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- Submission: Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill
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- Against forced child care from age 3
- Don’t want our rights to raise our children taken from us
- Children’s best interests would NOT be served by compulsory attendance at E.C. E. facilities
- One size does not fit all.
- The bill actively discriminates against beneficiaries
- Blatant discrimination of those receiving a benefit
- Young children do best in all aspects of life in the care of their family
- Healthy people build healthy communities. Healthy family attachments build healthy people.
- From a single Mother
- ECE doesn’t seem to suit every child
- It is institutional misogyny
- I strongly disagree that children so young (3 years) need to be in Early Childhood Centre
- From a Solicitor and Notary Public and mother of four children
- Importance of establishing secure attachment relationships during infancy in order to optimise brain development
- I feel my own family will suffer majorly if this Bill was to pass.
- I am a 20 year old single male
- For many children ‘later’ is better than ‘earlier’ when it comes to institutional education
- Three year olds are far too young to be away from their parents
- This is unfair and discriminatory
- The Bill is discriminatory and marginalises beneficiaries
- Motherless and Fatherless children of NZ forced to have the only parent they have taken away!
- An enforced separation of parent and child at the hands of government in exchange for financial assistance is both cruel and contrary to the nature of our free society
- Every child and every family is different!
- This legislation targets good parents – not the bad ones
- The government is saying that because I’m a solo parent I’m unable to make the right decisions for my children
- This is the worst kind of government interference into how people choose to raise their families
- It is offensive that the job my mother has done and so many other single parents do, is so under-valued
- ECE is not beneficial and is not and can not be a substitute for a caring, loving home environment
- Trust good parents to make good decisions
- I am a mother, not a babysitter and I absolutely oppose this bill
- Trafficking, extortion, kidnapping, slavery and deception
- This is invasive legislation discriminating against excellent parents and removing their freedom to raise their children in a secure loving environment and not going to achieve better lives for neglected children
- This proposed bill will show the New Zealand Government to be punitive and untrustworthy
- Children do not belong to the state
- From Romania: Please learn from the mistakes others did in history! Thank you!
- Children need to be with their family, and nurtured, they must not be treated as tools to force parents to comply with this bill.
- I also believe it enforces the detachment of children from their parents at an age which can be detrimental for many
- The bill falsely presumes that all beneficiaries’ children are at risk
- A child’s right is to be with their parents. To be loved and nurtured and protected.
- Family Integrity’s submission
- In it’s breadth it overshoots and impinges on the basic rights of dedicated and thinking parents such as myself
- Please do the right thing and don’t sully New Zealand’s reputation: vote down this bill
- It is a well researched, known and documented fact that it is parental involvement that makes the difference in regards to educational outcomes, not the institutional education of a child
- Keep our mana intact, don’t steal our children
- Reject compulsory ECE
- From a small Home Education Support Group
- This National government would be well advised and warned to examine carefully the agendas of those who have promoted, lobbied for and recommended the actions in this bill in order to maintain peace, good relations, civility and lawful behaviour in our communities
- Introducing this bill will not achieve a healthy end result for the wonderful country we live in
- Staying in the home saves everyone money including the government money in not having to fund ECE’s
- New Zealand jails are full of people who went to school not people who were home-educated
- Submission from the USA — Author of “Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching and Appreciating Boys”
- To be a beneficiary in Christchurch with an added ‘bonus’ of this reform will utterly destroy some
- Those Who Would Give Away Their Children for Money, Deserve Neither Children NOR Money
- I believe the Welfare Reform Bill to be invalid not only for human rights breaches but also as a Maori for the breach of Article 2 of the Treaty and the breach of the UNDRIP which was endorsed by government in 2010.
- Home-educated children do HALF of all the BAD CITIZEN things and DOUBLE all of the GOOD CITIZEN things
- Stephen’s submission
- We are people, Real People
- Home Education Foundation’s submission
- I worked at an Early Childhood Center before our little ones were born, we would never send our children to an Early Childhood Education Center
- The negative impact of early education is well documented and well ignored by government
- What a step backwards this bill is!
- If you are deprived of love and affection as a child then key areas of your brain which are responsible for your personality don’t get wired up correctly
- Children, again are the victims – and I call that child abuse
- A good government does not come into people’s homes and tell them how to raise their children
- I see this Bill as an abuse on young children and their parents
- Samuel Blight’s submission
- Submission from Poland
- Tarnya’s submission
- This is a poor attempt at trying to tackle New Zealand’s benefit problems!
- Is this law about the mighty dollar or about social engineering?
- Are 100% of beneficiaries to be treated as though they need to be kept away from their children
- Barbara Smith’s submission
- We need your help
- Letter to Human Rights Commission
- Right of Parents to Choose Education
- MP Electorate office for Peaceful Protest
- Sample letter to Select Committee members
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It looks to me from the letter, trying to read between the lines, that this is merely the camel’s nose poking into the tent. It seems the government’s intent is mandatory exposure to environments under its jurisdiction, promulgating its ideas and values, branded generally as ‘socialization’ but only by its definitions. I noted especially the words “licensed education” and “funded by the MoE” and “hospital based”…all of which are clearly under government jurisdiction. The end purpose of ‘socialized services’ of all types: government funding and oversight necessarily implies the right of government control…and indeed who can argue? Someone once said “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s”. It is not incidental that the means for the control is monetary. Increasingly we will have to choose masters.
Home-based education is actually directly antithetical to this: who will define what is ‘socialization’…the government, or the parents? What about when the parents’ definition runs directly contrary to the government’s? If it is not so today, it is guaranteed to be so in the future.
I feel reasonably certain that these minor steps of exerting control where a ‘return obligation’ can be ‘justified’ because of ‘financial support,’ will only be expanded over time…after all, it is impossible to live in any country today without receiving some kind of ‘financial support’ especially when the right to life itself is considered a ‘privilege’ granted by the government. I would suggest that those who receive “Working For Families” tax credits are likely eventually to be subjected to the same criteria or face loss of that credit.
On the one hand it seems easy enough right now to brush this off if it does not apply personally…not receiving such benefits as yet. But perhaps it is easier to empathize constructively if the long-term goals can be foreseen and judged? I am not sure what to do yet. I do however think the Greater Purpose is to draw like-minded people together closer until such is also no longer acceptable. Use the desert for refreshing springs.
Truly difficult times have been given to us. But then, we must be here now for a reason!
Hello Barbara
I think it would be a good idea for all those who believe it is the right of the parent to choose how their children should be educated to sign a petition and send a copy to the select committee, Paula Bennett, United Future Leader and the New Zealand First Leader (since they all voted in favour of the bill without questioning any part of it) asking that those who choose homeschooling should be exempt from the new requirements.
The petition should be made more public and in a way so that those who are not a member of for example Home Education Foundation can also sign it.
Points should be made that not all families on a benefit are inadequate parents or want to “pass on the culture of dependency” to their children. There are the women who have lost their partner or their partner has suddenly left them but will want to educate their children in the best possible manner (DPBs) and those who have sicknessess but still want to decide how their children should be educated (sickness beneficiaries). This bill is taking this right away from these people and also taking away the rights of their children who could be getting a lot better education in a home envirnment than in school.
Just a suggestion that I hope will be taken seriously not just by those who are on a benefit but by all those who believe they should have the right to choose what is the best method of educating their children.
Please let me know what you think and if there is ever such a petition I and my wife will sign it and I know a lot of others who will also sign it.
As I understand it submissions can be made until the 1st of November. Hence, submissions and letters to party leaders need to be made before that.