Labour backs off

this from www.familyintegrity.org.nz

The great news is that the Labour government has decided to back away from pickiing up this Bill, so it may go on past May and into June.

Bradford here treats us all with her usual contempt by saying we will continue to spread misinformation about the Bill. Yet she says out of one side of her mouth, "this is an anti-beating, anti-child-violence bill, not a piece of legislation that will see tens of thousands of well-meaning parents dragged into court for the occasional light smack," and from the other side comes out with, "my original goal: To remove the defence of 'reasonable force' for the purposes of correction under s59 of the Crimes Act."

The only way one can make sense of this is to equate, as Bradford does every time she speaks on this, "reasonable force" with "beating" and "child-violence", for she claims that "severe beatings" and "violent abuse" and "thrashings" all regularly hide behind the label of "reasonable force". Yet her amended Bill does not get rid of this terminology, a move I thought would be her primary objective, since she calls it "an anti-beating, anti-child-violence" bill and since she reguarly claims that these terrible things parade around unnoticed behind this terminology. No! Her amended Bill allows for "reasonable force" or if I do as she regularly does and swap that term with others, we find that her Bill now allows for "severe beatings" to stop harmful or criminal or offensive or disruptive behaviour and allows " violent abuse" that is incidental to good care and parenting.

Her arguments are as illogical as ever.

Now, she also says her office is flooded with SUPPORT mail. OK. Let's flood her office with mail opposed to her Bill, pleading with her not to criminalise us and not to terrorise our families by having police and CYFS hanging over our heads all the time for simply using "reasonable force" to correct our children. For crying out loud, that is a core duty of parenting.