And the real ideas behind National’s sudden caring about children in CYFS starts to seep out.
Removing children from their culture and sterilisation.
Let that sink in for a moment.
State may try to stop some families having more children
Some families who have come to the attention of authorities may be stopped from having more children by the Government.
…
Tolley acknowledged it would be a “huge step” for the state to start telling people that they could not have another child, but said it was “a conversation that New Zealanders, perhaps, need to have”.
…
Tolley did not rule out limiting or preventing some families from having another child, but said she would wait to see what the panel recommended in December. …
…let’s get this completely straight shall we? The solution to CYFS appalling physical and sexual abuse of children in State care isn’t properly funding frontline social workers to have the downstream resources that can make a difference in these children’s lives, oh no, the solution is to remove them from their cultural environment and impose sterilisation programs via privatised outsourced companies?
Are we actually listening to what Tolley is saying here – the solution to kids being violently and sexually abused in State care is to stop poor people having the kids in the first place???
Disbelief is the only response one can feel towards such draconian measures.
Remember the Nanny State? Remember when it was PC madness gone mad when the State stepped into people’s lives and suggested water saving shower heads and power saving lightbulbs? Remember how it was the end of Western Civilisation when Helen Clark backed law that would close a loophole that kept allowing parents who had bashed their kids to get out of Court free if they used the ‘discipline’ defence?
How in Christ’s name could all that be Nanny State yet the idea of the Government stopping people from having children and removing children from their cultural background isn’t Nanny State?
When it’s power saving light bulbs, water saving shower heads and stopping abusive parents getting away with assaulting their kids that’s Nanny State gone wild, but when it’s poor people on sterilisation programs it’s all fine is it? No unacceptable intervention of the State there?
If you want to prevent poorly equipped people from having children you increase sex education in those areas, we can’t even hand out condoms for free at schools without an up roar, yet we are seriously considering sterilisation programs for the poor?
The problem of children being sexually and violently abused in CYFS care is a problem of poorly resourced downstream services, you don’t solve that by taking children away from their culture or sterilisation programs.
The issue for CYFS is that they are not resourced well enough to find appropriate whanau when they are taking a child out of a family, that doesn’t mean keeping children within a cultural environment they are familiar with is wrong.
National are trying this on because they know their chunk of voters believe in ‘breeding for business‘, this is a sick way to generate a debate about children being abused in State care.
How far we seem to have fallen as an educated country in only 7 years under National. This is casual fascism at its most extreme. Middle NZ will go along with anything now – mass surveillance, the PMs Office colluding with the SIS to smear Phil Goff before the 2011 election, climate change denial, dirty politics, the TPPA, privatisation of social houses and sterilisation programs for the poor as long as their property values continue to rise.
This is surely our lowest hour.
The unsavoury practice of eugenics is being suggested by NatzKEY is it? A very dark period in mid 20 century Europe comes to mind here!
Selecting which beneficiary will or will not procreate, depending on their personal circumstances, is as disturbing as it is venomously bigoted and distasteful.
Equal access to education and opportunity is the solution, not eugenics which is the preferred tactic of despots to “sort” the citizenry into categories!
Perhaps government should be reviewing its toxic policies first and foremost, instead of talking about sterilizing some of society’s most vulnerable citizens, simply because they do not fit the perceived criteria!
What we’ve been practicing in NZ is eugenics in reverse: Paying ferals to produce children.
When Anne Tolley says:
“I certainly think we should be providing more family planning, more contraceptive advice to some of the families that we know who are – I mean, I know of cases that CYF have taken the sixth and seventh baby from,”
I think she’s absolutely hitting the nail on the head!
I can see no good reason why law abiding, middle class people should be stripped of their hard earned wages via taxation in order to fund these scum to reproduce the next generation of bludgers and criminals.
@ Andrewo – “Paying ferals to produce children.”
On what such distorted evidence do you base your statement here? And who decides what constitutes a “feral” in reference to human kind?
