Dialogue: Call it thrashing - and see why it's a bad law

Children need behavioural boundaries but it is nonsensical to suggest that smacking is necessary to rear them correctly, writes BRIAN DONNELLY.

In this country we have a law which states that a parent of a school-age child must ensure the child attends school every day that it is open for instruction.

The law has existed since 1877 and sets penalties for every occasion that it is breached. Nobody is saying it is a bad law and there is no clamour for its repeal. Yet if we were to apply this law vigorously, the courts would be overflowing.

Most parents from time to time, and for very good reasons, do not ensure their children attend school every day. Such reasons range from funerals to visiting an ailing grandparent in another part of the country to farmers' field days.

Only when frequent non-compliance seriously affects a child's right to an education is this law brought into force. Otherwise, commonsense and constabulary discretion are applied. But the law sets a standard of expectation and has served this country well.

Jim Allan, in his article on smacking, is quite right on one point: most New Zealanders want to retain smacking. But he does not mention that most New Zealanders want thrashing outlawed.

Section 59 of the Crimes Act not only gives protection to parents who smack their children, it also gives protection to parents who thrash their children with a piece of wood, leaving serious bruising several days later, as a recent case demonstrated.

In using only one end of the spectrum of behaviour allowed for under section 59 in his argument against its repeal, Mr Allan is himself cheating. Simply by substituting the term thrashing in every place he has used the term smacking, one will see his article in a totally different light.

Giving a child a smack will not automatically make an axe-murderer. And children must have behavioural boundaries. Far from being zealously anti-smacking, I believe that parenting with an odd smack to set out boundaries of behaviour is better than parenting without any behavioural boundaries.

But it is nonsense to suggest that smacking is necessary to rear positive children.

Many parents do not hit their children but raise them to respect their fellow citizens, understand legitimate limits and rules in social lives, and have happy lives because of this.

Mr Allan's claim that the repeal of section 59 of the Crimes Act is about outlawing the smack on the bottom administered by loving parents is totally misleading.

The issue is the legal framework surrounding our expectations of parents. At present, the legal framework is vague, ambiguous, contradictory and not well understood.

For example, access rights of a parent to a child can be affected if he or she hit another adult in the presence of the child, but not if he or she hit the child. The message is: if you are angry, don't belt your wife, belt your child instead.

The repeal of section 59 would simply apply the general rules of assault to parents in their relationships with their children. (If the survey to which Mr Allan referred had asked the question, "Do you believe parents should be allowed to assault their children?" I am convinced there would be a 100 per cent negative response).

The most compelling evidence of the social benefits is to be seen in the statistics of other countries, notably Sweden, which have made such law changes.

Since Sweden (a country with a population twice that of ours) changed its law 25 years ago, it has had four child fatalities from abuse, a staggering reduction in hospitalisation of children from this cause and considerable cuts to social agencies .

Many countries have repealed their section 59-type laws, Denmark as early as 1866. Not one of these nations could be considered hotbeds of crime or civil unrest.

As for Mr Allan's obsession with a Wellington conspiracy, he couldn't be further from the truth. The late Laurie O'Reilly, a quintessential Canterbury male, Lesley Max, an Aucklander through and through, Maxine Hodgson, from Parentline in Hamilton, Merepeka Raukawa-Tait, from Rotorua - all have arrived independently at the conclusion that section 59 must be repealed. It doesn't look like a Wellington cabal to me.

Finally, the mother who last year beat her 5-year-old son to death with a jug cord was probably acting within the law for the first few hits. Her crime was that she kept on going. How do you explain to an angry mother how many hits are reasonable?

The problem with section 59 is that it allows for a high threshold of tolerance, and if things go wrong, tragedy results. Surely one should set much lower thresholds of tolerance and apply commonsense around them.

* Brian Donnelly, a New Zealand First MP, is the author of a private member's bill which would repeal section 59 of the Crimes Act.