The Roastbuster Lottery

The clamour for consent education in high schools is growing post the Wellington College rape comments, from journalists to petitions to sexual violence prevention groups to hundreds of secondary school students marching on parliament.

Education Minister Hekia Parata says no, we can leave it to parents, in a line borrowed straight from Family First.  As with other FF stances, this makes little sense.  Since our best information says nearly two thirds of child sexual abuse survivors experience that abuse from a family member, and for one in six that's a parent or a step-parent, "leaving it" to parents really doesn't seem like a safe idea. 

It's a daft idea for another reason too.  For a government that claims it's interested in evidence driving practice, Minister Parata's comments are even more embarrassing.  Because consent education in high schools is the best tool we have to reducing the perpetration of sexual violence.  And that's not a community group I have linked to, it's the ACC information page about the healthy relationships programme, Mates & Dates, developed for high schools in response to Roastbusters.
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There are really two issues at play here.  The first is about what good practice consent education looks like.  And there's stacks of evidence about that, fortunately. 

It doesn't look like one-off sessions in assembly, no matter how inspirational your speaker might be.  In fact, it doesn't look like one-off sessions at all.  It doesn't look like telling young people how horrible rape is, or about legal penalties, or telling them to wait to have sex.  It doesn't look like raising awareness of sexual violence.

Consent education which works looks like skills-based activities which allow students to build on the consent skills they already have, and practice them in multiple non-sexual situations.  It looks like enough dosage - 5 weeks - of sessions, happening weekly, over each of the five years of secondary school, so students can integrate the content and bring it to life in their worlds.  It looks like trained facilitators who know their stuff and can manage young people disclosing abuse, because some will.  It looks like a whole school approach which supports the sessions and becomes safer for all students.

That's just the set up.  In terms of the content, it's vital consent education teach analytical skills for young people to analyse gender roles and expectations around sex.  It needs to look at peer pressure, alcohol, the media, music.  It needs to reinforce that consent is about seeking explicit enthusiasm as well as knowing what you want.  It needs to be strengths-based, because that's how people learn, and open to diverse sexualities and genders, because that's how we have relationships.  It needs to be adaptable enough to recognise and be able to tease out and respect different cultural beliefs around relationships and sex.  And it needs to teach bystanding skills - how to intervene to help your friends or others stay safe - to undermine rape culture.

The five sessions of Mates & Dates for each year group cover healthy relationships; skills and consent; identity, gender and sexuality; when things go wrong; and keeping safe together.  They have been designed with the evidence in mind, and they fit into the Health Curriculum but can be taught in any block of sessions schools make available.

So we have a programme which meets the evidence and is available for high schools right now.

Then there's the second issue.  Is the slavish devotion to schools making their own decisions about this wise, or are we literally creating a rape lottery?  Minister Parata is unwilling to make sure every student in New Zealand has access to programmes which reduce both the likelihood of experiencing and perpetrating sexual and dating violence.

How is this responsible governance?  New Zealand has the highest rates of partner and sexual violence for women in OECD countries.  The "cost" of family and sexual violence is estimated by government - and this is based on reported figures - to conservatively reach $6 billion every year.  The figures I'm quoting come from a Cabinet Paper, not an advocacy group for survivors, and they miss out the high rates of sexual and partner violence reported in Rainbow communities, and the one in ten boys who report unwanted sexual contact in high school. 

If we could change this, why wouldn't we?  Secondary school students want help to dismantle rape culture, and they want consent education.  The protests last week showed that, and so did the focus groups around the country that ACC ran in creating Mates & Dates.  We have a problem with rates of violence, and it's costing enormous amounts of resources - not only for the state, but for individual survivors, their relationships, families and communities.  We have one part of the solution, and it's even sitting in a box ready to go.

This should be an election issue, because every single party in New Zealand should want to prioritise their spending on sexual and family violence to make sure it doesn't happen in the first place.  That's what consent education is, done right.  Step up, politicians, listen to what people want and make sure schools become the safe places they should be for all students, not Roastbusters.

Bystander Boys at Wellington College

Wellington College hit the media yesterday in ways their leadership team will not be enjoying - two of their boys were posting comments encouraging rape in a Facebook group.

The similarities to Roastbusters won't be lost on anyone, but the issue of rape culture is far more common than the handful of schools who make headlines.

We have the unravelling of rape culture though folks, right here in front of us.  Two Wellington College boys brag about raping drunk girls - and other boys on the page report it, immediately.

People acting as ethical bystanders - intervening to disrupt norms which support sexual violence - is the best evidence base we have for changing rape culture.  That's exactly what the boys who reported this did, and I want to congratulate them, whole-heartedly, for the bravery in stepping forward and making it their business.

After Roastbusters, I asked a question about how we grew boys. Growing consent, making sure all genders know how to seek and check in with sexual partners in an ongoing way during all sexual encounters, plays an enormous role in shifting norms which make sexual violence possible.  But addressing the social norms which undermine consent in more collective ways, from speaking back to jokes about rape to challenging sexist language about girls to standing up to transphobic victim blaming to stepping in if you see an unsafe situation - all of these things are critically important too.

Rape culture isn't just about the individual decisions you make in your bedroom, or anywhere else you like to be sexual.  It's about the collective norms we allow around us, at morning tea at work, in the sports stadium, at the pub - or on the Facebook site where your mates are bragging about sexual stuff that's not okay.

We need to push for universal consent education in all our high schools - evidence based, comprehensive, multi-year, taught by experts who address gender norms and teach bystanding skills.  Quality high school consent education is the best evidence we have that we can change the rape culture and reduce sexual violence perpetration.  Just before Roastbusters, an evaluation of existing school programmes in New Zealand could not give any a pass mark.  This and Roastbusters was the impetus for ACC creating a high school healthy relationships programme.  Mates & Dates - full disclosure, I was one of the authors - is running now, but it is currently not compulsory.  Schools get to "opt-in" around consent education, and they often don't know which programmes are "good".

If we are serious about unraveling rape culture, it might be time to insist on compulsory, evidence based consent education in every high school.

But for today, I will be celebrating those Wellington College boys.  The ones who stood up to their mates, and stopped them bragging about rape.   We need more boys like them.  We need more people like them.  What will you do to stand up against rape culture?

Control, surveillance and "professional agency hopping"

In 2009/10, communities won a serious victory against this government when the hated, poorly conceived, cost-cutting travesty that was the "ACC Clinical Pathway" was kicked well and truly into touch by survivors, feminists, mental health support services and specialist sexual violence response agencies.

It was a community issue worth fighting.  In the short time the Pathway was implemented, the review forced by activists demonstrated a staggering drop in survivors who could access support, and horror stories of trauma were told by survivors and by the community agencies and therapists trying to support them.

The ACC Clinical Pathway illustrates the dangers of ideological public policy, and the importance of community safeguards and advocacy in speaking truth to (rape culture, neo-liberal) power.  I'm mentioning it now because I think this government has learned from that public policy defeat, but not the lessons we might hope.  Quietly and quickly, calmly and efficiently they have muzzled the community sector so it will not happen again.

