Family Integrity: 11 April 2007 - Family Integrity #218 -- Response to Bradfords latest form email

11 April 2007 - Family Integrity #218 -- Response to Bradfords latest form email

Greetings all,

Here is Bradford's "five points" form email she's sending out far and wide. Attached (below)is my response to it.

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

-----Original Message-----
From: Sue Bradford [mailto:Sue.Bradford@parliament.govt.nz]
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 11:39 AM
Subject: Section 59

Thank you for your email.

Firstly I must apologise for the delay in responding to your email. I hope you'll understand that this has been a very busy time for me and due to the volume of correspondence I am unable to respond personally to every email. I do however read and appreciate all considered correspondence on the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill.

I would like to respond to several of the points that have been raised in opposition to the Bill.

1. 80% + of the population is opposed to the repeal of Section 59.

A survey was done by UMR last year that found 37 % of participants agreed that Section 59 of the Crimes Act should be ended. This increased to 71 % who agreed that Section 59 of the Crimes Act should be ended, provided guidelines were developed to prevent prosecution for mild slaps and smacking. There was agreement from 64 % that this legislation should be ended if research showed that removing it would decrease child abuse, and from 53 % if research showed that physical punishment is not an effective method of discipline, and that it can be harmful. Research has shown that physical punishment is not effective, guidelines have and will be further developed to prevent frivolous prosecutions, therefore it seems the majority of the country support the Bill.

The questions that resulted in 80%+ of the population being against the bill, were framed in terms of the 'anti-smacking bill', which does not accurately represent the nature of the Bill and cannot therefore be considered a true indication of the peoples' voice. It does tell however tell us that we do need to do a lot more education regarding the purpose and content of this Bill.

The Bill has been more than 2 years in the parliamentary process, we have done thorough research, and heard hundreds of submissions. Nothing about this process has been undemocratic.

2. The Repeal of Section 59 will result in good parents being criminalised.

The Bill does not in anyway seek to criminalise or scare good parents. It sets out to remove the legal defence of reasonable force from the Crimes Act. The amended Bill also sets out four purposes where the use of reasonable force - for instance, to carry out the normal, everyday tasks of parenting - is permitted.

Domestic violence and domestic discipline are not the same thing - the Minister of Police has given reassurance that Police will not prosecute indiscriminately. Additionally the Police are developing guidelines about how to respond to complaints of assault on children if the Bill becomes law.

For the last 110 years it has been possible to be convicted for smacking your children, but the way the law has worked in practice is this: if the police receive a complaint, or believe an assault against a child has been sufficiently serious to warrant their attention, then they investigate. If after investigating the police believe there is a case to answer, then they press charges so whoever is suspected of committing the assault has to answer to the courts.

This will remain the same after the Bill has passed - nothing will change in terms of the procedure deciding whether an assault against a child goes before the courts.

The police will not suddenly start dragging parents before the courts because they were seen smacking their child on the hand in a supermarket. Charges will only be laid if after investigation the assault allegation appears sufficiently serious and credible to warrant bringing the case to court.

3. Section 59 is okay as it is.

Please refer to this article by the Youth Law Project for case examples of just some of the instances where Section 59 has been used in the courts http://www.youthlaw.co.nz/default.aspx?_z=128. I really can't imagine you would want to align yourself with such instances of abuse.

4. The Swedish case.
In Sweden, where there is similar legislation in place, the child death rate from abuse under the age of 15 is 0.5 per 100,000 children. In New Zealand the child death rate per 100,000 children under 15 is 1.2. That is more than twice the rate. Please refer to the following link for a more detailed analysis: http://epochnz.org.nz/images/stories/response_to_larzelere_on_sweden.pdf

5. Sue Bradford is trying to destroy the family.

That is the last thing I want to do. I want to strengthen families to support our children.

This Bill was my response to the call from over 50 child welfare organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand to ensure our legislation was consistent with international agreements, and other domestic anti-violence legislation. These organisations, including Plunket, come in contact with thousands of families every week and they believe this legislation is a priority. It is not the sole answer to the problems of child abuse, indeed it is just one small step. I am proud to be a part of this movement to create a safer country for all our children.

