Kiwiblog

The Paul Homes interview on Q&A was fascinating. Holmes was at his most hostile. He used every argument and language of those who support the anti-smacking law. He denigrated his guests as supporting violence, yet Cheryl Savil especially just sat there calmly and refused to allow Holmes to misrepresent her.

The video and transcript are here.  I recommend them as good watching:

Cheryl you are a Mum two kids, how old are the kids.

CHERYL Ten and twelve.

PAUL  And do you smack them?

So immediately tries to personalise it, but gets a calm response.

CHERYL SAVILL I have smacked them in the past, and I found it effective when they were younger?

PAUL How often would you have smacked them?

CHERYL  Actually it differed between the two children, they’re quite different little characters, and one of them is quite a strong willed character and it’s interesting to point out that discipline is on the things and correcting a child is when we’ve used smacking, so when it’s you know you’re not to touch something and they’ve gone to touch it, well I have one of them that would actually eyeball me and be quite defiant in her behaviour so smacking was effective, a little light smack on the hand.

Something hundreds and thousands of parents may have done.

PAUL So why are you so passionate about the right to use physical violence against children?

And then we get the loaded language.

CHERYL Well I don’t think it’s a right, the terminology there, the right to use physical violence.  Smacking is one of the things that parents can use as a technique to help discipline their children.

The calm response.

PAUL But why do we want to allow violence against children, I mean if an adult smacks, let’s use the word smack, if an adult smacks another adult it’s considered unacceptable, in fact it’s probably criminal, why should it be acceptable for a big person to assault or to smack a little child?

Here he repeast the pejorative term violence. Appears to concede and call it smacking. And then goes for anothe pejorative word – assault.

It is the equivalent of calling an unwanted kiss on the cheek, a sexual assault or violation.

CHERYL Well it’s quite a different relationship between a parent and their child than between adults.  So a parent’s responsibility is to raise their child to become a responsible loving productive member of society, and that’s what I think is the issue here, the parenting role is very different to the role that we have as adults in relationship to each other.

And another calm rational response.

PAUL What did you use, a wooden spoon or the hearth brush or what?

Another attempt to attack the mother personally. he could have asked if she smacked with a bare hand or with an implement

CHERYL  No I used a smack on the hand like that, or a smack on the bottom.  When you actually show the footage often you’ll see a parent grabbing the child by the arm and whack whack whack whack and I don’t agree with that I think that’s going too far.  So I need to really clarify that.

And another calm response, clearly saying what she finds acceptable and unacceptable.

BOB McCROSKIE 
 Well can I just clarify that, if you smack a child as they’re about to touch that’s preventing bad behaviour, but if they do it, if they do something naughty, and then you say you’re not to do that again I’m going to give you a smack don’t do that again, that is correction, that is illegal, and this is the minefield that parents are going through that you can smack to prevent that behaviour but not to correct.

McCroskie correctly points out the current law.

PAUL Nobody’s going through a minefield Bob.

The response being an unsupported assertion. And he is meant to be the neutral interviewer.

PAUL Parents are very calm, can I suggest to you everyone agrees, the Police, the government, both major parties, Bernardoes, Plunket, everyone agrees….

Paul think the lobby groups and the MPs represent everyone. Did he not wonder about why 300,000 people signed a petition, why it was cited as a factor in Labour’s loss, or why polls show 80%+ oppose the law. And he has the gumption to claim everyone agrees.

CHERYL I actually think it’s quite interesting that there has been this move away from smacking or from actual violence which we don’t agree with, you know anger in action.

PAUL Smacking, hitting, what’s the difference Cheryl?

Back to the language war.

CHERYL  Well a big difference, you know there is a seriously big difference, if a child gets bruised that’s too far.

And a calm response again

BOB  Same with time out Paul, there’s appropriate time out, but locking your kid in a dark room for three hours is child abuse.

I thought this was a very apt analogy. Any disciplinary method can become abusive. There is a difference between a light smack and a violent thrashing just as there is a difference between a time out and imprisonment.

PAUL What is your smacking history Mr McCroskie?

BOB  I was smacked, and it did me the world of good.  There was nothing wrong with it.

And again Holmes tries to personalise it, rather than debate the issues.

PAUL Well it was a simpler world perhaps, but go back to a situation that obtained before we amended section 59, kids in New Zealand were the only kids not protected from physical violence.  They did not have the same protections afforded to adults and animals.

BOB Yes they did, they were protected because the smack had to be reasonable and for the purpose of correction within the parent child relationship, so kids were protected from violence, if a parent went too far they were prosecuted.

PAUL And they got off Bob.

BOB One or two got off, there were a couple of exceptions.

PAUL A couple of very brutal incidents.

