The Herald reports that organisers of the recent referendum on the smacking law confronted the leaders of both major parties yesterday – but failed to win a single concession to review the law. Furthermore, questions from smacking supporters actually pushed Mr Key into a stronger defence of the law than he has given before, saying the 2007 ban on any use of force against children for “correction” was important to “send a message” that violence against children was unacceptable.
Now, we’re used to hate mail here at The Yes Vote headquarters – we’ve received plenty over the last few months, and it’s not unexpected given the nature of the question that there are a at least a few hateful people in the in the ranks of the pro-smackers.
What was our surprise then, when we received the following item yesterday:
Name: Richard
Email: [address removed]
Website:
It is a very sad week when a little 3 year old dies in our country from abuse that may have started with ‘a little tap’ and at the same time we have people like your group supporting the notion the violence towards our most vulnerable is ok. I don’t think you understand what good parenting is and as for one of your representatives saying to his little girl ‘daddy loves you’ as he abuses her – how sick is that. Shame on you
Time: Sunday August 23, 2009 at 4:04 am
IP Address: 125.237.176.[deleted]
Sent by an unverified visitor to your site.
This poor fellow obviously got the wrong end of the stick. Some people are very confused about what YES and what NO meant on the referendum question.
We tried to be kind to this well-intentioned individual, and responded as follows.
Richard,
You got it the wrong way around my friend … The YES Vote are the people who are against smacking!
Please take out your wrath on the VOTE NO people …
Undeterred, he responded:
Your response confirms for me that your organisation has got no idea about what you actually stand for and why the referendum was a waste of time. By voting, anyone would have supported your contention that smaking is a part of good parenting – how sad. By doing your homework and visiting hospitals etc, you’d see that the level of child abuse is appaling in this country and people who voted yes have been sucked into turning a blind eye to this and in effect supporting it’s continuation. I’m pleased to say that I’m not one of these people! I know heaps of people who are doing a great job of raising their kids without resorting to violence.
Thankfully, less than an hour later, he sent us the following apology:
Please accept my sincere apologies – I was so fired up I thought that I was emailing that lot wishing to over turn the current law – Baldock etc!!
I am sorry for directing my frustration at the wrong group. I just can’t believe how naive people can be believing that smacking kids is ok.
I will do what you say. All the best with your work – I wish you luck and again sincere apologies!!
Phew! It just goes to show how devious and confusing the referendum wording was, and that good triumphs over evil in the end. But we’re left wondering how many people were as confused as Richard when they voted.
Promoters of the child discipline referendum are increasingly damaging their own cause by failing to take the opportunity to call it off.
“With just three days left until the Governor-General issues a writ for the referendum, its organisers are coming off as arrogant, inflexible and unconcerned at the massive and unnecessary expense they are responsible for,” said Yes Vote spokesperson, Deborah Morris-Travers.
“Even among those who support their question, there is an overwhelming belief that the whole exercise is a terrible waste of money.
“Demanding an amendment to the child discipline law in return for calling off the referendum is outrageous. The law grants children the same legal protections as all other citizens have. This is fair and reasonable, especially when law is being administered sensibly and sensitively.
“By trying to place responsibility for the referendum’s cancellation in anyone’s hands other than their own, its promoters are dodging their responsibilities as its creators. Sheryl Saville, Larry Baldock and Bob McCoskrie started this farce and they are the only people with the power to withdraw it.
“The leaders of the two main parties have shown remarkable courage as leaders in standing by the current child discipline.
“They are not doing so to be popular, but because they know from their constant exposure to the reality of New Zealand’s high rates of family violence that this law is an important step towards creating safe, loving environments for our children to grow up in the 21st century.
“The Yes Vote coalition repeats its call for the referendum organisers to do the right thing, call off the poll before this Friday, and save the country at least $6 million,” concluded Ms Morris-Travers.
If the instigators of the citizens initiated referendum are serious about making life better for children in New Zealand, they should exercise their ability to stop the referendum and save some of the $9 million committed to this futile PR stunt. This is money that could be applied to making a real difference for New Zealand’s children and their families.
“The promoters of the petition forcing the referendum, Sheryl Saville, Larry Baldock and Bob McCoskrie, have a short window of time in which they could demonstrate some common sense and commitment to New Zealand families in these hard economic times, by withdrawing their petition,” said Yes Vote spokesperson Deborah Morris-Travers.
Legally, the petition can be withdrawn by its promoters before the Governor-General issues the writ for the referendum, which must be done by Friday 3 July 2009.