There were some warning signs even back then.  I was heavily involved, in my own time, in fighting the ACC Clinical Pathway.  The sexual violence agency I worked for then was quietly told by an ally in government that we lost a large contract because of my activism, which thankfully my boss did not begrudge in the grand scheme of survivor safety. This should be completely shocking - to change a funding decision based on the private activities of an employee of an organisation - particularly when, as it turned out, we were right.  But in a growing context of threats to advocates, it somehow just started to become intimidation business as usual. 

This government has decimated the community sector with a series of smart, chilling moves over quite some time, dismantling the sector's ability to play watchdog on punitive government policies.  There were the changes to the Charities Commission, restricting the ways in which organisations registered as charities could "advocate" for social change.  Even far from radical groups like the National Council of Women were forced to take legal action to defend their rights to advocate.  This step institutionalised advocacy, away from the public eye.  It's ok for community groups to meet with nice government officials quietly, to talk about their concerns - but don't even think about saying anything in the media.

Another major step was the introduction into contracts of requirements that community groups cannot discuss their contracts anywhere.  This one policy stroke alone would have stopped the ACC Clinical Pathway activism dead in it's tracks - because gone from public view and debate would have been the volume of horror stories from around the country of the impact the Pathway was having on real people.

Then there are the terrifying spectre of funding cuts.  Everywhere you look.  Services going under, like Relationships Aotearoa, despite nothing to replace them.  Services cutting their hours, and relying yet more heavily on volunteers.  Play nice, little community group, or we'll be sending you home, no matter how many lives you hold in your hand.

While the language of community shifts to neo-liberal talk of markets and providers and social investment and demand and results based accountability, the language of "people who are asking for help" has shifted to the obscene "professional agency hoppers."

The latest nail in the community coffin, that community groups will have to report to government the names and personal details of people coming to them for help if they want to be funded, is just the logical conclusion of all the changes over the last few years.  Taken together, these changes severely undermine democracy and the ability to show solidarity with people with little power.  They also turn community groups into de-facto arms of the state and will certainly stop people accessing community services through fear, shame and stigma.

If you doubt this, think about whether you'd be ok with the STI tests you're having being linked to your name in a government database.  The same database which has your tax details, benefit details, student loan, car ownership history - hell, there's no limit to what the Integrated Data Infrastructure might grow to include.  Let's be honest, there's been next to no public conversation about the developing surveillance system this government has created, and what's appropriate to link and why.

But think again, about accessing services.  Let's say you've got a gambling problem, and your relationship and home are both at risk if you can't change.  But if you go ask for help, that will be linked to all your other personal information.  Are you ready for that, or should you wait a little longer?

Or you've got an eating disorder and it's quietly killing you, but if you ask for help and it's loaded onto your system, will it mean you can't apply for that job you want in government?   

Then there are the safety concerns.  Logging women and children escaping domestic violence into a government database every time they go to a new Refuge will make them much less safe, particularly if their abusive partners can access where they are.  I've worked with women whose abusers were Police officers, and to keep them safe we had to make sure nothing was ever logged in their Police files which might help them to be tracked.  Will this new system acknowledge those dangers?  Of course not.  And while we're on this one, women going to multiple Refuges isn't "professional agency hopping," Minister Tolley, it's acting to save your life in the cycle of violence perpetrators use to control their families.  Just as people who've had lots of trauma and difficult stuff in their lives needing to try multiple agencies to find all the pieces of the help they need isn't "professional agency hopping," it's desperation and fear and lack of trust born from experience.  And it warrants compassion, patience and generosity - not sanctimonious penny pinching and vicious judgment - because do you know what?  If I'd survived some of the things women I've worked with have been forced to manage, I can't even tell you what my survival strategies would look like.  They wouldn't be clean, or pretty, or the model of a perfect little social services consumer though, I'll tell you that for nothing.

If funding contracts which force the community sector to pass on names and personal details had been introduced immediately post the ACC Clinical Pathway defeat, the community sector would have fought.  Fought for their place as safety, for people and families they support, to hold together lives which might be fraying a little.  Fought to remove barriers to help-seeking, not add them.

No, the government introducing it now is smart. 

This government has been confident in shutting down evidence it doesn't want to hear, from silencing researchers to these steps to muzzle the community sector.  It doesn't seem to want the well-informed debate when it comes to complex social issues, debate informed by people with personal knowledge and professional experience in supporting communities.  There are even steps to dismantle the long-term funded research in this area, now the government is exerting more control.  When questioned over the cuts to the longitudinal research Auckland University runs in order to understand child development needs - the kind of research which should help us decide community services - Bill English let slip some frightening honesty:

"Finance Minister Bill English said the decision was more about providing "value for money" rather than saving money.He suggested the Government was not gaining adequate access to the data.

"There's a whole history behind the Growing up in New Zealand study, there have been ongoing negotiations for some time, to make sure it meets the Government's needs.

"To some extent the longitudinal studies aren't as powerful as they used to be, because we've got our own administrative data."  What was important to the Government was the "availability of the data".

If the community sector hands over the names of people asking them for help, not only will it stop people getting the help they need.  Not only will it shift what the community sector is for - away from advocacy and support, towards monitoring and policing services.  Not only will it mean advocacy slips further into the distance, weakening our public policy development.  But it is part of a wider and largely unmonitored shift towards the state controlling more information about us than we've ever agreed to, and with that, making decisions about public spending based on data they control and interpret. 

Does anyone seriously think these changes will be good for our communities?  Trevor McGlinchey from the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services absolutely nails it when he says:

There has been a quiet revolution occurring which will have profound impacts on community-based social services organisations......Robust discussion and critique is needed to ensure that the most vulnerable in our communities can access the services they need, and community organisations can continue as independent promoters of civil society and community development.

Call me cynical, but the people that brought us the ACC Clinical Pathway are not qualified to make decisions about communities without us acting as safeguards.  Bill English and his "administrative data" do not fill me with confidence, because this government is ideologically driven to support the powerful and leave the less powerful to rot, in cars, substandard housing, shiny new prisons, a decimated community sector.  It's almost as if, the more they silence our voices and have control over interpreting our voices, the less we matter.

questions that were never asked

since there's no avoiding it, i thought i may as well do a post about a certain mr prosser.  contrary to what it might, my post of yesterday at my own blog wasn't actually about him.  but having listened to various media interviews over the last couple of days, i'm surprised that there are a whole range of questions nobody is asking mr prosser.

given that he wrote this:

“I will not stand by while their [his daughters'] rights and freedoms of other New Zealanders and Westerners are denigrated by a sorry pack of misogynist troglodytes from Wogistan"

i thought some of the following questions might be appropriate:

- if you are concerned about your daughters' rights & freedoms, do you support pay equity legislation, and do you commit to bringing back the pay equity unit that was housed in the former department of labour?  and what other policies will you actively pursue to reduce the gender pay gap?

- what actions have you taken to promote women's leadership, and in particular, the very small numbers of women appointed to the boards of directors in nz private sector companies?  what would you do to improve women's participation in governance and leadership in all sectors of nz society?

-  do you support greater gender balance in parliament and in cabinet?  and if so, can you point to any past statements you've made to indicate such support?

- women's refuge have struggled with funding in the past few years, to the extent that were relying on a donation from a pizza chain in order to function.  since you've become an MP, what steps have you taken to increase the level of funding to providers of support services for women who are abused in their own homes?

