Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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Parliament surely never intended that a person who shoved another in an inconsequential manner (say during a rugby field scuffle) should be hauled before the courts...
There is obviously a place for prosecutorial discretion in a crimnal justice system. I also think there is a difference between:
1. passing a law making people criminals whom you do not think are criminals and do not want to be criminals; and
2. passing a law making people whom you think are (minor) criminals criminals, and allowing that the full force of the criminal law not be brought into play in all circumstances.
I would suggest that - on the whole - Parliament might be reasonably accepting of the idea that someone who decks their opponent on the rugby field has committed an offence. In some/many/most circumstances this won't result in criminal charges, and they're also happy with that. So am I.
Parliament passed the amendment to section 59 of the Crimes Act while telling people that good parents wouldn't be criminalised, and that the law change wouldn't make light smacking illegal.
Parliament doesn't want rugby fights brought before the courts, and it has left prosecutorial discretion intact to allow this to occur. Parliament doesn't want light smacking brought before the courts and it has left prosecutorial discretion intact to allow this to occur, but it also doesn't want light smacking to be criminal, and yet passed a law making it so.
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Is it possible Graeme might re-state his point, I'd appreciate it?
My point was that I didn't really like being referred to by Russell as a pro-smacker, indeed, I suggested I was an anti-smacker who opposed the amendment to section 59 on the Crimes Act for other reasons:
1. That I did not think that a light smack was sufficiently serious that the criminal law should be implicated in dealing with it; and
2. That, given that Parliament clearly did not think parents who lightly smack are criminals, it shouldn't have passed a law making them criminals.Parliament knew when it passed the amendment to section 59 that any parent who lightly smacked a child would be committing a criminal offence (an offence not being committed prior to the amendment); Parliament did not want those parents charged, and it did not want the law it was passing enforced. When Parliament does that, the rule of law is diminished. In my opinion it should have passed a law that it would have been happy to see enforced instead.
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they were treated in a way that even the research quoted here by the pro-smackers says is not good.
And the anti-smackers who just don't think the full force of the criminal law is the best way to change minds ... and the pro-rule-of-law-ers who think Parliament shouldn't be passing legislation it really doesn't want enforced.
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Is it demonstrably, indisputably harmful? That's not a rhetorical question; I thought the passive smoking issue was still in hot dispute.
I suspect something like passive smoking causes cancer is in dispute. That children of parents who smoke in the home are more likely to have asthma, be underweight as young children, smoke themselves, do worse in school etc. etc. is probably less so.
You've got post hoc problems, I suppose, but no more so than smacking.
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Heh. I guess, with your rather odd comparison with smoking, you mean?
Is it that odd? I can't ever see myself smoking a cigareete, but don't think it should be illegal. I can't ever see myself smacking a child, but don't think it should be illegal.
Smoking inside your house, with your children around, is demonstrably, indisputably harmful to them, even if it's just a few light cigarettes; but I'm guessing few here would want it made a crime punishable by imprisonment.
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It seems worthwhile to point out that not all researchers see the clear and obvious demarcation between smacking parents and abusive parents that you and Graeme saw in the longitudinal study.
Didn't I pull out of the smacking part of this discussion a while ago?
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In America, professional bowling is huge. They have super-stars; they have endorsements; they get live coverage on ESPN (despite how much I yell at the TV for them to just show the baseball).
I was stoked to get a 222 in my last attempt at bowling.
And seeing you mentioned ESPN and baseball ... the 12:30am Monday night-Tuesday morning slot on TV2 frequented until early this morning by The Wire will feature ESPN's miniseries The Bronx is Burning from next week. Any idea whether it's any good?
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someone = somewhere
But Heather to the rescue anyway :-)
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... do you have any evidence of even the existence of such a competition and if so, what the outcome was? because the only thing I can find is your Scoop story. I would have thought a stunt like this would have hit the MSM at some point
Man that's cynical.
I remembered the story from someone, which I why I went looking for it. It's not my habit to read every media release on scoop, so I don't imagine it was there.
In your vein ... if Family First were doing stunts like putting out media releases falsely implicating major broadcasters in running tasteless campaigns, I would have thought it would have hit the MSM at some point.
Yes, Graeme, those things were "nice" -- but for me they don't compare to the real day-to-day work of child welfare agencies...
I wasn't comparing them, I was using it to dispute the allegation that Family First "have done NOTHING to justify their existence".
I'm open to correction, but I don't believe that the Families Commission does the "real day-to-day work" of a child welfare agency. In the past, you have rightly lauded its "it's not okay" campaign as worthy (... despite its lack of real day-to-day work). I don't believe your words of praise had dismissive quotation marks then.
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Family First ... have done NOTHING to justify their existence.
Justify to whom? It's not like they're taxpayer funded...
And I happen to really like their campaign for family dinners.
"What your kids really want for dinner...is you!" is a great message.And this response to an ill-conceived More FM promotion was just a nice thing to do.