Kiwiblog

I suspect Bill English enjoyed yesterday. It is always a bad sign for an Opposition when Governments are looking forward to question time and complaining it is only three days a week. From Hansard:

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Prime Minister has a great deal more confidence in the Minister than a certain Charles Chauvel had in a former Minister when, as president of the Labour Youth Council in 1988, he told the then employment Minister, Phil Goff, to “take action or resign”. Charles Chauvel is probably feeling the same way today.

Some Researcher or staffer earned his pay yesterday.

Chris Tremain: Has the Prime Minister seen any reports of an employment Minister dealing with rising unemployment during a recession?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Yes, he has seen a report that states: “It takes more than hot air, more than rhetoric, and more than using the backs of unemployed people to make political points. … I despair at the gamesmanship of politicians trying to get votes from the problem of unemployment”. That was said by Annette King in this House.

This is the problem you have when both the Leader and Deputy Leader were Ministers in not just the last Government, but also the one a decade before that.

Moana Mackey: How can the Prime Minister have confidence in a Minister responsible for cutting the training incentive allowance, and does he agree with Christine of Gisborne, a solo mother of four who now cannot do the nursing qualification that would enable her to move off the domestic purposes benefit and into paid work, when she says: “The Government has been sitting there telling us to upskill, get into jobs, not run up debt, to ride out the recession, and then they go and take away the assistance that some people need to enable this to happen.”?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: What we have learnt from the activities of the Labour Party over the last month is that we have to be pretty careful about believing whether Christine of Gisborne even exists, and also whether she is on the domestic purposes benefit, whether she owns three investment houses, and whether all the information she has given to the Labour Party about her situation has been truthfully represented here.

Once bitten, twice shy. Everyone is going to be very wary of any “example” put forward by Labour.

The Herald reports:

The sexual history of rape-case complainants may no longer be able to be raked over by defence lawyers in potentially far-reaching reforms proposed by Justice Minister Simon Power.

He is considering making evidence about a complainant’s previous sexual relationships inadmissible without the agreement of the trial judge.

I am broadly supportive of such a move, but have to admit I thought there already were restrictions on such details being detailed in court? One of our friendly defence lawyers want to clarify.

There are some occasions where past relationships could be material. If for example a complainant said she did not consent as it was their first date, and she would never sleep with someone the day she met them – then evidence that she is lying and has had a one night stand before would be relevant. But only because it is contradicting a claim she made. If she made no such claim, then I would say it is not relevant how many one night stands a complainant may have had.

Mr Power said rather than the complainant being ambushed in court with cross-examination about her past, a judge should first rule on its relevancy.

Which seems sensible.

He also proposes changing the definition of consent so someone would have to say “yes”, rather than the current law where a defendant is able to argue the woman did not say “no”.

Here I have to say, the proposal is impractical. Power isn’t exactly proposing this change – more just floating the possibility. But I think consent is often implicit, not explicit, based on how someone responds to you. I think Canada may have gone down this path, but to me it reeks of almost having to sign a statutory declaration of consent before sex.

Mr Power has also asked the Law Commission to investigate introducing a European-style inquisitorial justice system in sexual offending cases.

He said using such as system – where the judge is involved in collecting and determining the facts of the case – instead of the adversarial system that required “harrowing” cross-examination of victims was “worth a look”.

Fairly openminded on this. Fair to say though a high level of persuasion would be needed to change from the current system.

Mr Power says alcohol – a “facilitator” for crime – has to be dealt with if the Government is to have any impact on the crime rate. He says this will be done in one package of law reform this parliamentary term and will take into account the ongoing work of the Law Commission. It has already suggested limiting the opening hours of liquor shops and bars, raising the drinking age to 19 or 20 and increasing tax on alcohol.

I hope his comments do not mean the Government will just automatically legislate whatever the Law Commission recommends. The quality and relevance of the research they have used to date in citing the need for change has been seriously lacking.

Simon also announced his views on the provocation partial defence, which I will deal with in another post. His speech is online here and is a very good read. I’m incredibly impressed by the pace of work by Simon – he has achieved a lot in six months and by the end of his first term, will have a huge amount of law reform behind him.

On a final note did anyone else see Valerie Morse on TV last night holding up a sign calling for all prisons to be abolished at Simon’s speech. I’d like to ask Valerie what she thinks should happen to Clayton Weatherston and Graeme Burton. I guess she’ll just claims they are victims of the colonialist capitalist oppressors.

