Craig Smith: the enemy of freedom - NZ heading the way of the USSR

A very important article by Craig Smith of Family Integrity 25 May 07.  Well worth the read.

The NZ Governor General gave the Royal Assent to the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill on Monday 21 May 2007.

That means this bill, criminalising parental authority to correct their own children, will become law on Thursday 21 June 2007.

Train your children carefully and very discreetly: ensure they understand that what goes on in your home is not to be talked about outside the home. Ensure your children understand the necessity for your training and correcting of them. Home educate your children. The schools will certainly have "re-education" programmes or new "safety" programmes to help children understand their rights. I've talked to parents already here in NZ who say their children have already received this "anti-parent" message from the teachers: that parents are not allowed to force a child to do anything the child doesn't want to do.

Now in particular, The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCROC) will become more wll known. Click here to read the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child . Read the whole thing. But in particular, dwell on Articles 12 through 18. These will be used to allow a child unrestricted or much less restricted access to all forms of media that the child may want to read or watch or listen to -- regardless of what you, the parents, think is appropriate -- because the child has rights, and these rights are to be protected by law and enforced by the Police and CYFS. These UNCROC articles will allow the child access to all kinds of people you do not approve of. So you don't want others putting the ideas in your children's heads: again I say: home educate your children, get them out of the schools. It is not just the teachers putting ideas and being obliged to teach the Party line: it is the other school kids coming from their "homes", some of which are horrendously dysfunctional, and filling your children's minds with insane ideas. I'm not stretching things here: read Article 19. They used that article to rewrite Section 59 and criminalise "correction" even though the article talks about violence, injury and abuse. So it's not just me: you have all seen it happen in the last couple of weeks.

Now, the Children's Commissioner, Cindy Kiro, said on Wednesday, in relation to the criminalising of parental correction,

"I believe that we have reached a tipping point with regard to political attention to children. We need to address children's issues using
processes that involve all political parties intertwined with traditional party-political policy making systems."

I'd have to agree: we've come to a tipping point, where NZ was tipped over, overthrown by the enemy of freedom, tipped into the cauldron of Marxist totalitarianism. There will be no return without some kind of economic or social or political collapse (as with the old USSR in 1989) and much hardship. She is calling for all political parties to do as National's John Key did: join with the others to form one group as a new process to address children's issues. Kiro's job is to implement UNCROC. So that calls for burying our democratic process and bowing as one to UN pronouncements. This is the kind of thing that will make New Zealand an unfit place for free people to live.

Michael Reid's book "From Innocents to Agents" (Maxim Instititute, Auckland, NZ, 2006) says in the final chapter: "Who's in charge when it comes to children? ...[T]hey are no longer innocents living within the protection of their families, but the state has assumed a new authority and controlling interest in their welfare...If the state has an interest in the child, but parents fail to co-operate, the state is justified in superseding parental authority. In New Zealand, the authority for children has definitely moved away from parents and onto an array of advisors."

Kiro made some other disturbing remarks in a press release from the Childrens Commissioner Office dated 17 May 2007. After contratulating Parliament for passing the bill criminalising parental use of force and commenting on the budget, she said:

The best results occur when we intervene early in the child's life before problems become endemic, and also when the likelihood of success is greater." I believe the establishment of an integrated framework for children and their families would provide a foundation for more co-ordinated strategies. An integrated framework would bring a systematic approach tomonitoring the development of every child and young person in New Zealand through co-ordinated planned assessment at key life stages and supporting families to make sure children have the opportunity to reach their full potential," says Dr Kiro.

This is a reference to her plan to assign a social worker to every child at birth and then comprehensively -- and compulsorily -- assess every child at 4 points through their school-age years. The assessment will cover: academic, social, physical and psychological/emotional wellbeing. The information will go onto Dr Kiro's Information Hub and can be accessed by various "professionals" such as police, teachers, social workers, etc., each of whom also places information on the Hub. No, none of this contravenes the Privacy Act, for the Privacy Act only outlines 12 Privacy Principles, not 12 Privacy Laws or 12 Privacy Statutes, and only one of these 12 Privacy Principles can be defended in a court of law! (And that one, by the way, is the one guaranteeing each of us the right and power to approach any organisation in NZ and request a copy of all the information that organisation holds on us.)

So, just as the Children's Commission and the Families Commission and Save the Children and Barnardos and UNICEF and EPOCH and others all said at the first of the oral submissions to the Parliamentary Select Committee on this Bill to criminalise parental authority to correct their own chidlren, and as they've said plenty of times since, this bill is only the first step in a larger strategy...there are yet many steps to take. It is a social engineering process well-known among all politicians. Ruby Harrold-Claesson said in Sweden it is called, "The Tyranny of the Small Steps". We must all realise that the many social engineering laws we've seen passed by this government are only the beginning. We ain't seen nothing yet. It will keep decent folks fighting to maintain the status quo, folks and families who are already fully occupied with their jobs and properties and families and really don't have the time or desire to fight these political battles of defense...and defensive battles of this nature rarely win and then only to face a new defensive battle. And each step will see a bureaucracy established or inflated in size: this anti-parental authority bill will require a larger number of social workers, foster families, lawyers and psychologists as well as more work for the Children's Commission and Families Commission, and thus more staff for each. These groups become a large voting block who, since they all feed at the government trough, will vote more slops for their trough every time. That's also part of the social engineering scheme.

