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

Shame on Air NZ

Air NZ have shamed themselves with to days revelation in the NZ Herald that they have a policy of insisting that only a female may sit next to a unaccompanied child in flight.

This is outrageous, not only because it reinforces one gender as “bad” or “not to be trusted” but it goes against the facts themselves as reported by CYFS. Women abuse children at twice the rate of men (CYFS statistics).

Children’s Commissioner Cindy Kiro has stated “children’s safety is paramount and she commends the airline for putting thought into how it can keep children safe.”

Cindy’s ideology would have all Polynesians under a curfew after dark. All Muslims would not be able to travel in public unless they were in swim suits, every teenager could only drive a moped, and every politician would be required to be permanently wired to a polygraph.

A company concerned with the welfare of all its clients would have delivered a policy whereby people sitting next to the child were told that if there is a need for the child to go to the toilet then only the air hostess can take them. When this is to be directed at both genders it is not discriminatory.
But why think about upsetting males when they are such easy targets. Do you think this would have been permitted had the gender concerned been female?

My suggestion is to ring the EPMU on 04 576-1181 Speak to national secretary Andrew Little and insist that action is taken by the union to force a change in this policy and to ensure that no other policies are in place that slur a gender without just cause.

With kind permission from the author to post here -

Requiem For The Leftist Welfare Utopia

November 23, 2005

by Carey Roberts

Leftists have devised a simple yet amazingly effective formula to engender social discord: break up the family, marginalize fathers, and then blame the whole mess on men.

The pattern can be traced back to LBJ’s Great Society which spawned welfare programs that withheld benefits as long as dad was around. Then came Roe v. Wade, which disenfranchised fathers from the most fundamental decisions involving their unborn young.

Next, no-fault divorce laws set the stage for widescale child custody awards to moms. And finally draconian child support programs sent low-income dads shuffling off to debtor’s prison.

Judging by Census Bureau reports, this anti-father jihad made stunning in-roads. From 1960 to 1990, the number of American children living with their biological fathers plunged from 82% to 62%.

Of course unfathered children portend the continued unraveling of the social order and the rise of the welfare state. Leftists see nothing wrong with that.
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Below is a link to an article by British social commentator Melanie Phillips. Although it’s about the UK Child Support situation. It appears to have direct parallels to the CS situation in NZ. So it may be of interest to NZers. Interestingly it was published in The Daily Mail – a mass circulation daily. Can anyone imagine the old NZ Herald publishing anything like this?

The bogus child support agency

The argument was that men were financially responsible for their children whether or not such fathers were part of the family household. This was surely a profound mistake. Men’s responsibility is to be committed parents who look after their children by actually living with them.

But the CSA formula reduced fathers to being merely walking wallets, and helped redefine the family unit as the autonomous mother and child alone, serviced through payments from a distance by absent men.

As a result, Tory expenditure-cutters lined up in an unholy alliance alongside the ultra-feminist left. The feminist case was that lone motherhood was a right, and that although men might be too awful to be husbands they nevertheless had an obligation to pay for the upkeep of their children.

The result was that the CSA helped fuel gross injustice, galloping irresponsibility and the accelerating breakdown of the family.

OFF PAT – The Runaway Dads’ $500 million Cop Out.

Cow Pat was a more polite rendition of my first thought after reading Pat Booths column – The Runaway Dads.

I know this column will have irritated and angered many in the community. To be frank it is inaccurate, poorly researched, one sided, and grossly misleading rhetoric. Its inclusion in suburban newspapers is neither a credit to the writer nor the publisher. The unnecessary and unacceptable treatment of men in New Zealand over the last 20 – 30 years is an indignity that the older generation is generally unfamiliar with, and perhaps the source of ignorance that inspired this article.

Initially I would like to outline two reasons while I reply so strongly.

Firstly the indignities to which I refer often happen to men, while they are isolated and out of sight, in the presence of the police, judges, lawyers, people whom we expect to have integrity, wisdom, impartiality, patience, understanding, consideration and a genuine concern for society. In so many cases I have seen exactly the opposite and the severe consequences of loss of identity and self esteem have raised the male suicide rate to the second leading cause of death for men in NZ, ahead of car accidents, but behind cancer.