Over at NBR, I write why I think we will never hear those four words.

Helpful readers have found online a copy of Sophie Elliott’s paper, mentioned in the media this morning. The foreword is pretty special and moving, so I reproduce it here:

In February 2007, we shared the teaching in an upper level Microeconomics seminar at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. Sophie Elliott was one of the students. Sophie’s scholarly term paper, ‘Why measure inequality? A discussion of the concept of equality’, presented here in slightly abridged form, was easily the best essay on equity and equality either of us had ever read.

Sophie completed her degree in November 2007 and was on the brink of an exciting career. And then we learned of Sophie’s death. Sophie died on January 9th 2008, just one day before she was supposed to travel to Wellington to take up her first position at the New Zealand Treasury. She was brutally attacked and stabbed to death in her
own bedroom.

In her paper, Sophie examined the contrasting viewpoints and analyzes of a dozen of the main thinkers – both philosophers and economists – who are today concerned with equity as a fundamental value in society, and indicated at many points, gently but firmly, what she herself believes. We found Sophie’s essay stunningly to-the-point, thoughtful and mature.

Jean-Yves Duclos, editor of the Journal of Economic Inequality, wrote to one of us about Sophie’s paper in these terms: ‘It is a remarkable piece of research for such a young person. In just a few paragraphs, the paper is able to strike right to the core of welfare economics and to grasp with many of its complex philosophical and ethical issues. Elliott certainly had a beautiful mind’.

In Sophie’s paper, the reader will find many questions to ponder. Should a policy be about the people who deserve to be treated equally rather than those who are treated equally? How should we treat benevolence in society? Do we wish to make people in society equal in terms of the things that do generate welfare, or in terms of the things that should generate welfare? Does the prosperity of one person negatively affect the fortunes of some others? What do we mean by equal opportunities, and by equal reward for equal effort? Are market-generated outcomes necessarily unfair? If so, is the lack of compensation for this unfairness morally wrong?

We have both felt Sophie’s loss, in this awful calamity, very deeply indeed. We are proud to have been her teachers and we commend her inspirational essay to the readers of Oxonomics.

There was something magical about Sophie Elliott – everybody who knew her felt it, and everybody who knew her loved her, all but for one person. Rest in peace, Sophie.

What a wonderful tribute to her. And such a nice counter to the days of vileness from he who shall not be named.

A small extract from the paper itself. This will probably only appeal to economists!

Horizontal equity is conventionally defined as the principle that equals should be treated equally, and vertical equity, that unequals should be treated unequally. Galbiati and Vertova (2008) focus on horizontal equity, arguing that the above definition is flawed, as policies, by default, treat those they define as ‘equals’ equally.

The correct assessment of the horizontal inequity caused by a policy is in the policy’s choice of relevant characteristics1 that determine the ‘equals’.

If these characteristics are seen to be normatively inappropriate in reference to the intended effect of the policy, then the policy is said to be horizontally inequitable to some degree. That is, if those who should be treated as equals under the policy, in that they share relevant characteristics, are treated as unequals by the policy rule, the policy is considered unfair under this definition.

It is as Peter Westen states in his book on equality (see Westen, 1990): the presumption of equality is that people should be treated equally in the absence of good reasons for treating them unequally, such as a difference in relevant characteristics.

Lambert and Yitzhaki (1995) explain that horizontal and vertical equity serve different purposes. The former is an idea relating to justice, helping to ‘ensure that the law does not serve anybody’s self-interest’. The latter is a principle that prevents warped applications of the former, and, if satisfied, is sufficient to implement the former.

Consider a country with two types of people, those who love ducks and those who hate ducks. If the government gives everyone three ducks each, it has treated all the ducklovers equally, and all the duck-haters equally, thus satisfying the principle of horizontal equity when given its conventional definition.

However it does not satisfy the principle of vertical equity, as the two distinct groups are treated the same in relation to a characteristic that must be considered relevant in the distribution of ducks. Distributing the ducks in this apparently even-handed way actually results in an unfair outcome; hence we have an example of an equal distribution that does not achieve its fundamental aim of equity.

This illustrates the importance of considering both horizontal and vertical equity in theories of equality.

The full paper is only 10 pages, and as I said very interesting for those who are into economics.

