"Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?" That is the question posed by a forthcoming Citizens Initiated Referendum.
Richard Cubie is thinking of becoming a lawyer to profit from the fallout.
Ready for the referendum? I will be! Oh joy; I'm going to make a fortune!
I have been looking for a new profession for several months and this is obviously the ideal time to become a lawyer.
Dr Strabismus (Whom God Preserve) of Utrecht has confirmed that with equivalence for my current higher education qualifications I can achieve an honours degree in law within 12 months.
This will, of course, give time for the referendum to be held and the National Government - despite its protestations to the contrary - to implement a piece of knee-jerk legislation following the public's rejection of the "Question" as it has been put to them.
I will be ready and waiting to clean up from the thousands of cases emerging from the mayhem that always results when ambiguity is dressed up as choice.
This is not news as such, but the importance of what is about to occur has only come home to me since the flyer dropped out of my letter box and advertisements have begun to appear in the local press.
The fact that the question is loaded has already been commented upon and I am surprised that a linguist or psychologist from one of New Zealand's universities hasn't been in to remove the "good" and restructure the question so that the need for qualification and redefinition will not be necessary.
Sadly to this outsider it smacks of a society that lacks the confidence to carry through what seems to me to be an elegant piece of legislation and a clear statement about the essence of the culture in which it wishes its next generation to develop.
The Bill was passed in May 2007 by a vote of 113 to 7. (That seems to be a clear and positive statement of intent in itself.) Police were given discretion not to prosecute complaints that appeared to be inconsequential.
All good so far - there is no reason not to trust the police in this.
Surely anyone with a smattering of common sense, or anyone versed in the long-term sociological shifts in behaviour, following the enactment of social legislation, would understand that the new legislation needs many more years before the force of the changes become embedded in the psyche of people and before a proper appraisal can be made of the effect it will have upon the behaviours of all members of a family.
As a newcomer to this country, it is ironic to look at the juxtaposition between the government advertisements carried on the television based on an anti-violence-in-families theme and the referendum question that has been raised.
Entangled in this debate I have read pieces from quite learned individuals who have discussed the issue in terms of children's rights.
In addition to the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in its simple and straightforward Articles, defines the rights of all individuals, regardless of age.
More importantly, it defines how those rights are to be protected and how society should advocate for those who are vulnerable or unable to assert those rights.
So it is for our children.
They cannot assert their rights, nor understand the complexities of defining degrees of family violence, whatever the oppressors' motivations.
A civilised society will therefore undertake to protect its children from all violence, which is what Sue Bradford's Bill intended.
It takes enormous courage and effort of will, honesty and self-examination for any society to see a piece of legislation like this come to maturity.
Norway and all of the other countries mentioned by your correspondents managed it.
However, the most common reaction to any restriction on our ability to parent is met with the sort of emotional wash that appears on the pages of most papers at present.
Anyway, for my part, I'm off to buy some textbooks, look for suitable chambers to rent and prepare for the sort of opulent lifestyle that only those whose lifestyles are funded by confrontation can imagine.
Alternatively, the voters could decide to leave me in my current impoverished state whilst agreeing that our children's upbringing should be based on the principles of reason as opposed to the principles of fear.
• Richard J. Cubie is an English educationist living in Wanaka.
