Russel’s response to John Key
It’s interesting that John Key’s ‘Youth Guarantee’ scheme talks about providing free tertiary education for 16-17 year old students who leave school but nothing for those students who stay at school and then try to follow their dream through tertiary education. Instead it appears to put funding for our world class public secondary school teachers in competition with private providers.
It would also have been nice to see solutions to youth crime that dug deeper than boot camps, longer sentences and undermining the Family Court. The long term needs and hopes of our young people and their parents are healthy, affordable housing, secure employment and access to free education.
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January 29th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
I’ve always been suspicious about National’s reluctance to talk about the causes of problems. How can we address an issue if we don’t have a likely cause for it? If we don’t have a good idea of what’s going on and try to interfere to make things better, we risk massive unintended consequences.
I’m gonna have to look into this “bootcamp” thing a bit more before I comment on it. I know in my case, I would’ve probably wanted to have run away from home at that age before I got put in that kind of environment, but then, maybe I’m not typical in that sense.
January 29th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Thank god someone’s raising the lack of secure housing as a cause of social problems. How can kids build up relationships and community when they’re being carted from one often inadequate and damp rental to another because of changing parental jobs or rising rents? Thanks Russel, great work.
ned
January 29th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Contrary to the impression created by the TV news stabbings and bashings aren’t the most common forms of violence against young New Zealanders. That dishonour remains with our roads. And now the KiwiRAP program has delivered the means to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the blame belongs equally with road providers and road users.
According to the statistics that Land Transport NZ inherited from the LTSA the South Island’s highways should be safer than the North Island’s. South Island regions have higher seatbelt wearing rates, less drunk driving and the same average speeds.
But KiwiRAP and the statistics LTNZ inherited from Transfund tell a different story. The South Island has 62% of the most dangerous highway kilometres despite only having 44% of the State Highway system.
Despite the South Island’s highways carrying 24% of all State Highway traffic they receive less than 20% of Transit’s spending on highway improvements. The South Island highways receive less than 30% of the money Transit spends on maintenance. Consequently while the average State Highway pavement is 37 years old in the North Island, in the South Island they average 60 years old. Transit’s annual accounts state that depreciation is calculated on a 40 year average life. Can anyone seriously expect highways that are 20 years past their use-by date to be safe at 100kmh?
It should come as no surprise that governments deny that their funding arrangements created this tragic situation for the South Island. They find it much simpler to blame sober speeding drivers for the extra crashes. Of course when you remove the serious crashes caused by sober speeding drivers from the KiwiRAP stats the excessive danger on South Island highways magicly disappears. But then you would expect that when worn out highways share the same speed limit as well maintained highways.
One curiosity that has never been explained is why Sweden’s child road deaths halved within a few years of smacking being outlawed. There were no child road safety initiatives implemented at the time. Did Sweden’s processes leading to the outlawing of one form of violence against children lead to a cultural change regarding all forms of violence against children?
January 29th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Boot camps…. I suspect there is a lot of press flimflam about this, but do note that boot camps are an imported idea from the UK, where they were tried, and eventually abandoned as a bad idea; the last thing the police force needed was a criminal fraternity with the physical capabilities of an army enlistee who could outrun the boys in blue.
The only solutions that have any chance of working are social programs that work with youth before they become troubled youth. Sadly, there seems little reluctance to get involved pro-actively, only reactively.
Having said that; It’s good to hear Key laying down some policy, and there is hope in what he says.
And while I think on, seeing as the music has just come blasting out the telly - I am of the opinion that Coronation Street (and more latterly, Hollyoaks) are responsible for the social degradation of New Zealand. We have a Chief Censor who has the power to proscribe material on the basis it is “injurious to the common good”, and I can think of no greater, more insidious examples of unacceptable and inappropriate behaviours than these terrible imported soaps.
January 29th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
I bet Russ could not wait to rip into Key again, will we see the same response after Clark’s speech tomorrow?…I doubt it.
Anyway, there are a few things that I want to take issue with, for a start where are all our world class teachers?, as far as I can work out all the best ones are in private schools or have been driven out by feminazi PC brigade that run education.
Who is undermining the family court Russ?, again this is a complete and utter lie.
You must admit that we need to try something new, all the modern PC rubbish and family group conferences just do not work, Key has come up with some fantastic ideas and on the whole they have been warmly received by the press, the public and those at the coal face.
If you Russel were genuine about doing something about youth crime you would embrace what Key is saying, the trouble is that you are determined to take NZ down the hard left path and this means that you can NEVER agree with anything Key says even if it is the right thing to do.
January 29th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
…but nothing for those students who stay at school and then try to follow their dream through tertiary education
that should be obvious why not. So let me tell you. Keys education is at school level, not for the dream of post school tertiary education. The people key wants to assist are school level aged kids at that level, not post secondary school aged kids - and the kids key wants to help can then go on to teh tertiary education you are discussing…
Did you not read the speech and accompanying notes, Russel?
January 29th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Thanks, Davec, I missed that nuance.
The “…but nothing for those students who stay at school and then try to follow their dream through tertiary education” goes right to the heart of trying to rid society of crime.
The problem is that if you accept that social and educational solutions are the key to stopping a person comitting the first crime, and thus stopping this person starting on a life of crime, then you accept that targetted support must be provided to these persons. This means you have to accept that the system then becomes unfair, and that there are losers in the system, namely, those who aren’t likely to become criminals.
The alternative is to continue to do what we do today, which is to spend money giving criminals free accomodation, namely jails. This is (as far as I can tell) seen as being socially acceptable, and not “unfair”, despite the fact it is a manifest waste of good money. But, if the product of the system is criminals, then we have to do something with them.
To say “I/We can’t support spending money preferentially on potential criminals now to save money in the future because it is unfair” is to be, in effect, pro crime.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:05 am
Why all this avoidance discussing the real issues close to the Green heart?
Helen Clark is now “Champion of the Earth”.
This undoubtedly means that NZ is well on its way to being Greener than Green. The UN said so. They’ve awarded Helen the same award they thrust upon Al Gore. Don’t you guys like the UN and its peace keeping initiatives?
So why no congratulatory posts? An opportunity to celebrate the undisputed success of Labour’s Green initiatives. Are you worried there is no longer any need to vote for the Green Party? Or is it something else?
January 30th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Wouldn’t you accuse the Greens of being pro-Labour sycophants if they did so?
January 30th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
The video is no longer available.
January 30th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
The video is still working here.
January 31st, 2008 at 2:20 pm
The UN got it wrong, basically, Zentiger, and like any governmental agency they’re not immune to that sort of thing. Helen has done very little to actually protect the environment despite how much she talks about it. (that said, she’s probably prevented a lot of potential harm to the environment, too)