NZ Centre for Political Research

Hi there,

150,000 Citizens of New Zealand have officially expressed their opposition to Bradford's proposed repeal to Section 59 of the Crimes Act.

Does this mean nothing to our Government?

The people of New Zealand are not fooled. Repeal will criminalise parents who lightly smack their children. MPs who state otherwise are not telling the truth, because the bill does explicitly say that smacking for the purpose of correction will be an offense.

The bill should be dropped. At the least, it should come to an immediate binding referendum - due to the outcry from the majority of the people of New Zealand.

Check out http://section59.blogspot.com

Andy.

Thank you for a very sensible article on the minimum wage.

I studied economics from Form Three and now have a masters degree – a total of 11 years!

What is your view of making economics mandatory at school, perhaps from primary?

IMHO Dr. Milton Friedman is one of the two great economists, the other being Adam Smith. Of course both are hated rabidly among the ignorant lefty community.

Regrds,
Allan

From Frits:

My wife & I whole heartedly agree with your articles - to ban smacking will seriously undermine parental authority over their children.

We have seen 1st hand proof of that over the past 33 years of marriage, mixing with many families who's children we dreaded to have in our home, simply because they did not exercise affective authority over their children.

We have brought up 4 children, and we had a policy that if our children were not welcome in someone else's home, then we would rather not go ourselves. So we took our children out often and always the comment was... " your children are so well behaved"!. It's not because we beat them into submission, instead it is because they were raised in an environment where they were LOVED, but bad behaviour was not tolerated.

As a LAST resort we did smack!

If our children threw a tantrum at the supermarket for example, they would be immediately marched out to the relative privacy of the carpark and given a good smack.

At home if sending to their room or other forms of placid discipline did not work, then they would get a smack.

When they were toddlers and 'testing the waters' by e.g. trying to touch the fireplace and not taking notice of our warnings, then a smack on the back of the hand would do the trick.

As they got older,it would be on the behind, but always with our hand.

Needless to say we rarely had to smack our children. But when we did, it was for good reason and they remembered it.

Our children grew up to be responsible, sensible citizens who themselves advocate this form of discipline.

May we add, that we ABHOR child abuse and child beating. However the anti-smacking bill will never stop child abuse. Discipline which includes smacking when necessary, is in fact an expression of LOVE.

My wife was hospitalized a while ago. Home now, with
daily dressings by a District Nurse [DN].

I was astounded that all bandages, along with disposable
dressings, are disposed of. One DN with a long
memory said they used to be washed and sterilised and
rolled up by sheltered workshop people and reused.

I checked the [retail] price: circa $6 a bandage - going
into the waste stream. I wonder what the cost of the change
is to Health Board budgets?

Perry

Peter has written in with these comments on the increase in road user charges:

Here is a copy of John's Manifesto:

To the Letters Editor,

I am amazed that some writers are treating the Howard government¹s industrial laws as an impediment to their election later this year.

The writers, apparently, like the union leaders, treat a job as a worker's right and essentially property, that the unions can allocate to workers who patronise their union.

Let's get it straight - jobs are not property, but a contract.

Only in some Fascist societies do some businesses enjoy guaranteed profits. No business in a free society enjoys guaranteed secure profits. So it follows that workers jobs are secure and guaranteed only by the extent of the company's success.

People contract to work and the employer contracts to pay them. The unions contribute nothing. The lay about union leaders cream off a commission from the wages of the workers. Should their activities raise wages, the consumers eventually pay for it. Also other workers lose jobs. Either that or the company and all of its jobs are transferred to overseas workers.

The unions then vociferously complain of the 'injustice', which has been actually caused by their malefactory activities. It is interesting to note that the labor party is dominated by ex-union leaders. Everybody knows who they are - mostly unemployable militant academics who have never ever done a real day's work in their lives.


Ronald

Martin has sent through these very worrying comments on the state of crime in the far north:

Comment from Dominic:

Currently section 59 has seen many parents’ acquitted, particularly in jury trials, for acts of abuse towards children. We are not talking about a smack or two here. Currently section 59 has allowed parents to beat their children with wood, hosepipe etc which leave visible marks and bruising. One jury even considered it "reasonable force in the circumstances" for a father to scrape a tattoo of his daughters arm with a razor. Do you think this is just? Most of us would wonder how section 59 could be interpreted to allow this. The fact is that it is being interpreted like this – that’s why it needs to be changed. To suggest that Sue Bradford’s intentions are about “state control” rather than protection of children is just so stupid. Unfortunately the media, and politician’s (such as Dr Muriel Newman) mislead the public by these comments and phrases such as the “Anti-smacking Bill” show how little these people actually know about the reality of family violence and case law.

Letter to the Editor from Alan:

In all the Anti-Smacking rhetoric, no one seems to have pointed out the blatant hypocrisy of the Government’s position.

Of course the Government isn’t proposing to improve the lot of our children. No matter how PC it all seems now, the long term consequences for us and our children will be severe.

