Marching in the streets and holding candlelight vigils after high-profile killings like that of Rotorua 3-year-old Nia Glassie are a waste of time and the Government needs to act, says the producer of TV1 show The Darklands, Mary Durham.
"What we learn from Nia's terrible death is that the answers to New Zealand's appalling child abuse statistics are there for politicians to act on. However, no government seems particularly inclined to listen to the people who have those answers because the solutions are long term and fall well outside a government's term of office.
"Therefore, they are not vote catchers. It might sound terribly cynical but it's true," Ms Durham said.
This Monday's episode of The Darklands, which is fronted by clinical psychologist Nigel Latta, is about the death of the 3-year-old. Nia died of head injuries in Starship Hospital on August 3, 2007 - 13 days after being taken to Rotorua Hospital in a coma. She was in a coma for 33 hours after being kicked in the head.
Her mother, Lisa Kuka, was jailed for nine years for manslaughter. Kuka's teenage boyfriend at the time, Wiremu Curtis, and his brother, Michael Curtis, were found guilty of murder and received life sentences with non-parole periods of 17 years.
Michael Curtis' partner at the time, Oriwa Kemp, and Nia's cousin, Michael Pearson, were sentenced to three years and four months' jail and three years' jail respectively on charges of ill-treating and assaulting Nia and two other children in the house.
"We don't need any more green papers or anything of that ilk, the politicians need to wake up and start acting on what experts like Dr Patrick Kelly have been saying for years," Ms Durham said. Dr Kelly, a paediatrician and clinical director of the child protection team at Starship Hospital, gave evidence at the trial of those charged with abusing Nia and was among a panel of experts which in 2010 recommended an alert system for all abusive mothers so officials knew when they had more children.
Ms Durham said she didn't want to reveal who had been spoken to for the programme as some had requested anonymity.
However, the episode focused around the development of the Curtis brothers and how their lives connected with the other three, particularly Kuka.
"We then look at the events leading to Nia's death and what could have and should have been done to prevent her death - and that of hundreds of other New Zealand children. We outline the actions that can be taken in this episode of Darklands - they're not sensational, they're not startling. They're sheer hard work and they will take time - but it's time we on Darklands think will be well spent if it means saving lives of children," Ms Durham said.
"I know child abuse revolts all decent thinking people and is too much for many to stomach but the first step in tackling a problem is to acknowledge there is one.
"If people really want to do something to stop our children being murdered, they should watch this programme and urge their MPs to act on the advice [in it]," she said.
Rotorua district councillor and the former head of Women's Refuge New Zealand, Merepeka Raukawa-Tait, who gave evidence at the inquest into Nia's death, said in the five years since her death, 30 more children had died in family settings.
In each case, there would have been six people who knew of the abuse and didn't do anything as they feared the fallout for themselves rather than thinking about the child who had no one to speak for them, Mrs Raukawa-Tait said.
Stopping child abuse was everyone's responsibility and people needed to check on their families and be prepared to speak out if a child was being abused.