” The industrial revolution and the Renaissance before it lasted a century or more. It takes a long time for such fundamental changes to work their way through the system and produce a new “normal”.

Periods of great change produce fantastic investment opportunities and also destroy stable predictable businesses”

It’s almost as if they are paying lip service to their online profiles, whereas they should be directing as much resource as possible to it. It’s one thing i have to give TVNZ credit for – they do seem to be trying to get some traction online.

Good luck to Colman and the NBR, but i can’t see it working. Haven’t they learnt the lesson that the Internet is “free”?

That is how the court system has avoided change for so long and provided the least possible service and benefits at the greatest possible cost.

Don’t get me wrong. I work in business process improvement, so I know generally what is and isn’t productive. I have however never worked in Justice and I don’t know the operational details and I could be wrong.

Certainly their productivity in terms of wait times is appalling, just as it is in public hospitals.

Just as at present there would be rights of appeal to higher courts. More opportunities to incentivise quality decision-making arise, such as a requirement to refund costs for any decisions overturned on appeal due to errors made by the first court.

Likewise I see no reason why a range of cost options could be provided for a hearing from which the participants could choose. In the case of disagreement, the party demanding the higher priced version might suffer greater financial consequences if they lost the case.

There are all kinds of opportunities to improve the adminstration of justice if it is removed from bureaucrats and given to good business brains to manage, innovate and invest.

There are various significant constitutional principles at play here. In any society you have a division of power between the rights of the state and the rights of the individual. In both a monarchical democracy and in a republic these rights are carefully designed to create checks and balances. All of this is to prevent the state from abusing its power and falsely imprisoning, surveilling or even executing its citizens. These rights cannot be contracted out because it’s a contract between the state and the individual. That’s why we pay taxes (mostly) willingly and the state (mostly) willingly doesn’t run round falsely imprisoning people it doesn’t like or thinks are threats to itself.

It’s an extremely elegant arrangement built up over centuries and it works very well. If you introduced a private corporation whose employees had the power to imprison private citizens it completely changes that whole contractual structure.

There’s nothing wrong with private companies running the administrative side of the justice system but when it comes to judicial appointments they need to stay well clear of that and importantly, be seen by the public to have absolutely no influence whatsoever, neither in judicial appointments nor in sentencing policy. There are in fact many constitutional principles involved in judicial appointments such as the fact that a sitting judge cannot be dismissed except for gross misconduct and this is to prevent the govt from firing judges who come down with decisions they don’t like.

At least then the individual wouldn’t be facing the State in an operation run by the State.

Would I feel safer in an aeroplane run by a private company than one run by a State? You bet.

Why would a court be any different? It’s an order of magnitude simpler to design and operate.

As for me I usually just read my newspapers online either on their website or the actual PDF (not a scan too cause you can search content) of the print edition of paper throught the Wellington Library website using my library card (best kept secret for newspaper readers as every newspaper in NZ and several international ones are there too): http://whekenui.wcl.govt.nz/wc-bin/pressdisplay (I presume Auck and ChCh have it also)… True to form NBR isn’t on there as they mustn’t have sold their licence for this…

If you are sitting on a computer all day then why would you want to pay for a newspaper nowadays?

Best ignored.

“Workers control means of Production” was taken as “Party controls means of Information”

Watch this Video and see whether labour and especially the Greens are following the KGB/Soviet prescription for subverting a Country

over Generations.

Viewer Discretion is advised, as it may cause seizures.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeMZGGQ0ERk

;_)

Yeh but Alan, the justice system is not a business. It pits the state against a person. It uses the ultimate penalty up to and including execution and even if that’s not used at the mo, the processes have to be designed as if they were, in case it ever is, again.

If the worst happened, would you prefer you or your loved one to be subjected to a cheap, rapid and efficient trial, or something that took sufficient time to ensure due care and process were performed?

The possibility you might never be called to undertake such, isn’t relevant to your answer.

Which is exactly why the courts should be privatised and opened up to investment and innovation.