Says Professor Jim Evans on the Bradford/Clark/Key law:
This is not clear legislation. In creating this law, Parliament abandoned its constitutional responsibility to say with clarity just which conduct is criminal.
The section results from a political fudge. Whatever other views one takes about the topic of smacking, that much at least ought to be kept clear. [Hat tip Lindsay Mitchell]
The anti-smacking law is not objective law. Just vote NO.
5 comments:
I loved those concluding sentences also. Brilliant. Crystal clear. John Roughan soundly spanked for his lies, deception and slander.
Subsection(3) should be modified to say,
"If the level of force is more than what is necessary to perform the acts layed out in subsection(1), then subsection(2) prevails over subsection(1)"
In my opinion, necessity is what separates the concept of "correction" and the justifiable use of force required to perform the acts described in subsection(1)
I tend to think that despite the potential confusion between the concepts of "correction" and the actions layed out in subsection(1), it's still an improvement over the old law, which really wasn't objective either.
Hehe, I suspect that what have prompted the good Professor (Jim Evans) to say this, is that may be he did read Falafulu's comment on David Farrar's blog post on John Roughan's anti-smacking Herald article from last week. I never know what non-objective law is, till I started reading Not PC's blog, about 3 years ago and then I have been exposed to ideas/concepts that I would have never stumbled across on my own. This is why I like reading Not PC, since I can learn things which I would otherwise have to invest my time in learning about those, in which I just don't have time.
My whole comment from Farrar's blog is re-pasted below.
DPF said…
The current law does not define what is reasonable for the purposes of preventing disruption. It does not rule out a whack in the head. If your child is screaming abuse at you, you could punch them to the ground and potentially claim that was reasonable force to prevent or stop the disruption.
The following quotes meant exactly what you’ve just said above DPF. Arbitrary & clearly undefined laws are non-objective which lead to confusion. I often wondered sometimes if the anti-smacking crowd are indeed genuine or just argue for the sake of it. They see smacking/hitting/beating as the same thing.
Quote:
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#1) When men are caught in the trap of non-objective law, when their work, future and livelihood are at the mercy of a bureaucrat’s whim, when they have no way of knowing what unknown “influence” will crack down on them for which unspecified offense, fear becomes their basic motive, if they remain in the industry at all-and compromise, conformity, staleness, dullness, the dismal grayness of the middle-of-the-road are all that can be expected of them. Independent thinking does not submit to bureaucratic edicts, originality does not follow “public policies,” integrity does not petition for a license, heroism is not fostered by fear, creative genius is not summoned forth at the point of a gun.
Non-objective law is the most effective weapon of human enslavement: its victims become its enforcers and enslave themselves.
#2) That which cannot be formulated into an objective law, cannot be made the subject of legislation-not in a free country, not if we are to have “a government of laws and not of men.” An undefineable law is not a law, but merely a license for some men to rule others.
I should say that:
I never knew what...,
since I now know what it is.
The anti-smacking law is indeed a badly drafted fudge. John Key's "compromise" was an act of surpassing political cowardice that is now coming back to bite him hard.
But the referendum is, if anything, even less objective. I really don't see how you can bring yourself to "support" it.
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