"Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?"
Wow, is this a terribly ambiguous question or what? No, you think it's straightforward? Well I guess I'd better give a bit of background info for non-Kiwi readers.
New Zealand's Crimes Act 1961 Section 59 previously allowed a legal defence of "reasonable force" for parents prosecuted for assaulting their children. Intended to protect parents' rights to use reasonable force to discipline their children, this law was ultimately interpreted by a NZ jury to allow violent parents to beat their children with metal pipes and other large objects.
In 2005 a member's bill was introduced (by Sue Bradford, a NZ Greens MP) which was to amend Section 59 to disallow this legal defence. This bill was passed on 16 May 2007 at its third reading, but not without great controversy as "family-friendly" groups such as Family First NZ were concerned that they would no longer be able to harshly beat their children in order to discipline them without threat of prosecution.
And so we have this referendum. And as I stated at the start, how ridiculously ambiguous is this. I respect that sometimes - not all the time - it is useful to give a child a light smack, like when there's a little arm reaching for the frying pan and it'll save a lot of tears. Sure, a light smack in order to prevent greater pain for the child should not be a legal offence.
But wait we're not talking about a "light smack" here. The word in question is simply - "smack". Not to mention "good parental correction" is open to interpretation also.
No, this isn't a fair question. My initial reaction (and I'm sure most people's) would be to vote "No", because that's the way it's intended to come across. In reality, we're looking at a current law which has removed the ability for parents to get away with physical abuse of their children.
I mailed my "Yes" vote in today - hopefully it gets to NZ in time.
Edit: Here are links to both sides to the argument - both make some excellent points (and some not-so-good points).
at first I intended to vote "No",then after second thought I realized that there's a need to define '"good" parental', at the same time 'correction' is quite an outdated concept in somehow, someway to 'educate' or 'modify' children's behaviour, that means clear definition and changing of more positive wording is better off before one can really vote!
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