The madness of revisiting the ‘anti-smacking’ law

Winston is blowing so many dog whistles at once of late that it may as well be a dog bagpipe.

He’s going to starve his brain of any oxygen if he keeps going.

Winston Peters a ‘dangerous old man’ – Sue Bradford

Winston Peters has been labelled a “dangerous old man” who’s “really past his prime”, after vowing to repeal the so-called anti-smacking law.

Sue Bradford, the former Green MP behind the law, told The AM Show on Monday she was “horrified” by his recent comments.

“What he’s advocating is the return of the legalising of assault on our children, which is the last thing our kids need and the last thing the kids of Northland need.”

The Northland MP and NZ First leader on Friday said: “We are going to repeal the anti-smacking law which doesn’t work, and has in fact seen greater violence towards children.”

Ms Bradford said: “He’s talking about this on the back of the incident up in Kaikohe recently with the young people rampaging.

“Those kids probably see far too much violence I’d suggest in their lives already, far too much poverty, unemployment, a lack of opportunities for their families in their part of the country.”

The 2007 law change removed the defence of “reasonable force” in cases where parents and caregivers were being prosecuted for assault on children.

“It’s helped massively to change the idea that actually parents and other adults responsible for children are legally entitled to use physical punishment on their kids, that sometimes led to quite serious assaults,” said Ms Bradford.

Repealing the law would send the wrong message, she believes.

There are two things about this.

Firstly, it’s gutless to keep promising referendums because sometimes Politicians actually have to have some moral and ethical spine to lead on these issues when their electorate are not.

The great civil rights leaders of our times didn’t say, ‘Oh let’s put it to a referendum’, they stood and demanded action because it was the right thing to do. NZ First promising a referendum on the repeal of section 59 is just gutless garbage.

Secondly, it would be madness to revisit the repeal of section 59 because the ‘debate’ the first time around was a fucking disgrace.

I say ‘debate’, because it really wasn’t a debate so much as it was a lynch mob whipped up by hysterical mainstream media screaming ‘nanny state’.

How very Nu Zilund of us all.

The mainstream media hysteria at the time convinced New Zealanders that the politically correct social engineers of the Helengrad Dykeocracy were going to arrest all God fearing heterosexual parents who lightly hit away their children’s hands from stoves or moving vehicles.

The fact that the legislation was being brought in to remove a legal loophole where abusive parents who were being prosecuted for assault were able to claim ‘discipline’ as a defence and were getting away with child abuse was utterly drowned out by the howls of anger from the ‘we want the legal right to bash our kids’ lynch mob.

Just pause and consider the enormity of that. We had a farcical legal position where the court was ending up protecting abusive parents and NOT protecting the child who was being abused. That outcome didn’t serve justice and Sue Bradford’s courageous position was the rightoues one to implement, sadly the immaturity and slack jawed stupidity of a vast chunk of NZ couldn’t understand that they were marching for the rights of abusive parents.

Do we really want to revisit the naked feral ignorance of guilty Parents who have hit their kids and don’t want to feel that guilt?

Isn’t it hilarious that it’s ‘nanny state’ to remove a legal loophole that was protecting abusive parents, but it isn’t ‘nanny state’ to push contraception and drug testing on beneficiaries.