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.

A meaty subject

One of our news channels this morning was bemoaning the fact that a staple of New Zealand, ye old leg of lamb, is fast becoming a thing of the past. In fact, most lamb dishes are vanishing off the menu of all but the five star restaurants.
My mother, a thrifty pensioner as so many of her generation learned to be, says she doesn't eat much meat any more. "Too bloody expensive" she says.

So, why is it that lamb costs so much?  The comments of the news story showed the most expected to pay, when it wasn't on special, between $40 and $60 per small leg.

Figure.nz says there were 19,451,000 lambs slaughtered full stop in New Zealand  in 2017 and just under 3,700,000 adult sheep (hogget, mutton etc). We've gone down from a population high of 70 million sheep in New Zealand in the 1980's, to around 30 million in today's population. Forget the export numbers of live sheep - these are very small beans compared to our exportation of chicken (by far the most), beef and surprisingly, bees.

It's accepted sheep farmers don't make as much money as beef and dairy farmers do. Yet, you have to ask why that is?
Wool isn't as popular as it once was, given the huge steps forward in technology for producing cheap man-made materials ranging from clothing to carpets.
So... what's happening to the other sheep? Farmers don't get a huge payout per lamb, stable on average at around $87 each, although that's better than it has been in other decades.
I, like many others, grew up being able to pick up a half side of mutton for around $25. It was what you did - getting three good roasts, neck chops, shoulder chops and a "colonial goose" roast which was rolled flap with stuffing made to go inside before  using the butchers string to tightly hold it all together. You could also get or buy, the 'poor man's roast' in the lamb shanks. Yes you had to process it yourself, but that was accepted.
For those, like my mother, who grew up knowing how to bone out a sheep carcass and have less than an icecream container of waste,  and myself, who learned her skills, it was a very staple part of the diet.
Yet today, those mutton carcasses every supermarket and butcher used to have are gone completely. You just don't see them now.
What you do still see is the disgusting trend of crumbing old mutton, effectively hiding the sinews and ligaments of sheep that is butchered while not in the best condition. You'll see neck chops if you are lucky.

If you want to know what's happened to the rest of the cuts and the lamb/sheep you need to go to the fancy aisles and you need to have a finger on the Master Chef cooking shows and all the other of the same ilk that have changed the way we use the meats. Lamb racks, shanks (of all things!) roasts neatly (and in most cases, lets get two out of the one rear), boned out and "butterflied". And you are indeed paying through the nose for this. The point remains however, that it is still cheaper to buy New Zealand lamb in Europe than it is to buy it here. Think about that for a minute. It has to be slaughtered to a strict code (after having been selected for its exportability), processed, packaged, pass all the export/import systems and then be onsold to a variety of wholesalers before it arrives - cheaper than NZ - on the shelves of our northern lamb eaters.

Perhaps it's time we had a real inquiry as to why all of the many foods we process, from meats to dairy products, fruit and vegetables (because make no mistake, the export market gets the best) are sold to us at prices that are exorbitant and usually for seconds. We have a huge problem of obesity and its subsequent problems because too many of our lower income people find it cheaper to feed an entire family on takeaways than they do a healthy meals of meat and three veg.

I also believe quite firmly that the voracious maw of supermarkets, which has seen the demise of many family butchers, is partly to blame for this. They will buy at a bulk, low rate - but to make the required profit, they'll charge their customers like a herd of wounded bulls.

We eat very well in our above average income household. But even I baulk at the cost of a leg of lamb, which all too often these days is more than 5% of the average Joe Bloggs take home pay.

The freedom to camp - or not.

Freedom camping; there is nothing more polarising when it comes to communities than this one subject. And it's not surprising, given that tourism is the number one money spinner in the country these days and that more kiwis than ever before are taking to our wonderful countryside both as a way of life and, as the traditional beach bach is now out of most people's reach unless inherited, because a caravan/camper is cheaper.

Before we look into what Kelvin Davis and the 32 mayors of New Zealand had to say about it yesterday, let's look at what freedom camping actually means.
Simply put, it's the ability to park your camper anywhere that isn't a paying camp. Whether for the night, or for a couple of weeks, isn't relevant. What is, is that it is not a piece of land set aside for campers in which they can often be charged exorbitant fees. People want to park in bays and inlets and any area close to the beach or lake or river. That's what it is all about. They want the view and for many, who are on a budget, spending upwards of $120 a night for a family is money that can be better spent on sightseeing or whatever it is they want to do.

