Friday, May 16, 2008

MP's Should Get Real on Child Abuse

300,000 more signatures were submitted today on a 2nd petition demanding that the government tackle the real causes of child abuse including family breakdown and domestic violence.

"This is in addition to the 350,000 signatures already collected on the 1st petition calling for the scrapping of the anti-smacking law," says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ. "And this total continues to grow."

Organisations who originally supported the petitions, including Family First NZ, For the Sake of our Children Trust, Focus on the Family, Sensible Sentencing Trust, and Unity for Liberty amongst others, have been inundated with further requests for petition forms since the announcement that the first petition opposing the anti-smacking law had fallen short because of invalid votes.

"This is a huge response which has been reflective of the 80+% opposition to the Bradford / Clark anti-smacking law supported by far too many politicians who should have listened to the concerns of NZ parents. They simply abused the child abuse laws, and abused their law making powers. But the people have spoken."

"The inability to deal with the real causes of child abuse while criminalising good parents will be an election issue and Family First is calling on political parties to make quite clear whether they will change the law so that good parents are not criminalised for appropriate and reasonable correction of children."

"The ability for organizers to get over 650,000 signatures on the two petitions shows just how strong the feeling (and frustration) is amongst many NZ families on this issue," says Mr McCoskrie.

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