Politically incorrect gone mad?

Because of this.

How dare Nigel Latta use his critical faculties and his clinical psychology expertise to come to a rational decision!

I'm pretty much assuming anyone interested in this story will already be sick of the nitty gritty because it is getting saturation coverage.

So instead I wanted to draw attention to the End of the Affair between Latta and Family First.

In the beginning it appears Latta could be the saviour of the smackers, flawed only by his refusal to meet with Family First Bob McCoskrie:

Family First NZ is welcoming the appointment of Nigel Latta to the s59 Review Process but is concerned by his comments that he will not be meeting with any lobby groups.

“Nigel Latta has said ‘I did not agree with the original law change. I also voted no in the referendum. I do not believe that a parent smacking their child, in the ‘common sense’ understanding of what that means, should be subject to criminal prosecution or investigation’. That is a breath of fresh air, completely politically incorrect, and suggests that he will represent the concerns of NZ parents when he reviews the effect of the law,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.

...Family First is inviting Nigel Latta to meet parents negatively impacted by the anti-smacking law. [my emphasis]

Oh the irony - Latta, the independent reviewer on the panel, with Family First's backing, looked at all the evidence around the cases Family First highlighted and found Bob's version lacking in the critical area of veracity. The results are damning for McCoskrie, and I would hope fatally undermine any credibility he still had with the media.

Yesterday Bob said this about the final report from Latta's review:

Family First NZ is dismissing yet another report on the anti-smacking law which fails to address the real issues and concerns over the law change.

“This is the eighth report in just over two years on the law change. There have never been so many reports in such a short time frame on a law change in an attempt to sell it,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ. “The police have done six reports, a report from the ministry of Social Development, and now this report commissioned by the Prime Minister in response to the overwhelming rejection of the law in the recent Referendum.”

So Family First are the Way, the Truth and the Light, and everyone else, including zillions of people with everyday practical knowledge of child abuse and parenting, is clearly Wrong.

Nigel Latta certainly won't be getting a Chrissie card from Bob McCoskrie anytime soon.

Time out for parents

Reflecting on the sad story of Caitlyn Matthews, a little girl with serious and permanent brain damage caused when she was shaken as a baby, my partner said, 'We should promote time out for parents'.* I understood completely, and so probably does every exhausted, stressed-out parent of small children who is simply desperate for a couple of hours of uninterrupted sleep, or even the opportunity to just have a shower or go to the loo in peace and quiet.

Caitlyn's story made me remember a time when my daughter was a toddler, and still breastfeeding. She was no longer taking the whole breastfeeding enterprise seriously, and had discovered the sadistic joy that comes from biting mum's boob, then laughing as I yowled in pain. One day, in exhaustion and utter frustration, I came incredibly close to slapping her. I feel guilty about it to this very day. The things that seem obvious to someone who isn't exhausted or stressed - put the child down, take a deep breath and count to ten, leave the room - can sometimes just elude you when you're feeling overwhelmed.

This is just one reason why I'm so strongly opposed to smacking. If I'd slapped my daughter, no doubt some (possibly Christian fundamentalist) pro-smacker would have leapt to my defense, claiming that 'correction' of my child is my right as a parent. But in so many instances, as would have been the case if I'd actually slapped my daughter, what passes as correction is nothing but parental anger, frustration, exhaustion and lack of self-control. A friend of mine once mentioned to me how her father - a normally gentle man whom I like and have respect for - once lost his temper and pushed her, and her head put a hole in the wall. The line between an act of frustration and an act causing lifelong damage can be frighteningly thin.

Giving yourself parental time out - physically or mentally removing yourself from the stress - can be pretty hard to do. I'm not overly proud of it, but in moments of extreme frustration, I yell and howl like a banshee: incoherent phrases which may include expletives. My kids don't take much notice of it, but they know it means mummy needs a few moments to regain the marbles she's just lost. It's not a particularly sophisticated tactic, but I figure it's better than doing something that will scare my children, upset them or cause them harm.

What time out tactics do other parents use on themselves?