There are four separate big issues about this now and each of them is no better or worse, than any other the others.
1. Many councils have sold off holiday parks to make money to do other things. So, there is much less to choose from and the only option these days is the privately owned camps many of which do charge like wounded bulls. And I can speak on this, having owned a camp; I know what it costs to run one. There are also many, like us, who don't want to be sardine-canned into a camp; hearing your neighbour snore isn't part of the holiday itinerary.

2. Ratepayers are annoyed about having to pay for the clean up of what they perceive to be freedom campers. Now let's pull this one apart as it needs to be. In our travels, some of the biggest culprits of the poop-in--the park brigade are the day trippers. They are out there for a fish, for a swim, or for a day at the beach. But.... there are no toilets and often no rubbish bins. So what happens? They leave a large amount of evidence behind them, often in the mistaken belief that "it's only me, no-one is going to know". Wrong. We all do. Many campers, ourselves included, work on the basis that you leave nothing behind but your footprints and I have lost count of the times we, and people we know, pick up after this group. Secondly - ratepayers get it wrong when they think freedom campers don't spend money. They do. Diesel, food, alcohol, sightseeing, mementoes.. the list goes on. They help with the local economy and ratepayers do need to be forcibly reminded of this. There literally is no such thing as a free lunch.

3. and perhaps most importantly, councils are simply not putting in place the infrastructure that is required at popular spots. Toilets (even compostable ones), and rubbish bins are an absolute must at any area where people can physically park a vehicle. No excuses, Mr/Ms Mayor/CEO. This is one of the single biggest problems that is occurring and with the change to more centralised councils, the problem is that they only want to use the rates money within the town on new arts centres, sports dromes etc etc. This is not best practice when you are also touting your area - which you are ALL allocated money for in terms of tourism needs by the government - you have assets like beaches and lakes and rivers, then  put in the necessary infrastructure and pay to have it regularly maintained.

4. Like it or not, we have a subsection of overseas campers who use the small slider vans or cars and of which there are two nationalities that, in our experience, are by far the worst culprits - they want to see our pristine environment, but simply aren't interested in being part of keeping it that way.

So - how do we sort this out? There are two further things that must be considered. Given New Zealand's current housing crisis, which shows no sign of abating and to be brutally frank, isn't likely to; the requirements to ease it simply are not being addressed correctly, more and more people are taking to the road in campers, house buses, slider vans and even just cars. They have to stay somewhere. New Zealand's aging population is such that in the Bay of Plenty alone for example, more than 18,000 of those over the age of 60 are living on the road. By choice, it must be said and a fair percentage of those do have home bases. But think about that figure in just one region. How many others are there exactly? The NZMCA is a very strong lobbying group and one with a very large membership. But if you are on the social media pages, you'll see there is an even larger group who choose not to be affiliated with them.

One thing I do know, these groups, affiliated or not, have to have their say - and they have to be able to prove that the points I've made above are salient ones that need to be taken into account.
My own observation is simple. Give kiwis a separate permit to be self contained travellers who can stay where they want to, even if only for the night in some areas.

Make sure the self containment certificates are not given willy-nilly to cars masquerading as campers. They do need to be in designated camping areas. All councils need to have set areas for freedom camping that have toilets, bins and paid showers - every single one needs to have at least one and areas that can take a combined total of 200 in large areas, especially in popular areas such as Queenstown, Bay of Plenty etc. Get those same councils to make sure they cater for the day trippers as well with toilets and rubbish bins. The latter two are the big bugbear. They don't need to be - the country needs them as a matter of course.

This is our country and we do have the right to  freedom camp (even if, as some suggest, we need to change that name). It just needs to be a combined effort in putting in the infrastructure, educating non-campers/ratepayers about the direct and indirect positive impacts campers have on their local economy and to acknowledge where the actual problems lie so that the correct course of action can be taken to improve things. Banning it, however, is not one of them.

Housing crisis - putting the blame where it really lies

Landlords everywhere have taken a bit of a hammering lately. Enough that a concerning number have flipped the proverbial bird, sold their portfolios and headed off to sunnier climes.
Others, admittedly, have grinned at the current state of demand exceeding market, adjusted their rentals accordingly and shrugged at the resultant fallout from the average Joe Blogg who hasn't had a decent wage increase since the last upping of the minimum wage. It's about the only thing that hasn't gone up - cauliflowers $10 a head these days thanks to weather?

Either way though, our current housing crisis is not being caused by wages, inclement weather or any other of today's current ills.
The seeds for it were set back in the early 1980's, when both central and local governments decided that the user pays and centralised system was the better way of doing things. Then, that flow hit the Resource Management Act 1991. When those two things came together, the proverbial clang must have deafened those in the hallowed halls of council buildings around the country.

