KEY POINTS:
It's good to be home, woken by tui to walk the dog through native bush. New Zealand - land of badly dressed women, personalised number plates and the ubiquitous portable water bottle.
Nothing's changed when you open the newspaper and read a 3-year-old was allegedly spun in the clothes-dryer and hung on the clothes line by her own family.
Welcome to paradise. With dreary déjà vu, the same hand-wringing ensues - calls for inquiries into child abuse, squabbles among politicians. Quick as a flash, nothing will happen.
Why are New Zealanders so surprised? This is a country where violence is the answer to everything. In a poll of 3000 people this week, 70 per cent want children strapped and caned to stop teachers being hit.
Does it occur to these simpletons that perhaps teachers are hit by students because these children are routinely belted at home?
This Rotorua case involves another Maori family, but that doesn't make this a Maori problem. Good on the Maori leaders for expressing disgust, but there's nothing ethnic which predisposes Maori to domestic violence, no more than Pakeha are predisposed to corporate fraud. Most paedophiles are Pakeha, but I've yet to see Pakeha leaders claim child sex abuse as a white man's problem.
The one common denominator running through physical abuse - of every ethnicity - is inter-generational welfare, people having children they can't afford, don't want, don't love, but see as a way to get more money off the state. Think that's harsh?
Recall the James Whakaruru case, where his mother lied to the Family Court, to her own family, so she could get custody of James and thus retain her benefit and house.
Ngatikaura Ngati, another 3-year-old, was killed by his mother who claimed the boy back from his foster parents so she could get an increased welfare benefit.
As taxpayers, we pay these people to raise their children, but until they kill or harm a child, they're not given on-the-job training nor called to account for their daily cruelty.
It's not good removing all these children from their parents - who's going to raise them? Childless couples desperately seeking babies won't take on badly abused and often damaged youngsters. Welfare per se is not evil, but for too many, state aid has become a way of life, along with living in ghettos, boozing, partying non-stop, smoking skunk, bad diets, indolence and violence.
Nine years ago, I wrote the story on James Whakaruru. Things I wrote would today see me reported to the Press Council for discrimination (today confused with racism), but I don't shrink from demonising child abusers (nor Asian criminals, for that matter).
But nothing will change until politicians have the guts to put caveats on state welfare. If your parenting is funded by taxpayers, you will meet conditions - feed your children, clothe them adequately, ensure they eat breakfast before they go to school and make sure they do their homework. You will not spend your welfare money on booze, drugs, pokies and smokes. And if you have more kids while you're on welfare, you won't automatically get more money.
The state will check out your family first, investigate alternatives to funding, make extended families take responsibility for raising children.
The state needn't have a monopoly on welfare. Numerous community groups are making differences around the country - check out Huntly's Waahi Whanui Trust and see how decentralisation of welfare into a local marae can assist struggling families.
There are other changes we could make, such as bringing back Plunket with a vengeance, having nurses visiting every new mum, every day if necessary, until she's confident and coping properly with baby. Keep mothers in maternity wards until they know how to bathe, handle, change and cope with baby when it screams all night. Instead, we boot them out before they can breastfeed properly.
But don't hold your breath. Act, the only party ever to have a half-decent welfare policy, has confused libertarian with libertine and reinvented itself as the "fun party", fiddling while Rome burns.
National's Judith Collins has the mettle to tackle the nation's welfare burden, but getting public approval will be impossible.
I blame women voters. They jump around when kids are murdered, but as Act focus groups revealed, prefer to keep beneficiaries down and out, well away from the comfort of the middle classes.
Like I said, it's plus ca change in New Zealand.
