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New Zealanders hold protest against `anti-smacking' bill

Hundreds of protesters took to New Zealand streets yesterday protesting a proposed law which would ban parents from hitting their children to discipline them.

At least 400 people marched to Parliament in Wellington chanting slogans against the bill, which was due to be debated by legislators later in the day.

In Christchurch, the largest city in the nation's South Island, about 1,000 banner-wielding protesters turned out to oppose the legislation.

The proposed law -- popularly known as the anti-smacking bill -- appears to have majority support of the country's 121 legislators, but polls have shown a heavy majority of New Zealanders oppose it.

Pollsters Colmar Brunton polled 1,000 voters and found 83 percent believed parents should be allowed to smack their children.

Under the current law, parents can use "reasonable force" to discipline their children, but the legislation would remove this provision.

More than 50,000 signatures have been gathered in a petition demanding a referendum on the issue.

The opponents of the bill say it will turn parents who give their children a light smack into criminals.

"It's social engineering," yelled protester Louise Simpson at the Wellington protest.

"What they are actually doing is adopting the same fascist ideas as the Nazis and using our police force that we pay for to enforce it," she said.

The promoter of the bill, Green Party MP Sue Bradford, said the bill was being misrepresented, and police would never prosecute parents who gave their child a light smack.

The purpose of the bill was to prevent parents who severely beat their children from using the "reasonable force" provision as a defense.

Parents who had beaten their children with objects including riding crops, lumps of wood and bamboo canes have been acquitted of assault under the current law.

The bill has been supported by Prime Minister Helen Clark's Labour Party, members of the Greens and another minor party, which is expected to ensure the legislation is passed into law.

Clark has attacked "extreme right-wing fundamentalist groups," which she said were among the bill's most vocal critics.

She said the law change was needed to tackle New Zealand's poor record on violence against children.

A 2003 UNICEF report said New Zealand had the third-worst rate of abuse and neglect of children in the OECD group of developed countries.

"New Zealand has on its conscience that our rate of child death and injury from violence, including in the home, is appalling," Clark told journalists.
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