Yours sincerely.
Sue Bradford MP

Below, in this font, is a form email from Sue Bradford wherein she
answers five criticisms in this font of her Bill to repeal/rewrite
Section 59. In this font I respond to each of her answers.
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

From: Sue Bradford [mailto:Sue.Bradford@parliament.govt.nz]
Sent: Wednesday, 4 April 2007 4:10 p.m.
Subject: Section 59

Thank you for your email.

Firstly I must apologise for the delay in responding to your email. I hope you’ll understand that this has been a very busy time for me and due to the volume of correspondence I am unable to respond personally to every email. I do however read and appreciate all considered correspondence on the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill.

I would like to respond to several of the points that have been raised in opposition to the Bill.

1. 80% + of the population is opposed to the repeal of Section 59.
A survey was done by UMR last year that found 37 % of participants agreed that Section 59 of the Crimes Act should be ended. This increased to 71 % who agreed that Section 59 of the Crimes Act should be ended, provided guidelines were developed to prevent prosecution for mild slaps and smacking. There was agreement from 64 % that this legislation should be ended if research showed that removing it would decrease child abuse, and from 53 % if research showed that physical punishment is not an effective method of discipline, and that it can be harmful.
The questions that resulted in 80%+ of the population being against the bill, were framed in terms of the 'anti-smacking bill', which does not accurately represent the nature of the Bill and cannot therefore be considered a true indication of the peoples' voice. It does tell however tell us that we do need to do a lot more education regarding the purpose and content of this Bill.
The Bill has been more than 2 years in the parliamentary process, we have done thorough research, and heard hundreds of submissions. Nothing about this process has been undemocratic.

