Press Release For Immediate Distribution

The Bill Really Is Insane

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.

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.

ENDS

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