Because what this all did, was two-fold. First of all, it allowed councils to have a backdrop in which to encourage landbanking, while discouraging actual required development. "Looking out for our future generations," they piously uttered. The second thing it allowed them to do was to construct some of the largest fees this country has ever seen - subdivision impact development fees (fair enough, infrastructure has to be taken into account) - but then, there came the Building Impact fees, the Development Impact fees - and of course, this does not include anything at all like the geotechnical report fees, building consent fees etc ad nauseum. And these fees, in most instances, were quite frightening.
In one council area, these fees could reach as high as half of the cost of the actual section - I can't speak for all others, but certainly knew about this one. People already knew that building costs were phenomenal.

What happened was that people began to be concerned and didn't build; they went for the existing homes and in typical kiwi number 8 wire style, became the best renovators on the planet. Developers
had to get their projects sold, so builders came in and built spec houses - which, with the costs, were a lot higher than they should have been. But turnkey is a wonderful thing and so they still kept selling, even if not as fast as they once did.

And that is the crux of the problem. The councils actions everywhere meant that not enough homes have been built in the past 30 years. Quite simply, their inability to see where their actions could take them, have led to this horrendous state of affairs, where we are seriously short of homes to put people into - and taking in tens of thousands of migrants in each year, who are looking for homes that are not there.

To compound matters, first home buyers have been shat on from a great height, both by the Reserve Bank, who is worried that a global economic downturn - which will happen - will see banks completely in oceans of brown stuff if and when interest rates rise, and by successive governments who just cannot see where the problem came from nor how to fix it.

And if that wasn't enough, the meth scourge is biting everybody everywhere and the gravytrainers have found a new source of excellent income - I mean, $1100 plus to test the average 3br home? Are you guys for real? They are and because tenants and potential buyers alike these days MUST have their homes tested - and this is with government testing thresholds that not even chemical scientists can agree are the right ones - it has become an income juggernaut.

So we have landlords whose tenants - as often chosen by property managers as by landlords themselves - who are leaving properties that then need makeovers that are worth up to 20% of the actual house value. Insurers are going "yeah nah" when they can and councils, still borrowing above their eyebrows, have no-one to cap their spending and therefore cap rates at a liveable level. Oh and let's not forget the new rules coming in every year that councils expect everyone to be familiar with. The new Health and Safety website no-one understands, the Building Codes etc etc. Enough so that one landlord was told they had to pay back a tenant their entire rent for a year because of a non-permitted area that actually had no effect whatsoever to the tenant. Thankfully, that has since been overthrown... but there are others.

So... it's messy, there is no solution in sight and the one part of our infrastructure we really need, landlords, are packing up and leaving in their droves, sick of being vilified by this generation of "You owe me and I have rights" tenants.
I can't blame them one iota.

