Thursday, December 13, 2007

Doing the decent thing...

This lady deserves a New Year's honour. She has done more for making New Zealand a decent society than all the politicians and all the public servants in this country put together. Persuading her own son to turn himself in to Police is an example that could be emulated by more in society.

It seems that some laws are more rigorously enforced than others. Harbouring a criminal is not an offense that comes up in the court pages very often, but I suspect that there are numerous people living everyday, knowing the offender in a particular crime, and not coming forward.

Another point that readers may have missed is that the son in this case was 18. When I talk with people about parental responsibility I get the impression that the majority of people think their parenting stops as soon as their child turns 16 and is old enough to leave school. (Some people give up even sooner.) My kids know that they live by my rules while they live in my house, so if they are here till they turn 20 then they will not get away with anti-social, larakin behaviour.

I've expressed my view on the debate about raising the driving age. Nothing needs to change in law, but parents need to step up and be responsible. This article just proves that. All the socialist thinking in New Zealand causes people to bleat on about the Government needing to change the laws. Utter rubbish! They should enforce the law. And then, in the case of learner drivers, parents should "man up" and take responsibility for their own children's actions (whether it is driving, firing bb guns out car windows or drinking at parties).

Somehow New Zealand has to reverse the damage done by the last 2 or 3 generations who have been raised in a socialist environment. It is patently obvious that Governments are powerless to make change at an individual level. And the more ink they waste on legislation and then waste money on the bureaucracy to administer the unworkable regulations, only to have to draft some more unnecessary legislation to patch up the first, the worse it gets.

Being a decent society comes down to individuals doing the decent thing. They don't need a pile of laws to tell them what to do. But it is the cumulative actions of every individual and not the collective 'relative inaction' of Governments and their supporting bureaucracy that make New Zealand a decent society.

This anonymous woman deserves recognition for the huge contribution she has made to making New Zealand a more decent society, and the example she is to all parents.

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