"Progressive" myths encourage child abuse

The initial reference below is to a recent and notorious case in which an underclass mother shook her toddler to death and then dumped his body in a pond. The toddler was Aboriginal. Welfare authorities knew of the case before the killing but probably threw up their hands from the beginning as Aboriginal families are very commmonly severely dysfunctional, with child abuse frequent. And it is absolutely VERBOTEN to take children away from black families. That used to be done sometimes but in recent years the Left set up a huge howl about "The stolen generation" (the black children fostered out to white families) in reference to the practice. The authorities obviously now feel that it is better to let black kids die than risk any more of that abuse

The family of the dead toddler Dean Shillingsworth this week gathered by the Ambarvale pond where his body was found stuffed into a suitcase. In his honour they launched a small boat on which was written: "An eye 4 an eye." As one of the relatives told this newspaper's Jordan Baker: "There is a lot of emotional blaming."

Since Dean's body was discovered last week and his mother, Rachel Pfitzner, was charged with his murder, there has indeed been a lot of blame going around. But the idea which seems to have taken popular hold, that the Government, or "the system", is entirely to blame for the two-year-old's tragic end is a sign of something amiss with our concept of personal responsibility. As one reader asked me in an email: "Who actually killed the child in the duck pond? A social worker? A clerk? A policeman? A member of Parliament?"

While the NSW Department of Community Services has been an incompetent bureaucratic basket case for years, you have to have some sympathy for the minister, Kevin Greene, when he says there is "no foolproof way" for DOCS to prevent all child deaths. DOCS has failed in the past to intervene when children were in danger, so the suspicion it has failed again is not unreasonable. But reflexive attacks on overloaded social workers, regardless of the evidence, not only absolves families of the prime responsibility for their children but also deflects attention from the growing community dysfunction which is the root cause of child abuse. However, Greene's absurd claim that one in five children in NSW has been reported to DOCS as being "at risk", does make you worry about the department's judgment.

It is no secret what kind of social conditions breed child abuse and neglect, so you would expect public servants with limited resources to narrow their focus if they are going to be any use. It might suit progressives babbling on ABC radio to claim abuse and neglect occurs in all families, and it's just that the richer ones "hide it behind closed doors". The facts say otherwise, and efforts to soft-soap them are part of the intellectual corruption of the elites, which has trickled down to the bottom of the social heap and wreaked such havoc over the past 40 years. It is stating the obvious to say child maltreatment occurs predominantly in the welfare-dependent underclass, whether it's in a remote indigenous community in the Northern Territory or a public housing suburb on the outskirts of Sydney.

Joblessness, jail and illegitimacy are a way of life for so many people in these chaotic parts of Australia that what the Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson describes as the "basic social cultural norms that underpin any society" have collapsed. The expectations that children will be brought up safely, of mutual obligation between citizen and society, of public order and safety that the rest of us take for granted, do not exist.

The solution is "structure", says the sociologist Peter Saunders, from the Centre for Independent Studies. "There is no doubt that work is what puts structure and discipline in people's lives. It is what makes people get up in the morning and have a shave. "You sound like a wowser [killjoy] when you say this but it's rules, responsibility, consequences for actions. You've got to enforce laws when laws are broken - including the drug laws." A life of welfare dependence "undermines autonomy and capacity and encourages you to believe you have no control of your life". It underpins the breakdown of social organisation in communities, the "anomie" described by the 19th-century French sociologist Emile Durkheim.

As a social libertarian, Saunders has always believed that people should be free to do whatever they want as long as they are not harming others. But he is coming to the more complex idea "that you have to have one rule for one population and another for another. You've got to start discriminating." While aiming to increase the autonomy and freedom of individuals in society we should recognise that we need "paternalistic intervention . for those who don't cope at the bottom or their lives will descend into chaos".

For instance, Saunders and readers of this newspaper might agree with the plan by Sydney's Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, to liberalise drinking laws to allow more small bars to open in Sydney, while also supporting the Government's crackdown on grog in the Territory, as alcohol has caused such distress and dysfunction in indigenous communities.

