Category: Social Issues
On the afternoon of Monday, 13 June 2006 Auckland Police received a telephone call from a staff member of Kidz First Children’s Hospital, situated adjacent to Middlemore Hospital in Otahuhu, advising that hospital staff were treating two seriously injured twin infants. Their names were Christopher Arepa Kahui and Cru Omeka Kahui. Police went immediately to the hospital to investigate the causes and circumstances of the twins’ injuries.
Immense intellectual, or at least mental, efforts have gone and continue to go into denying the obvious, that on the whole family stability is better for children than instability, and that not all forms of family, or perhaps I should say household, life are equal from the point of view of children’s welfare. The terrible saga of the Kahui twins is but another illustration of the obvious.
Poverty advocates are crying foul over the fact that the government is even raising the idea of linking the immunisation of children to benefit receipt, even though it is an established practice that works well in many other countries. This is a discussion that is taking place in the wider context of the government’s initiative to better protect vulnerable children. Requiring beneficiaries to immunise their children – unless they are opposed for conscience reasons - is surely part of their obligation as parents. Those who fail to do so are putting their children at risk.
The NZ Herald recently ran a poll asking whether National was right to use its veto to override Labour MP Sue Moroney's private member's bill to extend Paid Parental Leave (PPL) from 14 weeks to 6 months. After 16,000 votes were submitted, sixty percent of respondents had answered yes.
The reality is that the world is a far better place today than it was 50 years ago or even a few years ago - and it will be better still in the years to come. The technological and internet innovations that we are currently experiencing are only the starting point of a revolution that is now underway and is transforming our lives on a daily basis.
It’s an honour to share some thoughts with you, report on the NZ, Australian and US relationship and put it in a historic, then global and regional context. I do this with some trepidation. I spent the first forty years of my life trying to get into the media and have tried ever since I was appointed trying to keep out of the media.
New Zealand has always had a strong welfare state tradition. In its original form, as introduced by Michael Joseph Savage in 1938, state welfare supplemented the community-based charitable efforts that had traditionally assisted the needy. For thirty years until the late sixties fewer than 15,000 people received state welfare, with under a thousand unemployed.
In its Green Paper for Vulnerable Children, the government estimates that 15 percent of children under the age of 18 are particularly vulnerable. By that they mean that “without significant support and intervention...
The matter of children and the benefit system has long concerned me. It began with the death of Wairarapa toddler Lillybing (Hinewaoriki Karaitiana-Matiaha) in 2000....
The Speech from the Throne is delivered by the Queen’s representative, the Governor General, at the opening of a new Parliament. Traditionally, the speech sets out the reasons for summoning Parliament after a General Election by announcing in broad terms, the outline of the new government's legislative programme for the next three years.
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