- rape crisis centres and other services for victims of sexual violence and abuse have struggled even more in the past couple of decades.  what effort are you making to ensure that sufficient funding is provided so the those who suffer from sexual violence and abuse are able to get the support they need in a timely fashion/

-  did you make any public statements when ACC introduced new procedures that severely restricted the provision of services to victims of sexual violence and abuse?  surely you were outraged at the huge drop in the numbers of women able to access the counselling they needed, and you would have had plenty to say about it?

- what are you views about women having the right to make decisions about their reproductive health?  are you prepared to advocate for women's right to make decisions about their own bodies?

- what changes to the justice system have you advocated to ensure greater access to justice for victims of sexual violence and abuse?  more than that, how have you worked to  change to our current culture which blames victims of violence for the crimes against them and where actively seeking consent is seen as  being a boner-killer or akin to asking for a signed contract prior to any sexual activity?  in fact, have you ever, even once, talked about rape culture and it's destructive effects?

 - how do intend to improve women's participation in non-traditional subjects like computer programming, engineering and the like?  at many high schools today, it is still common to only have 2 girls out of a class of 20 for subjects like IT programming.  and one of the reasons i've commonly heard from young women who chose not to take them is that they don't want to be in a class of mostly boys.  a related question:  how will you make the trades more accessible as a profession for women, and a safer environment for them to work in?

- have you ever used the words "feminazi", "sisterhood" or other derogatory terms, or ever complained about the feminisation of society, particularly when writing for investigate magazine?  how is it, if you care about the rights and freedoms of women, that you can bear to be published in a publication where such statements are common?


so, ok, these are just some things off the top of my head.  i'm sure some of you can come up with other and better questions.  but you get my point.  the basic question is this: if you are concerned about the rights and freedoms of women, where is the evidence that you have in any way advocated for women's rights and freedoms in this country? because if that is one of your basic values, then you should be widely known for it (your public advocacy that is), without anyone having to go looking.

ETA:  i forgot that i also wanted to link to this piece, which says a lot of things very well.  thanks to soraiya for pointing me towrards it.

"Cheaper" for kids to die

A week ago Stuff reported on a piece of horrifying research from Auckland University:

This preliminary study suggests that health sector spending is skewed towards non-Māori children despite evidence of greater Māori need.

Our study shows that in addition to being preventable, unnecessary and a breach of child rights, inequities in child health result in significant costs to our society.

So our health sector spends loads more dosh on non-Māori kids than Māori, and the disparity is worse if we compare Māori with Pakeha, according to the finer print.  Specifically, the research breaks down to: 

• 15,376 excess avoidable hospital admissions for Māori children during 2003 to 2007; 
• 36% of hospitalisations classified as ‘potentially avoidable’;
• Pharmaceutical claims for non-Māori children were 15 % higher, with non-Māori laboratory claims 55% higher than Māori; 
• ACC claims for Māori children 32% lower than non-Māori, and median cost lower; 
• Specialist outpatient visits by Māori children 86% lower than those of non-Māori children.

This all sits of course, in the wider context of one third of Māori children living in poverty.  When going to the doctor or paying for medicine means you won't be able to pay your bills or buy enough food, you wait as long as you can.  But it's not all about class, as Tariana Turia says, it's also about institutional racism:

Every day I hear examples of how our people are made to feel stink, or embarrassed, angry, or forgotten through various experiences they have had with the doctor, or with schools or through a wide and varying range of basic services of necessity.

Feeling stink is a great way of describing how it feels to not be the "norm" when it comes to engaging with an institution.  Or there's looking at how we measure up to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples:

Sometimes institutional racism is about what we imagine too though, the way we can frame a situation in our thoughts.  I don't know about other white people, but I continually find myself wrestling with internalised white dominant ideas, ways of thinking that position Pakeha ways of doing things as normal, natural and right.  

So maybe small wonder this piece of research - which adds yet more evidence to the pile labelled "Crap Colonisation Indicators" - was introduced by Stuff in this way:

Economists have proven it's cheaper to let Maori children die than spend money to provide equitable health treatment. 

It's hard to imagine why you would begin an article about research showing one group is disadvantaged by talking about it being cheaper for the disadvantaged group to die.  It's hard to imagine that sentence not causing an uproar if we were talking about white people.  Yet the article caused barely a ripple.  For me, that's a disturbing indicator of why Aotearoa can allow such appalling institutional racism in our health system in the first place. 

* The title of this blog is how it pops up in Stuff, but the title of the article is different.  I don't know if that means Stuff changed the headline after posting?  That is what it would mean in a blog link.

This report card is incomplete - must do better

Minister of Women's Affairs Jo Goodhew has been giving a "report card" over the last few days to the United Nations on how well women in New Zealand are doing.  This is the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women - CEDAW - and we report very four years, a kinda road map to gender equality.

Unfortunately, our GPS system seems to be malfunctioning.  Women's Health Action found a number of concerns they wanted to raise related to contraceptive coercion for women on benefits, failures for comprehensive sexual and reproductive education in schools to reach all young people, an increasing tendency for the definition of "child" to be broadened to include the unborn in legislation and interpretation, and barriers for up to one sixth of women in seeking first trimester abortions.

And then there is violence against women.  As Gordon Campbell points out - and his form around sexual violence is not unblemished, so this is interesting - under this government, survivors of sexual violence have been restricted from accessing potentially life-saving therapy by deliberate policy changes within ACC.  Even when those policy changes were ripped up on review, ACC has continued to stop people getting the help they needs - just 3.6% of survivors who applied had their therapy funded by ACC in 2011.

Report backs from Women's Health Action confirm Minister Goodhew is getting a grilling over violence against women - partly because here in Aotearoa we're too scared to acknowledge that domestic and sexual violence are about as gendered as an experience gets.  Apparently the Minister for Women's Affairs is struggling to acknowledge, at CEDAW, that violence against women is a problem.

Incredibly, Minister Goodhew's list of government plans for reducing violence against women as reported to CEDAW do not mention sexual violence even once.
 
The CEDAW committee aren't loving us making Family Court processes more expensive and less safe for women in "relationship disputes" and they are not loving the fact that the 2009 Taskforce Report for Action on Sexual Violence is still largely unacted upon.  This of course, includes the fact that the Law Commission review of trial processes for sexual violence seems to be sitting in limbo.

I suggested last week that I believe it is time to email Justice Minister Judith Collins and ask what is happening to improve the justice sector response to crimes of sexual violence.  The ACC insensitive claims unit and the CEDAW experience has me even more strongly convinced - this government will forget about rape and sexual abuse unless we tell them this is unacceptable to us.

Email Judith Collins and ask her where the Law Commission is at.  And cc in Jo Goodhew, if you believe that reporting on women's lives should include how well our government is responding to and working to end sexual violence.

international workers' memorial day

today is international workers' memorial day.  it's a day to remember those people who have died at work, particularly as a result of poor workplace safety practices.  it's a day to remember those that died at the pike river mine, the security guard charanpreet dhaliwal killed at his first day at work, the bus driver herman curry killed during an attempted burglary, derek lovell killed at the cool store explosion in tamahere, philomen gullard killed in the explosion in a water mains tunnel in onehunga, and so many more.  too many more.

it's also a day to remember those injured at work or general having to work in unsafe situations.   a quick look through the department of labour website shows that pacific workers have a particularly high injury rate:

“Manufacturing is a key area of focus for our work with Pacific Peoples as it accounts for one fifth of the Pacific workforce nationally,” says Vasantha Krishnan, General Manager of the Department’s Labour and Immigration Research Centre.

