MENZ Issues: news and discussion about New Zealand men, fathers, family law, divorce, courts, protests, gender politics, and male health.

Extract from a book review of ‘Freakonomics’, by Levitt & Dubner.

One of his best-known, and in some quarters notorious, findings concerns America’s falling crime-rate during the 1990s. Towards the end of that decade, confounding the expectations of most analysts, the teenage murder rate fell by more than 50% in the space of five years; by 2000, the book notes, the overall murder rate was at its lowest for 35 years. Other kinds of crime fell too. Why? Some gave the credit to economic growth; others to gun control; still others to new methods of policing, or to greater reliance on imprisonment, or to increasing use of the death penalty, or to the ageing of the population.

Mr Levitt goes carefully through these various explanations, checking them against the evidence. He finds that some of them do offer a partial explanation (more jail time, for instance), whereas others do not (greater use of the death penalty, new policing methods). But the most intriguing finding was that one of the most powerful explanations had not even been broached. That explanation was abortion.

The reasoning is simple enough. In January 1973, the Supreme Court made abortion legal throughout the United States, where previously it had been available in only five states. In 1974, roughly 750,000 women had abortions in America; by 1980, the number was 1.6m (one abortion for every 2.3 live births). “What sort of woman was most likely to take advantage of Roe v Wade?” the book asks.

“Very often she was unmarried or in her teens or poor, and sometimes all three…In other words, the very factors that drove millions of American women to have an abortion also seemed to predict that their children, had they been born, would have led unhappy and possibly criminal lives…In the early 1990s, just as the first cohort of children born after Roe v Wade was hitting its late teen years the years during which young men enter their criminal prime – the rate of crime began to fall.”

The theory is the easy part, once you dare to articulate it. Testing it is quite another matter. But the book moves methodically and persuasively through the statistical evidence. It turns out, for instance, that crime started falling earlier in the states that legalised abortion before Roe v Wade; that the states with the highest abortion rates saw the biggest drops in crime (even controlling for other factors); that there was no link between abortion rates and crime before the late 1980s (when unborn criminals, as it were, first began to affect the figures); and that a similar association of crime and abortion has been found in other countries.

Dr Muriel Newman (ACT Party)

It is a sad day for New Zealand when a government throws another $6.2 million of taxpayer’s money into the family destruction industry, instead of getting to the heart of the problem and fixing the law, ACT Deputy Leader Dr Muriel Newman said today.

Dr Newman was responding to today’s announcement that the Government will spend $6.2m over the next four years to run programmes through the Family Court to help separating parents reduce conflict and the stress separation can cause their children.

“The problem of conflict between separating parents, which creates victims out of their children, stems from the antiquated custody laws which Labour has refused to change,” Dr Newman said.

“Under these laws, two parents who are considered equal with regard to their responsibility for their children before their relationship breaks down, are no longer considered to be equal afterwards. The mother is awarded sole custody of the children and dad is charged child support and has an occasional visit with his children. That is what is responsible for some of the conflict between separating couples.

“On three separate occasions I have promoted shared parenting legislation that would fix this position.

“Under shared parenting, both parents are deemed to be equal with regard to their responsibility for their children after a separation,” Dr Newman said. “They can both decide on the living, schooling and other arrangements that would be in the best interests of their child.

“In countries where shared parenting is the law, conflict has significantly reduced. Children do better and both parents are valued. It’s a win, win situation.

“It saddens me that Labour has defeated my attempts to introduce shared parenting. I can only conclude that they have no desire to sort this problem out,” Dr Newman said.

It has often been said to me, “Men will not save themselves from feminism -they will need to be rescued by women.”

It has taken too long to appreciate that while the face of feminism was equality its true ambition has always been superiority. The truth may be a shock to the delicate ears of the conservative politically apathetic kiwi male, along with the realization that men have slipped below the line of equality and our sons are now an optional extra in a women’s world.

In a society that professes gender neutral policy, but practices gender biased implementation, it is not hard to find marginalized men who often reach one of two diametrically opposed extremes – a state of suicidal tendency, or righteous indignation. That is simply not an attractive destination for the same young men.

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Parents for Children are asking you to give special consideration to how you cast your party vote at the 2005 general election.

