Brownlee Gerry: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Brownlee Gerry: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:637;Page:8023] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam) 
: 
 That member may well have just blown her chances of being the Ambassador to Niue with that speech. She exposed in a very simple line that this bill will cause significant attitudinal change—those were her words. She said that this bill would cause significant attitudinal change. That tells us that Labour members think that the vast majority of parents in this country who do the right thing by their children day in and day out who care about them who love them and who want to put them on the right path need significant attitudinal change. That is the thrust of what Labour members are saying. 
It is also interestingly the reason why Labour is in such terrible political trouble at the moment. This bill is not about the Government supporting people. This bill is not about making life better for people. It is a bill that puts Labour and Helen Clark right into the living rooms of the families of this country on a watching brief. That is the situation. Labour is watching every little moment. No one can doubt that that is the case. 
We who are constituency MPs—some MPs of course have been booted out of their seats—will be aware that a lot of the work we get revolves around disastrous cases in the Family Court. There would not be an MP in this Chamber who has not had a letter from a constituent on either one side or the other of a Family Court argument. What bothers me seriously about this is that if one is having trouble with custody one can simply allege that the partner one is aggrieved with has smacked the kids. If anyone thinks that that is unlikely to happen he or she should stand by and watch what happens if this bill is passed. That situation will become form. We already know that a range of allegations are regularly made in the court because lawyers advise people that if they can get this this or this it will help their case. This legislation will just be something else. For the children that this bill is supposed to protect it will become in those circumstances at least a disaster. 
It is also interesting that Jill Pettis stood up tonight and put on that mock fervour about the need to have a gentler kinder less violent society when Labour has spent the last 2 months refusing to take any responsibility at all for the actions that resulted from Graeme Burton’s unfortunate release from prison. That is a fact. In the Chamber today the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister both said not to blame the Government. They said they were terribly sorry about it—it took them 2 months to get there—but that Graeme Burton was the problem. He pulled the trigger said Michael Cullen so he was the problem. Despite the fact that five psychological reports said that that man should not be released and he was that he was then not monitored and that it was known he was going to run amok—the armed offenders squad even had to be brought out—the authorities could not go after him because that in some way might infringe upon his rights as a paroled prisoner. 
So Labour members should not come in here and suggest that to criminalise the normal disciplines of a household is in some way about caring for the future. No one will believe Labour members when they say that. We know that this bill will pass only because Helen Clark wants to stay as Prime Minister for a time longer. That is what it is about. Otherwise those people in the Labour caucus who understand the people they represent who are connected to their constituencies and who do care about families in this country cannot exercise their vote in the way they want to. Helen Clark wants to be in Parliament as Prime Minister for a good time longer and that is unacceptable.