Wellington - Should you be allowed to smack your children?
New Zealanders have been debating the question for years. Some say
never, under any circumstances. Others say parents have a right to
discipline their naughty youngsters and it is nobody else's business.
A national referendum on the issue will be held in August but
Prime Minister John Key has already signalled that he will ignore the
result, whatever it is - a position he is entitled to take, as it is
not binding for his centre-right government.
Voting in New Zealand is not compulsory and Key said Tuesday that
he was unlikely to use his vote, as did Phil Goff, leader of the main
opposition Labour Party, who called the ballot a waste of money.
Organizations as different as the Maori Party and the Federated
Farmers organization agreed that there were far better uses for the 9
million New Zealand dollars (5.7 million US dollars) it will cost.
The only people who seem interested in the outcome are a motley
group of fundamentalist Christians and die-hard conservatives who
hold to the biblical shibboleth 'spare the rod and spoil the child'
and want to be free to use corporal punishment without fear of being
arrested for assault.
The postal ballot is being held because they managed to get
310,000 registered voters to sign a petition demanding it - the 10
per cent of the electorate needed to force the government to hold a
citizens' initiated referendum, even though it does not have to take
any notice of the outcome.
It was thought earlier that the question had been settled two
years ago when Parliament passed a law repealing Section 59 of the
Crimes Act, which gave mothers and fathers charged with assaulting a
child the excuse that they could use 'reasonable force' for the
purpose of parental discipline.
After long and often bitterly divisive debate, the majority of
legislators agreed to repeal the law with a compromise amendment that
parents can use force against children to prevent harm - such as to
stop a child running across a busy road - or to stop 'offensive or
disruptive behaviour,' but cannot use force for 'correction.'
This did not satisfy the pro-smacking lobby, which drafted the
referendum question: 'Should a smack as part of good parental
correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?' The ballot paper
requires a simple 'yes' or 'no' reply.
Labour leader Goff said he will not vote because the question is
loaded and implies that people who answer 'yes' support criminalizing
good parents who lightly smack their children and those who say 'no'
think the new law is not working.
'I can neither answer 'yes' nor 'no' without feeling that I'm
compromising what I actually think,' he said.
No parents were being taken to court for lightly smacking their
children which meant the law was working and therefore the referendum
was redundant, Goff said. The money would be better spent on
programmes to prevent child abuse.
Premier Key told his weekly news conference Monday that he also
believed the law was working, the question was ambiguous and the
outcome of the poll to be held over three weeks from July 31 was not
likely to change his mind.
A coalition of organizations including Save the Children,
Barnados, the Parents' Centre and the infant welfare group, the
Plunket Society, has agreed to campaign for a 'yes' vote as approving
the new law, even though spokeswoman Deborah Morris-Travers said the
question is misleading because it 'falsely equates smacking with good
parenting.'
And Jan Pryor, who heads the Families Commission, said the law was
working well and there was no evidence of parents being criminalized
for trivial offences.
'Consistent parenting strategies which use rewards, distraction
and consequences such as timeout are proven to be more effective at
teaching children self-discipline than physical punishment,' she said.
But the Family First organization, which produced the petition
that paved the way for the referendum, insists that many New Zealand
parents want to be able to smack their children.
National director Bob McCoskrie accused Key of undermining the
democratic process and said the referendum was an expensive exercise
made necessary because the politicians had failed to listen to the
voters in the first place.
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