The closest thing to “ferals” (to suppot your meaning of the word) I see out there are those making unjust policies and laws specifically designed to create disproportionate inequality, while at the same time giving unwavering service to greed and
corruption. In other words, the self indulgent politicians, who have failed many decent NZers!
There’s a car parked in our street at the moment, with a sticker in the window that says “I’m like a vagina, the more fingers you get in the worse it gets”.
Andrewo gave me the same feeling when I read his piece. Or is it a clumsy attempt at satire – maybe that’s why it got past the monitor.
The only “feral” I see here, Andrew is you. Your comments show the real person that you are.
Andrew, your comments as always betray you as a thoroughly inhuman being.
Are u law abiding citizen? It sounds like u are in business of social work. If so, ur aware of the illegal tactics social services keep under cover. Due process laws, which includes some kind of effort be made by attorneys representing clients because it’s their professional duty. Social workers don’t investigate cases, they are knowingly and willfully withholding requested exculpatory evidence that was proof signed by CPS investigators as unfounded. Two years later Marsha Beamen, investigating social worker having no case of me neglecting my 7yr old son, decided to invent a case by claiming what was unfounded to read as founded in report to judge. Also any statement I made or anyone else made that favored my mothering ability, Marsha rewrote it to reflect negatively toward me. Of course there were no signed statements submitted with report to judge. What kind of judge would find this to be appropriate evidence? Why would a judge ignore my request for the narratives that proved allegations were false and exculpatory evidence was tampered with? I was handed the evidence exactly 60 days later after jurisdictional hearing. My attorney wouldn’t return my calls regarding filing appeal, which by law he is required to if I request appeal to be filed. I researched the laws myself and learned the standard procedures and due process rights that are not optional to overlook. This court is not interested in truth. Dr Renee LaFrage, psycho analysts willing to assign a diagnosis to normal behavior/normal reactions for financial gain as county contractor for performing evaluations for them. Diagnosis is required for therapy to be paid for client to overcome invented diagnosis evaluator assigned to client. It was Dr LaFarge who told me this court was not interested in truth. Once they take ur kid, u just have to do what they say to get him back. This is being said before jurisdictional hearing even took place. Supposedly I haven’t been found guilty of any neglect at this point. Mental evaluations are not allowed before jurisdiction is established. U can’t use a mental evaluation as proof that allegations were true. Dr LaFarge was called to testify at my jurisdictional hearing. She knew truth wasn’t a requirement in this court and she took full advantage of the fact. The judge behaved like a prosecutor in a judges robe. Blatantly rude and no appropriate skills at making judgement calls. Nobody in that court room was expected to do their job. My son never met Margaret Copenhagen, his so called attorney, until 4-5 yrs down the line. All excepted Marsha Beamen’s report as proven facts. An investigation was never conducted for facts. I’m sure this was known, that’s why nobody was going to object to submitting unsigned statements into record. None of which were stated verbatum. This court circus would not be exceptable for anyone one of them as appropriate proceeding if they were defendant. Such gross injustice carried out unchecked. As a matter of fact, Judge Diaz, tried to interfer with the police investigation of her good friend Dr William Ayres, psychiatrist who is now in prison for his 40 yr career molesting boys. Judge Diaz also recommended Staurt Forrest to head juvenile hall detention center. He is currently in prison for child porn movies he purchased over internet. So do tell of all ur law abiding ways, talk is cheap. If u are concerned about who is sucking up ur tax money, that would be the human services department spending ur money on cases they invent, and expand on to get the most financing possible out of each child they trump up the needs ofthat aren’t needed. Years of foster care expense, therapy weekly for invented diagnosis, none of which could be proven being mental conditions are not backed by science, they get voted in or out. Homosexuality was a diagnosis in the psycho analyst bible, The DSM. It was voted out once is became a normal behavior in the eyes of psycho analysts now. Ur hard earned money will be putting all these foster kids thru college if they choose to go. Maybe it would be worth putting ur kids into the system at age 17 so u can get them all thru college without having to save to put any of them thru. As long as this agency is receiving more funding by taking kids, this will continue. When more money is to be made by keeping family unit together, u bet most of these kids will be considered better off in there home they had been taken from years ago. The justification money offers; that’s criminal behavior. That’s why u can’t claim u are law abiding person being u agree it’s ok for social working child kidnappers to lie, as if it’s legal, when they have no case if they don’t. Soo law abiding, yes sir.