In the interests of justice

TUESDAY, MAY 13, 2008

In the interests of justice

As appearing in The Lakesider, October 2007 issue

By Heather Skelton

When you meet someone who has battled our legal system for 27 of their 40 years, you’d be forgiven for expecting to find they’d be cynical, or embittered or just plain world-weary. Not so in the case of Louise Nicholas, who launched her and co-author Phil Kitchen’s book My Story this week.
This now house-hold name is just a slight woman who looks like she should have been swept away at the first sign of the winds of injustice. Yet straight-backed and clear-eyed as she tells her story, even the most cynical are left with no option but to carefully consider what she is saying.
The events that began back when she was 13 years old have seen her go through several trials, seen what she says is belated justice in some and not in others. Virtually singlehandledly, she’s fought for women to be better respected when it comes to reporting crimes of sexual abuse and either directly or indirectly, been responsible for changes in legislation to ensure that once in a courtroom, that respect continues.
The book, she says, is telling it how it really was and is.
“It started with an article Phil wrote in the Dominion Post in 2004. That’s really where the journey over the last three years has stemmed from.”
“I got asked to write a book and I wanted Phil to be part of that, he’d been familiar with it from the start. Random House agreed to that. It all started from there really.”
Louise says that writing a book wasn’t hard – she’d never done that before, but what she was writing about was something she had lived with for so long that getting it out and onto paper wasn’t the hard deal it might otherwise have been.
“You never forget these things. Sometimes I had a hard time with the actual chronological date times of some things, but the statements that were made at the time that Phil managed to track down certainly helped a lot with that.”
Her reasons for writing the book are simple and expressive.
“The public of New Zealand have a right to know the whole truth. It was really hard during the trial (of Bob Schollum, Brad Shipton and Clint Rickards), there was so much the public – and the jury – didn’t know, with witnesses and evidence being with-held,” she says.
“The media only knew what they were allowed to know and this meant the public only knew what the media did – there were many half truths and at times, the media got it really wrong,” she said.
Louise believes entirely that from a legal perspective it was a sham.
“I’ve been through five trials (often as witnesses for others) since the early 1990’s, two of which were aborted by John Dewar,” she says of the man so recently convicted of attempting to obstruct or defeat the course of justice over his handling of her complaints of historic sexual abuse.
“Then there was the my own trial and I’d come out of that one every day shaking my head at the injustices in our justice system.”
“There’s so much that is “not allowed” to be heard, simply because of a defense lawyer’s successful arguments to a judge. The majority of such decisions are at a judges discretion and some relates to our laws – which are so draconian. Much of this information and evidence that could convict is simply withheld on some technicality.”
The constant high profile of the alleged sexual abuse has meant that people see things differently today than they did three years ago, she says.
“The public are seeing the injustices that were done and are calling for accountability,” she says.
“In all honesty, when I decided in 2004 to come out into the open with Phil Kitchen and that first article, I didn’t go out for two weeks. I was so afraid of what people would think. But then,” she says, “I had to go and do some shopping and you know, it took me two hours. The amount of people who came up to me and hugged me, shook my hand… and said thank you, was just mind blowing to me.”
The reason for those ‘thank you’” took a while to sink in.
“I couldn’t understand it – but now, after years and countless women coming up to me and saying ‘thank you for doing what I never had the courage to do,’ and the amount of people who knew what was going on but could do nothing about it.. it vindicated what I was doing,” she says.
“I had nothing to hide, I put myself and my family out there and I expected some of the flak I got because that’s the way people think sometimes. But I have to say the positives from all over New Zealand have absolutely outweighed the negatives in every area and I have to give a big thank you to the public for their support. Without them, my husband Ross, our parents and daughters, I could never have got this far.”
Louise says she believes people have got sick of the little guy being bullied; they know it goes on, but no-one stands up to fight it – and when they do, the public get in behind.
Looking back on what’s happened, Louise sees a lot of positive events that have occurred – and still are.
“The legislation changes, the others who have taken courage and come forward – and there are so many – the necessary change of police attitudes.” Louise says she simply cannot fault Operation Austins’ police officers, who she said went over and above the call of duty throughout this.
And Louise doesn’t intend to let the fight stop with the publishing of My Story.
“There has to be a change in our laws and justice system, not just for victims but for defendants too,” she says. She passionately wants to see the third option in a trial become reality so that instead of either guilty or not guilty, we also have as the Scottish do, unproven. That way, if other evidence comes to light, someone who has been wrongfully acquitted can be made to stand trial again.
Most importantly, that defense lawyers cannot accuse any victim of some of the names and events that make women of New Zealand so afraid to stand and ask for justice and that if a defendant has a relative previous conviction of a similar nature, that this must be heard in court.
“And for me, the most important aspect is that defendants should not be allowed to hide behind their lawyers – that they must take the stand and I’ll be fighting all the way to see these things happen,” she says.
As for the book, it’s got it all she says. Things that were never allowed to be said or shown in the courtrooms, the truth she’s been wanting to have heard all these years.
Whatever I say in this, Phil has been able to back up with facts – and that’s what’s important,’ she says.

Canning fast food near schools?

MONDAY, JANUARY 24, 2011

Canning fast food near schools?

I know we are at a stage whereby the rules and regulations have to be adapted or employed every five minutes to cope with the ever increasing population.

But just because the same population is increasing girth-wise as well as number-wise, shouldn’t mean that we’ve all lost our marbles in combatting the problem of obesity of kids.

The story here: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/4575807/Call-to-restrict-junk-food-sale-near-schools relates to a call from the Secondary Schools Principals Assn to restrict the hours in which dairies and the like can sell certain foods during certain hours. Now, excuse me – but that is going to achieve what, exactly? And who is any school to dictate to a business owner selling legal goods when they can sell those very same legal goods?

What our children are fed is not the responsibility of either the school or the dairy owner. It is quite simply the responsibility of the parents who are too damned lazy to make their kids lunch, or provide for them the healthy ingredients to make their own – and of government agencies who continually allow over-processed-to-the-point-of-zero-nutrition foods to be sold at all.

These days, who knows what is ‘healthy’ and what is not? I nearly fell over the other day to find out that the bagged salads I sometimes use when my own garden is in hiatus, in actual fact are bathed in a chlorine-based solution. To ensure it lasts, this highly posionous crap is happily slathered around on food I thought was ‘healthy”.

