Child abuse - time to own up to the issue

Yet another case of severe child abuse on an infant that has much of the country up in arms this week - and yet it has a chilling resemblance to the Kahui twins where nobody saw, heard or said anything and criminally got away with it.
As someone vehemently opposed to the anti-smacking law which was enacted 10 years ago, I now have the facts and figures to back up the point that it just didn't work.
Child abuse has skyrocketed in the past decade. Child Matters believes that one one child every five weeks is killed as a result of domestic abuse. On average, nearly 160,000 reports of child abuse are made to Oranga Tamariki each year, more than 77,000 of which are direct referrals by police - who are, according to stats, reporting to one domestic violence report every seven minutes. And of those, 60% of them include both spouse and children.

Since the introduction of that ill-thought out piece of legislation in 2008, New Zealand domestic violence against children is now one of the highest in the world. It has risen, according to police statistics, 136% for family violence, 43% more for sexual abuse against kids and 45% more against neglect and ill-treatment. There have been 71 deaths of child abuse in the last 10 years. 71. Think about that. And 92% of them had killers that were close to them. It's no wonder the UN condemned New Zealand in 2015, calling us to task. And this is just from police reported figures, which are just the tip of the actual iceberg.

In an international study it was found that one in four girls were sexually abused before they reached the age of 15 and that Maori girls were twice as likely to be in the firing line. This was higher than any other country that was investigated in the study.

Additionally, it was discovered that 83% of male prisoners under the age of 20 had a care and protection record under CYFS/Oranga Tamariki. And if that wasn't enough, 70% of those same young men had endured sexual abuse themselves. Indeed, one in four boys in New Zealand are also sexually abused before they are 20.

There are predictive factors that researchers now know can be found for those most likely (but not all) to be at risk.
They include:

• Having a parent who has already abused a child in the past
• They are a product of an unwanted pregnancy
• Poverty
• They come  from a background of abuse
• A young mother with little support and low or no education
• One or both parents have drug or alchohol addidtion, or mental health issues
• The child lives in an overcrowded home
• Lives in a family with a background of family violence
• Has at least one non-biological adult living in the house
• Can be a sick child with a lot of needs

So what we are seeing here is an absolute flipping of the bird as far as Sue Bradford's rose-coloured non-violence legislation was concerned and really, who would have been surprised?

The short, sad answer is no-one is surprised if they have any real experience of the New Zealand coal-face around them.

We have issues that our changing social engineering is causing; that our cultural structures, on both sides are simply not coping with, or at this stage, able to change. Maori for example, are 14.7 of the population. Yet the domestic and child abuse is more than double the rate for Maori children than it is for all other ethnicities.

My next observation is absolutely not going to win me any friends in a few quarters, but it has to be said.

There is a marked tendency by academics and by activists to state that colonisation is to blame for the huge disparity between the races of New Zealand and Maori when it comes to family and sexual abuse. Along with a few other aspects, such as poverty.

After almost six decades of life as a part Maori who vied with church mice to get fed at times, that's an absolute copout.

If you have an issue, if you are an alcoholic, or a smoker for example, you are the only ones who can fix that and to do that, you have to own the issue. In order for Maori particularly, who seem hellbent on putting the blame anywhere but in our own backyards, to begin to heal and to fix this internationally frowned on rate, we MUST step up to the plate and own the damn thing. Lord Normanby did not hit your child with a piece of wood - you did. Sir George Grey did not get into the pants of your 13 year old niece. You did. Sir Apirana Ngata did not discourage your child from attempting academic excellence. Your apathetic attitude did that. How hard is that to understand?

I look back to my own upbringing here, with a ward state Maori Dad who did love the grog a bit too much and that kept us sharing clothes, shoes and sometimes food for much of our formative years. But he and Mum taught us all how to stand tall, be proud of ourselves, to apply ourselves to be the best we could be and most importantly, that this was a country that allowed you to be anything you wanted to be. We took that to heart, all five of us. And we succeeded because of that parental taught belief.

