John Minto: Society to blame for twins' violent death

There are never any excuses for child abuse and the killing of the 3-month-old Kahui twins has brought community condemnation and shame on the family.

Aside from the anger and outrage at the death of innocents, however, much of the community reaction has been based on shallow thinking and lazy prejudices. Some of it has been patronising, judgmental sermonising - in one case based on a cursory journalistic look at the house where the killings occurred. Some journalists should stick to writing drivel about celebrities.

There are no excuses but there are always reasons why such appalling violence occurs and if we are serious about preventing violence against children then we need to confront some home truths about New Zealand.

Aside from the personalities involved, there are two intertwined factors which led directly to the death of these babies. These factors are socio-economic and race and it's the potent combination of these two which has propelled New Zealand to near the top of the child abuse statistics over recent years.

Socio-economic circumstances don't cause child abuse but they are a huge contributing factor. How many children have died from abuse in our wealthy or middle-class communities over the past 20 years? Probably none.

At the same time, many families live on low incomes and never resort to violence against their kids but nonetheless it is here that the stresses on people are greater and violence of all kinds is an unsurprising outcome. Because Maori are disproportionately represented in lower socio-economic groups their child abuse stats are higher. More so if you have lived through a generation and seen your family go backwards.

Twenty years ago family incomes in Mangere were much higher than they are now in relation to the average wage. Mass demoralisation followed when government policies saw tens of thousands of well-paid, steady income jobs replaced by part-time jobs in the servicing sector where hours fluctuate, pay hovers around the minimum wage and many families rely on several of these incomes to keep the family going. For many a benefit is a lower but steadier income.

More than any other racial group in the country, Maori in our low income communities have seen their standard of living plummet in two decades. From doing relatively well-paid, stable, skilled and semi-skilled jobs they have been reduced to low-paid, part-time work.

Not only have families been blocked from "getting ahead" in the Kiwi fashion of their parents' generation but they have seen their own family members and those around them displaced into relative poverty. The degrading shame felt by many Maori breadwinners has been dispiriting and debilitating and the future holds no hope of improvement.

Recent overseas studies have shown not so much a link between low incomes and child abuse but between the degree of income disparity in a community and child abuse. Added to this is the demoralising effect of seeing your income, your place in the community and your self-respect eroded year by year and the degradation into drugs, crime, alcohol abuse and child abuse becomes inevitable in some families, as the whole country has come to see.

Race is the second factor. Much has been made of the relatively low incidence of child murder in Pacific Island communities compared to Maori when Pacific migrants are often on even lower incomes than Maori. The big difference is the cultural base of the people which brings self-respect and the ability to "stand tall" in the community.

Pacific Island children grow up knowing they have a homeland where their language and culture are strong and safe so it's easier to walk tall here. Many Maori are not able to stand tall in the land of their birth. The Maori nationalist renaissance of the past 30 years has brought a sea-change to many Maori traditional tribal structures and has increased the size of the Maori middle class but has produced nothing for others.

Many urban Maori long ago lost contact with their cultural roots and the gap has been filled with a street culture based on urban poverty where "being staunch" is more important than being Maori. The Maori-based gangs are the most obvious outward expression of this alienation from both cultural roots and from the community at large.

Having taught for 10 years in Otara, the most difficult students are those alienated from their families for whatever reason and the most difficult of the difficult are so often young Maori students whose alienation reflects a deep bitterness and resentment which has been sharpened by their families' economic slide over the past two decades.

We cannot claim these innocents as our own and pretend to be concerned when our society has effectively turned its back on their parents and grandparents. "Helping agencies" in the community are no substitute for quality jobs bringing in a decent family income. Instead their well-meaning presence can so easily just rub the injustice in further.

Helen Clark's proposal for a cross-party approach to domestic violence is in the same failed vein as in the past. It's a healthy sign in a community that we feel outraged at these killings but this becomes the unhealthy hypocrisy of crocodile tears if we are not prepared to bring radical changes to our economic structures which condemn whole swathes of our community to low incomes, relative poverty and all that comes with it.

* John Minto is a founder member of the Workers Charter.


Reader comment: Demoralisation of our indigenous people - the consequences of colonisation - yes, yes, yes - these are obviously to blame for a raft of ills. But the family were nearly all on benefits - higher wages would not help. What really horrifies me is the smug attitude of the spokesperson proclaiming the virtues of the concept of whanau in a family where children are grossly neglected. It seems to me that liberals like us have to rethink our support and sympathy here and be honest about the responsibility of Maori to come up with solutions - in Rotorua we have Maori who have a sense of pride but still underachieve and neglect their kids. I wonder if liberal sympathy is enough any more.
- - - posted 7.25am June 28 by Maureen