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East & Bays Courier. 4 February 2005

The front page of your 28 January edition is headlined “Mother hits back at Brash”, and gives the story of a solo mother of 22, with a 10-month-old daughter.

She is quoted as wanting to tell me that not all solo parents are bludgers.  I totally agree, and of course never for one moment contended that they were.  I argued in my Orewa speech that the increase in working age adults on a benefit from fewer than 40,000 in 1975 to over 300,000 today is a serious issue – for the hard-working taxpayers who are footing the bill and for the huge number of beneficiaries, plus their quarter of million children, who also incur a substantial human and financial cost.

I greatly admire the fact that the woman whose situation was described is already trying hard to help herself and her baby by working part-time.

But she is also quoted as saying that, while her daughter’s father provides some financial support to her and her daughter each week, “some solo mothers want independence and shouldn’t have to rely on the father” of the baby.

Pardon?  I absolutely respect a woman’s right to choose not to ask the father of her child for support, but she should not then ask the rest of us to provide the support which the father of the child should be providing.  That is not “independence” at all.

People who bring children into the world are the ones who should be primarily responsible for their care and nurturing.  The community should be there as a backstop, but not as a substitute father because the woman chooses to be “independent” and ask the rest of us to stand in for the father.

At the end of 1999 when Labour came into government, non-custodial parents (usually fathers) owed $362 million in unpaid parental support.  Now, the unpaid amount is some $870 million.  This strongly suggests that taxpayers are picking up a very large obligation which should be being paid by fathers, and we do nobody a service – not solo mothers, their children, or hard-working taxpayers – if we let irresponsible fathers away with that.

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