The Yes Vote coalition is calling upon them to act responsibly in this matter. It is clear from the referendum debate over the last two weeks that the question is misleading, many people remain confused about the application of the law, and there is no political will to change the law when it is working effectively. The outcome from the referendum therefore will be of little value.
The Yes Vote Coalition represents the major agencies working with communities to support parents and families. We support the child discipline law and we support parents. We see and understand the challenges faced by families throughout New Zealand and we know those families don’t want precious government resources being wasted on a referendum that will add little to the future well-being of their children.
“We call on the petition promoters to withdraw their petition while it is still possible to do so,” concluded Ms Morris-Travers.
Recently Napier City Councillor Maxine Boag was a guest on Newstalk ZB following commentator Dr Robin Gwynn the previous day on the same topic. This is a transcript of her two-minute thought for the day.
“Good morning, I’m Napier City Councillor Maxine Boag.
This week I received a flyer with a figure looking like an orange plastic ginger-bread man asking the question “Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?”
My first reaction was: “What a dumb question!”
It’s like that old set-up question: “Have you stopped beating your wife?” In which case a “yes” answer shows you have been beating her, and a “no” is an admission that you are still beating her.
But this dumb question is what we’re being asked to vote on in a postal ballot in July. It has been prompted by a nationwide petition that was launched in response to the 2007 [changes to the] Child Discipline law. At the cost of $9 million to taxpayers, this poorly-worded referendum has been criticised by both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, both of whom saying that they will not be voting in it, with the National-led government saying they will not be changing the law regardless of the outcome.
The question is very misleading.
First of all, many of us believe that a smack is not part of good parental correction. So if you say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ you are still agreeing that a smack is good parental correction. A recent study of pre-schoolers’ parents in Otago showed that only a tiny minority of parents actually thought smacking was a good thing for them to do, and just 9 per cent thought smacking was effective in disciplining their children. Most parents said that smacking was more to do with their own state of mind, their tiredness and frustration, than the child’s behaviour.
Secondly, since the 2007 child discipline law, the use of a “smack” has not made any parents criminals. No parents who occasionally smack lightly are being prosecuted. So if you say ‘yes’, you are saying anyone smacking their child will be considered criminals, when they’re not. If you say ‘no’ you again buy into this lie.
I heard the organiser of the petition, Larry Baldock on the radio just yesterday being asked if he could give a single example of where a parent has been criminalised for smacking a child and he couldn’t!
I rest my case.
It made me think back to my own primary school days, when I was strapped often, always for talking.
Did it work?
Did it shut me up?
I’ll leave the answer for you to decide.
I’m Maxine Boag, and that’s my thought for today.”
Tonight’s Campbell Live asks the question, “What would you do with $9 million?” A txt poll taken by Campbell Live shows that 61% of respondents believe that $9m on a referendum is a waste of money. Larry Baldock, the person who organised the referendum, seems confused about how best to spend $9m of taxpayer money. But not too confused to try to take advantage of the situation.
Baldock has issued a ransom letter to John Key stating that he’d withdraw the referendum if the government removes subclause 2 and subclause 3 from Section 59 of the Crimes Act… in other words, reintroduces “reasonable force” as a defence against assaulting a child.
That’s unlikely. We the taxpayers get to pay the price for Larry’s Folly.
Larry Baldock, the organiser of the referendum,was comprehensively owned by Sean Plunket on National Radio’s Morning Report programme today.
The referendum organiser cannot come up with a single example where a parent has been criminalised for smacking a child.
Baldock: It is absolutely clear that if a parent uses any reasonable force right now to correct their child right now they are breaking the law…
Plunket: Can you give us an example of that having happened?
Baldock: There are examples that we’ll have available…
Plunket: Can you give us a single example of that having happened, please?
Baldock: There was a grandfather for example, who tipped his grandson out of a chair because the grandson refused to obey his grandfather to turn down the television and so on.
Plunket: Was he convicted and was that a smack?
Baldock: He plead guilty …
Plunket: Was that a smack?
Baldock: No, he tipped him out of a chair….
…
Plunket: Can you point to anyone who has been criminalised for smacking a child?
Baldock: Yes we can.
Plunket: Please, could you give me an example?
Baldock: Well, I’ll have to go to my list of examples.
Plunket: Can you give me a single example off the top of your head?
Baldock: No, not off the top of my head, I can’t.
… and so on.
