Family Integrity #177 -- Second Press Release Ideas

Family Integrity #177 -- Second Press Release Ideas

Dear Friends,

This is the 2nd message sent as a press release and to some MPs we need to lobby (for that list, see:
http://www.familyfirst.org.nz/files/MPs%20to%20target%20re%20smacking.xls).
Please use any of these ideas in your own letters to MPs and Editors of newspapers,

And do get hold of Larry Baldock's and Sheryl Savill's petition: it's easy to get signatures. Decide to collect 20 at least, then post them in straight away. See the home page at
www.familyintegrity.org.nz for instructions.

Also check out this site to help your lobbying efforts:
http://starstuddedsuperstep.com/s59/

Regards,

Craig Smith
National Director
Family Integrity
PO Box 9064
Palmerston North
New Zealand
Ph: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
Family.Integrity@xtra.co.nz
http://www.FamilyIntegrity.org.nz

Our Home....Our Castle


Sue Bradford is probably right when she says Police will not charge parents every time they smack their child or use any other form of reasonable force to correct children. The real threat in her Bill to subvert parental authority is far worse: CYFS will come threatening to take the children away. Nothing could be more traumatic to a child, especially since the Children, Young Persons and the Families Act, Section 39, gives a single social worker, operating on her own, authority to use whatever force in needed to enter private homes and tear children from the mother’s arms. The social worker doesn’t need proof that abuse has taken place; she only needs to suspect that “ill-treatment” is “likely” to happen. And CYFS is not accountable if she makes a mistake.

Section (2) of Bradford’s Bill makes the correction of children a criminal offence if one uses any hint of force whatsoever: a gesture, a threat to withdraw privileges, intimidation, an appeal to conscience or any kind of physical force. A core responsibility of parenting, the correction of their children, is being thoroughly subverted.

Section (1)(c) of Bradford’s Bill lets a parent slap a hand over a child’s mouth if he is about to repeat an offensive swear word. But if the parent says, “Don’t do it again, or you’ll be off to bed without dessert,” the parent has just committed criminal assault, worth as much as two years in jail. If there is uncertainty whether the parent’s actions were corrective or merely preventative, Section (3) of the Bill says the corrective interpretation must prevail, putting parents outside the law.


(First Alternative ending, which I sent to the Media)
Bradford’s Bill appears to be the product of a fevered mind, corrupted by power, attempting to force its philosophy of child autonomy and minimal parental authority and maximum state powers of intervention upon us all in order to advance the utopia of a radical feminist agenda where so-called “patriarchal structures” such as the nuclear family are completely destroyed or neutralised.


(Second Alternative ending which I sent to individual MPs)
I am genuinely afraid of what you as an MP may be unleasing on us parents. Are you against me, as a parent, correcting my children’s behaviour? Or is it just the use of any force, even the most light and reasonable, that you are against?

Please, this whole thing is mired in muddy thinking. Nothing apart from the word “assault” has been defined. What do you mean when you say, “correction” for example? Please vote to dump this Bill of Bradford’s, and if you can, get your colleagues to debate the real issues more thoroughly. It’s been nothing but a propaganda war so far.