Borrows Chester: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Borrows Chester: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:639;Page:9286] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I rise to support the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill which is something I among many others thought that I would never do. Many thought as I did that after failed attempts to cut a middle track through the competing and the aligned objectives of both sides of the debate with the promoter Sue Bradford all hope was lost for a mutually acceptable compromise. The fact is that those most scathing of finding a compromise are struck with the same malady we as politicians are consistently and frequently accused and berated for: the will to win. Members of the public chant: “Why can’t you guys sit down and negotiate?” and now we are getting caned so to speak for doing just that. Although these people continually repeat the fact that 83 percent of parents believe that parents who smack their children should not be liable to prosecution nobody has bothered to poll on the support or otherwise of the bill as it is now. That could be because nobody wants to. It could also be because not a lot of people understand the bill as it is now written and I will talk about that shortly. 
I want to cover some of the recent history of the bill and its metamorphosis from a pig’s ear into not quite a silk purse. I repeat that National’s first position was to support my amendment as drafted but as lost through the Committee stage—and prior to that. Initially the bill repealed section 59. After select committee hearings and consideration it did not repeal but amended section 59. There was also a Supplementary Order Paper in my name that sought to cut a middle track and to further protect children from force that had previously been found to be reasonable in the court even though most parents thought it was unreasonable. 
Parties formed hard lines on support of the bill. We entered the Committee stage and debated through to clause 3 before John Key made approaches to Sue Bradford and Helen Clark to find some consensus. This becomes important because clause 3 is the purpose clause so it is the clause that prohibits reasonable force for the purpose of correction. In the clause 3 debate National wished to amend the clause to allow reasonable force for correction. Having lost that debate National have now negotiated an amendment that seems to counter the purpose clause by offering a defence to behaviour the bill seeks to condemn. It is easy to see why people find it difficult. It is not hard to see why some people find it difficult to understand and why they can only wish that Helen Clark had been willing to talk a couple of weeks earlier. The amendment confirms that police have a discretion not to prosecute in cases of inconsequential breaches. This is important because clause 3 as it stands creates an unlawfulness which would not have existed had clause 3 been passed as National sought to amend it. 
What the new bill does is threefold. First it provides in law a counter to current police practice in that it confers upon an individual officer discretion—so it will be case by case—which has up until now been removed by the police family violence policy which is to prosecute on every occasion. Second it provides a defence to parents who use reasonable force for the purpose of correction in the same way as section 59 does presently though in a more limited form. It does this by allowing a court to read widely the terms “inconsequential” and “not in the public interest”. This means that parents should not be held liable for what we would call light smacking—no parent wishes to smack a child in more than an inconsequential manner in any event. Third for the purpose of clarity it should be explained that a narrow reading of the law as it is now written would see the court hold that the amendment acts only as a guide to police. This narrow reading would be inconsistent with the court’s usual interpretation in such matters. It is important to state these points now because parliamentary debates form a secondary source in statutory interpretation so in making these points today in the way I am making them now we provide another defence to parents by way of the expectation that the amendment will be used in this way. 
Those parents who are worried that this legislation will criminalise lightly smacking a child can rest assured that Parliament’s intention is that this should not be the case and if at some future time they find themselves on such a charge they should advise counsel to research  
Hansard  
and cite these comments in their defence. 
I pay tribute to John Key who made an approach for the purpose of protecting parents. He put principle before pride. There is also the clear understanding that if this bill is misused against parents or found not to be working as intended it will be replaced with a more explicit law. I have to say that we have received a number of emails—thousands actually; I will never forget the day when I received a thousand emails in a day in response to this legislation—and a lot of those emails were from people who said we had far more important things to discuss than this legislation. Well the nature of members’ bills is that they are drawn up and go into a ballot and having been drawn from the ballot they come before the Parliament for discussion. I have to say right now that I find nothing more important and worthy of debate than our children because they are the most vulnerable and the most in need of protection within our society. Having opened the debate it was important to work through it in a consistent and logical way. Those people who would rather not debate the issue at all or who would just relegate it to the bin undervalue children in our society. 
One of the most important things that has occurred through the course of this debate is that it has focused the attention of the broad spectrum of the public on the safety of our children the way that we raise our children the methods of discipline that we use and the many many options that are in a community short of using corporal punishment. I applaud for instance the work of those involved in preparing and distributing the SKIP programme and of those who are providing that to the community and I applaud those who have changed their behaviour as parents and are using the programme to be far more creative in the way that they raise their young ones. I believe that the trend will continue similar to the trend in our family. My father was probably beaten less than his father was he smacked me less than he was smacked I smack my children far less than I was smacked and I hope in turn that they will not smack their children at all. 
In any event the reason why I moved my amendment to cut that middle ground was this: parents do use smacking in the discipline of their children. We know that the vast majority of parents in this country do not believe that it is tenable for them acting in what they believe are the best interests of their children to be prosecuted for that. People may argue about it as long as they like but this bill as it is written now protects parents now starting from the implementation of this bill and will in the future. 
I thank those who took part in the select committee process for their goodwill and good faith in the way that we negotiated and heard the submissions. I believe that we have ended up with legislation that is slightly less than where I wanted it to go but—compromise being something refreshingly new to this House—I hope that we have set a bit of a benchmark and that we see a bit more of it in the future.