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Home Truths
By Greg Knight
The Weekend Sun, Tauranga, Bay Of Plenty, New Zealand
6 February 2004 Issue: 174
It is time for Politicians to sit up and listen.
I love summer, Christmas, and the Christmas holidays, as it gives me a chance to spend much appreciated time with my family, friends and my children. However it also gives me time to sit back and reflect on the past year and what has changed for me personally, and for the country. These two things are so intertwined that sometimes I find it difficult to understand why people in New Zealand are so apathetic about our esteemed leaders and how those decisions affect us everyday.
I was out fishing the other day, and my father in-law said to me, ???Greg, why do you worry about politics so much, I mean can you tell me how it affects you in your daily life.??? (You shouldn???t really ask me that question unless you have a little spare time. Just my father-in-laws luck we were out fishing). I can???t help thinking that there are so many people out there who have switched off to politics because they think it doesn???t really affect them too much, or that they feel they can???t do anything about it. Or is it that people feel and think that if they did stand up, that politicians won???t listen to them anyway. I mean look at the GM debate. Huge public disapproval for the lifting of the GM moratorium, but the government went and did it anyway. Or the Scrapping of the Privy Council, even with over 85% of the country against it, Labour still felt they had a public mandate, because as Margaret Wilson said, the other 14 percent of New Zealanders who agreed with it were thinking New Zealanders. Don???t you just love politicians who convince themselves that they are right, even against the odds?
There is no doubt that politicians in the past have not listened enough to the people, and I believe it is time for the New Zealand public to stand up and make politicians more accountable. However, in all the time that I have been a polite bystander to all of the political goings on, I have never seen a government so arrogant or so hell bent on pursuing their own social engineering agenda, as this Labour Party.
The New Zealand public needs to understand that decisions that these politicians make do change our everyday lives. You might not see it straight away, but it will affect us down the track somehow. I mean look at the Guardianship Act that was put in place over 30 years ago to help parents who were separating. This bill, with the help of the Family Court has kept divorced fathers separated from their children for years. You could say that this is not in itself a national catastrophe, but I read in the papers everyday the concerns about our young people, and the national debate about how can we resolve the problems we have with abuse, under achieving children, lawlessness, disrespect, prostitution, teenage pregnancies and suicides of our young people.
There is no doubt that if this piece of legislation was more father friendly and also concerned with the outcomes of the children, that we would be living in a different society today.
As one of our previous Governor Generals, Sir Michael Hardie-Boyes said, ???If present trends continue, by 2010, half of European and nearly three-quarters of Maori infants under 12 months will be in families where there is no father. Unless we turn things around, the nation is going to be in serious trouble.???
What about the referendum on tougher sentencing and 92% of the people asking for the Government to get tough on crime. Has this Labour Government really listened or have they once again ignored us.
I could go on, but I am clear of one thing, our politicians aren???t listening. I have observed over the last couple of years Helen Clark and many of the others in the Labour Party displaying such arrogance and a total disregard for the public by bringing in legislation that a majority of people disapprove of, and I can see the many problems all of us will now have to face. Fine if as a country we have a majority that agree, (not a majority of politicians) then we reap what we sow, but why should we have a few people dictating to the masses. This is getting a bit too close to communism or dictatorship for my liking, and as one commentator has recently remarked, are we under the siege of Helengrad and the Fourth Reich.
Perhaps we have too many politicians and we pay them too much, so they think they have to be doing something to justify their existence. Just on that note, why is it that Helen Clark gets paid more than the Australian Prime Minister, and yet she seems to listen less.
I believe that most people are quite capable of managing their own affairs and politicians should stop interfering in our lives so much unless it is essential that they become involved, or we ask them to.
It is time for New Zealanders to stand up and say to the politicians, enough is enough. They all must learn to listen.
I personally have made a New Year resolution that I will speak out about my concerns until politicians learn to listen, not to just me, but the concerns and wishes of the people at large.
END
World News
What to do with men who batter
14.03.2004
By ROGER FRANKLIN
By all accounts except, oddly enough, that of the wife who killed him, Cecil Carver was a dreadful man. Grouchy in the morning - when he bothered to get up before noon, that is - he grew testier as the day's drinks kicked in. By mid-afternoon, when he was nicely primed, the 39-year-old Oklahoma deadbeat was ready to take offence at just about everything.
That's why Teri Lyn Carver sorta, kinda blames herself for what happened when she took charge of the TV remote control and insisted on watching Surviving a Lover's Attack, an afternoon talk show about domestic violence.
She thought Cecil might benefit from realising how much he had in common with O. J. Simpson, and since they were smoking joints and her hubby's thinking was getting a little fuzzy, she helpfully pointed out the similarities.
Cecil didn't take well to the comparison, and pretty soon was rummaging for the .22 automatic pistol that he sometimes produced for emphasis when words failed him. Then he put a single shot into the headboard beside Teri's neck to demonstrate, as the deadpan local cops put it, "that he did not like his wife calling him a violent partner".
They struggled, Teri won control of the gun and, as her husband raised both arms shoulder-high, she squeezed off a round from 2m away that hit him in the heart.