Paul Henry this morning constantly endorsed the sterilisation “solution”, going as far to say HE’D pay for it himself if need be. He also suggested the government pay $5,000 as an incentive for sterilisation and floated an idea of a “Mr. Snippy Van” driving around “poor areas” to sterilise people. It was quite something, and remarkably no one told him to shut up.
Whoa there Martyn….get a grip.
Stop politicising NZ’s appalling rates of child abuse, neglect and murder.
Stop making the erroneous claim that the entire cause of family dysfunction is poverty.
If that were the case then all 305,000 Kiwi kids living in poverty would be in state care.
You (and other experts on the left and right) need to understand that some people simply do not care about their children.
Not many, but some.
Many parents do make the changes necessary to be able to be better parents when the authorities have stepped in….and many more $$$ would be an investment in this area.
Whanau Ora…seemingly MIA….would be a good model.
However…serious contraceptive counselling for those women who keep repeatedly having babies and having those babies taken into care would not come amiss.
Put aside ideology and take a long hard look at the reality.
Well said Rosemary!
DPB was introduced with good intentions, to look after abused & abandoned wives and their offspring. However for some it became a meal ticket with the resultant children left unloved and vulnerable to abuse by a string of ‘uncles’.
When women produce children WHILST ALREADY ON DPB, something has gone very wrong.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
Andrewo…we are NOT in the same camp here.
You refer to “ferals”…jesus, what are you? Slater’s mate?
“can see no good reason why law abiding, middle class people should be stripped of their hard earned wages via taxation in order to fund these scum to reproduce the next generation of bludgers and criminals. – ”
Yuk.
Really?
I am a beneficiary.
“Scum” to you.
“Bludger”?
This is NOT a political issue. This is not a poverty issue.
This is not a class issue.
Lets get some common sense thinking happening here.
Rosemary, I don’t know your personal circumstances and I apologise if my language was too colourful.
Clearly there are a lot of people who find themselves on welfare through circumstances beyond their control. This is what social welfare was made for. However we also have to face the fact that there is a subset who are abusing the system.
But I agree with you: This is NOT a poverty issue. This is NOT a class issue, although some on the Left would try to make it so.
As regards those “ferals”:
Do you have a better name for people who have six successive children removed from their care by CYPS?
What would you call someone who flogs a baby with a jug cord?
How would you classify someone who punches a baby to death or locks them in a tumble dryer?
Which adjective do you wish to use? 😉
Rosemary, I don’t know if you’re missing the point or skilfully promoting a right wing agenda, but ven part of your comments are contradictory.
On the one hand you pontificate;
Then you suggest;
So, we’re agreed (or not) that lack of money is a problem? And generally, when families don’t have enough money, that is commonly known as poverty, right?
By the way, nowhere in his blogpost did Martyn claim “that the entire cause of family dysfunction is poverty”. You have either mis-read his statements or are wilfully mis-representing it.
This is now the third time I’ve picked up on your misrepresentations.
The suggestion of sterilisation or punitive contraception is a response to the appalling CYFS report that showed children in state care being violently abused and sexually assaulted. You can’t seriously agree that the solution to children being abused in state care is to stop poor people having the children in the first place?
EVEN if we accept your point – how in christ’s name does sterilising poor people save 1 single kid being abused in state care right now?
Martyn…children end up in State Care because their parents are abusing or neglecting them. Or there is a very real risk of abuse.
CYFs do not, (in my experience) run around with nothing better to do than remove perfectly happy and safe children from lovely functional families.
In fact, CYFs often fail to uplift at risk children…and these children die.
I agree…Cyfs often do a shit job of caring for these children. (Again, in my experience.)
This is appalling and must be remedied.
However…Tolley was not advocating sterilising “the poor”.
She was, quite rightly, suggesting that parents of children who are at risk be given contraceptive advice.
