Another diversion – “suspected” abusers

Written By: - Date published: 9:42 am, August 13th, 2013 - 74 comments
Categories: child welfare, crime, national, paula bennett - Tags: ,

The Key-Dunne spying Bill has met with overwhelming opposition.

More people believe Kim Dotcom than John Key.

The Fonterra scandal has trashed our “100% pure” brand internationally.

Unemployment is rising again.

Merridian float in trouble despite $30 Million handout.

The new Nat housing policy sank without trace.

Time for another law-and-order-tough-on-crime distraction! Look! Over there!!

Hard line on child abuse suspects

Suspected child abusers could be banned from being around children for up to 10 years without being convicted of a crime under a proposed law to be announced today.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett said the restrictions could mean up to 80 people a year are slapped with orders preventing them from working, living and socialising with children, with penalties of three years imposed on those who break the ban.

If police or Child, Youth and Family believe “on the balance of probabilities” someone poses a threat to a child, High Court or District Court judges could impose the ban, similar to restraining orders in cases of domestic violence.

Mrs Bennett expected opposition from human rights and civil liberties groups but believed she had the support of New Zealanders for the moves.

Yes, I’m guessing that there will be “opposition from human rights and civil liberties groups”, as there needs to be. But recognise this for what it is too. A cynical attempt to distract the headlines.

74 comments on “Another diversion – “suspected” abusers ”

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  1. King Kong 1
    13 August 2013 at 9:52 am

    Whoever came up with this one is a genius.

    Finally a policy from the right that we can frame like the bleeding heart lefties do. i.e. “If you don’t agree with gay marriage you are a red necked bigot who probably is a closet gay yourself:”.

    Now we can use “if you don’t agree with this you are pro paedo and probably like to touch children yourself”.

    Well r0b?

  2. Ennui 2
    13 August 2013 at 9:55 am

    The most telling bit is “suspected”. Certain civil, legal and democratic principles are at stake here…like the right to a fair trial, innocence before guilt, etc.

    Paula and National seem to think principles don’t matter, they show an intellectual vacuity that is frightening in this regard. Who decides who is suspect? This is creeping f*scism. And Joe Average out there shows their brown shirt credentials with the stock line “if you have nothing to fear you wont mind us looking”.

    • Rogue Trooper 2.1
      13 August 2013 at 10:23 am

      The interviews on Campbell Live, with the public, and the Nats at their conference, over the GCSB Bill were very informative.

      “and if you don’t love your country…” then you are banned from swimming in it’s water ways, catching it’s snapper or playing it’s pokies for up to 10 years.- Nathan Guy, with a bit of spinal fusion from Amy Adams.

    • Draco T Bastard 2.2
      13 August 2013 at 1:30 pm

      Paula and National seem to think principles don’t matter,

      Sociopaths don’t have principles.

  3. Colonial Viper 3
    13 August 2013 at 10:08 am

    Seems to me that Paula Bennett poses a real and present “threat” to ordinary NZ children.

    Does that mean she is going to issue herself a ban?

  4. Sable 4
    13 August 2013 at 10:14 am

    Yet more Orwellian tactics from a party that sounds more and more like they would be best suited to Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany. Maybe they should re-brand as the “National Socialist Capitalists Party”. Hitler found a nice suit with jackboots to fit Goering so Keys should be able to sort something out for Bennett without too much trouble.

    Seriously though convicting people on what they might be or do versus what they have done simply runs counter to the notion of democracy. Its also a very effective too for silencing opposition. Don’t like someone or their political opinions, simply accuse them or child abuse and the problems solved!

    • tc 4.1
      13 August 2013 at 10:21 am

      They’d be right at home in todays russia as Putin would be very approving.

      • Sable 4.1.1
        13 August 2013 at 10:27 am

        Putin refused to go along with the US re: Edward Snowden. Somehow I think Putin who is far from perfect would baulk at these creeps.

        • Populuxe1 4.1.1.1
          13 August 2013 at 6:31 pm

          Given what Putin didn’t baulk at as head of the KGB, I think you may be suffering from some kind of Stockholm Syndrome and advanced delusion.