Wouldn’t it be nice to send Baldock a bill for $9m?
National Radio ran a story on Morning Report today on the referendum, with guest spots by Deborah Morris-Travers, Sue Bradford, Larry Baldock, and Bob McCoskrie.
By now, the so called ’smacking’ debate is one of those issues that has been aired so thoroughly that its arrival back on the political agenda is like having an argumentative uncle turn up for Christmas dinner. He’s here again, there’s going to be a fight – and how long will it be before he goes away again ?
Next month, in the middle of a recession, New Zealand is set to spend something close to $10 million on a citizens initiated referendum (CIR) on the subject. The result will not be binding on the government and – judging by our previous track record on CIR that are NOT held at election time – the turnout can be expected to be low. The 1995 firefighters CIR attracted a turnout of only 28%.
This year’s referendum is being held nearly two years after the legislation that amended S59 of the Crimes Act – thus removing the defence of ‘reasonable force’ in cases involving parental violence against children – was passed by Parliament by a majority of 113 votes to 8. This year, in a classic case of putting the cart before the horse, the country will be holding its postal vote on the CIR before the Ministry of Social Development has finished its review of how the new legislation has been working. That review is not due to be released until September or October.
So far, the Act – and with it, the operational discretion available to Police on whether it is in the public interest to prosecute – appears to be working exactly as the law makers intended. Parents are not being criminalised en masse by the law change, as some had feared. In the one headline case where a Police prosecution was mounted, the jury agreed with the prosecution that the 50 year old parent involved had indeed committed an assault when he flicked his four year old child’s ear, pulled his hair and punched him in the face.
In July though, the public will not be asked to deliver a verdict on the law that was passed in 2007, or on how that the Police have administered it since. The referendum question is :“Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?” With the best will in the world, it is hard to see how any MP – or any citizen – who supported the verdict of Parliament could wholeheartedly answer either “Yes” or “No” to such a formulation, since it begs the question in at least two important respects.
One, It contains a value judgment about the context (“ good parental correction”) and secondly, it assumes the question of whether, under current Police procedures, such a smack can ever be a criminal offence. Essentially, the public is being asked to pass a judgement on a scenario that two years down the track, has not eventuated.
Still, that is the question that has been accepted by the Clerk of the House for the vote, and freedom of speech factors should carry a great deal of weight. After all, this is a procedure initiated by citizens, and official intrusion has to be kept to the absolute minimum. On the other hand, some $10 million of public money is likely to be spent on this process. For that reason alone, the procedures for CIR deserve closer scrutiny.
For answers, I consulted Dr John Parkinson of York University in the United Kingdom. Parkinson, a New Zealander, has written extensively on issues of direct democracy, With good reason in the past, Parkinson has criticised the high hurdle that any citizens initiated referendum in New Zealand has to meet before it can trigger a ballot. The organizers are given only one year ( plus a brief extension in extenuating circumstances) to collect supportive signatures from ten per cent of the voting population.
In this case, that meant Larry Baldock and the other organizers of the ‘anti-smacking’ CIR had to gather about 285,000 signatures – which boils down to a requirement to gather on average, 781 signatures each day, every day, for an entire year. No wonder very few CIR ever manage to make the signature target. When taken together with the high 5% threshold for MMP, it is another reason why politicians should never be trusted to write the checks (or cheques) and balances on how democracy should operate. Compare the New Zealand situation with Switzerland, which gives campaigners 18 months to gather 100,000 signatures – or just 1.75% of registered voters, at a rate of only 182 a day.
On the other hand, Baldock may care to rethink his previously stated enthusiasm for California’s citizens initiated measures. As I pointed out a year ago, the threshold for initiatives in California may be only 5% of voters registered for the previous elections for governor, but these must be gathered in only 150 days, at a rate of 2,492 a day – and while the result is binding, such statutes can be (and regularly are) struck down subsequently by the courts, on constitutional grounds.
First, I asked Parkinson this question : How do other countries manage, if at all, the issue of leading or loaded questions in CIR ? “The New Zealand CIR institution,” Parkinson replied, “ is unique, because there is no draft law being voted on. In those US states which use the device, CIR are not “questions” but complete laws or constitutional amendments. You have to have a legal team to draft a complete Bill, and that’s what gets sent to a vote. In Switzerland, initiatives take the form of constitutional amendments. Thus, Swiss and US voters have a lot more to go on than New Zealand voters do. The latter have just a vague statement of intent which Parliament (which is sovereign, remember, not ‘the people’) has to interpret, consider and respond to.”