BOB And that’s what we wanted to do was to amend the law, we agreed with Chester Burrows amendment, we agree with John Boscawen’s member’s bill, which simply more clearly defined what was reasonable and what was not, it was a win win situation, that’s what parents want, they want certainty in the law.  At the moment we’ve got this mish mash, parents don’t know where they stand.

And this is a key point. As far as I know no-one is arguing to go back to the old law. The Borrows amendment would beyond any doubt take care of those cases where there was public disquiet about verdicts under the old law.

PAUL But isn’t it strange that in this day and age we’re having a debate about whether we should be able to assault children?

BOB  No it’s not about assault.

And for the fourth of fith time Holmes uses the language of the small minority who support the law. It is Holmes at his most biased. He has lost basically every argument, so he resorts back to slogans.

PAUL Come on!

CHERYL  It’s not assault.  Assaulting children – in fact actually the footage that you showed of whacking a child over and over and over again, I don’t agree with that, that’s not what I’m saying, and that’s what – I talk to hundreds of parents, I talk to parents in the school ground all the time, and they say to me this is crazy, what’s going on with the law.

And again a good response.

PAUL Is this driven by adherence to the old biblical saying that to spare the rod is to spoil the child?  Do you believe that?

BOB No I think we be disciplining kids, I think we should be bringing them up, we should be training them and they should have clear boundaries, they should be surrounded in a loving family and the question is should a parent who’s bringing up a loving family, is loving the kid, doing all the things right, and chooses to use a smack, should they be criminalised, I would say no, it’s as simple as that, 85% of New Zealanders are saying that.

This time Holmes tries to paint it as religious fundamentalism. But there are many people like me who support gay marriage, abortion on demand, ending blasphemy laws, minimal censorship, gay adoption, legal prostitution etc etc – yet think this law that criminalises so many parents is wrong and should be amended in line the Borrows/Boscawen bill.

I thought Therese Arseneu summied it up well on the panel discussion:

THERESE        I think what the debate comes down to is that one smack that’s she’s talking about, that she agrees that if it’s multiply smacks it is assault, and I guess what you hear from their side is that they don’t take great comfort in the fact that the Police – you know the compromise that came from National that the Police will have discretion when it comes down to that one smack, it’s highly unlikely that any parent is going to be criminalised for one smack, but the problem is that parents don’t like that that one smack is considered criminal.

No they don’t. They resent it like hell. And the Borrows/Boscawen bill would change it so that it isn’t.

Tags: Bob McCoskrie, Cheryl Savil, media bias, Paul Homes, Q&A, Section 59, Therese Arseneau

For those in or near Epsom,Rodney Hide is having a public forum at 5.30 pm on Friday 24 July. The guest speaker is Bob McCoskrie on why you should vote No in the referendum.

It is at the Mecca Cafe, corner of Nuffield Street and Remuera Road, Newmarket. A cash bar will operate.

Tags: Bob McCoskrie, CIR, referendum, Rodney Hide, Section 59

One of the nasty clauses of the Electoral Finance Act is it requires home or residential addresses to be used in all authorisatiion statements. There may be some merit in this for material put out by individuals, but for parties and organisations their registered office is all that should be needed – as was the case in the past.

Over the weekend four women stuck 1,000 (plastic( knives into the Bob McCoskrie’s lawn. They also placed an (ironically) anonymous note on his front door.

This is thuggish intimidatory behaviour. I have condemned mens rights groups for their antics outside the homes of Judges and lawyers, and this is even worse. It is clearly designed to intimidate.

It is possible the people responsible could have found Bob’s address even if he was not forced to have it on election material for Family First. But that is not the point – there is a difference between being in the White Pages and having to have your home address plastered on pamphlets, websites and billboards. I know of several women who have refused to be financial agents because they don’t want their home address published so widely.

Just another reason to vote for parties that will repeal the Electoral Finance Act.

Tags: Bob McCoskrie, Electoral Finance Act, Family First

A wide range of reactions to National’s Benefits Policy. Taking them in no particular order.

Bll Ralston displys his outraged liberal roots and agrees with Helen Clark that it is beating up on single parents:

Frankly, less than 4000 adhering to the government breast on a more or less permanent basis is extremely few. In an effort to eradicate these last few bludgers, as it sees them, National will spend many millions of dollars in bureaucratic terms policing its new “back to work” system, counselling the DPB recipients and ensuring they really are making a buck for themselves.

Colin Espiner blogged yesterday and calls it Don-lite – watered down from Don Brash, but still different from Labour. He concludes:

There will be the usual objections from beneficiary advocates but National’s welfare policy won’t lose it any votes and may even pick up a few. It will be interesting to see how Labour responds. My pick is it won’t have too much to say.

Simon Collins has a useful look at the party differences:

It [Labour] believes the welfare state exists to empower those who would be powerless without it. For sole parents, the domestic purposes benefit gives them the power to leave unhappy or abusive relationships, and to balance paid work and unpaid parenting in the ratio that suits them and their children.