[Craig Smith]
It is sad and pathetic that Bradford would even challenge the obvious. Well over a dozen Internet polls have all shown the same thing: 80%+ of NZers are against her Bill. I just checked the results of a still-live one (3pm, 11 April 2007) at http://www.antismackingvote.co.nz. It had 24,460 votes (a separate email address is required for each vote), and 89% answered “No” to the question, “Do you support Sue Bradford’s Anti-smacking Bill?” and only 11% answered “Yes”. The Young Labour caucus put a poll on their website, and it too was heavily against the Bill....and Young Labour got caught trying to fiddle the results to look differently. Ask anyone out getting signatures for Larry Baldock’s CIR petition....people queue up to sign it!
The "research" to which Bradford here refers in unknown to me, unless it is the thoroughly unprofessional magazine survey done by the Littlies Lobby in April of 2005, the results of which were analysed by the same crowd UMR mentioned here.
But statistically, because of the way the responses were gathered, the "survey" is useless. It is more useless than the Internet polls, for at least those have fewer selective and exclusion factors involved than did the Littlies Lobby survey. In addition, the very criticism Bradford makes of the many other polls, at least 12, that have been done on the Internet -- the criticism about the way the wording was done on the questions themselves -- is also a criticism of the Littlies Lobby survey....the questions were biased and leading in themselves. But until we know what research Bradford is referring to here, how the data was collected, how many respondents there were and what questions were put to the people who responded, then we cannot know anything about the validity of this study to which she refers. There are three surveys that I know of that were done via proper research methodology:
The first was by the Ministry of Justice in 2001 titled, "Survey on Public Attitudes Toward the Physical Discipline of Children". It found that 80% of New Zealanders agreed with the statement: "A person parenting a child should be allowed, by law, to smack the child with an open hand if the child is naughty."
The full report on this research can be read at:
http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports/2001/children/index.html
The second survey that I know of was reported by former Commissioner for Children Dr Ian Iassell at a Child Abuse Conference in Wellington on 16 February 2006. It came from a telephone survey of 800 parents and showed that 82% believed it was okay to smack. (Ian Hassell told me personally that it was a sample of 1300 people).
This was reported on in the Dominion Post of 17 February 2006.
The third survey is a Bay of Plenty Times Insight Poll (conducted by Key Research as part of their regular Insight survey). Of the 300 surveyed, 250 (or 83%) disagreed with Ms Bradford's bill and thought parents should be allowed to smack. This was reported on in the BOP Times of 26 May 2006.
When Bradford says nothing about this process has been undemocratic, she is partly right. But at the first hearing of oral submissions by the Select Committee considering this Bill back in March 2006, it was revealed that Bradford, the author of the Bill, was sitting on the committee. This is clearly a conflict of interest situation, not endorsed by the principles of democracy. But there are plenty of precedents in NZ's Parliamentary history. The chair of the Committee, Lynn Pillay and the other Labour Party member of the committee, Anne Hartley, were totally shameless in their support of Bradford's Bill and clearly biased toward its passage. They were not at all objective. There were 10 presentations that day, all in favour of the Bill...it was a real media showcase: Barnardos, Save the Children, IHC, Families Commission, Childrens Commission, UNICEF, EPOCH, etc. Most of these groups said it was an opportunity for the Government to "show real leadership" in passing the bill in the face of majority opposition. In other words, they recognised they were outnumbered, and "real leadership" meant ignoring the democratic process and pass it over the clear wishes of the majority.
Bradford and co are becoming more and more brazen about how they put spin into their statements. They constantly equate the current Section 59's "reasonable force" with violence, severe beatings, thrashings, etc. Kiro was fond of saying Section 59 gives parents a license to beat their children. None of this is true, of course, for any fool will tell you that "reasonable force" is not beating, thrashing, etc. To maintain that they are the same, as do Clark, Bradford and Kiro, is to say that juries are typically too thick to tell the difference. This shows a marked disrespect for democracy by trying to misrepresent the situation by constantly using inaccurate and emotive
expressions like "severe beatings" and "thrashings" instead of "smacking" when in fact the juries decided it was a smacking using reasonable force by way of correction. And this kind of thing shows a shocking disrespect for our jury system.
This bill as proposed, reproduced below, doesn't get rid of the hated "reasonable force" that Bradford et al constantly say is a mask for severe beatings, thrashings, and other forms of violence. Bradford’s Bill now in fact outlines scenarios wherein one can use "reasonable force" or, using her own rhetoric, scenarios wherein one can legally thrash and severely beat one's child: to prevent harm, criminal, offensive or disruptive behaviour or when a beating is incidental to good care and parenting. According to subsection 2 of the proposed re-write of Section 59, the one time you must never use reasonable force is for the purpose of correction. In fact, subsection 3 of the bill says subsection 2 must prevail over subsection 1.
That is, if there is a question over whether a parent's smack or use of reasonable force was corrective or preventative or incidental to good care and parenting, the corrective interpretation must prevail, meaning when there is doubt about the intent, the parent must be considered quilty of planning correction for the child and therefore must be convicted.
Reasonable doubt normally requires an acquittal....one is found guilty only when it is beyond reasonable doubt, a legal precedent gained as part of our 800-year history of collected common law wisdom. But with this Bill, reasonable doubt requires a conviction, not an acquittal. Haven't Bradford and her colleagues on the Select Committee and Sir Geoffrey Palmer who drafted this Bill been clever to turn centuries of hard-won legal precedents on their head with a mere six words in subsection 3?
Brilliant. And reference to our common law heritage and precedent is ruled out of bounds anyway, just in case, by subsection 2. Bradford so hates the idea of parental correction of children, she is leaving nothing to chance.
The passage of this Bill will tip New Zealand into the cauldron of those countries which are totalitarian socialist dictatorships; places like Sweden & Germany. Sweden is best known for kidnapping children into foster care and monster children who control and terrorise their parents (see http://www.nkmr.org/english/the_children_are_embarrassing_sweden.htm and http://www.nkmr.org/english/we_are_bringing_up_a_generation_of_monsters.htm); Germany is known for its absolute intolerance of home schoolers and Christians who would dare to be different from the society the state's public schools is creating, explaining that "parallel societies" cannot be allowed (see: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54223).
As outlined in these last couple of paragraphs, the Bill itself is designed to destroy democracy. Worse than that, it will give our children into the hands of the state. And once we give the bureaucrats the children, we might just as well give them everything else. For once we've made the Big Compromise and given over our children, they WILL come for everything else.

Current Section 59
59 Domestic Discipline
Every parent of a child and...every person in the place of the parent of a child is justified in using force by way of correction towards the child, if the force used is reasonable in the circumstances.

