Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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And if there had been a bit of work on drafting a half useful bill then a lot more of us would have voted for it. I don't know whether it was laziness or a lack of judgement on Metiria's part but frankly the bill presneted to parliament looked like it had been drafted by someone who had been high for weeks.
So you didn't vote to send the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Deletion Bill, or the Young Offenders (Serious Crimes) Bill to select committee?
And didn't have a supplementary order paper to expand the ban drug driving that would have made it impossible to charge anyone with any sort of drug driving?
That's not to say I disagree with you - I just note it hasn't stopped you in the past. The form in which a bill is introduced has such an impact on the debate (publicly, and in the select committee etc.) that a really shoddily-drafted bill shouldn't get a first reading.
The Electoral Finance Act worked so poorly, I think, in large part because the Electoral Finance Bill was so bad (it would have made it a criminal offence a political party to issue a press release) that the entire debate was around fixing it's obvious glaring problems - no-one could focus on its smaller, but still important, problems. Had the EFA in its final form been the bill that was introduced you might have gotten something workable at the end.
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"A group led by Ngapuhi's Tass Davis plans a campaign of protest ... targeting the homes of judges (really not okay, at all), on the basis that they are part of the system."
Isn't there a certain irony in that the targeting of judges in their homes is lawful because of this decision...
A one-off protest, sure, but I'd argue that the "targetting" of (e.g. repeated protests) the home of a judge (or any person) could be a specified act, and thus become harassment in terms of the Harassment Act 1997. Not criminal per se (without fear for safety) but potentially enough to get a restraining order and make further repetition illegal.
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How many news channels screening wall to wall Michael Jackson necrophilly do you really need?
Good question. Access to the big-brand news channels is occasionally handy, but I'm getting most of my US cable news online anyway, most of the time.
Interesting question. The top-rating news programme (behind only Fox's So You Think You Can Dance) on US television on the day of Michael Jackson's death was ... ABC's Farrah Fawcett: Her Life, Her Loves, Her Legacy.
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What does freeview provide that sky doesn't these days?
The absence of a monthly bill?
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Fox News' MJ coverage is predictably the most cringe-worthy ...
I haven't been watching TV throughout the day, but what was wrong with that?
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Inflicting pain, be it physical or mental, on another person in order that they comply to your demands is illegal under article 26 of the Geneva convention, is it not?. Well, if you are a prisoner of war it is ...
No it isn't.
I'm pretty sure Article 26 guarentees the right to tobacco.
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if proponents had toned down their rhetoric?
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You've lost me here. Isn't that pretty much what Sue Bradford and others actually did argue?
No. That was what Sue Bradford argued sometimes. Other times she talked about a law that gives parents to right to hit or beat or smack without any sense that many parents who smack might be horrified to put in the same group as those who beat, and become automatically defensive when they were.
Other times it was references to the right of all children to grow up without violence, without any recognition of the possibility that many people wouldn't consider a smack to be violent, and without a recognition of what "violent" actually means - I haven't found a single dictionary that has a definition that would include smacking (although I've only looked in like two...).
It's statements like this I was talking about:
so many kids are brought up in a family that believes that they should be smacked, beaten or hit when they are kids, they grow up with the idea of a parent’s right to beat.
Kids who are smacked grow up thinking that beatings are okay? WTF? I think most parents think there is a difference between smacking and beating. I think most children think there is a difference. Sue Bradford really didn't seem to think there was. I can accept that someone might think that both are wrong, I can accept that someone might think both should be crimes, but the idea that they are even in the same league was downright offensive to many.
Plus I/S's (and others') references to even even those who oppose smacking, but just don't think it should be a criminal offence, as "childbeaters" or favouring child abuse. That's not a way to convince an opponent - or even a fence-sitter - of the justice of your cause.
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I'm still stuck on how its a bad thing eliminating a legal defence for punching your children in the face, or attacking them with a riding crop.
For many people that's what Chester Borrows was trying to do, they think Bradford's bill was aimed at eliminating a legal defence for punching your children in the face, or attacking them with a riding crop, or lightly smacking them.
I also suspect that many parents were miffed at being lumped together with child abusers ... if proponents of the amendment had toned down the rhetoric and instead argued:
we know the vast majority if parents who smack aren’t violent, and don’t beat their children, are just as sick at the levels of child abuse in this country as we are. This law change isn’t about parents who smack, it’s about the violent ones, the ones who use the law to get away with abuse. This law change bans smacking, but if we don’t do it we won’t even be able to begin to address the needs of those children who do grow up in violent homes. Most parents who occasionally smack their children, feel guilty about and know that there is a better way to raise happy and healthy kids; these people – the vast majority of New Zealand parents – will have nothing to fear from this law change – the police will not investigate or prosecute a minor smack. Yes smacking will not be something you’re allowed to do any more, but you already know you shouldn’t do it, and feel guilty when you do; and isn’t it a small price to pay to offer some protection to the children who do grow up in violent households?
I suspect the last two years would have been somewhat different.
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And yep, kids *misbehave* - but - blaming kids for being kids and then warranting physical punishment for such behaviour?
I raised the matter in response to Russel's incredulity that someone was *blaming* children for being smacked. I think the blame is about as much as would be apportioned by the person in question (and many others) to children who were grounded or lost TV privileges. Many people view smacking as just another consequence on the continuum of responses to mis-behaving children.
There are many arguments against smacking, and many arguments in response to those who support it, I don't think that their is blame apportioned to children in cases of smacking is a particularly good one in either respect. I suspect Bob McCoskrie and others would be opposed to any smacking where they didn't think the child was blameworthy - and probably opposed to grounding and other punishments as well. I think that most parents would think that if a child hasn't done anything wrong, why would any form of discipline or punishment - physical or not - be appropriate?
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At its most basic:
a publication may be in contempt of court by breaching the sub judice rule if it creates a real risk - not just a remote possibility - of prejudice to the fairness of a trial