Heatley Phil: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Heatley Phil: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:637;Page:7999] 
PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) 
: 
 I would like to bring members’ attention to the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill before them. The original title of the bill contained the words “Abolition of Force as a Justification for Child Discipline”. I think the member Sue Bradford must have got the words “Force as a Justification for Child Discipline” mixed up when she first put the title on the bill; child discipline as a justification for force is really what Sue Bradford is fighting. In other words “I beat the buggers. I got a whip and I thrashed them. I got a piece of four-by-two and I conked them on the head. And my justification is child discipline.” I think that is what she originally meant—and she might like to correct me—when she first introduced the bill. Rather than force as a justification for child discipline she meant child discipline as a justification for force—and wrongful force at that. 
Who in this House who in the gallery and who in New Zealand would think that beating children in the ways I have described and persecuting them so much and bringing them so much harm and pain could ever be justified as just disciplining a child. No one who is voting against this bill tonight as I will be doing thinks that using force in such a way can ever be justified by people simply disciplining their children and saying that they want their children to grow up just like them and to be wonderful people—as if it ever could. 
I am attracted to Chester Borrows’ suggestion that the title should be the “Send a Message Bill”. It should be the “Send a Message Bill No 3”. As a dad of three children I can tell members that my children have already been sent two messages in the last few years from this Parliament. One is that prostitution is OK. That is the “Send a Message Bill No 1”. It is OK for my daughters to sell their bodies for sex—to get cash and to give sex. It is OK for my two little girls to do that when they grow up. That is the first message they have been sent. 
The Green Party and Nandor Tanczos would like to send the “Send a Message Bill No 2” to kids—to Phil Heatley’s kids—that it is OK to smoke dope. It is not OK to smoke cigarettes but here it says in the “Send a Message Bill No 2” that it is OK for those three kids to smoke dope. 
This is the “Send a Message Bill No 3” and what is intriguing about that is that although Parliament through voting for all those other things seeks to undermine my family by saying it is OK for my girls to sell their bodies for sex and it is OK for my girls and my boy to smoke dope it removes all the tools parents use to try to prevent that stuff. 
Does it spend any money on parenting courses? Does it spend any money at all for groups and counsellors to go across the country to give parents the tools to help raise kids in difficult circumstances? I am not talking about healthy families like mine where my wife loves being a full-time mum and has the best and most important job in the world I love being a dad and we love our kids. I am talking about really struggling families—those with solo mums or those holding down a job— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I ask the member to come back to the title. 
PHIL HEATLEY 
: But this “Sending a Message Bill” simply is that. This Government and the member sponsoring it want to undermine me as a father in all those other areas and to take away the tools that will help me protect my children. This is another “Burden the Majority to Fix the Minority Bill”. The Government will help the prostitutes. It will send a message to every family in New Zealand that prostitution is OK.