Tanczos Nandor: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Tanczos Nandor: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:639;Page:9304] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 As many members have said during this debate being a parent is hard. At times it can be a hell of a struggle but it is worth every second of it. Becoming a father has given me a new respect for single parents who do not have the option of saying: “Enough!” and handing over a child when their patience is stretched too thin. And it has given me a new contempt for those who attack single parents as an easy way to score political points. Because parents’ patience does get stretched thin sometimes it snaps. I cannot promise that I will never whack my child but I will never be proud of doing that. 
Some people opposed this Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill because they claimed that it would criminalise parents for lightly smacking their children. It never would have and it was never intended that it should have. The bill is aimed at stopping serious child abuse perpetrated under the guise of discipline and it directly challenges the view that whacking children is somehow a duty a right and a thing to be proud of. 
Judy Turner raised concerns about Child Youth and Family’s interventions. The Green Party is also concerned about a number of specific actions made by Child Youth and Family but we also acknowledge the enormously difficult and thankless work its staff does. We do not agree that this bill will affect that agency’s policy or its level of intervention. Child Youth and Family already investigates allegations of child abuse independently of criminal proceedings and that will continue. 
Some have said that they agree with the bill but that it is premature—that we need a public education campaign first to give parents the tools they need to maintain discipline without violence. In fact we already have a TV campaign. It is fully self-funding and enormously popular and it is called  
Supernanny 
. People watch Jo Jo because they are hungry for information—because she gives practical tools for dealing with even the most unruly children and because those tools work. For those who think that discipline is synonymous with a whack I tell them to get this: she never smacks! In fact she chastises parents who yell smack or otherwise lose control over themselves and therefore over their children. 
Smacking is not—at least not very often—the calm measured response to an infraction of rules that some would have us believe; in my view it would probably be worse if it were. It is almost always a lack of control. I do not judge parents for that but neither do I congratulate them. 
This bill is an important statement for this country. It says that we no longer condone through an Act of this Parliament the use of violence against children. It removes the notion that somehow discipline justifies beating our young. Given our shameful child abuse statistics in this country it seems remarkable to me that this legislation is even contentious. 
I sincerely thank Sue Bradford for making New Zealand face this debate squarely. I thank all the members of this House and people outside this House who have put themselves on the line for this issue and I thank all members of this Parliament for their contributions to it. Kia ora.