Follows of the Weatherston trial will recall the defence claimed Sophie attacked Weatherston first, and cited as evidence the mention in her diary how she had “attacked a previous boyfriend”. The ex-boyfriend was not called by the defence to testify, and put this into context. He has e-mailed me details, to remove what he sees as a stain on Sophie’s character. He believes Weatherston only invented the “Sophie attacked first with scissors” defence after his lawyers read about the previous “attack” in her diaries. He writes:

The facts are thus:

1. We had been having an argument, and as people sometimes do I was really winding her up.
2. She got frustrated and scratched me.
3. She then promptly burst into tears and apologised profusely for having hurt me.

There was no punching, kicking, or anything else of any kind.

Without knowing Sophie and I, it’s also quite hard to get a sense of just how ridiculous the situation was. I’m 6 feet tall, 220 pounds and combat trained. She was around 53kg, 5’5” or so, and couldn’t have fought her way out of a paper bag. I actually laughed when she ‘attacked’ me because it was so ridiculous.

I think it is great that he wants to set the record straight.

It illustrates once again how vile the defence strategy was. He comments:

So, anyways, now that the trial is over this may never come up, but if it does it would be good to set the record straight and remove any perception created by the defence that Sophie was somehow prone to attacking her boyfriends. I also feel somewhat guilty because without that incident the defence would never have thought to invent this complete fabrication about Soph attacking Clayton with scissors.

I’m a bit surprised the prosecution did not call the ex-boyfriend as a rebuttal witness. Perhaps they thought no-one in their right mind would believe Weatherston’s story.

I was on Breakfast TV this morning talking about the issues I (and others) might face around potential contempt of court and the Weatherston case. I’m glad I got invited on, because I thought it unfortunate the segment on One News last night didn’t mention that I had taken immediate action to remove any problematic content the moment concerns came to my attention. I don’t want to be seen as someone saying that laws don’t apply to the Internet. They obviously do. There are of course significant issues around the practicality of certain laws, but that is an issue for the future – and the Law Commission has a discussion paper out on related issues such as suppression orders and the Internet.

The Breakfast interview I thought covered the issues quite well. You can view it here. Also a story based on it here.

I was highly amused to get a call from friends a bit later in the programme, telling me that my name came up during discussions on what gift Paul Henry should take with him to New York to give to Helen Clark. They are running a poll on it.

You can view it yourself at around 1:15 through this video. A transcript:

PAUL (reading an e-mail): Paul Henry, can you take Phil Goff with you as a gift to Helen Clark and just sit Phil Goff on the edge of the table there.

PAUL: Actually David Farrar would be a nice table weight. He’s such a sweet man isn’t he. He’s the blogger we just had in.

ALI: He’s somebody you just want to have sitting on your desk constantly so you can just ask him for an opinion on stuff.

PAUL: I’ve got David Farrar in a little box out the back. Let’s open the lid and ask him a question.

PAUL: He just seems very cuddly doesn’t he. He’s just a nice … I don’t know if I should be saying that about another man. Possibly not actually.

ALI: It’s too late now

I was very amused. I would have preferred it was Ali calling me sweet and cuddly but hey you take compliments from anyone

I blogged on Monday about how Whale Oil was seeking donations so he could win a charity auction (for Westpac Rescue Helicopter) for the prize of 90 minutes in a flight simulator with North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams. Cameron is a relentless critic of Williams, for those who don’t know.

Now this was great for the charity. It pushes up the value of the auction. Cameron was willing to go up to US$1,000 or NZ$1,500 – all of which would go to charity. He said if he was outbid he would donate the money regardless which meant if someone outbid him, the Westpac Rescue Helicopter could end up with more than NZ$3,000.

But in a fit of cowardice, Andrew Williams conspired with Trade Me to disallow bids from Cameron (and it seems from several other bidders), and the auction closed for just $150.

I’m disgusted at Trade Me that they remove valid bids, just because Andrew Williams did not like the bidder. That undermines their integrity greatly. And they helped rip the charity off also.

Williams looks ridiculous also. If Slater had won, Williams could have turned it into great PR – look at what I’m prepared to do for charity. Or if he really could not face the possibility, he should have got somone to outbid Cameron.

Now as it happens the Mayor’s daughter won the auction it seems at $150. And this was after several bids for higher than that were removed. So it looks even worse that they appear to have fixed who would win.

Aaron Bhatnagar blogs:

Slater would be a legitimate bidder, though clearly not one Williams would have appreciated. However, it was for a charity, so there ought to have been an element of goodwill about this. It’s not at all uncommon charity auctions have elements of prank or comical outcomes, but because it’s for charity, you tend to take it all in good humour. After all, Rodney Hide allowed himself to get his head shaved by Williams for charity not long ago.

