My bill doesn't ban smacking' - Bradford

http://www.stuff.co.nz/3994829a10.html

"Green MP Sue Bradford wants a Government campaign clarifying the legal position of parents as she struggles to explain how her bill outlawing physical punishment of children is not a smacking ban.

The call came as Prime Minister Helen Clark was forced to reconcile Labour's support for the bill and her comments before the election that a ban would "defy human nature".

Opponents of the bill, which removes the statutory defence for parents who use reasonable force on their children for correction but allows force to restrain them, seized on the statement as evidence Miss Clark had gone back on her word.

National deputy leader Bill English said the pre-election comments and Labour's decision to fully back the bill showed she could not be trusted. "It does ban smacking, because it says you cannot use force for the purpose of correction. The reason it explicitly forbids correction is because that's an explicit ban on smacking."

Ms Bradford has insisted that under the bill good parents will not be prosecuted for light smacking.

"There's a whole lot of misinformation about what this bill means," Ms Bradford said. "It has unnecessarily terrified many parents, and I'm really sorry about that because the intention was never to criminalise parents who occasionally or lightly smack their children."

Ms Bradford said she had been saying for two years that her bill was about removing the existing defence for force against children for the purposes of correction, and explicitly included other purposes where the use of reasonable force was permitted.

"I have never called it an anti-smacking bill – my opponents did, and the media adopted the phrase," she said.

"Smacking a child is already an assault under section 194 of the Crimes Act. It has been this way for over a century. If my bill is passed that will not change."

However, she conceded widespread concern about the implications, and said the Government should run a campaign explaining the law. It should air in the month between the bill's passing and coming into force, a delay supporters had to accept after former Labour MP Phillip Field proposed amendments to slow its progress..."