And I am concerned with what I eat. I can never eat avocados grown here in NZ – the only anser to a dreadful allergy I have to them is that we are one of the few countries who use the highly poisonous Hicane. Australia is no problem, I can eat those when there. But not even a lick from an avocado here without resulting in being a screaming heap on the floor in less than 20 minutes.

Many of us have allergies – and many are those from foods that never affected us before. So how much of what is put into or onto these ‘healthy’ foods is actually toxic to us in the long run? It’s not that many years ago that such things were not in practise – so who is toting up the longterm health costs? Smoking lobbyists would have us believe that these days, third-hand smoking is the reason one in three of us get cancer. Poppycock. A leading cancer specialist told me that over a third of all 360-plus cancers are caused by what we eat. Now, where are the lobbyists for that? Do I even hear of anyone in the media bringing this terrible statistic up for a look at the daylight? Nope.

I don’t disagree that there is way too much poor nutrutional standards in the food available out there. Every day at our local dairy, which services four schools within walking distance, you will see not only kids, but mothers with the pursestrings come in and buy ready-made packs of chips, softdrink, crackers and cheese (made in China) or pies to start them off on their daily learning curve.

My kids got sent to school with yoghurt, sandwiches and fruit. Simple, yet healthy. Two minutes to make. So what is it with today’s mothers/caregivers? I worked throughout my kids schooling years and some of the hours I worked weren’t pretty. But they always got fed and got fed well.

I’m not going to buy chips or ready-made packs; I have no need for them. But I dislike intensely someone telling me I can’t buy them because Big Brother has decided they are not good for kids to eat. Of course they are not – but pull the parents up by the short and curlies, not the rest of us.

What are police up to?

MONDAY, JANUARY 24, 2011

What are police doing?

I had to deal with a very irate 30 year old daughter last week. She lives with her aunt in a not so good area of Rotorua and over the past two months, her car has been broken into twice and my sister’s home burgled and ransacked to the tune of in excess of $20,000 of goods and damage.

Once again last week, the number one daughter’s car was broken into and a ring she had in the glove box was taken. I spoke to a friend of mine who is involved in a civilian manner with the local police. It turns out there has been a huge increase in burglaries in the area, some 15 had been reported in the past two weeks. Yet my sister – who had someone closeby do a fair bit of digging and who found the names of the alleged toe-rags my daughter had interrupted during the house burglary and who had furnished police with the names – has heard nothing at all from the police about it. Nor has she heard anything from Victim Support, whom the police are supposed to pass on these kinds of things to. And this despite being front page news in the local daily paper for the burglary and page four on Saturday where the family spoke of feeling like they were being hounded out of the city. And even with that report I had to question the journalist’s line of thinking – there was not one comment from a senior police officer as to what the police were actually doing about the problem.

So – where are the police here? Where is the community constable even? Where is anyone from the force trying to track down the maggots responsible for this huge increase and to get around the small community and pick up the ante in encouraging people to keep an eye on each other’s homes and to let them know that many of these burglaries are happening in daylight hours? Police have descriptions – even the group offenders dog has been described. Yet not one of the three people I have spoken to whom this has affected in the past fortnight have seen or heard from police since the initial event. And not one of these people has had a call from Victim Support.

One wonders whether or not the fact that many of these people live in a low socio-economic area has a bearing on whether or not police place any importance on attending ‘routine’ events. I don’t buy that as being a good enough reason. If it was happening in Lynmore, Springfield or Baxendale, police would be in like Flynn – because these residents would be dancing up and down about it.

We’ve had no murders here in the past month. We would have had a number of family violence assaults, because Rotorua features highly in those stats – but the lines of investigation for those should be easily sorted within a week.

So…. what on earth are our local police up to?

Lessons not learned from previous SOE sales

SUNDAY, JANUARY 30, 2011

Lessons not learned from previous SOE sales

The news that National is seriously considering selling up to 49 percent of shares in our state-owned enterprises shouldn't have come as any surprise. It's what this political party does, after all. But I have to shake my head at the sheer short-sightedness of such an action.

When Muldoon started off on his megalomaniacal Think Big projects, our national debt ballooned out to considerably more than it is even today. It left David Lange and Roger Douglas coming into power as the Labour government in the unenviable position where the country was days away from bankruptcy. They had no option but to sell off some of the family silverware and I remember as a young voter, hearing Roger Douglas' words, "This is going to hurt." It did too; we'd just got over a two year forced freeze in wages and rental costs for a property we owned - had gone to Aussie to try and make a way for our then young family that was not happening here at the time. Coming back four years later, New Zealand was still feeling the devastating results of a finance minister who should never have been allowed to become Prime Minister in Muldoon.