Which makes the actions hypocritical also.

UPDATE: A reader has commented that the person listing an auction can blacklist or remove bids themselves, without any input from Trade Me. If this is correct, then Trade Me are not to blame. The villain then is Worldflight who acted with Williams to lower the amount donated to charity. There goes the brand.

I had to laugh at Labour List MP Carmel Sepuloni trying to insist on Breakfast TV that it had been a great week for Phil Goff.  It was like a finance company spokesperson trying to insist they were sound.

Where do I start. First the Herald reveals that Phil Goff did not tell them the sob story he fed to them, owned a total of three properties, and it was not the case of someone with no assets being forced out of their family home. It was just a case of someone being unwilling to sell their property investments for a loss. I hope this story appears in as prominent place in the print edition as yesterday’s story.

Now even before this episode was exposed, Guyon Espiner blogged:

Labour’s ill-judged foray into the benefit policy debate – offering the dole to anyone who losses their job regardless of their spouse’s income – is a strategic blunder which ignores these basic facts of political life….

Labour now claims it isn’t going to allow the dole to be paid to anyone, regardless of income. But that’s a back down because that is exactly what they were saying on Monday.

You could sense the desperation on Monday after the story was broken in the Herald. Goff had clearly blurted out the story too early because Labour party officials and MPs were scrambling to fill in the details as other media worked to follow up the story.

On Tuesday Goff was desperately trying to claim that he was talking about the principle of middle income people not missing out on welfare and not the details. All the more reason then for not announcing the plan until the details are worked through.

Guyon makes it fairly clear Goff personally blundered by making policy up on the hoof. Guyon also covers their banking inquiry:

I see Labour is having another go. Having failed to win a proper select committee inquiry into whether the banks’ interest rates are too high, they are teaming up with the Greens and Jim Anderton to hold their own “inquiry” – one with no standing, no authority and no power.

Essentially they’ll be sitting in a room, preaching to the converted. Looks like a gimmick to me. Looks like Labour hasn’t fully realised it was turfed out of power.

Indeed.Hat Tip: Keeping Stock

John Armstrong writes this morning:

This has been an especially awful week for Phil Goff. It is not just that the Labour leader has made two blunders – the first being a policy mishap and the second being caught out by failing to reveal pertinent information. It is that a pattern of bad judgment calls is starting to emerge. That will be causing his colleagues some serious concern.

The problem for his colleagues is the lack of options. After 2011 there will be options, but there are not yet.

Twice within the past two months, Goff has sought to cause National discomfort only to end up pinging himself by failing to disclose facts which ended up being revealed by his opponents to his embarrassment.

The first example was Neelam Choudary, the Indian woman who alleged former minister Richard Worth sexually harassed her. She turned out to be a Labour Party activist.

The latest example is a Helensville man, Bruce Burgess, who seemed the perfect example of the kind of middle-class distress Goff had been talking about when he floated a shift in Labour policy so the dole would be paid to redundant workers for up to a year regardless of the income of their partners.

There is a warning in Armstrong’s writing. Having twice sat on highly relevant information, the gallery is going to be far more suspicious of any information from Goff in future. His effectiveness will be reduced due to this.

Goff is kidding only himself if he thinks this new information would not change people’s perceptions of Mr Burgess’s predicament.

Labour knew Mr Burgess owned the properties. It should have dropped his case immediately it knew that. However, presumably Goff was blinded by Mr Burgess being one of John Key’s constituents. The Prime Minister had done nothing to help him. Goff could see the headlines before they appeared. Through his own fault, they have ended up being the wrong ones.

The information totally changed people’s perceptions. Just as Choudary’s identity did also. I actually felt a bit guilty, at the time, for blogging yesterday on the Burgesses as I felt sorry for them being on the verge of losing their only home. While still sympathetic they are in tough times, the fact they have two other properties means they do have options – far better options than most families.

If he fails to win in 2011, Goff knows his party will look for someone else to lead them into the next election. If he keeps performing in the fashion displayed this week his colleagues might start asking themselves whether they should not look elsewhere before then.

I think Goff is safe until 2011, again due to the lack of alternatives.

Duncan Garner also blogs:

Labour sat on the fact he owned three homes. To Labour it was irrelevant to its case – that hardworking Kiwis are missing out under National.