In contrast National, as John Key put it yesterday, believes in “a genuine safety net in times of need”. It thinks people should be moved on as quickly as possible.

I don’t think National in beliefs or policy encourages people to stay in abusive relationships. The DPB still exists. The difference is, having once moved out, whether or not one is forced to seek work at some stage, or can you stay on it for a decade without ever seeking a part-time job? But Collins is right the views are seen as “empowerment” vs “safety net”.

As his [Key's] policy pointed out, New Zealand’s refusal to work-test sole parents is now out of line with all Western countries except Australia, Britain and Ireland, all of which have signalled moves to start work-testing.

Yes, as with the 90 day trial period policy, this is standard practice in the developed world.

Collins also has quotes from various advocacy groups:

Family First director Bob McCoskrie, an invited guest at the policy launch, said making parents work part-time made sense, but only if implemented with discretion.

“We’d want to make sure that the work requirements are within school hours and not within the school holidays. Otherwise we are going to have a lot of unsupervised kids.”

Case Managers will need some discretion.

Another guest, Mercy Mission founder Barbara Stone, said she agreed with the work requirement “as long as it’s in school time and there is someone at home for the children for the rest of the time”. She said it was hard to get jobs for sole parents, who often had low self-esteem.

The focus should be on work during school hours only. But a part-time initial job may boost the self-esteem and confidence so that a full or near full-time job is easier to obtain once the kid or kids are older. Having a total break from the workforce for 10 years makes it much harder.

Housing Lobby spokeswoman Sue Henry said she was upset that John Key had “regurgitated” the work requirement policy that National implemented in the 1990s. “Quite frankly, latch-key kids and youth gangs and transience are a direct byproduct of taking the stick to beneficiary families [in the 1990s],” she said.

Yes there were no gangs before the 1990s. What a sensible contribution.

But Parenting Council chairwoman Lesley Max said the requirement for sole parents to work 15 hours a week was “consistent with the norm that exists across society as a whole”.

And who would argue with Lesley?

John Armstrong looks at the policy also:

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue – a much paler blue in the case of National’s bits-and-pieces patchwork welfare policy.

Heh that could apply to many National policies!

The latest policy is archetypal John Key. It promises things Labour would happily do itself – such as making the annual inflation-related adjustment of benefit rates a legal obligation on governments, rather than just convention.

Yet in forcing part-time work obligations on some sickness beneficiaries the policy has enough to be identifiably National in origin. But not so much that it frightens centre-ground voters.

Labour and the Greens ritually slammed the policy as an attack on beneficiaries. Some in National’s ranks must think “if only”.

As I said, a sensible combination of carrot and stick.

The Herald editorial is reasonably negative on the policy:

It [solo mothers breeding to get the DPB] is probably as much a myth as the Labour Party’s idea of the average employer. That is to say, there are instances of benefit abuse just as there are rogue employers, but to treat the whole beneficiary class as though they are avoiding paid work would be as foolish as legislating labour arrangements for all. Nevertheless, that is what National proposes to do with sole parents, invalids and sickness beneficiaries.

It is an interesting analogy, but somewhat flawed. Not all sole parents, invalids or sickness beneficiaries are being work tested. Only those DPB recipients whose children are aged over six, and only that small minority of invalids or sickness beneficiaries who have been medically assessed as capable of part-time work. The editorial concedes this later down, so the rhetoric of “treat the whole beneficiary class as though they are avoiding paid work” is somewhat hyperbolic.

For sickness beneficiaries the policy seems fair enough. As the economy has strengthened and the unemployed have faced more stringent job-seeking requirements, the numbers on sickness and invalids benefits have risen suspiciously high. They have needed only a doctor’s note, and even if the doctor assesses them to be capable of part-time work, they have been under no obligation to seek it. National intends to change that.

Some praise amongst the grumpiness.

But there will be cases where the time and cost of taking a low-paid job put added stress on a sole-parent family for little if any financial gain. It is doubtful that society gains from that stress, or that it is worth the trouble the ministry might take to enforce it.

Single mothers with good earning capacity are normally anxious to return to paid work as soon as child care allows. National’s efforts will be felt mainly by those with few skills and poor earning capacity and, frankly, Mr Key ought to have more important things to do. This policy does more to stroke the shibboleths of party supporters than meet any pressing social need. He should return to topics that count.

The policy is pretty standard in the developed world. And having an extra 30,000 or so people in the workforce will help close the gap with Australia.

Tags: Barbara Stone, benefits, Bill Ralston, Bob McCoskrie, Colin Espiner, Family First, John Armstrong, Lesley Max, National, NZ Herald, Simon Collins, Sue Henry, welfare