She said, in respect of Bradford's Bill, The Government has taken a position because of its great concern about being bottom in the developed world in relation to the rate of death and injury of children in our homes. We are absolutely delighted that Parliament has been almost unanimous in taking a stand on these issues. We believe that that will be good for children and families of our country.
She refers, in part at least, to the Innocenti Report Card below which shows deaths due to maltreatment.
The New Zealand statistic was based on the average number of deaths from 1994 - 98. In the five years to 2003 it dropped to 0.9 but let's ignore that we managed that drop without banning smacking.
Look at the top four countries; Spain, Greece, Italy and Ireland. When the statistics were collected none had bans on physical punishment in the home. If the Prime Minister is going to use comparisons to other countries as the basis for her edicts she should familiarise herself with the facts.
2 comments:
Smacking study hits at claims of harm
12:00AM Saturday October 07, 2006
By Simon Collins
Groundbreaking New Zealand research has refuted thousands of international studies which claim that smacking children makes them more likely to become aggressive and antisocial.
Children who are smacked lightly with an open hand on the bottom, hand or leg do much the same in later life as those who are not smacked, found the Dunedin multidisciplinary health and development study, which has tracked 1000 children since they were born in the city in 1972-73.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10404809
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10404809
http://blog.greens.org.nz/index.php/2007/05/02/section-59-again/#comment-27218
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