To avoid the charge of hypocrisy, Saunders says we need to distinguish between those who are competent to manage their affairs and the minority who "engage in such self-destructive behaviour that any reasonable person would understand the need to intervene". It is natural to feel squeamish about demanding restraints on the behaviour of others down the social scale that you would not tolerate for yourself. But warnings from conservatives that the social upheavals of the past 40 years would have their most tragic consequences on the most vulnerable have been ignored. The elites have grabbed the social freedoms to which they feel entitled, devaluing the role of fathers and the value of the old-fashioned nuclear family and proclaiming tolerance of all lifestyles as the greatest virtue.

The trickle-down effect has been disastrous, as recounted in Theodore Dalrymple's book Life at the Bottom. There is no doubting parents in the underclass love their children, but for too many, their child-rearing philosophy is what Dalrymple, a former British prison psychiatrist, calls "laissez-faire tempered by insensate rage". They "live in a torment of public and private disorder [which is] the consequence of not knowing how to live". It is the behaviour and lifestyle of these parents, particularly the mothers, which leads to the abuse and neglect of their children. So government social policies need to be focused on changing that behaviour, rather than sanctioning it by providing welfare without obligations, and refusing to be judgmental about lifestyles that are obviously detrimental to children.

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Bishop of the C of E (Church of the Environment) attacks Catholic cardinal

Having abandoned the Bible, the Church of England has turned to Environmentalism instead. Who wants to save those silly old souls when you can save the planet?

AUSTRALIA'S most prominent religious sceptic of climate change, the Catholic Archbishop George Pell, was out of step within his church and the global Christian community on global warming, a leading Anglican environmentalist says. The head of the Anglican Church's international body on the environment, George Browning, said Dr Pell's position on global warming defied scientific consensus and theological imperatives to protect the Earth and its future generations. It also made no sense and would be proven a mistake. Bishop Browning's stance came as the Australian Anglican church prepared to adopt its strongest position yet on climate change, committing 23 dioceses to initiatives reducing their carbon footprint.

But Dr Pell said last night he had every right to be sceptical about extravagant claims of impending man-made climatic catastrophes. "There are many measures which are good for the environment, which we should pursue," he said. "We need to be able talk freely about this and about the uncertainties around climate change. Invoking the authority of some scientific experts to shut down debate is not good for science, the environment, for people here and in the developing world or for the people of tomorrow. "My task as a Christian leader is to engage with reality, to contribute to debate on important issues, to open people's minds, and to point out when the emperor is wearing few or no clothes. "Radical environmentalists are more than up to the task of moralising their own agenda and imposing it on people through fear. They don't need church leaders to help them with this, although it is a very effective way of further muting Christian witness. Church leaders in particular should be allergic to nonsense."

Bishop Browning supported warnings that climate change refugees would, in the future, pose a bigger threat to world security than terrorism by triggering massive population shifts. He also warned Australia had to dump the "language of drought" because it offered false hope to farmers by implying that after drought would come flood and a return to normal farming life. The warming of the planet had triggered irreversible climate changes that warranted fundamental changes in farming and investment practices. Bishop Browning took issue with Dr Pell's Easter message this year at which the cardinal said Jesus had nothing to say on global warming. He told the Anglican synod meeting in Canberra yesterday he had written to Dr Pell after the Easter message because he found his statement "almost unbelievable". [I wonder could the good bishop point out the chapter and verse of the Gospels where global warming is mentioned? I rather foolishly thought that Jesus said "my kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36)]

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One unfixable public hospital

Despite huge pressures on the politicians, it is still a disaster zone

WHEN young mother Sara Claridge received a third phone call from Royal North Shore Hospital relaying the news that her urgent surgery had been postponed yet again, she broke down in tears. The 26-year-old was in line to have cervical surgery to remove pre-cancerous cells and relieve crippling pain from a gynaecological condition, but was told the hospital's theatres were closed. Ms Claridge - whose mother had a similar condition and had a hysterectomy at the age of 27 - had already had her operation cancelled once before she was moved up the priority list for surgery in October.

The incident is the latest in a string of alarming cases emerging from Royal North Shore Hospital following the case of 32-year-old Jana Horska, who miscarried in the hospital toilets last month. Following Mrs Horska's miscarriage tragedy, Associate Professor Bill Sears, a neurosurgeon at the hospital, spoke out, revealing operations are cancelled frequently at the last minute because of theatre closures.

