“The number of children dying from assaults each year has not changed in more than a decade”

A news item appeared this morning that set me wondering about the efficacy, or not, of her anti-smacking law.

You’ll recall that Sue Bradford, Helen Clark and John Key between them agreed four years ago to ban parents disciplining their children by smacking.  This, we were told by Bradford, Clark and Key—and by virtually the entirety of the chattering classes—would stop parents beating and killing their children.

How has it worked out?

Well, that this was never about evidence-based harm reduction can be understood when you realise the evidence for how this worked out has never really been properly followed up.

The government’s “Family Violence Death Review Committee” has done “considerable work,” they say, “setting up systems,” “building trust and goodwill,” and “strengthening our understanding” of the work of responsible agencies. They’ve also established relationships, protocols (“clear and safe protocols,” to boot!), and “engaged with appropriate cultural specialists in each death review case.”

I’m sure that will all make you very happy. What they’ve been been less good at is actually producing evidence. This, they say, is “due to a range of issues beyond their control,” and clearly beyond the interest of everyone who argued that this policy was based on evidence.

The best we can discover, it seems to me, appears on page 9 and 10 of the ill-starred committee’s December 2011 report,* which suggests

In the period 2002-2008, 186 family violence deaths were identified by the FVDRC [of which 49 were children under 15 years, and 38 under 5]. This equates to approximately 27 [killings] per year on average [in total].

And what of 2009, 10 and 11?

At the time of writing this report [in December 2011], the NZ Police have identified … 42 [killings] classified as family violence related for 2009 while preliminary data collection indicates 26 [killings] were family violence related for 2010.

There are no figures given for 2011, the “researchers” have not bothered to break the numbers down into age groups, and even the figures given for 201o are still classified as a “preliminary count of family violence deaths identified by the FVDRC at the time of writing the report,” i.e., twelve months after the end of they year in question.

Nonetheless, we can still confidently say the “average” 27 deaths by family per year has not gone down. Precisely the opposite.

The report of the NZ Child and Youth Mortality Review Committee is equally careful to tiptoe around the issue, carefully breaking its own figures down in a way that doesn’t highlight the number of parents killing their children.  But we can still observe that deaths by intentional injury, i.e., by beating, has not decreased

The news item this morning announced further research from yet another group of researchers, this lot producing the  Childrens Social Health Monitor, none of whom seem to talk to each other.  This research however is more unequivocal, researcher Dr. Nicky Turner telling Radio NZ this morning

the number of children dying from assaults each year has not changed in more than a decade.

Not changed in more than a decade.

You can see that here in this graph pulled from their 2012 report, which shows no dramatic drop after the ant-smacking law was introduced :

And you can see how “successful” the anti-smacking law has been in stopping parents beating their children, with more up to date figures showing the same number of children every year (around 70) being hospitalised for assault, neglect or maltreatment, regardless of what the law now says:

Moral of the story is this: Parents who respect the law stopped smacking. But those parents who didn’t respect the law carried on beating.

Meanwhile, the social engineers who still can’t tell the difference between smacking and beating removed a valuable form of discipline from the toolbox of good parents, while doing nothing at all to stop bad parents killing their kids.

Oh, and they essentially stuck a policeman in every home, replacing parental force with nanny’s. Which I’m still convinced was the real intention.

Thanks Sue Bradford.

Thanks Helen Clark

Thanks John Key.

* * * *

*I’m more than happy to hear there’s a better source.

Cameron Slater (aka Whale Oil) in hot water again [update 2]

Cameron Slater (aka Whale Oil) is in hot water again for naming someone before the courts.  The argument being floated today is that since the “high profile public servant” named by Slater has been found not guilty, Slater’s naming constitutes grounds for arrest.

Yet as Cameron himself points out, the not-guilty verdict on a claim the man assaulted his son looks to have been delivered based on a very interesting wrinkle indeed in Sue Bradford’s anti-smacking law.

And as as Lindsay Mitchell points out, the public concern expressed by the man’s lawyer is pretty much an own goal.

UPDATE 1: Since I’ve already argued before about the nonsense of name suppression, I’ll simply link rather than argue anew.

UPDATE 2: Lawyer Stephen Franks argues “there may be a few grounds for suppressing the name of people charged with crime,” and lists four reasons with which I’d concur.  Those aside, however, “open justice must be restored, from the time of charging.”  This decision, says Franks, is

another inexcusable intrusion on free speech and the principle that justice should be delivered in open courts, where we can form our own views about whether it is without fear or favour according to rank and connections…
    “I feel ashamed that I will not publicly disclose who this acquitted man is, to help make unworkable the continuation of this offense to our liberties. I'll not put myself and my license to be a lawyer at risk .  Many heroes who secured our liberties did risk all to get free speech and open justice.
    “But there is something I can do. Whale Oil is standing up for the principle. Despite often finding his language and expression gratuitously unpleasant, I can help make the point by reducing his personal cost of standing up for the rest of us.  We who are too careful can salve our consciences with contributions. If we make it plain that fines and other penalties will just attract mass support, eventually our would-be masters will have to accept the loss of their current power to suppress.
    I'll find out the account we can contribute to and provide the link for others who want to contribute.”

And so shall I.

DOWN TO THE DOCTOR’S: Smacking Sue, Tweaking Tuku, & Mocking Michael

Libertarianz leader Dr Richard McGrath takes another irreverent weekly look at some of the past week’s headlines.

1. Bradford: Pro-smackers behind threats – According to Sue Bradford, anyone who opposed the anti-parenting legislation rammed through by the National/Labour socialist grand coalition wants to thrash and maim children. According to Sue, it’s not about parenting – by the way, Sue wants to nationalise parenting, which her Marxist study has taught her will help in dismantling the capitalist system. Sue reckons the resistance to her red plague is coming from people wanting to assault and murder their children. As I have stated previously, what inflamed people (if you would care to listen, Sue) is the fact that you and your ilk want to remove the ability for parents to be able to use physical force to keep their children safe and from doing harm to others, when all attempts to use reason and negotiation have failed.

