PM's stance on smacking questioned 

Prime Minister Helen Clark is rejecting accusations of flip flopping on the anti-smacking debate.

Clark has been forced to defend her stance on the issue after the anti-smacking lobby released comments she made during the last election.

All Labour MPs are supporting Green Party MP Sue Bradford's bill and Helen Clark has led from the front.

Beut before the last election the prime minister said: "As you know I do not support a ban on smacking. I am opposed to that because I think it defies human nature. No one wants to see a stressed and harassed parent who in exasperation lightly smacks a child dragged before the court."

National's deputy leader Bill English says this means New Zealanders can't trust Helen Clark to make policy about their children.

"Before the election she said she was against the smacking ban because it suited her. Now she's trying to shove it through parliament, riding over her own MPs to get it through," says English.

But the prime minister says she hasn't changed her tune and the effect of the bill has been misinterpreted.

"It is a crime to hit anybody...the changes that Sue Bradford is proposing will not see a parent who lightly smacks a child being marched off into court and successfully prosecuted and convicted," she says.

Currently Section 59 of the Crimes Act provides a legal defence for parents who use reasonable force to discipline their children. Bradford's bill removes that defence for parents charged with an offence involving force against a child.

"The police and all the legal advice is that it does ban smacking - that was the intent of the bill," says English.

Bradford acknowledges that it would not be legal to smack a child under her bill.

"It's removing a defence that's available now to parents who smack their kids that is not available for example to husbands who beat their wives," she says.

The war of words has come at a crucial time as the conservative wing of the Labour Party faces pressure to vote against the bill.

Delaying tactics have postponed the final vote for another month.