Secondly a subsequent consequence of the issues I make reference to above can be clearly seen in our population statistics. Analysis of the most recent statistics contains many interesting anomalies; one of the most interesting is the growing imbalance over the last 20 years between the numbers of males and females between 20 and 50, which currently stands at minus 40,000 men.
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Ex-children’s commissioner Dr Ian Hassall claims he was bullied and insulted by protesters outside the Auckland Marine Rescue Centre last Tuesday. Mereana Ruri, from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner was speaking to a forum held to prepare for the debate on Green MP Sue Bradford’s private members bill to repeal section 59 of the Crimes Act (which allows parents to use reasonable force to discipline their children), when a “racket” interrupted her presentation.

Union of Fathers members on the sea wall held signs such as “drink and pregnant legal, smacking illegal” and “no smacking = UN job for Helen”, and used a loud hailer to make their objections known.

The NZ Herald reported: Fathers shout for attention:

But the nuisance factor finally wore down Dr Ian Hassall, the first children’s commissioner, who ran out of patience and went outside threatening to call the police. He returned to tell the forum he had asked the protesters to “cease and desist” which they did, shortly after.

Dr Hassall later told the Herald the men had made “various insulting and rude remarks” to him.

“Essentially they are bullies. They want to bully their children and want to bully us, and probably got kicked out of home because they bullied their wives.”

Fortunately, the entire event was captured on video by cameraman Murray Bacon, so you can watch Dr Hassall undergoing his distressing experience: Download antianti-smacking video [1.24MB .wmv]. I trust suitable post traumatic stress counselling will be made available.

Later in the Herald report, Sue Bradford said that she was pleased to see the back of MP John Tamihere because he “supported violence against children”.

The systematic use of personal attacks on people with opposing points of view is a common occurrence when an ideological program is being foisted on a community which does not share the embedded values. It’s effective – when people are made to perceive there is a danger in deviating from the politically correct line, most of them can be expected to bury their heads in the sand.

The casualness with which Hassall, Bradford et al are prepared to throw around serious accusations should raise serious concerns about their motives in removing the current protection for parents afforded by section 59.

Media Release

United Future Labelled Anti-Family by Child Support Reformers

“Peter Dunne’s dickensian approach to child support reform will be remembered by parents as Dunne’s disaster, and clearly shows that United Future is a family-unfriendly political party,” observed Mark Shipman, national president of Parents for Children. He was commenting on the first reading of the Child Support Amendment Bill.

“Dunne’s diatribe on Morning Report today shows that he fails to understand that the current Child Support Act is fundamentally flawed and has nothing to do with the costs of raising children. Parents are fed up with politicians who continue to ignore the injustices created by Act. It is just another tax grab at the expense of New Zealand children and their separated parents.”

“Parents for Children members oppose this legislation and demand a complete review of the current child support legislative mess. They have no faith in the rubber-stamping select committee process, so it is likely that members will move to civil disobedience to highlight the injustice of the current flawed child support regime,” concluded Mark.

ends

Parents for Children is a national organisation seeking legislative change to enable parents who have separated to continue parenting and supporting their children.

This requires:

1. Presumptive shared parenting

2. A fair and reasonable child support system

For Further Information Contact:

Mark Shipman 021-982222

Jim Nicolle 021-800586

Save the males promo

I managed to stay awake long enough to watch “Save the Males” last night on TV2, and I must say I was very impressed with Greg Stubbings’ production. What a shame it was screened so late, at a time when the majority of working men would be tucked up in bed asleep.

I may have been influenced by the shot of a Web browser accessing www.menz.org.nz near the beginning of the documentary, but I thought all the spokesmen came across very well, presumably helped by sympathetic editing. Mark Bradman from Mensline and Peter Zohrab from the NZ Equality Education Foundation were both impressive, but I have to nominate Kerry Bevin from the Men’s Affairs Group as one of the most effective media spokesmen for men issues to appear so far. With a bit of assistance from a wardrobe consultant this man could go far!

The opening segment on the law was the most disappointing in my view. It discussed male-only crimes such as ‘male assaults female’ and rape and pointed out that men usually receive longer sentences than woman, but it didn’t really touch on the two most important legal issues for men – the biased application of the Domestic Violence Act, and the huge number of false abuse accusations made against men.

Men’s health received a fairly comprehensive overview, with Dr Rob Williams doing a good job of highlighting the disparities in health statistics and funding. He says: “If a group is disadvantaged for some reason the government should put money into finding out why. They are doing it for Maori, Pacific Islanders and woman but not for men.”