Also, Parkinson adds, no one else in the world operates an ‘acceptability’ test for CIR questions. “In the US, any such requirement would breach the First Amendment. Instead, they leave it up to other groups to come up with competing propositions, and put all the competing ones on the same ballot. It’s a ferociously expensive process, which means only the very well-funded have any chance. In Switzerland, they handle it by means of (a) delaying tactics. The Federal Council can choose any time it likes to hold the vote – and (b) government counter-proposals which go to a vote at the same time as the citizen’s initiative. Counter-proposals almost always win. In other words, no-one tries to filter out bad ideas in advance. They trust to the competitive democratic process to reveal the flaws in proposals. Having options [counter-proposals] helps.”
Thirdly, he says, questions are vetted in New Zealand, once they have passed the signature target. The precise question has to be agreed between the Clerk of the House of Representatives and the proposer, so that it meets the requirements of the CIR Act 1993. “ The ‘leading question’ issue has not come up in the three previous CIR that went to a vote,” Parkinson says, “but one, the Withers referendum [on crime, held in 1999] clearly breached the requirements of the Act in that it asked at least four separate questions. Mr Withers was extraordinarily resistant to the Clerk telling him to simplify it, and my interpretation of the correspondence between them is that the Clerk thought there was no point continuing an unpleasant fight when the vote would not make a difference anyway. That is my interpretation, not the Clerk’s. I don’t know what the process was in this case.”
Should loaded questions be ruled out? Well, in defence of the organizers of this year’s referendum, it is certainly not unknown for even government–initiated referendums, much less CIRs, to ask value-loaded questions. John Howard’s Australian republic referendum in 1999 for instance, was not shy about assuming the outcome that it sought, and nor was Augusto Pinochet’s ‘defence of the dignity of Chile’ referendum in 1988. Only those who didn’t care about Chile’s dignity – or who were too gutless to defend it – could disagree with El General, and his modus operandi.
The second question posed to Parkinson was : Given the track record of low turnout in New Zealand on non-binding postal CIR held outside the context of an election, what sort of majority can fairly compel a government to pay heed – and does overseas practice on non-binding referenda give us any guidance?
In other words, if ten per cent of voters seek a CIR, and only 30 % of the public respond, and 80% of those that respond express the same opinion, what weight – if any – should be given to that result by the government ?
There are three camps on the “what weight” question, Parkinson replies. “One, ‘pure majoritarianism’ says that 50%+1 is the only justifiable decision rule, and turnout has nothing to do with it. The second “consensus” camp says that there’s no hard and fast rule, but the higher the winning margin and the higher the turnout, the more legitimate the outcome.
The third is a “super-majority rule” which says you need 50%+1 of total votes, plus a majority in most or all states, or among ethnic groups, or religions, or whatever the major cleavage in society is. The point of super-majorities is to ensure that small states or groups don’t get steamrollered by the big ones all the time.” The examples, he says, include:
– Australian constitutional referendums that require an overall majority of voters, plus a majority in EVERY state;
– Swiss CIR that require an overall majority of the vote, plus a majority in more than half the cantons.
Other examples ? “There are two kinds of turnout restriction,” Parkinson concludes. “In Italy, so called “abrogative referendums”, allow citizens to challenge laws, but they require a turnout of 50%+1.” Otherwise, compulsion can always settle the question of turnout. Australia, Belgium, Brazil, and 27 other countries have compulsory voting, and that effectively settles any legitimacy question about the turnout.
Overall, Parkinson comes down on the side of the obvious. “ My view is that, given the non-binding nature of the vote, a big majority on a low turnout is not as compelling as a big majority on a big turnout. If it’s binding, then I like the double-majority system – it forces people to try to persuade each other rather than just bully each other. The decision rule should still be 50%+1 though. I don’t have a considered view on the turnout requirement, but my gut reaction is to prefer compulsory voting – it becomes a badge of citizenship, and not a burden.”
Plainly, compulsory voting – especially on some lobby group’s pet CIR topic – is not a runner in New Zealand, Perhaps it should be, when a highly organized 10 % of the population can compel the wider public to spend $10 million on a process that Parliament, in its considered wisdom, is then free to ignore.
At the very least, the Key government will be wanting to wait and hear from the MSD review of the current law – and how it is operating – before reaching any decision. Unfortunately, the public will not be able to do likewise
by Gordon Campbell at Werewolf
Republished with permission
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