I believe we face a wave of organised misogyny. Not just internationally, but here in New Zealand too. Sadly, the examples are everywhere.
We see it in the Government’s cuts to many of the vital services that hold our communities together, particularly those that support women. This is because those cutting these services deny their necessity because they deny the reality of the abuse of power. It is inarguable that the abuse of power has been an issue for humankind for as long as we’ve been around. We on the left recognise that power can be, and regularly is, abused and that the government must make rules and intervene where necessary to rebalance power. The right, on the other hand, through its commitment to the free market, believes that the government cannot, and should not, interfere in matters considered personal.
To that point, I was alarmed recently to see that the Government has, through MSD, advised that many of the contracts with HELP and other sexual violence organisations will not be renewed at the end of this year. The Government defends these cuts saying they will reallocate the money but there is no sign they will provide the same services elsewhere. When I spoke to the groups impacted, they told me they help people who are ineligible for ACC funding or hesitant to use those services. These cuts are an expression of how little this Government prioritises the wellbeing of vulnerable women and follows its egregious erosion of pay equity and the narrowing of the criteria for emergency housing.
This is simply not good enough and utterly fails to address the fact that we are a violent country in comparison to many others and it is our women and children who pay the price with their lives. Nearly half the homicides and violent crimes are cases of family violence. One in three homicides are children. It is also likely that family violence causes even more suicides than homicides. Children are also being targeted for sexual abuse at younger and younger ages. They are being groomed and then blackmailed online.
While these new technologies allow women and children to be harmed in new and terrible ways, abuse of power still lies at the heart of the problem. Rather than cutting funding for organisations like HELP, we need to be addressing power abuses proactively. For example we are doing far too little to educate parents and their children of the dangers on their phones and what behaviour is not acceptable in their lives or online. We need to empower our women and children to resist attempts to hurt them.
As the holder of the Family and Sexual Violence portfolio for Labour, I am constantly speaking with those working to change the situation. They know that it’s useless being the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff and that we must prevent the harm in the first place. That means education at every level but not only is it absent from the Government’s action plan, they are actively removing existing programmes we set up in schools.
It’s not just education, more affordable housing is vital for getting victims and their children out of damaging environments and I am working with those in my party holding the housing portfolios to prioritise the housing of victims of family and sexual violence. We in the Labour Party do not want New Zealand to hold to its ranking as having some of the highest domestic homicide and assault rates in the world. We have both the will and the experience to fix this appalling dynamic and look forward to getting to work for all New Zealanders. (Helen White)
helen.white@parliament.govt.nz
www.labour.org.nz/HelenWhite
#ponsonbynews #iloveponsonby #loveponsonby #auckland #aucklandshippestrip #onlyponsonby #ponsonbyroad #Greylynn #freemansbay #westmere #ponsonby #hernebay #stmarysbay #archhill #coxsbay @followers #followers @everyone #everyone #waitematalocalboard @highlight
