English Bill: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
English Bill: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:638;Page:8850] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 As the Committee will be aware at a joint press conference this morning John Key and Helen Clark announced a further amendment to the bill. It is one that I expect will have the majority support of Parliament. I want to congratulate John Key on his initiative despite the mean-minded speech given earlier on by Phil Goff who carried on as if he and his leader had sorted all this out. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: That’s where the initiative came from. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Actually I will explain to the Minister where the initiative came from. The initiative came from the leader of the National Party who could see that this legislation had got into a stalemate. We faced the situation where Parliament could pass a law backed by Labour and its supporters that would leave parents without any protection for lightly smacking their children. That fundamentally offended the common sense of New Zealanders and it amounted to bad law for this Parliament because it relied on not being enforced. John Key decided to initiate talks with Sue Bradford. That did not come to anything but it set the ball rolling on this Parliament finding a solution because John Key said a solution should be found. I congratulate him on doing that. 
I want to reflect though on the end result of the long complex discussion that Parliament has had about this bill. We have gone around in a circle because we started out with the Green’s bill that repealed section 59 but now we are going to have a section 59. We are going to have a section 59 because despite the fact that the Greens and whoever else wanted no defence for parents in disciplining their children the select committee and now Parliament have decided there needs to be a defence. So after the 12 or 18 months we have spent we have ended up with a section 59 and the defence has changed from “reasonableness” to “inconsequential”. That is it. 
It is now the case thanks to the initiative today backed by Helen Clark and John Key that parents will have protection. They will not be liable to prosecution for the inconsequential use of force for the purposes of correction. That is what this amendment amounts to. That is what parents always had under section 59 and at this last minute it is what they will now have again as a result of the new section 59 that Parliament will pass. I wonder whether it was all worth it. 
Well it was. What has happened is that the community has sent a strong message to this Parliament that it will not allow the Government any further in the door of its households. It has sent a strong message to this Parliament that the ideological push to separate children and their rights from those of their families in the context of people who care for them has reached its high tide and is now receding. The general public have said they will not let the Government come between themselves and their children—and that zone is about the right the established right and care of a parent to discipline a child. If that is what Parliament takes out of the long complex debate then that will mean a step forward for New Zealand families who have been able to reassert not just the common sense but the genuine depth of the bond between parent and child. It is a bond of love and affection and at times tension at times anger and at times exhaustion nevertheless a bond much deeper than the legislation this Parliament can circumscribe. 
That is why I want to thank John Key. He had an instinctive recognition of that—an instinctive recognition of what the public was telling this Parliament but unfortunately the Labour Party and the Alliance did not. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Before I call the next speaker I inform members that I understand Mr Borrows has withdrawn his amendments. Thank you very much. Gordon Copeland and the Hon Peter Dunne still have their amendments on the paper.