More than 4.6 million attempts to view child sex abuse material online were blocked in New Zealand over the last five years, Internal Affairs says. Illustration / Paul Slater
Filtering out the porn
As a parent who shares the concerns of the mum in “Just constant porn” (Herald on Sunday, March 24), I was horrified when I changed my internet service provider from Spark to Skinny, their budget subsidiary, only to find there was no longer a simple, effective filter on the online dashboard to allow me to protect my children from harmful content.
When I looked elsewhere, researching all alternatives, I found only Slingshot provided a one-click filtering solution, suitable for non-tech-savvy dads like myself. Even then, it will cost extra in the longer term.
The road toll, adjusted for population, has not fallen by two-thirds in 40 years due to driver education - the equivalent of “talk to experts”, as the Principals’ Association president advocates. Rather, it is primarily due to improved roads and car safety technology, mandated by regulation.
Our new Government has an opportunity to demonstrate compassion, common sense and courage by prioritising practical, effective rules to protect children and young people online.
This means standing up to big business and ignoring their self-serving arguments about imperfections, exceptions and trivial negative consequences. No solution is perfect, but why shouldn’t all parents have access to free, high-quality, one-click online filters to protect their children when the technology is already available?
Stephen Bayldon, Mt Roskill.
Crime and illness
Correspondent Susanne Whale’s comment that Heather du Plessis-Allan should show a little more respect and kindness to former Green MP Golriz Ghahraman demonstrates misplaced empathy (Herald on Sunday, March 24).
If committing crime was a side effect of illness, then surely our prisons would be filled with sick people. Alternatively, if everyone who committed a crime used being unwell as a defence, then maybe our prisons would largely be empty, as committing crimes could be associated with social, mental and physical disorder.
It’s also an affront other people who suffer from any type of disorder to suggest that they could be criminals by default. Yes, by all means feel sorry for these people, but there is also the suffering of the victims of crime to be considered. In Ghahraman’s case, valuable items have been stolen, impacting the business and the wellbeing of the store’s owners.
Ironic, given Ghahraman, at the time of committing her crime, had no need to steal as she was an MP with a salary far in excess of the average wage. I am also sure that she would have supported the Greens’ initiative for higher taxes on the wealthy, showing how hypocritical she is in her desire to uplift the very items only the wealthy could purchase.
Bernard Walker, Mt Maunganui.
Smarter transport
The current Government’s transport policy is incredibly disappointing. This is another missed opportunity to make sensible decisions in Auckland.
We will have more cars and trucks and minimal investment in public transport, no active transport promotion and no consideration of climate change. Have our governing politicians not witnessed what progressive cities of our size can accomplish with smart transport planning?
Efficient public transport (trains, light rail) and active transport promotion (walking, cycling) contribute to pleasant living and working conditions in modern cities. We already have significant levels of street and motorway congestion, and our decision-makers seem not to believe the well-researched science that tells us if you build more/bigger roads in cities, they quickly fill with more vehicles.
Already, our motorways and feeder roads act as virtual vehicle parks at peak times and are increasingly gridlocked after any “incident”.
While the world succumbed to the car culture in the 1960s, smart countries have since realised the folly of that and introduced sensible transport policies. We continue to “double down” on failed decisions and will rue these well into the future.
Alan Clanachan, Mt Eden.
Public service profligacy
The public service has ballooned in staffing numbers, and all the while we still paid hundreds of millions to consultants (more than under previous governments).
We got no visible or measurable benefit in any services from any government department, be it immigration, health, education etc during the last six years. In fact, mostly the opposite.
It is logical to therefore assume there has been no increase in productivity. So what have these extra people achieved/done? One can then infer these staff are not front-line workers.
I do not support reducing front-line staff in any government department, including the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Department of Conservation, but it appears blindingly obvious that there is every argument for cutting the “communication” and other non-front-line staffing roles.
We did not need the ”Road to Zero” advertising campaigns that were not only unpleasant to watch, and therefore not watched, but ludicrous in their attempted objective.
Glenn J Pacey, Glendowie.
Classroom behaviour
The Education Review Office (ERO) has found New Zealand classrooms are at the bottom of the list of OECD countries in terms of student behaviour.
This hugely important finding may be just what we have been looking for to explain poor student performance with regard to numeracy and literacy.
The ERO should make their 16 recommendations public. Every teacher and every parent should be supplied with a copy of the 16 recommendations by every school.
Parents and teachers must all work together to correct this serious behavioural problem.
John Caldwell, Howick.
Backing smacking
The way children behave in class has been getting worse over the last 20 years. Um, I wonder why?
Could it be this has happened since the introduction of the anti-smacking bill [the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act 2007], pushed by that brilliant example of misbehaviour and contempt for officialdom, Sue Bradford? When they said they were looking at this, I said then they were sowing a whirlwind, and here we are.
One suggestion for improving this is training teachers better. This has nothing to do with teacher training and is the fault of the Act. It has instilled in following generations a sense of “all rights and no responsibility”, which has flowed out into the community, as seen by the contempt these characters hold the police in.
The schools are expected to be everything, as they have taken away the right of the parents to discipline their kids and social education. Kids need to know where the line is drawn before you have crossed it.
The cure is to revoke the anti-smacking law. This was brought in to stop child abuse and child abuse is worse than ever - abusers will always be abusers, as we see daily in the paper.
Wake up, NZ. Take charge again and tell the kids what their limitations are.
Tom O’Toole, Taumarunui.
Childcare solution
The lead headline in the Herald on Sunday (March 24) informed us of the cost of childcare for two children per week. That’s certainly a chunk out of a pay packet.
The obvious solutions would be for parents to be paid more, or for childcare fees to be reduced.
But perhaps this is the time to revert to the system in which one or other parent was the stay at-home carer until the children turned 5 years old and started school.
Having a parent as the caregiver in the most formative years would benefit the children, and perhaps society as a whole, in so many ways.
Janet Boyle, Ōrewa.
Former Act president's lawyer claims sentence was too harsh, calls for home detention.