By George
There is no justification for child hunger in New Zealand. There is no defence for child neglect in New Zealand. There is no excuse for child assaults in New Zealand and there is definitely no threshold for the adult inflicted child mortality in New Zealand. Yet, it appears, the cure for all of this is to throw more money at the perpetrators, or at best, absolve the perpetrators from their responsibilities. Children don’t need money. They need love, nurturing and responsible parenting, all the things money can’t buy. Nurtured children don’t go to school hungry.
So the state feeds those children who are hungry. A full belly may improve the child’s discomfort but that is soon forgotten when the child returns home to an environment that continues to ignore and neglect them. I refuse to be sucked into the poverty argument. If a child goes hungry it is through emotional abandonment not the lack of money. The most impoverished countries in the world raised children. Their parents would rather starve than inflict the pain of hunger on their children. They confront this without generous state support. Why can’t we, with one of the highest funded and resourced welfare programmes in the Western World, protect our vulnerable children?
I totally accept there is genuine hardship for some. I know many work two or three shifts on minimum wage to make ends meet. I know “Struggle Street” well. Most of us have lived part of our lives on this street. So have our children, most of whom didn’t go to school hungry.
This government, or any government, has to get honest. Avoiding reality has resulted in a state-sponsored co-dependency. As long as there are politicians prepared to make excuses for child neglect then it will continue to be a plague on our society. When politicians cite ‘colonisation’ and numerous other pathetic excuses, you know the wrong people are in charge.
Whilst they are flapping their lips children go hungry, and it is the children’s degenerate parents who receive the nurturing of the state by way of the politically motivated justification for their behaviour. Until the parents and caregivers of these children are confronted head-on by the state, nothing will change. The question is why is this being avoided? I think most of us know why. Shallow politicians, gutless politicians and pathetic leadership.