Proposed replacement of Section 59
59 Parental Control
(1) Every parent of a child and every person in the place of a parent of the child is justified in using force if the force used is reasonable in the circumstances and is for the purpose of --
(a) preventing or minimising harm to the child or another person; or (b) preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in conduct that amounts to a criminal offence; or
(c) preventing the child from engaging or continuing to engage in offensive or disruptive behaviour; or (d) performing the normal daily tasks that are incidental to good care and parenting.
(2) Nothing in subsection (1) or in any rule of common law justifies the use of force for
the purpose of correction.
(3) Subsection (2) prevails over subsection (1).

2. The Repeal of Section 59 will result in good parents being
criminalised.
The Bill does not in anyway seek to criminalise or scare good parents. It sets out to remove the legal defence of reasonable force from the Crimes Act. The amended Bill also sets out four purposes where the use of reasonable force – for instance, to carry out the normal, everyday tasks of parenting – is permitted.
Domestic violence and domestic discipline are not the same thing - the Minister of Police has given reassurance that Police will not prosecute indiscriminately.
Additionally the Police are developing guidelines about how to respond to complaints of assault on children if the Bill becomes law.
For the last 110 years it has been possible to be convicted for smacking your children, but the way the law has worked in practice is this: if the police receive a complaint, or believe an assault against a child has been sufficiently serious to warrant their attention, then they investigate. If after investigating the police believe there is a case to answer, then they press charges so whoever is suspected of committing the assault has to answer to the courts.
This will remain the same after the Bill has passed - nothing will change in terms of the procedure deciding whether an assault against a child goes before the courts.
The police will not suddenly start dragging parents before the courts because they were seen smacking their child on the hand in a supermarket. Charges will only be laid if after investigation the assault allegation appears sufficiently serious and credible to warrant bringing the case to court.

[Craig Smith]
This is a load of double-talk. She is talking of intentions, that she does not intend to criminalise parents. But this is not entirely honest either. She intends for all parents to accept, embrace and adapt to her ideology....that any force of any description, regardless of how light or how reasonable, for the purposes of correction should become a criminal act....and if you parents don’t embrace Bradford’s ideology, then your actions will be criminalised. But of course the vast majority of parents understand that it is their core duty as parents to correct their children's behaviour, and that it often takes some degree of force and force in one form or another. At the very least it is the parent forcing his/her will on the child. If parents did not have any requirements or prohibitions in relation to their children, then there would be no need for correction. Perhaps this is the utopia of which Bradford dreams, but it is totally disconnected from reality. Parents must and do impose requirements and prohibitions on their children, not just for the sake of the parents, the family peace and harmony, but for the sake of the child who does not yet know right from wrong, good from bad, wise from unwise. In addition, society expects parents to train up children so that they fit in, know how to socialise and deal honestly and true and respectfully with others.
Perhaps it is extremely difficult for someone like Bradford who has made a reputation and a lifestyle of living outside of the law and of pushing to change the boundaries of the law…perhaps it is too hard for her to understand that many people strive always to live within the law. Bradford’s assurances that parents will not be charged and prosecuted left, right and centre is of little comfort since parents’ actions of using light and perfectly reasonable force to correct will become, by definition, actions outside the law. Such parents, who almost certainly constitute the vast majority, do not want even a POSSIBLE investigation and charge to be laid against them for doing what parents have a duty to do: correct their own children.
A text without a context is a pretext.
This is what Labour and the Greens are doing when they say that for the last 110 years smacking and time-out have been illegal.
That is like saying it has always been illegal for police to make arrests.
Looking solely at the legal definition of Assault in Section 2 of the Crimes Act shows that time-out, smacking and arresting all constitute acts of criminal assault. But taken in the context of the entire Act, it becomes obvious that Section 59 recognises parents have legitimate authority to use "reasonable force" - not unreasonable force -
to correct their children and that several other sections of the Act give police and even bystanders legitimate authority to use force - sometimes the Act doesn’t even specify that it must be "reasonable" - to arrest people for various reasons.
So Labour and the Greens reference the text of Section 2 of the Crimes Act, without the context of the rest of the Act, for the pretext of claiming that smacking and timeout are already illegal.
The second pretext employed by Labour and the Greens is to say that "all this Bill does" is remove the defense of "reasonable force" for correcting a child. So after telling us that the Bill won’t criminalise parents, because those who smack are already criminals, they add that from now on parents who smack or use any force at all to correct will have to be found guilty of assault, for there will no longer be a legal defense.
Labour and Green are saying, "You parents have always been criminals. From now on you have no refuge in law. If you use even reasonable force to correct your children for anything they do, you will be guilty of child assault. If you are seen or even suspected, you will be investigated. If you have corrected your child, you will be charged and you will be found guilty, for there is no longer a legal defense for correcting a child."
I have written statements from two Police Commissioners, Past Commissioner Robinson and present Commissioner Broad, that state, "If section 59 was repealed in its entirety, parents would not be authorised to use reasonable force by way of correction." and "[S]macking a child by way of corrective action would be an assault."
It is very clear and obvious, even from the wording of the Bill before Parliament, that any action toward a child that involved any force at all for corrective purposes will become, by definition, an act of assault, unjustified in law. Gregg O'Connor, President of the Police Association has said Police will have no discretion: when they see or hear of a smack...it will be an assault if Bradford’s Bill is passed, it will be regarded as a case of "domestic violence", and it will almost certainly be investigated and reported to CYFS. The Manawatu Evening Standard rang the Police recently and asked them if they would have to investigate any complaint about a parent lightly smacking a child for correction. They answered, “Yes.” Would they need to inform CYFS? Again, the Police answered, “Yes.” This was on the Standard’s front page of 30 March 2007.
Parents and children will have to go through this trauma of possibly being reported, or of actually being reported and investigated, regardless of what Bradford says, for any show of force, regardless of how light or reasonable, for doing what parents naturally do: correct errant behaviour. Some of these parents will end up with criminal charges.
Some will lose their children. This will happen because the parents used reasonable force to correct, not that they committed child abuse, because reasonable force used for correction will become a crime.

