The dark side

Apart from the dreadful weather, the news in New Zealand has been dominated by a series of horrific crimes. This has included the death of two three month old twin boys and the rape of a woman in her own home. The man arrested for the rape has turned out to have distant familial ties to the family of the twins.

Whilst these tragic events happen the world over, I was pretty shocked to learn that New Zealand has highest rates of domestic violence and child homicide in the world and certainly amongst the OECD countries. This is indeed a dark side of New Zealand.

I’ve been more interested in social issues this week as I mug up for a job interview with the Ministry of Social Development. The Government’s manifesto for the Country revolves around three themes – economic transformation, families – young and old, and national identity. In the last five years priority has been given to getting people into work and New Zealand now enjoys the lowest unemployment rate in the OECD grouping (3.5%). Looking forward the focus is turning to protecting and supporting the most vulnerable groups in society.

Social exclusion and deprivation in New Zealand is most prevalent amongst Maori and the reasons for this are complex. An opinion piece in this week’s Sunday Star Times highlights this issue. http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3711599a1861,00.html It’s clear that the Ministry of Social Development has a tough agenda to tackle.

Not unrelated, I’m going for a contract job with the Ministry of Justice to help them with their communications for collecting fines and reparation payments. They’ve just started a campaign identifying individuals to try and tackle the burgeoning payment default levels. As at 31 January 2006 $671.7 million was owed in fines by 482,939 people. Of this amount $366.7 million was overdue for payment. Men between the ages of 20 and 30 owe $213.2 million nationally and these men’s attitudes to their fines range from defiance to forgetfulness and they hope that by ignoring the problem it will go away. It seems that the NZ Government are getting tough on fine defaulters and tax evaders putting in place new legislation that will allow people who owe fines to be stopped at the airports.

On a lighter note, considerable Government time was spent this week debating whether farm dogs and granny’s poodles should be exempt from a new micro chipping law. From 1 July all new dogs will have to be registered and micro chipped so that they can be tracked if they are lost, cause damage or attack. The vote decided that farm dogs would be exempt but not others – bang goes $200 when our bassets arrive then.

So along with the weather, it’s been crime and disorder that’s been dominating the news this week – that and the All Black’s creeping in with another last minute win against Argentina after defeating Ireland in a similar way the two week’s previously.