get it. Because, shock horror, Auckland might start demanding that Auckland taxes actually be spent on Auckland!

Uh Oh

Just writing out a cheque last night and I thought, there's something vaguely familiar about the date. Is it somebody's birthday? Independence Day maybe? No we've had that. Tax Freedom Day? No. Had that. Did I have a dentist appointment? No. Been and done that. Oh yeah. It's my wedding anniversary. At least this year I remembered on the day. Sometimes it's well past before either of us notice. The last of the great romantics - I don't think so. But hey. At least I am not like that blubbering, noisomely sentimental partner of the Nigerian kidnapee. Thank God he was returned and we won't have to see or hear her again. Yuck.

Blame it on the missus

A new book about evolutionary psychology claims,

Men like Barbie-doll blondes, beautiful people have more daughters and a mid-life crisis is not about a man getting old – it's about his wife getting old.

Having read the article, if you are anything like me you will now be mentally going through a list of anybody you know who has had a mid-life crisis or more daughters than sons to see if the theory fits. Does it?

As I have one son and one daughter I figure I must be both rich and beautiful. That or I am neither. Face facts. It's the second. Perhaps I'll go ring a psychic to reassure me that one day I will be both. I need a new 'addiction'.

"When sex is bad for you"

I disagree with Tapu Misa most of the time but her column in today's NZ Herald strikes a chord. But I don't think the difference between men and women is as black and white as she paints it. Plenty of the male species want more than just casual sex as well. (Watch out for Cactus's post on this one.)
My thirteen year-old asked me the other day, not, where do babies come from (he seems to have cottoned on to that with little input from me) but, why would you want to have sex with someone you didn't know? (This after some media item alluding to prostitution.) Why indeed. A very good question.

Maori-In-Oz

This is an interesting site;

HAERE MAI TO ALL VISITORS! Welcome to the only website of its kind outside of Aotearoa (NZ). MIO (Maori-in-oz.com) has been online since 2004 with approximately 6,273,000 hits to March of this year and now mustering without effort over a million hits every few months! This gives us warranted reasons to move forward with the times as MIO grows from strength to strength.

Most of their news is dominated by Maori Party press releases so I submitted my piece about Hone Harawira's outburst and they have published it. Nearly 100,000 Maori live in Australia - around 15 percent of the Maori population.

In March 2006 there were 389,464 New Zealanders living in Oz and almost one quarter of them are Maori. Next to Poms (at just over 1 million) Kiwis form the next biggest group by country of birth.

Fuel efficiency is dangerous

US research shows that shaving weight off cars to make them more fuel efficient is resulting in many more lost lives. Additionally when drivers can get more miles per gallon they are inclined to drive more thus negating the fuel savings.

Let's hope that the House does not follow the Senate's lead and dramatically raise Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards across the board.

Raising CAFE standards would only accomplish two things: eliminating consumers' freedom of choice concerning the types of vehicles they can drive; and placing drivers at greater risk of serious injury or death in the event of an accident.

None of the senators have ever designed a car and sold it in the marketplace for a profit, yet they see fit to tell the entire automobile industry what is possible.,,,

....The CAFE standard is a morally bankrupt public policy – an experiment that has killed almost as many people as the number of military personnel lost in the Vietnam War. It's time to end, not expand, CAFE.

Rule of thumb. Whenever government seeks to solve a problem it creates another.

Maori Karaoke

According to the Sunday News;

Hardened criminals have been battling their way through winter behind bars by playing violent video games and competing in karaoke gaming competitions on brand new LCD television screens....Other video games available to the inmates included SingStar - where players battle it out in an on-screen karaoke contest.

Singstar?? I can't wait to see these guys singing "Material Girl" and "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go". They'll be practising to go on Homai Te Pakipaki when they get out. Brilliant Friday night TV. Have a few drinks while you watch and join in. Better than being at the pub.

Racist accusations an unfortunate diversion

There are communities in the Far North and on the East Cape where children have never seen their mum or dad - or even their grandparents - working. Demoralisation sets in. These communities are rife with drug-taking, crime, alcoholism, obesity and ill-health. This was what our Prime Minister said in 2004. And has the government done anything about the problem? Apart from the jobs jolt policy preventing the unemployed from moving to these workless towns, no. Neither did that policy prevent parents moving to or growing families in these places.

New Zealand has its parallels with Australia. It is not surprising Helen Clark was reluctant to criticise John Howard's overdue actions in the Northern Territories. Any disapproval would have drawn attention to her own government's inability to protect victims of child abuse.

Hone Harawira's outburst, on the other hand, was a red herring. If he had called Howard a statist or even fascist bastard we might have had the real debate which is about how heavy-handed should a government be in tackling problems that exist throughout society but disproportionately among indigenous, poor communities.

