Brash's tough plan for parents of criminals

By HELEN TUNNAH

"Parenting classes" for the parents of young criminals are part of a radical new policy which the National Party is exploring to make people responsible for their children

Parenting contracts are being tested in Western Australia and Britain, and are claimed to have helped halve youth offending.

The court-ordered classes for parents would not be limited to sorting out children's behaviour.

They would also require parents to seek help to overcome drug and alcohol addictions, or tackle their own anger and violence problems.

National Party leader Don Brash said last night National wanted parents to be held to account for their children, and law and order spokesman Tony Ryall has been investigating the Australian plan.

"We're certainly looking at ways of saying to parents, 'The primary responsibility should be yours. If your children aren't behaving, then you should have to take responsibility for that'."

National's annual conference in Auckland over the weekend was given a taste of the party's thinking on welfare, education and crime, with a heavy focus on a whole-of-government approach to keeping young people in school and out of court.

A focus will be on children deemed "high-risk", for whom there are low educational expectations and who may be moved around a succession of households because of unstable family relationships, making it difficult to track them through the school system.

Other policies being considered include cutting the benefits of parents whose children are truants and encouraging the police to visit the homes of truants.

National has yet to decide whether to implement formal parenting contracts.

And it needs to find a way of selling them to voters without them being seen as punitive.

Australia's Opposition Labor leader Mark Latham raised the idea of good behaviour training for parents in January.

The idea drew considerable criticism, particularly from single mothers, who said they would be targeted for courses while absent fathers would escape blame for problem children.

Mr Latham's scheme was based on "parental responsibility orders", which would allow courts to order parents to attend classes on how to discipline or look after their children.

Parents could initially agree to voluntarily attend classes.

But if they did not attend, the courts could order them to do so, and a failure to comply would be met with fines or a requirement to undertake community service.

It is understood National is considering similar programmes, but they would not focus only on parenting and might not be voluntary.

Education spokesman Bill English also wants to overhaul the education system.

He said the system of decile ratings for schools might be renamed, because it was a "lousy" exercise in branding some schools as poor with low expectations for students.