No place to raise children
Last week's referendum result was predictable. After a long campaign of misinformation and a loaded, misleading question the referendum on smacking was won by the pro-smacking lobby.
They celebrated in style at a flash hotel in Auckland, raising their glasses to the right to hit their kids without the state interfering. They lacked the courage to put the more honest question to the electorate: "Should parents be able to hit their kids without fear of prosecution?" They would have lost that one.
Aside from ACT, no political party has the stomach to face a debate about law change and this is good for kids. There was never an intention to criminalise parents for smacking kids and John Key will this week move to make this clearer.
Meanwhile a report released yesterday by Infometrics has tried to put a figure on the cost to the country of child abuse. It's not surprising to find it costs New Zealand $2 billion per year. The obvious costs come from abused and neglected children needing extra healthcare, welfare and justice services. Less obvious costs include ongoing health, special education and counselling services while the wider consequences for the community include crime and the victims of abuse often become unproductive members of society.
Deborah Morris-Travers of the Every Child Counts coalition says we don't rate well compared with our OECD counterparts. She says we have the worst child death by maltreatment rate in the developed world.
Family First's Bob McCroskie wants a Royal Commission into child abuse and the figures certainly warrant dramatic action.
The New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse says 39 children were murdered between 2000 and 2004 while Unicef's 2007 overview of child wellbeing in developed countries placed New Zealand and the US as the worst countries for deaths of under-19-year-olds by accidents, murder, suicide and violence.
Let's face it. This little country we grew up thinking was a great place to bring up children is now nothing of the sort. It's the worst place in the world to raise children.
Every Child Counts says we should be "identifying a range of different things we can do to better support families and build stronger communities so children are not vulnerable to maltreatment".
Should this be done via a royal commission? I don't think so. It would be a waste of money. International research is now crystal clear that it is in countries with high levels of income inequality where social problems such as child abuse are also more prevalent. The correlation has now been demonstrated so clearly there is no excuse left and no time to waste navel-gazing.
To reduce child abuse and alleviate the awful social problems which bedevil the country we need economic policies which redistribute wealth from those who haven't earned it to those who do the work. Taxes on capital gains (on all but the family home) and heavy death duties are the logical place to start. A financial transaction tax should follow and GST should be abolished.
Tax and income policy should be based around what is needed for a breadwinner to maintain his or her family at a decent standard of living after a 40-hour working week based on sociable hours.
None of these things will happen shortly but they are the measures the public must demand if we are to dramatically reduce child abuse.
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For Minto to think that the question was “Loaded” only goes to prove that he has no understanding or that he has a preconceived notion. When will the nutty left understand that a smack as part of good parenting is not child abuse, nor does a smack kill a child.
Thoughtful blog, but there is an interpretational problem with your assertion that New Zealand is "the worst place in the world to raise children". As one who worked on the UN-based Global Atlas of Violence and Health, I can tell you that western countries often rank much worse than they otherwise ought because other countries suppress or under-report negative violence or health outcomes. This under-reporting is sometimes as characteristic of developed nations as so-called underdeveloped nations. Cross-country comparisons are spurious at best. We can't even compare abuse rates from our own past, as reporting rates have been influenced by better data collection. Violence rates may be falling; we simply don't know. Worst place in the world to raise kids? The 'facts' are ambiguous, but somehow I doubt it.
John - you surely are aware that Communism has failed everywhere - right?
You do know that?
Punishing those that do well for themselves is no way to run a nation. Ask the Cambodians.
All you will achieve is to continue to drive the best and brightest out of the country. And the simple fact is that these days - they don't tend to come back.
Maybe that's what you want - drive out the talent so that mediocrity is the order of the day - and then no one will get their poor wittle feelings hurt when someone does better than them.
And given that the main industries left in the country are farming and tourism (seeing as we have driven all other manufacturing out of the country) - there will be no return to "sociable" hours as you put it. The only real industries we have left don't work to those hours.
