MandM: Family First Forum

Showing posts with label Family First Forum. Show all posts

Thursday, 30 July 2009

Key and Goff on Family Matters at the 2009 Forum on the Family

The 2009 Forum on the Family is nearly upon us. This year John Key and Phil Goff are slated to face-off, Lord of the NZ Blogosphere, David Farrar, will be making an appearance, details of the rest of this years lineup are on the poster (click on the image if you cannot read it). You can register here and if you do it now you'll get the early-bird rate.

Matt and I have been to the last two Forums on the Family and can thoroughly recommend them as interesting, informative and a great place to network and meet people; at this stage we plan to attend this one.

Wednesday, 13 May 2009

Rankling the Families Commission

If we must suffer the statist affliction on society that is the Families Commission (FC) then I am utterly stoked at the latest appointments to it of Bruce Pilbrow, my former neighbour at Bible College and Christine Rankin. Christine is of course the major controversy and if you are a kiwi you will be well aware of the things she is accused of and the stones being hurled, if you're an international visitor click here for The Press' report.

The FC was ostensibly created to monitor legislation and policy and comment on its impact on families and make recommendations for future policy but was, soooooo predictably, captured by anti-family lefties who have refused to define a family leaving the definition wide open and who championed the anti-smacking bill and so on.

United Future Party Leader Peter Dunne, who was key architect of the FC, is apparently angry at Christine's appointment and is calling for her to decline it, "Her taking up this role will seriously undermine the credibility of the Families Commission." Funny, amongst most families I know it has no credibility to undermine and having the likes of Pilbrow and Rankin appointed to it has been the only bright spark in an otherwise dim history.

The Greens' Sue Bradford, architect of the anti-smacking law, is claiming that National are "subverting the commission through political appointments" and is accusing it of "sabotage." I sincerely hope that this is precisely what National are doing but I doubt it because both Pilbrow and Rankin have spent the past years working in NGO's promoting family and researching real causes and child abuse and working to prevent it.

The opposition leader, Labour MP Phil Goff, former communist and a long time left-wing politician said "Ms Rankin aligned herself so exclusively with one side of the political spectrum [pot, kettle] for example attending Destiny Church and Families First rallies, that it was hard to see how she could be representative." Mr Goff clearly is not aware that members of his party have attended and spoken at the same rallies - someone should brief him better.

Further, Christine is not a Christian, something she openly speaks about at these rallies and she does not attend only those events on that side of the political spectrum and I fail to see how this is relevant anyway - does every appointee have to share Goff's politics or is it broader than that, anyone can be appointed but those tarnished by association with Christian groups? At least she has raised a family unlike the childless high-profile women on Mr Goff's side of the spectrum.

I really like Christine Rankin (I really like Bruce Pilbrow too but he is not controversial for some reason). I have heard Christine speak twice now and met her briefly and I have always felt a kindred connection, like if she and I knew each other better we would seriously hit it off. She and I both have had pasts as solo mothers who toughed it out on welfare and got ourselves out of it; She and I both have a somewhat abnormal (amongst women anyway) drive to do, to change, to get involved, and both of us have been famous for having amazing legs. We have both been criticised for being polarising and divisive - something I think most women in politics, particularly right wing women, get regularly accused of *yawn*. She is not perfect, none of us are, but she is strong at spotting PC crap and standing up to it and she is not afraid to be the only one in the room talking sense. The FC won't know what hit them and will have someone in there who will work hard and hold them to account and that can only be good.

So Christine, don't you dare even think about turning this role down - I am sure you are not anyway!

Monday, 11 May 2009

Shameless Advertising: We Want to Win!

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We find the midweek update very useful to have an idea of what is happening in the area of law and policy affecting family; sometimes it has stuff we've missed. Even if it is not your sort of thing, perhaps it is not libertarian enough or it does not satisfy your Marxist tendencies because it buys into the 'false notion of family,' sign up anyway to gather intel!

Matt and I could really do with a break and for most people there are at least some things Family First are doing that they agree with so sign up!

Wednesday, 6 August 2008

Coming Events

As the early bird rate expires on Friday, I registered Matt's and my attendance at this years Forum on the Family. Being election year, the line up is mostly politicians all keen to vote catch but of the array of political parties being billed, one is most conspicuously absent.

Can you spot which one? Its a fairly major ommission and I bet the ommission is not on the part of the organisers.

To save you having to squint, here is the line up from left to right (on the advertisement, obviously):

Pita Sharples - Maori Party
John Key - National
Rodney Hide - Act
Winston Peters - NZ First
Peter Dunne - United Future
Jeanette Fitzsimons - Green Party
Larry Baldock - Kiwi Party
Taito Phillip Field - NZ Pacific
Richard Lewis - Family Party

(The absentee I am speaking of is not Jim Anderton of Progressive who isn't listed but really who cares that he's not?)

Regardless it will still be a great event, last year was very worthwhile though it is a wee bit disappointing to hear that David Farrar of Kiwiblog (a fellow Student Choicer from back in the day) will not be speaking this year as has been rumoured about the blogosphere but I am looking forward to it and have September 8 circled on my calendar.