Ms Claridge's setbacks now, sadly, catapult her into being a new symbol for Premier Morris Iemma's Government's failure to cope with the state's growing hospital crisis - a crisis that Health Minister Reba Meagher appears reluctant to admit, address or provide policy responses for. This latest case will increase pressure on the Government to explain how it intends to turnaround health care in NSW - it is another example of ordinary people being let down.

"But then she called and said the theatre was closed and we'd had to reschedule again to November. I was in tears, I just couldn't handle it any more," Ms Claridge said. "The pain knocks me sideways. Some days I can't get out of bed and I don't want to leave the house. "I'm 26, I shouldn't have to worry that when I have a shower my hair falls out in clumps. "I should be able to take my daughter to the park, or even be able to get up and make her breakfast without feeling like I have to go back to bed for the rest of the day."

An RNSH spokeswoman said the postponement of Ms Claridge's surgery was the decision of the doctor, who already had 21 patients on his waiting list. "(The) hospital has contacted Mrs Claridge and is investigating the possibility of an earlier date for surgery by transferring her care to another surgeon," the spokeswoman said.

Opposition health spokeswoman Jillian Skinner said yesterday it was a standard State Government defence to blame the doctors. "It is another example of the minister being at odds with doctors and their clinical decisions," she said. "She is in discomfort and she has a toddler to care for - it is cruel to delay the surgery."

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Windschuttle to take over at Quadrant

A worthy successor to Paddy McGuinness



Keith Windschuttle, scourge of leftist historians, will campaign against decadence in the arts when he takes over as editor of Quadrant magazine next year. Consider Wagner's Tannhauser, that myth of the sacred and profane now on show at the Sydney Opera House. "There's a guy painted in gold (who) stands there with a giant erection - symbolises lust or something," Windschuttle said yesterday. "That kind of gratuitous offensiveness is almost everywhere."

On Monday in the Sydney suburb of Balmain, the management committee of the small-circulation magazine chose Windschuttle, a former Leftist critic of Quadrant, as successor to Paddy McGuinness, who retires at the end of the year. His decade as editor roughly parallels the Howard years and the Prime Minister has praised Quadrant for "fine scholarship with a sceptical, questioning eye for cant, hypocrisy and moral vanity". Quadrant has an influence, especially in the history and culture wars, well beyond its modest circulation of 6000-odd.

But what if Kevin Rudd dislodges John Howard in Canberra - would the magazine have to reinvent itself? "Good heavens, no," said Peter Coleman, the longest-serving editor and Quadrant's unofficial historian. "The magazine has a certain liberal, conservative, cultural, literary outlook. That has sometimes coincided with support for the federal Government (under Mr Howard), but it's also published lots of articles sympathetic to the Labor Party cause."

Asked yesterday about Quadrant's influence, McGuinness said: "The big impact, of course, was the Windschuttle stuff on the so-called (frontier) massacres (of Aborigines) where he demolished the comfortable left-wing university consensus comprehensively. It's meant that people are increasingly open to renewed debate about how to make Aboriginal policy work." McGuinness believes he's been able to "re-establish" Quadrant as a "sceptical and non-ideological" journal in the conservative spirit of Samuel Johnson, the literary colossus of 18th-century England.

"Re-establish" is a diplomatic reference to McGuinness's predecessor, the political scientist Robert Manne, who fell out with the Quadrant crowd over economic rationalism and the Aboriginal "stolen generations". It was McGuinness who suggested Windschuttle delve into things Aboriginal. A book review assignment grew into three articles for Quadrant in 2000. The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, which accused well-known historians of exaggerating and even concocting massacre stories, emerged in 2002 and provoked bitter debate.

"If Paddy hadn't been editor, I would never have gone near the issue," Windschuttle said yesterday. Both men say not to expect radical change when the new editor's first issue appears next March. But if McGuinness, an atheist, has had a soft spot for religious debate, Windschuttle is not feeling charitable towards luvvies. "I've become concerned in recent years about the cynicism and decadence that you get in the opera, in the theatre, in other parts of high culture - even the dance companies," he said.

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