To smack or not to smack? That's the question (News Feature)

By David Barber Jun 16, 2009, 7:44 GMT

   Wellington - Should you be allowed to smack your children? New Zealanders have been debating the question for years. Some say never, under any circumstances. Others say parents have a right to discipline their naughty youngsters and it is nobody else's business.

   A national referendum on the issue will be held in August but Prime Minister John Key has already signalled that he will ignore the result, whatever it is - a position he is entitled to take, as it is not binding for his centre-right government.

   Voting in New Zealand is not compulsory and Key said Tuesday that he was unlikely to use his vote, as did Phil Goff, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, who called the ballot a waste of money.

   Organizations as different as the Maori Party and the Federated Farmers organization agreed that there were far better uses for the 9 million New Zealand dollars (5.7 million US dollars) it will cost.

   The only people who seem interested in the outcome are a motley group of fundamentalist Christians and die-hard conservatives who hold to the biblical shibboleth 'spare the rod and spoil the child' and want to be free to use corporal punishment without fear of being arrested for assault.     

   The postal ballot is being held because they managed to get 310,000 registered voters to sign a petition demanding it - the 10 per cent of the electorate needed to force the government to hold a citizens' initiated referendum, even though it does not have to take any notice of the outcome.

   It was thought earlier that the question had been settled two years ago when Parliament passed a law repealing Section 59 of the Crimes Act, which gave mothers and fathers charged with assaulting a child the excuse that they could use 'reasonable force' for the purpose of parental discipline.

   After long and often bitterly divisive debate, the majority of legislators agreed to repeal the law with a compromise amendment that parents can use force against children to prevent harm - such as to stop a child running across a busy road - or to stop 'offensive or disruptive behaviour,' but cannot use force for 'correction.'

   This did not satisfy the pro-smacking lobby, which drafted the referendum question: 'Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?' The ballot paper requires a simple 'yes' or 'no' reply.

   Labour leader Goff said he will not vote because the question is loaded and implies that people who answer 'yes' support criminalizing good parents who lightly smack their children and those who say 'no' think the new law is not working.

   'I can neither answer 'yes' nor 'no' without feeling that I'm compromising what I actually think,' he said.

   No parents were being taken to court for lightly smacking their children which meant the law was working and therefore the referendum was redundant, Goff said. The money would be better spent on programmes to prevent child abuse.

   Premier Key told his weekly news conference Monday that he also believed the law was working, the question was ambiguous and the outcome of the poll to be held over three weeks from July 31 was not likely to change his mind.

   A coalition of organizations including Save the Children, Barnados, the Parents' Centre and the infant welfare group, the Plunket Society, has agreed to campaign for a 'yes' vote as approving the new law, even though spokeswoman Deborah Morris-Travers said the question is misleading because it 'falsely equates smacking with good parenting.'

   And Jan Pryor, who heads the Families Commission, said the law was working well and there was no evidence of parents being criminalized for trivial offences.

   'Consistent parenting strategies which use rewards, distraction and consequences such as timeout are proven to be more effective at teaching children self-discipline than physical punishment,' she said.

   But the Family First organization, which produced the petition that paved the way for the referendum, insists that many New Zealand parents want to be able to smack their children.

   National director Bob McCoskrie accused Key of undermining the democratic process and said the referendum was an expensive exercise made necessary because the politicians had failed to listen to the voters in the first place.