One of the things I love about Aotearoa is that our forests are pretty safe. They do eat people ocassionally but it's rare. The taniwha in the rivers do too, now and then, but people usually know where the danger spots are. What we don't have are a dozen varieties of venomous snakes, scorpions, lethal spiders or large people-eating carnivores. I guess an angry pig could do some damage if it caught you unawares, but it's not something trampers are likely to worry about.
All of which, I guess, makes the tragic death of Rosemary Ives all the more aggravating. The idea that a person could be accidently shot while brushing her teeth before heading off to bed at a DoC campsight makes me angry as hell. My immediate response was to “throw the book at the bugger responsible” for being negligent with a lethal weapon, for shooting near a public campsight, for 'spotlighting' from the road and for just being a dick. The fact that 2 other similar incidents were reported over the same weekend just added to my disgust.
A Hamilton man, Andrew Mears, has now been charged with careless use of a firearm causing death and I welcome that. His lawyer says that his family wishes to meet with Ms Ives' family to express their sympathy but have been advised that it is too soon. I have no doubt that Mr Mears and his family are completely shattered by this event and I hope that they do get an opportunity to express their sorrow to the Ives' face to face because it may help soothe that family's terrible, irreparable loss.
But I am beginning to wonder what good 'throwing the book' at anyone would actually do. If Mr Mears is convicted, what use would there be in putting him in prison? It won't affect his likelihood of reoffending. To be honest I'd be surprised if he could even bring himself to pick a gun up again. Neither will it have any deterrent effect. Anyone stupid enough to hunt in the dark near a campsight by spotlighting from a vehicle is clearly not thinking about possible consequences – to themselves or to others. If the possibility of killing someone isn't enough to dissuade them, the length of the sentence if they do is unlikely to have an impact.
There are three issues that a real justice system would need to address, in my opinion. The first is how the family and friends of Ms Ives can find some peace in the midst of their grief. A restorative justice approach seems to me to be much more likely to deliver that than the standard cold court system and I hope they are given the chance to consider it and support if they wish to use it.
The second is to hold the culpable person responsible. Again, a restorative justice conference where the killer has to face Ms Ives' family and look them in the eyes would be a lot harder, and a more powerful way of taking responsibility, than time in prison.
The third issue is how do we prevent, or at least lessen, this kind of moronic behaviour in the future? Hunting accidents are not THAT uncommon, although usually it involves hunters shooting other hunters, often their friends. If people faithfully followed the Arms Code that they are tested on when they apply for a gun license this shouldn't happen, but I suspect that some people treat it like a school test – learn it enough to regurgitate on the day and then forget about it.
The Deeerstalkers Association is urging all hunters to learn from the bad practises that led to Ms Ives' death, but I wonder whether a more systematic approach is called for. The question is, how do we make people understand when they get a gun license that carelessness really can lead to them killing someone. How do we get them to really think about that? Our current licensing procedure doesn't even try. Perhaps a compulsory viewing of the confessions of convicted hunter-killers would help bring the lesson home.
(from my Waikato Times column 29/10/10)
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Ankle tapping MMP
I was quite impressed with the way John Key tried to ankle tap MMP a couple of weeks ago. He never actually came out and said that he wants to get rid of it. Instead he told us, the public, that this is what WE are thinking. We just needed a little help to work that out.
It was a brilliant tactic. It allowed him to take a stab at our electoral system while leaving room to about-face if the political dynamics and focus-group opinions change. It sounded like he was on the pulse of the nation, but committed him to nothing. John Key may be relatively new to parliamentary politics, but he's a natural.
Key has tried from the beginning to portray himself as an impartial adjudicator in the MMP debate. He is only holding a referendum because that is what the public want. It is 'the people', rather than John Key, who are now questioning MMP as a result of the ACT party's self-destruction. I'm not saying they should or shouldn't take that view he told us. This begged the question of exactly which 'people' he was referring to. The answer came a week later. Leaked minutes showed that his chief of staff had been talking with Peter Shirtcliffe about pushing the Supplementary Member (SM) system as an alternative to MMP.
Peter Shirtcliffe, for those that don't know, was the main figure behind the campaign to derail the MMP referendum in 1993. He was chair of Telecom at the time, and realised that a more democratic voting system is a threat to corporate profits. He managed to get more donations from his big business buddies than Labour and National combined, which is telling in itself, and the combination of big money and deceptive advertising almost took the referendum. Nevertheless people power won the day in the end.