ROFL, your argument made sense until the last 3 paragraphs. Typical John Minto: more one eyed than a Cyclops with Tunnel Vision wearing a Crusaders jersey.
"It's the worst place in the world to raise children."
Congratulations, John. That surpasses all your previous levels of fatuous nonsense to achieve truly stunning mindless drivel.
Your prize is a free one-way ticket to Somalia. Collect it from me anytime.
Still harping on that lie about smacking equalling child abuse huh?
Democracy John - whatever happened to the majority are right?
Sadly you and Sue Bradford have screwed up your perceptions so much that you have left the real world. In that world a smack on the bum is not abuse - it is discipline, and chldren have a right to be disciplined.
Beating children repeatedly, with objects, and around the head has always been abuse, even under the old law (a stupid judge in Timaru notwithstanding).
Trying to change nature with a law is jsut wrong - baby animals get smacked (and bitten and sat upon, etc.) as part of learning to live in their society. Young humans actually NEED discipline - and although you and others may be the paragon of upper middle class virtue and never need to resort to smacking you are in a minority.
Smacking is NOT abuse......and continuing to say that it dose is simply going to reinforce your status as the looney left.
Oh - I should point out, I support the changes made to the laws of NZ to protect children. You will get no argument from me that removing a reprehensible defense for child abusers to use, was a good thing.
Our parliament should be praised for not bowing to populist politics, and leaving the law as it is.
Couldn't agree more. The referendum question was heavily loaded, and highly ambiguous. Would I be cynical in thinking it was deliberately drafted in order to achieve a specific outcome? I know many people who didn't vote in protest against the appalling drafting of the question.
As a nation we agree that abuse of adults isn't on - why do our children not warrant the same level of protect and safety?
How many kids have been killed since this anti-smacking law was introduced? Has it stopped (or even reduced) any of the violence against our children? Watching the news in the past few weeks the answer is NO. It hasn't made a damn bit of difference, and the reason it hasn't made a bit of difference is something the weak kneed sandal wearing, tree hugging do-gooders seem to either try very hard to ignore or really do lack the ability to understand... Smacking a naughty kid on the bum or hand isn't abuse. It doesn't "damage the child" it doesn't leave them in comas or fighting for their lives and parents that smack aren't the ones killing our children. And until our stupidly ignorant politicians come to terms with that simple fact and start actually dealing with the issues instead of focusing on something which really has very little to do with the problem our children will continue to die at an alarming rate.
The government should be investing money into educating parents of alternative ways of disciplining children rather than outlawing smacking anyway. It's all very well to say you can't can't smack children, but what about giving parents some alternative? showing them different ways of disciplining children.
You can't just take something like smacking away and leave a void. Teach parents something to replace smacking with.
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I don't understand why everyone who believes that yes was the right vote always says
1) This law doesn't criminilize smacking; and 2) Oh dear, you shouldn't be allowed to smack your kids.
Make up your mind, what is this law about to you? Should it crimilize smacking or shouldn't it? Because if it shouldn't, then the law should say it doesn't, and not just the police have discretion.
The problem with the yes-voters is that they think we are all stupid and don't understand the law. Wrong. We do - the law patently says that you cannot smack your kids, and that if the police in their discretion choose to prosecute you for doing so you have no legal remedy. It DOES make smacking your kids illegal. I'm really sick of people trying to tell me it doesn't.
I'm also sick of people trying to tell me the law is working because 'no good parents are being prosecuted'. I know of parents who haven't been prosecuted but have been dragged through an inquisitorial system that they did not deserve to go through. It has caused much distress. Plus, has it really reduced domestic violence? Why would it?
This law is wrong and wrongly justified on so many levels - its time that parliament stood up and listened to New Zealand. We are not asking for a return to the old Section 59 - all we are asking is that parents are not beholden to their children saying 'you can't touch me.' All that we are asking, is that GOOD parenting is allowed. All we are asking, is that the law recognises a defined level of smacking as being ok. This was mooted by some parties in parliament at the time the law was changed and until the law reflects that, I will not be happy.