Borrows Chester: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Borrows Chester: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:638;Page:8442] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 The public of New Zealand are hanging on this debate. We are making history here today. Those who come here fighting to protect the rights and relationships of parents and children are fighting not in the best interests of parents although it achieves this but in the best interests of children not to have their parents liable to prosecution because of a smack. Those who approach this from a philosophical approach have the wrong end of the stick because everything they seek to achieve here will never occur. 
Some seek political branding through this bill. Well it is not a chance to brand oneself for election purposes. It is about children their parents and their relationships. It is not about political branding. Then there are the fence-sitters. Some of them will be out of Parliament at the next election. One day they will be asked by their grandchildren: “So what did you do in Parliament Grandad?”. 
Jill Pettis 
: Not much. 
CHESTER BORROWS 
: Jill Pettis is right in her case. 
All they will be able to say is: “I kept my head down and when I had the chance to make a difference I sat on my hands.” How will history paint the future of those people in this place? Being a member of Parliament is a huge privilege denied to many and granted to only a few. In being elected to this Parliament an MP is not sent here to sit on his or her hands. Those of us who are elected to Parliament are sent here to do something. People believe in us as MPs. They have made their selection based on an assessment as to who best represents their beliefs. Nobody came to this Parliament to sit on his or her hands. I ask those members how history will paint them in this matter. 
The only issue directly addressed by this bill is whether parents who smack their children should be liable for prosecution. The next question is: if a protection from prosecution should exist should it be in the law or should it be in practice? The proponents of this bill say that we should leave it to the police and to Child Youth and Family. But the police say “Don’t leave it to us.” At the Justice and Electoral Committee Assistant Commissioner of Police Peter Marshall asked whether we really want to leave lawmaking to our social agencies. The police’s own family violence policy as it is written at the moment makes prosecution mandatory where an offence is disclosed. 
It is MPs who make the law not the police and not Child Youth and Family. Threats to pull the bill if my amendment passes show bad grace. So I say to Sue Bradford that if she does not like the process she should not participate. I have already spoken about the implications for those elected to this Parliament to be active participants in the process. Members put their ideas up for debate. They work damn hard to articulate them they lobby and they sweat blood. Then it is over to the House. We win or we lose. We do not pick up our ball and go home; we do not chuck our toys out of the cot spit the dummy and sulk. 
Sue Bradford’s bill initially sought to repeal section 59 of the Crimes Act and this was a reflection of her philosophical position. There was no surprise. Sue and the rest of the Green Party are activists and it kills them to abstain but they do it in expectation of reward. One of the rewards was Labour support for this bill and Helen Clark promised it without resort to her caucus. She made a press statement before going into the room saying that she expected 100 percent support for the bill from her caucus and she did this knowing that she did not have it. She sold it as a collective conscience issue but there is no collective conscience in the Labour Party; there is only fierce discipline. She knew that there were dissenters in her camp. She knew and she knows now that at least eight of her troops are swallowing rats over this bill and my amendment. Even proponents of the Bradford bill admitted that the amendment made so much sense that many of Labour’s caucus want to vote for the amendment. 
What Labour’s one-time supporters out on the streets say though is that Labour has no regard for them. It has no regard for the 80-plus percent of New Zealanders who disagree with criminalising parents and who have constantly done so in nearly 20 polls and surveys on this issue over the past 2 years. Labour says: “Stuff your beliefs your thoughts your parental relationships. This issue is on our agenda. We’re going to pass it—eat that.” 
I stand here today bringing with me the experience—some would say the baggage—of 30 years of dealing with agencies involved with child abuse. For all the rhetoric around this bill all the “send a message” all the protecting of children and for all of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child nobody on either side of this debate believes that the bill will save one life or one beaten child. There is not a single parent whom this bill will affect who presents a threat to his or her child. Who will it send a message to? Which children are they actually seeking to protect? The Otago University longitudinal study found that children raised in a safe loving and nurturing home who were smacked achieve all the good social educational and financial heights of a child raised in a similar home who is not smacked. Children who are not nurtured in a warm loving relationship do not do so well at all. 
I find it hugely ironic that a Government that refuses to take responsibility for vulnerable people hurt while living in its care—such as the likes of Liam Ashley who was killed in a prison van by a murderer he was handcuffed to like the numerous young people under placement by Child Youth and Family who are abused physically and sexually in foster homes and like those suffering from instances of ECT in mental hospitals—sees it as its role to take responsibility for what goes on in the private homes of good New Zealanders who would otherwise never come to the notice of the police Child Youth and Family or the court system. 
Proponents of this bill have continually spoken about parents who want to beat their children. I doubt whether I have heard anybody from their side talk about a smack. It has always been words like thump whack belt bash and assault. My amendment seeks to strongly limit the use of a section 59 defence by allowing the use of reasonable force for correction. So that is the amendment to this clause: to add to the clause after the word “provision” the words “for the parental control of children by limiting the use of force for the purpose of correction.” As frivolous as opponents would paint this amendment the Law Commission has said that this is a significant limiting of the law as it currently is. That was said by the same commissioner whom Labour stands behind in respect of his opposing opinion to Peter McKenzie QC. 
Labour members cannot have it both ways and they will need to have a think about that. An amendment I have put forward to clause 4 limits the use of section 59 to three minor uses because parents who do more than what is reasonable will be charged with more serious offences. The amendment does not allow the use of implements because they become too hard to define effectively and we would be forced to try to define not only what they were but also how they would be used which would be a hopeless situation. Reasonable force could not be used in a way that is cruel degrading or terrifying. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
CHESTER BORROWS 
: The fifth provision to my amendment seeks to restrict the law as to harm more tightly from where it is now. 
The point has been made that we are writing the law here so as divisive as it may seem we have to be specific in writing that law. Opponents will always twist the need for this into what it is not. They will say that an amendment is in some way compliant with those who beat thump bash and assault their children—as the Prime Minister has been saying lately. I have used a term from the common law to set the most extreme level of force that can be inflicted and that could possibly be saved by this amendment. It is a legal term for the reddening of skin from a smack. In the law it is called “transitory and trifling harm”. Those are not my words and they are not flowery words that have been made up by someone trying to squeeze something into the law as has been suggested; they are legal words and they come from the common law. 
I would bet my life on it that every good parent who has seen that redness feels immediate guilt because the smack was obviously too hard and left a red mark. I have seen the red mark where my hand has smacked a wee bottom and I have frequently eaten myself up about it since. But I do not believe I should be liable to prosecution for it. I am not proud of it and I do not argue it is my right or duty but I do believe I should not be rendered liable for prosecution for having gone to that level. That is where the line is drawn. 
The media and my opponents have tried in every way they can to say that I believe it is OK to hit one’s children. I have never said that. I have not promoted smacking. I have never said the words “It never did me any harm.” which is not an argument for anything. Sue Bradford has said that I take this stand because in her words as she said on the radio: “Well he’s an ex-policeman and a big man so he would wouldn’t he.” 
I take this stand for the children of ordinary New Zealanders. When I am asked by my grandchildren what I did in Parliament I will proudly point to this day as just one example of a stand I took with others to protect the families and future families of this country.