So, SOE's were sold because they had to be. Since that time, the privatisation of three examples of what were sold has been a picture of a telling failure. The Bank of New Zealand had to be bailed out hugely. Telecom took its jobs offshore and happily let go of the reputation it had built up as being the most progressive and technologically advanced telecommunications firm in the world. New Zealand Railways... well, what worked well back then is still hobbling along on crutches today.

How hard is it for people in government to understand the primary basics of SOE's? The bottom line is they provide jobs - which injects money into the local economy. This, along with the company tax rate, provides taxation for the government to include in their budget. So if you sell these things off, what happens? The profits go overseas instead of being set into the government coffers. Then the powers that be decide they need a much bigger pay increase, so to offset that, they take the vast percentage of jobs, as in Telecom's call centre, offshore to where what's little better than slave labour costs a damned sight less. So, not only do profits go offshore, the economy drops because jobs have been lost, the taxation drops because the money is no longer here - yet Government expenditure goes up because, strangely enough, we now have more people without work.

What happens then is that other employers look at the large pool of unemployed we now have and know perfectly well they can keep wages down because demand is far exceeding supply. And our politicians say they want to see a wage parity with Australia? How do they think that is going to happen is they keep doing things like this?

To me, all this is basic Household Budget 101. Selling off our SOE's should never happen and the reasons for it are glaringly obvious.

Instead of continuing to borrow $250 million a week as they currently are - and selling our SOE's isn't going to change that, but it will drop our international credit rating because we no longer have the assets to back it up - they need to seriously look at changing the way we spend money. The welfare system needs a major overhaul; we are one of the few countries in the world that actively encourages a paid baby-factory mentality.

I'll be blogging on the subject shortly, but suffice to say, it shouldn't take a committee years to work out how to change the system so that money is saved and those savings spent where they should be.

All I can say is John Key is an ex-banker. That should have alerted voters to what was possible way back then.

Insurers ripping off victims

MONDAY, JANUARY 31, 2011

Insurers ripping off victims

I couldn't believe it when I read this in the news yesterday http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/4601859/Quake-hit-home-insurance-rip-off. If it isn't bad enough that some 3000 homes in Christchurch are in for the skittle as far as being unrepairable are concerned - but it seems the victims insurance companies what them to continue paying the previous premiums - and in at least one known case, they've increased. Excuuuuse me?

When insuring something, you have a couple of choices. You either insure it for the market value at the time, or insure it for full replacement value. In the former instance, that's what you think the market thinks it's worth - and usually less if the insurance companies have to pay out. In the latter, you do get replacement value - but in terms of a home, I know we'd get something built to the 130sqm home we have today - but certainly not using the beautiful rimu and matai timbers this solid house was created from. No insurance company is going to pay to source that, so the 'replacement' is an anomaly anyway.

To tell anyone that their property insurance has to stay the same or increase after such as event as the November 'quakes is not only ludicrous, it's absolutely unethical. To be blunt, it's sheer theft.

I do not believe for a minute that no-one who has been faced with this has not said to their insurers, "Look, I insured my home for the value of x amount of dollars. It's now not worth a quarter of that, so I need to adjust the premiums to reflect what it is now worth." Just in case, of course, the fence does happen to fall onto the neighbours place and cause damage as some pea-brain from IAG was quoted as saying. These days, the cost of the excess would be more than the cost to repair the fence, so using it as an example was more than a bit precious.

For those homes that were crumpled to non-entry status, what is the point of continuing to insure it? It is not useable for the purpose for which it was built, it has to be demolished - and any materials from it do belong to the insurance company, not to the owner, same as a written off or pinched car. Land doesn't need insuring - it either is there, or it is not. And if not, well, the EQC supposedly look after that.

So what bright spark with a criminal mind came up with this idea? Whoever it was, I've got one thing to say... are you sleeping well at night?

A racist slap on Waitangi Day

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2011

A racist slap on Waitangi Day

I was absolutely incensed to read the news that if you are representing non-Maori media and expect to get onto Te Tii marae, the 'official home' of the Waitangi Day celebrations, then a payment of $1000 would be demanded. If you refused to pay it, you are to be refused entry.

Just over $270,000 a year is paid to a variety or organisations every year to help hold the celebrations of what is supposedly our national day. Of this, more than $180,000 is paid to the Waitangi area and $140,000 of that directly to the marae trust to do this. That is taxpayers money. All taxpayers of New Zealand, including the media. So how dare the Trust spokesperson Hama Apiata tell the media, "You don't pay, you don't get in."