“These workers are disproportionately represented in injury statistics, accounting for over one-third of the manufacturing sector’s injury claims made to ACC in the 2009-2010 year,” Ms Krishnan says.


there are the appalling conditions faced by workers on foreign charter vessels, first reported by bloomberg and which led to our government putting out this report.

workers deserve to be safe at work.  they should be able to leave work at the end of the day, no worse off physically or emotionally than when they started it.  their policies, procedures and processes required to ensure their safety shouldn't be described as unnecessary bureaucracy or PC gone mad.  we still have a long way to go in keeping workers safe.  let's keep the names above, and others, in our thoughts so that we don't forget how important this is.


on another note, this is the photograph i loved best from the asset sales protest today & i wish i could have been there holding that sign as well:

it was great to see such a large turnout at the protest.  let's hope it makes a difference.

Funding cuts no HELP

The potential loss of the 24 hour crisis line for sexual violence survivors run by Auckland Sexual Abuse Help has been all over the media this week, and the petition asking government to step in and save the service is steadily climbing - and you can still sign it.

I want to look at context here, specifically the context of the last few years and specialist funding for counselling for survivors of sexual violence from ACC.

In October 2009, ACC changed the way it funded counselling for survivors of sexual violence, introducing a number of constraints and barriers they called the "Clinical Pathway." This Pathway was essentially ripped up after a six month review by an independent review team, because it was causing harm without any "legislative or clinical reason." The review came back in September 2010.

This bolt-from-nowhere was introduced without consultation to a sector which we know from the "comprehensive road-map" was already struggling to meet community need. It led to survivors deciding not to even try to go through what ASAH called at the time an "outrageously inhumane" process to access help. It also meant the sexual violence intervention sector, including ASAH, had to mobilise to prove what we already knew - that appropriate, skilled, specialist support and counselling is critical to recovery after sexual violence for many survivors.

Recent information released from ACC under the Official Information Act demonstrates just how disastrous the Clinical Pathway has been - for both survivors and the dangerously underfunded specialist sector which tries to supports them on their way past surviving to thriving.


Numbers of clients dropping from the moment the new Pathway was introduced, continuing after ACC recognised the Pathway was inappropriate and were instructed to make changes to address the problems.

Maybe more relevant to what is happening now for ASAH - and for every agency working in the specialist sexual violence intervention sector - let's look at ACC funding for specialist counselling over the last few years:


Does this bear repeating? In 2009, the Report for the Taskforce for Action on Sexual Violence said the sexual violence intervention sector needed "urgent and immediate" funding. In 2009, one of the most major funders of this specialist work began slashing funding to that very same sector, and the slashing hasn't stopped even after an independent review order.

So what will our new government do about it? Time to step up and use your mandate for good, Mr Key.

Open thread on new Cabinet announced today

No time to write an actual post, but please do feel free to discuss it here.  This is currently the only linkable thing that comes close to a list that I can find.  If you come across a proper list please do share!  UPDATE:  Here it is in PDF on the National party website.  I did look there earlier with no luck, shouldn't this kind of thing, as a Government announcement, go up at DPMC first/simultaneously??

Haven't done any numbers yet but looks to me like there is possibly a slight increase in the number of women - lost Georgina Te Heu Heu (retired), but gained Jo Goodhew and Amy Adams.

Also massive promotion for Hekia Parata, who now has Education and is ranked higher than Paula Bennett, but loses Women's Affairs, now gone to Cabinet newbie Jo Goodhew.   Anne Tolley has been shifted from Education to Corrections and Police, while, in a problem for pro-choice peeps, Judith Collins gets Justice and ACC.

Further comment in comments (funny that) please!

Women's Choice 2011 - Suffrage eve debate follow up.

cross posted from my place.

A review of the questions and answers.

On Thursday the 22nd of September the Women's Choice 2011 Suffrage Eve Debate took place in an Auckland university lecture theatre with a wonderful mix of over 100 attendees. A speech was given by Dr Judy McGregor, the EEO Commissioner, who did a wonderful job of chairing the evening.

The party reps were:
National - Dr Jackie Blue MP
Labour - Carol Beaumont MP
Greens - Catherine Delahunty MP
ACT - Kath McCabe
Mana - Sue Bradford

Three minute stump speeches from each party, were given followed by written questions from a variety of women's organisations, as follows.

NB: I was trying to scribe this with no skills in shorthand, and didn’t do the greatest job. (partly because some pages were smudged with tears of laughter from a very entertaining evening!)
My apologies for any mistakes. The below is paraphrasing of key points as I could catch them, and sometimes it was a bit of a challenge!! If I have missed something or made mistakes, please feel free to email me with changes and I will update this ASAP
I hope you enjoy this review.
Scuba Nurse.

Q From the Campus Feminist Collective
What are the parties doing to empower people who are struggling financially, such as single parents on the DPB, to attain qualifications that will allow them to support themselves and their families? An example of such a a measure would be the discontinued training incentive allowance.

Labour - Carol Beaumont MP
Support for life- long learning.
Does not agree with cuts to education for those over a certain age.
The access for older people in training needs to be reviewed.
Restore funding for the training incentive allowance.

Greens - Catherine Delahunty MP
This is an attack on beneficiaries, stop this.
Being a sole parent is doing a job twice and people should have enough money to live on and get training.
Raise the status and value of the parent and sole parent.

Mana - Sue Bradford
Mana is respectful of training.
Reinstate the training incentive allowance.
Lower tertiary fees
Lower student loans
Total overhaul of the benefits system is needed
Universal tax credits.

ACT - Kath McCabe
Why has the quality of education gone down? (Audience member called out “It hasn’t!”)
Funding is going to the wrong end: funding is being spent on student loans not the education providers.
Need to review student allowances
Close to the maori party on some points here.

National - Dr Jackie Blue MP
Values education as a liberator
Early childcare available for those who need to get back to school/ work. Especially in areas where attendance is low
Training incentive allowance Level Four National Qualifications Framework courses or above no longer applies.
Focusing on basic numeracy and literacy as a focus.
Student support as a priority.


Q From the Working women’s resource center.
What will your party do to improve the working situation of women who are forced into casual and/or contract work rather than proper employment and who don’t get sick pay, holiday pay, parental leave, professional development or job security.

Mana - Sue Bradford
Collective bargaining is essential.
Unions have been undermined by national.
Committed to do everything they can.
The right to strike returned to workers.

Labour - Carol Beaumont MP
This type of work is becoming prominent, and this is deliberate.
We need to increase rights to strengthen collective bargaining.
The reason women are concentrated in a precarious environment is because they have to seek flexibility to care for families.
Flexible working arrangements to help families would go a long way.

Greens - Catherine Delahunty MP
The root of the issues is contracts. They are very bad for women.
Monitoring of women’s work situations is needed.
Collective bargaining should be improved
Equal pay
Not being allowed to discuss contracts means that inequalities continue without question.
Used the example of warner brothers.

