"It's time to Change Course" says Kiwi Party

A 44% increase in the number of children in CYFS care since 2001 would be one of the clearest indications that the Labour Governments approach to family is simply not working.

Couple this with NZ now appearing as the 3rd worst nation in a United Nations crime study of 30 countries, and any Kiwi with a brain would have to conclude that we need to rapidly change direction away from the failed ideologies of family intervention championed by the Children's Commissioner, the Families Commission, and Child, Youth, and Family.

Kiwi Party Leader Larry Baldock's petition is calling on the Government to understand and address the wider causes of family breakdown, family violence and child abuse. Heeding such a call means the nation will have a chance to give their support to meaningful, as opposed to marginal action.

We simply cannot continue along the same path with more and more money being poured in to what has now become a huge black hole of family dysfunction in this country.

The time of simplistic slogans and the tweaking of failed policies and frivolous philosophies is now over - families are desperate, and children are dying as a result of the state erroneously believing that it has greater wisdom about effective parenting and family care than most parents and families do.

If we do not reverse direction on some of the failed policies and legislative changes made by the Labour and National Governments over the past 20 years we will top the world in all the wrong statistics.

The tsunami-like increases in teenage pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse, youth crime, low educational achievements, truancy, underage prostitution, increasing child poverty, and the alarming disrespect for authority by children is the result of a Government that refuses to go where the evidence is leading them - that they have been complicit in actively contributing to the very problems they say they want to solve.

The Kiwi Party has drafted the terms of reference for an urgent Royal Commission as a response to the referendum to be held, hopefully later this year. New Zealand will have to engage in some fairly radical and costly comprehensive changes if we are to have any chance of rebuilding the foundations of our society.

To do this right will take some time, but it must be done. The sooner we begin the better.

ENDS

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