Exploiting the Loopholes

Sue Bradford's law was supposedly issued to prevent people who use unreasonable force on a child get off by arguing the force was reasonable. Her new law was supposed to prevent a mere handful of cases over 15 plus years from evading justice. The old law simply said a parent may only use reasonable force if disciplining their child. The law was clear, and the loophole (if one existed) was merely that a judge might not be able to understand what reasonable force was. Here's part of her new law:

Section 59 - Parental control
(1) Every parent of a child and every person in the place of a parent of the child is justified in using force if the force used is reasonable in the circumstances and is for the purpose of — (c) preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in offensive or disruptive behaviour;

Surely, the loophole remains? Clearly then, the sole intent of her law was only to ban correction. Technically, subsection 2 makes any form of child discipline illegal, whilst lawyers can argue on the same basis they always argued, using subsection 1c.

It's not a good law.