There are ways I think are the way forward with this and not all of them are palatable. We already know that the loss of the "village raises a child" philosophy has hurt our young ones and by extension, the next generations. So perhaps we need to rethink how our social security actually works. Set up a five year time frame and let everyone know that at the end of that time, any young one having a child under the age of 21 will expect to have their family support them, or put the child up for adoption. That there will be no social security payments. 

By the same token, all teenagers no matter what their social or economic status, must attend a parental course, which every college needs as part of a compulsory curriculum. This teaches the basics in budgeting, relationship skills, cooking, parenting. Everything that is needed. We can't license people to have kids - but we can teach them early what their responsibilities are and what they need to know. There is absolutely no argument that this last generation could never survive if the technological age should suddenly come to a halt. Perhaps we also need to introduce a social study curriculum that looks at human's interactions with one another and educate about what is acceptable and what is not, rather than trying erroneously as always to attempt to place blame, which solves nothing.

There needs to be absolute crushing of any person who is convicted of hurting a child to the point of death or hospitalisation, of being allowed to have any more or be caregivers to the children of others. Absolutely end of story. Putting abused children from one part of the same family to another also doesn't work - where do you think the abusers have had their abuse learned from? All too often the wider family.

The last point I have to make is that the changes that have to be made; the correcting the problem rather than manufacturing ambulances for the bottom of the cliffs, have to apply to all New Zealanders, no what what race, gender, culture etc. The problems are happening here and now - and it is those in the here and now that have to get off their fingerpointing fat asses and start making it happen so that we can show the rest of the world that we can turn things around.

Police pursuits versus entitlement

The picture of a weeping grandmother apologising for her grandson's stupidity during a police pursuit that saw three people killed last week struck a chord for many.
The debate about whether or not New Zealand should follow Queensland's example of not having pursuits generally has been aired again.
In Queensland, we are told, there are 44,000 more people than New Zealand and in 2016, they had just 126 police pursuits and no deaths, compared to our 3323 pursuits and seven deaths.

In New Zealand in the past 10 years, the percentage of drivers refusing to stop has increased more than 500%, yet the percentages of this for Queensland have perhaps conveniently not been gathered or presented, so the yardstick has a proverbial hole in it.
According to police figures in 2010 (I haven't been able to source later ones - except the  percentage of pursuits has risen exponentially since 2014), there were 2195 pursuits, of which 28% were abandoned. One in four resulted in a crash and seven died. This meant that 0.07 drivers caused 4.6% of the year's road toll at a cost of 45 million.

In 2015, harsher penalties to replace the wet bus ticket fines of $200-$300 (maximum being $10,000 but never used) were introduced. From that point on, these idiots would face a minimum of 12 months disqualification, possible confiscation of vehicle and fines. But despite police urging judges haven't been  doing a great deal with the powers they are given in creating a judicial deterrent. One in four drivers facing the court under these charges were likely to get off without penalty in the past 10 years.

The most telling point is the steep increase over the past five years of people failing to stop for police.
Now, while we can all look at the percentages and numbers and cry foul for chasing twats that won't stop, I haven't heard anyone at all asking the most pertinent question. Why? Why will these morons not stop? They know the road rules - even if they don't have a license, they know they have to stop when the flashing lights go on behind them and the police car doesn't seem interested in passing them.

The biggest offenders are males in their 20's and under, although a few females who seem to have strapped on brains at hip point are creeping into the equation.
There are four reasons for why they come to police notice. The first is stolen cars; many of them are and are usually to be used in the future commission of other crimes. The second is speeding - they are already putting the public in danger. The third is driving erratically and the fourth is that is the car is being driven by someone police know to already be disqualified.

So, each and every one of these reasons are reasons for why these people should not be on the road in the first place. People can talk about Queensland's lack of deaths on the road caused by fleeing drivers all they like, but has anyone thought to correlate the amount of kiwis being flung back over the ditch lately from the same place? The point here is that you cannot use the mentality of the young in both of our countries as a common denominator - they are very different culture-wise. We have a lot of disenfranchised young here who believe they have a lot more rights than they actually do and are very quick to try it on from a legal perspective.

How has that happened? There is a whole generation of gravy-trainers out there who are inadvertently teaching their young that they are entitled to free passes to just about everything. We see this on our TV cop programmes, we see it in every day life and for someone like me who has listened to more police scanners through my work than most, I see and hear it all the time.
There is a wide-ranging belief from young ones of all walks of life who have never had to learn respect, to understand that for very action, there is a reaction (and one they have to live with).

