On Close-Up on TV One last night, there was a discussion panel about the
They asked for feedback, and I gave them some.
Why on earth is Simon Barnett present in a discussion about legal matters? Does he have any relevant qualification to weigh in, or does having been on television for a while count as some kind of expert degree these days? I look forward to Miss New Zealand's take on our military presence in Afghanistan.
It didn't occur to me that they might respond, or I would have said something a bit clearer about Simon Barnett's hardcore evangelical Christian views making him unrepresentative of most parents in New Zealand. But, to Close-Up's credit, they did respond:
Simon Barnett was on the show as a parent not an expert in legal matters. This bill affects many New Zealanders and all parents and he was chosen as a mainstream voice and a parent, not as a lawyer. His "qualification" was that he's a parent of four and has spoken out about the issue over recent weeks.
I was too shocked by their good manners to say anything intelligent in response, and told them so. They replied that there were another 523 mails about the discussion left to deal with, and even though they declined my offer to reply to a few of them myself, I asked another question:
If you can spare a moment more, whose decision was it for Mark to call it "the anti-smacking bill"? It's not the name of the legislation, and it sort of immediately frames the discussion in a way that's going to obfuscate what the bill actually does. I know that Close-Up is hardly the first to call it that - in fact, it's hard to find a news or discussion source in New Zealand that calls it anything else. But Bradford, Clark and others have all repeatedly said that it's not a ban on smacking. Anyone trying to clearly put forward arguments in favour of the repeal are immediately on the back foot, having to explain that the bill everyone knows as the "anti-smacking bill" is not, in fact, an anti-smacking bill.
To which they replied...
This may interest you. It’s a Green Party Press Release from 2003 in which they labelled it just that themselves.
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR6778.html
And so they did. The stupid bastards. Though the press release does make clear that the concern is that Section 59 has been used to get parents off assault charges that involved hitting their kids with bits of wood, the title is there for all to see: "anti-smacking bill".
While I hope the legislation goes through, it would appear the Green Party may have brought some of this shit on themselves, through lack of foresight.
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