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.