How many Kiwis can cry poor with three homes? It’s a bad look Labour – and I suspect you know it.

Can you imagine how Helen Clark, as Prime Minister, presented with this sort of information – would have acted?

She, and/or Michael Cullen would have not only crucified Burgess – but she or he would have damn well made sure John Key was cut into three pieces,

So Labour needs to go away and look at what it’s doing.

It needs to take a breather. Goff has been too damn keen this week. He’s cocked up. He’s acted like a cut snake.

And finally we have Colin Espiner:

Labour’s also attacking the appointment of former National leader Don Brash to the new productivity taskforce, calling him a stalking horse for privatisation. Goff says it will lead to a renewal of ideas soundly rejected at the 2005 election.

Actually, as Key pointed out in the House yesterday, National wasn’t “soundly rejected” at the 05 election – it only lost by the narrowest of margins. And it was probably the Exclusive Brethren that spooked voters more than National’s privatisation agenda.

Indeed. Mps who call Don “Lord Voldemort” may want to reflect on the fact he got only 2% less than Helen Clark in 2005, and that their references to him as such actually alienate a large segment of the population. Anyway back to Goff:

Goff had another terrible day in Parliament today after the case of poor old Bruce Burgess, a constituent in John Key’s electorate no less, who having worked hard all his life now couldn’t get any assistance from the state after losing his job.

Labour shopped the story to the Herald this morning, which ran it without question. Trouble was, poor old Bruce owns two rental properties besides his lifestyle block in a leafy part of Helensville – in other words, he has assets of at least a million dollars. Now, that doesn’t mean he isn’t suffering, but that wasn’t the picture presented to the public by Goff or the Herald this morning.

Also, according to the Government, Bruce is eligible for $92 a week state assistance – something that wasn’t pointed out earlier either.

Once again, an issue that should have run in Labour’s favour ended up backfiring badly.

So this is what Carmel Sepuloni calls a great week for Phil Goff. I’d love to see what she calls a bad week.

I blogged on the 8th of July some basic steps that I believed the Police should have done in investigating the stolen Brash e-mails:

1. Compile a masterlist of every document referenced in Hager’s book
2. Sort them into groups – e-mails, faxes, etc
3. For the e-mails record down when each e-mail was received, and when it was deleted if it was. This will provide a window of time as to when the theft occured.
4. Also for each e-mail record who has access to it. Who was cc’d or bcc’d it. Who had access to a printed copy.
5. Look for common patterns in access, to try and narrow down which e-mail account or accounts were probably accessed
6. Look at the date of the final document used in the book. It is likely the theft took place soon after that.
7. Obtain staff lists for National during that period. Look especially at anyone who joined just before the thefts occurred.
8. Obtain swipe card records for the Leader’s Office for the period just after the final documents cited.

As far as I know, the original inquiry did none of this. Don Brash has a complaint with the IPCA over the inadequacy of the investigation.

Tracy Watkins from the Dom Post reports that the Police appear to have reopened their investigation, which is an implicit acknowledgement of the failings of the original investigation:

Police have been interviewing parliamentary cleaners and security guards after reopening their investigation into the Don Brash email files.

A team of up to four police officers has been involved in the investigation which is understood to have been reopened several weeks ago after Police Commissioner Howard Broad put one of his top officers, assistant commissioner Steve Shortland, in charge of reviewing the Brash file.

MPs and parliamentary staffers are expected to be interviewed as well. It is understood the Independent Police Conduct Authority is also investigating after a complaint from Dr Brash.

I’m not sure whether the investigation will reach any conclusions, as the theft happened around four years ago, but it is pleasing to see they are at least trying.

A good piece by Brian Fallow:

The government is a large part of the non-tradeables sector, which over the past five years has grown by 15 per cent. The tradeables sector, said Whitehead, where the country earns its living as a trading nation, contracted by 10 per cent.

Even without the global recession, this was going to catch up with us.

“In other words the public sector has to raise its productivity – provide more for every dollar spent – and grow more slowly than the private and export sectors, to rebalance the economy.”

This is key. The Government sector should not grow faster than the private sector. The private sector funds the Government sector.

Easier said than done, one suspects, but they will need to all the same. The budget allowance for new spending has been slashed and as debt mounts a growing share of revenue will be pre-empted by higher interest costs.