To be fair, John Key probably was a bit agnotic about MMP while ACT remained a viable political partner. While an outright majority would make it easier for National to ram free market fundamentalism through parliament (which was one of the reasons we got rid of FPP in the first place) he was quite comfortable knowing that he could rely on ACT for support on one side and the Maori Party on the other. This provides a lot of scope for a centre-right politician, with the bonus of having a coalition agreement to blame for unpopular policy initiatives in either direction. With ACT gone at the next election, as seems likely, Key now has only one direction to lean. National must be burning offerings in thanks that the referendum planning is already underway.
So expect to see more undermining of MMP by the National Party up until the election. It's not without its own risks for them though. Drumming up concern about the influence of small parties under MMP may grow a mood for change, but a return to FPP, or a move to SM, may not bring that to an end. Getting rid of MMP will probably spell the end of some small parties, but one in particular will be the big winner. The Maori Party has five MPs by virtue of its electorate vote. Party votes add nothing. With the other small parties gone, it is likely that Labour and National would both be reliant on the Maori Party to form a government on a regular basis. Far from ending the influence of small parties, a move to a less proportional system would probably just give the Maori Party a monopoly.
I suspect that is not what Peter Shirtcliffe had in mind.
(from Monkeywrenching)
It was a brilliant tactic. It allowed him to take a stab at our electoral system while leaving room to about-face if the political dynamics and focus-group opinions change. It sounded like he was on the pulse of the nation, but committed him to nothing. John Key may be relatively new to parliamentary politics, but he's a natural.
Key has tried from the beginning to portray himself as an impartial adjudicator in the MMP debate. He is only holding a referendum because that is what the public want. It is 'the people', rather than John Key, who are now questioning MMP as a result of the ACT party's self-destruction. I'm not saying they should or shouldn't take that view he told us. This begged the question of exactly which 'people' he was referring to. The answer came a week later. Leaked minutes showed that his chief of staff had been talking with Peter Shirtcliffe about pushing the Supplementary Member (SM) system as an alternative to MMP.
Peter Shirtcliffe, for those that don't know, was the main figure behind the campaign to derail the MMP referendum in 1993. He was chair of Telecom at the time, and realised that a more democratic voting system is a threat to corporate profits. He managed to get more donations from his big business buddies than Labour and National combined, which is telling in itself, and the combination of big money and deceptive advertising almost took the referendum. Nevertheless people power won the day in the end.
To be fair, John Key probably was a bit agnotic about MMP while ACT remained a viable political partner. While an outright majority would make it easier for National to ram free market fundamentalism through parliament (which was one of the reasons we got rid of FPP in the first place) he was quite comfortable knowing that he could rely on ACT for support on one side and the Maori Party on the other. This provides a lot of scope for a centre-right politician, with the bonus of having a coalition agreement to blame for unpopular policy initiatives in either direction. With ACT gone at the next election, as seems likely, Key now has only one direction to lean. National must be burning offerings in thanks that the referendum planning is already underway.
So expect to see more undermining of MMP by the National Party up until the election. It's not without its own risks for them though. Drumming up concern about the influence of small parties under MMP may grow a mood for change, but a return to FPP, or a move to SM, may not bring that to an end. Getting rid of MMP will probably spell the end of some small parties, but one in particular will be the big winner. The Maori Party has five MPs by virtue of its electorate vote. Party votes add nothing. With the other small parties gone, it is likely that Labour and National would both be reliant on the Maori Party to form a government on a regular basis. Far from ending the influence of small parties, a move to a less proportional system would probably just give the Maori Party a monopoly.
I suspect that is not what Peter Shirtcliffe had in mind.
(from Monkeywrenching)
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Peaking oil
For a country so dependent on importing and exporting we are amazingly relaxed about the state of the world's oil supply. The report into 'peak oil' by the German military leaked in Der Spiegel last week barely rated a mention in our mainstream media. Neither did the British government's Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security report. Both made sobering reading.
Let's be clear - no one is saying that the earth is running out of oil anytime soon. In fact 'peak oil' refers to the peak of production, when we are producing the most we ever will. The problem is that production will then start to decline at the same time as resurgent powers such as China and India seek a bigger share. Oil prices are likely to become very erratic as speculation and recurring recession drive demand up and down, but the basic trend will be a permanent oil supply crisis with fossil fuels becoming very expensive.
The likelihood of this and its implications are what the two reports were attempting to explore. The British reports warns of a supply 'crunch' in the near future and says that we need to act now to prepare. The Bundeswehr report warns of shifts in the global balance of power, a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, a "total collapse of the markets" and of serious political and economic crises. Both reports stressed the urgency of the situation that we face.
Up until a couple of years ago discussions around peak oil were never heard among ‘hard-nosed’ business people or politicians. It was only the extremist freaks that kept trying to bring attention to these issues – hippies, greenies, geologists. Now, like on so many other issues, fringe opinion is being adopted by the mainstream.