* Caitlyn's story was one of two I spied today about the plight of shaken babies. The second was about the cost of caring for those who sustain severe head injuries. I thought it was kind of odd - the fiscal consequences wouldn't be my first argument against child abuse.

Post script: Caitlyn's grandparents, who are raising her, just spoke on Campbell Live about the difficulties and many joys of caring for her, and the importance of stressed parents learning to walk away. They - and lots of other grandparents raising grandchildren in tough circumstances - do an incredible job.

Get your Yes Vote in the post soonest!

Votes in the Child Discipline Referendum need to be in the post tomorrow to make it on time, so make sure you find your orange envelope and do your democratic thang and vote.

Here at The Hand Mirror we made a conscious decision months ago to support the Yes Vote campaign. We've written about why we support a Yes Vote at some length.

For those who support the current law but think the question is ridiculous and are thus thinking of abstaining, please have a second or even third think about it. While we can't determine or change the question we can send a positive message about what we think of the law. Voting Yes says you support the modifications made to s59 of the Crimes Act, to give children more protection from violence.

For anyone still undecided I recommend this very simple presentation from the Yes Vote campaign. It's just a series of powerpoint slides, no emotive pictures of beaten children, and I think it's a credit to the Yes Vote campaigners that they haven't gone there at all. Anyway it's a very succint overview of how we got to here and why you should vote Yes:

Referendum 2009 - Unicef NZ

View more presentations from yesvote.

Post your vote today or tomorrow, otherwise your vote may not count and your voice may not be heard.

Today's the day to Vote Yes

And this is what Idiot/Savant's Yes Vote looked like:

Picture removed at Idiot/Savant's request, per advice he received from the Electoral Commission. For the record, it showed a "Yes" vote.

If you need any further convincing I suggest you check out The Yes Vote campaign site. Or indeed any of the posts we have written here supporting a Yes Vote...

supporting the yes vote campaign

hi all. just reproducing an email i got this morning from the yes vote campaign:

Now is the time to engage support for the Yes Vote

With the referendum so close, now is the time to reach as many New Zealand voters as possible with the Yes Vote message.

People have asked how they can help. Here is what you can do:

1. - Have a conversation. Encourage people to vote. A strong Yes Vote outcome will help secure the 2007 law – now and in the future. A Yes Vote is a strong statement in support of the law. Not voting or spoiling the ballot paper leaves the floor open to the No Vote.

2. - Visit the website – there is a wealth of information there about why New Zealanders should be voting yes.

3. - If you have not already done so sign up as a supporter – individually and also get your agency to join – this way we can keep in touch with you. The list will also be useful evidence of support for the law if we need to resist the reintroduction of legal assault on children in the future. Type your e-mail address in the box on the right of our web page.

4. - Visit our website and download the flyer. Print this off and give to friends, family and clients. Take a walk in your local neighbourhood and distribute the flyer in letter boxes.

5. - Tell your MP you are voting Yes by using our website to send the message.

The 2007 law change plays a part in reducing violence to children and within families in New Zealand. It will play a part in securing more positive outcomes for many children. Please help us keep this law secure by supporting a YesVote in the 2009 referendum.

pull the petition, ms savill

now we find out that we dont have to be spending $9 million on the poorly worded question about hitting chidren:

"The promoters of the petition forcing the referendum, Sheryl Saville, Larry Baldock and Bob McCoskrie, have a short window of time in which they could demonstrate some common sense and commitment to New Zealand families in these hard economic times, by withdrawing their petition," said Yes Vote spokesperson Deborah Morris-Travers.

Legally, the petition can be withdrawn by its promoters before the Governor-General issues the writ for the referendum, which must be done by Friday 3 July 2009.

it appears that the full responsibility for pulling the referendum lies with sheryl savill, as the instigator of the referendum. let's hope some serious pressure builds up during this week to get these people to withdraw, so that maybe we can focus on the rights of children during this recession rather than the rights of their parents to hit them.

Quick hit: Rankin will front the Vote No campaign

Ye gads.

Families Commissioner Christine Rankin's decision to be a face of the "vote no" campaign for the smacking referendum is "quite incredible", Green MP Sue Bradford says.

