The anti-smacking act means that parents are visited by the police for smacking their children and in some cases have gone to court. Family first have publicised this well in their advertisement.

This totally changes everything. I wish people who are not parents would get a clue! This act means that our children can ring up the police and complain if they are smacked. And the police will and do investigate. This undermines the family because it undermines parental authority. It takes away the right of parents to physically discipline their children in a time-honoured fashion and supported by Christian principles. Unfortunately we have had a foolish piece of legislation foisted on us by an illiberal minority who think they know better than everyone else.

There has been a lot of deliberate disinformation about the Bradford amendment, but it has actually changed very little for good parents apart from giving a clear signal that there are better ways of disciplining our kids than whacking them. The Police still have a discretion on the basis of public interest whether to prosecute, as they always have done.

But what it has done is promoted a lot of thought about whether physical discipline is the most appropriate form of discipline, and ensured that genuine abusers can’t use a justification defence to get off. Sure, only a few people were acquitted using the defence of “reasonable force for the purpose of correction”, but how many more did the Police choose not to prosecute knowing the defence was available to them?

stephen – it is impossible to define “reasonable force”. Chester Borrows tried, talking about force that caused physical injuries that are only “trivial and trifling”. But how can a parent know in advance what injuries the application of force will cause (including mental injuries). And given that many parents use physical discipline when they are angry with the child’s actions, their judgment about what is “reaonsable” is often likely to be impaired by their anger.

There is no evidence that the current law has led to good parents being criminalised, as Family Fist and the likes suggested, so, as Sue Bradford has said, we should all just move on and start to address thenumerous other issues that are related to child abuse.

Riding crops and hose piping have also been used, but they were acquitted as they were judged to be using ‘reasonable force’, which is nuts. Annoyed that Bradford and co didn’t just try to define reasonable force, but there you go.

I do actually agree with you Craig. And I agree with democratic right of those who wish to bash their kids to say so. And I also enjoy my right to make fun of them. Failing because of so many invalid signatures I guess reflects on the intelligence of those signing.

A campaign to add invalid signatures to the petition, increasing the chance that it fails again, seems to me to be quite a fun thing to do.

So’s sticking a lit firecracker up a cat’s bum, if you’re twisted that way. I’m no supporter of this petition (in fact, I think non-binding citizen-initiated referenda are crapuous pseudo-democracy but that’s a whole other thread) , but I’ll express my disregard by not signing it as opposed to perpetrating a fraud.

What we have is a government who railroaded a law through that almost no one wanted.

Bogusnews: I’m sure this is going to get me another dump truck full of bad karma, but I’ve no regrets that Section 59 of the Crimes Act is gone. Doesn’t mean I buy into the hysterical S&M rhetoric of proponents of Bradford’s bill, but I sure don’t think they were wrong in trying to plug a defence for sadistic loons.

But let’s get back on topic for a moment — I’m going to keep asking the question you’ve skilfully dodged until someone bothers answering it: Do you think Geoff Bascand deserves a chance to actually answer the question before being called the Liarbore Dykeocracy’s tame bitch? Or do we just go down the Roger Nome/Ghost Who Lies path of presuming someone is guilty of some horrendous skull-duggery for no other reason than we don’t like the outcome?

Reality check: Some folks around here have accused the Government Statistician (who is also the CEO of Statistics New Zealand) of politically motivated fraud. Put up or shut up, guys, because that’s not a trivial allegation.

How the hell does this:

he beat me (and many others at my school), for literally no reason at all.

…teach people respect?! That it totally warped!

If you were to then individually check the other samples (i.e. look at the remaining 10 1/11’s), you would likely find a similar number within each sample. That is, you would find 160 signatures within each sample that were duplicated within that sample.

But this would ignore any signature that was in both sample A, and sample B. Or sample A, and sample C (or any of the 110 combinations of elevenths).

You should consider, if they found 160 signatures that were duplicated within a sample, how many would they find if the compared that sample to the remaining 10/11’s of signatures?), approximately another 1600.

Consider the next 1/11. There would be 160 internal duplicates, but also duplicates that look valid because you haven’t checked everyone else, a further 1440. In the third 1/11 sample, there’d be another 160 internal duplicates, and 1280 external ones. Keep doing this and you get around 19,000 duplicates – not the 1760 you’d estimate.

normally you have a good contribution, but in this case I believe you are off the mark.

What we have is a government who railroaded a law through that almost no one wanted. When the petition comes in it appears that further shenanigans happen with the count. I can certainly understand why people are peeved, especially when this important information is not justified or explained by the media.

They rammed it through without consultation, forced their odd views onto parents, and now to add insult to injury are discarding the fine work on the petition.

I can understand why people are p***ed off.

Do you think Geoff Bascand deserves a chance to actually answer the question before being called the Liarbore Dykeocracy’s tame bitch? Tell me that.

can you answer this: Of those signatures checked, 25,754 were valid.So 25,754 x 11 = 283,294. The number required is 285,027 so this indicates a shortfall of just 1,733 signatures.The Government’s Statistician has said that his best estimate is just 266,903 or a shortfall of more than 18,000; nearly 17,300 greater than the 1/11th sample would indicate.

How ,Craig, did the Government statistician come up with 266,903? Tell me that.

I suspect that the Labour govt has ensured that this petition would not have the correct number, I smell another case of Labour lies and corruption.

Really? Sounds more like Larry Baldock couldn’t organise the proverbial piss up in a brewery — what is so hard about the notion that a petition should be signed ONCE ONLY by a properly qualified person who provides accurate contact details (as listed on the electoral roll) in a legible hand? Isn’t it a bitch when you actually have to follow the rules like everyone else, and listening to Baldock having his little tanty on Checkpoint didn’t make me regret his departure from Parliament.

…158 were duplicated and 2 were triplicates

I salute the restraint shown by the s59 repeal supporters — these numbers suggest close to nil orchestrated sabotage.