Mark Ron: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Mark Ron: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:638;Page:8472] 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 I rise to take my first call of the evening in this debate and before I go any further I have to say that I respect and support totally the right of New Zealand First caucus members to vote as they see fit on conscience issues. I respect and support totally the right of any member of this Committee to stand up and vote as that member sees fit according to conscience and I totally stand against anyone who would force any member of Parliament to vote against his or her conscience. I have said enough there. That includes everybody in this Chamber.  
I want to dispel some of the myths that have been spread about this bill. Myth No. 1 is that the bill will create a safe and secure environment that is free from violence for all children in Aotearoa New Zealand or indeed on planet Earth. It will not. Myth No. 2 is that the police will not investigate every case that is brought to their attention. The truth of the matter is that the police will have to I tell Mrs Bradford. They will have to do so because one of the fundamental core policies that the police are pursuing in their drive to reduce crime is to act on every reported incidence of family violence and that is something that the Green Party the Labour Government the New Zealand First Party the National Party and the ACT party all support. The police understand fully their responsibility to act on every complaint of family violence. To say now that they will not do so is not true. It misleads and deceives and it is a myth.  
Mrs Bradford in making the comment in this debate that the best torturers in the world know how to hide their work in so far as I am concerned was saying that every person in this Chamber who has ever smacked one of his or her children is a torturer and should be considered and legislated against as though that member were a torturer. Let me tell Mrs Bradford what a Green Party member said about torturers in an article that he wrote some years ago “Cambodia liberated: victory for humanity”. Her colleague Keith Locke wrote: “He rode into Phnom Penh on a Honda and as a lone figure in black pyjamas came to a halt in front of a line of Cambodian armoured vehicles it was hard to say who was more scared.” That man who trumpeted the victorious actions of the Khmer Rouge does not mention that when the Viet Namese liberated the city of Phnom Penh which was previously a city of a million people they found 75 people there. That was torture I say to Mrs Bradford; that was condoning violence I say to her.  
Smacking children in order to protect them from danger—the type of discipline that I would imagine every member of this Committee who is a parent might well have had to resort to as a last resort—is not torture. It is very disappointing I say to Mrs Bradford that one has to stand up and condemn the idiots who have sent me some of the emails that extol why I should vote against this bill in support of their views—emails that I regret and wish I had never read. The people who have written those emails to me fit into exactly the same category as Mrs Bradford now does by daring to imply that everybody who smacks his or her child is a torturer or condones torture. That is as emotive and misleading as some of the opponents of her bill have demonstrated themselves to be by the claptrap that is cluttering my computer.  
I turn now to the warnings from Tau Henare. Let us just watch to see how litigious matrimonial settlements become now. We all know that the firearms community talks ad nauseam about the best way to pay back a husband who has a few hunting rifles he loves if he is in an acrimonious settlement with his wife: the wife tells the police she is scared of her husband and he has all his firearms taken away. There is not one case not 10 cases and not 50 cases but hundreds of cases of that. Members cannot sit there and tell me that men and women who are locked up in acrimonious settlements will not use their children and under this legislation start to claim that one of the reasons for separating is that the husband or wife has smacked their children.