Editorial: Vote a fiasco

The pro-smacking lobby has scored a healthy win in the referendum, but it is a win thoroughly tarnished, writes The Press in an editorial.

The question posed was flawed, the participation of voters low, the campaign unengaging, the cost of the exercise prohibitive and the results inconsequential. In short, the referendum was a fiasco.

That will not stop the smackers demanding that the Government acknowledge the result by removing section 59 of the Crimes Amendment Act.

John Key, a Prime Minister strongly inclined to following the dictates of public opinion, will find it difficult to resist the clamour, but he should stand firm.

His support of the legislation cost National little support in the general election because those who voted for the party had reasons stronger than corporal punishment for doing so.

The same political dynamic surely is still in play. Successful handling of the economic crisis and the benign face of the Government are more important to New Zealanders than the right to smack their children.

The Government is therefore unlikely to suffer more than a temporary buffeting if it refuses to change the law.

Moreover, Key's support for restrictions on smacking is morally and practically right.

It would be repugnant were children in this country returned to the brutal position of being exempted from the assault laws that apply to adults. It would be reprehensible if the progressive change in parenting that the reform is bringing about were halted. It is in this change of attitude that the law will be beneficial, not in the number of cases it brings to court.

Legal proceedings are costly and intrusive for a family; the cause of non-violent rearing is not advanced by a stream of parents being hauled into court.

The police realise this, and their administration of the legislation has been exemplary. They have initiated legal proceedings only for gross violations of the law and talked through other instances.

It is the fact that the law frowns on smacking that will encourage parents to rethink and change their behaviour towards their children such is the influence of formal sanctions in altering humans' attitudes.

Therefore, a decade from now if section 59 remains on the statute books New Zealand parenting is likely to be dominated less by physical coercion and more by smart nurturing.

For now, though, once the brouhaha of the referendum's result dies down, attention needs to focus on the farce that these consultations have become.

Their non-binding nature makes them a means of letting off steam rather than a guide to legislators, but those legislators are unlikely to change that.

What they should consider, though, are changes that would remove the inadequacies that this referendum has highlighted.

Chief among these is the lack of control on the wording of questions. The vote on criminal violence and on smacking produced questions that were impossible to answer unequivocally with yes or no, thus undermining the credibility of the consultation.

It is reform of the referendum legislation, rather than reform of the smacking law, that this latest referendum is likely to produce.

- © Fairfax NZ News