Things that are Not OK

Well, John Key has replied to the Great Smacking Referendum. He's been on every TV news programme this week, promising to "review the working of the law" (not the law itself, you'll note) and make sure that parents aren't being prosecuted for minor slaps delivered to their children. We should all be reassured, he reassures us, that the law will not be allowed to run amok.

Clearly, he's hoping to ride the whole thing out until we all get bored. I do hope he doesn't get away with it.

The referendum question, for all its many faults, was very clear on one thing: this action, whatever it is, "should [not] be a criminal offence". It's not just about being prosecuted: it's about being a criminal.

On my first visit here, in 2001, I drove most of the length of the North Island, from Auckland to Wellington. It's a long drive, involving great stretches of open road with few other cars in sight, where the speed limit is 100 km/h (a shade over 60mph). The road is single-carriageway, but it's reasonably straight and well maintained, and I fully expected to see people barrelling along it at 120 km/h or more; but I didn't.

Not once.

Kiwis, I concluded, tend to respect the speed limit even when there's no obvious reason for it.

That's not a universal trait by any means - we've got our share of lunatic petrol-heads here in Auckland, and every other major town as far as I can tell - but it's a lot more common here than it is in some places I've driven.

And so it is with smacking. What the prime minister wants parents to swallow is: "You will be criminals, but we promise not to prosecute you.".

The pro-smackers, however, are having none of this. And they're right.

For a government to criminalise a large segment of its population is bad enough. To declare that it will neither enforce nor repeal a law that it helped to put in place is truly disgusting.

As usual, I voted with the minority in the referendum. But I agree with the majority on this. It's not about keeping parents out of jail, and it's not about protecting kids - no law can do that, what we need is properly resourced education and social services. No, it's about honesty. Writing a law with no intention to enforce it - is dishonest.

And it's not OK.

Dumb ideas

"This US healthcare business is so boring." Thus Susan to me the other night, as we watched Jon Stewart dutifully mocking the president's wavering on the public option.

She's got a point. It's beyond irritating, how that "debate" is spilling out to the rest of the world.

Fortunately, New Zealand politics is livening up a little - as tends to happen in the first term of a new government, while there are still some fresh ideas. This month sees the frankly embarrassing referendum on the thorny question "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?"

I don't know if there's any official worldwide record, but I'd like to nominate this as quite possibly the dumbest question ever put to a national vote. And certainly one of the most dishonest. ("Parental correction" isn't illegal, it's discipline that is.)

I voted Yes, because I figure that's the answer more likely to irritate the referendum's initiators. But I have no illusions about the outcome.

The bright side is that the prime minister, John Key, is so mortified by the whole thing that he's felt impelled, in the closing days of voting, to make a real effort to deflect the headlines.

Yesterday, that effort took the form of a 60-page document from the Ministry of Transport listing 62 ideas to make our roads safer. A selection at random: raising the driving age to 16, raising the driving age to 17, lowering blood alcohol levels, making signs clearer, encouraging bikers to wear reflective gear, lowering speed limits, compulsory third-party insurance, ever-increasing anti-speeding/anti-drink-driving/anti-cyclists-and-pedestrians-as-targets publicity campaigns...

Much of this I'm all in favour of. But there are some truly dumb ideas in there, presumably on the basis that "everyone who's talking about this, isn't talking about That Bloody Referendum".

Making "driving while fatigued" an offence, for instance. Just what form would a roadside "fatigue test" take? The report mentions that in New Jersey, if you've been awake for 24 hours and then get in a car and kill someone, you can get 10 years in chokey. But there's a world of difference between "driving while fatigued" and "killing someone by driving while fatigued". The latter is relatively easy to detect - corpses on the road tend to draw at least some attention fairly quickly, even in New Jersey.

Then there's an idea to make child seats and restraints compulsory for all children under 148cm (4'10"), regardless of age. It's bad enough that when you drive your teenager and her short friend together, one of them will have to endure the humiliation of a booster seat. But even some adults are shorter than that. Do we have to strap them in, too? And who's responsible for that - the driver, or the adult? Can we expect to see taxi drivers turning fares down for being too short? Will short people be required to sit at the back of buses? Can we look forward to identification cards being issued to people who look kinda short, to certify that they are in fact at least 149cm tall?

All of these distractions I leafed past, in my hunt for the change that the new government hinted at last year. It's not attracting much attention right now - but it's in there, at number 17: "Change the give way rules for turning traffic". (Page 22 of the ministry's document (PDF), for completists among you.)

Not a minute before time, as the present rules make less sense than a musical about cats.

Oh wait...