          • Colonial Viper 4.1.1.1.1
            13 August 2013 at 6:42 pm

            a) Stockholm syndrome as a phenomenon between captives and captors, is irrelevant here.
            b) According to wikipedia, Putin retired from the Soviet intelligence forces as a Lt Colonel i.e a mid ranked commander. He was not head of the KGB. Post USSR, Putin was made head of the FSB, one of the successor organisations to the KGB.

            • Populuxe1 4.1.1.1.1.1
              13 August 2013 at 6:48 pm

              My mistake, he’s obviously a saint compared to Key and Benefit. Complete Tui buildboard here.

              To clarify, I was alluding to the ideological captive identifying with a monster, and the rest is largely irrelevant to Putin being far more dangerous than anything we have ever experienced in this country

              • Colonial Viper …
                13 August 2013 at 7:03 pm

                Well, you can’t govern Russia like you govern the Waikato.

                • Populuxe1 …
                  13 August 2013 at 7:09 pm

                  Because Russians are devils?

                  • RedLogix …
                    13 August 2013 at 8:28 pm

                    Because Russia does not have much in the way of a democratic tradition. Cast your mind back over the last thousand years or so, and Putin is by far the best of a very bad lot.

                    • Colonial Viper …
                      13 August 2013 at 8:32 pm

                      Indeed. And while more Russians nowadays would like more democracy, most like a “strong man” at the top even more.

                    • Colonial Viper …
                      13 August 2013 at 8:36 pm

                      Here’s a French news article of a pissed off Russian TV station director who snuck on to the airwaves an anti-Putin “diatribe”. Read to the end of the article what they did to him.

                      Clue: they sacked him.

                      In Stalin’s day, they would have gone another way for the man, his family, and his parents. So yes, a massive improvement.

                      http://www.france24.com/en/20130807-russian-tv-accidentally-airs-anti-putin-diatribe

                    • McFlock …
                      14 August 2013 at 12:15 pm

                      Because nobody who disagrees with Putin dies?
                      Litvenenko and Politkovskaya spring to mind.

                      Gorby was pretty good.
                      Khrushchev was probably better or at least equivalent to Putin.

                    • Colonial Viper …
                      15 August 2013 at 12:41 am

                      Oh sure, but post Stalin its a big improve 😛

    • Murray Olsen 4.2
      14 August 2013 at 1:04 am

      The police have been unofficially labelling crims they don’t like as either pedophiles or informants for as long as I can remember. One of their favourites used to be call someone from the holding cells at court and send them back a few minutes later with a stage whisper alluding to some child molestation offence. The other is to be overly friendly, offering the prisoner cigarettes, calling them by their first name, and thanking them for information in a high decibel stage whisper. This latest attack on rights is just formalising what they do already. In fact, it’s the same principle as the GCSB legislation.

  5. karol 5
    13 August 2013 at 10:26 am

    The child abuse proposals are not just a diversion from the GCSB issue, but also part of a wider plan to justify domestic surveillance.

    I posted a while back on how the surveillance systems of the “5 Yeyes” network” were being justified with respect to crimes of child abuse, and people smuggling, enabling an in to surveillance within people’s homes.

    The long reach of “5 Eyes”: Not in our name!

    I said:

    Not in the name of “women and children” and democracy!

    In May 2013, 3News reported on Chris Finlayson’s role, linking international crime with domestic crimes of a sexual nature:

    They [attorney generals] will share information on approaches to addressing historic allegations of sexual assault, and how courts deal with fair trial rights and supporting complainants and witnesses giving testimony, particularly in relation to sexual violence in indigenous and immigrant communities.

    The same Attorney General that is responsible for issues of crime and justice within NZ, should not have so much responsibility for arrangements within the 5 Eyes network, and for the GCSB’s role within it.

    • Sable 5.1
      13 August 2013 at 10:29 am

      If you are right its time for us all to pack our bags and move to a democratic country.

    • Populuxe1 5.2
      13 August 2013 at 6:40 pm

      That’s not what it was about at all – that was an international conference on best practice. It’s hardly the Bilderberg. That sort of thing would take place under a Labour-Green government as well. The 5 Eyes network has nothing to do with it. Next you’ll be saying we shouldn’t participate in Interpol stings on international childporn rings.

      • Colonial Viper 5.2.1
        13 August 2013 at 6:46 pm

        What we have to be careful of is a very deliberate conflation between police investigative activities and intelligence gathering activities aimed at foreigners and national security.