2. Tukoroirangi Morgan: Maori or Pakeha candidate – who’d get your vote? – The $89 man (remember the boxer shorts?) reckons that not many years ago Maori owned all the land over which Rodney Hide’s Super City Council will preside. That’s stretching it a bit. Before European colonization, land was not owned in the sense that we think of ownership. It was fought over, there was no secure title and thus there was little incentive to improve or develop land as it was likely to be pillaged and looted at the time of the next tribal raid.
    Somehow however Tuku reads in the Treaty of Waitangi a right for ‘indigenous’ people to have special representation on the Super City Council. He laments the fact that the advertising industry seems to feature rich, white people in their promotions. He does have a point in that the Maori ‘brand’ is lumped with negative or controversial extremes. But the answer is not for the government to insult Maori by treating them as powerless victims. It is to empower them by treating them as sovereign individuals, unshackling them from welfare dependency, closing down the violent and increasingly anarchic public schools in which many of them are raised, and allowing them genuine tino rangitiratanga – independence from domination by the state.
    New Zealanders should all be subject to equality under just laws, with no discrimination by race or other accidents of birth. More on this at a later time!

3. Mayor hails first day of gang patch ban – There is now a dress code in W(h)anganui, enforceable by law. Michael Laws has made the River City a laughing stock; unbelievably, Timaru now wants to do the same (no word yet from Otara).
    The ultimate reference for new laws and by-laws should be a Constitution or Bill of Rights. Laws incompatible with this should be struck down. New Zealand has a Bill of Rights of sorts, crafted by Geoffrey Palmer, the man whose face needs punching because of his conspicuous and over-the-top wowserism. Section 14 of Geoffrey’s Bill of Rights states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the right to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind, in any form.” To that section has now beeen added three words: “except in W(h)anganui.”     

See y’all next week!
Doc McGrath

(Horrific) Quote of the Day: The collectivist evil that lives on [update 3]

I’ve been saying all along that all this anti-smacking spin and nonsense is not primarily about child discipline.  It has come about because Sue Bradford and her fellow travellers wanted to use those who cannot tell the difference between a smack and assault to advance the state's control over families.  I’ve been suggesting you should never forget that Sue is still at root a Marxist -- and Marx called explicitly for the nationalisation of children and the abolition of the family.  And along these lines, I’ve reminded you of her support for Cindy Kiro’s surveillance state – her wet dream of for clipboard-wielding Stasis examining every family in the country, an apparatchik in every home.

That is the ultimate goal of the collectivist, as Plato described for them over two-thousand years ago in The Republic  The Laws [see excerpt here at Google Books].  If you want to see horrific, then this is it:

“The greatest principle of all is that nobody, whether male or female, should be without a leader. Nor should the mind of anybody be habituated to letting him do anything at all on his own initiative; neither out of zeal, nor even playfully. But in war and in the midst of peace -- to his leader he shall direct his eye and follow him faithfully. And even in the smallest matter he should stand under leadership. For example, he should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals... only if he has been told to do so. In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently, and to become utterly incapable of it."  [Hat tip Samizdata]

Feel free to express your revulsion, in any terms you care to use.

UPDATE 1:  Cometh the hour, cometh John Boscawen’s Private Member’s Bill.

UPDATE 2: Cometh the hour-and-a-half and we’ve got Sue Bradford calling Boscawen’s bill to denationalise children “a return to the Dark Ages,” and John Key continuing with his “it’s-working-fine-already” blind denial.

At least it was fun watching Adolf at No Minister wriggling while he waited to be sure what he was supposed to think.

UPDATE 3: SteveW points out that the first line of this quotation has been dropped, suggesting this changes the meaning  -- the first line being. "Now for expeditions of war much consideration and many laws are required; the greatest principle of all is that no one of either sex should be without a commander..."  Now note first of all that to make more readable translations some translators change clauses into sentences, which is what’s probably happened in Samizdata’s translation (which I understand comes from Karl Popper’s book, so it’s him you’d be accusing of selective quotation.)

And note also that the context given here is both “ in war and in the midst of peace,” a context Plato reinforces for the reader by going on to emphasise that “we ought in time of peace from youth onwards to practise this habit of commanding others, and of being commanded… I should add that all dances ought to be performed with view to military excellence…”  In other words, according to Plato, society should be conducted like a military garrison.  And that idea is really the quote’s full context.

LIBERTARIANZ SUS: No means no! [update 3]

Susan Ryder explains that no doesn’t mean yes, Mr Key.

“88% VOTE NO IN REFERENDUM” screamed the newspaper headline last Saturday evening when I ducked into the supermarket for a few things.

After weeks of debate about it, the Smacking Referendum had incredibly slipped my mind. I’d been tied up playing tour guide to friends on their first visit to this country, thus paying scant attention to news reports and political blogs in the interim. “Well, that’ll set the cat amongst the pigeons!” I thought. “What are you going to do now, John Key?!”

What indeed. U-Turn Boy has been backed right into his own corner, leaving no wriggle room. That the referendum is non-binding is immaterial. The electorate has clearly shown the politicians the proverbial middle finger.

The reaction from the Anti-Smacking Act’s architects and supporters has been predictably unpalatable. Stunningly, Sue Bradford called it “inconclusive,” showing once again the authoritarian love affair with language-revision.

National party stalwart Richard Griffin, when asked if would it be “plain rude of John Key to ignore” the vote, said “Not at all. This is not a major political issue. This government is driven by other criteria; there are far more important things to deal with. This government is about global trade relationships. It’s not about social engineering.” Well, all the more reason to repeal the Act then, eh.

His political radio counterpart from further left, John Pagani, said of the 1.4 million-plus voters who returned a “no” vote, that “the question posed isn’t the same as what the referendum advocates are calling for.” That because the wording on the ballot paper never said to change the law, the “no” voters “have no idea what the law should be changed to.”

And the Prime Minister went even further by stating that it would “derail Parliament if it went back to the House for a vote” and that the voters “didn’t necessarily say they want the law changed.”