And suggesting, perhaps, that offering tubal ligation to a woman who has had seven babies removed from her care would be a good idea.
And I agree. Having cared for such a seventh, drug affected newborn.
Women use contraception all the time. Rich and poor alike. For various reasons.
Using contraception, controlling one’s fertility, is considered a responsible and mature thing to do.
Especially if one struggles to cope with parenting.
Women also choose to have their tubes tied…choosing not to have children, or having completed their family wish to no longer be concerned about another, unwanted pregnancy.
A woman who cannot care for the children she has already given birth to should not be getting pregnant again.
This is not eugenics.
This is common bloody sense.
If her circumstances change, and she becomes more able to parent, she can parent the children she already has, perhaps.
I have an issue with child abuse being inextricably linked to poverty.
Only the poor abuse and neglect their kids?
Poverty causes the stressors that lead to abuse and neglect?
etc. etc.
Not true.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11520406
and before I read that, on a long trip to Auckland today my partner and I recalled the many children we fostered on an emergency basis for CYFs.
In many of these cases…it was not poverty that led to the children being at risk and coming into care. Drugs, alcohol, mental illness, inter generational violence…yes. But also, in sadly, too many cases, the children were simply not loved enough, by anyone.
I want my kids to have a better life than me. Most parents want this.
Some parents don’t.
And some parents, unbelievably, resent the fact that their kids might have a better life than they had.
You won’t agree.
You will accuse me of being a right wing nut job.
And in another twenty years time, if global warming fails to deal to us, we will be having exactly the same conversations about exactly the same issues.
Because it always ends up in a left/right slanging match.
Politics wins and the truth loses.
I disagree. This suggestion to sterilise – and that’s what it was Rosemary, you might not like the idea, but that is what Tolley suggested on TV (yes she has backed down, but that is what she suggested), is a distraction to over gloss the original report that started all this debate and that was the assault and sexual abuse of children in State care. You seem to want to ignore that – yes there are some terrible parents out there, yes there are some damaged human beings with questionable emotional and intellect issues – BUT THAT’S NOT THE ISSUE. The issue is what is happening to children in state care, that’s what the report into CYFS was about. Please name one thing that sterilising or forced contraception of parents who are awful will do for the thousands of children in state care who are open to abuse right now, because that’s what the report was about.
I agree that there are parents who are damaged, and how we go about dealing with them raises troubling questions, but when you consider the lack of education and level of poverty this is not a surprise.
The ‘playing politics’ here is being done by the right who are playing to the ‘breeding for business’ myths and who have brought this up as a solution to the failure of state care. Our questions should be demanding why so many children are being damaged in state care, answer that first so those children suffering now are treated and looked after now.
Rosemary, it is not “playing politics” when people resist some loopy idea from this government, or demonising those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.
It is not “playing politics” when we refuse to participate in this government’s on-going beneficiary-bashing.
Because I’ll tell you this for free; this is directed at welfare recipients.
Do you think, for a moment, that some National-voting, ‘high net worth’ (ie; “rich prick”) individual living in Remuera or Karori or Fendalton would allow his kids to be removed and allow himself (or his wife) to be forcibly sterilised, if he was abusing his children?
Hell no. He’d have a platoon of Queen’s Counsel lawyers on the phone within four minutes (after pouring himself a generous double of Remy brandy) laying a dozen injunctions on MSD, from the Minister, down to the social worker handling his case.
Now. Let’s get constructive.
It’s takes resources (ie; money) to address the real problems* faced by these families.
It takes skilled, experienced social workers and community support workers, attending to these families and helping them make the right decisions.
It takes money.
Like, for example the $250,000 one family demanded from the Ministry of Health (via a Court order) to allow their high-functioning aspergis son to receive 24/7 monitoring/support so he could live in his own flat without causing problems for his neighbours; attracting the attention of the police (which he did); over-using alcohol; or having his love of knives and lighting fires get him in trouble. (He doesn’t do the fire thing much these days. But you should see his 30cm long ‘Crocodile Dundee’-style knife – it’s a beauty.)
