Small but important acknowledgement
Multi-Party Group Works On Family Violence Prevention
Press Release by New Zealand Government at 3:28 pm, 22 Nov 2007
The Multi-Party Working Group on Family Violence is committed to working together to eliminate family violence in New Zealand, said Social Development and Employment Minister Ruth Dyson today.
“The multi-party group is made up of MPs from ACT, the Greens, Labour, the Maori Party, New Zealand First, Progressive and United Future. The group is committed to providing leadership to end family violence and to promote stable, healthy family relationships. All New Zealanders have a role to play in eliminating family violence,” said Ruth Dyson.
“The group are working well together and have recently agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding which is a commitment to a sustained and collaborative effort to deal with this complex social issue.”
Tomorrow the group will visit family violence related initiatives in South Auckland. The programme includes visits to initiatives that target people at key developmental and transition stages such as Family Start that works with new parents and Mangere Genesis Youth Project Trust who work with young offenders and their families.
The group is also preparing for White Ribbon Day on 25 November 2007. This is the international day when people wear a white ribbon to show that they do not condone men’s violence towards women.
“We also acknowledge the need to recognise New Zealand research that highlights the fact that family violence involves both male and female perpetrators and victims and that more needs to be done to reduce all forms of partner violence, as well as violence towards children,” said Ruth Dyson.
The group stresses that violent behaviour of any sort is unacceptable in the home.
“Family violence is such a serious and multi-faceted problem that we all need to work together, at all levels of society, to make New Zealand a safe place for our children and families to grow and thrive.”
ENDS
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 Third to bottom para – just about the first mention in a government release. Small but important step…
Not edited:
It’s good to see UF posting this article to this site. What worries me is that the primary issues that men throughout the history of this site will not have registered any major impact on the discussions about to get under way.
1: Male violence has been factored as being more common than women’s, yet no Party yet seems to be offering any observationon why this might be. The conclusion, most naturally is that men are more violent than women. Yet, how can this be true if women’s violence is not considered any different from men and where that consideration has not been made then women’s violence is liscenced to operate and function into society in a manner of disguised viciousness.
2: That the simple rules to disaffect point 1 is to established challenges to those kinds of violence which could deliniate any separation in those kinds of violence. Separated father’s can generally complain that this violence against them is definable through a syndrome called PAS. This stands for parental alienation syndrome. It is under researched and most definately there are not provisions in mainstream society and its disaffecting programmes. Instead we rely on programmes to disaffect violence called living without vioence or anger management. So to this point, if it could be held that women can be equally violent as men, yet not always in a way that demands physical or sexual abuse and that PAS was an expression to quantify that violence, then it has not been fully or properly addressed by those politicians who advocate that they have a repugnance for any violence.
3: There can be no greater example to this fact where women’s violence is untested and allowed into society where the Care of Children Act is a justification for women to have children without securing for the child an association with the child’s biological (or natural) donor parent. This law generally tends to favour “any” woman who should want to have a child for whatever her reason without furnishing the child with their protected association rights with that parent. This is a direct expression of PAS. The child is left to develop without a protection that their natural father could hold any greater value to them than for the expression of want by the mother.
4: The hospitals in New Zealand have presently adopted a policy of asking questions of every woman to attend the hospital on whether or not they have been exposed to domestic violence. This action is directly discriminatory against sex, and yet it has been applied without the broader questions of whetehr or not such a poractice is deomnstrably justifiable. It has been presumed even though PAS is protected as a permissable syndrome in New Zealand society that the authorities have an educated view on teh constiution of domestic violence.
5: The people who suffer the damage for this are not only the fathers. It is the children who must always be directly discriminated against in order for this substandard behaviour to occur.
Optimally UF will register that the only way to challenge this behaviour is to challenge it directly. The general public have no or little ability to counter what has proved to be a long standing negative practice that is deeply detrimental against our most vulnerable and precious resource: our children.
Respectfully,
Benjamin Easton
(of a) father’s coalition.
Comment by Benjamin Easton — Mon 26th November 2007 @ 1:27 pm
UF, This is wonderful news. Thanx for sharing it.
Is there anyone in there to represent Pacific Islanders?
Benjamin, can you please not answer this question. I want to hear what UF has to say. (no negative intended)
Comment by julie — Mon 26th November 2007 @ 3:13 pm
The multi-party working group includes members of UnitedFuture, Labour, the Progressives, ACT, the Greens, New Zealand First and the Maori Party.
They work with a range of community groups, but to my knowledge don’t specifically represent any particular group. Does this answer what you meant by your question?
Comment by UF — Mon 26th November 2007 @ 4:35 pm
UF,
It doesn’t matter. I can see this is a group from the top and will work with groups that work with family violence and such. Which is good.
It is just that Pacific Island men are acknowledged as DV victims only. And that there is work being down for them but hush hush from the rest of us. It would be interesting to include just men as victims as women are considered just victims.
But I guess to have both being victim and perpetrator is a good start. Unless they are moving away from man bad – woman good and will acknowledge women as sole perpetrators in families.
Comment by julie — Mon 26th November 2007 @ 6:34 pm
Anybody that believes Ruth Dyson will assist fathers in any way possible is as delusional as the nutbar Peter Dunne !!
Comment by dad4justice — Wed 28th November 2007 @ 7:28 am