Editorial: Sterilisation? Let's start with Garrett

OPINION: It's hard to know which is more repugnant: the fact that ACT MP David Garrett wants to sterilise abusive parents and he thinks it will make a difference, or that he believes people can be persuaded to give up any thoughts of having a family for the price of a half-decent flat-screen telly.

The abuse of children is disturbing and shameful, as is our sorry record when it comes to domestic violence. At some point, during the latest gruesome case involving the murder of a child by a family member, many of us have been caught suggesting that such pathetic excuses for parents should be taken out and shot.

It is an understandable reaction to the tragic circumstances of a beaten or murdered child's life.

But for a Member of Parliament to suggest that such parents be offered $5000 to tease them into sterilisation is appalling, even if he insists that his views are personal and not those of the ACT party.

For a politician to make such a bold, public statement staggers belief and suggests that he has misread the calendar and mistaken March 3 for April 1 – April Fool's Day.

The breadth of Mr Garrett's stupidity is laid bare when he highlights the parents of the Kahui twins as prime examples for sterilisation. Putting aside your thoughts on what went on within the four walls of their Auckland home, and just who was responsible for their deaths, it's worth remembering that their father, Chris Kahui, was acquitted of their murders in 2008.

Mr Garrett's ideas are of course not new. Other countries have put them into practice with disastrous results.

If he had conducted any research on the subject he would have found serveral studies about similar plans in the United States, where sterilisation was used on American Indians.

Between 1970 and 1976, the Indian Health Service (IHS) sterilised somewhere between 25 and 50 per cent of female American Indians between the ages of 15 and 44.

Investigations showed that some of the procedures were justified; the rest appeared to be nothing more than an attempt to wipe out a proud native race.

The practice was stopped and the administration of the IHS handed to the American Indian community by an act of Congress in 1976, a move inspired by outrage at what critics saw as a form of ethnic cleansing (anecdotal evidence suggested full-blooded Indian Americans were targeted in the sterilisation programme).

It is worth noting that Mr Garrett's examples are indigenous people whose skin colour is different to his.

If this is the level of thinking that goes on within our highest level of government, maybe Mr Garrett is right to push sterilisation for some.

- © Fairfax NZ News