He got the resources because (a) his parents were upper-middle class professionals; highly educated; who knew the system; and were not afraid to call in the lawyers, and (b) ‘Harry’** was blond, pakeha, articulate, intelligent, and often quite disturbing.
This is a true story. I’ve seen his file, and it is as thick as your wrist.
Low income/impoverished families do not have these resources; do not have lawyers on-call; cannot sue the government for assistance; and are generally treated like vermin. (If you don’t believe that, check out the comments on Kiwiblog or Whaleoil.)
Until we have the resources and policies in place to give everyone like ‘Harry’** a decent chance, we will not get anywhere.
I disagree with those who stridently suggest this is “not about money”. It is precisely about money.
If it’s not about money, try telling the top income earners to pay 1 cent in the dollar more in taxes. You’ll hear them scream blue murder from Remuera, Karori, and Fendalton.
Unless this government invests more money in this problem, we will not get anywhere.
But they won’t.
=======
* Notice I call them problems, not “issues”. It’s called being realistic and not indulging in post-modern euthemisms.
** Not his real name.
Simple. It’s the Nanny state when it happens to you and it’s the compassionate Step Mother State when it’s done to someone you don’t like.
It is fortunate that they don’t feel pain like we do or we might have to think twice before we bring out the big scissors.
I support contraception and a max 2 child family policy to be enforced all over the planet, as we are already in unsustainable territory. This may seem harsh to some, but we must be rational about this. And as Rosemary wrote, there are also serious issues with child abuse, and some stern measures, at least serious talking are overdue.
Simply going on about poverty and having 7 or more kids, used as a pawn, is not going to convince many these days.
So yes, hard questions and answers are due, but I do at the same time not trust this government to implement anything fairly, as they have already ideoligised welfare policy.
Mike in Auckland
We often fail to examine what actually works….in education, health, child welfare.
We focus on the failures, instead of looking at why family “A” on an income of fuck all manages to care for and about their children, engage with their educational outcomes and ensure they do better, while over there…family “B” becomes a media headline.
It doesn’t make a single bit of difference which colour flag flies over the Beehive.
Find out what works and fund the necessary educational programmes.
Agreed again. Education is indeed the key.
However education often does not stick on children with dysfunctional and violent family backgrounds.
The Youth Court has sponsored some excellent work in this area. Please read this:
http://www.justice.govt.nz/courts/youth/publications-and-media/speeches/what-causes-youth-crime-and-what-can-we-do-about-it
The bottom line: A child born in these adverse circumstances doesn’t stand much of a chance and will likely go on to repeat the cycle.
Bottom line, Andrew, you are advocating a Final Solution for those living in poverty.
What does that make you?
Ah!
Godwin’s law has been invoked! 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
It was only a matter of time…
No, Andrew. Not Godwin’s Law.
This law; Those who forget history, are doomed to repeat it.
It’s a more sensible law, if you’re going to invoke one.
I agree with the two child policy, not as a matter of individual family financial sustainability, but for ecological sustainability, and I don’t agree with anything Rosemary said, that was just bollocks.
Mike, what you say makes a fair bit of sense.
In NZ we effectively pay unemployed to have more kids – it’s the unintended consequence of DPB. So a first step is to restructure welfare to discourage reproduction.
i.e. If you need government assistance to look after this brat, what the hell are you doing producing another!!!
Well it annoys the fuck out of you for a start, Andrew… 🙂
JS – Post of the week… *Thumbs Up* 😀
well i can tell you that winz does not pay people to have more kids – have you being on a benefit lately?
winz only pay you $270 for a solo parent benefit – DPB no longer exists – i know, i was down and out – its a pretty sad life not really an economic lifestyle choice.
Sad comments from a few showing whats really wrong with nz as a whole
Indeed, John. You can tell the Right Wingers and misinformed middle-class; most of them have no idea how much welfare really pays.
Not. A. Clue.
Aheyyy! How many of you old timers (like me) recognise dear old Violet Carson in the meme above? She played Ena Sharples in Coro St for yonks from when it first started. I still miss the old trout…
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