She says it was an accident - that the gun went off accidentally - but that made no difference to Cecil, who was quite dead when the ambulance arrived.
A no-hopers' tragi-comedy? An Odd Spot for the next day's papers? A lesson about the perils of watching daytime TV?
It's a lot more than that, says Linda Mills, controversial professor of law and social work at New York University. She says couples like the Carvers demonstrate the absolute inadequacy of all prevailing approaches to the punishment of domestic violence and treatment of offenders.
To say that the arguments she presents in her new book, Insult to Injury, have made her many enemies is an understatement.
From the left, feminists have seized on her assertion that mandatory arrest and sentencing of accused men is counterproductive. And they are livid that her analysis of the statistics shows that women are just as often the instigators of domestic violence as their men.
To those feminist critics, she has betrayed the sisterhood by arguing that women should have the right to drop charges against their batterers.
In most American states, they no longer do. The moment they call the emergency operator, the matter is out of their hands. To Mills, that approach is "paternalistic and extremely counterproductive".
When the law locks up a basher, says Mills, the attacker will emerge from prison embittered, more angry than he went in and far more likely to bully and abuse. The net result - more violence, more damaged kids, and women who must live in poverty because the family breadwinner is making licence plates instead of paying the rent.
As Mills noted, having just opened the latest bundle of clippings from her publisher, Sydney Morning Herald reviewer Megan Gressor summed up the attitude when she accused her of seeking a return to the days when partners "could assault one another with impunity".
Meanwhile, from the right, the attacks have been just as vicious. Here's what former Ohio domestic-violence prosecutor C. Douglas Kern wrote of Mills' book in the conservative National Review: "In lieu of punishment, Mills wants 'intimate abuse circles' from which crafty, manipulative abusers will learn a new lexicon of buzzwords and catchphrases with which to dazzle judges and probation officers at future sentencing hearings."
Brutal men, he adds, will feel "nothing but contempt toward covens of experts yammering about communication."
Mills has been vilified so much, so often, and from so many quarters that she insists it no longer affects her. "I figured that if I'm coming under fire from both left and right, I must be on to something."
She told the Weekend Herald: "As a feminist, I wholeheartedly believe we have gone about this the wrong way. Violence against women may be increasing - I doubt that it is, personally, it's just coming to our attention more often - but calling it a crime doesn't address the underlying issues."
What might do the trick, she argues, would be for the legal system to reserve prison cells only for "the incorrigible, the pure evil offenders and abusers" while sentencing the rest to encounter groups moderated by therapists. There, victims, relatives, friends and neighbours could confront abusers with the human faces and bruised psyches of their victims.
"That way, instead of greeting you with a scowl when released from jail, it could be a smile of thanks for caring enough to make the effort to take part in a process that made a real, genuine, restorative difference.
"That has to be better than treating women as if they are simple children and taking away from them the prerogative of dropping charges. Jail or not, 50 per cent of women return to their abusers anyway, so trying to find another remedy isn't pie in the sky, it's being realistic."
As realistic as, say, life in that Oklahoma shack where Teri Lyn Carver's copper-jacketed slug cut short her husband's plans for an afternoon of booze and brawling?
Teri, just released from jail after authorities declined to press charges, doesn't seem as sure of her innocence as the prosecutors who set her free.
"I would never hurt him," she says. "He wanted to spoil me. I wouldn't leave him. I loved him."
It's a quote that raises another perspective on domestic abuse, one that neither advocates of string-the-bum-up justice nor Mills seem to have taken into account: what can you ever do with folks who are just so stupid that, when all is said and done, they deserve each other's misery?
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http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3554520&msg=emaillink
Judge warns MPs about shared care law
11 March 2004
Forcing shared parenting on separated families could damage children's wellbeing for the sake of their parents' convenience, Principal Family Court Judge Patrick Mahony said yesterday.
Appearing before MPs considering the Care of Children Bill, Judge Mahony said the judiciary was in the hands of Parliament when it came to the laws covering the controversial Family Court.
Some MPs, such as ACT's Muriel Newman, want the law to presume that parents will jointly share children when they separate unless there are good reasons against it.
Judge Mahony said MPs, like the courts, should be cautious about strict rules enforcing equal time-sharing, as while it might suit parents, it would not always be in the best interests of their children.
"Children should not become imprisoned by an arrangement that suits their parents, but which does not promote their wellbeing," Judge Mahony said.
While the law currently advocated one parent getting custody and the other getting access, in most cases there was an element of shared care.
It was "increasingly rare" for one parent to be given sole custody, Judge Mahony said.
The Family Court has been criticised for being secretive and lacking in accountability, but Judge Mahony said it was up to Parliament to decide the law that the Family Court operated under.
In particular MPs had to decide the balance between protecting the privacy of individuals and the need for the court to be accountable.
Judge Mahony refused to answer questions about the contempt charge laid against National MP Nick Smith for publicising a Family Court case.
Judge Mahony retires from his job on Friday.
The Care of Children Bill replaces the concept of parents' rights with parents' responsibilities.