        They are completely separate and very different activities with very different objectives.

        Conflating them is another step on the road to a totalitarian state.

        • Populuxe1 5.2.1.1
          13 August 2013 at 6:50 pm

          Seems to me it was karol doing the conflating. Neither 5 Eyes nor Echelon was mentioned there once, and I think it highly unlikely that the judicial wing and plods would be let anywhere near that level of intelligence.

  6. aerobubble 6
    13 August 2013 at 2:00 pm

    Its inevitable that governments are going to collect all the metadata and more. China is. The US is. The problem with the spy bill is not that the data is going to be collected, its the oversight.
    Essential information is power, and economic information is going to be even more pressing, if we don’t know what China or the US knows about our own economy….
    …the problem is Key wants to keep access to that information to the PM oversight. This places too much power in the executive and hamstrings the opposition from holding the executive to account.
    As power means money, the money then selects the leadership of the major parties and you get one oligarchy, all singing whatever neo-liberal song of the day. At the expense of long term NZ.

  7. aerobubble 7
    13 August 2013 at 2:10 pm

    So they pay bonuses to keep beneficiaries in strife, under economic duress, yet let tax dodgers go. Interesting. So summing up, a department of government has an easier time tracking the same people, hounding them, increasing their duress that they may even seek to steal from WINZ, and keeps beneficiary numbers down as tax dodgers aren’t forced into strife. And so government believes its better to lose tax income, carry a cost, to maintain a perennial underclass who can routinely be brought up to inspire the politics of derision and denigration of the most marginalized.

  8. Jenny 8
    13 August 2013 at 3:15 pm

    Of course the sexual abuse of children is horrible.

    But in some contexts the creation of a moral panic for political gain is worse.

    Many years ago I once caught an old black and white documentary made soon after the war by a holocaust survivor. He recounted how the holocaust had descended on his community in Germany. It all started with a case involving a Jewish man accused of molesting a young blonde German girl.

    The Nazi propaganda machine and the Nazi courts staged a huge show trial demonising this man and by implication Jews.

    The documentary involved going back to this deeply wounded man’s neighborhood after the war and interviewing those involved in this court case. Of course the accused and the whole Jewish community that he had grown up with were no longer alive to be interviewed, in the ensuing hysteria and moral panic following the court case, all had been deported to concentration camps and murdered, men women and children. The young German girl now an adult refused to talk to him. He didn’t have much more luck with his previous German neighbors and friends. The true guilt or innocence of the accused was never uncovered. But the interviewer did manage to interview the serving judge and asked him to explain himself on camera.

    The judge just said that it was what everyone else was doing, and what was expected of me, it was normal.

    We often hear the phrase “the banality of evil”.

    With this legislation we risk normalising this sort of evil scapegoating here.

    Maybe not on an industrial scale.

  9. Winston Smith 9
    13 August 2013 at 3:22 pm

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/9032722/Hard-line-over-child-abuse#Scene_1

    – Good on the Greens for doing what National wanted them to do but unfortunately Annette King didn’t play ball and sounded reasonable

    I have to say I agree with some of the proposals, automatic reporting of suspected abuse and parents convicted of killing or abusing their children will have to prove they no longer represent a threat in order to be able to care for new children, for example

    However I’m uncomfortable with with the banning aspect of suspected offenders

    • Rogue Trooper 9.1
      13 August 2013 at 4:44 pm

      Yes to the last point, yet data is now held that can be examined going back years on suspected offenders; imagine all those people who have googled and sat on sites containing child porn! Tsk tsk, naughty naughty,when the (inevitable) time comes when such data is checked pre
       – employment. Happy that my own interests were comparatively orthodox. 😉

  10. tracey 10
    13 August 2013 at 4:19 pm

    I am pleased to see that those who have previously abused children gave to prove themselves if they have subsequent children BUT just what will be accepted as proof I dont know.

    80 people a year might be impacted by this. Sadly its another ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

    hundreds of kids are abused yearly this will address the abuser after some abuse incident real or alleged.

    after all the submissions this government refuses to build fences at the top the cliff.

    rio tinto gets 30m though.