I have news for Bradford, Griffin, Pagani, Key and the myriad of commentators who insist upon wrongly referring to the 1.4 million-plus voters as “the pro-smackers.”

This issue, as noted again on this blog yesterday, was never about smacking or not smacking children. It was never about preventing or not child abuse. It was about opposing state intrusion into private lives, period.

Notwithstanding the previously-stated shortcomings of referendums per se, the overwhelming “No!” vote is a lonely victory for individual freedom in this increasingly centralised country, made all the more astonishing in the face of a surreptitious campaign to deter voters from bothering to return their ballot papers at all.

Regarding the latter, John Key lead the charge by channelling Helen Clark in his arrogant assertion that nothing would change as a result of the referendum. He stubbornly insisted that the law “was working,” a mantra that was echoed by some in the media, along with playing the “referendum-question-is-confusing” record on high rotate.

And the Greens, in a world-first, harped on about the “wasted cost to the taxpayer” of $8-9 million; the same Greens who were only yesterday grizzling about cuts to Adult and Community Education totalling, according to Russel Norman, “only $13 million; (which is) pretty small in the scheme of things for government funding.” But then the Greens love people who want more government. The opinions of the 100 or so who attended the public meeting in Wellington to force others to fund their Night Classes are far more important to the Green party than those of the thousands who opposed the Bradford Bill. Further, the Greens conveniently forget that they were part of the Government that refused to allow the ballot to be inexpensively held on Election Day last November, citing “voter confusion.”

Meanwhile, the child abusers continue to freely inflict their torture upon little children, with not a peep from Saviour Sue on the horrific occasion of every new case.

The Referendum question was not confusing, nor do the “no” respondents, of which I was one, have “no idea” what they want from the result. On the contrary, the legions demonstrating on the streets and in every poll ever undertaken knew exactly what they wanted prior to the Act’s arrogant imposition: ‘No’ to the Bradford/Clark/Key Rewriting of Section 59 of the Crimes Act.

Section 59 should never have been repealed, child abuse always being rightly and properly prohibited. If creating legislation was the key to solving problems, the Soviet Union would have been a paradise. It wasn’t. However Bradford had a firm ally in Clark, who was looking to a future that figured the United Nations and to hell with the wishes of New Zealanders.

John Key, conversely, ought to take note. The law is decidedly not working when citizens are fearful of authority. He should remember who works for whom. If his government is not the Nanny State government, he can demonstrate that by repealing the Anti-Smacking Act.

It shouldn’t take long. I’ll happily provide the match.

* * Read Susan Ryder’s column every Tuesday here at NOT PC * *

UPDATE 1:  Feel free to borrow from anything here to write your own letter to that nice Mr Key.  Here’s a letter written by a colleague to that nice Mssss Bradford:

Dear Ms Bradford,
    I am writing to register my dismay that, despite a 9:1 rejection of your
"anti-smacking" law, you seem unwilling to concede that the overwhelming
majority of New Zealanders do not support your position. Rather, you choose
to insult us by insinuating that the result was skewed because we apparently
could not understand the question and voted the wrong way. Now I can
appreciate that you might find the question difficult or confusing, but I
would submit that is more a reflection on you than the general New Zealand
public.
    I lived for seven years in a country where smacking was banned and I
witnessed firsthand some of the consequences. Among other things, my wife
was assaulted by a 10 year old boy while 5 months pregnant: kicked at full
strength in the lower abdomen because the child did not want eye drops put
in his eyes. It took both parents to hold the boy down and hold his head
still for the drops to be administered, while the child screamed and fought
every inch of the way. Everyone in the department could hear what was
happening including other patients. It was a humiliating and degrading
experience for all concerned, including the child.
    Why did this happen? Because the parents, like so many other parents in that
country, had had no control over the child since the day he was born. It was
a topic much discussed in the general society: there was real confusion and
uncertainty amongst parents about how to cope with their uncontrollable
children, and yet the government trumpeted the virtue of the wonderful,
enlightened law they had foisted on society.
    I would respectfully submit that that government, like you, was blissfully
out of touch with the realities of daily life and the consequences of such
unwanted and unwarranted governmental intrusion into our daily lives.
In conclusion, I would appreciate a public apology for the gratuitous
insult you have delivered to the 87.6% that voted against your law, and an
acknowledgement that it is not the government's role to interfere in how we
raise our families.
    Sincerely,
    P----- P----

UPDATE 2: As has been said before, the problem with Bradford’s law is not just that it is non-objectively derived (i.e., smacking is not beating) but also that it’s non-objectively articulated. As Professor Jim Evans said not so long ago of the Bradford/Clark/Key law:

    This is not clear legislation. In creating this law, Parliament abandoned its constitutional responsibility to say with clarity just which conduct is criminal.
    The section results from a political fudge. Whatever other views one takes about the topic of smacking, that much at least ought to be kept clear.

Evans’s point: no-one has a bloody clue in`advance of acting what’s legal and what’s illegal -- and new “guidelines” sent to the police isn’t going to change that.

It’s a bit like rugby’s rules on what you can do in the ruck, eh.  New guidelines sent to referees isn’t going to make things any clearer for the players heading at full tilt into the next contest; only a fully objective rule change is going to help.

Madeleine has a post on the sort of change that’s needed to bring clarity to the dog’s breakfast of Section 59: Dear Cabinet . . .

UPDATE 3: A lot of well-articulated anger directed at the Prime Minister this morning for the arrogance of not listening (now doesn’t that remind you of another Prime Minister).