(As an aside, wouldn’t it be nice to see some acknowledgement of the hippies? I’m sick of seeing guys in power suits talking about the environment and then saying “but don’t think I’m some kind of hippy” as if we would ever mistake their boring old arse for one)
It looks like peak oil is here, although we won’t know the precise moment until it has passed. Globally we go through just over 30 (US) billion barrels of oil a year, but for the last ten years new discoveries have amounted to around 10 billion barrels a year. We have already got most of the easy to get stuff and now we are going after the rest. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is in some ways a predictable outcome of our oil dependency as we source our oil from increasingly more remote oil fields, employing more complex and inevitably riskier production techniques.
However there does not appear to be any energy source capable of fully replacing oil, and neither are we making the investments now that would be needed to even attempt to do so. In Aotearoa the government is still ploughing money into road building while neglecting the transportation systems that will survive the end of cheap oil – rail, coastal shipping, walking and cycling. There is even talk about spending some $20 million to put a tunnel through the Kaimai’s to carry road freight (hat-tip Mark Servian). I can’t help wondering what that money could do if we invested it in trains.
One thing for sure is that the end of cheap oil will hit us all hard. Fossil fuels power our food production systems and its distribution. Transportation, materials production, international trade, construction... basically everything will become a lot more expensive. There is a lot that we can do to begin preparing for the end of the oil age, and many communities are already getting started. While we cannot maintain our current lifestyles, we can maintain or even improve our quality of life. We just need to do the kinds of things that hippies have been talking about since the 1970’s – energy efficiency, localised economies, waste reduction, passive solar building design, walkable cities, and a focus on building communities rather than making more stuff.
Despite the government’s wilful negligence on this issue we have a choice – begin to make the transition towards a low energy future or ignore the problem and watch Rome burn. Personally I’m not waiting for the politicians.
(from Monkeywrenching)
Let's be clear - no one is saying that the earth is running out of oil anytime soon. In fact 'peak oil' refers to the peak of production, when we are producing the most we ever will. The problem is that production will then start to decline at the same time as resurgent powers such as China and India seek a bigger share. Oil prices are likely to become very erratic as speculation and recurring recession drive demand up and down, but the basic trend will be a permanent oil supply crisis with fossil fuels becoming very expensive.
The likelihood of this and its implications are what the two reports were attempting to explore. The British reports warns of a supply 'crunch' in the near future and says that we need to act now to prepare. The Bundeswehr report warns of shifts in the global balance of power, a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, a "total collapse of the markets" and of serious political and economic crises. Both reports stressed the urgency of the situation that we face.
Up until a couple of years ago discussions around peak oil were never heard among ‘hard-nosed’ business people or politicians. It was only the extremist freaks that kept trying to bring attention to these issues – hippies, greenies, geologists. Now, like on so many other issues, fringe opinion is being adopted by the mainstream.
(As an aside, wouldn’t it be nice to see some acknowledgement of the hippies? I’m sick of seeing guys in power suits talking about the environment and then saying “but don’t think I’m some kind of hippy” as if we would ever mistake their boring old arse for one)
It looks like peak oil is here, although we won’t know the precise moment until it has passed. Globally we go through just over 30 (US) billion barrels of oil a year, but for the last ten years new discoveries have amounted to around 10 billion barrels a year. We have already got most of the easy to get stuff and now we are going after the rest. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is in some ways a predictable outcome of our oil dependency as we source our oil from increasingly more remote oil fields, employing more complex and inevitably riskier production techniques.
However there does not appear to be any energy source capable of fully replacing oil, and neither are we making the investments now that would be needed to even attempt to do so. In Aotearoa the government is still ploughing money into road building while neglecting the transportation systems that will survive the end of cheap oil – rail, coastal shipping, walking and cycling. There is even talk about spending some $20 million to put a tunnel through the Kaimai’s to carry road freight (hat-tip Mark Servian). I can’t help wondering what that money could do if we invested it in trains.
One thing for sure is that the end of cheap oil will hit us all hard. Fossil fuels power our food production systems and its distribution. Transportation, materials production, international trade, construction... basically everything will become a lot more expensive. There is a lot that we can do to begin preparing for the end of the oil age, and many communities are already getting started. While we cannot maintain our current lifestyles, we can maintain or even improve our quality of life. We just need to do the kinds of things that hippies have been talking about since the 1970’s – energy efficiency, localised economies, waste reduction, passive solar building design, walkable cities, and a focus on building communities rather than making more stuff.