    • Jenny 10.1
      15 August 2013 at 6:49 am

      Casualisation of the growing number of working poor. De-unionised, powerless, Shifting from job to job, unsettled home life, children having to change schools all the time, no time for childhood friends, isolated, disrupted education, their parents desperately following the work from place to place. Huge overtime worked to pay the bills. Out of control rents, unaffordable bonds to pay every time you shift. Children left with in laws or friends. Tired, hungry, cold, neglected, angry, resentful, alienated, dangerous.

      The children of Rogernomics, now parents.

      • Jenny 10.1.1
        15 August 2013 at 7:00 am

        Not to mention deregulated gambling and alcohol regulations. All an evil social brew. While an engorged elite look on, never having experience it so good.

        This is nothing like the country I grew up in. Where extreme crimes were rare. (One murder a year compared to over 50 a year now).

        • Colonial Viper 10.1.1.1
          15 August 2013 at 7:20 am

          Homicide rate nz 2010, 2011, 2012 was 46, 39 and 42 respectively.

          Saying its “over 50” is an exaggeration and scaremongering.

          • Jenny 10.1.1.1.1
            17 August 2013 at 11:23 am

            Sorry about that CV. Should have checked latest stats. Thanks for the correction. I was not intentionally trying to inflate the figures, they are bad enough. A few years back it was around 50 and that is what I should have said. They have dropped back, a little.

            But I think you would agree with my main point that the exponential growth in these sorts of extreme crimes is linked to the sort of unjust and brutal society that neoliberalism results in. And, with more of the social poison of government beneficiary bashing. On top of rising unemployment. Mixed in with more pokies and relaxed gambling and alcohol laws. All the statistics marking a sickening society will be back up there. Nothing is surer.

  11. Pascal's bookie 11
    13 August 2013 at 4:19 pm

    Wonder how many people who signed a petition saying they want to be able to hit their kids are feeling a bit anxious.

    • Rogue Trooper 11.1
      13 August 2013 at 4:46 pm

      that is clever Pb; I make a similar point above. It’ll be red-heads next!

    • miravox 11.2
      13 August 2013 at 5:09 pm

      Wonder how many people in acrimonious relationship breakdowns will be feeling a bit anxious about the what the former other half might be thinking of right about now.

      • Rogue Trooper 11.2.1
        13 August 2013 at 5:42 pm

        excellent! (I had been considering a former primary care-giver myself…but then, mercy is a better quality than vengeance).

  12. tracey 12
    13 August 2013 at 4:22 pm

    Agree jennny and winston.

    this sounds like a govt tapping hot buttons to justify other infringement s on freedoms

  13. tracey 13
    13 August 2013 at 4:23 pm

    Touche bookie

  14. remo 14
    13 August 2013 at 5:46 pm

    There was a week or two there no-one could get boo out of Jonkey. He was strictly off-line. Joyce the same. I can dimly remember the speaker of the house caught out of his chair in the middle of some parliamentary debacle of phone records and impropriety, and just before the big sleep of FONTERRA, was Peter DUNNE -red faced indignation – off to see the lawyer, data-dump a steaming pile in his arms and Winston hot on his heels. NSA was all over the news. SNOWDEN – remember him? there was even mention on mainstream of ECHELON my goodness. And who was Booze Allen Hamilton? and why do private companies have access to critical information out of NSA – I dunno…maybe john Campbell could have asked who Russell TICE is and why what he sais MATTERS. It was HOT. Things were moving and the press was pressing.
    yawn.
    A week later, we are right in the middle of a Karl ROVE quote. “We’re empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

    Now, Jonkey’s all over the place. yabber yabber. Child Welfare. Off to China to apologize. Meridian. Houses. We get to ‘study’ what he “do”. Everytime you turn on in the morning, there’s our Johhny. Up to his neck in platitudes. Anything but the dot.com.
    Thats why its called Radio NZ ‘National’ ?

  15. Daveosaurus 15
    13 August 2013 at 6:16 pm

    I’ve got no problem with cracking down on kiddyfiddlers. The best thing Labour could do is just rubber-stamp it and get back to cracking down on the topics where National is clearly in the wrong.

    The best test as to whether these policies are good, however, would be if Family Fist came out and opposed them. If they do, then these may well go down in history as the one worthwhile thing that Paula Bennett has ever done in her life.