• From the MacDoctor: “John Key claims that, with respect to the anti-smacking bill, the “law is working” He is right. The repeal of Section 59 was designed to criminalise using force to correct children It is working very well indeed. Most parents are now criminals. All the ones who have smacked their child within the past two years…
      But the law is working well.
      No, we don’t smack any more. We no longer have any control over our children in a public place. Yesterday, I saw a woman attempting to “persuade” her child out of her tantrum. It was very sad. A grown woman reduced to begging her two-year-old. I saw the look of triumph on that little girl’s face and knew she was doomed, her only means of learning self-control removed by the power of this law.
      Still, the law is working well.
      That nice Mr. Key says so.”
• Lindsay Mitchell: Go ahead - break the law - “I am unspeakably angry at the government's, no, John Key's reaction to the referendum. But I shouldn't be. Smacking is effectively against the law and that is how it will stay. But those authorities that administer the law are being told to act like it isn't.”
• Oswald: What an opportunity lost for the Nats - “With an 88% backing, a great opportunity was lost to score some serious points.You stand up in public and state "Now that you have spoken, we understand the true extent of your feelings on this isssue and we will move to repeal this law immediatly."But no, you screwed the pooch.”
• Liberty Scott: Child abusers need to be bribed - “So is the philosophy of leftwing columnist John Minto. After bemoaning child abuse figures in his Stuff blog, he has found a magic solution for it - give them more unearned money.”
• Liberty Scott: Ready to punch your kids? - “Presumably the vote on the badly worded smacking referendum means that New Zealanders predominantly want it to be legal to punch your kids in the face or smack them over the head with concrete - that's what you voted for, right? With this sort of nonsense from the child nationalisation lobby…”
• NZ Conservative: Changing the smacking law would derail parliament! - “On NewsTalkZB this morning John Key said that if they changed the smacking law, it would "Derail Parliament."
      Derail Parliament???
      Unbelievable!”
• NZ Conservative: John Key Lied Today - “John Key lied today, as reported in this mornings DomPost. He said words to the effect that "smacking is legal". This is what the act says:
          (2) Nothing in subsection (1) or in any rule of common law justifies the use of force for the purpose of correction.
      How clearer could this possibly be? . . .  We need to respect the laws, not be told to ignore them. If this results in injustice, the law must be changed to be just.
      It is hard to debate when even the Prime Minister willfully misrepresents the facts.”

It’s that “even the Prime Minister” bit that gets me, as if things were going to be different with the Blue Team in charge.

No comment, of course, from Adolph’s No Minister blog apart from this piece by Lou Taylor that slipped through on Saturday.  Since then they’ve been as silent on the issue as Labour’s Red Alert blog. (Now there’s an irony for you.) No surprise of course, If Adolph was a woman he’d be queuing up to have John Key’s babies.

It was never just about smacking, you know [update 4]

The primary focus of the anti-smacking brigade is not smacking.  Once you understand that, you will understand their reaction to the weekend’s poll.  The primary focus of the anti-smacking brigade is not smacking, and it was never about child abuse. It was always about control.  They have used reasonable misgivings about smacking and widespread outrage at child abuse to advance an agenda of state control that has been enabled  by politicians too dim to realise they’re being used.

This morning’s cabinet meeting would be a good time for John Boy to realise that.

In case you hadn’t noticed, statists like Cindy Kiro and Sue Bradford want the state to be part of your family. The original intention of Sue Bradford’s private member’s bill: to ban smacking outright, was entirely consistent with her Marxist philosophy of state control in all facets of life – it was the Trojan Horse  by which she and Cindy hoped to get the state into the family. That’s the agenda here, a much wider one than the way you discipline your children – and an important one to realise when “compromise” is on the cards, as it will be again at this morning’s cabinet meeting.

You can see that wider agenda at work in 'Surveillance Cindy’s' plan for clipboard-wielding Stasis examining every family in the country against criteria set by Cindy Kiro and her children's commissariat.  Don’t raise your kids like Cindy tells you, and you’ll feel the wrath of the apparatchiks.

You can see  it in  Sue Bradford’s long-standing support for Stalinist Cindy’s scheme, and in her and Catherine Delahunty’s Marxist training school Kotare – what Delahunty describes in this speech outlining the Kotare School's aims as "a centre for radical and liberating education for social change."  (Part 2 is here.)

You can see it in Sue Bradford’s announcement in the wake of her anti-smacking amendment being passed that "This [was] very much the end of the beginning."

You can see it too in her utter disregard for the effect of the anti-smacking amendment on good parents, and in their lack of interest in those parents who are still killing their kids, which outrages happen each time without a word from primary sponsor of the amendment that was (it was alleged) intended to stop these violent assaults.

But this was never about smacking, not really.  It always has been about control – control not of bad parents but of good ones. The tragedy still is that only one side seems to understand that.

UPDATE 1: MacDoctor takes on the statistical “confusion” about the result exhibited by the control freaks.

UPDATE 2:  Danyl at Dim Post beautifully satirises some of the likely changes to the anti-smacking law, including :

• Alter font of Section 59 amendment from Courier12 to Times New Roman.
• Initiate second non-binding referendum to ask voters if they understood question in previous referendum.
• Key to address Families First meeting, stand at podium with shit-eating grin and demand to know who the fuck else they’re going to vote for.

UPDATE 3:  It’s worth remembering that it wasn’t just John Key who turned tail on his original opposition to Bradford’s Bill, and who emailers, commenters, Twitterers and Facebookers should now be pressuring to reconsider his first instincts.  What about all those National Party turncoats who stood up on the steps of Parliament in April 2007 swearing total opposition to the anti-smacking amendment, and then in May 2007 filed obediently into the lobbies to vote for it. I’m talking about National Socialist sell-outs Chester Borrows, Shane Ardern, Toe-rag Henare, Maurice Wimpianson and Judith ‘Don’t-Believe-A-Word-I-Say’ Collins.

Get onto them and tell them now to have the courage of whatever convictions they pretended to have back in April 2007.

mailto:chester.borrows@parliament.govt.nz
mailto:shane.ardern@parliament.govt.nz
mailto:tau.henare@parliament.govt.nz
mailto:m.williamson@ministers.govt.nz
mailto:j.collins@ministers.govt.nz

(And if you’re super-keen, then as a commenter advises send the buggers a letter. "MP name, parliament" is all that it needs. No stamp required. Emails are much much easier to delete than letters, which will all be delivered physically to the MP’s office.)