To my mind, there is a double edged sword here that needs to be sharpened properly. The first side is judicial. Let's change the wording from police pursuit to fleeing driver and put the blame firmly where it belongs. Judges need to be seen to be using the tools they have at their disposal properly. None of this kowtowing to the millennial belief of self-entitlement as they so often do.

On the other side, AA and its ilk need to back down on their stance about abandoning police pursuits. Our roads are not the same as Queensland's generous, often straight wide open roadways. Their vehicles are not registered in the same manner ours are, (ours making it easier to use cars that should be off the road and that offenders don't care if they get pink stickered). Our roads are more dangerous and we do need to keep idiotic drivers off them. Police need to keep the public safe and this is simply another way in which this has to happen.

Lastly, we need to take some responsibility here. We do need parents putting the fear of God (or whoever else is at hand) into their young when it comes to using the road safely. As villagers, we need to remember it takes one to raise a child - and if the parents can't do it, the rest of us need to have the right to - and step up to the plate. It is most unfortunate that so many parents today are that in name only and have no knowledge of being able to teach respect, teach what is right and what is wrong and most of all, to teach that self-entitlement is a road with a dead end.

Pic 1: Otago Daily Times

How much rent is too much?

There's been a lot in the news lately about the housing crisis, the reasons for which we've looked at earlier in the month.
At the coalface though, the roar against landlords is coming through loud and clear that the rot has filtered far deeper than most of us middle class plebs suspect.
Jacky* has two kids and has recently come out of a relationship. She's looking to work, but in the meantime, she's on the benefit. Of the $700 a week she gets, $400 of that has to be paid on rent for a very basic three bedroomed home that is of 80's fibrolite, cracked tile benches, one small pantry and the whole sandwiched between housing corp homes. That $300 a week has to pay for power, the net, petrol, kids schooling, medical and clothing needs and as always, food.
She never has anything left over, and often doesn't have enough.
Mike and Belle have two kids, both work and they are paying $650 a week for a reasonable three bedroomed home in a good suburb in the same regional city as Jacky. Her entire wage pays the rent, with a little more coming from Mike to cover the shortfall.

In the past, a healthy economy was thought to be where you used 33% of your income on your necessary outgoings. In fact, banks wouldn't loan you money for a house unless you came in under that threshold. Back when I was in my 20's, that was doable. Today, it is so unattainable that the banks have quietly shelved that. But while house prices and rentals have surged ahead in triple figure percentages cost wise, wages absolutely have not, particularly in the regional areas.

How has this happened that in order to put a roof over one's head in the rental market, you absolutely have to have at least one of you working to pay your entire wage on keeping said roof over your head?
Peta and her husband Jack have four kids between them, both were working at the time and paying $500 a week. They had a standard home in one of the major regional cities that they were asked to leave from as the owner wanted it back for Christmas.  When they left at the end of October, they had nowhere to go. Since then, her health has taken a turn for the worse and while waiting for surgery, she has had to give up work. They have lived since then, with their family, on friends couches, garages, tents on front lawns and in March this year, they still cannot afford a home, needing as they do to stay in the area because of a child's special needs.

Then there is May, a 75 year old pensioner who lives in a council allocated flat in a leafy, lovely Waikato town - and which the council now operates on the basis of charging market rental rates. So for her one bedroomed home, she pays $230 a week - and yet receives just under $400 a week. That leaves her just $170 with which to exist. And it is just exist - the 61% of the median wage, which is what pensions are based on, is not keeping up with living costs.

