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The
Christchurch Civic Creche Case |
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One of the worst things
about parenthood is imagining your children as adults. No matter their age,
the prospect that your offspring might, one day, function as sentient
independents is strangely frightening. As a parent you are
aware of all your child's qualities - good and bad. The prospect of the bad
qualities attaining an age of majority is especially disturbing. The toilet
habits, the table manners, that excessive self-regard - I mean, does the
world really need another Australian? Then there's the
late-teen alternative. Indolent and judgemental, an illiberal liberal in
favour of all rights but their parents'. Which is, I suppose, why boarding
schools were created. They remain, outside Otago University, the safest place
to detonate all that excessive ego and caprice. But there is any number
of reasons to be nice to your kids. And the chief one is that, one day, you
will be old. And they won't. It will be them
ordering your retirement and your rest home. Them taking charge of your
finances, gaining power of attorney, striking out your last will when you
leave it all to the busty, blonde nurse who administered the enemas. Indeed
it is remarkable how venal families - and especially grown-up kids - become
over your last weeks and months. Plotting against each
other to get hold of the expensive jewellery, the fashionable painting, even
the house. Although never the Lladro collection - no one ever seems to want
that. And who's to say threats to their inheritance do not exist? If
83-year-olds can bed Playboy playmates, and 60-year-old widows start
spreading it around with east European toyboys, there's no guarantee mummy
and daddy's estate will be coming their way. Which might account for this new phenomenon that Labour
minister Ruth Dyson was warning us against last week. Elder abuse, and
especially elder sexual abuse. Yep, you read that right. Elder sexual abuse
seems to be the post-millennium version of recovered memory syndrome - even
if the Alzheimers ensures it's unrecovered. I must admit that anything Dyson warns us against is
instantly suss, but these latest ministerial claims are just bizarre. It's
the decrepit version of all that ritual Satanic abuse that was supposed to be
happening in our playcentres and creches in the late 1980s. In short - crap. But it's been one of
those weeks. No one is making sense, anywhere. A Tongan boxer, out on bail,
allegedly assaults people but is only granted more bail, so he can beat up
even more people at the Commonwealth Games. Ahmed Zaoui gets granted an
amnesty by the Algerian government, but still prefers to hang out with his
weird Dominican friar friends rather than be reunited with his family. A week in which a white
South African family, the Penfolds - who, incidentally, are not on welfare and
not in trouble with the law - are about to be deported. Their crime? They
moved from Whangarei to Auckland. Proving that they're smart too. Although
the weirdest aspect of this whole expulsion story is that NZ Immigration
granted a work permit to a used car salesman in the first place. Like we
really need more of them in this country. Mr Penfold's crime was that he then
preferred plying his trade on the North Shore. But mostly it's been a
week in which a New Plymouth farmer walked free from a High Court, after
being acquitted of the manslaughter of his 4-year-old daughter. The jury's
verdict was understandable - that Gavin Vanner had suffered enough. But
that's forgetting that it was Vanner's daughter, Molly, who suffered the
most. Little wonder the United Nations reports us as a problem country when
it comes to preventable child mortality. Since the verdict, the
police have been roundly criticised for bringing the case against Vanner.
Nonsense. Their action was totally principled and wholly correct. It was
never at dispute that a 4-year-old should not be in sole charge of a 369kg
quad bike. Vanner's own evidence was that he was distracted from the care of
his daughter and that he compromised his own safety principles. So it's a little
difficult to see that justice has been done. The verdict sends a message to
too many in our rural community that they can continue to place their kids in
danger, simply because it's part of their farming culture. Then, finally, it's
been a week in which one man can be allowed to subvert the law. Legally, of
course. Conservation Minister Chris Carter vetoed the proposed marina
development at Whangamata, despite the project having the overwhelming
support of locals and meeting all the requirements of the pesky Resource Management
Act and the even peskier Environment Court. Carter's reasoning was
especially specious. That the environment would be damaged if the development
went ahead. That claim was rejected by the Environment Court, which heard all
the evidence and experts and considered the risk to be minimal. So what can we learn
from this past week? That the best way to protect yourself in this country
-and to assert your rights - is to belong to a minority group with an
identifiable culture. At that stage, the usual rules no longer apply. Oh - and that there's a
new sub-group heading our way. The elderly. And they're pissed off. Not only
that they've been taken for granted, but that they've been regarded as sex
objects for too long. |