UPDATE 4:  Interesting that the Reds’ Red Alert blog hasn’t mentioned a thing on the referendum. Seems their beloved democracy gave them a good smacking on this occasion.

And interesting too that the Reds’ luminary, Braying Oddwords, chose to mention it on Saturday only with a photo of Larry Baldock punching the air in celebration and the caption “A Picture Worth a Thousand Words.”  (FWIW, I left the comment “You do spin well here, don’t you,” but Oddwords wasn’t interested in my comment and it never made the main page.

Quote of the day: On children

"Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food and tyrannize their teachers."
…………………………………………  - Socrates [hat tip Stephen Hicks]

Anti-smacking law is non-objective

Says Professor Jim Evans on the Bradford/Clark/Key law:

    This is not clear legislation. In creating this law, Parliament abandoned its constitutional responsibility to say with clarity just which conduct is criminal.
    The section results from a political fudge. Whatever other views one takes about the topic of smacking, that much at least ought to be kept clear.  [Hat tip Lindsay Mitchell]

The anti-smacking law is not objective law.  Just vote NO.

Don’t smack.

There are other alternatives to smacking children, you know. The Onion has one: a new baby-safe ball that makes shaking babies safe.  And here’s another: condoms

Paying for views you oppose

One of the chief evils of offices of political advocacy is that taxpayers opposed to views which they hold to be wrong-headed, destructive or plain vicious are required, nonetheless, to dip into their pockets and pay for bureaucrats to promote those views.  Paid political activists whose time is paid for by their opponents – what could be more outrageous!

Latest example of this outrage is a magazine issued by the Families Commission which fiercely upholds the power of  government employees to enter your home and tell you how to discipline your children.  While Families Commissioner Christine Rankin has been told by her bosses to keep her mouth shut on matters pertaining to the anti-smacking referendum, you and I and and the opponents of the anti-smacking legislation are having our pockets picked to pay for advocacy which we oppose.  Advocates like Bob McCoskrie of Families First and his supporters are required to find the money to promote the “No” vote campaign, while all the while being required to up the tab for their opponents as well.

Such is the evil of offices of political advocacy like the Families Commission, which opposes the sanctity of the family, or the Children’s Commissioner, which under Cindy Kiro favours the nationalisation of children.

Into this debate steps Stephen Franks, arguing that things have gone so far that it is time to consider the heresy of “a new publicly funded agency to remedy failure in the marketplace of ideas”: an Office of Devil’s Advocacy – and office paid to provide opposition to the paid political advocates of the “dreary anointed.”

Sounds like a job I might enjoy – if, that is, I could stomach the heresy of picking my opponents’ pockets to pay for the unpalatable advocacy I’d be required to promote.  :-)

Smack go the courts

Last week I quoted John Key’s now infamous comment on the Bradford/Clark/Key anti-smacking law that “To date I have not seen any evidence that it is not working.”

I quoted MacDoctor, who says the real damage is “being felt in family dynamics, not in law enforcement. There is considerable fear, uncertainty and doubt about the new law and what is really acceptable.”

Lindsay Mitchell offers further evidence today that the real damage lies in both quarters – that “the police can and will prosecute any degree of force on hearsay” and use the full weight of this non-objective law* to sow uncertainty, doubt, disorientation and dejection.  Read her story and weep with her.
                                                                                       * * * * * * * *

* What do I mean by non-objective law?  Among other things, Objective law requires that folk “know clearly, and in advance of taking an action, what the law forbids them to do (and why), what constitutes a crime and what penalty they will incur if they commit it.”  Only a fool could suggest that the Bradford/Clark/Key anti-smacking law fits that bill, as the case reported by Lindsay Mitchell highlights. An entry on this topic in the Ayn Rand Lexicon describes the future for family dynamics under such a law:

When men are caught in the trap of non-objective law, when their work, future and livelihood are at the mercy of a bureaucrat’s whim, when they have no way of knowing what unknown “influence” will crack down on them for which unspecified offense, fear becomes their basic motive . . .  Non-objective law is the most effective weapon of human enslavement: its victims become its enforcers and enslave themselves.

And at this point we’re back to MacDoctor’s argument that the real damage is being felt in family dynamics, not in law enforcement – in this light we can now see the damage in the former is due to the non-objective rent in the latter.

LIBERTARIAN SUS: Assaulting adults

Susan Ryder smacks a few politicians wriggling amid bogus ambiguity.

Last Sunday marked the second anniversary of what is commonly known as the Anti-smacking Act, (ie the amendment to section 59 of the Crimes Act), just a few days after the announcement of the upcoming referendum on the Act by postal ballot.

A lot can happen in a few days and it did. Hell seemed to break loose. Seemingly every man and his dog pronounced the referendum question “confusing” and “ambiguous”. The cost of the referendum popped up, too. Oddly enough, the people in that camp were opposed to any law change. “The law is working well!” they cried. “Nobody’s been criminalised! “It’s not an issue anymore!”

All that huff and puff demands a good look at the question:

Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?

Because you’re confused, children – er, adults – I’ll explain it to you. You have two choices of response: Yes or No.

Yes, it should be a criminal offence, (or)

No, it should not be a criminal offence

So far, so good; not a lot of confusion there. And as for any ambiguity, if anything it favours the Act’s supporters whom we’ll call the pro-Antis, for the hell of it.

The cost of holding the referendum is estimated at approximately $8 million. Comparatively, the estimated cost of the proposed national cycleway is $50 million. Well, the Greens like bikes so no problem there. And a whopping $550 million was buried deep within the recent budget as being earmarked for ‘climate change’. Whatever that entails, it’s reasonable to believe that the Greens won’t be averse to it. The state-worshipping pro-Antis – never ones to worry about taxpayers as a rule – will have to come up with a better reason than expense.

Having said that, it is worth remembering that the referendum wouldn’t have cost an extra cent had it been added to last year’s general election voting papers as suggested at the time. But Helen Clark was quick to quash that suggestion as being “too confusing”. I have no doubt that, based on every poll taken prior to the Act’s passing, the result of ..

