Infanticide in NZ

Killing Kiwi Kids
Child Youth & Family Services release report (a collation of other research) showing NZ's child murder rate falling in recent years:

1994-1998: 50 deaths
1999-2003: 38 deaths

Good news. An improvement. Other stats of note:

• Maori children died at the rate of 1.5 for every 100,000 and Pakeha children at 0.7 per 100,000, compared with rates of 0.7 in Australia, 0.6 in Japan, 0.4 in Britain and 0.1 in Spain
• Babies under a year old are at much higher risk in NZ than elsewhere, accounting for 30% of all child deaths from maltreatment here against 24% in other developed countries.
• [A] study found that 81% of children killed between 1991 & 2000 were killed by a family member. Of those killed by a parent, 54% were killed by their father or stepfather, 40% cent by their mother and 6% by both parents.

As often happens, such an emotive topic in such a charged (Kahui deaths) environment, lots of folk are spouting nonsense. Feminist news-service, NZPA, remind us not once but twice, that the report shows:

"the predominant pattern was male violence directed at a female partner"

Never mind abused and dead children (the focus of CYFS review), it's all about wimmin. Lindsay Mitchell cites other research debunking the 'all domestic violence is male violence' line and also shreds the Maori Party's hallucinatory claims about "economic violence." One tiny ray of sanity, however, from Tariana:

..Maori children were most in danger because of their exposure to parental factors such as poverty, low education, unemployment, sole parenthood and live-in partners

Maori kids are statistically unlucky; are more likely to be brought up by a poor, dumb, unemployed solo mum & her series of boyfriends - an undesirable family environment. At least Tariana acknowledges there's a 'Maori problem' (even if she doesn't declare it as such), unlike the Commissioner for Children's waffling spineless evasion:

"ethnicity as a sole or primary indicator of risk family violence was "a very difficult area"
"Family violence – physical, sexual & emotional violence – occurs in every single social group irrespective of socioeconomic status, irrespective of ethnicity, & irrespective of where people live & what jobs they do."

Too scared to say the M-word or make 'judgements' about poor people. What do the death/ethnicity stats tell you, Cindy? How can this bloated bumbling bureaucrat possibly help when she can't even confront, let alone discuss, this "very difficult area." Sorry to sound so cynical about a truly horrendous problem. But listening to various 'experts' responses to the report so far, doesn't fill me with hope.