The Unfortunate Ammendment

If you go here you will see a Stuff News ariticle which has the proposed new Ammendment to Sue Bradford's 'Anti-Smacking' Bill.

It claims the wording of the ammendment is as follows;

"(4) To avoid doubt, it is affirmed that the Police have the discretion not to prosecute complaints against a parent of a child or person in the place of a parent of a child in relation to an offence involving the use of force against a child, where the offence is considered to be so inconsequential that there is no public interest in proceeding with a prosecution."

Unfortunately opponents of the bill seem to to be jumping for joy!...

WHY???...

This ultimately changes nothing.

If Section 59 is removed then any force by a parent against their child will be no different to common assault.

This ammendment says "where the offence is considered to be so inconsequential that there is no public interest in proceeding with a prosecution."

With the ammended change it will still be Illegal to smack. The smack is still concidered to be an "Offence".

Parents who smack will now, rather than relying a jury of their peers to decide whether what they've done is reasonable, will now be relying on the "discretion" of a Police officer to let them off an offence.

Part of the Irony is the opening statemtent "To avoid doubt". This is more confusing than before! Now we have a law which says it's illegal to smack but it's actually still ok to because the police should let you off if it wasn't that bad.

So So Frustrating!... New Zealand... this is not a good thing!