Anne Smith is Professor Emeritus at Otago University’s College of Education, and discusses her research on child discipline that shows that less than 10% of parents feel that smacking is effective; she says that most of the parents involved in her study that smacked their children regretted it afterwards, and that the smacking had more to do with the parents’ state of mind, tiredness, etc than the child’s behaviour.

She also discusses parents’ reaction the current law.  In her study, 47% supported the current Child Discipline Law, 27% were against it, with the rest undecided.

Prof Smith said that only a tiny minority of experts believe that smacking is effective, and that the present law is working well.

Murray Edridge (CEO Barnardos) and Bob McCoskrie (Family First) comment on the research and the referendum.

He says:

• The question assumes that smacking is part of good parental correction – which is an assumption that John and many other people dispute.
• Vote YES if you favour smacking being a crime, you want to keep the law the way it is, you support a violence free society, but you find yourself in the company of Sue Bradford and the Nanny State, and those people who think they know how to bring up your children better than you do.
• Vote No if you’d like to go back to the previous law where “reasonable force” is a defence against physically hitting children, and you find yourself in the company of the whackers and the bashers and the wacky right and all of those people.
• John is voting YES because he believes, along with Pita Sharples, that there has to be a better way of bringing up your children than smacking them.

Key points:

• Calling it the “anti-smacking legislation” is wrong – the purpose of the legislation is to protect children from being beaten up by their parents.  It’s aimed at changing the culture of violence against our children that we clearly have in NZ.
• $10m is being wasted on the upcoming referendum on a ridiculously worded question.  We’ve had the debate already, and the Child Discipline Law was passed by a margin of 113-8.
• The legislation anticipated an education programme that never occurred. The $10m being spent on the referendum would have much better been spent on the education programme.
• The real referendum question should have been, “Should we be able to beat our children with a horse whip or a piece of wood and get away with it in court”, as happened before this legislation was passed.

Deborah also discusses the upcoming referendum, and why your YES Vote is so important.

Key points:

• It’s significant that it was a jury ruling
• The Police had discretion to prosecution, and police the six-monthly reports issued since the 2007 law change show that they are only prosecuting cases where parents have seriously injured their children
• The court sentences being handed down in these cases are usually anger management and parenting education courses – which seems entirely appropriate, and provides additional support to the offenders to do their jobs properly as parents.
• Parents are not being criminalised – The public is being seriously misled by groups like Family First and the Kiwi Party who are pro-violence against children.  These groups have sought to minimise the significance of the issue by referring to this case as the “ear-flicking” case.
• These groups collected enough signatures to force an unnecessary and expensive referendum on a stupidly worded question.
• Smacking Children is not good parental correction, and there are 92 international studies that show that positive parenting is better, and that hitting children is harmful.
• A YES VOTE promotes positive parenting and supports children.
• Independent of the Referendum, the Child Discipline Law is scheduled to undergo a full review by the Ministry of Social Development later this year.
• John Key has said repeatedly that the law is working well and National continues to support the law.
• Public perception of the law is strong – a recent UMR Research poll showed that 43% of the public support the law, 28% are opposed, and the rest are undecided.
• Children attain the best behaviour outcomes when they live in an environment that includes good structure, clear boundaries, warm communication, and love.
• In homes where parents use violence against their children to correct their behaviour over four years or more, the violence tends to escalate.  In many homes where children are abused, the parents say that it started out as punishment, but the punishment has gone badly wrong.