Date: 21 October 2012
POST TO:
Secretariat
Social Services Select Committee
Parliament Buildings
WELLINGTON 6011
SUBMISSION
Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill
Name of Individual / Family / Organisation: Rob Berger
Email Address: address supplied
I do not wish to appear before the Committee to speak to my Submission unless it is considered advantageous to defeat this bill.
If you circled YES, please provide daytime contact number: phone number supplied
SUBMISSION:
I OPPOSE Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill
Reasons:
On principle.
A government which asserts authority to separate children from their parents for any length of time or for any reason other than lawfully proven criminal behaviour, is itself the greatest threat to the children it claims to protect.
If a stranger offers me money in exchange for my child for 15 fifteen hours a week to do with as they please, every moral and reasonable person would correctly judge me a criminally immoral person unsuitable for parenthood if I consent. It is called child trafficking, and it is unlawful.
If, noting my refusal, that stranger then told me that failure to accept his offer would result in all the harassment and hardships he was empowered to inflict, every reasonable person would correctly judge this extortion. This also is unlawful.
If the stranger then forcibly removed my child from my care for no other reason than my refusal to deal in child trafficking or to bend to his extortion, every reasonable person would correctly judge this kidnapping. This too is unlawful.
The only system in which the strangers’ demands are lawful is a legalized slave system where the slave’s owner also owns the offspring and therefore has the right to dispose of his property as he wishes.
This law seeks for government the authority to purchase children from their parents for a stated period of time and a stated purpose, the specifics of which are all incidental and deceptive distractions.
With all the noble sounding language and unproven justifications stripped out, the proposal is simply that the government be permitted to engage in child trafficking, extortion, kidnapping, and slavery. For that is what it would be called if anyone but the government were proposing it.
This law seeks to criminalize the most principled of parents who will never sell their children for any price, and to monetarily reward with bribes those who do.
This law contradicts the experiences and lessons of history, and seeks to undermine the very foundation on which this society is built: the biological family unit. Biology does not derive its rights from government, but from God.
Even a stupid ewe is smart enough to defend her lambs from that which would seek to separate her from them prematurely. Farmers appreciate ewes which mother their lambs and dispose of those which will not. Farmers are smarter than the authors of this law.
Children are not calves to be removed from their mothers so the farmer can make a bit more profit off the milk a little earlier. Mothers are not cows.
Wolves split off the weak and defenceless from the protection of the rest of the flock. This law seeks to separate benefit recipients from the rest of society, and to separate children from their parents. Thus it reveals its immoral nature and intent.
This law’s proponents are both dumber than sheep and more dangerous than wolves.
My children are not for sale for any price to ANYONE including the government of New Zealand.
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Please put in a submission to the Select Committee to keep Early Childhood Education for 3 – 5 year olds and Well Child Checks (including immunisations) from becoming COMPULSORY for children of beneficiaries. Please ask the Select Committee to reject this bill.
For more information: https://hef.org.nz/2012/make-a-submission-reject-compulsory-early-education-for-3-year-olds/