Despite the government’s wilful negligence on this issue we have a choice – begin to make the transition towards a low energy future or ignore the problem and watch Rome burn. Personally I’m not waiting for the politicians.
(from Monkeywrenching)
Monday, September 13, 2010
Ecological overshoot
Last week the human species went into debt. Not financial debt, but in something far more important – the service flows of the environment. Money is just something we made up, useful but ultimately illusory. If we go into ecological debt, on the other hand, there is no government or lending establishment that can bail us out. There are no appeal rights against the laws of nature.
It's a simple idea. Think of it like a business. If it spends more than its income, eating into its capital, it will eventually go bust. A family budget is the same. If times are hard you may have to spend some of your savings on groceries and rent but sooner or later you have to learn to live within your income.
Natural resources are the same. We cannot continually take more resources than the environment can regenerate, yet most wealthy countries live far beyond their environmental means. If everyone in the world lived like the average American we would need the resources of at least 5 planets. For the UK it is 3.4 planets, and New Zealand is probably somewhere around there. The per capita consumption of China is estimated to be close to one planet living.
I personally don't aspire to the lifestyle of the average chinese, so I'm interested in how we reduce our consumption without losing our quality of life? Which begs the question of what it is that makes the 'good' life. It's something that we don't seem to much ask ourselves these days, obsessed as we are with living the 'big' life. We have locked ourselves into a growth frenzy that makes us work harder for less happiness. Most people have less time to spend with their family or their friends, less time to walk along the river bank or share a meal together and less financial security despite the economic growth of the past few decades.
Much politics is focussed on cutting spending on the things that make people happier in order to boost spending on things to increase economic growth. It is assumed that this will make us better off, although there is no evidence to think so. In my opinion, it is time that we began to invest in infrastructure to improve the well-being of our people. Not because it will boost tourism, not because studies show that happy citizens are more productive, not because it will give savings in the health sector, but simply because it will make us all better off in the only terms that really matter – enjoyment of life.
One of the candidates for Hamilton City Council, Mark Servian, has said “A community is a home, not a business, so council spending decisions should be based on 'cost-benefit', NOT 'profit-loss'. Neither a household or a firm can let itself go broke, but the city is first and foremost where we live our lives. The council is our shared project for making our collective home much more pleasant”. I agree. It is a pretty bleak vision that sees pavements, drains and rubbish as the only things councils should be interested in. In my view we will learn to live within our ecological means by living better lives and local councils have a major role to play in that..
One obvious strategy in Hamilton is to invest in making it a more walkable, cyclable city. With our flat streets, our gully system, our river banks and our parks it is hard to imagine a place better suited for it. This could be combined with a functioning passenger rail service to Auckland and better cycle and public transport connections to outlier towns to make getting around a joy rather than a source of road rage. I wouldn't be the only one that would be both happier and greener because of it.
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/earth_overshoot_day
http://www.bettertransport.org.nz
(from my Waikato Times column)
It's a simple idea. Think of it like a business. If it spends more than its income, eating into its capital, it will eventually go bust. A family budget is the same. If times are hard you may have to spend some of your savings on groceries and rent but sooner or later you have to learn to live within your income.
Natural resources are the same. We cannot continually take more resources than the environment can regenerate, yet most wealthy countries live far beyond their environmental means. If everyone in the world lived like the average American we would need the resources of at least 5 planets. For the UK it is 3.4 planets, and New Zealand is probably somewhere around there. The per capita consumption of China is estimated to be close to one planet living.
I personally don't aspire to the lifestyle of the average chinese, so I'm interested in how we reduce our consumption without losing our quality of life? Which begs the question of what it is that makes the 'good' life. It's something that we don't seem to much ask ourselves these days, obsessed as we are with living the 'big' life. We have locked ourselves into a growth frenzy that makes us work harder for less happiness. Most people have less time to spend with their family or their friends, less time to walk along the river bank or share a meal together and less financial security despite the economic growth of the past few decades.
Much politics is focussed on cutting spending on the things that make people happier in order to boost spending on things to increase economic growth. It is assumed that this will make us better off, although there is no evidence to think so. In my opinion, it is time that we began to invest in infrastructure to improve the well-being of our people. Not because it will boost tourism, not because studies show that happy citizens are more productive, not because it will give savings in the health sector, but simply because it will make us all better off in the only terms that really matter – enjoyment of life.
One of the candidates for Hamilton City Council, Mark Servian, has said “A community is a home, not a business, so council spending decisions should be based on 'cost-benefit', NOT 'profit-loss'. Neither a household or a firm can let itself go broke, but the city is first and foremost where we live our lives. The council is our shared project for making our collective home much more pleasant”. I agree. It is a pretty bleak vision that sees pavements, drains and rubbish as the only things councils should be interested in. In my view we will learn to live within our ecological means by living better lives and local councils have a major role to play in that..
