OPINION
Phil Green
Over the weekend I wrote a piece about ram-raiding, where I suggested that the present youth are taking their lead from the adults in parliament. So far so good, most of us with children understand that positive direction for youth often comes from their elders.
If you see your elders making off with the family silver and dominating the political arena, you’re likely to think, “Sheesh, I’ll have a bit of that.” Now, it’s likely too that these youths are being directed by older people, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Adolescents are very primal beasts, and if you feel you’ve got nothing to lose because the cops are soft and you’re feeling marginalised (they wouldn’t use that term), the endorphin rush would be exhilarating, and for most kids, the excitement is the clincher.
I don’t have insight into the mind of a young criminal, but I do have some thoughts about what wouldn’t have changed the landscape.
Remember Sue Bradford and her anti-smacking law in 2007? At that time, except for the homosexual law reform bill (1986), no other law had divided New Zealand society so much since the Springbok tour in 1981.
The issue being contentious even now, I’ve no wish to re-litigate the past debates, except to say that I supported her. What I supported, was that parents could no longer use as a defence the parental right to discipline a child, when sometimes that discipline led to death.
Let that sink in.
It’s grimy stuff, and way too often, specifically New Zealand grimy stuff. Our child abuse statistics are appalling, and though I have little faith in the legal system solving the ills of the world, being more the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, it at least sent a signal that violence, when we do catch up with these monsters, is not OK.
Enter the debate about corporal punishment in schools, which was also abolished by Sue Bradford’s bill. The present state of New Zealand education is shocking, and many teachers would likely say the lack of discipline is a primary cause of the statistics which are seeing New Zealand’s education statistics plummet from ‘reasonable’ to dismal.
There’s obviously a case to be made for instilling the fear of punishment, which would make the school system run more smoothly. We didn’t have ram-raiders back then, so it’s obvious a smacked bum makes all the difference. But not so fast.
The most often stated comment from men of a certain age is, “It didn’t do me any harm.” That’s true, and in fact, young men back in that era prior to parliament saying no to corporal punishment were proud of their stripes and boasted to their mates.
But that’s not the point, the whipping of good young men, which is what it really was, was never going to make a difference to the social culture.
What has to be determined, is whether the whipping of bad boys was going to change their worldview.
I’m no scholar, but I’m pretty confident the most telling crimes of the past century have been committed by societies committed to corporal punishment; the Hapsburgs, the Russians, the Ottomans and the Germans. And if they didn’t practice corporal punishment, they did very well with capital punishment.
How many obscene instances must we see of disgusting violence on unarmed people to realise that society has sadists and unremitting psychopaths in our midst?
Sue Bradford tried to make these people accountable for their actions and God bless her, in my book she’s a hero.