Food and electricity costs have soared in recent years and don't let any politician tell you they haven't.
Some 38 years ago, a truck driver I know was receiving $15 per hour to drive his B-train rig and paying $65 a week in rent for a three bedroomed house. At that time, I was paying $92 a month in mortgage off a $27,500 house in Levin. Our weekly budget for food was $40 a week for the four of us, which included two children and pets.
That same truck driver is receiving $22 a hour these days (and is regarded as a higher paid than usual driver). He was paying, until recently, $520 rent for a home in another regional area.  Our weekly food budget, with just my husband and myself, is around $275 a week these days. Thankfully, we have paid off our mortgage. Yet, economists (a profession I think should be driven off a cliff with the amount of  seriously inaccurate figures they release all the time) believe, for example, that the average annual mean wage in Auckland is just over $81,000 a year. $81,000 a year? I know a lot of people in Auckland and only two would earn more than that. Yet on that basis, they are advising, according to Interest, that in order to bring Auckland rents up to the prices-to-rent-ratio on a par with the rest of the country, landlords would have to increase rents by a third. Good luck with that.

Have a good look at those microcosmic figures though and see the differences. I'm no mathematician, but when you think about the exorbitant price of electricity and the leaps and bounds in increases it has experienced in the past five years on the basis of "Profit! Profit! Profit before all else!", it's amazing we haven't all dropped back to kerosene and candles.

For landlords, it's much harder than renters might think. Yes, there is the absolute issue of lack of houses caused by councils with their landbanking methodology as discussed earlier. But when I read the other day that Tauranga District Council, which was one of the worst offenders with that methodology and then implementing ferocious fees to develop and build, is looking to charge ratepayers a 40% increase over the next three years - my first thought went to how the heck were landlords and subsequently renters going to pay for this? Still known as the 10 dollar city for its employers unwillingness to pay much more than minimum wage, this is an untenable situation. No pun intended.

The Local Government Authority has proven itself over the years to be a complete toothless wonder in its management of councils and their willynilly expenditure which has placed most of them firmly in the red.  Something needs to be done - and believe me, allowing Tauranga to become a super council by swallowing up the more affluent councils of the region would be the biggest mistake ever - and would certainly further impact on landlords and tenants.

The plans by Labour to introduce legislation to stop landlords from being able to evict without due cause is set to come up in parliament this year. I feel ambivalent about that. If I owned a home that was rented out and if circumstances should change so that I should need to move back into it, I'd want that - and why not? It's my home. But as a tenant in an era where homes are so scarce and not looking to improve any time soon, it's a stressful situation to be in and one in which I've unfortunately seen all far too many times the anguish such decisions can and do cause.

Is there an answer? I do know that tenants raging against landlords isn't going to  fix the problem and in fact, will; probably exacerbate it by frightening prospective landlords into investing in other things with less hassle attached.  Yes, there are those who are in it only for the profit and yields; they see it as a business, which of course is how the IRD view it and subsequent taxation from such businesses is as to be expected, not cheap. People cannot afford to buy first homes these days, no matter how many platitudes get thrown at them by various government. It is ludicrously hilarious that Judith Collins is now the National party's spokesperson on Housing - yet in an area where her party either directly caused some of what has become a massive, nation-wide problem, or at the very least totally ignored what was shoved up their left nostrils well before the last election, is hellbent on focusing on Phil Twyford, rather than on coming up with some solutions. And maybe therein lies the answer. A bipartisan approach by all parties to sort this becomes it becomes any worse; before our homeless numbers and our children living in poverty approach figures we simply cannot fix.

There's P in your pantry; a 21st century scourge.

Growing up in New Zealand, the illicit drug of choice was always marijuana. Most people tried it as teenagers and most people also grew out of it once university and OE's were finished and real life was buckled down to. A rite of passage, even if an illegal one. Your family rarely, if ever, knew about it.

But four decades on from my time as a teen of deciding it wasn't for me, there is a new drug that is regarded as the most addictive in the world and has become so prevalent that just about every family in New Zealand is having to deal with the fallout of its use.

Methamphetamine has been around for more than 100 years; created by a Japanese organic scientist. It was used during the second world war (in small doses) for Luftwaffe pilots to keep them alert while on sorties.

With the advent of the internet and the discovery of the recipe in how to make it, early dealers realised there was a packet to be made. At the time, all ingredients were easily accessible and you didn't have to be a scientist to cook it.
It is the one drug that has even the "experts" disagreeing on how wide-spread it is.
The Drug Foundation believes only around 26,000 use it according to government stats.  But the Ministry of Health says, during the same year, that it believes 53,900 were using it in 2009. Meth Xperts say according to their data, 138,000 kiwis are using it.
And the Hamilton Alcohol and Drug Community Support believe the figure is closer to 700,000. If you read many of the social media pages around the country, you'll see there are a lot of drug houses that their local communities are pushing police - often unsuccessfully - to deal with. Last year, there were 3177 convictions - an increase of 22% on the year before.