Freedom

FREEDOM

Everybody wants freedom – freedom from debt, freedom from responsibilities, freedom from bad relationships, freedom to do as you please. But freedom is a paradox. To be truly free, you have to submit to something. To be free to play beautiful music, you have to submit to the rules of music. To be free to love someone, you have to submit to their desires. To have social freedom, everybody has to submit to the just laws of the society they live in.
Another way of saying this, is that you cannot have freedom without form. There must be limits and controls on freedom or else it degenerates into chaos. God has established these limits with an absolute standard of right and wrong, which is represented in the Ten Commandments. The laws of New Zealand were originally based on this standard, as they were in other countries with a Christian heritage. It is this that has given us social freedoms – freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of choice. The problem is that our society has pretty much abandoned the divine standard that these freedoms were built on, yet we expect the freedoms to remain. We are dreaming.
As we abandon God's moral standard, it is reflected in our society. We scratch our heads and wonder why we have all the social problems that now afflict us, when the answer is staring us in the face. But we refuse to submit to the forms that would prevent this chaos. Instead we abandon them in the name of freedom!
The end result will inevitably be the same as we have seen throughout history and throughout the world when God's ways have been abandoned – either anarchy or tyranny. For instance, how many Communist countries can you name that haven't governed by tyranny! Some would say that our present government is already subtly taking us down this path.
What does this have to do with faith? We can only save our country if we as individuals are saved. The Bible says about Jesus Christ that "there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved". Jesus Christ came into this world and died on the cross to set people free – free from the penalty and guilt of sin, free to love and serve God and others. Belief in Jesus as the Lord of the universe and as your personal saviour brings freedom.

By Lloyd McGarvey, Hokitika

Key Sells out on Smacking

from www.libertarianz.org.nz 2 May 07
Bernard Darnton - Libertarianz Leader

Party leader Bernard Darnton today confirmed that Libertarianz opposes John Key's sell-out on the anti-smacking bill.

"John Key is utterly worthless. I have no idea why he doesn't just join the Labour Party," Darnton said in disgust.

"Sue Bradford's anti-smacking bill effectively nationalises New Zealand's children by removing parental discretion in how to raise them. It is 'nanny state' in its most literal form. Helen Clark's amendment, which John Key has lapdoggedly pursued, does nothing to change that."

"All this amendment does is give Police discretion in deciding whether a prosecution is in the public interest. As ministers of the current government already know, the Police already have that power."

"The amended bill will not necessarily prevent the Police from prosecuting trivial cases. It will not prevent CYF from making its victims' lives a misery. It will not prevent private prosecutions – against which there will now be no defence - from malicious ex-spouses. It will not make the tiniest bit of difference to those who already seriously assault their children."

MPs discussion in the 3rd reading - Hansard

from familyintegrity.blogspot.com

Hansard is now up for the 3rd reading

or more specifically:

Child Abuse—Child, Youth and Family Discretion

Gordon Copeland— Resignation from United Future

Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill Third Reading

Points of Order Votes—Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill

and

Voting Correction

Dyson: "Bradford's bill does not change the legality of smacking"

Judy Turner (United Future MP):

Do the guidelines used by her department focus on the amount of force used, which is not reclassified in the new amendment to section 59, or on the intention and thinking of the parent, which will be changed in today's amendment?

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour MP, Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment (CYF):
The member seems to be confusing section 59 of the Crimes Act, which is actually a defence against an assault charge brought by police, with the statutory role as outlined in the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act.

Rodney Hide (Leader, ACT Party) :
Can the Minister confirm for the benefit of parents and, indeed, children up and down New Zealand that should the anti-smacking bill pass into legislation, a parent smacking his or her toddler will be committing an offence under the Crimes Act, irrespective of the directions to Child, Youth and Family and irrespective of whether the police decide to prosecute?

Hon RUTH DYSON:
This member has also demonstrated his lack of understanding of section 59, which is a defence against an assault charge. Nothing in Sue Bradford's bill, which Parliament will be debating later this afternoon, changes the legality or otherwise of smacking.

-----------------------------------

What a pack of lies.  Two MPs ask for clarification on what Bradford's bill will mean for parents, and Dyson simply dodges the question by questioning the MP's understanding of the bill.

Bradford's bill will change the legality of smacking, Dyson.  Smacking (reasonable force in the circumstances) - once a legal option for child discipline, will now be illegal, and subject to prosecution, or the terrible prosepect of having one's children ripped away from you.

Winston Peters: Smacking Bill Will Not Achieve Intended Aims

from www.scoop.co.nz
Press Release: New Zealand First Party 16 May 2007

New Zealand First Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters today reiterated his belief in the right of his fellow caucus members to exercise a conscience vote on the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill and offered an explanation as to why he would be voting against it at its third reading.

"I believe that the process the bill has taken through parliament has been fundamentally flawed partly due to parties whipping their members in to line rather than allowing them a conscience vote," said Mr Peters."'Smacking' is already a crime under current legislation and careful reading of the proposed bill shows that it will not achieve the aims that the member sponsoring it would like it to. The problem with the bill is that while it will allow 'light smacking', it will do so under circumstances almost impossible to interpret.

"It is my view that, although the existing law would benefit from being amended, Sue Bradford's proposal provides no real and workable solution.

"For the reasons outlined above I will not be supporting the bill at its third reading," concluded Mr Peters.