I want leaders who are able to make intelligent contributions to discourse on pressing issues, like family violence, or rape, or national crime rates.
So when New Zealand gets a report card D for having the 5th highest violence rates in the developed world, it doesn't help to read Judith Colins, our police and corrections minister, saying "the people who hit and kill and starve children are the ones who should be blamed".
Really Judith? So the system hasn't failed any of these people, in any way? These people just woke up one day in their perfectly happy homes, at their fulfilling, high paying jobs, looked at their life prospects, education, their useful well placed network of supportive contacts and friends, at a society that has in no way looked down on them for being poor/brown/illiterate/angry/depressed/mentally ill/taught as a child that violence is acceptable/whatever - all this, and they then just decided to lash out at their kids, their partner, that guy who looked at them funny?
Yeah. I didn't think so either, Judith.
I'm not saying violence isn't about one day making the wrong, stupid choice. Of course it is. But it doesn't happen in a fucking vacuum either, and saying dumb soundbitey things which just come across as desperately wanting to avoid the blame, doesn't fucking help. But I guess that was never really the intention.
No comments:
Post a Comment