Your last three paragraphs make no sense and border on being personally offensive.

I draw yor attention to..”A 55-year-old man who beat his daughter over the head with a lump of concrete when she refused to go to his Mormon church “does not understand what all the fuss is about”, Hastings District Court has heard.” (NZ Herald, 11/07/09)

I for one am grateful, the anti-smacking law is in place to stop people like this.

You need to stop thinking inside your own ‘privileged’ upbringing, and think about those kids out there who aren’t as lucky. I challenge you to spend a day in a South Auckland School talking to those kids. Would you still feel the same way I wonder?

Regards.

It’s not relevant whether the police have the manpower to arrest 85% of NZ parents, either. The fact that their actions will be criminalised makes them vulnerable, especially to having their children confiscated by CYFS. Even if only a few parents are prosecuted for smacking it is an injustice.

What’s a light smack? Also irrelevant. The difference between smacking and beating is obvious. And I trust a jury of 12 to make that distinction based on reasonable force.

I’m not a conservative (or a misogynist as you seem to assume), but we should think carefully before throwing away long-established traditions. Society evolves. It is better for social change to happen gradually by a process of evolution, rather than by wholesale state intervention.

As for the ‘riding crop’ case, the mere idea that 12 ordinary men and women decided this use of ‘force’ was reasonable isn’t the issue. Its that they found it ‘reasonable’ and the parents are back in court AGAIN.

“I blame the nanny state for a lot of violence and problems because it tries to insulate people from the consequences of their actions” ..this is a strange comment coming from you because, isn’t that precisely what the s59 bill seeks to do? Isn’t it insulating this stupid woman and her husband from the consequences of their actions?

It isn’t a matter of whether or not I trust the police, it’s a matter of doing simple maths. They won’t have the man-power to enforce and arrest EVERY ‘light-smacking’ incident. Just like they don’t have the man-power to enforce the ‘copyright law’ as it is written.

As for the ‘exaggerated, vindictive’ cases you seem to think are going to be clogging up our court system, that can happen with or without the s59 bill.

As for the issue of allowing a ‘light smack’. What constitutes a ‘light smack’? When it doesn’t leave a mark? When the child isn’t hurt by it? If this is the case then what’s the point of doing it in the first place?

Re your final point. Killing people in Iran and Iraq has been a normal part of their lives for thousands of year too, does it make it right? For thousands of years it was assumed ‘women’ were subservient to ‘men’ too, but that myth was soon put to rest. Don’t look now, but one of them is sitting in the Prime Ministers chair…Just because it’s ‘normal’ doesn’t necessarily make it right, now does it?

Down with the nanny state. Yes, I blame the nanny state for a lot of violence and problems because it tries to insulate people from the consequences of their actions. Actually, how many kids who are taken by CYFS and raised by strangers end up in prison? Does the state stepping in actually make it less likely, or more likely?

Yes, I think there will be cases where people are arrested for a light smack. There will be many more cases where people lose custody of their own children as a result. You seem to place an awful lot of trust in the police. But it isn’t just the police. You would have to trust that sulking children won’t complain and exaggerate, ex-partners won’t make vindictive complaints, and that Crown Law won’t step in to force prosecution of marginal cases. Why not make the law clearer rather than putting an extra burden on the police?

Yes, people are arrested for copyright piracy. But that’s completely irrelevant.

Your last point is meaningless. It would be just as accurate to say that cases of abuse started with a stern talking-to that developed into verbal abuse, time-out that escalated into locking the kid in a closet, or an attempt to reason that turned into emotional manipulation and abuse. Light smacking has nothing to do with abuse, and there are many ways to abuse a child that don’t involve physical violence. There are also many ways to deal with abuse that don’t criminalize innocent parents.

A final point: smacking has been a normal part of raising children for thousands of years, and the vast majority of parents do so on occasion. Most parents are not abusive. You claim that abuse starts with a light smack, but that claim bears no relation to reality.