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A question of money

Murray Edridge, Chief Executive of Barnardos New Zealand, has called on Sheryl Savill, the instigator of the petition that gathered over 300,000 signatures to pull the referendum, and "save" the country 9 million dollars.

Over 300,000 signatures makes for a compelling reason to proceed with a referendum. Actually, it's the law. Asking Savill to can the referendum disrespects all those people that signed. They signed to force the issue. They signed to ask the question.

It might be 9 million dollars, Mr Edridge, but it's tax payer dollars - it came largely from the pockets of those signatories. Let your taxes fund those pointless alcohol advertisements. You are actually telling us to save OUR money, not yours and not the government's.

Anyway, it's not Savill's referendum. She did it for the people of NZ, well, at least over 300,000 of them. It belongs to the people.

Remember that Murray Edridge.

If democracy is not as important as money, will we see Mr Edridge suggest we cancel the next general elections?

That would save huge amounts of money - perhaps hundreds of millions!

Maybe John Key can announce in advance he's not going to pay any attention to the outcome of the elections anyway...that's what he's already decided about this referendum.

Let's tell him what we think anyway.

The question is NOT "Should smacking be discouraged?"

The question is NOT "Should child abuse be illegal?"

The question is NOT "Can a judge recognise unreasonable force if it hits him on the head?"

The question actually is not any of those things.

It comes pretty close to "Should smacking be illegal?"

If the people of New Zealand agree with the politicians, who made a change to section 59 and made ALL forms of discipline technically illegal, do we round up and jail their parents first? At the very least, the Police need to investigate each and every one of them. Starting with Sue Bradford's folks.

And let's not make this about money. You've already cheapened democracy enough with your little outburst.

Barnados wants to save some of OUR money for us

Family First offer them that chance

UPDATE: Looks like I've disagreed with Murray Edridge before - Barnardos Put Politics First

Comments

  1. Breathtaking! Barnados should sack Murray Eldridge as a service to free speech!

    So now we have Sue Bradford trying to screen CIR questions she doesn't like, Barnados trying to stop referenda they don't like, and politicians like Key saying they will ignore the public anyway.

    Can anyone spell totalitarian? (if so, please check my spelling)

    PS. Zen, both your links go to the Scoop media release by Family First.

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  2. Link fixed (although they never seem to survive more than 3 months anyway.)

    Came across another rant from Barnados calling on Family First to publish names and addresses of the people affected by the law change to date.

    Because the rest of New Zealand is safe after 1 July 2009???

    They say they have to "come clean"

    I would call on Barnados to publish ALL of the details of each and every court case that tried to use the "reasonable force" defence over the last 25 years.

    Not the carefully presented soundbites, but the actual cases and details. Because apparently, the previous law was not working and needed a complete change - it needed to make all forms of discipline technically illegal.

    If those cases were actually brought into the public light we'd find out many interesting things.

    For example:

    * There were not many cases using this defence. (Just over 20)

    * Most times the defence failed. The judge found the force used unreasonable, and passed verdict accordingly.

    * The deliberations of the judge in other cases often reflected complex situations that made the decision more than one single issue.

    * If we accept the argument that judges are idiots and get things wrong (not my statement - the implication from Bradford that a judge doesn't understand reasonable force) then clarifying this would have been much better. However, Bradford's aim was to make all physical discipline illegal, which explains why a rational amendment was never allowed).

    Anyway, let's see the full details of these court cases that prompted the action to make potentially thousands of parents criminals to catch perhaps a dozen questionable cases over the last 25 years.

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  3. Here's one of those cases that Murray doesn't believe exists: It's started

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  4. Such contempt for the will of the people. Are these vermin aware of how totalitarian they sound?

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