ACT - Kath McCabe
Not sure that people are *forced* into casual and contract work.
People choose their work places and plenty of people don’t get sick or holiday pay – they are self-employed.
Used the building industry, and low work levels for said builders as an example of the above.

National - Dr Jackie Blue MP
The 90 day trial is helping with this. Migrants and youth and parents are positively affected.
Most people who get jobs retain them, it is working well.
It gives women a chance


Q From the Women’s health action trust.
The government currently has an amending bill in the house which aims to relax the provisions of the 2008 employment relations (breaks, infant feeding, and other matters) amendment act which required employers to provide breaks and facilities (where reasonable and practicable) to support women to breast feed while employed.
What is your party’s position on this?

ACT - Kath McCabe
The key here is “where reasonable and practicable”. Few women are making the hard vocational choices.
Her company has just hired large numbers of international engineers because "New Zealanders won’t take the hard jobs".
Dirty, filthy industrial sites are not appropriate for breast feeding, and women wouldn’t want to feed there.

National - Dr Jackie Blue MP
Under current law, mothers have the right to ask, and the employer must respond in a timely fashion.
If not, action can be taken.

Mana - Sue Bradford
The mana party would not support any weakening of the current laws.

Greens - Catherine Delahunty MP
"If we are going to discuss dirty high paid jobs, what about parliament?"
One woman breast fed there.
When we talk about support and what is reasonable and practicable, it needs to be what is reasonable and practicable for the BABY not others.
The problem is workplace leaders who don’t have tits and want to make a profit.

Labour - Carol Beaumont MP
Thought amendment being referred to is about workers breaks, rather than specifically breast feeding breaks, but unsure.
Women have kids, and would like to breast feed. We need to support this.
Clean up the workplace and make it safe, for EVERYONE, including breastfeeding mothers.


Q From the YWCA
How will you recognise and address disadvantages faced by our Māori communities’ especially young Māori women?

Labour - Carol Beaumont MP
Recognises gender and ethnic issues.
Policies need to recognise different needs.
When you break down the wage gap beyond simply gender, into ethnicity the disparity for Maori and Pacific island women becomes even more graphic

Greens - Catherine Delahunty MP
“Honour the treaty, don’t call me sweety”
Women are discriminated against in the system.
Address the issues and listen to tangatawhenua to ask what THEY want rather than having policy makers who are removed from the issues telling them what to do.
Go to the Hapu and Iwi to consult.

Mana - Sue Bradford
This is a huge problem and the whole of Mana’s policies are focused in these areas.
Respect and self determination
Education gives women a place in the world.
People need wages to live on and should not be separated from their home communities because the system said they cannot return.
Empowerment is key.

National - Dr Jackie Blue MP
Referenced the whanau ora policy.
Additional money is needed for additional providers.
Money has been reprioritised for sexual health, teen pregnancy etc.
On the recent media interest in Sex ed, having viewed providers, they were professional and innovative, with accurate info.

ACT - Kath McCabe
"Jackie covered most of it."
Upset by the way young Māori women are characterised by this question.
I know highly regarded women from the Māori community, (gave examples of many high powered roles)
Successful Māori are not celebrated.


Q From ALRANZ
Our 36 year old abortion laws are medically outdated, what action would you like to take to reform the law?

ACT - Kath McCabe
Personally supports decriminalisation.
It will be a conscience vote, and my choice is that it should remain a personal choice.

National - Dr Jackie Blue MP
As a former GP she helped many women decide what to do, no one does it lightly, it is a difficult decision.
Supports it being in the health act
Abortion is the choice of a woman and her health provider.

Greens - Catherine Delahunty MP
There should be a review, there is currently no Green party consensus.
Personally believes it is a health issue, not a criminal one.
Working on a Green party agreement.

Labour - Carol Beaumont MP
Supports the women’s right to choose.
Safe abortions are currently available but she strongly supports change to the current law which only provides safe abortions to those who are having to work with an unwealdy system, having to lie about their mental health.
Community clamour is needed for this to be reviewed.
Keep pushing for change.

Mana - Sue Bradford
There is no party agreement but she is personally pro-choice.
There is more support needed for pre and post counselling as there is not enough support for women who make that choice and have to go through such a hard time.


Q From the National council of women’s Auckland branch
What is your party’s strategy to reduce increasing poverty in NZ and to close the ever widening gap between rich and poor?

Greens - Catherine Delahunty MP
Not with tax cuts for the top 13% or financial bail outs for Canterbury finance that is for sure.
Commitment is needed
Work on the welfare system
Increase minimum wage
Job creation and quality education

Labour - Carol Beaumont MP
This is of vital importance for a fairer society
The gap is growing, there are kids in poverty.
Need to lift minimum wage
Take GST off fruit and vegetables.
1st $5 earned should be tax free
More collective bargaining
Putting funds into research and development and increasing jobs.

Mana - Sue Bradford
Economic justice to lift the income of those at the bottom.
Tax free income threshold for those below the minimum wage
One off hardship benefit by Christmas, which Kevin Rudd did in Australia
Trust routs need to be tackled – the rich are hiding income.

National - Dr Jackie Blue MP
Getting those back to work who can work.
Off benefits and back to work
Lift wages and increase economy
Want to keep entrepreneurs and companies here in NZ – supporting businesses.

ACT - Kath McCabe
Recognise that welfare is not for the upper and middle class.
Gave an anecdote of a wealthy family receiving money from “working for families”
Target welfare to those who need it.
GSC2 conditions with trading partners which means difficulty exporting and employing
State is poor at picking winners
Incentivise and assist.


Q From Auckland women’s center.
Given that MMP has drastically improved women’s political representation in parliament, why doesn’t the national party support MMP?

National - Dr Jackie Blue MP
That is incorrect. National believes that the choice of voting systems is up to the voters and has chosen to leave the choice to them, without comment.


Q From the Auckland coalition for the safety of women and children.
Many of the changes and cuts that national have made in the last three years have impacted negatively on women and also made it more difficult for them to be safe from abuse.
What will your party do to improve women’s lives and provide more safety for women?

Scuba Nurse: Massive apologies, but my phone ran out of battery and lost this page of notes when it closed unexpectedly..
Does anyone have this?

Q From the Women’s network of NZEI Te Riu Roa
What policies will your party have to help maintain quality public education?

Labour - Carol Beaumont MP
A strong commitment to public education, the first four years of a child’s life are very important.
Critical of cuts to ECE
No one would tolerate high schools where 30% of staff are unqualified, why tolerate it in ECE?
Pro training incentive allowance.
Scrap national standards, replace with REAL standards.

ACT - Kath McCabe
Support the institutions not students for funding.
Sweden has an process initiated by the political left where funding was given to parents, not to the students; and funds were wasted less.
Improved quality of education and empowerment of parents.

Mana - Sue Bradford
All levels of the system need support
John Minto heavily involved in writing their work with this.
Abolish national standards.
Reject public/private partnerships in education.
Recognise Maori/ pacific island special needs. These are currently under recognised.
Update Te reo Maori

National - Dr Jackie Blue MP
National values education as a liberator.
1.4 billion is coming to ECE
They are targeting communities with low participation.
1/5 of youth are leaving school without basic education – this is not good enough.
Student loans should remain interest free, but there should be criteria.