“Do you approve of Sue Bradford’s Anti-Smacking Act – yes or no?”

.. would have been a virtual smack for both Helen Clark and John Key. And we know that politicians of any colour cannot bear to lose face.

Speaking of colour, in its press release last Sunday, the Green party said that the law was working well, giving “children the same legal protection from assault as adults”.

I think we should send a copy of George Orwell’s 1984 to the Greens. They appear to need a reminder of the dangers of Orwellian Newspeak, ie language revision. They have forgotten that assaulting children was always a crime. They have forgotten that those parents who used section 59 in defence of their actions were always in danger of having to explain themselves in a court of law. They have forgotten that a smack on the hand is not synonymous with brutality and never has been. And in their self-importance to proclaim their role in protecting the ‘chooldren’, they miss the irony in their blatant assault upon parental rights to child discipline within the bounds of the law, as it stood for so long.

It is also worth recalling the original intention of Sue Bradford’s private member’s bill: to ban smacking outright. This aim is in keeping with her Marxist philosophy of state control in all facets of life. The bill was controversial from day one, with polls overwhelmingly opposed.

According to a Family First press release from last week, John Key said this at the time:

"The Labour government [said Key] has shown utter contempt for New Zealanders and the democratic process with its plan to railroad the anti-smacking bill through Parliament. The Labour-led Government knows the measure is deeply unpopular, so it plans to act against the wishes of the majority of Kiwis and ram the bill through under urgency. This is a deeply cynical abuse of power as Labour tries to clear the decks on the controversial issue. Helen Clark has refused to let her MPs vote the way they really think on this bill. To ram it through under the cover of urgency shows just how out of touch her government has become."

That was what John Key said then. Then National MP Chester Borrows jumped in with a proposed amendment. Bradford saw red – appropriately – and swore to “pull” her bill if any amendment was forthcoming. What happened next was pure politics with quiet deals being done and before you could say ‘flip-flop’, the Borrows amendment was adopted, Bradford was buttoned and Clark neatly shifted the argument to being one of “stopping the heinous abuse”. The bill’s passing was all but guaranteed when John Key bought into it, ignoring his prior rhetoric.

Two years down the track and the abuse has not stopped, mongrels having little time for the law. And political mongrels show no sign of altering welfare laws that pay people to have children they neither want nor care for.

It is crucial to note that those opposed to the Bill are not necessarily in favour of smacking children as a form of discipline, nor are they necessarily promoting smacking as a form of discipline.

The issue here is one of state interference and what it can lead to. As such, I remain staunchly opposed to this Act and shall be voting NO in this referendum.

Those who believe in the virtue of limited government can only do likewise.

* * Read Susan Ryder's column here every Tuesday at NOT PC * *

Smacking referenda

In the wake of John Key effectively rejecting in advance the results of the forthcoming referendum on smacking, I’ve been inundated with emails from folk calling for NZ to embrace the concept of “binding referenda.”  The latest such missive

If politicians are going to take referenda seriously . . . they should also be considering the right of citizens to have their will enforced, and make all referendums binding. If they are not binding they are not worth the paper they are written on.

I have a couple of problems with hanging my hat on that idea.

The first objection goes to motive. The enthusiasm for binding referenda is rooted in the feeling that politicians don’t listen to us – which is true.  But since I don’t see any sign of politicians presently taking binding referenda seriously, not at least as long as the two-party capture of the body politic remains in place, I’d suggest that persuading them that they should take the idea seriously becomes about as difficult as persuading turkeys to vote for Christmas – and if you have that sort of persuasive power then you’d hardly need binding referenda to make your voice heard.

The second objection is more substantive. It’s that binding referenda do not represent an increase in freedom. Not at all.

In fact, the idea behind binding referenda is that the will of the majority should always be enforced; that unlimited majority rule is always right.  Nothing could be more dangerous, or more destructive of real freedom. It’s not just that the majority is not always right, but that unlimited majority rule puts in danger every “minority” who disagrees – and the smallest “minority” is the individual. As the ghost of Socrates might tell you, in any battle between an individual and the community under such a system, it’s the individual’s life that is forfeit.

And as the people of Iran might presently tell you, even if the majority did vote for Ahmadinejad, that doesn’t make it right. As  Walter Williams reminds us, "Democracy and majority rule [can] give an aura of legitimacy to acts that would otherwise be deemed tyranny." Principled government is not built on majority rule, but on individual rights.  Hanging your hat on the verisimilitude of a vote is not the way to bring freedom to Iran, or to anywhere (are you listening President Obama?).  Hanging your hat on a system of constitutionally protected individual rights would be.

That said, I’ll still be voting in the forthcoming referendum on smacking.  And I’ll be voting “no.” Even if the politicians refuse to listen to the result, which by their hysterical reactions over the wording of the referendum we can pretty easily predict, the overwhelming message is going to be hard to ignore.

And parents deserve to have their children back from the clutches of those so abjectly ignorant as to be unable to distinguish between smacking and beating, between assault and reasonable parental force. 

You might object, as John Key does, that “To date I have not seen any evidence that it is not working” – that there have been no court cases indicating the law isn’t working, no good parents being criminalised, no police resources wasted on fruitless inquiries, no children snatched from their parents’ hands by uncaring state monitors.

But that completely misses the point, doesn’t it.  The anti-smacking law hasn’t stopped parents beating and killing their children, has it, even though Sue Bradford insisted it would. And as MacDoctor says however, hanging this particular hat on some very short-term outcomes rather misses the more important point.

