http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/6407578/nz-mayor-in-call-to-sterilise-underclass/A famously-rude Kiwi politician has proposed a new solution to the country's dire child abuse problem - sterilise the "underclass".
Michael Laws - who stirred up contempt by calling the late Tongan King a "bloated brown slug" - has again hit headlines for the wrong reasons.
The regional mayor claimed that the children of social security beneficiaries, drug addicts and criminals had little chance in life and were prime targets for child abuse.
Sterilising their parents was the best solution, he brazenly suggested.
"If we gave $10,000 to certain people and said 'we'll voluntarily sterilise you' then all of society would be better off," he told the Dominion Post newspaper.
"There'd be less dead children and less social problems."
He was commenting on the latest death of a toddler, two-year-old Karl Perigo-Check, who was the son of a convicted murderer and gang member.
The little nation, which prides itself on its clean, green image and liberal social policy, is placed third among OECD nations for child deaths due to maltreatment, four spots ahead of Australia, according to UNICEF.
It is ranked fifth for both child beatings and sexual abuse, again several places ahead of its Antipodean neighbour.
Laws argued that "liberal methods" of beating the problem had failed.
But his "solution" has been branded "draconian" and "totalitarian" by the country's child health advocates who are calling for him to stand down as a city mayor.
"I just find it such a disgraceful attitude," said Child Poverty Action Group director Janfrie Wakim.
"It's hard to comprehend that an intelligent man who's leading a city is making such reprehensible suggestions."
This is just the latest controversy for Laws, who last month hit headlines for bullying primary school children.
The indigenous children had written to the mayor to express annoyance that he refused to make a subtle spelling change to the name of the North Island town, Wanganui, to make it historically correct.
But Laws, a fierce critic of the name change, took exception to the letters, replying: "There are so many deficiencies of both fact and logic in your letters that I barely know where to start".
He told them they should sack their teacher for suggesting they write to him.
My old man is on the City Council here too. Hates Laws lol.
