Michael Laws: Christine Rankin's a champion of common sense

Michael Laws - Sunday Star Times

I'VE NEVER known what to make of Christine Rankin. She is not simply a polarising personality (thus drawing my instant empathy), but she has this unique style. All legs and cleavage.

It's not that I don't appreciate legs and cleavage: dear Lord, I'm a middle-aged heterosexual male. Appreciation is about all you get to do. And there are obviously some men in the public service who got to perv at much closer proximity.

But Rankin lacks finesse she comes across as having just a wee bit too much dog in her dogma. So most political observers express discomfort that she lacks that intermediate step between lecture and hector.

This makes her ideally suitable for her new role as a family affairs "commissioner". Such startling gaucheness combined with a glorious lack of PC will make her a formidable champion of commonsense in the ether that is Wellington policy-making.

Already she has claimed her first scalp: Druis Barrett, a Maori policy adviser who objected to Rankin uttering the truth about child abuse. That it is particularly endemic in the Maori community, and that it has more to do with drink and drugs than cultural subjugation.

This was too much for Barrett. She was looking for excuses, and the Families Commission was a nice, safe enclave from which to deny any cultural responsibility.

That said, the pinko connection will still be in the ascendancy. How could it not be with Labour appointees such as Gregory Fortuin and liberals like Kim Workman still around the Families Commission board table? They were put in by Labour along with its chairperson Dr Jo Dryden to ensure ongoing political correctness from that quarter.

Of course, the larger question is why we have a Families Commission at all. Like the Office of the Children's Commission, it has in my view achieved absolutely nothing since its inception except to act as a make-work scheme for minor public servants and friends of the government. It has neither saved nor enriched any family bar those in its employ. And it costs $8 million a year just to keep the greedy little bugger fed.

And it's not like there isn't work to do.

Cue mad mothers of the week: Mary Joachim and Rachael Brown. That they ever bred is two of life's tragedies. The former failed to prevent the murder of her seven-year-old son, Duwayne Pailegutu, and the latter is an alcoholic and recidivist drink-driver.

Incredibly and that can be the only word both were allowed to keep care of their children until their latest brush with the law. Both have destined their children to turn out just as useless as them. Except in Duwayne's case: he did not survive the psychotic attentions of his mother's lover.

Rachael Brown is the notorious soak who turned up at her sentencing last week in the Rotorua District Court drunk. She had been convicted of her eighth drink-driving charge and her fifteenth for driving while disqualified. The last time she was apprehended more than twice over the legal limit she was seven months pregnant.

She also has made outstanding choices in her relationships. She was bailed in January of this year because her partner was in prison, and she was caring for his kids as well as her own. According to her lawyer, she still has custody and care of four or five children. No one was quite sure of the exact number.

Eventually, the patience of the bench expired and Joachim is away for three years and Brown for 12 months. But the wider issue here remains child abuse.

It is inconceivable that Rachael Brown has custody and care not simply of her children, but her partner's. What more proof did CYF need than the front page of the Rotorua newspaper that Brown was an incompetent, selfish and addled mother?

And in both cases, the perpetrators of these outrages are brown. The sad soliloquy continues as Christine Rankin noted. But we're not meant to say such things in public apparently because, although accurate, they are deemed culturally insensitive.

Garbage. It's time for some straight talking around child abuse in this country and the link with ethnicity rather than poverty. And the link with blasted parents who consume themselves with drinks, drugs and the wrong partners.

The person who needed to go from the Families Commission was Druis Barrett and, thank God, Rankin forced her hand.

And yet political correctness is not dead. Despite the Rankin appointment, it is not even in retreat.

Especially, in Australia. Where footy/media star Matthew Johns lost his livelihood as a consequence of what he claims was a consensual group sex session in Christchurch seven years ago.

There can be no doubt in my mind that the complainant "Clare" anonymous, voice disguised, pixilated has embarked upon a course of cool revenge.

But there is no evidence to support her claims of use and abuse. There never was which is why the Christchurch Police lost interest so long ago. And still aren't interested. Sure, it's a strange practice but groupies and professional sportsmen will go at it for as long as groupies exist.

Johns' real crime was cheating on his wife and that is a torment that he has obviously atoned for. But spare me the historic bleats of a young woman who, according to work colleagues, bragged of the encounter and then discovered remorse. That the media then fed on Johns' commercial corpse proof that they eat their own.

But also that PC is alive and well. At least until Rankin hits town.

m.laws@radiolive.co.nz