Proposals in the bill include:
ascertaining and taking into account the views of a child;
guardianship ending at age 18, or if the child is aged between 16 and 18 and enters into a de facto relationship and parents have consented to that relationship;
the Family Court being given broader jurisdiction to make orders concerning paternity;
female partners of a birth mother are deemed a legal parent of a child conceived using assisted human reproduction techniques, providing that technology was carried out with her consent;
reports of proceedings may be published providing the report does not include any information that might lead to the identification of any party. There would be higher penalties for those who breached publication rules.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2840977a11,00.html
Domestic violence on the rise
13 March 2004
DAVE COURTNEY
Domestic violence is on the rise across Canterbury with police unsure what has caused the jump.
In December last year Canterbury police dealt with 590 domestic violence callouts, compared with a monthly average of 450 for the rest of 2003.
Last year was a black year for domestic violence with a record 5800 cases recorded by police.
Superintendent Sandra Manderson, Canterbury police district commander, said that while Christmas stresses always caused an increase in domestic violence, December's leap was "out of odds" with previous years.
Annette Gillespie, of Christchurch Women's Refuge, said domestic violence was on an upward trend.
She said Christmas and the weeks following it always bought a surge in family violence because of financial stresses or family being together.
"Some women even hold on until the new year thinking `everything will be all right in the new year'.
"When it's not they call us."
Gillespie said a recent spate of domestic-related murders had put a public focus on domestic violence.
Manderson said there were several strategies in place to deal with victims of repeated violence.
In Christchurch 40 per cent of the violence was repeat.
Police would visit known problem families after an event to discuss what happened and put in place plans to stop violence happening again.
In the last three months Canterbury frontline police staff had received further training in family violence.
"Making the victim safe is the priority. Then we can focus on the offender," Manderson said.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2845101a11,00.html
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http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/ED0403/S00049.htmBreaking up is hard to do ??? study seeks views
Friday, 12 March 2004, 10:44 am
Press Release: Victoria University of Wellington
Breaking up is hard to do ??? study seeks children's views
The views of children and teenagers experiencing parental separation are to be heard in a groundbreaking study to be undertaken at Victoria University.
Doctoral student Andrea Rigg, a student in the School of Psychology, is seeking 50 children and teenagers, aged between nine and 18 in the Wellington region, whose parents have separated in the last two years to participate in the study. Their views will be examined in a confidential initial interview and a second interview some months later.
Ms Rigg says very little research had been carried out in New Zealand to examine how young people cope with parental separation.
"We often hear a lot about adults whose relationships are breaking down, their pains and strategies to cope but very little is heard from their children and what we do know tends to be fragmentary and anecdotal.
"My research aims to hear first hand how the children experience the process of their parents separating and how they coped. By meeting with them again in a follow up interview, I aim to see the changes they've undergone and assess what their needs have been as well as their general feelings and wellbeing.
"Family breakdowns are a common experience for children in New Zealand. One in three marriages alone ends in divorce and almost 50 percent of these involve children, many of whom are under 10 years of age. As many adult New Zealanders in relationships are not marrying or delaying marriage, the number of children affected is likely to be much higher."
Ms Rigg says once she completes her doctorate, she will prepare a booklet for use by parents, professionals and others working with children and families, including those associated with the Family Court.
Ms Rigg, who has an Honours degree in Psychology from Victoria University, a Bachelor of Arts and Graduate Diploma in Education from Otago University, is carrying out her research under the supervision of Dr Jan Pryor, Director of the Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families at Victoria University. The consent of the child's guardian is required and no participants will be identified in the research.
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fyi
http://onenews.nzoom.com/onenews_detail/0,1227,261165-1-7,00.html
Family Court judge retires
Mar 13, 2004
Judges from nearly every court in New Zealand have farewelled Principal Judge Patrick Mahoney who has stepped down from New Zealand's Family Court after nearly 20 years.
The family court replaced the unpopular divorce courts in the early 1980s and since then has had to cope with new property laws, the domestic violence act, the move away from bitter fault-based hearings and new laws on the status of children.
And Mahoney says he's happy to see the usually very secret court becoming more open to the public and the media.
"Children are resilient and they can manage very well the process of change when they come to realise their mummy and daddy are no longer together...it's the conflict and fighting that damages the kids," he says.
However, Mahoney is retiring at a time when some fathers are far from happy - taking their concerns to a parliamentary select committee.
Darrell Carlin from the Union of Fathers says they feel the counsel for the child is often second counsel for the mother.
"We very rarely find one that works well for fathers," says Carlin.
The organisation believes the court's tendency is to give custody to mothers.
But family lawyers support the court.
Simon Maude rejects suggestions that there is a gender bias.
A complaint about the family court is its secrecy, with no public or media access to hearings.
But a bill to come before parliament could change that.
"The family court judges will be very comfortable with whatever arrangement parliament makes," says Mahoney.
"We will be able to work effectively so long as we have some discretion to protect vulnerable people in our courts."
The new principal family court judge is Peter Boshier - known to have fairly liberal attitudes to media and public access to the courts.
?? One News
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