Referendum smacks of small-minded smugness
June 21, 2009
In his column in the Sunday Star Times (21/6/09) Finlay Macdonald takes apart the referendum question calling it “ambiguous” and “an indictment of the intelligence of those behind it”. Instead he suggests his own question: “During a recession, should the linguistically challenged be allowed to waste taxpayers’ money on pushing their reactionary agenda?”
No thinking person, he writes, “regardless of their personal parenting philosophy” could answer the referendum’s question in good faith.
He concludes by saying: “All the law now states is that nothing in all that “justifies the use of force for the purpose of correction”. In other words, if you belt your kids just to teach them a lesson, rather than to prevent some clear and present danger or disruption, the law is not necessarily on your side.
In their continuing resistance to such healthy reform and their lamentable inability to even mount a coherent argument against it, the backers of this referendum disqualify themselves from any claim to have the best interests of children at heart.”