Children have a right to be supported and parented by both parents working together for their children’s best interests. Yet the pleas of parents separated from their children, for shared parenting and a fair and reasonable child support system, have fallen on the deaf ears of successive Labour and National led governments. Many parents have reached the conclusion that Labour and National politicians will only act to support reform if they know that it will cost them party votes at the general election.

You can make a big difference for kiwi kids by the way you cast your party vote. National and Labour want your party vote, give this to them and they will do nothing to implement a fair and reasonable child support system and real reform of family law.

Parents For Children is asking you to VOTEWISE05 : To give your party vote, at the 2005 general election, to a party that advocates fair and reasonable child support and real family law reform. It’s a powerful message to Labour and National that our kids do matter and a simple action for you to take.

Email Helen Clark and Don Brash telling them that you are going to VOTEWISE05!

Your party vote can make a difference – VOTEWISE05. Send the message to Labour and National that ignoring our kid’s right to be parented and supported by both parents does carry a political cost, your party vote.

Please forward this email message to others you know that may support VOTEWISE05.

For further information on VOTEWISE05 visit the Parents for Children website or email votewise05@gmail.com.

VOTEWISE05 at the 2005 general election!

A New Zealand Herald columnist Sandra Paterson may last week have been the messenger with bad news the Labour-led Government does not want at the forefront of news coverage in coming weeks.

It was nothing as riveting as a Ministerial resignation in the face of verbal fire from the opposition; nor an administrative scandal of bigger than NCEA proportions. But it went to the heart of middle New Zealand unease about the reformist social programme the Helen Clark’s administration has run since first assuming office.
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The documents were, the column said, written by Kay Goodger, now a senior adviser in the Ministry of Social Development.

In them Goodger wrote, the column said: “Coercive family laws should be abolished….the rearing, social welfare and education of children should become the responsibility of society rather than individual parents.

“The famiily distorts all human relationships by imposing on them the framework of economic compulsion, social dependence and sexual repression. Our goal must be to create economic and social institutions that are superior to the present family.”

More than that, it gave substance to John Tamihere’s ramblings in Investigate magazine on the demerits of Clark’s administration.
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is it the social strategy that mainstream middle New Zealand would want followed? Is it what Maori want? Is it what Pacific Islanders want? Is it what Asian New Zealanders want? Each of these societies within the New Zealand population mix has the family at the centre of daily life. Overthrow of family life by actions of the state is hardly a concept of government likely to fit well with these sections of the community.

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Scoop understands that Kay Goodger – the subject of this article and the article by Ms Paterson – considers the content of the original New Zealand Herald column to be defamatory and to contain significant factual errors.

Joe McCarthy Lives – Right Here in New Zealand

Last week Ian Wishart, Tamihere’s interviewer, and Sandra Paterson, who gets published in the New Zealand Herald, both wrote articles about how a woman called Kay Goodger and a pamphlet published in 1974, was, they claimed, linked to women in the Labour government. “In short,” wrote Wishart, “an agenda written by an offshoot of the Communist Party in 1973 has been met in full by the women it infiltrated the Labour Party and public service with all those years ago.”

How did they come up with this story? It’s quite easy if you know how.
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I don’t know who the little old lady was. But in 1998, one Barbara Faithful gave an interview on Access Radio (online at www.menz.org.nz/MENZ%20Issues/1999/May%2099/may99.htm#Barbara). By a remarkable coincidence, she told an approving John Potter of Menz all about the 1974 publication of what she called a “landmark submission” by the “Trotskyist (Cuba-aligned) Socialist Action League (SAL, now Communist League)”, using some of the same quotes as last week’s articles.
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For anyone who knows anything about the McCarthy witch-hunts of the 1950s or the current witch-hunts under Bush, this is where it gets truly frightening.
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Joe Stalin and Joe McCarthy both used very similar tactics. But I didn’t expect to see them being used in New Zealand in 2005.

Early last month, convicted child molester Peter Ellis suffered a heart attack.

Ellis may be a chain smoker who is partial to red meat and the odd tipple, but the most probable cause of his condition appears to be stress. Ellis has waited nearly two years for a select committee to decide whether to recommend a Royal Commission of Inquiry into his 1992 conviction of multiple counts of child abuse. His case is almost unanimously regarded as the greatest miscarriage of justice this country has seen since Arthur Allan Thomas. Peter Ellis has been waiting a long, long time for justice, and at the rate things are going, time may be running out.

