After today's News coverage on TV with John Key saying he wouldn't change the smacking law regardless of the outcome of the referendum, I got to thinking about what he said during the election about the 'will of the electorate' with regards as to why he voted against the Prostitution Bill. The below is from the NZ Herald almost exactly a year ago [bold emphasis mine]-
Yes, well - whatever happened to that thinking? The referendum is a clear means of "asking the electorate what they want", yet he now intends to ignore it whatever the outcome. And I also don't buy that changing the law back will tie up Parliament - that's just a cop-out. I helped put Key there by voting for him; he is there to work for me and the citizens of NZ, not the other way around.
Meanwhile, Barnardos has done a survey of children who say "smacking is wrong, full stop"..
Um, what did you expect them to say? Good grief, some people are dumb - and they are calling the referendum useless? How much money did it cost THEM to get an answer they already knew they would get? Hello?!
I'm not sure whether 55% constitutes a "majority of callers" either. 'Just over half' would probably be a better description, but then that wouldn't suit their purposes would it.
But the reason he changed his mind about prostitution was because some constituents visited his Helensville electorate office and suggested that supporting the bill would send the wrong signal.
A couple of the constituents had 16-year-old daughters. As parents, they felt that whether Key liked it or not, the bill would legitimise prostitution as a credible pathway for the girls.
Key said he started to think that in the end, he was a representative of these people.
He firmly believed that if he asked his electorate what they wanted, they’d want him to vote against it. “So I did. And that’s always been the view I’ve taken.”
Yes, well - whatever happened to that thinking? The referendum is a clear means of "asking the electorate what they want", yet he now intends to ignore it whatever the outcome. And I also don't buy that changing the law back will tie up Parliament - that's just a cop-out. I helped put Key there by voting for him; he is there to work for me and the citizens of NZ, not the other way around.
Meanwhile, Barnardos has done a survey of children who say "smacking is wrong, full stop"..
Um, what did you expect them to say? Good grief, some people are dumb - and they are calling the referendum useless? How much money did it cost THEM to get an answer they already knew they would get? Hello?!
“The initial results from the survey show that the majority of callers (more than 55 percent) do not think parents taken to court for hitting a child should be let off if they say they were disciplining the child”, says Murray Edridge, Chief Executive of Barnardos New Zealand.
I'm not sure whether 55% constitutes a "majority of callers" either. 'Just over half' would probably be a better description, but then that wouldn't suit their purposes would it.