One obvious strategy in Hamilton is to invest in making it a more walkable, cyclable city. With our flat streets, our gully system, our river banks and our parks it is hard to imagine a place better suited for it. This could be combined with a functioning passenger rail service to Auckland and better cycle and public transport connections to outlier towns to make getting around a joy rather than a source of road rage. I wouldn't be the only one that would be both happier and greener because of it.
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/earth_overshoot_day
http://www.bettertransport.org.nz
(from my Waikato Times column)
Friday, August 27, 2010
Miscarriages of Justice and what to do about them
There is no such thing as a perfect justice system, where the guilty are always convicted and the innocent acquitted. In fact the most heinous mass murderers, the tyrants and warmongers that decide the fate of nations rarely even stand trial. Justice, like truth, is a journey rather than a destination.
One traveller on that road is Professor Graham Zellick, who has been in Aotearoa recently to talk about the UK Criminal Cases Review Commission. This was set up in 1997, following some high profile cases in the UK, to review possible miscarriages of justice. His talk was both informative and compelling, partly because New Zealand's justice system is a part of the 'common law family' that stems from Britain and is subject to many of the same problems.
That problems exist in the New Zealand appellate system is not news. Public disquiet remains about a number of high profile convictions. Other verdicts, such as Arthur Allan Thomas, David Doherty, Alec Waugh and David Bain have been overturned after lengthy terms of imprisonment. It was concern about such cases that led retired High Court Judge Thomas Thorpe to conduct a self funded investigation into miscarriages of justice and recommend that New Zealand establish a body like the UK CCRC.
Appeal courts find it very difficult to correct certain kinds of problems in the court system. According to Zellick, this is partly due to an excessive confidence the system places on jury verdicts. Appeal courts are happy to look at questions of law, procedural issues and the like. They are very reluctant to look at questions of fact and say that the jury simply got it wrong.
One of the ways that juries can be misled is through expert witnesses. Zellick spoke about the case of Sally Clark in the UK who was imprisoned for murdering her cot-death baby, mostly on the basis of now-discredited theories of a Dr Meadows. As he spoke I was reminded of the FBI evidence that was so crucial in convicting John Barlow, evidence that has now been shown to be wrong.
Although it is not a point he made, it also seems likely that juries give unwarranted attention to certain kinds of evidence. Contrary to common sense, two of the biggest causes of wrongful conviction (as evidenced by DNA based exonerations) are confessions and eye witness identification evidence that most ordinary people would expect to be reliable.
The UK CCRC gets about 1000 applications a year, refers 30 - 40 cases back to the courts and about 70 percent of those result in a conviction being quashed. This is all at a cost of around £8 million. The Scottish CCRC, serving a population of around 5 million people, costs about £1 million. When you consider that it costs about $90 000 to keep one person in prison for a year then a CCRC in Aotearoa might well save us money, if effective justice is not a strong enough argument for the Government.
Currently in this country once appeal rights have been exhausted all that remains is an appeal to the Crown for the prerogative of mercy. According to Zellick, this is a bit muddled in New Zealand. The prerogative of mercy is originally a power that the Crown has to overturn a conviction or to commute a sentence. Under the Crime Act this has been changed into an ability for the Governor-General in Council to refer a conviction back to the courts. In practise it is a decision of the Cabinet, which is constitutionally undesirable. The process has been described as ad hoc and inadequate by at least one QC.
Certainly the prerogative of mercy has not provided any benefit for most of the cases where it seems likely or possible that the conviction is unsafe. Note that this does not necessarily mean that the person can be proven innocent, but rather that their conviction cannot be sustained by the evidence. Our system requires proof "beyond reasonable doubt" in criminal cases and it is questionable in number of cases whether this threshold was ever reached. Peter Ellis, John Barlow and David Tamihere are all cases that in my opinion should be looked at by an independent body.
Even more compelling is the case of Scott Watson, who was convicted for the murder of Olivia Hope and Ben Smart in the Marlborough Sounds in 1999. Having read a reasonable amount of different material about the case, I am convinced that not only is there a miscarriage of justice but that Scott Watson is innocent. Unfortunately he, and the others, seem unlikely to get justice until New Zealand has an independent, transparent body to look at alleged miscarriages of justice and do something about it when it finds then.
One traveller on that road is Professor Graham Zellick, who has been in Aotearoa recently to talk about the UK Criminal Cases Review Commission. This was set up in 1997, following some high profile cases in the UK, to review possible miscarriages of justice. His talk was both informative and compelling, partly because New Zealand's justice system is a part of the 'common law family' that stems from Britain and is subject to many of the same problems.