It is now much easier to get than marijuana and the reasons for that are widespread. It is much easier to make than to grow. And the yields are enormous. Around $300,000-$800,000 per kilogram, broken down into ounces, it's about $5000. From there it is about $100 a point (crystals the size of a fingernail).
And New Zealand is one of the top three countries who pay top dollar for this - which is why, it is believed, the Asian crime bosses focus their attention on getting either the ready made, or the pseudoephedrine, a necessary component, into the country, rather than into other countries. Once here, the gangs and in particular, the Mongrel Mob and Head Hunters, are believed to be the biggest group of cooks and dealers. This is underlined with the fact that when it comes to convictions, over 60% of those are gang members or their prospects. Yet these two gangs also have a rule.  Meth use is prohibited. Think about that one.

We have gone from border control finding just $4.5 million  street value of attempted meth related imports in 2014, to the largest ever haul in one instance in 2016 of $438 million street value of meth. Such is the growing demand.

The social cost these days, of meth use, is around 1.8 billion dollars when it comes to police, courts, prisons etc. Housing New Zealand, in the past year, has spent 5.5 million of our money on meth testing and of the 640 homes tested in the past year, 323 were positive, 278 had to be fully decontaminated and 12 had to be demolished. Yet, it isn't just a lower socio-economic drug. There were 53 properties reported to the Auckland City Council last year to be added to their data base (started in 2005) of meth contaminated properties. Many drug related facilities are working with both middle class and upper class families who have members who are addicts. Young tradies, people involved in sports, particularly horse racing given the work hours required and, while the percentages have leaned toward males being the biggest group, an ever increasing amount of women have also become meth users.

In the past five years 153 kids have been removed from 87 meth labs, according to police stats. Yet CYFS (or whatever they call themselves these days) won't release the statistics of children being removed from meth infected families. These kids, given the drug's libido-enhancing abilities, are at risk according to lawyer Chloe Barker, are at real risk from abuse, which doesn't even touch on the problems causing higher metabolism rates, respiratory, skin and organ failures because children are much more susceptible to absorbing what's going on around them via smoking or manufacturing.

The unbelievable part is, you'll find all the drug help with facilities etc in our main cities. But the regional areas, where this is as rampant as a bull on steroids, there is nothing. No help for addicts, no help for their families. And those involved in rehabilitation have just about become hoarse in the asking for government funded help.
There is no getting away from when someone is on meth. Previously clear skin suddenly develops acne like spotting which escalate to full blown sores when use is heavy.  They grind their teeth, shimmy their legs, can't sit still and their eyes are shifting everywhere. Many have an ever present water bottle, because it does create thirst. Speed up the speech, or see them jumping from one subject to another and perhaps the hardest part, the paranoia and aggression. The illnesses that meth causes are widespread - and so is the crime, ranging from burglaries to fund a habit, to killing or injuring partners and children because of the aggression and paranoia.

The worst part of this drug, and the primary reason for its misuse, is that it is psychologically, rather than physiologically based. At normal heights of pleasure, say, sex for example, the brain releases about 300 a unit of dopamine, the body's own "happy pill". With the use of meth, that's raised to 1000 a unit. And there is a price to pay for that externally created overstimulated euphoria - the user will crash and burn, psychosis is often a product of it. Tests have shown long term users brains look like those with Alzeimhers disease. And like the latter, this is unfixable.

There has been a massive jump in hospital admissions in the past two years, over 51%. New Zealand doesn't yet have the stats for deaths that are meth related, but Australia does and it makes for sobering reading. 43% of them were caused by drug overdoses; 22% by diseases caused by meth use; 18% by suicide linked to meth use, 15% in accidents, usually vehicles and 1.5% killed in drug deals that had gone wrong.