And this is worth remembering. Every daft proposal by Labour to borrow and spend means greater financing costs for the next decade or two. That means either less spending in other areas or tax increases.

The bottom-line arithmetic is that, even with serious fiscal restraint, chronic deficits and mounting debt will be part of the legacy of this recession. All else being equal, this represents upside risk to interest rates.

It will also make it much harder to accomplish the kind of tax reform that the economy needs.

Significant structural changes to the tax system are a lot easier to accomplish in the context of fiscal surpluses, to lessen the extent to which it is an exercise in robbing Peter to pay Paul.

I regard the Cullen years as a horrific wasted opportunity to reform the tax system. The massive surpluses allowed options that just do not exist anymore.

But there are some good signs. Not a lot of money, but it is about the culture. The Dom Post reports:

Wellington Hospital chiefs will axe percolated coffee for staff from next month to save $190,000 a year.

Excellent.

Very pleased to see some stories on Sophie Elliott, so that Weatherston’s warped version of reality is not the final say on her. The Herald reports:

While her family remember a loving daughter with everything to live for, prominent academics overseas have described her as having a “beautiful mind” and an exciting career ahead of her.

Peter Lambert, economics professor at the University of Oregon, Jean-Yves Duclos, editor of the Journal of Economic Inequality and economics professor at Laval University in Canada and Sir Tony Atkinson, professor of economics at Oxford University, said Sophie had remarkable ability for a young person, exhibited considerable prescience in her thinking and could have been a leader in the field of welfare economics.

Professor Lambert said a paper she wrote titled, Why measure inequality? A discussion of the concept of equality, which was published in this month’s edition of the Oxford University economics journal Oxonomics, was “easily the best essay on inequality” he had ever read.

Professor Duclos called the paper a “remarkable piece of research for such a young person”.

In a few paragraphs, Sophie had been able to strike right at the core of welfare economics and grasp many of its complex philosophical and ethical issues, he said.

“Elliott certainly had a beautiful mind.”

I recall reading, shortly after her murder, that her ambition was to be the first female Governor of the Reserve Bank, and thought what a wonderful ambition to have. And from the sounds of it, she may have got there if not for Weatherston.

Incidentially, does anyone have access to, or have a copy, of the paper which just got published? I’m interested to read it.

The Herald has a less flattering profile of Weatherston. While my thoughts are mainly with the Elliott family, I do feel great compassion for the Weatherston family also as they cope with the horror of what Clayton did and what he is.

They also talked to Lesley Elliott. I twittered yesterday that Lesley was my hero of the month for hugging after the verdict both Clayton’s mother, but also his lawyer – Judith Abblett-Kerr. True class. Lesley wants to:

In an interview with the Herald prior to the verdict, Mrs Elliott said she now wants to focus her energies on keeping young women away from abusive and dangerous relationships. Her daughter had complained of being assaulted by Weatherston prior to the killing.

“My legacy to Soph is to somehow get to girls in their late teens and twenties, when they start to date guys, and [explore] what is acceptable behaviour and what isn’t,” she told the Herald.

The sad reality is that if Sophie had dumped Weatherston the moment he became abusive, she might be alive today. And after he assaulted her she should have never seen him again. Her desire to try and end the relationship as friends, ironically acted against her.

The issue of whether provocation should be a partial defence to murder is canvassed in this article. I am with Women’s Refuge:

Women’s Refuge chief executive Heather Henare said: “Because of the way the defence was run, this trial became a perverse opportunity for a killer to continue to persecute his victim and her family after her death.

I actually think that was part of his plan all along.

“This trial turned justice inside out. The killer became the victim and Sophie Elliott was portrayed to us all as he chose to describe her. Unfortunately for Clayton Weatherston, the jury didn’t buy it and nor did the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who watched him giggling on television.”

Never has a defence strategy so backfired, in my opinion.

Stuff reports that the provocation partial defence may go:

Killers will lose the right to claim provocation as a defence after murderer Clayton Weatherston’s attempt to smear his victim.

It is understood Justice Minister Simon Power wants the controversial defence scrapped as soon as possible and will announce his intentions today.

I think such a move would be exceptionally popular.

Stephen Franks argues for why the partial defence should be retained. He says Judges should set a higher threshold for its use, but it should be retained:

From this case the judges should take a lesson, and simplify the defence of provocation. It should only relate to what would provoke ordinary reasonable people, not drunks or P addicts or nut cases, or homophobes. The judges should now punish those who turn it into mockery.

