Wednesday, June 21, 2006

the twins parents are fraudsters


I have held off blogging about the deaths of the three month-old twins, until I read that Tony Milne had pretty much said that it was the fault of Section 59 of the Crimes Act, and the centre -right belief system.I won't even bother to destoy the little lad's argument.

What I will say is that too many Maori children are dying while in the supposed care of their parents or caregivers. James Whakaruru, Lillybing, Mereana Edmonds, Tamati Pokaia, and now Chris and Cru Kahui.

Why should the Labour Party's social policies allow for Family Support to be paid to parents who are not supporting their kids? At the very least the Government should require the money - and we are talking thousands of dollars in this case - to be paid back, particularly when the child dies. It is worse than a person collecting a WINZ benefit while working. In this case the two kids who died had severe injuries - one had a broken femur, both had head injuries. The other kids in the family were malnourished and dirty.The place was overcrowded. Neighbours reported loud music at the house often, probably during parties.

Parents who treat their kids like this in their care should be had up for Family Assistance fraud as they are refusing to provide the necessities of life while they shift kids between various members of their whanau. Prior to the twins' death, their mother was out of the house for 12 hours, presumably spending the Family Assistance money.

This is a Maori problem, and a Maori has the job of fixing and minimising these problems.

When a woman gets acquitted in court for smacking her white boy, our Maori Children's Commissioner screams "child abuse" the very next day. When two Maori kids get murdered, our Commissioner refuses to initiate any investigation or even provide a strategy to prevent further similar tragedies. This could be seen as bordering on racial and religious discrimination. Rather than advocating for children, she is putting her efforts into banning smacking of children that are not suffering any abuse.

But she will attack court decisions in public, without mentioning the circumstances, and I will be commenting on this later today
update I cant be botherered commenting on lies and spin by ignorant people like Cindy Kiro and MSD boss Peter Hughes, so I won't. It's been done via other means.

6 comments:

Matt said...

Interesting idea about the benefit, kind of like quality-testing Certainly, a good friend who I've talked about this kind of problem says we need to be harder on people. I'm not quite sure yet of my stand on the issue.

In Tony's defense, it wasn't his link to the twins: it was DPF's. Similar problems yes but link no.

Matt said...

www.kiwiblog.co.nz

Anonymous said...

Its a distressing and perplexing problem, and yes Maori have to play their part in putting their homes in order. However scapegoating maori is not helpful. There are plenty of pakeha parents who are irresponsible and neglectful as well - I have had the misfortune of meeting some of them. Ideas about withholding the benefit might sound good but the practical implementation of this would be impossible - I mean, how would you monitor it and ensure compliance?

Also, it conveniently sidesteps the issue of european culpability - it was colonialism that implemented a deliberate policy of urbanisation which resulted in the breakdown of maori societal and family structures.

I think you are well meaning in what you post, you just have not thought it through.

Dan said...

I would not say that this is a Maori problem.
While the majority of cases may in fact be Maori, this is not an exclusively Maori issue, and it is very unhelpful to paint it as such. There is enough racial inequity (favouring either Maori or Pakeha) as it is.

The problem is largely with the judiciary. There appears to be gross inconsistancy in how cases are handled (and not just in child abuse cases).
This problem needs to be resolved; we need to see judical consistency before we go messing with either existing legislation, or looking at any kind of system like the one you propose, where Family Support benefits are performance-based.

Otherwise things will only get worse.

Swimming said...

Crap.

This is a Maori problem. Ask Merepeka Raukawa Tait, JT, Pita Sharples or any other Maori worth his or her salt.

Actually, in this case it is definately a Maori Problem. How many pakeha families would get their whanau in behind them to subvert th course of justice, claim benefits and rort the state, while abdicating their kgal and moral responsibilities.

I hope the police charge the whole whanau for subverting the course of justice if the preseint sotnewalling continues.

DOes anyobdy from IRD read this blog - if so, please email me at d dot crampton@ xtra dot co dot nz.

ZenTiger said...

Chuck, I think you make a good point. To take it a little further, we could add that Gay Groups have a vested interest in taking responsibility for working on the problem, and furthermore, that Gay people might listen to these groups more than some straight Dr preaching at them.

In this case, same deal for the Maori community.