Newsworthy - Dr Richard Worth
new-zealand-national-party
Fri Mar 16 2007 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
Newsworthy - Dr Richard Worth
Friday, 16 March 2007, 11:20 am
Column: New Zealand National Party
16 March 2007 - No. 101
The victor from last week
Who wrote and where “no birdy aviar soar any wing to eagle it”. The line is from Finnegan’s Wake 1939 by James Joyce. The lucky winner has been notified.
Spare the rod spoil the child – Proverbs 13:24
Parliament has been consumed as has the media by the tortuous debate on child smacking. The issue is a very simple one and revolves around section 59 of the Crimes Act which currently reads:
1. Every parent of a child and …every person in the place of the parent of a child is justified in using force by way of correction towards the child, if the force used is reasonable in the circumstances.
2. The reasonableness of the force used is a question of fact.
If the defence of parental correction is repealed (which is the point of the Bill) then parents are criminally liable for assault.
This issue would traditionally be a conscience vote. Not so for the Labour Caucus who have been required to vote for the legislation whatever their private views. This is the second conscience vote Bill in four months that the Labour Caucus have not been allowed to exercise the personal voting rights of members and the result is corridor murmurings of rebellion in the camp.
Most countries allow parents or guardians to physically punish their children, although some countries currently prohibit corporal punishment of children in all settings. Sweden was the first country to ban physical punishment of children in 1979.
My position is that the law should remain as it is. It is not possible to legislate moral behaviour and the reality is that some parents will always exceed the bounds of what is known in Norway as “safe slaps”. Where excess occurs the police should intervene and prosecute the parents.
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Business investors and migration
The Government continues to delay announcing policy changes in respect of attracting appropriate off-shore investment to this country.
Last year, at the NZ Association of Migrant and Investment confer
ence, Immigration Minister David Cunliffe said he would announce changes before Christmas to Labour's failed Investor Category policy, which has attracted only a handful of migrants and $6 million since 2005, but he failed to meet the deadline.
The old policy for investors attracted 1,300 people between 2001 and 2003, bringing in $1.3 billion to our economy.
A rose by any other name, would smell as sweet
So said Juliet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
Police in India's Western state of Gujarat are to wear new uniforms impregnated with the fragrance of flowers and citrus to help improve their image.
The National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad drew up the uniforms on request of the state government in an effort to make sweat-drenched offices more approachable.
The cotton uniforms with the scent embedded in the fabric are to be introduced in the next few months to the state's 300,000 police.
The institute says the fragrant finish, reflective prints and fibre optic technology should make sure the uniform not only smells good but glows at night so officials can be easily located.
Political Quote of the Week
"I believe in the dignity of labour, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living." -- John D. Rockefeller - US oil industrialist & philanthropist; founded University of Chicago 1890
Ends
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