3. Section 59 is okay as it is.
Please refer to this article by the Youth Law Project for case examples of just some of the instances where Section 59 has been used in the courts http://www.youthlaw.co.nz/default.aspx?_z=128. I really can’t imagine you would want to align yourself with such instances of abuse.

[Craig Smith]
In this website Bradford mentions, lawyer John Hancock was trying to find all the cases where Section 59 was used as a defense. He only found 18 cases over the 13 year period from 1990 through 2002. One of those, the famous "plank of wood" (which in fact was a piece of kindling 30cm by 2cm, the size of a standard wooden spoon), actually never had Section 59 brought up, for the jury acquitted the parent from a charge of assault under Section 194(a) of the Crimes Act as soon as they heard the facts. See http://familyintegrity.blogspot.com/2007/04/hawkes-bay-father-4-x-2.html. So that means Section 59 only came up17 times in those 13 years or 1.3 times a year. In 10 of those cases, the person charged was found guilty; 1 needed a retrial; in 1 case the child was removed; and the parents were justified in only 5 cases in those 13 years, less than once every two years, showing that Section 59 does not let abusers off. In these cases of acquittal using a Section 59 defense, the juries composed of 12 people, after hearing all the evidence in excruciating detail, not wee snippets as are given in Hancock's review, unanimously found that the parents had used only reasonable force, not abuse or violence, and that it was used for corrective purposes, not to inflict injury, vent anger, take revenge or whatever.
Section 59 does work just fine as it is. But Bradford still insists that each of these parents are guilty of violently beating or thrashing their children and should have been found guilty of assault even though the juries found them innocent. Bradford clearly has another agenda in mind. She apparently does not like the idea that Section 59 allows parents to use a measure of reasonable force to back up their natural authority as parents. Because abuse and violence against children are already illegal under several other parts of the Crimes Act, including Section 59, removing Section 59 would only INCREASE by a vast measure what is considered violence against a child. This appears to be Bradford's agenda: criminalise parental use of their natural authority to correct their own children using reasonable force. When this is done, the only people who will be allowed to use force....and not even reasonable force....to correct children will be the police and social workers, agents of the state.
On the one hand Bradford wants people to have maximum freedoms, even to ruin themselves: keep the drinking age lower, legalise prostitution, leave the party drug P at the less-dangerous drug classification, legalise marijuana, lower the penalty for child pornography, not require birth mothers to name the fathers on the birth certificates. And she apparently wants maximum freedom for children to be out from under their parent’s corrective authority. But parents’ duty and responsibility to effectively train, discipline and correct their children’s behaviour is to be under the constant threat of a charge of criminal assault, while it is to her perfectly acceptable for state agents (police and social workers) to use force to correct wayward children.