  16. Populuxe1 16
    13 August 2013 at 6:28 pm

    It’s political suicide to criticise this move too much. CYPS is over-burdened as it is, so I am not sure how they intend to police this. Also I’m not sure how anyone can “prove” they are safe to look after children. I would probably support automatic reporting. The best thing Labour and the Greens could do is ignore it as much as possible and keep attacking National corruption and failures.

    • Colonial Viper 16.1
      13 August 2013 at 6:32 pm

      There is also the option of playing this into a larger narrative of “unworkable, ineffective, ill-considered”.

      That would require strategic thinking on the part of Labour’s communication teams, and yesterday one of them was on The Standard bemoaning the criticism being laid at the feet of the “Welcome Home Poster” that they had just released.

      • Populuxe1 16.1.1
        13 August 2013 at 6:55 pm

        Nope, wouldn’t play. The average Joe isn’t going to understand all that – all they are going to see is the opposition frustrating anti-kiddie fiddler legislation and therefore paedo enabling. If Labour-Greens want to play that game, they would be best attacking charter schools as potential paedo playgrounds with little state oversight and no need for a teaching qualification where teacher training has processes to filter out all but the most determined and cunning perverts.

        • Colonial Viper 16.1.1.1
          13 August 2013 at 6:57 pm

          I think it would play very well, however not to Joe Public as you point out, but to many opinion makers out there in the media and the community who actually work with children.

          • Populuxe1 16.1.1.1.1
            13 August 2013 at 7:11 pm

            Next you’ll be telling me that most parents have the faintest clue what a teacher’s job actually involves. Where did I put that Tui billboard.

            • Colonial Viper 16.1.1.1.1.1
              13 August 2013 at 7:12 pm

              Democracy is not for you P1, you’re too cynical and you despise the citizenry too much.

              • Populuxe1 …
                13 August 2013 at 7:45 pm

                No, CV, I can only go from what people who teach for a living tell me and from my own experiences. I can’t just pull faux “facts” out of my arse like you do. When was the last time you heard someone envy teachers on the assumption that the work day ends a 3:30 and they get school holidays off, for example? Parental entitlement and helicoptering are symptoms of the wider hostility to the teaching profession.
                While the studies below aren’t specifically about New Zealand, they are broadly indicative.

                http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/27532195?uid=3738776&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21102548494417

                http://www.adi.org/journal/fw99/RamirezFall1999.pdf

                How nice it must be not to work for a living…

                • Colonial Viper …
                  13 August 2013 at 8:45 pm

                  Well good luck to you mate, the electorate are like idiots to you, but that’s not how I see them.

                  • Populuxe1 …
                    14 August 2013 at 3:29 pm

                    Really? Because every second thing you say seems to berate the public for their shortsightedness on something or other you big fat hypocrite.

                    • Colonial Viper …
                      14 August 2013 at 3:56 pm

                      ok now you’re making shit up again.

                      Unlike some Lefties I recognise that the electorate is more often right than the majority of our politicians. Just the way it is.

  17. Greywarbler 17
    13 August 2013 at 6:54 pm

    Child abuse – the net seems being cast so wide that it could include the grate Poorer Benefit herself. She certainly has caused many a child to go without whatever they really needed and suffer pain, humiliation through not providing enough support of any sort needed by parents.

    • Colonial Viper 17.1
      13 August 2013 at 6:58 pm

      One other thing…the NATs instinctively know that Maori and Pasifika are going to be caught up in these court orders disproportionately.

  18. xtasy 18
    13 August 2013 at 8:39 pm

    “Innocent until proved guilty” – hah not in “Niu Zilliland 2013” under Storm-Trooper Bennett and Field Marshall Don Key.

    The law is gradually being changed here, to turn that old valued legal principle up on its head. So mere suspicion may in future lead to orders, that will certainly be abused by some, to not just stigmatize, but also force people, simply under suspicion, to not be allowed near children anywhere.

    I am strongly against child abuse of any form, and I am for measures to fight this, and to hold persons that are proved guilty accountable. But to go that far, to bring in law changes, to include even just “suspected” persons, that is a total breach of basic principles of the rule of law, of natural justice and any legal body of a human rights and freedom respecting developed society.

    Watch out for future custody disputes after break ups and divorces, the dirty laundry may include allegations and suspicions of “child abuse” – committed by the hated former partner. Watch out teachers, especially male ones, if you are not popular, some suspicion by some students may cost you more than your job in future!

