Going without

Child poverty figures have shown no significant change under the Labour-led Government, so what does the first Children’s Commissioner think is the answer?

Child poverty figures have shown no significant change under the Labourled Government, so what does the first Children’s Commissioner think is the answer?

Sir Ian Hassall, the country’s first Commissioner for Children, has championed children’s rights since he qualified as a paediatrician in the 1970s. Nearly 25 years ago, he and others in the children’s movement launched an organisation called Children’s Agenda. Underpinning it was a plan to bring a finetooth comb to all legislation to gauge its effect on children. That was never adopted, and Children’s Agenda morphed into other advocacy organisations over the years. Hassall, now 78 and with seven grandchildren, has seen horrible things happen to children and has never given up the fight against child poverty, abuse and neglect. Steps forward have been made, yet nowhere near enough, he says.

What was the Children’s Agenda?

Hassall: A non-party-political movement made up of people from diverse backgrounds who, through education and policy reform, wanted to create a society that valued children.

What did it call for?

Top of the agenda was the development of a national policy that placed children at equal prominence with policies on trade, law and order, health, education and the economy. We also wanted a requirement that a childimpact statement accompany Cabinet papers and legislative proposals and that planning bodies had a child advocate. We wanted a review of legislation to consider its compatibility with children’s best interests, the introduction of a transparent independent system of review of all child deaths, and a commitment to collect and do research on statistical data to ascertain the effect of public policy on children.

What has been achieved?

We have a review of all child deaths and commitment to research and good collection of statistical data. That’s a big tick. There was always a deficit of information, basic information, and that’s really starting to come right with the collecting of statistics. Also good is paid parental leave and the repeal of section 59 of the Crimes Act – in other words, the passing of the “antismacking” law that removed the licence parents had to assault their children in the name of correction.

Are children now on an equal footing with policies on trade, the economy and so forth?

No. But the Prime Minister’s Child Wellbeing and Poverty Reduction Group and the legislation that’s being set up around that are a start. That unit may do all sorts of good things, but it’s still potential at the moment, as I see it. When we started out, none of the political parties actually had a policy for children. Children were in education, of course, and they were in health and welfare, but it was never based on the well-being of children. It was as if they were a kind of by-product in the system. It was all upside down in the way it was approached and the way money was being spent. We’ve finally realised as a country it’s important to have concern for the well-being of children. We’ve got to the start.

If the major planks had been adopted 25 years ago, where would we be as a country?

We would have a more integrated society. We wouldn’t have the disparities that we have at the present time and that would have all sorts of important effects on things: prisons, healthcare, education. If we had a focus on children 50 years ago, or 30, or 20, we wouldn’t be in the terrible mess we are now with the climate emergency, for example. We would have had that long view that we needed. It’s an attitude about the way we look at things. We’ve been trained in the past 30 years to look at our national well-being in terms of GDP, for example. Sure, GDP’s a good thing, but it’s not the be-all and end-all and it’s only one aspect of our national well-being. Our national wellbeing can be better measured, in my view, by how well our children are doing. We’re not there yet.

What started you off on this long fight?

One of the jobs that I’d had to do as the full-time specialist, which I was appointed to as my first job as a fully fledged and licensed paediatrician in the old Princess Mary Hospital in Auckland, was doing mortality reviews. For any kid that died, there was a full-scale review. I did a lot of those, and one of the things you find out quite quickly was the sequence of events that led up to their death in the hospital was only a tiny part of the story. Most of it was happening out there, in the family and the community.

Why is that important?

It’s vital information, and it’s symbolic as well. If a baby dies, if a child dies, everyone says, “How sad”, but that’s different from saying, “Damn it, we don’t like that, it’s not good enough, we’re going to do something about it.”

Is there a case that haunts you?

There’s a terrible case that keeps coming up and I can’t get it out of my mind. That was when I was a tutor specialist. The top floor of the hospital was the psychiatric hospital and they used to put mothers and babies there. I was on call at the time and I got called up to this place and there was a baby whose head had been dashed against the wall by her mother who was in a state of despair. The baby was still alive, but that stuck in my head. Why do people do that? And I think there are answers. Exploring those, and doing something about it, is worthy of a lifelong commitment, isn’t it?

What are some of the others you remember?

There’s a long list of cases that caught the public eye. Nia Glassie, James Whakaruru, the Kahui twins, to name a few. Delcelia Witika, in 1991. Hers wasn’t the first case of abuse. It wasn’t even the first case that had been reported, but it was the first one the