4. The Swedish case.
In Sweden, where there is similar legislation in place, the child death rate from abuse under the age of 15 is 0.5 per 100,000 children. In New Zealand the child death rate per 100,000 children under 15 is 1.2. That is more than twice the rate. Please refer to the following link for a more detailed analysis:
http://epochnz.org.nz/images/stories/response_to_larzelere_on_sweden.pdf

[Craig Smith]
Bradford has been caught using shonky research statistics before. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjBKFKc2igU.
"Every year, eight to ten, sometimes as many as twelve children die in Sweden due to violence. This has been true for several years," said Morgan Johansson, Sweden's public health minister on 5 May 2006. Sweden's children's ombudsman Lena Nyberg added: "In Sweden, many people believe that children have not been subjected to violence since the ban on corporal punishment was introduced, but this is not true." (see http://www.thelocal.se/3734/20060505/). There is a ton of research material about Sweden and other parts of the world under the "Research" and "Sweden" index tabs on http://www.familyintegrity.org.nz. See especially Dr Larzelere’s “Sweden Smacking Ban: More Harm than Good” and Chris Beckett’s “The Swedish Myth: the Corporal Punishment Ban and Child Death” both under the “Sweden” index tab at http://www.familyintegrity.org.nz.
The two researchers involved in analysing Sweden's situation in English are Dr Robert Larzelere of U. of Oklahoma and Dr Joan Durrant of U. of Manitoba. Using the same database, they have come to nearly opposite conclusions. Dr Larzelere’s works are on the Family Integrity website, http://www.familyintegrity.org.nz and http://familyintegrity.blogspot.com/search/label/Robert%20E.%20Larzelere%20Ph.D. I spoke to Durrant face to face when she was out here a couple years ago. She confirmed that it was a war of world views and that in her opinion, one world view would have to triumph and the other would have to be put down. She is thoroughly against the traditional view of parental authority and favours the view of children as autonomous individuals living in a socialist utopia where nanny state runs and regulates virtually every thing. There is no thought of peaceful co-existence in her mind with cultures and philosophies and religions that compete with her ideology. Her ideas must prevail and all others that contradict or compete with hers must be criminalised.
Bradford is operating in the same vein. She and Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro and Beth Wood of UNICEF and others of the pro-repeal lobby take their marching orders from the extreme position of the UN Committee for the Rights of the Child. You must read their commentary on this issue which was published in June 2006 (see http://tinyurl.com/fvrwo). They equate corporal punishment with being "cruel and degrading" and that it is by nature "violence against children"; and that is just in Paragraph 1! In Paragraph 8 they say how such violence, "however light", must be prohibited in families as well as in schools. In Paragraph 31, all these evils are equated with "reasonable or moderate chastisement or correction." Such evils must clearly be legislated against, Paragraph 34. And Paragraph 29 says the Committee's ruling on this trumps the Bible or any other religious convictions or sacred writings. Paragraph 52 recommends that local governments recruit schools and youth groups to monitor and report on how individual families conform to this ideology. Bradford and the others obviously approve of these totalitarian tendencies.

5. Sue Bradford is trying to destroy the family.
That is the last thing I want to do. I want to strengthen families to support our children.
This Bill was my response to the call from over 50 child welfare organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand to ensure our legislation was consistent with international agreements, and other domestic anti-violence legislation. These organisations, including Plunket, come in contact with thousands of families every week and they believe this legislation is a priority. It is not the sole answer to the problems of child abuse, indeed it is just one small step. I am proud to be a part of this movement to create a safer country for all our children.