That problems exist in the New Zealand appellate system is not news. Public disquiet remains about a number of high profile convictions. Other verdicts, such as Arthur Allan Thomas, David Doherty, Alec Waugh and David Bain have been overturned after lengthy terms of imprisonment. It was concern about such cases that led retired High Court Judge Thomas Thorpe to conduct a self funded investigation into miscarriages of justice and recommend that New Zealand establish a body like the UK CCRC.
Appeal courts find it very difficult to correct certain kinds of problems in the court system. According to Zellick, this is partly due to an excessive confidence the system places on jury verdicts. Appeal courts are happy to look at questions of law, procedural issues and the like. They are very reluctant to look at questions of fact and say that the jury simply got it wrong.
One of the ways that juries can be misled is through expert witnesses. Zellick spoke about the case of Sally Clark in the UK who was imprisoned for murdering her cot-death baby, mostly on the basis of now-discredited theories of a Dr Meadows. As he spoke I was reminded of the FBI evidence that was so crucial in convicting John Barlow, evidence that has now been shown to be wrong.
Although it is not a point he made, it also seems likely that juries give unwarranted attention to certain kinds of evidence. Contrary to common sense, two of the biggest causes of wrongful conviction (as evidenced by DNA based exonerations) are confessions and eye witness identification evidence that most ordinary people would expect to be reliable.
The UK CCRC gets about 1000 applications a year, refers 30 - 40 cases back to the courts and about 70 percent of those result in a conviction being quashed. This is all at a cost of around £8 million. The Scottish CCRC, serving a population of around 5 million people, costs about £1 million. When you consider that it costs about $90 000 to keep one person in prison for a year then a CCRC in Aotearoa might well save us money, if effective justice is not a strong enough argument for the Government.
Currently in this country once appeal rights have been exhausted all that remains is an appeal to the Crown for the prerogative of mercy. According to Zellick, this is a bit muddled in New Zealand. The prerogative of mercy is originally a power that the Crown has to overturn a conviction or to commute a sentence. Under the Crime Act this has been changed into an ability for the Governor-General in Council to refer a conviction back to the courts. In practise it is a decision of the Cabinet, which is constitutionally undesirable. The process has been described as ad hoc and inadequate by at least one QC.
Certainly the prerogative of mercy has not provided any benefit for most of the cases where it seems likely or possible that the conviction is unsafe. Note that this does not necessarily mean that the person can be proven innocent, but rather that their conviction cannot be sustained by the evidence. Our system requires proof "beyond reasonable doubt" in criminal cases and it is questionable in number of cases whether this threshold was ever reached. Peter Ellis, John Barlow and David Tamihere are all cases that in my opinion should be looked at by an independent body.
Even more compelling is the case of Scott Watson, who was convicted for the murder of Olivia Hope and Ben Smart in the Marlborough Sounds in 1999. Having read a reasonable amount of different material about the case, I am convinced that not only is there a miscarriage of justice but that Scott Watson is innocent. Unfortunately he, and the others, seem unlikely to get justice until New Zealand has an independent, transparent body to look at alleged miscarriages of justice and do something about it when it finds then.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Suicidal tendencies
I’ve got my own theories about the high rate of suicide in New Zealand (and most of the western world). To my mind we need to address the alienation, the atomisation and the anomie of modern life if we want to get to the roots of the problem. In addition I find it hard to believe that at some level we don’t all feel the ecocide rending the planet. We are part of the fabric of life, despite the illusion of separation, and cannot be mentally healthy while we continue to wreak destruction on ourselves.
Such thinking was not, I suspect, behind the Chief Coroner Judge Neil MacLean’s call for more media reporting of suicide. He pointed out that while the number of people dying from suicide is 50 percent higher than the road toll, suicide receives comparatively little attention. In this he is correct. The money spent on reducing the road toll is considerable, with public media campaigns and strong enforcement around drink driving and speeding. Suicide prevention is small fry in comparison.
It is hard to understand why this is so. Suicide is not a new problem. Perhaps there is an assumption that it is primarily a youth problem. I don’t mean to be indelicate, but young people only draw significant political attention and ministry resources when we can blame them for shit. There has been far more media time, mental energy and government money spent on boy racers than ever was directed at suicide prevention.
An indication of our collective lack of interest is the fact that an international expert on suicide prevention, Annette Beautrais, left the country just a year and a half ago because of what a colleague described as a lack of support and recognition from the NZ Ministry of Health. Even more telling, the Associate Minister of Health with responsibility for the area, Peter Dunne, didn’t seem to be aware of this.
