Mark Ron: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Mark Ron: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:637;Page:8012] 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 I will not take a long call; I simply want to put my views on the record. My view is simply that the passing of this legislation will not prevent there being another James Whakaruru it will not prevent there being another Coral Burrows it will not prevent there being another “Lillybing” and it will not prevent girls such as the Howse girls from being murdered in their beds. This legislation will criminalise caring loving parents caregivers grandparents foster parents and adoptive parents. 
In fact this legislation will leave the police absolutely no choice whatsoever other than to investigate and prosecute every alleged and reported case of child abuse that is a case of smacking. For those who say the Police Association is overstating its case I say it is the association that is telling the mistruth. Those people who counter Mr Greg O’Connor’s views and the views of the Police Association know that when the Police Association said what would happen with lowering the drinking age it did the one thing the police were too scared to do—it told the truth. And it was proven right. 
I also add into the mix the Department of Child Youth and Family which is so often criticised as being a zealot in the way it applies the law. I am waiting for someone to tell me that Child Youth and Family will not be required to swoop on every home where a schoolteacher has reported that a child has come to school and said he or she was smacked. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: The member needs to come back to the commencement. 
RON MARK 
: The commencement of this bill is an abomination. The commencement of this bill will be a blight on society and on good caring parents. The commencement of this bill will see Child Youth and Family with no choice but to act. 
I challenge Sue Bradford. I believe she has her heart in the right place and I believe that in commencing the passage of this bill she was quite rightly focused on child abuse. I applaud her and I thank her for raising those issues. But Miss Sue Bradford is misguided. In relation to the commencement of this bill I will be here along with the other members who like me will vote against it and they will be saying that at the time that Ron Mark warned about these things during the commencement of the bill he was right. In 1 year 2 years we will be looking at the results and saying: “By gee we got it wrong.” 
We do not want to see in the commencement of this bill parents having their children removed from them for months on end while Child Youth and Family which has a national reputation for not always getting it right conducts its investigations. I seriously ask every MP who has been forced against his or her conscience and whipped into voting for this bill to consider what the commencement of this bill means for the rest of the nation. For those who do not have children and grandchildren I challenge them to take up the task of being a parent for 1 week 1 month 1 year or 10 years and tell me that they are right in their view on this bill. 
At the commencement of this bill people need to be thinking very clearly about one simple fact: children commit acts of violence even though they are not taught to do so. I have seen my own grandchild grab a toy and hit another child. I see nothing wrong with taking that little hand smacking it and saying: “Don’t do that. It hurts and now you know that yourself.” I can say with a lot of pride that I could count on half a hand the number of times I have ever had to physically discipline any of my children. But that does not mean that I should have the right to remove that means of disciplining and guiding children from normal caring loving parents in some misguided belief that I should be adding to the pile of legislation that is meant to have an educative purpose. 
I simply say to those learned people who have said that law needs to be educative and law needs to send messages that that is what we have television advertising for it is why we have an education system it is why we run programmes such as anti-smoking programmes and it is why we jail and imprison people who clearly abuse. That is where the education is best had.