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

In todays Dominion Post

The Health Ministry’s foot-dragging stance on prostate cancer screening for Kiwi men is criminal, patient advocates and doctors say.

A study by Wellington researchers of prostate screening and treatment, published in the December edition of the international journal Pathology, suggests the ministry’s outdated guidelines could be costing 200 men their lives each year.

The Ministry of Justice is carrying out a review of the Domestic Violence Act 1995

Somehow I don’t think we should expect substantial reform:

Recently we have consulted government agencies, the judiciary and some representative interest groups to obtain an up-to-date picture of how the legislation is working. Most people we have consulted support the principles and framework of the Act, and there has been no indication over the years that a more fundamental review is warranted. Therefore, we have taken an “issues-based” approach to this review.

(more…)

The Innocence Project New Zealand Conference at Wellington’s Victoria University last week proved to be an extremely interesting and educational three days.

Organised by Matthew Gerrie & Maryanne Garry, the project is primarily a group of scientists, writers and lawyers who aim to investigate possible cases wrongful conviction in the New Zealand legal system, educate people working in the justice system, and conduct research aimed at making criminal investigations as effective and safe as possible. Sadly, there were no judges at this conference, and I was shocked that nobody from the Ministry of Justice bothered to attend. (more…)

From Stuff.

Why not just make unpaid Child Support work the same as unpaid court fines?? Treat them like unpaid fines – clamp the non-paying parents’ cars, seize goods and in the end if they still don’t pay, have them hauled before a judge to be treated like fine defaulters. Put the non-paying parents’ names with debt collecting firms to ensure they no longer get credit to buy their big screen TV etc instead of paying for their own kids.
Mark Miller

Inland Revenue have a possessed toy by the same name, don’t they?

Dads not happy with mum’s violence challenge
By JOHN HENZELL – The Press | Wednesday, 05 December 2007

A fathers’ group is outraged Christchurch police have been challenged for informing a dad that his children had been present during a domestic-violence incident between their mother and her new partner.

The father learnt of the incident more than a year later when his son mentioned fighting and that they had been “in a police car” when they were taken to the safety of their grandmother’s home.

… Darrell Carlin, spokesman for the Union of Fathers, said it showed once again that the authorities were failing to make children’s rights the priority.

“Fathers need to be in a position to protect their children (but) it happens quite frequently that fathers don’t get to see what’s going on,” he said.

“He could have gone through the custody case and the court wouldn’t have been notified that this had gone on because it didn’t involve both (the mother and father).

“This case was about the mother’s dignity and feeling of humiliation, but we’ve got to bring it back to the kids and what it’s like for them and what it’s like to be taken out of their house in the middle of the night in a police car.

“To keep the checks and balances, fathers definitely have the right to know whether their children are likely to be in any kind of danger.”

Those who have separated may have recognized the extra expense of running two households when there had been only one while the family remained together. Researchers at Michigan State University have studied the environmental impact of increasing divorce rates. They calculate that an extra 38 million rooms, 78 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity ad 2373 billion litres of water are needed each year to accommodate this selfish fashion. Will the Clark government take steps to discourage family separation as part of its claimed priority on environmental protection? Unlikely. For this feminist government, biological families are seen as bastions of patriarchy that need to be torn down, and separation provides a convenient way to transfer wealth between the genders and to enslave men in order to pay for women’s lifestyles with no reciprocal obligation.

An astonishing article on National Radio this morning about Marianne Tremaine, described as “an executive of the Centre for Women and Leadership at Massey University” (what’s the bet there isn’t one for men…). The National Radio link will only last for a week but after that I will have a copy of this interview for anyone who wants it. Ms Tremaine is about to be awarded her PhD for her research into women mayors, and she has already won an international journalistic literary award. Here’s a Listener article that describes some of her findings. Apparently, she interviewed a number of NZ women mayors, no male mayors, and concluded that women mayors were much better than men at their jobs because they had “balanced egos” and unlike men were not “too concerned about themselves” to be able to see what the community needed. Apparently the lady mayors tended to admire the kinds of attributes that women mayors had rather than men mayors (how surprising). According to the women mayors, communities were much more impressed with women mayors and formed much closer bonds with them (so how come many communities vote for men?). (more…)

I watched this South Pacific Pictures movie last night and recommend it highly to all. It’s about Dave Henderson’s real-life fight against the IRD that shafted him. Many have been shafted by government departments and Courts, but few battle as effectively as Mr Henderson did.

Notable in the story were the gender issues. The problem apparently began when a male IRD officer made inappropriate personal comments to Mr Henderson’s partner. When Mr Henderson attempted to defend her honour by threatening violence, the IRD officer mounted a vendetta.

His partner, though initially happy at his chivalry, soon became stressed at the developments. She started attributing the problem to Mr Henderson’s own shortcomings, his anger and social impropriety (even though he behaved quite well after his initial outburst). She pushed him against his better judgement to share details about what was happening but as soon as he did she sulked and complained that he was raising his voice. She became angry with him when in his stressed condition he showed impatience towards her son. She berated him for raising his voice etc even while she was shouting at him about it. In the middle of it all she left him because it was too stressful, thereby wrecking the bond he had fostered with her son and leaving Mr Henderson bereft. When he eventually succeeded she was back to “I miss you”, and his chivalry extended to forgiving her readily for her abandonment of him in his hour of need.

Many men will find the themes quite familiar from their own experiences. Of a number of morals to this story, I will highlight only the importance of keeping detailed records of all communications and experiences when involved in a dispute.

1. J.A.M has been developed by Jim Bagnall during and through his support for over 10,000 Fathers and a few Mothers going through the Family Court.
2. The word justifiable applies to the context of the anger and its source and does not glorify anger in anyway. Justifiable is a word for an acceptance of that person’s anger.
3. The Pay/Fight back scale provides a framework and a structure in which anger exists and an explanation both to the angry person and their helper of how both the energy from the anger can be used and how a person can use the scale not only for understanding their anger but for analysis and action to combat their role deletion.
4. The scale usually should be read or listened to from its base which starts out with description at the Instinctual level and then moves up through anger’s mind treadmills and obsessions to a social level and a place where a person can find outlets for his/her analysis of where he/she is at.
5. At the top of the scale there is a place where standards are reshaped through analysis and where a re formed identity is realized and a higher justification is reached based on valuing people and a just outcome giving new strength through adversity.

Contact Jim Bagnall for J.A.M
09 815 0307 or 021 170 7375

Multi-Party Group Works On Family Violence Prevention