The section on fatherhood focused on father’s rights (or lack thereof), but didn’t really get to grips with the fact that children lose entire extended families as a result of this feminist project to destroy the patriarchy, and that it’s really children’s rights we should be most concerned about. Union of Fathers’ Jim Bagnall explained how ‘the shadow of the law’ works – 92% of applicants at the Family Court are woman because they believe they will get everything they ask for, men know there is only a 10 to 15% chance that they will be awarded custody. A number of my photographs of Family Court protests from the www.menz.org.nz website were used in the film, with appropriate attribution.

Nelson College headmaster Selvi Gargiulo discussed his opposition to the sale of “boys are stupid — throw rocks at them” T-shirts, and demonstrated how you can easily spot media and cultural denigration by simply changing the target ‘boys’ or ‘men’ to other groups such as ”girls’ or ‘Maori’. I think there is a danger here however, I don’t see any gains for men if we start becoming precious about showing a bit of male buttock on TV or at a strip show — restricting what we can see, hear and read about is more likely to work against us in the long run, I reckon.

The feminisation of the education system and the consequent negative impact on boys was covered pretty well by Cal Greer from Oratia District High School who made it clear: “the previous disadvantage experienced by girls has disappeared and it’s been replaced by a growing disadvantage for boys”. According to the two headmasters, little is currently being done to look at what works best for boys.

The film ended with a discussion about the Ministry of Woman’s Affairs, and made a good argument for having a men’s Ministry to balance the advice given to government. It didn’t explore the possibility that the whole concept of creating public policy with deliberate gender bias is fundamentally wrong and needs to be ceased rather than balanced.

Where did the funding for the anti smacking conference come from? From the families commission no doubt! Sue Bradford with monotonous regularity crusades against what the NZ public has already made a firm decision on. Leave section 59 alone. We should be encouraged by the presence of the children’s commission as guest speaker, when they have already publicly stated that they have no idea what the problem is. We are all past being fooled into believing this is concern for our children, when the real motivation is changing the law to create the state parent. This is not a new idea, it is a failed idea. The same law changes were made in Sweden in 1979, and contrary to claims by some groups that the legislation is worthy of emulation the evidence and conclusion drawn by independent studies in other countries says exactly the opposite. This opens the door to parents having no rights to their children and only responsibilities determined by the state and courts. That leaves me to conclude, Ms Bradford, that the only reason for your persistence is the ulterior motive. I would again encourage reasonable New Zealanders to rally against the stupidity of state disestablishment of the family. There are children at risk in this country, but their plight has nothing to do with section 59 of the crimes act.

Parents for Children
Media release

Will Cunliffe’s Catastrophe become Dunne’s Disaster?

“Peter Dunne really has been given a hospital pass from the Labour Government with the revival of the proposed changes to the Child Support Act 1991. Mums, dads, lawyers, economists, social commentators, child advocates… are all saying a real review of the current approach to Child Support is required, but politicians continue to ignore pleas for a fair and reasonable child support system that works for our kids,” responded Mark Shipman, National President of Parents for Children, to comments attributed to Peter Dunne in The Press (17 November 2005)

“The proposed tinkering with the Child Support Act will worsen the real problems faced by parents forced to deal with a system that focuses on benefit recovery for the State at the expense of the best interests of Kiwi Kids. The current Dickensian approach to Child Support is driving more and more parents to the poor house while damaging our children’s future thanks to a Government that is obsessed with revenue collection, not the best interest of Kiwi Kids,” observed Mark when asked to comment upon the proposed tinkering to the Child Support Act 1991.

“Australian politicians have initiated major changes following serious issues identified when reviewing their Child Support System. Given that the Child Support system we have was based on the Australian legislation parents are asking: Why are politicians ignoring the real issues that have been shown to exist with the New Zealand legislation? Parents for Children hope that Peter Dunne will have the courage and vision to initiate a real review of the current Child Support Act,” concluded Mark.

For further comment contact:

Mark Shipman (021) 982-222
Jim Nicolle (021) 800-586

Child Support Bill in the House before Xmas. Link to Stuff News with Comment from Peter Dunn and Katherine Rich.

They clearly still miss the point – Its all about money and not about fathers. What do you think ?