Science-based tool able to help prevent child abuse

Kudos to Tony Wall for being able to find a senior staffer at Oranga Tamariki (OT) prepared to defend the agency after criticism from Christine Rankin in the case of the death of a 2-year-old, Nevaeh Ager, left by OT to live with a father using meth (‘‘Agency ‘too scared’ to protect children’’, News, December 27).

Since Newsroom’s sensational ‘‘baby uplift’’ story, almost nobody of seniority has been prepared to defend the organisation in what has been an emotive trial by media.

There has to be a better way to gauge the work of OT, and indeed there is. In 2012 there was a proposal to develop a tool that could scientifically predict risk of harm for young children, but the research on this was halted by the then minister, Anne Tolley.

This tool has been since developed, tested and validated in the US by its New Zealand originator, Professor Rhema Vaithianathan of AUT University, and it shows strong predictive power for hospitalisation, such that young children with the highest risk scores were 7-10 times more likely to suffer or experience abuse and harm than those with the lowest.

Perhaps our new Government can overcome the fear of a scientific approach shown by a previous administration, and get us beyond the unhelpful trial by media to which OT is currently subject?

Peter Davis, Emeritus Professor of Population Health and Social Science, University of Auckland

Nevaeh Ager – another name on the wall of shame.

Clearly there are people who would fail any kind of ‘‘suitability for parenthood’’ test, but we don’t have such a check, do we?

Surely we’ve just about run out of excuses on this matter.

B Watkin, Auckland

Crushing dissent

Citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, 37, has just been jailed for four years in China, after a threehour show-trial, for filing ‘‘uncensored reports’’ on the outbreak of Covid-19 in Wuhan at the start of last year. The regime has charged her with, wait for it – ‘‘picking quarrels’’ and ‘‘provoking trouble’’, over her blogging of the virus outbreak, (and the panicked response by the Chinese authorities). This reprehensible regime has desperately tried to cover up the origins of this deadly plague, and avoid responsibility for what has happened (at one time claiming a ‘‘ biological warfare’’ soldier from America was the cause). Now the roundup of ‘‘dissidents’’ and ‘‘ troublemakers’’, whose only crimes were telling the truth, has begun!

The shame is that we have an ongoing free-trade agreement with this monstrous country.

Looking at the wording of those political charges they can mean anything, to shut down anyone the regime wishes to silence.

John Watkins, Auckland

Fears justified

Martial law is being discussed in the White House. The whiff of autocracy has trailed Donald Trump during the past four years and it has been possible to see parallels with 1930s Germany. Tyranny there showed early signs of what it was to become, but at the time seemed relatively innocuous. It was a gradual process.

Four more years of Trump, without the behavioural constraint of having to win an election at the end, didn’t bear contemplating. Perhaps Trump’s post-election behaviour shows us we were right to be scared; that the US – and the rest of us – really did dodge a serious bullet. Gary Ferguson, Auckland

Destructive deer

Brook Sabin’s photo in Travel (December 27) was captioned ‘‘The journey to Fiordland’s Lake Hankinson passed through untouched bush’’.

However, the photo shows that in fact the bush is highly modified. The floor of the forest is high in Crown fern (Blechnum discolor) with no other species showing, which would indicate a forest high in deer numbers as Crown fern is the only plant that is not palatable to deer.

It is very sad to see the level of destruction that deer have wrought in this area, which we all consider our most pristine forests.

It would be good if Travel, in explaining the beauty of the forest, could also add a paragraph about the effects of pest species.

Claire Stevens, Auckland

Chastened Speaker

I’m pretty sure that Clare Curran, Iain Lees-Galloway and David Clark, not to mention Jenny Salesa, would disagree with John Mahoney’s assertion (Letters, December 27) that the prime minister is soft on badly performing or misbehaving ministers. As for the Speaker, I’m pretty confident that he will now be aware that he has used up his one chance to stuff up. John Capener, Kawerau