November 21, 2010
Tasmania’s State law gives parents the right to physically correct a child using “any force that is reasonable in the circumstances”.
Tasmania’s new Children’s Commissioner Eileen Ashford’s call for change in this law was triggered in part by a recent trial in which a couple was found guilty by a jury of mistreating their 3 year old daughter with a regime including hitting the toddler with a stick, with plastic pipe, forcing her to keep her nose to a “dot” on the wall, leaving her in cold water for extended periods, and leaving her in wet and soiled bed sheets as a punishment for wetting the bed. The court was also told she was emaciated when taken to hospital with a head injury in July 2008. The couple used the defense that this regime was reasonable under the circumstances in light of the fact that they felt that they had exhausted all other options of controlling their children. While this couple was found guilty, the trial involved complications concerning what constitutes reasonable force, as had numerous previous trials.
Eileen Ashford says that the government needs to look at amending the legislation to make the safety and well-being of children paramount. The government considered amending the law in 2003 in order to clarify what is permissible. However, the issue stalled and the amendments never took place, at least in part because a poll indicated that Tasmanian parents overwhelmingly opposed limitations on their rights to use corporal punishment against their children.
A community study this week gave some indication that views on corporal punishment may be changing and that they vary between older and younger Tasmanians, with younger Tasmanians believing corporal punishment should not be used on children.
Former Tasmanian Greens leader Peg Putt, who introduced a Bill to ban the use of corporal punishment in Tasmanian schools in 1999, said it was no longer appropriate to use harsh corporal punishment at home. Ms. Putt said child abuse had been excused in Tasmania in the past as strict corporal punishment. Ms. Putt said as follows:
“This needs to be addressed by Parliament, but politicians shy away from the issue because there are such varying views in society about what is appropriate and what constitutes abuse. I am not unsympathetic to the fact that some parents have trouble coping. But that is not an excuse for abuse. If parents are not coping they need to be helped.”