S59: lets have a whackers charter

The Green Party thinks the proponents of a referendum on smacking intend to create a 'whackers' charter', legally describing how parents can assault their children.

Sue Bradford made the comments after Simon Collin's one man travelling road show found that 86 percent of those surveyed opposed the smacking legislation. Additionally, most people didn't understand how the law worked, and supported the referendum question "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?.

It's contradictory," says Bluff cameraman Stuart McCormick, 35, and many others. "How can you not use the other things [such as preventing harm] for correction?"

But Bradford will harp on about now is to claim that "no offence of smacking was created" and so the referendum question is irrelevant.

Smacking has never been a criminal offence, and still isn't......no offence of smacking or spanking was created, and I believe the proponents of the referendum have deliberately confused the issue.

So why, then, are people being investigated for smacking if it is not a criminal offence? And if it is not a criminal offence, as Bradford claims, she's right, we don't need a referendum to change the law because its legally okay to smack your kids.

In fact if light smacking was a criminal offence we wouldn't have passed legislation to change the law, would we.Duh!

The woman is mad. If this is the best she can come up with no wonder the public don't understand the law. But it was always Bradford's intention that the public did not understand the law.

We already have a whackers charter. It's called CYFS caregiving.