    The problem is, as I have blogged before, that the effects of the repeal of section 59 are actually being felt in family dynamics, not in law enforcement. There is considerable fear, uncertainty and doubt about the new law and what is really acceptable. Listening to someone like Bradford, one would assume that a smack on the bottom is the equivalent of true child abuse , on the scale of Nia Glassie. The net result of this uncertainty is a reduction in the use of smacking – a result that the advocates of the repeal applaud. Unfortunately, the unintended consequence of this is that some parents will lack the skill-set to use some other form of discipline, resulting in the use of no discipline at all.
    Thus the true consequences of the repeal of section 59 will not be seen in 2 years, but in 15 years time when undisciplined children become undisciplined youth. But you can already see some of the consequences already. Noticed an increase in very unruly children recently? It is very noticeable in my consulting rooms. There have always been inquisitive kids and some downright hyperactive ones, but there is now an obvious flurry of toddlers who wander round the consulting room utterly unsupervised, barring an occasional protest from the parent. My observation is purely anecdotal, of course, but I am willing to bet that doctors reading this blog know what I am talking about. I am also willing to bet that other readers have noticed an increase in badly behaved children in public places.
    Let me be clear. I do not think that smacking is a particularly effective form of discipline. I do not subscribe to the idea that “spare the rod and spoil the child” means “beating your kids is your duty as a parent” (the rod in that passage is a rod of authority, not a weapon). But I think other forms of (non-violent) discipline require considerably more skill as a parent than smacking. It seems to me that a more measured way of reducing smacking in our society is to assist parents by improving their skills in other disciplinary forms, rather than removing the only form of discipline to which they have access.

I agree completely with that. How' ‘bout you?

Time to overturn the anti-smacking law

MacDoctor makes much sense on Jimmy Mason’s conviction for punching his four-year-old in the face – a crime that was illegal before Sure Bradford and is still illegal now.  As such, as MacDoctor says, “It is not even remotely a test case for the new legislation.”

This is not to say at that the Bradford/Clark/Key anti-smacking law should “trundle along unattended to, on the grounds that [we] are not seeing large numbers of convictions under the new law. This is a dangerous illusion. The damage is being done to thousands of toddlers as I type.”

This is the damage to children of receiving no discipline at all – since under the fear, uncertainty and doubt of brought in by the new anti-smacking regime, no parent now knows what the hell they’re legally allowed to do with their own children. The resulting horror stories of good parents being hounded for administering a light tap and other parents simply giving up on any parental discipline whatsoever is frankly  “far worse for children than the inappropriate punch of Jimmy Mason.”

MacDoctor makes a good argument for reinstating the legal protection of Section 59 immediately.  Read Not Smacking and see if you can disagree.

Uptown Top Rankin [updated]

There must surely be many more useless government departments than the Fatuous Family’s Commission, and there is surely fierce competition for the spot, but the government department created by the Clark Government as a bribe to keep Peter Dunne on side (and to foster the illusion that his years in parliament had actually achieved something) must be the most well known as a prime candidate for the chop.

What has it actually achieved? Nothing. What was it supposed to achieve? To fool Done-Nothing's supporters into thinking he'd achieved something in his career.

So when former bureaucrat Christine Rankin was appointed to the position of head of the Fatuous Commission yesterday it hardly made my heart sing. Yes, she took the right stand on the anti-smacking bill promoted by Sue Bradford (who yesterday was disgracefully characterising Rankin as being a promoter of violence towards children) but she’s still just a wasteful bloody bureaucrat in charge of a department that should not exist.

So that’s what I was thinking as I listened to her interviewed on Newstalk ZB last night. That anyone who could make both Sue Bradford and Peter Done-Nothing expose their true character can't be all bad (and aren't they nasty when they're crossed) , but this is still just another high-spending bureaucrat in charge of just another useless quango.

But then she said something that made my jaw drop. Larry Williams put to her that very point – that the Families Commission was nothing more than a political creation, by expediency out of MMP, and a complete waste of time, space and money – and she agreed. And she said that if after examination she still held that view, then she would be working to close it down.

I’ve never heard a bureaucrat say that before – even with those few weasel words. So just this once, I’m going to support the appointment of a new bureaucrat, no matter how wasteful she's been in the past. Well done Ms Rankin. You now have a year’s grace before I see you as just another jobsworth.

Here’s a song which may or may not be related to this discussion:

 UPDATE:  Oops.  A commenter points out that Rankin isn’t boss, “she's only one of seven. Also look up the FamCom website to check out the drivel they produce. The thing should have been abolished....full stop.”

Parenting advice from Sun Tzu

Now that one iniquity created by the Clark Government has been removed, it’s time to address some others.  How about the Anti-Smacking Bill, in which the present PM is still implicated.

One of the worst errors forced on parents by those who were unable to distinguish between smacking and beating (yes, I’m talking to you Sue Bradford) was the legally enforced confusion between assault and reasonable parental force.

There is a difference.  A distinct difference.

Rational Jenn has a great post that explains the difference perfectly, and concretises why reasonable parental force is sometimes so crucially necessary: The Art Of War For Parents.

Think of it as the necessary update to Sun Tzu.

Don't ban force

It became obvious over the last few years to anyone with a brain that a vast number of people in positions of political power were absolutely unable to discriminate between smacking and beating

For the likes of Sue Bradford and Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro, a firm open-handed smack on a child's bottom is no different than a beating delivered with a vacuum cleaner pipe or a piece of 4"x2".

So much for Ms Bradford's and Ms Kiro's ability to discriminate.

They provided further evidence of this mote in both eyes over the weekend, showing themselves utterly unable to determine any difference between a child initiating force against another child, and a teacher using force in defence of of that child -- ie., between violence, which is never justified, and retaliatory force, which is our right. [For more on the difference, see my 'Cue Card' on Force.]

When "top youth aid cop" Inspector Chris Graveson quite properly -- and in the current cultural climate, courageously -- pointed out that  "Teachers should not be afraid to 'man-handle' violent children if they pose immediate risks [to others], even if it means leaving bruising,"  Bradford and her confreres were ready to pounce.

    "You hear people saying, `You can't touch children. You can't do this, you can't do that'.  (But) if a child's being attacked, you're duty-bound to intervene," Graveson said at a New Zealand Educational Institute seminar in Wellington on Friday...

To which Bradford responded: "Teachers can use force to stop a child from causing harm to themselves and others [and I'm sure they're grateful for the Bradford/Key/Clark Act limiting that force] ... But what concerns me with the comments from the police officer is you can use force up to the level of bruising the child.  That might lead to some teachers using what I would consider unreasonable force."

