Collins Judith: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Collins Judith: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:637;Page:8030] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 I rise to speak in relation to clause 2A “Principal Act amended” which I will read for the benefit of those who are listening: “This Act amends the Crimes Act 1961.” So I take it we can talk about the Crimes Act 1961 and how it is amended by this particular bill. 
At the moment should parents smack a child not for the purpose of correction but because they do that every Friday or every day after they come home from the pub or because they feel like it it is against the law. That is not condoned by the law because it is not for the purpose of correction of the child. This is already the law. It is already against the law to hit a child for any reason other than for the purpose of correction. It is absolutely the law. 
Occasionally the law can be abused by people being overly keen to prosecute a parent but it can also sometimes be abused by people thinking they have the right to do that. It is quite wrong to have discussions in this House that imply that somehow there will be a change of attitude towards children and the beating of them. I have heard people in this Chamber talk in this debate about how we need to send a message. The way most of us send messages is by phone calls emails letters television and radio adverts and by talking to people and educating them. We do not actually prosecute parents because we want to send a message. 
This bill should not be about what the Green Party and the Labour Party want it to be about which is who is in charge of our kids. Those parties think they are. This bill should be about what is in the best interests of children. What is in the best interests of children is for them to have responsible empowered parents who put their children first and who make decisions that sometimes the children do not like but they are in their best interests. 
I heard the most appalling suggestions tonight from Labour Party members that we should not now do anything that children do not like and that we should have a voice for children here in Parliament. They say we should definitely do that. Well why do we not just give children the vote? That will solve the problem. We have heard Labour Party members saying that children should not be forced to do things they do not like. I do not know of any parent here of a teenager who could say to his or her child: “You decide dear when you would like to go to bed at night. You decide dear whether you do your homework. You decide who you get to hang out with. You decide where you go. You decide whether you would like to go to a pub when you are 14. You decide.” 
I would just like to say to those members who do not live in the real world—unlike those of us who do who represent real people and do not live in some la-la land along with la-la land people—that on Monday I was at the Bethany Centre in Auckland. The centre does not really do adoptions these days; what it does is teach parenting to mums who are absolutely at risk. In other words we are talking about people in the underclass area—people who have absolutely no hope without the help and intervention the Bethany Centre can give them. Staff at the Bethany Centre have said to me that one of the biggest problems they have is kids who come in there who have no idea about being parents. 
They have parents who come in to visit their children and who are trying to do the right thing but who have never said “No”. They have never set boundaries or actually said they do not want to be the best friend of their child but want to be that child’s parent. Because guess what? They are different—just like those members who are former teachers and who like to stand up and say that once they used to smack children once they used to beat them with a cane but they do not do that any more because they have learnt the way. They try to equate the relationship between a parent and child with that of a teacher and a child. They are completely different relationships. 
A teacher will have a child for a certain number of hours every day and not in the holidays. A parent has a child 24/7. I have never seen a teacher get up at 3 o’clock in the morning and take a sick child with earache to the doctor which is what normal parents do. Those teachers who are parents will have done it for their own children but they do not do it for other people’s children because they are not those children’s parents. There is a basic difference between the relationships. 
It is absolute twaddle for some members to come into this Chamber and talk about how they used to be a teacher and cane children but now they have learnt better. Forget it! We are not saying parents should be able to cane their children; we are saying that a light smack on the hand or the bottom of a child by way of correction will not harm him or her. In fact it may actually stop a situation escalating.