John Armstrong: Staunch PM braces for buffeting in smacking storm

Playtime is over. This is real politics. This is John Key sailing for the first time into a headwind of gale-force strength. This is the test of Key's mettle as Prime Minister.

Confronted yesterday with a private member's bill that would have allowed parents to give their child a "light" smack for the purposes of correction, Key now knows just how lonely the job of Prime Minister can be.

Regardless of soundings he took from colleagues after the Act-promoted measure defied overwhelming odds and made it on to the floor of Parliament, the decision to vote down John Boscawen's bill is Key's and Key's alone.

Yesterday's decision is all about displaying leadership and being seen to be making the hard decisions. However, Key is inviting a backlash of epic proportions from the massive "no" vote in the smacking referendum.

With the bill's first reading some weeks away, Key is going to come under massive pressure to relent and at least allow Boscawen's bill to make it as far as the select committee stage.

Key could have announced National would hold a conscience vote on the measure - a mechanism which would have transferred the problem to Parliament as a whole. He would have won plaudits from those campaigning against the current law for what would also have been a victory for democracy.

If he did nothing else, Key could have played for time by waiting until the matter had been debated at National's next caucus meeting before announcing his party's position on Boscawen's bill.

Key's pragmatic instincts would have been yelling that he take one of these courses of action (or inaction) given the intimidating scale of the "no" vote in the referendum. Indeed, he seemed to hint in the House that the bill might be sent to a select committee for in-depth consideration.

That would have been the easy option. Having said on Monday he did not want Parliament "derailed and consumed" by another drawn-out debate on smacking, Key could hardly turn around and have his party vote for exactly that.

A shift in stance would also have catapulted Key on to the other side of this vexed debate - a place he finds uncomfortable given he clearly supports the current law.

He would have been walking away from his personal investment in the existing law, of which he is part-architect as a result of his efforts to find a compromise back in 2007 to save Sue Bradford's ground-breaking amendment to the Crimes Act from ending up on the scrapheap.

Key retains the option of altering the existing law if the discretion given to the police not to prosecute is found not to be working. But police reports have consistently shown the law, if confusing, is working. There is no reason that will change.

Key will be bracing himself for a backlash. He will wear whatever criticism is thrown at him. He can afford to do so.Voters angry with him do not have a lot of alternatives. But the National leader is quietly punting that his decision is in tune with the female voters who National has to hold on to.

That is a pragmatic reason for remaining staunch to the existing law. But he is also remaining staunch to what he believes.