The media, of course, will blame the politicians for the lack of reporting. The Coroners Act does restrict reporting of suicide to some degree, but this is a bit of a cop-out. The Coroners Act says that if a coroner has found a death to be self-inflicted, no one can make public anything other than the name, address, and occupation of the person concerned and the fact that the coroner has found the death to be self-inflicted. Unless you have the coroner’s permission. They can only give that permission if it is unlikely to be detrimental to public safety.
Given the contested evidence about the effect of media reporting, this seems a good thing. It is a cautious approach that leaves the door open if the evidence stacks up against the notion of ‘copy cat’ suicides. In addition it is the Chief Justice who has responsibility to draw up guidelines for coroners about what may or may not be detrimental.
Strangely you’d never guess this from Judge MacLeans comments. I agree that more reporting is probably a good idea, but it is in his hands to allow this to happen.
Secondly, the restrictions are only around the particulars of specific deaths. There is absolutely nothing to stop the media covering the broader issue of suicide such as trends, research and causes. In particular more coverage of how to spot the warning signs and what to do about it if you do would be helpful. In fact the extensive coverage of suicide in The Press this month is a good example of just what can be done under the current law.
There are many laws that do need to change in this country but this is probably not one of them. Let’s see what we can do with what we have before we start demanding another act of parliament.
Such thinking was not, I suspect, behind the Chief Coroner Judge Neil MacLean’s call for more media reporting of suicide. He pointed out that while the number of people dying from suicide is 50 percent higher than the road toll, suicide receives comparatively little attention. In this he is correct. The money spent on reducing the road toll is considerable, with public media campaigns and strong enforcement around drink driving and speeding. Suicide prevention is small fry in comparison.
It is hard to understand why this is so. Suicide is not a new problem. Perhaps there is an assumption that it is primarily a youth problem. I don’t mean to be indelicate, but young people only draw significant political attention and ministry resources when we can blame them for shit. There has been far more media time, mental energy and government money spent on boy racers than ever was directed at suicide prevention.
An indication of our collective lack of interest is the fact that an international expert on suicide prevention, Annette Beautrais, left the country just a year and a half ago because of what a colleague described as a lack of support and recognition from the NZ Ministry of Health. Even more telling, the Associate Minister of Health with responsibility for the area, Peter Dunne, didn’t seem to be aware of this.
The media, of course, will blame the politicians for the lack of reporting. The Coroners Act does restrict reporting of suicide to some degree, but this is a bit of a cop-out. The Coroners Act says that if a coroner has found a death to be self-inflicted, no one can make public anything other than the name, address, and occupation of the person concerned and the fact that the coroner has found the death to be self-inflicted. Unless you have the coroner’s permission. They can only give that permission if it is unlikely to be detrimental to public safety.
Given the contested evidence about the effect of media reporting, this seems a good thing. It is a cautious approach that leaves the door open if the evidence stacks up against the notion of ‘copy cat’ suicides. In addition it is the Chief Justice who has responsibility to draw up guidelines for coroners about what may or may not be detrimental.
Strangely you’d never guess this from Judge MacLeans comments. I agree that more reporting is probably a good idea, but it is in his hands to allow this to happen.
Secondly, the restrictions are only around the particulars of specific deaths. There is absolutely nothing to stop the media covering the broader issue of suicide such as trends, research and causes. In particular more coverage of how to spot the warning signs and what to do about it if you do would be helpful. In fact the extensive coverage of suicide in The Press this month is a good example of just what can be done under the current law.
There are many laws that do need to change in this country but this is probably not one of them. Let’s see what we can do with what we have before we start demanding another act of parliament.
Friday, August 6, 2010
In need of a radical localism
Apparently local body elections are coming up soon, although most people would never know. Some of the more imaginative candidates in Hamilton are getting up to all kinds of interesting stuff, but chances are the turn-out this year will be as low as every other local election. Which suits those in power quite nicely.
I can understand the lack of interest. The thought of going to a council meeting kind of makes me cringe inside, even though I know that local councils have more influence on the day to day lives of ordinary people than Parliament does. A lot of my constituency work as an MP was either doing pycho-therapy or explaining to people why I couldn't do much to help them because it was a COUNCIL ISSUE. Even then, I'm not sure it ever inspired them to vote for their city councillors.
More recently there has been another reason to be disinterested in voting in local elections. The sacking of Environment Canterbury and its replacement by a government picked board was a complete travesty of democracy, removing democratic representation so farmers could seize water resources more easily. The fact that the people of Canterbury won't even get to vote for their regional council this year just adds to the injury. The reorganisation of Auckland's goverance to allow the city to be run by business people for business people is a similar usurption of democracy.
