Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is, Tamihere
Dr Muriel Newman – Press Releases – Social Welfare
If Youth Affairs Minister John Tamihere is so concerned with Kiwi boys lacking adequate role models, then why doesn’t he put his money where his mouth is, ACT New Zealand Deputy Leader and Social Welfare Spokesman Dr Muriel Newman challenged today.
“Mr Tamihere is right: many boys in sole-parent families do lack suitable male role models. But if he were truly sincere, he would have acknowledged that one of the biggest contributors to this problem is our flawed Family Law,” Dr Newman said.
“The real problem is that Family Law pushes many fathers out of their children’s lives after separation. A large proportion of boys in sole parent families have little or no contact with their dads – not because they don’t want to, but because of how the law is written.
“In comparison, countries that have introduced shared parenting have seen a dramatic increase in the support and interaction that fathers have been able to have with their children.
“Mr Tamihere knows this and, this year, had an opportunity to take a lead on this issue. Instead, however, he towed the party line and has now decided to give solo mothers the responsibility of finding role models for their sons.
“The Minister’s so-called concern is disingenuous. He has had ample opportunity to support changes which, he knows, would make things better – yet he has failed to do so.
“If the Minister were genuine in wanting to solve this problem, he would have put his money where his mouth is long ago – and perhaps Father’s Day would not be tinged with sadness for so many dads and kids around the country,” Dr Newman said.
ENDS
I notice Tamihere’s response to Muriel Newman is to call for greater funding for Youth Affairs to deal with at risk young males. A laudable cause but shit a brick! more bucks for him to play socialist superhero with.
No doubt to create more government bureaucratic involvement in folks lives. Like the Nanny state he’s part of doesn’t intrude enough already eh? He needs to wake up to how fatherless is incentivised in the first place – no fault divorce, DPB, and our feminist dominated femily caughts which Boshier has been assighned to tamp down pre-election. The current debate I’ve come accross in the NZ media seen about lack of male role models for boys strikes me as pathetic drivel. There are literally masses of great role models around, just not the cowed femised PC variety many commentators want boys to have access to (chivalric warriors yet also bizarrly somehow very feminised emotional types apparently – LOL!).
The socialist-feminist assault on fatherhood as a subset of thier waging cultural war against men for 30 odd years has ended up with many children being cut off from a great many of the wonderful men around them.
Wake up and smell the coffee John T.
Comment by Stephen Gee — Sun 5th September 2004 @ 3:05 am