Is the Government ever going to swallow its pride and vindicate Peter Ellis, or are they happy to sit back and wait for history to repeat itself?

Here is the rest of an extensive article about the Peter Ellis and the Cristchurch Creche Case by Anthony Frith.

White, middle-aged Western Bay men are luring poverty-stricken internet brides from overseas by lying about their income and occupation – and then using the women as virtual slaves after they arrive.

Tauranga Women’s Refuge currently has five internet brides in abusive relationships on its books – two Americans, one South American, one Polynesian and one from Thailand – and has dealt with a total of at least 10 in the past year.

Those numbers did not account for those who were too afraid to come forward.

The refuge estimates that in general three-quarters of internet brides have been sexually abused.

To escape their marriages and stay in the country, women must prove domestic violence or police involvement in their case which was a slow and difficult process, Miss McLean said.

Miss McLean is outraged the marriages are still legal and wants a blanket ban on them.

New Zealand law currently allows internet brides to be “purchased”. Once married, these women often depend on their husbands to stay in this country legally.

But under the Department of Labour’s “victims of domestic violence” policy, women can apply for special permits to stay in New Zealand without sponsorship if they can prove police intervention or domestic violence.

Five such applications have been approved for the Bay of Plenty, Waikato and Coromandel since 2001. One application has been approved so far this year.

Police family violence co-ordinator Detective Jason Perry was not aware of any reported cases of internet bride abuse in the Bay. “I’m sure it does go on but there’s nothing that has come to our attention. We know it’s out there but these people are more likely to go to those social services.”

As you’d expect, there’s big support for champagne in the park – thanks to bra-maker Berlei that is. Berlei Champagne in the Park is a series of four national, women-only charity fun runs on November 14 to raise funds for NZ Women’s Refuge. Model and celebrity Nicky Watson is the ‘face’ of the fund-raiser.

And she’s getting plenty of help from celebrity friends Peggy Bourne, Mayoress Diana Hubbard, Fiona McDonald, Stacey Daniels and Pauline Gillespie who are getting behind the event to help raise awareness. Supporting them all is Berlei, with a special Nicky Watson-endorsed NZ Women’s Refuge fundraising sports bra sold exclusively in Farmers stores. For every one of the bras sold – at an entirely reasonable $34.95 – Berlei is donating $5 to the Women’s Refuge. The fun runs – in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin – comprise a 5km run or walk followed by the Berlei Champagne Breakfast and Prize-giving.

National co-ordinator for NZ Women’s Refuge, Roma Balzer, says Berlei Champagne in the Park is an extraordinary event. “We have received wonderful support from both the community and a number of high profile New Zealanders publicly demonstrating their commitment to stopping violence against women and children in this country.

Ross Hill opens bills with what has become a familiar dread.

There are the standard accounts – power, phone, credit card. And then, inevitably, the letter from the IRD, demanding $220 a month in child support for an 11-year-old Australian girl he has never met.

The letters started coming 15 months ago, but since then Hill has come no closer to verifying whether he is the girl’s father, or even establishing contact with the girl and her mother.

Hill never knew of the girl until the first letter arrived in February last year, saying the IRD would collect his payments on behalf of Australia’s Child Support Agency (CSA).

While he admits having a relationship with the girl’s mother years ago, Hill says he was in a residential rehabilitation centre at the time of conception. He has been trying for more than a year to resolve the paternity issue through a DNA test, saying he would happily pay for child support if it showed he was the father.

But the CSA is refusing to review its position and consider a DNA test unless Hill can produce records showing he was in the centre at the time – records he says appear to have been lost.

Hill says the CSA is now asking for more than $7000 – and any possibility of arranging a DNA test of his own accord is hampered by the CSA’s refusal to give him the woman’s contact details.

Hill’s lawyer, Gary Clarke, said the situation was frustrating and unfair.

“It seems to me (the system) is considerably weighted in favour of a woman,” he said. “They can assess a man for child support on the say-so of a woman, yet he can’t get it reviewed unless he can provide records showing otherwise.”