These days, there are few extended families who haven't had someone who is trapped in this insidious addiction. The confusion, the sense of loss, the anguish that such addicts bring to the family table is one of the saddest indictments of the 21st century, where the police can only fight a rear guard action at best, and given their under-resourcing thanks to past governments, do not have the amount of staff required to fight an effective offensive.

Pensive about the pension

Godfather of the user-pays system Gareth Morgan has been chirping recently about introducing means testing for the pension. As he is about to join the august ranks of the time-to-retirees, he tells us he is wealthy enough to not need the pension and as far as he is concerned, there are too many in that position.

Now, lets look at how the government perceives means testing. It comes with two components - financial and asset.You can't split them. So, if a couple bought a property on a dirt road in Papamoa on the beach front for $5000 (pounds back then) in the 1950's and live in it as retirees with just a pension for income, they would have an asset worth say, $2 million in today's times if the section was never subdivided. But - they only have the pension as income. Where does Mr Morgan's lofty ideals leave them then? Absolutely up the creek. Why should they have to sell their long term family home - and these days, at least a quarter of the funds would have to be for another house anyway.
The point is however, they should not have to leave the home they have known for the past 50 or 60 years. Tradition, family, all the things that are important to us as kiwis are tied up in that philosophy.

Let's look at the pension itself. Brought into law in 1898, it was a universal (meaning non-means tested) benefit for those over the age of 65. In 1938, when the Social Security Act came in, it was changed to include means testing between the ages of 60 and 65, where it reverted back to universal.
In 1975, Labour, always thinking ahead, introduced a compulsory retirement scheme whereby everyone put in 4% of their gross wage. Labour lost the election the following year and in 1977, Muldoon axed the scheme and changed the way the pension was paid, so that people received 80% of the average wage. (This was later changed to 65% and then Labour upped it to 66% where it remains today). Between the years of 1993 and 2001, the pensionable age was raised from 61 to 65, where it currently is today.

The Cullen Fund, a colloquial name given to a retirement fund of Labour's then finance minister Dr Michael Cullen, was set up in 2001. Partially pre-funded by the government, it remains today the biggest monetary asset the government has, cushioning us against the global recession in 2009 and having a record return for a fund of its size for 2012 with a 25.8% return.

Kiwisaver was also introduced by Labour in an attempt to help kiwis learn how to save for their retirement, with grumblings from economists of the babyboomers being too many for the country's coffers to cope with when we all started retiring in the millennium and beyond.

When we couple this with the figures that over their working lifetime the average household pays $1.48 million in taxes (figures sourced from the NZ Taxpayers Union), and can virtually claim nothing whatsoever of any value each year from tax returns, we've paid our way to have a universal pension that is not means tested. Indeed, there is a global push these days to provide a universal benefit to everyone, simply because technology is growing to such an extent that working for a living will become a thing of the past for the vast majority within the next 50 years. My point here is, our pensioners have absolutely paid their dues. Their hard work and in many instances their sacrifices,
is what has got us to this point. If we as a wider community cannot look after them - even if they don't need it - then it says an awful lot about how badly our humanity has slipped. As a community should bring up a child, so too should the community succour its elderly.

So why would a man like Gareth Morgan suddenly pipe up and start spouting about means testing the pension? Between the Cullen Fund, for us not-quite-there-yet retirees and Kiwisaver for those in the prime of their life or younger, and then the push for universal benefits for us all, we are all well insulated for our later years.

Perhaps Mr Morgan needs to pick up the spade of retirement and stick to the garden.

Digital addiction: the start of the decline of civilisation?

Everywhere you look today, you'll see people using phones and tablets to the point where they have effectively chosen virtual over reality.
A couple of years ago, we were at dinner with friends in Whakatane when a couple sat next to us and the whole time they were there, he was on his phone. She just sat there, ate her meal and looked dejected the entire time. It was very difficult to sit there and say nothing about the utter rudeness and disrespect he was showing to his dinner partner.