And education minister Chris Carter responded: "There are policies to deal with disruptive and violent children... The problem with what the officer has said is he's taken a broad-brush approach to what is actually very specific and rare cases."

And the Office of the Children's Commissioner  responded that "it was never appropriate to bruise a child."

Never?  As the Timaru Herald asks, are they in the real world, these people? How will a "policy" help Hemi when Hone's beating him over the head with a chair?  How can it be "never appropriate" to drag Johnny off Jemima with peremptory force when he's beating her to a pulp (and as Graveson points out, "Serious sexual offenders as young as 12, who would be labelled paedophiles if they were adults, [for] preying on young victims")? 

How could one ever think it "unreasonable" to protect young victims from the classroom bullies and thugs who would take them over if the "sense" that Kiro and Carter and Bradford exhibit ever became too common.

The point is this: it's not just desirable to discriminate between force and defensive force -- between coercion and self-defence -- it's essential. Indeed, as Ayn Rand points out, it's the very basis of a rational politics:

Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. A holdup man seeks to gain a value, wealth, by killing his victim; the victim does not grow richer by killing a holdup man. The principle is: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force.

Don't ban force, ban the initiation of force -- because by making retaliatory force illegal, all you do is increase the violence.

See the history of pacifism for countless examples -- like this one.

Child abuse needs urgent action

In reaction to the wave of brutality on children since the start of this year, a litany of horror itemised on the front page of today's Herald under the news that a four-month-old Papakura baby is on life support after "non accidental" head injuries, Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro says "a lot of the problem came back to how the abusive parents were raised themselves.  It is time something is done," she says, "to ensure we get it right for the next generation."

She's right of course.  Something must be done.  Urgently.  Three deaths and multiple cases of brutality since January this year -- atrocities that parents and step-parents are inflicting on their own children -- shows that whatever is being done now is not only not working to protect children, it's actively putting hem in harm's way. 

Something must be done.

The first thing that must be done follows from the fact that Kiro and her predecessors have used their office not to advance the cause of children, but for the sole purpose of grasping every opportunity to advance the nationalisation of New Zealand children.  Her office should be be disestablished forthwith.

The second thing that must happen follows from the failure of Sue Bradford and John Key's anti-smacking law to do anything at all to arrest the tidal wave of brutality, which is its immediate abolition and the return of  the power of honest discipline of their offspring to good New Zealand parents -- who are being punished for the sins of the few without the few themselves even feeling the effect.

The third thing that should happen follows from identifying the nature of those who are predominantly killing their children, which is predominantly children who kill their own children, i.e., people who are paid by taxpayers to have children they don't want , who kill those unwanted children with barely a moment's reflection -- and sometimes pause to eat McDonalds as they head off to hospital to drop off the bodies. 

The overarching answer is obvious: It's time to stop paying no-hopers to breed.  Here's how to do it.

UPDATE:  Liberty Scott points out there's a few more things that need to be done, in addition to the cessation of paying no-hopers to breed.

On not smacking Helen

Helen Clark says there's no way the referendum on the anti-smacking law can be held at the same time as the general election since there's just no way it can be organised in time.

For her part, Sue Bradford says she says she is "quite relaxed" about the timing of a referendum because she "respects the democratic process" and the work people went to to get the signatures on the petition.

Why the difference?  Obvious, really.  Whatever the extra cost involved in a later referendum, Clark doesn't want the referendum held at the time of the general election since she doesn't want the election itself to be a referendum on the nanny state -- which is what the anti-smacking law represents to many people, including moi.

And is there "no way" the referendum on the anti-smacking law can be held at the same time as the general election?   Of course not.  Not even Clark believes that.  Not unless she's planning an early election...
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* Not that the reasoning makes complete sense, mind you, since both Labour and National voted for the anti-smacking-bloody-law, and neither are any less nanny state than the other -- nor are their respective supporters any less deluded.

And National haven't even promised to repeal the damn law, not even if a referendum were successful.  All Key has said if the process under way to force a referendum was successful was it would be something "National would take very seriously."  WTF?

"Minor, trivial and inconsequential" harassment of parent

When Sue Bradford, John Key and Helen Clark introduced the Nationalisation of NZ Children (Anti-Smacking) Act last year, we were told that "minor, trivial or inconsequential" incidents would not be covered by the law.  Parents should have "confidence that they will not be criminalised for lightly smacking their children," said Key.  "Police will use their discretion," said Clark. Police will not be enforcing charges against minor force such as smacking, said Bradford.

All bullshit.

In the first court case taken under the Bradford/Key/Clark Anti-Smacking Act, a Glen Innes man was kept from his children for months, held in prison, and harassed by police for the alleged crime of disciplining his children, only to get to court yesterday to find the police had no evidence against him.  That's right, no evidence at all. The judge dismissed the case because the police had exercised their "discretion" under the law, harassed the father by means of the law, and when it came time to front up declared they had no evidence even of the minor discipline of his own children the man was alleged to have exercised.

The man's lawyer Tony Bouchier points out:

"When the whole issue was being discussed in Parliament and in public, they said that minor matters would not end up in court, it would only be the serious ones," he said.  "I am not condemning the police for protecting children, but the public were given assurances that the police would consider this law carefully, and in this case they have not."

It should be immediately obvious how much the assurances of a politician are worth. Bouchier says his client had pushed one of the girls to get her to hurry for school and threw the jeans at the other to get her attention.

Mr Bouchier said that the man was a good and loving father...  it was not the mother of the children who complained, but her sister.  He said there seemed to be some animosity between the father of the children and the sister who had interfered.

Remember when the nationalisers of children were told how their law would be used as a weapon by disgruntled family members against each other?  Remember how those claims were peremptorily dismissed?

We were fed bullshit by bullshitters, and New Zealand parents and families are suffering because of it -- and most of you reading this will go right out in November and vote for one of those three parties that introduced it.  That makes you exactly as bad as those busybodying bastards you're voting for