Smacking bill wins over MPs

Sue Bradford

A clear majority of Parliament looks set to support sending Green MP Sue Bradford's controversial anti-smacking bill to a select committee for public submissions.


A lineup of all eight parliamentary parties at a child summit in Hamilton yesterday saw New Zealand First, the Progressives and the Greens totally support the bill, and Labour and the Maori Party support sending it to select committee. Those parties hold 76 of the 120 seats in Parliament.

United Future MP Judy Turner said her party had not yet fixed a position but also wanted "to see what potential there is at select committee for further changes".

But National social services spokeswoman Judith Collins said her party opposed the bill and would replace it with a full review of the child abuse issue if it won power.

The Act party said it had not yet decided on the bill but was also likely to oppose it.

Ms Bradford said it was the first time she had heard all parties' views on her bill and was "delighted" at how much support there was for it. The bill is due to come up for debate on July 27.

Act MP Muriel Newman said she was expecting parties to give their MPs a "conscience vote" on the bill.

But Labour Cabinet minister Ruth Dyson said Labour would vote as a block to send the bill to a committee, and no other party indicated that it would allow a free vote.

This week's child summit has been organised by Hamilton-based Parentline, which works with 900 children and their families to prevent child abuse and neglect.

Former Tasmanian Children's Commissioner Patmalar Ambikapathy, an Indian-born lawyer who started a campaign to make a similar change in Tasmania, said her successor did not support the campaign and New Zealand now had a chance to become the first common-law nation to remove the parental defence to assault charges.

She urged New Zealand not to copy New South Wales, which changed the law in 2001 to define "reasonable" parental force, banning hits above the neck or with instruments.

"I am absolutely appalled by that. What you are actually saying is that some forms of assault on children are okay," she said.

However, Ms Collins said full repeal of the parental defence was "a blunt instrument" which National could not support.

"What is 'reasonable' to you and me may not be 'reasonable' to someone else, but I do think we need to have a standard of what is reasonable," she said.

"To simply say to parents that they could become criminalised for what they think is doing a reasonable job and a good job, and for being caring enough to say no to children, without good education around that, might in fact work the opposite way."

Ms Dyson said Labour was already running programmes to educate parents about non-violent ways of teaching their children to behave safely and considerately.

Ms Turner said United Future wanted "some sort of legal clarification around 'reasonable force"'. As a former infant teacher, she knew that young children sometimes had to be forcibly restrained.

What would change?

* The bill would repeal section 59 of the Crimes Act, which allows parents to defend a charge of assault on a child because they were "justified in using force by way of correction towards the child, if the force used is reasonable in the circumstances".