Skip to main content

Spare the rod, spoil the child?

The 'anti-smacking bill' introduced by Green MP Sue Bradford raises a number of issues (quite separate about the rights of parents to discipline their children and the rights of children to be safe from harm).

The parliament is split on the matter. It will be voted on in the house based on the conscience of each member.

The Maori Party are keeping their powder dry, refusing to commit and waiting to see what political advantage they can extract from either side. If the question is genuinely a question of moral conscience then, surely, the Maori party must already know their position.

Likewise Sue Bradford has said that she will withdraw the proposed legislation if there is any amendment to her bill that would specify what 'reasonable' force is. This is petty hubris. I beleive that, once legislation has passed its first reading in the house it should no longer be the prerogative of the bill's original author - instead it is subject to the democratic process.

Naughty parliamentarians - go to time out this minute.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Addict-o-matic

A cool resource for you to try. Aggregates search topics from a number of sources. Thanks to Brand DNA (again) for the heads-up.

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St