KEY POINTS:
Once again, the face smiles from the front page of a wide-eyed happy child. This time, it's the face of Rotorua 3-year-old Nia Glassie, who died in Auckland's Starship hospital on Friday. It is alleged that Nia suffered months of abuse, including being spun in a tumble dryer. Meanwhile, a 12-week-old boy is in the same hospital with suspicious head injuries.
Placard-waving demonstrators in Rotorua have taken to the streets demanding something chillingly akin to lynch law. Meanwhile, one of the accused has alleged he has been threatened with death if he is bailed. Such reactions have a cathartic appeal. But no one can seriously argue that they will improve matters for the women and children suffering abuse in our communities.
Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro says that dealing with domestic violence and child abuse demands "decent investment in programmes". But what programmes? It is no longer enough for us to rely on state or voluntary-sector organisations whose remit is to address violence: we need, as a society, to confront the causes of violence and not the violence itself.
It is idle to deny that the problem occurs disproportionately in Maori communities. But to make the next step, and claim that it is a Maori problem, is a grievous over-simplification.
United Future leader Peter Dunne was one of several politicians who this week blamed the Rotorua events and last year's death of the Kahui twins on "a failure of Maori leadership".
But ethnicity is not the prime predictor of child abuse; social class is. To put it another way, it is not Maori who are beating their kids; it's poor people - and poor people are disproportionately Maori.
We may wring our hands and lament the epidemic of child abuse and child-killing, but the figures show that the number of children killed each year is actually dropping.
A former chief social worker for Child, Youth and Family, Mike Doolan, who analysed police data found the rate among Maori soared in the 1990s but that it has dropped dramatically since. The 90s began, not incidentally, with massive benefit cuts and, in the years that followed, sectors such as forestry and the railways - disproportionately high employers of Maori - saw huge job losses.
The Maori rate is still more than twice that of non-Maori. Labour MP Shane Jones pointed to the root of the problem when he spoke of Maori families "gripped by a poverty of spirit and an impoverished morality". What he did not say - and what we must all acknowledge - is that they are disproportionately gripped by poverty, as well.
In that context, it makes no sense to dismiss this as a "Maori problem" that must be solved by "Maori leadership". To do so is to turn our back on a problem blighting New Zealanders. Nor can we point to dysfunctional behaviours - the P epidemic is an integral part of this breakdown as well - and label those guilty of it lazy or evil. Like it or not, tormentors are victims too.
On the assumption that domestic violence and child abuse often go hand in hand, every woman who presents at hospital will now be asked whether she has been "asked to do" anything sexual she didn't want to do.
Probably every woman has at some time or other; surely the question is whether she has been coerced into doing something. In any case it is likely to result in alarmist over-reporting and more funding being thrown at committees planning "improved service delivery". Meanwhile, we can ignore what we know to be true: poor people are hurting - and they are hurting each other. This is not a Maori problem; it's a Kiwi one.
