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4
August 2007
The
Unspeakable Question
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Another
Maori baby has died at the hands of family members. Yesterday,
three year old Nia Glassie, the little girl who was tortured
by family members, lost her battle with life.
Meanwhile
the 12-week-old Rotorua baby, who was rushed to Starship
Hospital last weekend with suspicious head injuries, remains
in hospital. The little boy’s grandfather is reported to be
a senior member of the Black Power gang.
The
unspeakable question on everyone’s mind is whether child
abuse is a Maori problem. Given that Maori children are six
times more likely to be abused than non-Maori, and that child
abusers are eight times more likely to Maori than non-Maori,
the facts tell us that child abuse in New Zealand is
predominantly a Maori problem.
The
Prime Minister and her politically correct government refuse
to accept those facts. They like to blame everyone else –
including neighbours – except, it seems, the abusers, having
put in place a sentencing regime that sees child abusers
treated more leniently that those who abuse animals.
To
deflect criticism away from their failure to reduce child
abuse, the government this week hastily launched a
controversial new programme to question all sick women in
hospital about their personal relationships and sex life -
Have you ever felt controlled or always criticised? Has
anybody hurt or threatened you? Have you been asked to do
anything sexual that you didn't want to do?
Quite
who will collect this information, who will see it, or what it
will used for, has not been spelled out. Nor do we know
whether this questioning represents the blatant breach of
privacy laws that it certainly appears to do on the surface.
Under
this $11 million feminist strategy, sick women will be asked
questions that are designed to set the machinery of the state
against men even though the research around domestic violence
and child abuse is unequivocal: women are perpetrators as well
as men.
This
week’s NZCPR guest commentator, Bev Adair, runs
a communications and networking business
and is passionate about her role of advocating for children
and young people. Bev
is a Maori woman who was brutally abused as a child. She is
angry that Maori leaders have not done more to stop the abuse
of Maori children, and she
has bravely agreed to share her story:
“From
my earliest years I lived with violence. I remember knives,
blood on walls, being beaten, being locked up in cupboards,
being molested by my Dad, being used by my mother's men
friends - she put me on show for them. When I was nine, my Dad
was jailed for molestation. I was taken to the Papakura police
station in a car, put in a room, and given away to foster
parents. I had little contact with my mother after that. I
visited my father in jail and never saw him again. Abuse by
foster dads followed. I lived in seventeen different foster
homes and attended seventeen schools”. (To
read
Bev’s
article click here
>>>)
Bev believes that not enough has been done to address the root
causes of child abuse and that leadership by Maori - and by
the government – is sadly lacking. If it was up to Bev, she
would cut benefits to get parents and children out of the
welfare trap freeing them up to get on with making something
of their lives instead of being beholden to their political
and tribal masters.
Last
year, in response to the death of the Kahui twins, Alan Duff
wrote a guest article for the NZCPR outlining why Maori abuse
their children. He believes that a lack of education is a
central problem: “You don’t see Maoris with university
degrees beating up anyone”.
He
states: “There is a disturbing anger
common to far too many Maori that needs to be deeply
investigated, like some permanently infected wound. Maoris
dominate in gang numbers and prison inmate numbers. We have
the highest number of assaults and almost exclusively own the
child murder statistics. This attitude, this barbaric outlook
on life will continue for the next thousand, ten thousand
years if we don’t analyse it properly, if we don’t hold
ourselves, our very societal model up to scrutiny”.
He describes Maori culture as being based on a “Stone Age”
societal model which does not work in a modern world: “To
continue with the collective, whanau, hapu, iwi societal model
is a fatal mistake. A fatal
mistake. For in not developing individuality we continue
down the declining slope of anonymity in a collective. Of
no-one willing to make decisions – especially unpopular
decisions – for fear of standing out from the crowd, going
against the collective will”.
And
that is the core problem. Maori leadership have heralded
tribalism as a cultural renaissance, when in fact it has been
used to maintain the myth of cultural oppression and to foster
separatism. In this day and age tribalism is little more than
a celebration of class privilege and vehicle to unlock the
riches available through the Waitangi Treaty settlement
process. As a result of persisting with this outdated societal
model, social dysfunction has been allowed to flourish in many
Maori communities.
Again,
as Alan Duff says: “The
quality of debate in this country on Maori issues is poor,
cowardly, non-analytical, and none of it serves the Maori
people well. Like social welfare, which many of us have warned
about for years, every government benefit takes another breath
of the recipient’s self-respect away. Until they choke on
self-hatred and maim and kill themselves and others”.
(To read Alan’s article click here
>>>)
Wise
Maori know that the welfare is destroying their people. They
know that the Domestic Purposes Benefit in particular, has
been hugely damaging to Maoridom. I have been on marae after
marae where the notion of abolishing the DPB and replacing it
with a system that encourages work, independence and personal
responsibility, finds overwhelming support.
They
know that where Maori families were once strong, the DPB
has made them dangerously weak and fragmented. They know that
where Maori men were once committed fathers, husbands and
providers, the DPB has caused them to be rejected and cast
adrift. They know that their boys, instead having a father to
look up to, to teach them to respect women, and to demonstrate
a parent’s unconditional love, all too often turn to gangs
in their search for a father figure.
According
to government records, back in 1926 when the statistics on
marriage were first collected, the marriage rate for Maori was
69 percent and for non-Maori, 62 percent. Over the next 50
years marriage rates increased until by 1971, the marriage
rate for Maori was 73 percent and for non-Maori, 77 percent.
But
the introduction of the Domestic Purposes Benefit in the mid
seventies changed all that, especially for Maori. By 1981 the
marriage rate for Maori had slipped to 62 percent, by 1991 it
had fallen to 50 percent, and by 2001 to 46 percent. In
comparison, by 2001 the non-Maori marriage rate had gradually
declined to 70 percent.
It
is this collapse of marriage and dramatic rise in the DPB that
is at the heart of the Maori child abuse crisis. Maori women
are now heavily over-represented on the DPB, making up 41
percent of all women on that benefit. But the trend for
teenage parents is even more worrying. Maori teenagers make up
55 percent of all teenage parents on the DPB, and unless this
trend is turned around, the Maori child abuse crisis is set to
worsen.
There
are solutions. Other countries have faced similar problems and
have replaced sole parent benefits with support systems based
on getting parents back into the workforce. As a result, the
incidence of child abuse has fallen, unemployment has reduced,
school drop out rates have improved and marriage has become
more popular. In fact, there is no downside except the
predictable political one.
Maori
leaders who are genuine about wanting to turn around the child
abuse crisis should band together and call for the replacement
of the DPB. They should not accept anything less.
Governments
like Labour depend on the support of people on welfare. The
more people who are dependent on the state the better they
like it. That is why their welfare reforms are only ever half
hearted.
Maori
leaders will have a fight on their hands to get the DPB
replaced. But if they succeed, they will be responsible for
saving the next generation of children from a fate that under
our current system simply doesn’t bear thinking about.
The poll this week asks: Do
you think all women entering a New Zealand public hospital
should be questioned about whether they have been subjected to
abuse? Go
to Poll >>>
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