Ms Bradford was the architect of a 2007 law change which removed the defence of reasonable force in child abuse cases. Ms Rankin vehemently opposed the law change and was spokeswoman of For The Sake Of Our Children Trust.

Tomorrow Ms Rankin will front at the launch of a campaign urging voters to vote no to the question "should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand"?

That is despite Prime Minister John Key last week saying he would not expect Ms Rankin to continue to campaign against the law change, and the Families Commission saying it supported the new law.

"I am surprised because I had thought that Christine Rankin was under strict instructions from the Government to keep her head down now that she's been appointed a Families Commissioner," Ms Bradford told NZPA.

"It seems extraordinary that she's willing and able to be the public face of the vote `no' campaign. . . it's quite incredible."

Ms Rankin was paid $565 a day up to 100 days a year in her position as a commissioner and as such was supposed to represent the interests of all New Zealand families, Ms Bradford said.

She questioned how that was compatible with being "out there on the front line campaigning for the `no' vote".

"I just do not see how her position as a Families Commissioner is tenable and would ask John Key and Paula Bennett to urgently reconsider her position."

Ms Rankin last week refused to comment on the referendum as the media had "ripped her to shreds" when she was appointed to the commission last month.

Ms Rankin's history of extravagant spending as a public servant and her relationship with a newly widowed man were publicised widely after her appointment to the commission.

The citizen initiated non-binding referendum will be held by postal ballot from July 31 to August 21. It was forced by a petition organised by opponents of the 2007 law change.

Bob McCoskrie, director of Family First NZ which is leading the "vote no" campaign, said Ms Rankin had not expressed any concerns about being involved.

"She's got freedom to speak out on it," he said.

From Stuff (who have changed their article to be about Rankin not going to the Vote No campaign launch)

Zoiks! I haz no wrdz. Feel free to share yours while I phaff around the internet in a speechless fashion.

Treat as a criminal

Family First are at it again, proving their love of teh children by advocating for hitting them. They've got full page ads in the Sunday papers today [PDF] calling on the Prime Minister* to make good on his promise to change the law (back) if "good parents" are "criminialised for lightly smacking their children for the purposes of discipline."

They give four examples of how the law is being enforced in a manner that has criminalised some parents. I see they have stopped using the example of the ear-flicker father who punched his four year old child in the face.

Now to my mind criminalised means treat as a criminal; find someone guilty in a court of law and sentence them for the crime (warning, diversion, community service, prison sentence, home detention, reparations, that kind of thing) in a manner designed to dissuade others, punish the guilty party, rehabilitate the offender and hopefully deliver some justice to the victim.

In the examples Family First were any of the parents found guilty of a crime and then sentenced?

1. Investigations were undertaken and no charges laid.
2. The parent was charged and then chose to plead guilty. The sentence is not mentioned.
3. Charged, convicted (does not say whether he plead guilty or not) and discharged without penalty (which I assume means a s19 discharge, ie no conviction on his record either?)
4. Charged, police offered no evidence, case dismissed when it got to court.

So actually we can rule out examples 1 and 4, as the parents concerned were not convicted (and thus criminalised). In the case of example 2 the parent plead guilty himself, which makes it hard to argue fully that it was the law that made him a criminal, rather than his actions (either hitting a child and/or pleading guilty to a charge of assault).

That leaves us with example 3. Without knowing more about the facts, in particular whether the parent plead guilty or not, it's pretty hard to say much about whether this person was really "criminalised" or not, but a discharge without penalty is what some in Family First would dismiss as a slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket in other circumstances.

These examples are not presented in a strictly factual manner, but are coloured by the cause that Family First uses them for, i.e. to reinstate the defence s59 previously gave parents who hit their children. These four cases still don't show the law is criminalising good parents, despite all the wordsmithing of the Family Firsters.

There are many many people who believe physical punishment of children is not necessary. Family First are trying to create the impression that the law isn't working and that all those child advocacy agencies that continue to support the changes to s59 are wrong. If these four examples are the best Family First can come up with then they've got a long way to go to make their case.



* John Key. I still can't get used to this.