Thursday, 25 October 2007

Spot the Difference

A few weeks ago wide publicity was given to a study that concluded that NZ women are the most promiscuous in the world. (The fact that, this study had some serious scientific shortcomings having neither a control group nor a random sample group was not so widely publicised.)

What was interesting was the reaction by some that this study as somehow validated permissive sexual mores. To cite one typical example, at the recent family first forum a question was asked from the floor about what would be taught in sex education courses at public schools. The response, from at least one politician, was that this study showed that encouraging people outside of a monogamous sexual relationship to practise abstinence was unrealistic.

Now this morning we see another study has come out this study suggests that sexual molestation of children is prevalent in NZ it suggests that one in four women have been sexually molested. I note the almost universal response from our politicians and media and quite rightly so, is to condemn these practises and exhort NZers to change any actions and attitudes that lead to such behaviour.

I am confused: I thought that when a significant number of people engaged in a sexual practise, then it was unrealistic to condemn it? I thought the state was supposed to simply accept contemporary practise and alter their values to fit it. Can the politicians who make the aforementioned argument about sex ed answer me this: When are you going to advocate that the state to teach safe child molestation techniques in public schools?

The reality is that we do not look to contemporary practise to determine what’s right and wrong. Rather we use principles of right and wrong to critique contemporary practise. Despite their trendy sloganising, our politicians know this, or at least they do when it suits them, but conveniently forget when it doesn’t. If contemporary liberals want to justify their values to others, they need to provide arguments for them. Not assurances that these practises are fashionable or trendy or that “all the cool people are doing it” or that “Kinsey showed 10% of people do this” etc. Unlike some people in parliament and the media many of us grew out of our teens sometime ago.

Monday, 15 October 2007

Dissecting the Family First Forum

Today I took the day off work and Matt and I headed to the Family First Forum. It was a worthwhile day out, all the speakers were great. What was especially impressive was the diversity of the speakers and the range of worldviews and political persuasions - this was an impression I formed even before we got to the panel of MP's from every party. Also well done was Bob McCoskrie's MC-ing, the organisation from the behind the scenes people - especially the food, the entertainment ranging from the local school doing a national anthem cum haka to Ben Lummis' live performance.

Of the speakers, Christine Rankin was especially memorable for me. Maybe it was because she spoke a little about her background and motivations and life turning points and I could really relate to where she was coming from or maybe it was the outspoken, confident, right-wing, woman thing - cause I so get that.

John Tamihere was impressive too. I found myself agreeing with a lot of what he said and wondering how he could ever have been in the Labour Party.

The political panel was really good too. Judith Collins was outstanding. Absolutely outstanding (it warranted repeating - you had to be there). Nick Kearney (who stood in for Heather Roy) was a close second and did a very good job. The two Future MP's Judy and Gordon basically had the same policy so it was kind of funny thinking of them as being from two different parties - Gordon is an impressive individual and I really do hope he has success with Future NZ but I just cannot... I am just not a centrist. He was really good on some issues but goverment sponsored marriage courses just make me want to run and scream - Judith and Nick were great on that when they pointed out that those initiatives, whilst excellent and important for the good of society, were not and should not be in the domain of the government. Russell Fairbrother and Sue Bradford did a good job of playing the villians - given the audience they were almost always going to bomb with their answers though they did both manage the odd answer that got agreement.

I somehow ended up baiting Russell Fairbrother - Bob says he will hereinafter refer to me as the giggle girl for it - a few questions on conscience issues had come up, the panel had all stipulated that this or that issue was a conscience issue for their party and then gone on to expound their personal view. Each time Russell had his turn at this it grated me more and more - I mean Labour allows conscience votes?!? puh-lease! I sat quietly (well fairly quietly) through Russell's "smacking was always illegal" then 20 minutes later "this bill did not make smacking illegal" contradiction but the repeated references to Labour allowing conscience votes was too much - I laughed out loud, my giggle audibly echoed just as Russell paused after alluding to yet another of the instances Labour allowed their MP's to vote on a conscience issue, other giggles erupted but mine was lingered in such a way that any cynic present might have suggested was a little too perfectly timed and executed (never!). It seemed to hit a nerve, Russell began aggressively claiming that Labour respects conscience voting which simply elicited more howls of laughter from the audience and the panel of MP's.

Another pearler was Sue Bradford's suggestion that the claim that a light smack was essentially the same thing as beating a child with a horse whip, block of wood or a piece of hosepipe - this elcited howls of outrage. At another point she said she could not see any value in locking up violent, recidivist offenders for long sentences and did not understand why anyone might think doing so was a good idea.

I sat next to some very impressive teenagers - homeschooled (what a surprise) - very sharp. Their reasoning skills and ability to see how things followed was evident by their comments to each other both as they critiqued and evaluated the answers the MP's gave to the questions and as they commented on Matt's commentary to me (he cannot watch panel discussions without commentating - even talks to the television during political debates).

All in all a very worthwhile and enjoyable day.

Madeleine

[Photos swiped from http://section59.blogspot.com]

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