Category: Crime & Justice
Privilege! If there is one thing we all hate, it is privilege. Especially if it is unearned privilege, although even earned privilege may irritate.
The Government Communications Security Bureau legislation is now back in front of Parliament. Introduced by former Prime Minister Helen Clark under urgency in 2001, the original Bill was designed to establish a proper legislative framework for the GCSB, which had been operating since its creation in 1977 as a non-statutory organisation.
Such a lot of nonsense has been spouted about the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) that it's difficult to know where to start. Let's begin with the ridiculous. Peter Dunne has been publicly worrying that state agents are spying on him. Believe me, they aren't. Dunne isn't very interesting - especially not to our spies.
On the afternoon of Monday, 13 June 2006 Auckland Police received a telephone call from a staff member of Kidz First Children’s Hospital, situated adjacent to Middlemore Hospital in Otahuhu, advising that hospital staff were treating two seriously injured twin infants. Their names were Christopher Arepa Kahui and Cru Omeka Kahui. Police went immediately to the hospital to investigate the causes and circumstances of the twins’ injuries.
The reality is that a group of radical Maori sovereignty activists had come together with extreme environmentalists and so-called peace campaigners in the Ureweras, to support the Tuhoe “cause”. Combined they created a potent mix of anti-establishment fanatics and career protestors with a potential for revolutionary action.
It was a good day for New Zealand. Justice Hansen sentencing the Urewera four was having none of what he called their “utterly implausible” excuses. Well done, police and prosecutors. So called “peace activists” will not rest easier. Their cover ispermanently blown by the terrorism evidence even though it could not be used. They know the police know who they are and what they mean by “peace”.
The Maori Party is claiming that New Zealand’s justice, police, courts and corrections processes systematically discriminate against Maori. Co-leader Pita Sharples says that he has based his stance on a series of top-level reports. But it is clear that he is ignoring overwhelming evidence that show his claims of prejudice to be not only blatant electioneering, but blatant racism as well!
Following the Maori Party's allegations of Police bias towards Maori Sensible Sentencing Trust Spokesman Garth McVicar is asking if the Maori Party is really a covert organisation in disguise!
In New Zealand today we have our own Hydra; our system of family law. Like the multiplying heads of the mythical Hydra, the costs and delays of the Family Court have grown out of control.
It is disappointing that two government initiatives announced over the last week aimed at reducing New Zealand’s appalling rate of child abuse, appear more focussed on criminalising law-abiding citizens than changing those government policies that are at the heart of the child abuse crisis. The first is a change to the Crimes Act, being promoted by the Minister of Justice Simon Power, that will criminalise people associated with families with at-risk children if they don’t report their concerns to authorities.[1] The second is a longer term Green Paper project, led by Social Development Minister Paula Bennett, that will look at the introduction of 'mandatory reporting', whereby teachers, doctors, and other professionals associated with children will be criminalised if they fail to alert authorities to suspected ill-treatment.[2]
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