Share your parenting tips please

Dave from the Yes in 09 campaign has asked us to ask you, dear readers, to contribute to the Yes Vote website's parenting tips. They're putting together a treasury of short bursts of helpful advice, to support parents and supply non-smacking options.

Many of you out there are involved with children and I'm sure will have some great ideas to share. It just needs to be a paragraph or two, and here's mine to kick things off:

My son loves books. He loves reading them with us, he loves turning the pages, he loves pulling them off the bookshelf and he loves ripping the pages out once they are lying helpless on the floor.

To stop him from getting them in a vulnerable position in the first place we've loaded up the shelf with books, and then jammed one more book in by use of a hammer. This way they are tightly stuck and he cannot get at their pages. You do need to be sure your bookshelf is secure against the wall though, to be sure your child can't pull it down on them. He also has a stack of his own books which are less fragile and he can pull on these to his little bitty heart's content.

In time my son will learn to treasure books as we do, but until then this will keep them safe, and avoid angry situations when dearly loved pages are found fluttering alone without their companions. He's too little to understand why we are annoyed at his actions, so limiting the possibilites in the first place saves everyone angst.

Please do add them in comments here and they may well appear as the Yes Vote's campaign's tip of the day!

The Hand Mirror has pledged its support to the Yes Vote campaign, as Anjum and myself have already written about here, and there will be more on this issue yet to come.

Random Impertinent Referendum Questions

As inspired by this comment on this post, and with apologies to Cactus for stealing her title.

There's a referendum coming in August, which Anjum has recently written about. There's a campaign to vote Yes, despite a really rather stupid question, one that is loaded to encourage as many No votes as possible:

Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?

If this is voted down then I expect to see future referenda questions along the following lines in due course:

• Should a smack, as part of good spousal correction, be a criminal offence in New Zealand?
• Should a smack, as part of a positive relationship between friends, be a criminal offence in New Zealand?
• Should a smack, as part of an industry-leading customer relations standard, be a criminal offence in New Zealand?
• Should a smack, as part of a best practice child behaviour policy in education, be a criminal offence in New Zealand?
• Should kicking someone in the back, in the midst of the breakup of a romantic relationship betwen the kicker and the kickee, be a criminal offence in New Zealand?
  

From Dave Moskovitz:

The question being asked is really stupid; if it were rephrased as "Should it be illegal for a manager, as part of good management practice, to hit an employee" we wouldn't be here arguing about it.

Two suggestions from Paul:

"Should it be illegal for an interrogator, as part of good interrogation practice, to hit an interrogatee?"
[and]
"Should it be illegal for a child, as part of growing up, to hit a parent?"

Here's one from Brian Edwards:

This is the equivalent of asking: ‘Should doctors recommend an exclusive diet of McDonalds and KFC as part of a healthy weight loss programme?’ McDonalds and KFC cannot be part of a healthy weight loss programme. And it is open to serious doubt whether smacking can be part of ‘good parental correction’.

Feel free to add yours in comments, or blog about them yourself.

In the face of the inane referendum question that we really have to vote on in August I believe voting Yes sends a message that you reject the presumption that violence of any sort, smacking or otherwise, is a good way to correct children.

the yes vote

while we're on the topic of domestic violence, let me raise the issue of the proposed referendum on child discipline. i'm sure you'll all be familiar with it, but if not, the details are here.

a group of organisations that work with children have banded together to advocate a yes vote on the referendum. they include barnardos, plunket, save the children and unicef. the website advocating the "yes vote" can be found here.

i haven't yet decided how i'll vote on the referendum. the strongest part of me wants to boycott it, because i think the question is mischievous and wrongly framed. on the other hand, i'd also like to send a message that i support the modifications to s59 of the crimes act - in fact would have been happy for them to go further. and a yes vote seems to be the only way to send that message.

nonetheless, i've written a piece on child discipline from an islamic perspective for the website, which you can find here*. i won't reproduce it here, as i'd like to increase traffic to their site. however, they have comments turned off, so feel free to comment at the hand mirror. i hate to have to say it, but given my last post, let me state clearly that i won't be tolerating any islamophobic comments but am happy to engage in respectful debate.

*many thanx to my friend dave moskovitz for giving me the opportunity.