Anyone who listens to Willie Jackson and John Tamihere espousing their paternalistic solutions for Maori communities in south and west Auckland might wonder why Hone hasn't labelled them racist. Jackson and Tamihere want to control the benefits going into dysfunctional Maori families, to link the receipt of welfare money to behaviours they see as desirable - getting the children to school, feeding them properly, not taking drugs and boozing till all hours and not neglecting or abusing their children.

If these two men were Pakeha they would no doubt have also drawn the wrath of Hone and the Maori Party by now. And while their ideas haven't stretched yet to alcohol prohibition it is Hone himself who wants tobacco prohibition. Inasmuch as far more Maori smoke than Pakeha surely this, in Hone's terms, is a racist policy too.

There are Aboriginal leaders who have given qualified support for Howard's national emergency actions. One is Noel Pearson who has worked on the Aboriginal problem for decades and come up with similar solutions as Jackson and Tamihere. Is he a racist too?

So we can see that calling John Howard a racist was a complete waste of time and a unfortunate diversion from the harder question I have already posed.

The problem needs to be split in two. There is a law and order component and there is a social component. Howard has a duty to protect the children who are being illegally abused. This he seems to understand better than his detractors.

But, and this is the thorny but, is suspicion a good enough reason to enforce health checks on all aboriginal children? Because some Aborigines get paralytic drunk should all be stopped from drinking? And worse, with the inevitable criminality that goes with prohibition, will the children end up exposed to even more danger?

Howard is no longer prepared to simply speculate about the answers. He is going to find out. And the ends might eventually justify the means.

Meantime, in New Zealand, with its higher regard for human rights (but lesser regard for stopping crime) thousands of children will go on living perhaps not dissimilar lives to some Aboriginal children. Aboriginal children are four times more likely to be the subject of a finding of abuse (neglect, emotional, physical or sexual in that order) than non-Aboriginal. In New Zealand (when a breakdown was last published ) Maori children were twice as likely as non-Maori children to be victims.

Do we need to think about some short sharp doses of paternalism in this country too? Maybe the Jacksons and Tamiheres have it right. Ultimately people have to learn to stand on their own two feet and take individual responsibility for their actions. But if they won't, not even for the sake of their own children, then there is no other choice but to expect and exercise intervention. We used to talk about "breaking the cycle" but the phrase seems to have faded away as generation after generation has proved stubbornly immune to the efforts of social workers and opportunities presented by a strong economy.

Instead of simply slating Howard, Hone should be watching closely and seeing what can be achieved with this last-resort approach. Aspects of it may be needed here.

Two new paintings

Two paintings about to be entered into the Academy Gallery's Winter Exhibition. Grappling with names for them and pricing.

Greens of a different variety

The German Greens have ideas that only the ACT party would articulate here. The World Socialist Web has published an article about their latest programme here. Sue Bradford would be horrified.

Germany’s Green Party recently agreed to a new economic programme, published under the title “The Green free-market economy.” The programme paper was developed by prominent party figures under the auspices of the party’s parliamentary faction leader Fritz Kuhn, heralding the free market as the guardian angel of the environment—and their own wallets.
“If the state effects social justice all too bureaucratically, then we end up with an expensive and incapacitating welfare state,” the Greens write. “Green politics require an encouraging and enabling state, which does not curb social life but opens it up.”

The source of such reasoning is well known—it stems from the ideology of neo-liberalism. According to this outlook, it is not unemployment that is responsible for the high number of people on social security, but welfare payments that are responsible for the high number of unemployed.

.....If any questions remain about the direction in which the Greens are headed, they are clarified by the chapter on budgetary policy. Here they demand “a rule that ties the permitted [state] expenditures to the development of [state] receipts.” “Such a rule,” they continue, “effectively limits [state] indebtedness.”

Laws strictly linking public expenditure to the levels of state receipts rank among the most effective means of lowering social spending. They practically eliminate the right of parliament to decide on the level of public expenditure and leave fiscal policy to the arbitrary decisions of the state bureaucracy.

Face Off

On NewstalkZB tomorrow after 11am. This week the Face Off panel is United future Leader Peter Dunne, Peter Dunne's youth MP and myself discussing Hone Harawira's comments, Jason Reihana's medical treatment and the blood/alcohol limit for driving. Should be .....interesting:-)

National's next policy?

The UK Conservatives are moving towards policy that favours married couples. According to leader David Cameron (Key will be paying close attention);

"I believe that families matter more than anything else to our society. If we get the family right, we can fix our broken society."

Apparently this is not unilaterally welcomed among Conservative supporters. One comment from the Conservative website goes;

"What a dreadful set of proposals. As soon as governments start interfering with people's private lives (such as marriage or sex) then you know it's all going wrong."

Quite.

