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I was quite taken with Finance
Minister Michael Cullen's recent description of an unfriendly treasury report
as an "ideological burp". So I'll borrow it, and embellish. Having gorged themselves on
political correctness, inscribed their policy manuals and presumably indulged
themselves in an orgy of self-congratulatory training sessions, the airlines
appear to have been caught in the throes of an ideological chunder. A
technicolour yawn of mindless proportions. How else to explain the policy
that came to light on Wednesday this week whereby men are banned from sitting
next to unaccompanied children on Qantas and Air New Zealand flights. The logic, one presumes, is that every
man is a potential paedophile, and the airlines are not prepared to take the
risk. Stick a label on our foreheads, why don't ya? Well, how about a little bit of
alternative logic: There are no reliable figures for the percentage of
paedophiles in the general population, but probably 98 percent of men are no
more paedophiles than they are Martians, and this thoughtless, stupid,
offensive, bigoted, discriminatory, damaging, derogatory, distasteful and
insulting policy is surely indicative of a meltdown in the tiny brains of
these organisations. I travel on Air New Zealand quite
frequently as do members of my family -- wife, sons, daughter. I use this
airline partly out of necessity and partly out of residual national pride at
a once-decent company. But with policies like this, I would cash in my
airpoints and shift allegiances overnight. It is an affront to all men, and
more than that, to common sense. It was certainly an affront to Philip Price
of Tauranga. Travelling on a flight between Auckland and Christchurch, he was
sitting across the aisle from his wife and children (Wife and children --
Hello! Anybody home?). Next to him sat an unaccompanied child. A flight
attendant asked him to swap places with his wife. The policy has even brought
together an unlikely allegiance of Green MP Keith Locke and National's
PC-buster Wayne Mapp. Mr Locke has called it moral panic and Mr Mapp has said
it is political correctness gone mad. I agree with them both, although I wish
Mr Mapp would sharpen his verbal arsenal. Dunedin-based clinical
psychologist Nigel Latta, with 15 years' experience working with sex
offenders and victims, said the airlines' policy was "insane" and
"offensive", that the policy was sending an "awful"
message to society that "all men are pariahs". That's more like it.
In fact, it is in the realms of
the infamous hyperbole "all men are rapists" that surfaced from the
far-out flanks of feminism during the gender wars. But here we have a
supposedly mature commercial organisation, Air New Zealand, in large part
owned by the taxpayer, instituting a blatantly discriminatory and
gob-smackingly offensive policy. What next? If it is prepared to
effect a blanket rule towards such a large percentage of its travelling
population, what might it do to minorities: the weight-challenged, the
hygiene deficient, the ethnically different, the religiously conspicuous? The move smacks of hysteria and
commercial stupidity. This, after all, is a company with a huge budget spent
on advertising and corporate image. Yet it still manages to come up with a
policy like this. Who invents these rules? And who
trains their unrepentant public relations boffins. "Our long-standing
policy (blah-blah) reflects an approach adopted (blah-blah) by leading
airlines around the world (blah-blah)." Yeah, right. I'll give Air New Zealand some PR
advice for free. Revise your policy smartly, explain it openly and apologise
profusely to your offended customers. If you are truly concerned for the
safety of your unaccompanied young passengers, find another way. Employ
specialist staff, be creative with your seating plans, offer discounted fares
to passengers as travelling "nannies", offer adopt-a-child schemes
for travelling families. Whatever. It can't be that difficult. Because if increasing numbers of
decent, law-abiding fathers, husbands, brothers and sons who could no more
abuse a child sitting next to them in an airline seat than pilot a spaceship
to Mars are tossed out of their seats on the basis that they might be
paedophiles, you may find yourself haemorrhaging customers. Or worse, having
to seek legal advice. And that certainly won't be for free. |