Greens - Catherine Delahunty MP
Student loans system is flawed.
National standards are not needed.
When they went direct to the users (10-17 year olds) they didn’t want national standards, or particular types of education. They wanted quality relationships with their teachers.
Education needs to be relevant.
Racism should be addressed in schools
Centres are closing due to funding changes, so how can national claim no funding cuts?


Q From Feminist action.
Our justice system results in an abysmal conviction rate for sexual assault. How would your party address this problem?
Mana - Sue Bradford
A special taskforce for sexual assault was discussed for a long time. If Mana was part of the next government they would pick up on those recommendations and get New Zealand out of the dark ages.

National - Dr Jackie Blue MP
The victim levy has been a success with $50 paid by perpetrators of crimes going towards services for victims.
The minister of women’s affair’s interventions have informed policy development
ACC is providing 16 counselling sessions to those affected by assault.

Labour - Carol Beaumont MP
The taskforce needs to be fully picked up and acted on.
Improve court processes
The current government haven’t done much.
ACC has been a traumatising experience for those who had to fight for their right to support.
Long term comprehensive approach is needed.
A commission should be made up from the special taskforce for sexual assault and the task force for family violence.

ACT - Kath McCabe
One problem is the police themselves.
After the unfortunate actions of the past, a commission of enquiry has gone some way towards dealing with the issue, but people don’t want to go to the police for help when they have their own issues.
A female minister of police is a good step.
When the accused can cross examine the victim, the system is appalling.

Greens - Catherine Delahunty MP
Special victims task force good hearing from minister, but not on the ground level.
After the recent incident with a comedian there is no faith in the system and people are having to think seriously about whether they want to put themselves or their children through this horrific system.
Simon Power has other ideas
Need a cross party consensus.


Q From the Tertiary Education Union’s women’s sector
The literature is clear that high quality early childhood education has significant beneficial benefits for those children and society as a whole. The funding for ECE however has been savages under National/ACT.
Will your party increase funding in this area, particularly in low socioeconomic areas where the impact of provision of high quality ECE would make the most impact?

National - Dr Jackie Blue MP
It wasn’t savaged.
This funding is the most the ECE has ever had.
Focus has been largely on areas with lower participation.
3500 new ECE places.

Mana - Sue Bradford
Mana has strong policy in this area and is passionate about increased funding for ECE and education led groups.
No public funding for profit led early childhood education.
Increase the provision of support for struggling areas.
Have ECE promote the link with schools in the same area.
Review and refocus on te reo Maori.
An annual audit on Te reo Maori providers is needed to keep a level of quality.

ACT - Kath McCabe
Don’t impose the governments will on the decision of parents to choose education providers
Struggling family’s need support and second income, and ECE supports both parents working.

Labour - Carol Beaumont MP
There is a big announcement coming, and so cannot speak too much on this.
20 hours free.
It is not true that there haven’t been cuts
Facilities with 100% qualified staff are being penalised under current funding.
Ensure that all children have the best possible start.

Greens - Catherine Delahunty MP
There is a profit industry of baby barns.
Mothers are being forced back out to work, and this is not a victory for feminism.
80% of Maori and Pacific Island are just applying to the nearest provider rather than choosing. The market is deciding, rather than it being parent driven.
Not good enough.


Q From the Service and Food workers union. Nga ringa tota women’s sector.
Pay equity is not about individual women negotiating a better deal for themselves but about whole groups of workers who are paid less simply because most of those doing their work are women. It’s about valuing the work women often do, like caring for our most vulnerable citizens.
What specific actions would your party put in place, should you be in government and in a position to implement these, to lift the wages of caregivers and other mainly women workers like cleaners?

ACT - Kath McCabe“I am going to rephrase the question.”
Met a Russian surgeon who said that in Russia the majority of surgeons are female, and truck drivers are male. Surgeons ended up lower paid than truck drivers because women’s work is not valued, no matter what it is.
This is a perception problem.
Adult rate for youth means less jobs for youth.
The issue is 2/3 the recession.

Labour - Carol Beaumont MP
Increase minimum wage.
Narrow the gap.
Promote equality in the workplace.
We need roles traditionally seen as women’s work valued. If women take “men’s” jobs to try to increase income, who will be the caregivers?

National - Dr Jackie Blue MP
Lift all wages.
Hard times, national policy is needed to strengthen national industry.
Boost the economy, support businesses and increase education and skills training.
Pay gender gap is because women are in low paid roles
The Gender pay gap is at 10.6% which is the lowest it has ever been.

Greens - Catherine Delahunty MP
The statistics mentioned by Jackie can be read in so many different ways.
Structural help is needed. Bring back recommendations and actually implement them.
Test wages.
A structural commitment should be given.
Pansy Wong says women need to talk about rugby and be a plumber, but women and their work should be valued in their own right.

Mana - Sue Bradford
The incident with Alasdair Thompson exposed how employers think.
We need to lift wages now!
Workers in sectors that are undervalued need support, they are “invisibilised”.

numbers for those with poor english

a copy of the email i received from ministry of ethnic affairs:

Support for ethnic communities affected by earthquake

The 6.3-magnitude earthquake near Christchurch has caused significant damage. The Police are working to determine the number of dead. Numerous injuries have been reported. The quake occurred at 12:51pm, February 22, 2011 10 kilometres south-east of Christchurch, at a depth of five kilometres.

For the latest information and advice visit the Ministry of Civil Defence website People concerned about the wellbeing of friends and relatives in Christchurch should call 0800 REDCROSS (0800 733 276). A special phone help-line has been set up for people seeking information about Government services and support. It is 0800 77 9997

For those with little or no English the Office of Ethnic Affairs’ telephone interpretation service is available. Language Line can help provide everyone with the help and information they need. The Director of the Office of Ethnic Affairs, Mervin Singham says: “in times like this it is essential that people with little or no English are able to access information, advice and entitlements in the same way that any other New Zealanders can.

The Office of Ethnic Affairs is committed to ensuring that this occurs”. The numbers below offer Language Line and assistance in your language. Other agencies which use Language Line and the list of languages can be found at http://www.languageline.govt.nz/
· ACC Claims................................................................................. 0800 101 996
· Christchurch City Council............................................................. 03 941 8999
· Work and Income......................................................................... 0800 559 009
· Child, Youth & Family................................................................. 0508 326 459
· Housing New Zealand Corporation.......................................... 0800 801 601
· Earthquake Commission............................................................ 0800 326 243
· Inland Revenue........................................................................... 0800 227 774
· Heathline...................................................................................... 0800 611 116

More phone lines are available here.

Advice from the Ministry of Civil Defence

The Ministry of Civil Defence advises that people in the affected area should:

· Expect aftershocks. Each time one is felt, drop, cover, and hold on.
· To minimise overloading on the phone network people should use text messaging to check if family and friends are safe.
· There are 38 confirmed fatalities and numerous reports of injuries. The death toll is likely to rise.
· Stay out of damaged areas. There are reports of widespread building collapse, especially in the central city.
· Listen to the radio for updated emergency information and instructions.
· Welfare centres have been set up in several areas of the city.
· Help people who require special assistance - infants, elderly people, those without transportation, families who may need additional help, people with disabilities, and the people who care for them.

