Posts by Kyle Matthews

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  • Cracker: Smack Your Kids Up,

    Can anybody answer my question as many Barristers cannot ?? – when a parent is arrested for smacking a child will they be subjected to the same provisions contained in a protection order under the DV Act

    This Act won't change, and I wouldn't imagine its enforcement would either. People who enact:

    (a) physical abuse:
    (b) sexual abuse:
    (c) psychological abuse

    against a child may face protection orders.

    Anyone who thinks a court is going to put in place a protection order against a parent because they smacked their kid a little bit hard needs to sit down and have a cup of tea and stop scare-mongering. If you take to your kid with a block of wood and they end up needing medical treatment, then you'll face the law, and so you should.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Cracker: Smack Your Kids Up,

    Um, yes and no. I know it's a school of political/jurisprudential thought that's falling out of favour, but I prefer an elected legislature to, well... do it's damn job and legislate - and take it seriously enough to go through a careful process of consideration and debate of carefully drafted legislation that is more about passing workable law than how it's going to play out in the next polling cycle.

    You'd need to push for parliament not to write laws then methinks. Bradford's original bill was at least quite clean and legally clear. The way the select committee re-wrote it, leaves it open to almost as much vagueness as the current one, as did Chester's amendment.

    But I don't think you can legislate the specificities of these sorts of laws. There's no legislation indicating when a brawl on a football pitch is just that, and when it should be pursued legally through the courts. And you'd look stupid trying - four punches not three, blood drawn and broken noses vs just bruises. Why would you argue for the same silliness in a different context for the same crime?

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Cracker: Smack Your Kids Up,

    Just imagine if the government had shown the public the enthusiasm for strengthening the family rather than passing legislation that will hand police another quagmire of bad family law.

    Section 59 isn't family law, which deals with children's rights, parents, access, decisions about children etc etc. It's part of the Crimes Act and it's Criminal Law.

    And paternal influences have massive influence on children's socio-emotional development. I think a fair few people would argue that smacking kids however is a negative influence on them, and so the bill would therefore be indeed exactly about helping our 'vulnerable children'.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Cracker: Smack Your Kids Up,

    I take your point Kyle, but the fact is we now have a set of conventions and expectations about the contours of discretion when it comes to the situations your describe. If the police DID start regularly bringing prosecutions for assault in the examples you bring up, we probably would have an outcry at that change in policy, and perhaps a change in the law.

    Conventions and expectations have yet to be set in the case at hand, and I think it's quite legitimate to worry about just how they will turn out.

    But that's always the case with laws - their exact implications on all of us aren't necessarily clear from the law. They are somewhere in between 'every parent who touches their child will be a criminal', and 'police won't be doing anything different from what they do now'.

    As is always the case, the police, judiciary, various community and government organisations, and if necessary, parliament, will get involved to make the abstract law have practical implications.

    Those implications will also change over time. About 15-20 years ago police ramped it up big time on domestic violence. A lot more men were arrested, and more convictions were pursued, even if they weren't guaranteed wins (in particular, they no longer required the victim/partner to give evidence). These weren't just law changes, they were the police admitting that they hadn't been doing the best job, and changing their policy on dealing with domestic violence. It's not a perfect world as a result, but it's an improvement.

    Smacking children is out in that same system. The bill is just shifting the grey area.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Kids these days,

    afaik it wasn't the evolution of a person, it was the evolution of a big group of apes. they found this big black monolith...

    I heard they were wandering along a beach and they found this buried statue that looked just like the statue of liberty.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Cracker: Smack Your Kids Up,

    If anything, I could see a better analogy with the state of affairs BEFORE the homosexual law reform. Just because the police chose not to prosecute the majority of people who went round getting off with those of the same sex, didn't make the law right, did it?

    I think they're both terrible analogies. Equating charging homosexuals for having sex to parents smacking kids... yeah. Most police officers when you try and draw those two together are going to look at you funny (and then possibly arrest you).

