"Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?"
They say the wording is hard to understand. Some want to answer a different question, believing the question asked is irrelevant. Residing in that particular camp is opposition leader Phil Goff.
He says he would not vote in the ballot because the question did not make sense.
"The question implies that if you vote `yes' that you're in favour of criminal sanctions being taken against reasonable parents actually nobody believes that."
Mr Goff, read some of the anti-smacking commentary. People DO ACTUALLY believe smacking should be a crime. People DO ACTUALLY believe a message needs to be sent. The law change to Section 59 specifically bans reasonable force for the purposes of correction.
The excuse that reasonable force was too hard to define is a red herring. The law still allows reasonable force for a range of other reasons, just not correction.
There are a large group of people, and many powerful organisations and lobby groups that believe smacking is wrong, it is immoral and it doesn't work. They continually equate any form of smacking with child abuse and want to see it banned permanently. They want to use the State to impose their will rather than educate parents to have the necessary skills of discernment. The law change unnecessarily interferes in the lives of good parents, and as time goes by the cries for tougher measures on any form of discipline will become more strident, and rather than spending time preventing child abuse, we as a society will be fixated with preventing physical discipline, as if that is somehow the cause of child abuse.
So Mr Goff, if you believe that criminal sanctions should not be taken against parents, then vote NO. That's what the question asks. If you don't vote NO then you are effectively voting YES and it will be on your head, as a law maker, when the laws you support are interpreted as they are written, not as you believe.
Wake up and quell the poseurs Mr Goff. Vote NO.
Related Link: Goff off in Nevernever land