Wagner Nicky: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Wagner Nicky: Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:638;Page:8873] 
NICKY WAGNER (National) 
: 
 Managing training disciplining and bringing up kids are intensely personal experiences. Family links are the most important and the most intimate relationships in anyone’s lives hence the problems that Parliaments have had in writing this legislation. 
As a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee that reviewed the 1700 submissions that were made on the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill and listened to over 300 oral submissions I was continually reminded of the strength and value of family relationships. Of course we had many technical and academic submissions but we also had many from individuals talking about their personal family situations. 
Those submitters came from both sides of the debate—some happy families who smacked some happy families who did not smack and some very unhappy people who had been abused. We even had the odd submitter who defended behaviour that I and most people in this House would consider indefensible. That is the problem. The methods that successful parents use to bring up children are idiosyncratic. They are varied and they are diverse. They reflect the variety and diversity of our families and that is the way it should be. We need to respect the individuality and creativity that parents use in bringing up their children. 
Although this has been a very contentious bill similar themes have underpinned all submissions regardless of their stance. All submitters spoke of their condemnation of child abuse and the high level of violence in our society. All submitters were concerned about the welfare of children; otherwise they would not have made the effort to be there. Most submitters recognised the importance of parenting and understood how difficult the job was. The majority of submitters understood that there were many useful techniques used to bring up kids. The SKIP programme was often mentioned as a way to learn new methods of parenting. But when it came to the question of smacking that is where the opinions diverged. Either smacking was OK or smacking was not OK. But even those who thought that smacking was not OK mostly did not want to criminalise good parents for giving a light smack. 
So that is what we heard in the submission process. Most New Zealanders had very positive and very similar values in child rearing and they diverged only over specific parenting techniques. But then came the politics and the use of emotive words: belting bashing beating kids—behaviours that the vast majority of New Zealanders consider to be totally unreasonable and therefore already illegal under the existing section 59. 
Then came the introduction of irrelevant information—the child abuse figures the highlighting of New Zealand’s tendency towards violence and the mentioning of “Lillybing” James Whakaruru and Coral Burrows. Child abuse and violence which are intrinsically unreasonable and the treatment meted out to those children are already illegal under section 59. There was absolutely no evidence that section 59 had ever been invoked in any of these high-profile cases. 
 However my biggest concern with the bill has always been with the interference in the lives of good parents and their families and the dangers of criminalising families who use an occasional smack. Now that John Key has been able to broker a common-sense amendment that accepts that ordinary New Zealanders who may occasionally smack their children are not criminals the bill manages to bridge that no man’s land of disagreement with submitters.