    Bennett and Key, and their colleagues, you are about to bring in collective punishment with this too. As it is known, that child abuse often leads to the abused later in life becoming abusers also, the natural conclusion will be, that abused children will be potential abusers, and must therefore be “suspected” of “future abuse”, and when adults of “abuse”.

    So I suspect we will have screening of whole families and generations of them next, as a further development of such measures. Label them, stigmatize them, shun then and ban them from parks, public places, reserve special seats in buses, only for those “not allowed to sit next to children” or youngsters (remember the age of consent and that side also).

    Yeah, why not go all the way, as was done in Central Europe in between 1933 and 1945, make them wear a special symbol or sign, clearly visible.

    This though is likely not distraction from the appalling GCSB spy bill before Parliament, this is just further development of the whole agenda already happening in welfare, where social obligations are now applied to benefit parents only, not all parents, where drug testing is done and when tests are failed, a punishment is handed out, before the affected may have been able to exercise a right to question and challenge the decision.

    Also now the new work capability expectations under the reformed Social Security Act and applied to sick and disabled, mean nothing less, but that those considered fit to do some work, will also be forced to prove their “innocence” and that they are as sick and incapacitated as they claim, by delivering more proof than their own doctors. That is because the “Work Capacity Medical Certificate” is now just part of what is looked at, when assessing beneficiaries with health conditions, with disability and incapacity.

    A “New World Order” of some different kind is being created in New Zealand, the social and economic experimental lab of Planet Earth.

    • RedLogix 18.1
      13 August 2013 at 9:21 pm

      I think that just about covers it xtasy.

      By itself no-one is going to object to the most loathed group in society being marginalised and demonised even more. What is more important is that this process of alienation is normalised.

      We will be trained to the idea that it’s alright to punish people on the mere suspicion of wrong behaviour. And that wrong behaviour is whatever our owners define it to be.

      • Murray Olsen 18.1.1
        14 August 2013 at 1:32 am

        Good to see someone understands what’s going on here. I see it fitting in very well with the GCSB bullshit – “For reasons of national security, we cannot say which Middle Eastern sites he was downloading material from, but we all know we don’t need people who support Sharia Law, with conjugal rights over 11 year old girls, as part of our free and democratic community.”

        Thank god people are waking up to it and have less contempt for themselves than Populuxe has for them.

  19. tricledrown 19
    13 August 2013 at 11:30 pm

    Good to hear Garry Mc Cormack on Jim Moras show saying that the tricledown policies weren’t working
    What we neef is a govt mucking in to help the poor!

  20. Not Another Sheep 20
    14 August 2013 at 12:42 am

    Another Diversion??? NO !
    Get real – this proposal does. It has huge merit. Let’s forget party allegiance, conspiracy type theories. What is happening to our children is absolutely shocking and needs a hard line approach.
    HOW MANY CHANCES, HOW MANY STRIKES DOES A PERSON GET FOR FUCKING A KID’S LIFE ? Some men and women “on the balance of probabilities” should never get another go at being near children. Such a big HooHaa over experimenting with synthetic drugs on animals, how CRUEL???? but ironical that some think helpless children should be okay and left to be raised in a ‘just in case someone changes’ experiment where we stand by giving an ‘abusive’ adult the benefit of the doubt.

    I work in this field and I can say with absolute certainty that NONE of the abused and neglected children ever put their hands up and said “YES PLEASE, GIVE ME MORE?”

    •New Zealand has the fifth worst child abuse record out of 31 OECD Countries.
    •On average one child is killed every 5 weeks.
    ◦Most of these children are under five and the largest group is less than a year old.

    •Ninety percent of all child deaths are perpetrated by someone the child knew.
    •Nearly 9,000 children per year are born “at risk” (1 in every 30).

    •152,800 notifications were made to Child, Youth and Family (CYF) in the year ended June 2012. Of these:
    ◦62,678 were in response to Police Family Violence callouts when children were present.
    ◦61,074 were classed as ‘Further Action Required’ by CYF.
    ◦21,525 were substantiated as child abuse.
    •Child Abuse costs NZ around $2 billion each year.

    One oversight in Bennet ‘targetting’ men who are around solo-mums (Yahoo news). Family Commission reports in 2010, 2009 show in overall activities of abuse and neglect of children being that women (51%) now outnumbered men in notifications.

