The Bill Really Is Insane

Craig Smith - 6 March 07

At last an MP has come out and said what the vast majority of New
Zealand's population has been saying for over a year: that Bradford's
home invasion Bill is insane. (See http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0703/S00071.htm)

All thanks and congratulations must go to United Future MP Gordon
Copeland. He has pointed out that Sir Geoffrey Palmer's report of the
Law Commission, upon which the Justice and Electoral Committee leaned to
compose the current form of Bradford's anti-parent Bill before
Parliament, states that the Bill disallows parents from using any force
at all for either corrective or disciplinary purposes. This bans a great
deal more than just smacking: enforcing a time out to "think over what
you've done", forcing children to apologise for an insult or repay
stolen money or simply to do as they were asked will all become crimes
of criminal assault worth as much as two years in jail because they seek
to correct children's bad behaviour into good and proper behaviour. How
could any sane adult seriously contemplate enacting such absurd,
destructive legislation?

And the report also points out that Section 3 of the Bill disallows
correction to even be part of an action's mixed motives. That is, the
Bill endeavours to force parents to be pure even in thought. Bradford
would legislate that parents' very hearts and minds must not be soiled
with what she would see as the illegal corruption of corrective or
disciplinary motives.

As Mr Copeland say, this is just plain nuts, absurd, insane.

Bradford gave us plenty of clues right from the start that her Bill was
crazy: the Bill's original title was a nonsense; she openly stated she
wanted to see parents reduced to the same level as everyone else so far
as the use of force with their own children is concerned. This would
completely erase the fact that children, being both dependent and
immature in mental and physical development, need some responsible
adults, parents being the obvious ones, to take charge of their lives
and force them along the path of character and behaviour development
children do not travel if left to themselves. And her insistence that
there be no appeal to our 800 years of common law wisdom and precedent
clearly shows a lemming-like desire to jump off the edge into the great
unknown of social experimentation.

May the rest of Parliament comes to its senses and vote Bradford's
subversive Bill into oblivion where it belongs.