Graham MacCormick: Let's get back to basics now referendum is over

Photo / Brett Phibbs

Now that the referendum is over it is to be hoped that many will acknowledge that:

- The referendum question was a "leading" or "loaded" question, designed to elicit a particular answer, especially by the use of the word "good". Accordingly neither the level of response to the referendum nor its outcome can be of much real use to anyone.

- The amendment to the previous provision in the Crimes Act, which the referendum was supposedly about, doesn't mention "smacking". The amendment has throughout been referred to as anti-smacking legislation but in my view would have been much more accurately referred to as anti-child-abuse legislation.

- The old Section 59 of the Crimes Act provided that every parent of a child (or person responsible for care in the place of a parent) was "justified in using force" by way of correction towards the child if the force used was reasonable in the circumstances. The reasonableness of the force used was a question of fact, meaning in most cases determinable by a jury.

- This meant that while it wasn't okay to assault another adult it was okay to assault a child "by way of correction". With this defence provision in the law a number of juries found parents and others not guilty of considerable physical abuse against a child.

- The old provision had been criticised in international reviews of New Zealand standards of childcare and protection.

The new provision was a negotiated provision which still permits the use of reasonable force for preventative action in a number of circumstances, but not for mere correction, with the proviso that the police have the discretion not to prosecute complaints where the offence is considered so inconsequential that there is no public interest in prosecution.

Before more time is spent debating some further or other amendment we need longer to see how the police, the judiciary and, where applicable, juries, apply the new law.

- The "nanny-state" aspect to the response and the furore over this relatively inconsequential legislative amendment (perhaps important in principle but not in my view of great practical importance) has acted as a "smokescreen" (Christine Rankin's terminology) to inhibit consideration of much more important childcare issues.

While I do not favour telling parents how they "must" parent, I do favour providing much more practical support and assistance to all our parents and primary caregivers, particularly for the critically important first three years, ensuring in the process that all our children, including those at most significant risk, get the best possible start in life. Few find parenting particularly easy, least of all with an uncontrollably screaming baby who can't tell you what they're screaming about! Or with a 3-year-old who sees his role as to rule the world!

International and local research has established that the brain develops extraordinarily rapidly in the first three years and that the level of care and nurturing in those three years lays down the foundations for adult life. As Simon Rowley, a senior consultant neo-natal paediatrician at Auckland City Hospital, has observed: "If we get it right for the first couple of years we have a very good chance of getting it right for life."

Not inevitably, of course, one of the reasons being that there is another very rapid period of brain development and change in the teenage years, but "a very good chance". And if we don't get it right in the first two or three years it will be harder still to get it right in the teenage years.

The research has been enabled by new technology: brain scanning and imaging. Just by way of illustration a normal baby's brain weighs 350g at birth, 1.2kg at 3 and 1.4kg as an adult. At birth a baby has about 15 per cent of its neurons (brain cells) wired or connected but the normal 3-year-old's brain has twice as many neuronal connections (as part of the wiring-up process) as a 26-year-old. This is because by 26 considerable pruning will have taken place. But that doesn't derogate from the critical importance of the first three years. (The research has been promulgated in New Zealand by the Brainwave Trust).

The aim of a positive start in life for every child, with huge benefits not only to the child but to the adult he or she will become, and huge economic and social benefits to society as a whole, still doesn't, however, seem to be significantly nearer realisation.

Perhaps because of insufficient general awareness of the research and its implications.

In a recent public opinion survey conducted in Canada (reported in "Early Learning Prevents Youth Violence", a study by Tremblay and others) 41 per cent of respondents believed governments should invest more money in violence prevention programmes for adolescents, while only 10 per cent would invest in programmes for children aged 4 and under.

The research clearly indicates that in providing information, support and assistance we actually need to start where one should normally start: at the beginning. From birth, or better still from and during pregnancy.

* Graeme MacCormick is a former Human Rights Commissioner and retired Family Court Judge.*