Borrows Chester: Crimes (Reasonable Parental Control and Correction) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Borrows Chester: Crimes (Reasonable Parental Control and Correction) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:666;Page:13822] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 I rise to make a number of points clearly and succinctly in respect of the Crimes (Reasonable Parental Control and Correction) Amendment Bill. On the face of it a number of the comments that the previous speaker Mr Garrett made were valid and I agree with him that the Supplementary Order Paper that I put forward in 2007—which the member now puts forward as a bill—was valid for the time. 
David Garrett 
: What’s changed? 
CHESTER BORROWS 
: A number of things have changed and I will make those points very clearly. 
We have to look at where this bill came from. The bill came from a Supplementary Order Paper that was drafted by me in response to the Crimes (Abolition of Force as a Justification for Child Discipline) Amendment Bill which was a member’s bill in the name of Sue Bradford that sought to repeal section 59 of the Crimes Act. I spent a number of months on the Justice and Electoral Committee looking at that bill and hearing submissions from around the country. The reason why the Supplementary Order Paper—the bill as it is now; its provisions form this bill before the House—was valid at the time and is not valid now is that we did not have the numbers. When the Supplementary Order Paper—now this bill—came before the House the Labour Party and its support parties had the numbers to defeat it and it contained all the words that are in this bill before the House now. What changed? Well there needed to be a compromise position which was arrived at through negotiation between John Key and Helen Clark. If we had done nothing if we had done what that member Mr Garrett probably wishes we had done—stuck to our guns put forward our Supplementary Order Paper and been defeated—then the law would be in a much worse state than it currently is. It was the negotiation between those parties that actually brought about a compromise changed the wording of the bill and gained support from across the House apart from the ACT Party and one or two other members. 
I worked hard to get support for Supplementary Order Paper 86. I spoke to the Green Party I spoke to the Labour Party I spoke to the Maori Party I spoke to United Future and I spoke to New Zealand First. The vote was split in New Zealand First. We had the support of the ACT Party. We did not have the support of the Maori Party and it was clear we were going to lose. I believed then and I believe strongly now that it would have been wrong to say: “OK stuff you. Let’s argue about it at the next election.” That would have left New Zealand parents in a worse position than they are in now even with the compromise in place. 
I will move on and ask the member who has just resumed his seat David Garrett where he thinks this bill will go. If this bill is passed tonight it will be referred to a select committee and all of a sudden the debate will not be about the words “transitory” and “trifling”. The whole debate will be about when parents can hit their kids under what circumstances they can hit their kids how hard they can hit their kids or what marks they should be able to leave behind on their children. The debate will be about whether they are allowed to use implements on what occasions they are allowed to hit their kids and who can hit kids. Will it be confined to parents or will a person acting in place of a parent be able to hit those kids? I believe that the difference between back then and now is this: we put forward the Supplementary Order Paper in the course of business and if we had had the numbers then it would have passed and we would not have got into a debate about such things as whether a person can hit a child between their shoulders on the tops of their knees on the bottom of their legs or on the fleshy parts of the body and what sort of marks one can leave behind. That is a distasteful debate to have. 
If that member thinks that it is seemly to go around the country listening to hundreds of submitters talking about when it is appropriate to hit kids and what level of injury one can leave behind on the kids—a debate we would not have had around the country if the Supplementary Order Paper had passed—then we are on different planets quite frankly. I heard all those submitters. I heard a number of people argue that they have a God-given right to belt their kids and that they should be able to smack their kids. They said they should be able to use a rod to hit their children. 
It was interesting that the vast number of those submitters came from fundamentalist Christians who quoted scripture to me. I took great delight in quoting scripture back at them. Never once did those submitters quote the scripture that says: “Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.” All they talked about was sparing the rod and spoiling the child. All they did was talk about their God-given right to discipline their children in the way they saw fit. Where the total evil in that position comes from is this: in almost every case where a child was beaten with an implement and where the case went forward to a prosecution—including our famous horse-whipping stock-whipping woman—the beating started in order to discipline the child and to control and to correct the child. I believe that if we were given the opportunity to mandate discipline control and correction in the same way then we would see an abuse of the legislation that allowed that to happen. 
We know that although parents protest that they use a range of discipline regimes such as time out the naughty step loss of privileges a growling apologies compromises and all that sort of stuff when parents start to smack smacking becomes the default position very quickly. It gains immediate compliance. Children stop doing what they are doing because smacking hurts. They do not learn not to do the behaviour; they learn not to get caught doing the behaviour. Through the work of the SKIP programme which has been incredibly successful we have seen that after only 2 years of implementation 34 percent of parents knew of its existence knew how to access it and said that they implemented the strategies for disciplining children in a non-violent way. 
The law has changed the future for many young children. As much as there are parents who still give their children a light smack—and I would not argue that they were child beaters—I make the point that the vast majority of parents want to live within the law so they do not use corporal punishment and they do look for other strategies. It is quite right for the member to point to the large number of respondents to polls and surveys but at the same time he has to understand that the practice of the law as it is now is different from the letter of the law in many aspects of our law. 
I will take an example which maybe is an extreme example far away from this piece of legislation. Under the Misuse of Drugs Act there is a presumption before the criminal court that anyone in possession of more than 28 grams of cannabis is in possession for the purpose of supply. The police never ever charge anyone for possession for the purpose of supply when all people have with them is 29 grams of cannabis or more. Why not? The police realise that actually practice has overtaken the presumption that is in the law. So I am saying to the House that the police use their discretion to look at who they have in front of them and apply the letter of the law accordingly. That is why we have not seen a huge flourish of parents appearing before the courts and being charged with assault on a child over an incident of light smacking. In fact in the last year in 2009 there were 33 complaints of smacking and there was one prosecution that was later withdrawn. To put that into perspective I note that over the same period there were 83000 complaints of domestic violence. 
I believe that the police are working in the public interest in the enforcement of the current legislation. I think it is written like a dog’s breakfast. I think it is ugly and on the face of it with all the legalese it is not easy to understand. I think my Supplementary Order Paper was a hell of a lot better than the dog’s breakfast we have. But at the time we did not have the numbers and in this House we need the numbers. If members do not have the numbers then members have to compromise. We compromised and like it or loathe it it works.