Back then, the school cane was usually a long, bendable and intimidating bamboo stick. The proverbial rod for our backs, as the saying goes.

In the third grade, our teacher, not unlike the scary head mistress in Danny DeVito's Hollywood hit movie Matilda, used a metre-long plastic cane about half a centimetre thick, and god it hurt.

The best antidote was to rub peeled onion or potato onto your hands, but the stinging pain was always relentless. The teachers were good at the swing. Whoosh! Ow! Child abuse.

Corporal punishment in schools was banned by Paula Wriedt in 1999. Her father Ken Wriedt was a passionate advocate of a ban.

I rarely smacked my kids, but I joined my generation of "commonsense" opposition to any nanny state interference with child discipline. That was until one day when playing beach cricket with the kids, my son broke the rules and belted the tennis ball out to sea. The terrified look on his face as I strode towards him broke my heart and changed my mind.

The current laws in Tasmania, like other states, allow smacking as long as it is "reasonable", whatever that means.

From a law reform perspective, Governor Kate Warner earlier this year expressed support for a ban, citing conventional wisdom among professionals.

The argument goes that while smacking may produce short-term results, it can lead to long-term psychological effects such as depression, anxiety and other mental health issues.

Rubbish, you might say. Spare the rod and spoil the child. Nothing like a good clip round the ears to get their attention.

Rubbish, I say. Smacking children is supposed to curb mischief such as fighting, but what a crazy example to set for kids. Whack! "Stop fighting!"

Smacking your children is bordering on child abuse. I also suspect that there is a correlation between unreasonably smacking children and physical family violence involving the adult partners.

As children reach adolescence there are incidents of parental abuse, which is not surprising given what was dished out to adolescents as children.

In a majority of cases smacking is surely administered properly and sparingly. However, in many cases it would be excessive, whether because of the prevailing culture - the male/female adult is prone to violence - or is just the actions of a bullying coward.

In an ideal world a smack would amount to a slap on the back of the legs instead of the upper body and head, but we all know that is not the case. I've seen plenty of examples of adults too lazy to bend down to smack the kids on the legs, and resort to that cuff round the ears.

This is child abuse. It can cause physical harm, it is humiliating for the child and it can escalate. Full marks to mothers raising large families in difficult circumstances, but even screaming at children is a form of child abuse.

Unreasonable physical harm to a child in the home may constitute assault and under current laws such a case came before the courts last year.

But as a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, we should ban all smacking. Leaving it as a grey area in the criminal code is a failure to protect our little ones.

It's nanny state stuff, I know, but the home is often a battlefield for defenceless children. To assume or pretend otherwise is both naive and dangerous.