From other cases they should accept that ordinary people want the law to distinguish between those who start fights or cause trouble, and those who respond even if their response is “disproportionate”.  The criminal should bear the risk of significant  disproportionality in the response to thuggery, rape or robbery , even if common sense says the defence can only go so far.

The Press reveals the Weatherston defence team tried to get photos of Sophie’s wounds supressed:

King told the court that the autopsy photographs were highly prejudicial because of their graphic and disturbing nature. “They illustrate the painful death of a beautiful young lady in her prime, and the injuries are simply horrific,” King submitted.

He said they provided little, if any, probative value and would “likely distract the jury from their proper task in assessing the partial defence of provocation”.

King entered a “back-up submission” that three photographs showing the injuries to Elliott’s face should be removed.

I thought that number and nature of the wounds was an essential part of the case. I’m glad the Court of Appeal dismissed the defence’s application.

The court ruled that the submissions were “hopeless” and the photographs were highly relevant to the issues at trial.

They had been carefully chosen to minimise their prejudicial effect as much as possible.

“Any remaining prejudicial effect is a natural consequence of the nature of the wounds inflicted by Mr Weatherston,” the court ruled.

Exactly.

I blogged this morning on the case of Bruce Burgess, as reported in the Herald, and said there were questions about how one is facing losing a property you purchased in 1989, because of a job loss four months ago.

Well either as a result of that post, or by coincidence, the Herald has updated their story and answered some of the questions. We now learn:

Mr Burgess told the Herald today the couple own two properties in Auckland – a house in Papakura and an apartment in central Auckland purchased “in 2004 or 2005″ – but they were not currently returning any money.

This is presumably on top of the lifestyle block in Helensville. So the story now is that if you lose your job, and own three properties, you may have to give one of them up.

He said he paid about $385,000 for the Papakura property, though it was now worth about $340,000.

The apartment was purchased for “$260-something”, but he did not know the current market value.

So assuming the lifestyle block is worth at least $500,000 their propoerty assets come to over a million dollars.

But about four months ago, Mr Burgess – whose case was brought to the Herald’s attention by the Labour Party – lost his Avondale-based engineers job – and with it a $750-a-week paycheck.

And this was not disclosed in the earlier story. Now did Labour disclose to the Herald that Burgess owned three properties? Either Labour or Mr Burgess did not think this was relevant, or they did disclose it and the NZ Herald did not think it was relevant.

This is exactly why so many people are cynical about trusting what they read in the media. The Herald took a Labour planted story and ran it without checking the facts or even putting it through a logic check.

And Labour have shown us exactly what their priority is for all the money their pixies are printing. It is to give out welfare to a couple where one partner is working, and they have over $600,000 of investment properties.

This is not turning into a good week for Phil Goff. It seems he literally does advocate welfare for millionaires.

We see from this Twitter shot, that the story was obviously part of a Labour comms campaign. Goff twttering on it this morning, and asking questions in the House. So did Goff know this couple actually owns three propoerties worth around $1.4 million when he held them up as an example of why we should pay the dole to everyone?

I think Whale pointed out a couple of days ago TVNZ were running figures with the source being Labour. I hope they checked the figures before running with them.

UPDATE2: And it gets even worse for Labour. Duncan Garner blogs:

Labour has been dealing with Burgess for days over his plight and Goff has just given a vein-popping performance about poor old Bruce in Parliament.

“Why,” Goff asks, “should poor old Bruce be missing out?”

Why should 60-year-old Bruce lose his lifestyle block because his wife earns too much  for him to qualify for the dole?

Well, let me tell you what Phil Goff won’t tell you.

Bruce Burgess also owns two other rental properties on top of his lifestyle block. Burgess appears to have never told the Herald this.

But he did tell Goff. Oh yes. He told the Labour Party about his financial situation alright.

He told Labour he owned three properties. It’s just that Labour never told the media. Phil Goff never told the full story in Parliament about Burgess.

Labour did know about the other two properties. They told a deceptive story to the media and held this situation up as the poster child for their campaign. Shabby, shabby, shabby.

Bill Ralston makes easy work of the PSA and Labour:

Erect a stake, pile wood around it as a pyre, tie Treasury Head John Whitehead to it and throw in a match.

The man has committed heresy. He said the public service needed to rethink its approach, trim its fat, move out of its comfort zone and generally get its act together or someone else will come and do it.

Shocking. Dreadful. Appalling.