For more information on Language Line a telephone interpreting service of the Office of Ethnic Affairs contact:

Sue Ingram
Senior Communications AdvisorOffice of Ethnic Affairs, Te Tari Matawaka
The Department of Internal Affairs, Te Tari Taiwhenua
46 Waring Taylor Street
Wellington
Direct Dial: 64 4 494 0584
Mobile: 027 541 4696
sue.ingram@dia.govt.nz

government response to sexual violence report

it's been a busy news day, what with david garrett's meltdown & the teachers strike. and still plenty of news coming out of canterbury. the perfect time, it seems, for the government to release it's response to the report of the task force for action on sexual violence. a response headed by 3 ministers of the crown: the minister of justice, the minister of social development and the associaste minister of social development.

you would think that this would be worthy of some attention on the 6 o'clock news, but if there was any, i definitely missed it. the press release is dated 1.19pm so it's not like there wasn't time. it's seriously looking like this something the government wanted to slip under the radar.

so here are some of the action points included in the press release:

• The Ministry of Justice re-prioritising $1 million of funding over two years for sexual violence prevention education programmes.
• Responding to immediate funding pressures by providing funds to sexual violence service providers through the Community Response Fund ($864,000 provided to date).
• A cross-agency stocktake of government expenditure on sexual violence services.
• Exploring alternative approaches to pre trial and trial processes for victims of sexual violence, including looking at inquisitorial justice models.
• Improving the level of support available to victims of sexual violence as they go through the criminal justice system. This includes funding for 18 specialist court victim advisers, a discretionary grant to assist with expenses incurred as a result of sexual violence, new information resources, and increased financial assistance for travel, accommodation, and childcare.
• Funding the Survivor Advocate role for the next three years.
• Police introducing new Adult Sexual Assault Guidelines.
• Funding for TOAH-NNEST to enable it to continue its role as co-ordinator for the sexual violence sector.
• A commitment to continued engagement with the sexual violence sector.

i haven't yet seen any responses from the member organisations of the TOAH-NNEST network to this, but would be very interested to hear from them. just off the cuff, the funding figures below are extremely low. given that ACC funding to the auckland sexual abuse help people was cut by around $300,000, the $864,000 to date is really not much at all. especially given that rape crisis centres around the country have been seriously underfunded and struggling for a long time now.

the network's report has 71 recommendations, but the government has chosen not to respond to these specific recommendations directly. instead, they've focused on "six key priority areas". it's good to see funding for court victim advisors & a survivor advocate. however, when it comes to the police, i seriously don't think a new set of guidelines is anywhere near sufficient. not only does there need to be in-depth training, but also a comprehensive plan to deal with the current police culture.

the "Exploring alternative approaches to pre trial and trial processes" is to be done by the law commission, who will report back by december 2011. the wheels of justice do indeed turn slowly. the law commission will also be looking at "evidential procedures in sex crime trials" but won't even start doing that until december 2011.

so we have some progress, and generally i think hon simon power is doing well in this area. however, the difficult issues around consent, evidence & trial process have been conveniently pushed off til after the next election. at some point, someone is going to have make the difficult decisions, and the sooner the better.

who's doing research for ACC

i received a link by email to this article in the sunday star times which covers research by dr felicity goodyear-smith commissioned by ACC, and apparently used to develop the policy implemented last year which restricted access to counselling for victims of sexual abuse. excerpts from the article have been copied below, but i'd strongly recommend reading the whole article. luddite journo wrote about this last year in august, and again i'd recommend reading the post & comments (note that the "julie" commenting there is not our julie).


LAST OCTOBER, ACC changed the rules governing the support available to victims of sex crimes, introducing a heavily criticised new regime that severely restricted access to counselling....

During the eight months following the clinical pathway's introduction, ACC paid out $7 million less to 2889 fewer claimants than it had over the same period a year previous. Approved new claims, running at 1313 in the eight months prior to the pathway's introduction, subsequently dropped to 240 over the same length of time. Among the hundreds to have their claims denied were two women believed to have later committed suicide....

The scheme's many detractors were primarily concerned by a new requirement that, before they could access ACC counselling and support, claimants had to be diagnosed formally with a mental injury as defined by the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV). Whereas previously, ACC might have accepted a GP or counsellor's description of symptoms such as flashbacks, panic attacks or nightmares resulting from a sex crime, now a formal diagnosis of a mental illness such as post-traumatic stress disorder was needed.

It's unclear exactly why. Nowhere was a DSM-IV mental illness diagnosis specified in the so-called "Massey guidelines", the widely accepted 2008 best practice manual which ACC had commissioned from Massey University researchers, and which it cited as having guided the formulation of the pathway....

ACC now admits it got it wrong and earlier this month announced that sexual assault victims are now automatically entitled to 16 sessions of counselling. "We moved too quick, and left a bunch of people with nowhere to go," says ACC spokesman Laurie Edwards....

Like others in the sexual abuse care sector, [Kyle MacDonald & Barri Leslie] fear that Goodyear-Smith's research has fed into the pool of information that guides decision-making around sensitive claims policy, influencing the creation of higher hurdles for victims, and a more disbelieving regime around claims of sexual abuse in general.

ACC denies any link. Asked by the Sunday Star-Times last October about the relation of Goodyear-Smith's research to the newly unveiled clinical pathway, ACC responded in an email that it had not commissioned her 2005 research, and eventually refused to answer further questions. This was untrue. ACC spokesman Laurie Edwards said this month that the public relations staffer responsible had made a mistake, but could not account why.

Earlier this month, after communications staff were directed to evidence that it had commissioned the paper, claims management general manager Denise Cosgrove admitted the corporation had funded the research, but maintained it had played no part in the development of the pathway....

The fact that it appeared in both Goodyear-Smith's paper and the clinical pathway, despite not being found in the Massey guidelines, reflected the fact it was "best practice", although on what authority this was claimed he was unable to clarify.

An ACC-commissioned 2003 review of the sensitive claims process said the corporation had adopted the DSM-IV as a diagnostic tool to establish – as it was required to under the 2001 Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act – whether a mental injury had occured as a result of a sex crime. But there is nothing in the act that specifically mandates the DSM-IV as the necessary diagnostic tool.

some movement on ACC funding for sensitive claims

a glimmer of hope:

Extra support is being made available to survivors of sexual abuse, ACC announced today.

From Monday 16 August, people with a new ACC sensitive claim, or with a new claim already in the system but awaiting a decision, will be able to access up to 16 hours with a counsellor, to ensure their safety and wellbeing.

“ACC has listened to concerns expressed by several groups that more support is needed. Those groups included the public, the sexual abuse treatment sector, and the independent panel appointed by the Minister to review the sensitive claims pathway,” said Denise Cosgrove, General Manager Claims Management.

It is envisaged that these support sessions will, in fact, be sufficient to meet the needs of many people, who will therefore not go on to require ACC cover or ACC-funded treatment.

However, for others who do demonstrate signs of a possible mental injury arising from sexual abuse (as specified in ACC legislation) the sessions will also be used to gather information to help ACC make a cover decision.