Ngapuhi elder David Rankin has publicly revolted at this - and rightfully so. It is utterly racist. One has to wonder how any government official can accept this by attending the 'celebrations'. What's your take on this John Key? Do you ever hear of media being charged to cover Anzac day celebrations - anywhere?

I find it mindboggling that our country's leader has had nothing to say about this - and doesn't seem to get it, that by attending the event with this tag attached, he is subliminally condoning it.

The statement by some that the media are there only to cover the disruptions doesn't cut the mustard with me either. The media cover what happens. If the Maori radicals of this world choose to use the marae as a way to circumvent the system - one that is working and has been for some decades now - then who is to blame for that? Clean up the actions of some of your troublesome iwi, Mr Apiata. The whole day is supposedly about manaaki, the ability to welcome onto a marae all visitors. Not ever to blatantly exercise racism to this extent. Me, I'm only one - and of the iwi Ngapuhi at that - but I WILL distance myself from this by simply not watching any broadcast from media at the marae.

And that brings us to the next step. We've listened and watched last week as our neighbours over the ditch joyfully celebrated their Australia Day. I lived over there for seven years and if I know one thing, boy do those patriotic Aussies know how to throw a national party.

Yet we don't here. Many people tend these days to view Anzac day as our national day. It is the one day where we completely unite as a nation and remember how we got to be here and remember those who fought for that right. Isn't that what a national day is supposed to commemorate? It is a day when we can be justifiably proud of who we are, where we've come from, where we are going.

Maybe it's past time we renamed our day New Zealand Day and brought the national celebration of that out of Waitangi to all of the people, not just some. We are a major melting pot these days, but it seems to me that each and every February 6, all we are reminded of is that 14 percent of our population still are not content with what has been achieved in recent times; that the resentment of many of the rest of the population is growing. And that actions like this from the Te Tii Marae only serve to continue the festering.

The UN's condemnation of New Zealand

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2011

The UN's condemnation of New Zealand

So the United Nation’s Committee on the Rights of the Child has condemned New Zealand for its ‘staggering rates’ of child abuse and poverty in its first report since 2003.

I’m somewhat ambivalent about that aspect – while I absolutely agree the two are an issue that should not be possible in the fruit bowl of the South Pacific, one has to wonder what the heck the UNCRC has been doing for the past eight years if New Zealand is the first it’s chosen to train its gunsights on since that time. There are many other countries where children are at far greater risk; England comes instantly to mind with its rampant poverty, the increasing trade in stolen children for pedophile rings etc ad nauseum.

So, one does have to ask as an aside, what was so ‘special’ about New Zealand that in its first report in almost a decade, we’ve got stung. Where we’ve been lambasted for ‘limited access’ to quality pre-school care, the widening disparity between Maori and non-Maori children when it comes to living conditions, health and education and our high teenage birth rates and conversely, suicides.

That aside, it is very true that we have a major problem when it comes to kids who fall into the lower decile socio-economic areas. Each year as our population increases – and much of that increase from these same demographics – we find there are children born into families who not only cannot afford to feed, clothe and educate them, many of those same families have major problems with drugs and alcohol and most disturbingly of all, a repeated intergenerational cycle of extreme violence.

As the last three decades have passed, what I’ve seen is puzzling. We’ve put into place over that time the very processes that have created the problems we have today. We’ve allowed young teenage mothers to get pregnant willy-nilly and to actually pay them to do that, instead of offering the options of family taking care of the child – morals might be better instilled into youngsters if the families knew they had to pay long-term for the lack of them – or adopting out to families who are financially able to take care of a child in all ways that matter for the long term. One cannot use ignorance as an excuse here, the free Family Planning Clinic and high school sex education that have been in existence since the late 1970’s ensure that every physically mature young girl and boy know what it’s all about.

So the baby factory mentality has been well and truly installed.

Then we have the problem of the Children and Young Person’s Act of 1989. What a complete and utter disaster that one single piece of legislation has been, the one that gave kids all rights and no responsibilities – and parents all responsibilities and no rights; this later enlarged to include all teachers, caregivers and any other single thing that would have helped instill respect into these little monsters.

Our youngest generation has grown up with no boundaries and the fallout from that has been of such disastrous proportions that New Zealand is literally caught standing in the middle of the road like a possum in full headlights. Nowhere to go and no way to see ahead. Crime has escalated so far out of proportion it has become the norm, rather than the exception. And the UN thinks to condemn us because we want to lower the age where youngsters can be culpable for our most serious crimes; the ones these kids DO commit? What are we supposed to do with them? Hit them with a wet bus ticket? We do enough of that already.