The problem stems from our colonial history. In Europe power tends to be more localised because nation states grew out of the federation of independent cities and provinces. Local power often has constitutional protection. In New Zealand the nation states was enforced from the outside and it was highly centralised from its inception so as to facilitate our exploitation. Simply put, we were designed as a farm for England rather than as a democracy. The source of political power is not seen to be the people, but rather the Crown. While we no longer farm for Britain alone, we are still a commodity producer. Efficient production remains a more powerful political imperative than the right of local people to have a say over the things that are important to them.
Some of the most interesting social developments in Europe have resulted from the exercise of local power. The Dutch quasi legalisation of cannabis, for example, began with a decision by a local prosecutor not to prosecute for cannabis. The resulting policy has been so successful at reducing drug related harm than it has been adopted in most of Holland and increasingly in other parts of Europe too. In New Zealand such a development would be impossible. Here we have centrally controlled pilot schemes, with all the political arse-covering that this involves. If successful, they usually have the plug pulled on them in short order so as not to threaten any entrenched interests.
Because power is seen as flowing down from Her Majesty, rather than originating in the people and flowing up to the Parliament, local bodies provide no constitutional constraint on the Government. As we have seen, the Government can sack councils at will. Neither is there any overarching constitutional constrain on the Government. The Government can pass any laws it likes, even if they breach basic human rights, so long as it has the requisite majority. Our system is very much a product of that brief moment in time when the Nation State was all powerful in Europe – just forged out of autonomous provinces and city states but not yet constrained by regional or global systems of goverance. We are frozen in time.
The question is, which do we value more highly - efficiency or democracy? It has become heretical to question any demand of the market, as if the desires of human beings are legitimate only insofar as they facilitate the economy. We have been enslaved by our own invention. The answer, in my opinion, is a radical localism and it begins with a participatory local politics.
(from my Waikato Times column 6 August 2010)
I can understand the lack of interest. The thought of going to a council meeting kind of makes me cringe inside, even though I know that local councils have more influence on the day to day lives of ordinary people than Parliament does. A lot of my constituency work as an MP was either doing pycho-therapy or explaining to people why I couldn't do much to help them because it was a COUNCIL ISSUE. Even then, I'm not sure it ever inspired them to vote for their city councillors.
More recently there has been another reason to be disinterested in voting in local elections. The sacking of Environment Canterbury and its replacement by a government picked board was a complete travesty of democracy, removing democratic representation so farmers could seize water resources more easily. The fact that the people of Canterbury won't even get to vote for their regional council this year just adds to the injury. The reorganisation of Auckland's goverance to allow the city to be run by business people for business people is a similar usurption of democracy.
The problem stems from our colonial history. In Europe power tends to be more localised because nation states grew out of the federation of independent cities and provinces. Local power often has constitutional protection. In New Zealand the nation states was enforced from the outside and it was highly centralised from its inception so as to facilitate our exploitation. Simply put, we were designed as a farm for England rather than as a democracy. The source of political power is not seen to be the people, but rather the Crown. While we no longer farm for Britain alone, we are still a commodity producer. Efficient production remains a more powerful political imperative than the right of local people to have a say over the things that are important to them.
Some of the most interesting social developments in Europe have resulted from the exercise of local power. The Dutch quasi legalisation of cannabis, for example, began with a decision by a local prosecutor not to prosecute for cannabis. The resulting policy has been so successful at reducing drug related harm than it has been adopted in most of Holland and increasingly in other parts of Europe too. In New Zealand such a development would be impossible. Here we have centrally controlled pilot schemes, with all the political arse-covering that this involves. If successful, they usually have the plug pulled on them in short order so as not to threaten any entrenched interests.
Because power is seen as flowing down from Her Majesty, rather than originating in the people and flowing up to the Parliament, local bodies provide no constitutional constraint on the Government. As we have seen, the Government can sack councils at will. Neither is there any overarching constitutional constrain on the Government. The Government can pass any laws it likes, even if they breach basic human rights, so long as it has the requisite majority. Our system is very much a product of that brief moment in time when the Nation State was all powerful in Europe – just forged out of autonomous provinces and city states but not yet constrained by regional or global systems of goverance. We are frozen in time.
The question is, which do we value more highly - efficiency or democracy? It has become heretical to question any demand of the market, as if the desires of human beings are legitimate only insofar as they facilitate the economy. We have been enslaved by our own invention. The answer, in my opinion, is a radical localism and it begins with a participatory local politics.
(from my Waikato Times column 6 August 2010)
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