    [lprent: Please don’t SHOUT quite so much. It gets irritating when everyone starts to over-indulge as a competition with each other. I have adjusted your inappropriate shouting to a more *appropriate* level.

    I’d suggest that you read the site policy before I wind up further noticing your behaviour here. 😈 ]

    • Not Another Sheep 20.1
      14 August 2013 at 1:21 am

      Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

      • Colonial Viper 20.1.1
        14 August 2013 at 1:33 am

        •Child Abuse costs NZ around $2 billion each year.

        Then why isn’t Bennett reinvesting $1B back into at risk families, creating decent jobs and housing opportunities for them, relieving child poverty and sorting out the causes of family stress and disruption?

        • Macro 20.1.1.1
          14 August 2013 at 11:06 am

          But it boosts our GDP by $2 Billion.. as does Earthquakes and Drought relief and sending people to jail! Lets have more of this and boost our GDP even more!

          • Colonial Viper 20.1.1.1.1
            14 August 2013 at 11:10 am

            I’m coming to a wee bit of a negative view regarding our current politico-socio-economic arrangements.

            • Macro 20.1.1.1.1.1
              14 August 2013 at 11:16 am

              Me too! Have just finished reading “Enough is Enough” and now on “”What’s the Economy for Anyway?” by John De Graaf and David Bakter. Both excellent. If you get the chance grab them..

      • xtasy 20.1.2
        14 August 2013 at 2:15 am

        “Not Another Sheep”, but friend of a Don Key:

        Yes, and the next comment from you will claim:

        Those abusers and “perverts” were all “born bad”, and must therefore be put under permanent lock up, and deserve all the shaming, naming, the blaming, yes ultimately the destruction of themselves, perhaps even in types of “camps”, to get “rid” of them for good, right?!

        There once was a New Zealand, I was once (in the oh so distant times) told about, where you could leave your doors unlocked all day, and where there was hardly any crime worth talking about. Now, where has that gone? Why has so much changed for the worse, what may be be causes, yes CAUSES, there may indeed be something behind it all, that has lead to deterioration in so many areas? What has happened since, what economic, social and other changes may have occurred some time back, that may at least have perhaps contributed to social and moral deterioration down the line?

        While I accept some people may have some little – or unknown – predispositions to whatever behaviour that is inappropriate, I doubt very much, that people are simply born bad, born violently, perverted or else.

        Sadly the social and any other enlightened awareness has been blown out of most people’s brains by constant, aggressive bombardment with brainwashing, prejudicial, redneck and hardline one-liner news and talk, and by “blitzkrieg like” advertising hammered into ears and eyes daily, 24/7. Consume, buy, sell, profit, compete, grab, even resent, hate, persecute, lie, shame, disgrace, cheat and self-serve, that are the daily messages, little else. Me, me, me, and stuff the rest.

        Such developments and conduct have left traces of what we see every day now.

        Analysis, understanding, balanced thinking and thus reason have almost vanished from too many, hence we even had this crap government of madmen and women voted in twice over recent terms, to come up with such extreme and bizarre law proposals, to seek to blame and SUSPECT, before looking at facts and evidence to take certain actions.

        Sad, sad times these are: Simple solutions often lead to worse outcomes, than what we have already. But in you Paula has a hot fan, I notice.

  21. the pigman 21
    14 August 2013 at 2:22 am

    “If police or Child, Youth and Family believe “on the balance of probabilities” someone poses a threat to a child, High Court or District Court judges could impose the ban, similar to restraining orders in cases of domestic violence.

    Can someone remind the court that those orders are called protection orders, that the civil standard of proof is already adopted in their granting, and that there already exist appropriate orders of this very nature under the CYFS Act?

    For FUCKS SAKE, Paula!

    • Macro 21.1
      14 August 2013 at 11:12 am

      Yes.. I heard that this morning too.. and thought – what the heck!!! She has no idea of natural justice, and is by nature a bully ( I’d bet she was one at school too!).. but as has been pointed out above – she will most likely get away with this because of the prevailing punitive attitude of the NZ culture. We like to “get tough on crime” so it seems…

  22. tricledrown 22
    14 August 2013 at 2:45 pm

    the rights answer to everything
    More punishment!

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