Sue Bradford

Rugby legend strikes out on s59

by Sue Bradford

Today’s Herald reports former All Black coach Sir Brian Lochore as saying, ‘Yes, I smacked my children, but I’ve never hit them.  Yes, I smacked other peoples’ children, but I never hit them.’

In making these comments to a Parents Inc breakfast attended by more than 1000 fathers, Sir Brian is repeating the common fallacy that somehow ‘smacking’ or ‘spanking’ someone is not hitting them.

How can this be?  I would love to know how he’d feel if a grown man ‘spanked’ or ‘smacked’ him on some dark Auckland street tonight.  I rather suspect he would see it as an assault, on both his person and his dignity.

Well – that is exactly what any form of whack, tap, smack, clout or other assault is on any human being, whether baby, child or adult.

Sometimes when children are whacked or smacked they are badly injured.  Sometimes they are killed.

James Whakaruru, for example, died in the name of toilet training.

That is why so many individuals and organisations who work with children and families put so much effort into supporting the passage last year of my bill which ended the right of parents to legally assault their children in the name of child discipline.

We believe that babies, children and young people deserve the same legal protection from violence as adults enjoy.   

I am looking forward to the ongoing debate which is going to occur in the build up to next year’s referendum.

I just hope that at some point in the process I will get the chance to publicly debate with Sir Brian Lochore his odd but all too commonly held belief that smacking people is not hitting them.

Published in Health & Wellbeing | Society & Culture by Sue Bradford on Wed, August 27th, 2008   

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