As adults, we can make choices. But our children can't and Sunday on TV 1 last night, aired a piece that looked at what is happening to children who are allowed unrestricted freedom on technological devices. It is very frightening.
Psychologists are now saying that tests are showing children who use these on an unrestricted basis are developing the same brain anomalies as heroin addicts when scanned. And their reactions to having these taken away from them mimics drug withdrawal symptoms.
Furthermore, the behavioural patterns of natural physical play - and learning by doing so - are disappearing. They literally empty their minds to all other than what is directly in front of them, and this was graphically shown by an experiment the producers did on one child who didn't even notice that a man he had never seen before had walked into the lounge of the boy's house and stood there for a few seconds before leaving. The boy simply never saw him.

And if that wasn't enough, their bones and musculature are being forced into positions that are already seeing too many of them at physiotherapists. These children have no interest in going outside the house during leisure time - or doing any leisure activities that do not involve the devices they have access to.  They don't want to play sports; they don't learn the self discipline that comes from that and more importantly, the way the programmes are structured, the ability to solve problems and to expand lateral thinking  that helps children develop their  second and third dimensional ways of thinking, are being removed.

A teacher I know who works in a school that has the "Tomorrow's Schools" theme is reassessing how he feels about it.
"In the beginning, I thought it was a brilliant idea. But now I'm seeing kids who haven't learned to interact well with others, who are socially isolated products of the digital nannies so to speak, who actually aren't learning what they need to in the way they need to that encourages exploration and ways to find solutions. And what's more, this continual accepted use of text speak means that our literacy rates are the worst they have ever been. Where do we draw the line?"

In today's busy times where all adult members of a household have to work, it has become too easy to both push the use of a tablet or phone onto a child, knowing it will keep them quiet. Or, to expose a child very early on to not being taken any notice of because the parent is in exactly the same position - a technology junkie. Infants have been killed by people who didn't want to leave their devices to attend to the child's needs. People have died through blood clots gained from 12 hour or more sessions of gaming.

The logarythmic expansion of technology and how it works for us is such that we simply haven't had the time to see where this might be going. Now we are beginning to have it emphasised that too much of what was thought to be a good thing, could well be the undoing of our civilisation. If we stifle the natural curiosity and the ability to fathom out how and why and when things work; if we continue to allow the mindlessness that such programmes  encourage that in turn stunts the frontal areas of the brain in a physical manner - what makes us different, great as a species will be lost in the very short term. Psychologists are now making the call that parents have to absolutely limit their children's time on these things; one hour a day during the week and two at the weekend.

I'm starting to think that perhaps there needs to be an actual age limit on them. I look around and see family members and friends who have no idea of how unsociable they have become, both with their children and their friends because their use of their devices is such they are like an extension of their hands. And I wonder... where to from here?

NZ - the Aussie-originated penal colony of 2018?

There isn't a week goes by when the national news doesn't gasp over yet another unsavoury character being booted from the young and free (although the fair part is a moot point) country.
Australian politicians  at this point in time, are sailing perilously close to the winds of human rights with their position on chucking out all and sundry when it comes to their laws being broken. And we can all understand that, those of us who are law-abiding citizens, for the most. You can't put a bullet in them, but you can take them by the proverbial ear and send them back from whence they came. Or to Christmas Island.

That a fair few of them are flying feet first back to New Zealand is understandable. But just lately there have been some examples where both we as a nation have to put our hands up and say, "Not our circus, not our monkeys," and ensure our laws can be adjusted to take that stance legally.

The two latest are the cases of Eileen Creamer, a 60 year old South African born woman who was found guilty of defensive homicide in killing her husband in Moe, Victoria in 2008. She is to be released and, we are being told, deported back to New Zealand. Hang on a minute. New Zealand? She spent less than five years here.  One could almost wonder if she and her husband who were married in South Africa in 1997, only came to New Zealand to get a residency to get the foot in the door to Australia. This does happen more than people think. She should be being sent back to South Africa.

The next one this week is teenage killer Amanda Pemberton. She left New Zealand with her parents when she was three years old. She is, to all intents and purposes, a product of the lucky country. After being part of a five-strong pack of feral teenagers who brutally murdered 18 year old Tracey Muzyk in 1996, Pemberton is being released 22 years after being sentenced to life imprisonment and her  reviews comes with a warning that if she doesn't have strong support from our already limping mental health systems, she will remain vulnerable to depression and drug use and be likely to commit small crimes. She is a New Zealander by birth, but she is a product of Australia.