Collins Judith: Crimes (Abolition of Force as a Justification for Child Discipline) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Collins Judith: Crimes (Abolition of Force as a Justification for Child Discipline) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 February 2007. Volume:637;Page:7584. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 Parenting in my opinion—speaking as a parent—is the toughest job in the world. It is also the worst paid. It is the most difficult role; and I remember being a parenting expert—before I was a parent! I remember knowing how other people should bring up their children. I remember thinking very very smugly in my latte days: “I’d never let my child behave like that at a cafe.” then a few years later having exactly that thing happen and knowing full well that I would just have to deal with it the best I could and get myself and my child out of there so that I was not such a disruption to everyone else. I understand that smugness. I understand as well the feeling of most parents who say that they do their very best because most parents do. 
I have been listening to the debate tonight and it has been very reasoned and sensible. I would like to congratulate all the speakers on that. But what I have not been happy about has been the amount of emotional language used not just in this House but elsewhere. I have been visited by many well-paid taxpayer-funded lobbyists who have talked to me about why it is that apparently I support child abuse—because I believe that we should not criminalise a parent who uses a light smack with a hand on a child’s bottom once as a form of discipline. I do not believe that that view is in the best interests of children. 
I was also seriously disgusted to be approached yesterday by another lobbyist—at no doubt great taxpayer expense—and advised that I was therefore supporting child violation. How in the world could anybody with half a brain cell consider that a light smack on the bottom with a hand a violation of a child? That is unfortunately some of the language that has been used around the section 59 debate. 
I have listened very carefully to the former teachers who have talked tonight about the fact that they used to strap children. They realised once they were not allowed to that they had to find other ways. I say: “Good on them!” because I suffered from a teacher who every chance she could would get a ruler out and slap me—and I have to say I was the most strapped child in standard 2. Frankly I was rather proud of it at the time. But leaving that to one side I think we need to say there is a huge difference between the responsibilities of a teacher and the responsibilities of a parent—a huge difference. We do not expect our teachers to love our children. We do not expect our teachers to go the extra yard for our children; we expect them to be teachers. We do not expect them to mortgage their homes so they can give our children what they need. We do not expect to go without for our children. We do expect that from our parents. 
I am not one of those people who believe that parents have a God-given right to discipline. I do however believe that parents have a God-given responsibility to their child. I believe that is the most robust relationship there is. When I looked today at the Unicef report yet again I saw that the countries with the very best relationships between children and their families and between children and their peers—every single one of the top eight countries—allow a defence of reasonable force or words similar to that. What that says to me is that those kids want to be with their parents. I am one of the people in this House who can remember being slapped—on only two occasions because that was all I needed—by a parent. I got the message and did not do it again. 
But of course the children whom we are most concerned about are those children whose parents do not give them a light slap on the bottom with a hand. We are most concerned about the children who are killed and the children who are seriously emotionally damaged by their parents. I ask members to think about themselves as children and what it must be like to be called stupid ugly fat or unwanted. All of those names can be and are routinely used against children and every single one of those names will hurt a child significantly more than one slap on the bottom. 
This bill will change nothing. This bill will allow emotional abuse. It will for instance still allow a mother or a father involved in a custody dispute over a child to say to the child: “Your other parent can’t see you this weekend because they don’t love you.” What is worse for the child? Instead this bill will criminalise parents who are good parents. It will criminalise parents who in fact do their very best—around 83 percent of those parents who have replied to polls. Those 83 percent of parents have said they have slapped their child on the bottom with a hand. None of this will help those children whom we know are killed by parents or caregivers—people who should know significantly better. 
I believe the police when they say to me that the police will prosecute parents who smack their child with a light smack on the bottom. I have had people say that that will not happen but I tell them it will. If the police arrest someone they will generally prosecute. There is a reason for that: if they do not prosecute they end up getting sued for wrongful arrest. That is why they do it. I hate to talk practicalities amongst all the fluffy words that we would like to think about on this issue but people get picked on in this society. People who are poor people who are brown and people who are at the bottom of the socio-economic heap will be the people who suffer the most from this legislation. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: As I was mentioning before the dinner break the people who are most at risk from this legislation being passed are the poor the brown the people who are often marginalised the people who are picked on in society and the people who are easy prey to the State. Those are the people who are most likely to be arrested and prosecuted. Recently I met with Pacific families and Pacific New Zealanders who told me how concerned they were that this legislation would condemn them. These are good parents who are very deeply committed to their children. They are parents whose children are going very well at school and who will be good citizens of New Zealand. They feel at risk. 
There has been a lot of talk in the media about just how at risk they will be. Let us just look at a few situations. The police have said absolutely categorically that if they are advised that a child has been smacked they will investigate and if they find that a crime has been committed—which on the face of it it will have been—they will prosecute. They have to do so for various reasons. One reason for that is that if they do not they will open themselves up to a charge of wrongful arrest. They have seen many instances of that situation so they have learnt to prosecute. The second reason is that if we say the police will use discretion then we are in fact giving to the police a discretion that generally they do not have and do not use because in giving to the police this overall discretion over whether to investigate or take any action we are saying to them in these situations that they can choose whether they prosecute over something that is on the face of it an assault. 
I believe absolutely that the people who will be most disempowered are those who are already disempowered. What will be the result for those children? It will be that they will have a parent with a criminal conviction for assault on a child. The result will be that they may well be removed from their homes because the parent has a conviction for criminal assault on a child. The result for that child may well be that that child is placed in a far less safe environment than he or she was in his or her own home. The result may will be a completely dysfunctional family at the end of the day; we have in fact not helped the situation. 
Parents need to be given alternatives. Those are the reasons that I completely support the amendment of my colleague Chester Borrows. Chester Borrows is bringing forward an amendment that is sensible and that makes very very plain that repeated smacking is not OK but that a light smack on the bottom of a child by way of discipline will not result in prosecution. This is after all not a House where we should be indulging in social engineering. This is a House of law. This is where laws are made. We do not make laws for the purpose of not having them obeyed. I believe that it is an absolutely fundamental purpose of this Parliament that when we make laws we expect them to be obeyed; we do not tell the police not to bother prosecuting because we do not really mean them to do so.