Clerk Confirms: Referendum to go Ahead

Kiwi Party Press Release
2pm, 22 August 2008

Kiwi Party Leader and CIR Petition organiser Larry Baldock welcomed the news today that the petition has been certified by the Clerk of the House of Representatives to have achieved sufficient signatures to force a referendum on the question, “should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?”

“This is great news and a huge victory,” said Mr Baldock.
“It has been a long battle to assert the right of all New Zealanders to be heard on this controversial issue. Quite frankly in a democracy it should not require so much effort. I want to pay tribute to Sheryl Savill who was prepared to put her name to the petition, and the thousands of volunteers that have helped us collect over 390,000 signatures,” Mr Baldock said.

The clerk of the house has declared that 310,000 signatures were certified as valid.
This means there were over 25 000 more signatures than the 285 027 required by the CIR Act 1993 to force a referendum.

“The referendum should be held at this year’s election. None of the reasons being given by the Prime Minister for delaying it make any sense at all, and are simply a tactic for her to try and avoid this being an election issue. She will not drown out the voice of the people and should realise there is no point further angering everyone by delaying the inevitable.

“Justice delayed is justice denied, Prime Minister. 110 MPs should never have ignored 80% of the population in the first place, and the right thing to do now is to let every Kiwi have their say as quickly as possible.

“The Kiwi Party have made it our number one priority to ensure that voice of the people in this referendum is respected. There is ample evidence that good mums and dads are now being prosecuted by this new law, while there is no evidence that it has led to any reduction in the real child abuse we are all concerned about,” said Mr Baldock.

www.thekiwiparty.org.nz

Unity for Liberty: Petition Count Report

Below is an excerpt from an email received from Unity for Liberty, regarding the status of the Anti-Smacking-Law petition signature count...

All is looking good for the referendum. The scrutiny is now complete and is just waiting for the statistician to come up with his magic answer. The good news is that the results are almost identical with the first scrutiny, which means the result should be beyond the power of any magic wand that our statistician may wish to wield.

Here are some official numbers concerning the sample of signatures taken for the signatory check,

The sample taken represented a 1 in 13 ratio, a total of 29,710 signatures were scrutinized.

From this total 25,787 signatures were valid, 3,886 did not qualify.

160 duplicates were found, there were no triplicates found.

So 25,787 x 13 = 335,231,  which means that the statistician will have to lose a further 50,000 signatures (approx) to fail the attempt. Apparently, by applying the same formula as the first time we should have a 25,000(approx) surplus.

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The question is not now "if", the question is "when".  Will Helen Clark push ahead with her selfish plan of running the referendum after the election (costing NZ over $10,000,000), or will she allow the referendum to go ahead as would be normal practice, at the upcoming General Election (15 Nov or earlier).

Clearing up Confusion over Referendum Process

As per my last post, there is obviously a level of confusion over the future of the petition calling for a referendum on the Anti-Smacking Law. Below I have a copy of the Referendum Process from the Parliament website (you can download a PDF version by clicking here). I have added some comments to the chart. I'm just focussing on the top petition question,

"Should a smack as a part of good parental correction be a criminal offense in New Zealand?"

Some people have been unsure of what the question for the Referendum means. It is saying, "should a smack be illegal?" And my answer, and the answer of the aproximately 70% plus New Zealanders opposed to this draconian home-invasion law will be a most definite NO.

Click here for a Press Release from Larry Baldock (Petition Organiser), where he comments on the issue.

Petition calling for referendum on "anti-smacking" law results unclear

It is unclear whether we have gained enough signatures on the petition calling for a referendum on the 'anti-smacking' law to have it put on the ballot paper.

The Kiwi Party leader put out this press release explaining the results.

Kiwi Party Leader and anti-smacking petition organiser Larry Baldock confirmed today that the preliminary results from Sheryl Savill’s petition to force a referendum on the question, ‘should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offense in NZ?’ was going to be very close to being just under or over the required threshold.

A total of 324,316 signatures were handed in on Feb 29th. To succeed in forcing a referendum it is required to have the certified signatures of 10% of those enrolled on the electoral role which on that day was 285,027. That would therefore require a success rate of 87.88% from the audit process undertaken by the Chief Registrar of Electors. A random sample of 29,501 signatures was taken and checked individually against the electoral role with 25,754 qualifying as certified correct.

Mr Baldock said “If I did my own simple maths on those figures we would then estimate that we had a success rate of 87.29%

“However I am informed by the Clerk that the Government Statistician needs 90 hours to complete a very complicated mathematical formula to officially ascertain the number of correct signatures. I have no idea why this must take so long and whether there will be any great variation from my simple maths. It begins to look like the Duckworth-Lewis system of determining the results in rain shortened One Day Cricket matches, and we all know how they turn out, usually in the other teams favour! said Mr Baldock.

The final result must be given to the Speaker of the House of Representatives no later than next Tuesday April 29th by the Clerk of the House.

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So if you take 87.29% of the 324316 signatures collected we get 283095 correct signatures. That is 1935 signatures short. Lets see what the Clerk has to say on Tuesday.
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Also posted at NZ Debate