What Sue Bradford’s ill-conceived Bill will do is very simple.

First, it will remove from parents the ultimate right to discipline their own children. What use, what threat, what power of discipline does a “light smack” that doesn’t hurt actually have? In the process, parents will be demoted to merely “care givers” and we all know how caring many of them really are.

Second, hypocritically, it will elevate and concentrate the combined power of the nation’s parents directly into the hands of the Government itself. Instead of a million parents each waving their own “small sticks”, we will have one bloated Government waving one gigantic stick. And that giant stick will be used against individual parents who dare to usurp the Government’s power by attempting to discipline their own children.

And that, if I am not mistaken, is at the heart of fascism.

Re rights and responsibilities:

Frankly, our law works well enough as it is. It protects children from abuse. There is no need to replace it.

Today we are so much concerned with people's rights? What has happened to our concern for responsibilities? We seem to conveniently forget these. So far as I am concerned, receive your rights in proportion to the way you show your responsibilities. If you do not show your responsibilities, you lose some of your rights. That is why society imposes punishments on those who fail in their responsibilities. These punishments can range from just having a quiet word with the transgressor all the way to denying that person his or her liberty.

Also, my rights only extend to the point where they do not impinge on your rights. If I cannot learn to contol the exercise of my rights to such an extent so as to let you enjoy yours, then I deserve to be punished.

Giving a punishment which is proportionate to the offense is not abuse. If one hits a child because the child has committed a serious transgression and that smack causes some transient discomfort but the child is able to get up and run around again soon after, the child has not been abused.

If one hits a child so that it suffers physical injury which needs skilled attention, then that is abuse. Our law deals with that. Let us leave well enough alone.

Anthony

I agree Paul - and don't forget the strident job that teachers will play in making sure that kids know their rights and are trained to dob in their parents to teachers, child care workers, social workers, police and the like.

It wouldn't suprise me if some young people just give up on the whole idea of even having kids!

Nice of Louise to offer her perspective, but remember it is just that, her perspective. Excellent Perspectives article in this morning's Herald from a lawyer associated with both sides of Section 59 cases. Smacking is never a desirable solution. But provided it does not cause any serious injury, it may be a necessary one at times for some parents. What is most certain in all this, is that the State has way over-stepped its remit. It is already illegal to hurt your kids, so I can only hope Louise offers her well presented opinion with the acceptance that people may reach a conclusion that differs to her own. Alas it doesn't work this way once the social engineers get an idea in THEIR heads. La Leche will virtually ostracise anyone who has to bottle feed their kids. Kindergarten will do the same to anyone who has a different view on the Treaty. Now they want to climb into well-intentioned parents to achieve nothing at all other than misery and waste of resources. Whtever happened to democrcay and freedom of choice? You can freely turn trans-sexual, vegan, goat-sacrificer, tennis ball stuffer or any number of alternatives, but you can no longer exercise your right to make choices for your own family. Go figure.

Sue Bradford’s Smacking Bill

How on earth anyone in their right mind would waste more than one second considering this unbelievably illogical bill of Sue Bradford’s is beyond me. And yet here we have our MP’s, QC’s, and other so-called intelligent people wasting time over this nonsense. Some are even stupid enough to agree with it. Pity help us while those people have any influence!!!

Children are human beings in small bodies and they are intelligent and wide awake. They look for guidance and direction from people they respect and those people should be predominantly their parents. No child is going to respect a parent who is incapable of giving proper direction and discipline and all children/human beings are different. Some are harder to control than others and therefore the level of guidance and discipline is different. For example; how would Sue Bradford suggest we should handle a nine year old child wielding a machete or a loaded pistol?

Take a look at the time when we had negligible crime and abuse in this country and it was a time when the cane and strap was used daily in schools and at home. Most of the people from those days are still the most stable, honest and trustworthy individuals in the country and armed with the best basic education on Earth. Invariably they will proudly tell you how they respected their tough parents and teachers who guided them with a powerful hand and administered proper discipline as and when needed.

I was raised on a large farm and noted that even animals looked after their young and disciplined them when necessary. In fact, in the few isolated cases when they didn’t do that we got rid of them fast.

Any parent who abuses their child is worse than a regular animal and is therefore insane and a bill to handle and treat those “nutters” is what we should be considering. Not a bill which assumes that we are all “nutters” - because I can assure you, we are not. Anyone who would even hint that we are, is obviously in need of similar treatment for “nutters”. The way to handle the problem is to handle the cause just like we did by eliminating one or two offenders out of many hundreds of animals on the farm.

This idiotic bill has sadly exposed the shocking fact that we have so many unstable “nutters” in positions of authority in this country.

We must change this dangerous situation!!!

Sincerely,
Dennis

In response to the Letter to the Editor from Manager of the Family Centre -
the whole crux of the matter seems to me to be the difference between smacking and bashing.

There is a difference. There are occasions when smacking is appropriate. Bashing is never appropriate.

I feel we should call it the Anti-Bashing Bill and define bashing. That would be a whole lot easier.