Bradford Sue: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Bradford Sue: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:638;Page:8862] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 I would like to take a call to speak to the two amendments that have come in front of us this afternoon. First of all I thank the majority of members for their support for Mr Dunne’s amendment that has come through today. I acknowledge the way in which Mr John Key approached us—me and Labour—last week for a meeting to try to seriously consider whether there was a way through with this Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill where we could find an amendment so that the National Party could support the bill. 
I thought that meeting was a tremendous initiative because if we had the majority of the House including both major parties behind the bill that would send a great message to the parents and children of this country. And that in fact is what has happened. Although that initial meeting we had last week did not succeed I think that its cordial nature and the fact that Mr Key and his colleagues were well meaning in their intentions—I certainly recognise that—have helped lead to where we are today as have the continued efforts on all our parts to find a way through recognising that we do have common goals in this. So I would like very much to acknowledge Mr Key and Mr English and also Helen Clark for the role she played in trying to think of another way through. 
I thank Chester Borrows for all the work he did on his amendment. He put a tremendous amount of work into it and has had the courtesy to withdraw it today acknowledging that this new amendment—I hope—achieves some of what he was intending to achieve originally but in a very different way. 
The reason that I can accept Mr Dunne’s new amendment rather than Mr Borrows’ is very much around the fact that Mr Dunne’s amendment does not attempt to define the nature and level of force that we are legitimately able to use against our children. I could never accept an amendment like that because it would have put us in a worse position than we are now. This amendment today does not do that. What it does do is to affirm that the police have the discretion not to prosecute when the matter is so inconsequential that there is no public or other interest in pursuing that prosecution. 
We tried very hard in the Justice and Electoral Committee—as Lynne Pillay and other select committee members including Mr Borrows can attest—to find an amendment like this and of course as can be seen we failed to do so. It has taken us a long time but I am very glad we have got there today. I really would like to thank everyone from all the parties involved. I know it has been very tough for certain National Party members and certain New Zealand First Party members. Some parties have been quite split and members have felt I am sure very mixed allegiances and have had quite a difficult time. So I am really glad that we are finding this way through today. 
The second amendment Mr Copeland’s is around his concerns about whether placing a child in time out will be made illegal by this bill. I think there is absolutely no need at all for Mr Copeland’s amendment. We talked about this a lot in the select committee because all members were very well aware that the use of time out is an accepted and useful parenting practice that many many parents use as an alternative to violence—as an alternative to hitting their children. 
There was no way we would want to inadvertently criminalise parents or leave the way open for parents to be criminalised for using time out. This was one of the things that was behind the clause 4 amendment of section 59 of the Crimes Act particularly in “(1)(c) preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in offensive or disruptive behaviour;” and in “(d) performing the normal daily tasks that are incidental to good care and parenting.” Both of these provisions were very much aimed at making sure that if a parent should happen to use reasonable force in picking his or her child up for example and in carrying the child screaming to his or her room for time out—I am sure a situation that every parent in this Chamber including me is familiar with—that there is no way that that would be deemed a criminal offence or that there would not be a defence should for any reason it become known to the police that this incident had occurred. 
Four lawyers from the Law Commission including Sir Geoffrey Palmer worked with the select committee on this amendment. We discussed and considered it at length. It was the result of a lot of consideration and I believe firmly that it does the job that Mr Copeland is trying to achieve with his amendment today so I hope that people will not support Mr Copeland’s amendment. 
Finally Mr Nick Smith said earlier that parents should be grateful that most of us in this Parliament have found a way through where we can all support this bill today. He is right about that but I say that I think the children of this country will be even more grateful that so many of us in this Parliament have had the courage to take leadership on this issue now and have found the courage to say that children in this country have an equal right to adults to be protected from violence. The children of this country will be grateful to every MP who supports this bill.