I am so sick of listening to everyone's two cents of the causes of violence in our families, in our communities, sick of it because they are complicating the simple and putting band aids on broken legs.

Responsibility for ones actions - that is what is missing in this 'whats the cause of violence' blather. Its not your skin colour, your culture, your colonisation, your government benefit - its your decision to put your fist in someone elses face that is the problem. Violence is a choice. People need to stop making excuses.

All this talk of the root cause of violence is a crock. If violence has a cause, if it is some disease then actions are not free. No matter how crappy you feel, no matter how broke you are, how colonised you might be, no matter what your skin colour, no one makes you pick up your fist, you decide to do that.

Plenty of poor, colonised, maoris on benefits do NOT beat their kids and plenty of rich, liberated, employed europeans do. The fact that there is more in one racial group than another is irrelevant. The demarcation lines need to be drawn down ethical lines and not skin colour or income type.

Some people choose to beat their kids, other people wouldn't dream of it no matter what - its a lack of character, a lack of responsibility, a lack of desire or inclination to do the right thing, to be the kind of parent that they know they should be.

I don't think many people who physically hurt the people they love actually think what they are doing is right, I would think most would know that it wasn't even if they deceive themselves at times, but they just don't care about doing the right thing enough to stop, seek help or control themselves.

The solution to this problem is that people need to develop character. They need to commit to doing the right thing and to expressing censure on those who do not. Our government and our society has privatised morality and then fails to hold people properly to account - if everyone who beats a child to death was executed, if every parent found guilty law for beating their child had every one of their children taken off them and were thrown in jail for life, if people got that we took this seriously, that we expect a higher standard and that we value children it might start making a dent.

Madeleine