    We have lots of laws which are not universally applied. Assault is probably the most common, assaults happen all the time, the rugby field is only one example - drunken idiots at the pub, kids in school yards having a bust-up. The police know these things go on, 'lack of resources' is not the only reason they don't pursue them, 'common sense' is the other one. They're not going to go chasing witnesses to a rugby match when the forwards had a brawl, and then arrest 10 people, unless some sort of serious assault/injury was involved. It's a system that works pretty well, and no one is up in arms that the assault laws need to be re-written to exclude 'minor fighting occurring in the process of the playing of sports'.

    Everyone who's 'uncomfortable about parliament passing laws that aren't always followed' needs to go think about what would happen if everything in the Crimes Act was prosecuted. And if everyone who drove 51 km got a ticket. And if every person who left a 13 year old at home for 5 minutes while they went to the dairy got charged. If every underage kid who had sex with their underage boy/girlfriend got charged.

    This discretion exercised by the police and the prosecutorial system is an important part of our legal system, which happens all the time, but we're not normally consciously aware of it. Smacking of kids always has, and always will, fall under the same system.

    Yes the bar will move. Yes it will move more towards smacking being something that is investigated and prosecuted. Will everyone be prosecuted? No. Do police officers have brains? Normally, yes. Is there an independent legal system to provide balance if they go too far? Yes.

    Will it overall be an improvement if this bill gets passed? I think so.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Cracker: Smack Your Kids Up,

    I personally don't think there should be any smacking, either in laws or in reality. I think the select committee muddied the issue and forgot how laws (and their implementation) work when they changed it from simply removing section 59 to adding in what's essentially no brainer exceptions.

    It was noted this morning on the radio, that some time ago (mid-1980s?) corporal punishment was removed from our schools. And there was a great outcry that teachers wouldn't be able to control kids and kids would run crazy etc etc.

    None of that has come to pass. Indeed I think the removal of that power has partially led to better teaching skills as a result. Teachers have developed better strategies to deal with problem kids. We're going to see the same thing with parenting over the next 20 years when this bill passes, and good on it.

    The massive paranoia being promoted by people and the media that anyone who struggles with a kid to get them in a car seat is going to be prosecuted is tosh. This is an emotive issue obviously, but some people need to switch their brains on before they rant. Any cop on the beat will be able to answer that question, let alone the cops who are going to set the policy on it.

    There's no way that the police are going to use the same aggressive policy to deal with smacking kids as part of parenting gone over the top, to partner abuse. They're developing a policy, let's wait until it's done before 'we' jump on it.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Gay, but really not happy,

    And the guinea pig's name was ... Fluffy ....

    Years of stalking RB secretly ends when I accidentally let the guinea pig's name slip. Dammit.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Gay, but really not happy,

    How can I combat this? What have other parents done?

    I vetoed the "Naming it after the other dog that I used to own that got run over by a truck" first off. That was going to be way too much.

    I went for a "we both have to agree on the name of the animal" approach. But of course, there's only two of us. If there were two adults and three children, life would have been much more difficult.

    If they're guinea pigs, then they're little fluffy things that'll die within a year, and it probably doesn't matter if they're named 'Fluffy 1' and 'Fluffy 2'. Dogs, cats, horses etc should be taken seriously, the rest are just rodents that we're agreeing not to poison this week.

    As for the gay community - they don't feel fully represented by 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy'? Man, some people are so demanding.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Speaker: Part 1: Thoughtful,…,

    There could not, I am sure, be three people less qualified to comment on the cricket than these three fine gentlemen. As long as the making up extends to some fine Gilks cartoons of Fleming smashing a double century on the way to a NZ World Cup victory, we thoroughly look forward to it.

    If it's just commentary on how losing to Bangladesh has been good for the team and builds them up well for the tournament... oh god, now I'm depressed again.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

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