John Key does not care about suicide

Key to explore suicide laws
John Key said yesterday that Parliament could "explore" the rules on suicide reporting because they were "somewhat defunct these days".

"The reality is that, particularly with youth suicide, very quickly social networking sites like Facebook and blog sites report that. There's huge engagement with young people around that information and so I don't think blocking the media from reporting is achieving an awful lot."

He said it would make sense to review the rules, but it was important to tread carefully because of the risk of copycat suicides.

I am pretty passionate about the issue of suicide, I was on the Board of Trustees of Youthline and it featured heavily as a topic on the youth talkback I did on radio, so listening to Key lend support to the issue is welcome, but his words are simply not held up by actions.

I'm not talking about implementing hard right economic policy as social policy which was the reason our suicide rate tripled in the welfare restructuring under Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson, I'm talking about National's cruel decision to not allow funeral costs for the families of suicide victims all because, as Nick Smith puts it, 'suicide is not an accident'. This cruelty mirrors the cruelty Nick Smith used to deny rape victims any counselling by defining rape as an 'acute event' rather than a mental illness.

We spend millions on road safety based on the premise that the road toll is a public health issue, we allow our Police force vast draconian powers to force blood from drivers based on nothing more than the cops personal prejudices, yet we don't put any of that effort or political will into a suicide rate that dwarfs our road toll, why? Because politicians don't want the answer as to why so many of our fellow citizens decide to end their life in this supposed 'gods own'.