KEY POINTS:
Kiwi Party leader Larry Baldock today announced his party's first five priorities for action they work on after this year's general election.
"Our number one priority is, of course, to stop the criminalisation of good parents by repealing the anti-smacking law," Mr Baldock told his party's national conference in Auckland.
"This has to be the most anti-family socially destructive legislation parliament has passed in a long while.
"Completing the petition to force a referendum was always only going to be the first stage of the battle," said Mr Baldock
Mr Baldock announced today that the party's anti-smacking law petition had sufficient signatures to force a referendum.
He said it was not good enough for National Party leader John Key to say he supported the peoples' right to have their voice heard in a referendum without committing his government to abide by the result.
"In fact, when National's leader John Key announced their pledge of 10 policy items at their conference last weekend, not a single one of them addresses any of the social engineering Labour has forced upon the nation in the past six to nine years," Mr Baldock said.
"National surely is the party to maintain the status quo, easy she goes, don't rock the boat."
Mr Baldock said it was essential that the Kiwi Party was able to exercise influence over National after this year's election if voters wanted to see the social engineering of Labour repealed.
"Our message to the voters in this election is this, give the Kiwi Party your support on election day and the Bradford anti-smacking law will be gone by lunchtime.
"Once the law has been repealed we must then get serious about the nation's child abuse by appointing a Royal Commission to understand and address the wider causes of family breakdown, family violence and child abuse in response to the more than 300,000 kiwis that signed our petition on this matter.
"Then we must restore our democracy by ensuring that we can have binding referenda on controversial issues. It must never happen again that more than 90 per cent of our elected representatives could ignore 80 per cent of the population ever again," Mr Baldock said.
He said the minimum wage must be raised to to $15 an hour with an offsetting tax credit to employers "to give our low paid workers dignity and a decent wage to put food on their tables".
The party would also raise the drinking age, clamp down on anyone supplying alcohol illegally to people underage and move quickly to establish faith-based detox and rehab centres to provide assistance to families dealing with drug and alcohol addictions in their youth.
"Then we will invest in marriage preparation, marriage and relationship enrichment course through faith-based charities, iwi-based and other third sector organisations," Mr Baldock said.
- NZPA