[Craig Smith]
Bradford here demonises parental authority that would use reasonable force to correct as being outside "domestic anti-violence legislation." She also mentions international agreements, meaning the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCROC). This document does not mention domestic discipline or child discipline or correction or corporal punishment at all. The UN Committee for the Rights of the Child freely admits "Article 19 and article 28(2) do not refer explicitly to corporal punishment. The travaux preparatoires for the Convention do not record any
discussion of corporal punishment during the drafting sessions." Then they give themselves a blank cheque to make UNCROC say what ever they want: "But the Convention, like all human rights instruments, must be regarded as a living instrument, whose interpretation develops over time." See http://tinyurl.com/fvrwo, paragraph 20.
Plunket and Barnardos and Save the Children and the others are mostly heavily funded by the Government and therefore subject to Government agendas. It suits the present Labour led NZ Government to remain in high gear in pushing through social engineering legislation such as this which will totally re-define the relation between parents and their own children and vastly increase the legal powers of state agents to intervene in the family for the flimsiest of reasons. In addition, these agencies thrive on family dysfunction. As more is created, as will happen via this bill, it means more jobs and projects for these organisations. They want to view themselves as essential, indispensable providers; they do not want to work themselves out of a job.
Barnardos in particular was infiltrated by Brenda Radcliffe who proceeded to take over and change the whole culture of the organisation, purging it of people who did not agree to making the repeal of Section 59 their number one priority. The Barnardos written submission on Section 59 was a formal repudiation of their founder, Dr Thomas Barnardo's thoroughly Christian evangelical world view and its replacement by the twin ideological guidelines of "secularism and rationalism". Check it out at http://www.barnardos.org.nz/AboutUs/writtensubmission.pdf with the words "NOT FOR PUBLIC USE" plastered across each page. They repudiate their founder's philosophy and world view but want to continue trading on the founder's massive goodwill and reputation as a Christian organisation. It is dispicable.
As Bradford says, this legislation is not the answer to the child abuse problem – it doesn't even address it at all -- but it is the first of many small steps as the pro-repeal showcase submitters all said on that first appearance before the Select Committee back in March 2006. Swedish lawyer Ruby Harrold-Claesson was stunned when she heard them say this, for it is precisely the strategy used by the totalitarians in Sweden to take over personal freedoms: it even has a name, "The tyranny of the small steps."
Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro has talked about a programme to give every child a personal social worker at birth who will assess the child on academics, physical and mental and social health at four points during the school years. See http://familyintegrity.blogspot.com/2007/04/26-october-2006-commissioner-for.html.
Former Family Court Judge Graeme MacCormick has an even more invasive programme to assess parents seven times before the child turns 14, with any form of child benefit payments being cancelled should the parents refuse the assessment. It was dubbed the parenting license. See http://familyintegrity.blogspot.com/2007/04/19-september-2006-nzherald-parents.html.

Bradford is definitely out to destroy the traditional family as we know it. In Parliament on 1 March 2007 Sue Bradford made the following comments during the first reading of the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill: "...If this bill goes through there will therefore be a statutory obligation on fathers of children to make the notification, and an obligation on mothers to jointly make the notification with the father - whether they choose to or not.”
“Aside from the situation where a woman fears for the safety of herself or her baby, which would probably be covered by the "undue distress" exemption, there are a range of other situations where women may not wish to have the father of their child's name registered.
"One is where the woman is in a same-sex relationship, wants her partner to share parental responsibilities, but wants to conceive naturally rather than by assisted reproductive technology. Another is where the woman has a partner of the opposite sex who is infertile, but chooses to conceive naturally to another man. A third is where the woman simply wants to raise a child on her own without any involvement financially or emotionally from another parent. These are all reasonable choices for women to want to make, and choices that some women do make. Yet with the new section 9 proposed by this Bill, they are not choices that women will be lawfully
permitted to make.”
“... This aspect of the Bill is nothing short of draconian - it makes criminals out of women who wish to make choices to raise their children without the involvement of their biological father. ” (See http://www.hansard.parliament.govt.nz/hansard/Final/FINAL_2007_03_01.htm).
Bradford's ideology behind virtually every word she utters is so foreign and radical to anything average New Zealanders understand as normal and healthy that she is not to be taken seriously.

Yours sincerely.
Sue Bradford MP

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