While these changes do not alter the process of deciding who qualifies for ACC cover, or how they will subsequently be helped, the changes do ensure everyone has support while their status and needs are assessed.

i guess in this current environment, any movement is a good thing. but it's so much less than what should be in place. hat tip to kyle macdonald who has been blogging on this issue for a while now.

ACC's new approach to sensitive claims not working

From the Herald this morning:

A review of new rules for sexual abuse counselling has come too late to save a South Auckland mother who died four days after her claim for ACC-funded counselling was rejected.

Counselling Services Centre manager Emma Castle said the mother-of-three's claim for counselling for sexual abuse she had suffered as a child was rejected by ACC two months ago on the grounds that she had not suffered "a significant mental injury".

"The counsellor who submitted the claim made it very clear that sexual abuse was the reason why she had suicidal ideation and was self-harming," Ms Castle said. "It took them six months to make that decision. Four days after receiving notification that the ACC claim was denied, the client passed away."

...[Speaking on the issue of the panel announced to review the policy] "None of our specialist experts that work day to day with survivors of sexual violence, and have done for decades, have been chosen to be part of this review," Dr McGregor [Head of Rape Prevention Education aka Rape Crisis] said.

She said the rules had caused a virtual "collapse" of sexual abuse counselling, with cases approved by ACC down from 472 in the first two months of last year to just 32 in the same period this year.

The Association of Counsellors' representative on the ACC's sensitive claims advisory group, Elayne Johnston, said a 15-year-old girl who was raped over Christmas had still not received counselling because ACC required her to be assessed by a psychologist to see whether she had suffered a "mental injury".

Dr McGregor said almost all of the 600 to 700 private counsellors who were registered for ACC-funded work had stopped taking applicants for ACC subsidies since the new rules took effect because of an ethical objection to labelling assault victims as mentally ill.

Survivors were now going to rape crisis agencies instead, but the agencies could not cope because they had also lost funding...

Click through for the whole article.

This whole thing just makes me so sad. The sector warned the Minister that this would happen if he changed the rules in this way. He did it anyway. And now that it's happening, with real consequences for real people in awful situations, he's announced a review that doesn't include anyone from the frontline. This is starting to be a standard MO for this Govt. It reminds me of the 1990s when anyone who was an expert or practitioner in X was written off as having a vested interest in X and therefore their views were biased and not worth consideration.

agreeing with rosemary

i find that i often disagree with rosemary mcleod's op-ed pieces, but she has written a couple lately that i completely agree with.

the first can be found here, and while i don't completely agree with the first half (ie that groping is mostly harmless and seeking justice for it is "revenge" rather than empowerment), the main point she makes about unfairness in sentencing is a very good one:

But it's another comment by the judge that I find troubling: that publicity was not required in his case because none of the offensive images were of New Zealanders.

Setting aside how he could possibly know that for sure, isn't it enough that vile images were spread of any women and young children, whatever their ethnicity, and wherever they might be? They were images of real people; that is their charm for people who enjoy such cruelty.

I don't buy any argument that looking is so different from acting, or that geography waters down a crime. It's in our minds that we first become evil, before we act, and in our minds that we give ourselves permission to be brutal by proxy, as both these men have been.

the second piece doesn't appear to be online yet, but covers some appalling behaviour by ACC towards a sexual abuse victim. the concluding paragraphs of rosemary's piece are as follows:

According to Labour's victims rights spokesperson, Lynne Pillay, just 32 people were approved nationally for sexual abuse counselling in the first two months of this year, compared to 472 in the same time last year.

What's that supposed to suggest?

That the other 440 were lying or that, although they were traumatised enough to seek help, they were not "mentally injured"?

If this is economising, it's short-sighted.

Victims won't go away because bureaucracy wants them to; harm doesn't evaporate spontaneously, though we wish it did; and one way or another we're bound to pay for our lack of belief in "rehabilitation and all that other babble".

john key to date...

someone by the name of bronwyn dutton put up a fine list of achievements/proposals by john key, which i've copied below the fold. since it's on the save radio nz facebook page which has over 20,000 members, i'm hoping she won't mind me sharing it here. a couple of missing things come to mind: significantly cutting the budget of the department of conservation; scrapping the fast forward research fund and the research & development tax credit; ending local democracy in the canterbury region.


1 Let junk food back into school tuck shops
2: Stop the phasing out of inefficient incandescent light bulbs
3: Introduce a 90 day "probation period" for employees
4. Abandon minimum fuel economy standards for cars
5: Abandon the commission to equalise wages between sexes for the same job
6: End local democracy in the Auckland Region.
7: Cut funding for adult education night classes just as a recession is taking hold
8: Increase funding for private schools.
9: Introduce "3 strikes" legislation, proved worldwide to actually worsen crime rates
10: Change New Zealand's stance on whaling without consulting the country
11: Put the issue of climate change on the back burner indefinitely
12: Rort the ministerial expenses system and get away with it.
13: Appoint Christine Rankin to the Children's Commission
14: 'Streamline' the RMA to allow for unfettered development.
15: Lift the ban on new thermal (coal and gas) electricity generation.
16: Repeal the biofuels sales obligation.
17: Refer to coal as 'sexy.'
18: Abandon the TVNZ charter
19: Propose to open up conservation land for mining
20: Introduce national educational standards in primary schools despite all the international research indicating they are a bad idea.
21: Propose cutbacks to the National Radio network and commercialisation of the Concert Programme
22: Raise GST to 15% while at the same time cutting the top tax rate
23: Proposed extensions to the 90 day probation period so that large companies will also have the ability to sack employers without giving reason.
24: Choose not to introduce a capital gains tax on people with investment properties, therefore continuing the absurd growth in house prices and rentals. (Offset this loss of potential revenue with an increase in GST & cutbacks on all of the above)
25: Halve the effectiveness of the Kiwisaver scheme byreducing employer contributions from 4 to 2%
26: Appoint Rodney Hide as minister of local government
27: Plan to cut 700 teaching positions from NZ secondary schools
28: Pass legislation to bulldoze parts of Mt Albert to build a new motorway.
29: Prepare ACC for privatisation.
30: Take a party who only got 2.2% of the vote as a coalition partner and let them call the tune.
31. Amalgamate government departments (resulting in job losses), and claim it's to "improve services" rather than just to save money.
32 increased the quota for the endangered bluefin tuna"

The Odds & Ends Drawer

As always, feel free to add your links (including self-promotion) in comments. Thanks to those who did last time :-)

• Azlemed considers how difficult it is for mothers to be politically active.
• Darien introduces us to Jaine, who cleans John Key's office for $12.55 an hour. Some of the comments are pretty septic, but many are supportive.
• New blogger Jan offers her thoughts on the ACC funding cuts, and how they may drive some sexual abuse support services to close.
• Meganwegan is neither a lady nor is she a girl.
• The Paradoxical Cat goes to the ballet.

Plus some thought-provoking columns and articles that a friend on FB identified which may be of interest:

• Why Househusbands are the future - New York Times
• Glass Slippers? Old hat - also NYT
• Angie the Anti-Theist: Mother stands by her decision to graphically document her abortion live on the internet - Sydney Morning Herald