A TRIUMPH FOR COMMON SENSE (Letter to Dom Post, February 12)

 

Of course the anti-smacking law failed. Family First’s report (Anti-smacking law failed: report, February 12) is a triumph for common sense. 

It’s hardly Family First who’s being ‘ridiculous’, as the law’s promoter Sue Bradford claims, ‘for suggesting the law should have solved child abuse’. Family First suggests no such thing.

 

Surely it’s Bradford herself who thought the law would solve child abuse. She actually states that the law was amended ‘to protect children from physical violence’. And in 2010 the Yes Vote Campaign promoted the law change ‘to protect children from assault’. In other words, to solve child abuse.  

In saying John Key who voted for this nonsense should repeal it, and target ‘real child abuse’, Bob McCoskrie of Family First is right on the money. Child abuse begins in the womb, with violence against the unborn.

 

That child abuse is the root of all the rest, and that’s the child abuse we have to solve first.