MASON TO TEXAS FOR CHILDREN’S RIGHTS

PAUL MASON
Barrister-at-Law – Family Law Act Arbitrator
Family, Children, Personal Injuries
MEDIA STATEMENT
26 MAY 2011

Paul Mason, former Children’s Commissioner for Tasmania and a member of EPOCH (Ending Punishment of Children), leaves today for Dallas, Texas, to chair a session at the inaugural “Global Summit on Ending Corporal Punishment and Promoting Positive Parenting”. He is going at his own cost and will chair a session on “Engaging Parents”.

The Global Summit brings together the world’s leading experts on positive parenting, as well as child rights activists and UN Convention practitioners. It is an historic event.

“I was invited because of the work I did as Children’s Commissioner for Tasmania raising public awareness about this aspect of children’s rights and trying to bring Tasmania’s laws about hitting children up to international standards.”

29 jurisdictions around the world have now brought their laws on assaulting children into line with the law about assaulting adults, and legislation is a requirement of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Prosecution of parents have not gone up anywhere but at least their laws fit the rhetoric, so that all parents know that communit values have changed. Police have a discretion to charge, and will only do so where pubic order is disturbed or they are sure of a conviction.

“At the moment Tassie taxpayers pay good money to public servants and private consultants to roll out projects, pamphlets and services telling parents how harmful it is to hit their kids.

“And yet the Government’s own law says it’s ok. How wasteful. Kids are the only group left that it is legal to hit for no good reason or benefit. Either the Government should encourage parents to use “reasonable force” against all the evidence or should repeal section 50 of the Criminal Code and abolish the defence at common law.

“Repeal was the recommendation of the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute to the Tasmania Government in 2003. Since then successive governments have been sitting on their hands, too frightened to take the strong leadership required.”

It is Greens Party policy, and it was a Greens private Bill that put an end to corporal punishment in Tasmanian schools in 1998 and another that was adpted by the New Zealand Parliament in 2007. Mr Mason says: “The ALP supported them then for all the reasons they should support this next change in the law. The Liberals have modernised and the issue should be debated in Parliament.”

Research shows clearly that when kids use physical punishment to discipline, kids learn other lessons: to continue their “naughty” behaviour in secret and lie to their parents, to use force themselves, to bully at school, to use violence in their adult relationships, and to hit their own kids in turn. The latest research shows that kids themselves don’t know why they are hit and don’t change their behaviour for being hit. The classic example is hitting kids for hitting other kids.

I am making this public statement because the taxpayers of Tasmania while I was on their payroll put me in this position to be invited because of my passion for the rights of kids. Tasse kids have the right to know that someone is standing up for them.
Paul Mason