SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF COMMUNITY STANDARDS INC.
Questions from National MP Sandra Goudie (MP for Coromandel
& Spokesperson for Internal Affairs):
Order Paper, Debates (Hansard), Questions, Daily progress, Journals
Questions for written answer
13510 (2006). Sandra Goudie to the Minister of Internal Affairs (28 Sep 2006): How many DVDs, films and videos were classified in 2005/06 as R18 publications because of explicit sexual content, sexual violence or offensive sexual content that degrades, demeans or dehumanises women?
Press Release 31/07/06
Non-government child advocate lobby groups in NZ have urged police to confirm that police officers will not arrest parents for smacking their children, should smacking become a criminal offence if Section 59 is removed from the Crimes Act, upon the passage of Green MP Sue Bradford’s bill into law. In effect, what they are doing is asking police to ignore certain criminal offences when smacking is reported to Police by Child Youth and Family (CYF).
Well, it’s not working in Sweden. In 1979, Sweden was the first country to ban smacking.
Media Report 28/07/06
Sweden has been hailed by Green MP Sue Bradford as an enlightened country where anti-smacking legislation has had a significant impact on reducing the number of child homicides committed by parents. She wants to repeal Section 59 of the Crimes Act, which provides a defence of “reasonable force” to parents, or those in the place of parents, charged with smacking their children for the purpose of corrective (domestic) discipline. She claims Sweden’s child homicide rate is one case every four years, as opposed to one every month in New Zealand (Close Up TV One 19 July). Her call for the repeal of Section 59 is based on lies, deceit and shoddy reasoning.In Sweden 258 children under the age of 16 years were killed by their own parents between the years 1965 and 1999 – an average rate of about seven child homicides per year – over a 35 year time period when legislation had been in place for some time that banned smacking. These figures are based on a major published study carried out by researchers from the University of Stockholm and reported in a leading Swedish newspaper The Daily News (May 12, 2006). They did not include child homicides committed by persons unknown to the child victims or those where the relationship of killer and victim was unknown.
Press Release 19 July 2006
The Society is disgusted that many New Zealand secondary school teachers (all named) are being subject to a range of personal attacks and abuse on a new website where New Zealand students are encouraged to rate their teacher’s ability and post anonymous comments. The Secondary Teachers Union (PPTA) has also expressed disgust at the growth of this expoitative and pernicious website that has already attracted 165,000 visitors and 80,000 ratings on more than 18,000 teachers at nearly 1500 schools, since it began last month. Howerever, it says it is powerless to close it down and will only get involved in supporting its members “in cases where the website is being used to terrorise, intimidate or attack them.”
Media Release 11/07/06
The Society is pleased that the Office of Film and Literature Classification (see Scoop 7 July) has applied the censorship law correctly and banned the computer game Reservoir Dogs that is based on the Quentin Tarantino’s ultra-violent sick film of the same name. However, the Society’s president Mike Petrus says:
“The OFLC has a very poor track record when it it comes to applying the law correctly – in particular its failure to apply section 3 of the Films, Videos and Publications Classification Act 1993 (dealing with the definition of “objectionable” content) to films like Baise-Moi and Irreversible depicting sexual violence and large numbers of videos and DVDs where women are sexually degraded, demeaned and dehumanised.”