When we couple all this with the ‘victim’ mentality that has become apparent as a by-product of our policies towards rectifying the problem of Maori grievances are concerned, it’s no wonder that the policy makers have become very quiet as to finding a long term solution to the problems all these things have created, both directly and indirectly.

Even worse, when we look at the way-too-large impact of our continued immigration policies, what hope have our young of finding their way in a society that has no jobs, thanks to the advent of multi-national corporates who take the job opportunities offshore and a lack of tax money to pay for the infrastructure that’s needed. And we wonder why our teenage suicide rates are so high? This, in an active nation that enjoys all manner of outdoor activities that many other countries don’t have access to?

I can’t give answers to the whole problem. But I do have some suggestions.

The first is to restructure the welfare system completely. Ensure that no young unmarried pregnant woman under the age of 21 receives any financial help outside of her medical care. The child born to her must be supported by her and/or its father, or by either’s set of parents or extended family.

Any woman on the DPB who becomes pregnant will not be paid any additional money for the sheer fact of having another child. It’s an unpalatable fact that in doing this for as long as we have, we’ve dumbed down the nation’s IQ. All mothers who fall into this category who are under the age of 25 must attend courses in parenting, family safety and basic housekeeping and cooking skills. Even with the influx in recent years of micro-housing, almost every New Zealander with a family has enough room on their sections to grow their own vegetables. Use a ‘ticket’ method; for those on the DPB or unemployment, the government gives them their benefit by having first taken out the money to pay the rent, utilities and food, with a set allowance available, but not accessible as money, for medical care. That way, the most important aspects are taken care of.

Next, scrap Working for Families and in its place, allow married – either legally or defacto - mothers (or fathers who wish to take on this role) who have had a career up until the time of becoming pregnant the ability to stay at home as a mother and be paid to raise the child until it is ready to go to pre-school at four years of age. The loss of the hearthstone of a mother figure being at home during a child’s formulative years is one of the primary reasons we have so many problems today.

Long term unemployment benenfits have to stop. Once someone has been unemployed for five years, they become virtually unemployable. So anyone who is in that position after two years must be made to work voluntarily – and there are many ways this can be done. Intergenerational unemployment has become a problem that is almost insurmountable. Whether they weed council gardens, work with Aged Concern or their local church is immaterial – work they must.

Absolutely batten down on immigration. Infrastructurally, we cannot afford to continually allow on average, the 100,000 a year we do let in here. I don’t give a tinker’s cuss what protocol we have signed with other nations as to how many we ‘must’ allow in. Charity starts at home and we need to fix up the mess we’ve got ourselves into before we worry about adding to it.

Change the curriculum at secondary education – use the spatial intelligence method and work towards getting young ones into the areas that suit them best, some towards academia, some towards trades, some towards services – this has to start at the time where it is most important. Why we keep trying to fit the square, hexagonal, octagonal pegs that our students are into the one round hole I will never know. And while on the subject of schools – and councils for that matter, I know of only one school in our area that has lots of fruit trees that are designed for the students. We have hungry kids – instead of planting oaks and liquid ambers that are major headaches for the ground staff, why not provide food from Mother Nature? If councils did the same in their many pretty parks and reserves, this would have to help. I cannot understand, why, in these times of increasing poverty, we are asked instead to simply enjoy ornamental fripperies that provide nothing but cost ratepayers an arm and a leg. The same goes for milk – if we have to, bring school milk back in. And that reminds me – someone I know works at a local college. He sees the canteen staff putting food, still in its plastic wraps into the bins at the end of the day. He also sees kids scavenging through those bins, which are supposed to be for the local piggery to pick up. He asked canteen staff why hungry kids couldn’t have the food without having to scrounge for it. The response? They wouldn’t make a profit if they gave it away. When a dollar via a pig farm is more important than a child’s hungry belly, you know there is a problem.

Absolutely create incentives for companies to retain their manufacturing here; it’s not that difficult to do. Company tax of 28 percent if all is processed in New Zealand – 45 percent if any of it is sent off shore for production or services.

When it comes to family violence or sexual abuse, these need to be made major crimes. Lock the perpetrators away, even the first offenders – for long enough so that the children grow without having to witness it, without having to think it’s ‘normal’. So that the many, many millions of dollars spent of medical care, counseling etc etc are lessened because the deterrent is such that any person thinking of raising their fist, or thinking that a physically immature child is prime prey for sex will think again.

To fix all this, there has to be a hardening up of how we do and see things. And until whoever is in government realises this, the problems will only get worse. One wonders at the naivety of the UN at times. Do any of these committee members have kids themselves? Are any truly aware of the ‘warrior’ society our very young country is still in? Most obviously not.