A socialist utopia , Jim , but not as we know it

Jim Flynn is defending his reported "eugenicist" comments at the Alliance blog. He puts the arguments from the 'real' eugenicists and his responses. Here is one:

THEM: Poor people have many more unplanned children than the well off. They are evicted, suffer from domestic violence, emotional stress. Their lives are chaotic and they lose control.

ME: Well, let us hope that NZ does something about all of that. Redistribution of wealth would eliminate poverty, free education would lower barriers, 20-hour per week jobs with tenure and good child care facilities would mean career women would be less likely to put off having children. All of those things should be done on their merits - and if done your so-called problem would go away. It has gone away in Socialist countries like Finland.

Finland. Finland has a lower fertility rate then NZ and it's declining.

No domestic violence? From an organisation I am sure Jim would trust, Amnesty International;

Violence against women

Violence against women continued to be widespread. The last extensive study on the issue, conducted in 1998, showed that 40 per cent of women in Finland had been victims of physical or sexual violence or threats of violence by men, and 22 per cent of married women and women cohabiting with men had been victims of physical or sexual violence or threats of violence by their partner. The government failed to follow up effectively on a national project on the prevention of violence against women that was carried out between 1998 and 2002.

Finland's crime rate is only just behind NZ's and their homicide rate is higher.
Another thing Jim doesn't mention is their unemployment rate is almost double NZ's.

I'm sure there are lots of positive things socialists can find to say about Finland but let's not go overboard.

Cow disregards govt advice (see following post)

I couldn't resist this gorgeous photograph.



Waharoa farmer Anne Barbour found it easy to forgive her first calving cow of the season for being a bit shaky on her feet after the mum produced a hat trick of new arrivals.

The dairy cow marked the start of the calving season by delivering heifer triplets unaided in the early hours of Wednesday morning last week.

"It really knocked the stuffing out of her," Mrs Barbour said.

"She was a bit off-colour the day before so we put her in the paddock and she delivered naturally overnight. We just came out in the morning and there they were."

The calves were healthy and would be checked by dairy researcher Dexcel to see whether they were identical triplets and worth including in herd research.

Do they look identical to you?

Two child policy urged

A call for UK families to have no more than two children is perplexing;

Families should restrict themselves to having a maximum of two children to stabilise the effect on the environment of Britain's rapidly growing population, a thinktank warns today.

According to the Optimum Population Trust, Britain's rising birth rate, currently growing at the highest rate for nearly 30 years, should be considered an environmental liability.

The author of the report, John Guillebaud, professor of family planning and reproductive health at University College, London, made the call after figures from the office of national statistics showed 669,531 babies were born in Britain last year, with the UK having the highest teenage pregnancy rate in western Europe.

But according to National Statistics;

In the 1960s there was a more sustained 'baby boom', with births rising to a peak of 1,014,700 in 1964. This was followed by a rapid decline in the numbers of births, reaching a low of 657,000 in 1977. The large numbers of women resulting from the 1960s 'baby boom' contributed to a rise in births in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Subsequently births fell to 669,000 in 2001 and 2002. Since then, with rising fertility rates, births have been rising again. In 2005 there were over 722,500 births in the UK, an increase of 6,600 on the previous year (1 per cent).



From the tone of the report's author you would expect a climbing fertility line. In fact it is fairly flat and there were fewer births in 2006 than in the previous two years.

Also teenage pregnancy is not the same as teenage birth. It is the latter that matters here. But the nuttiest thing is this. Telling women they can only have two children risks a backlash. If every woman produced two children the UK's fertility rate would rise.

Update; A reader has pointed out that the Professor was referring to births in England and Wales. Not the UK. I mistakenly compared the figure he quoted with that of the UK. In fact the fertility rate has risen from 1.8 in 2005 to 1.87 in 2006. The reason I thought the Professor was referring to the UK is his reference to the high UK teenage pregnancy rate. I am still unsure why he threw that in given pregnancy does not equal birth, UK does not equal England and Wales, and the biggest increase in fertility is among women in their 30s and 40s. Perhaps he was selectively quoted.

Look to your own patch

Something for the Maori Party to think about.

The 2005-06 rate of substantiated child abuse and neglect per 1,000 0-16 year-olds in Australia was 7.6 For indigenous children the rate was 29.4 and for 'other' children it was 6.5

The most recent available comparison for NZ is 2003 when the rate for non-Maori was 5.9 and for Maori, 11.9 (The overall rate had climbed to 11.8 in 2006 but no breakdown is published.)

Based on care and protection notifications and subsequent established findings Aboriginal children are 4.5 times more likely to be abused or neglected than non-Aboriginal.

Maori children are twice as likely to be abused or neglected than non-Maori.

There is a job for the Maori Party right here.

Better news from Oz

Australian-based Peter Saunders has launched a new book, The Government Giveth and the Government Taketh Away

"We should be getting away from the idea that whenever we have a problem in life we turn straight to government. It infantilises us and destroys our 'can do' spirit."