Next he’ll be advocating that the world is not flat and that the Earth revolves around the sun.

The reactions to that sensible speech were so predictably knee-jerk mid-numbingly stupid.

Of course.

“The groundwork is being laid here for privatisation and further deeper job cuts”, says Labour’s State Services spokesman Grant Robertson.

No it isn’t. Whitehead talked of contracting out some services if it made sense. If a department could get say cheaper legal or accounting services from the private sector, why wouldn’t it look at that option rather than retain or expand its in-house services?

Heresy.

The PSA’s Brenda Pilott chimes in, “We’re amazed Mr Whitehead says we should be privatising public services when bad management in the private sector has created the worst global recession since the Great Depression.”

If this is the PSA’s grasp of economics and world finance then God help its members.

Ms Pilott might be interested to know the recession arose out of the credit crunch brought on by the failure of the US subprime mortgage market. Basically a relatively small group of bankers went greedily mad in a largely unregulated market.

To condemn the entire private sector for the failure of one small part of the capitalist system is nuts.

So primary producers, manufacturers, the services sector and any other part of the private sector nationally and internationally must all beat the blame for the recession?

Would we condemn the entire public service because of the single failure of, say, the Corrections Department? Tempting but unfair.

A good example of the stupidity of those who rant against the private sector and think this means all of capitalism has failed.

A horrified Grant Robertson claimed it signalled the resurgence of Treasury’s influence over the public sector.

Hang on. “Resurgence of Treasury’s influence?” Hadn’t his previous Labour government somehow banished Treasury to a corner where it could not exercise any influence over the financial performance of the public service?

Yes.

I recognised several dozen people from the media and political arenas at the screening of In the Loop at the Film Festival last night.

It is a hilarious film about spin, about war, about MPs and their staff and the dialogue is just superb. The PM’s head of Communications is obviously a take off of Alistair Campbell.

Political satire does not get much better. It has a 95% rating from Rotten Tomatoes.

Here are a few of the quotes:

Within your ‘purview’? Where do you think you are, some fucking regency costume drama? This is a government department, not some fucking Jane fucking Austen novel! Allow me to pop a jaunty little bonnet on your purview and ram it up your shitter with a lubricated horse cock!

That was the PM’s Comms Head (Malcolm Tucker) to a departmental comms person.

Your swearing does not impress me. My husband works for Tower Hamlets and believe me those kids make you sound like… Angela Lansbury!

Her response.

“Climbing the mountain of conflict”? You sounded like a Nazi Julie Andrews!

To the Cabinet Minister who departed from “the line”.

Oh, great. Meeting my constituents. It’s like being Simon Cowell, only without the ability to say, “Fuck off, you’re mental”.

The Minister, Simon Foster

I gotta say, I don’t understand how my parents’ limited reproductive ability reflects badly on me. I’m the sperm that made it!

Chad a staffer after he is called an only child.

Go see the film or get it on DVD.

Two private members bills have been selected from the ballot.

The first is the Customs and Excise (Prohibition of Imports Made by Slave Labour) Amendment Bill by Labour’s Maryan Street. This bill comes from the NZ Progressive Bills Wiki, so it shows you do not need to be an MP to have a real input inti legislation. It simply “prohibits goods manufactured or produced wholly or in part by child labour”.

The second is the Te Rā o Mātāriki/Mātāriki Day Bill by the Maori Party’s Rahui Katene. This bill would make Mātāriki, or the Maori New Year, a public holiday – on the day of the next new moon following the day in which the moon rises in the months of May or June.

By coincidence the Greens are having a Mātāriki Party tonight, which they have kindly invited me to. So I guess they will be pleased the bill has been drawn (even though it is a Maori Party Bill) and there will be lots of organic beer being drunk to celebrate!

The Dom Post reports:

A ban on using hand-held cellphones while driving looks set to be in place by October as officials prepare to report back to Transport Minister Steven Joyce this week.

Mr Joyce confirmed yesterday he expected recommendations to land on his desk by the end of the week after lengthy public consultation.

But he has made his intentions clear a ban on texting while driving was a “no-brainer” and he had sympathy for the view that taking calls on a hand-held cellphones should be outlawed.

Hands-free cellphone kits would be allowed.

I look forward to seeing the research that says hands-free cellphones are safer to use in a car than hand-held ones.

Road safety experts suggest that drivers are nine times more likely to have a crash if they are using a cellphone, and cellphone use has been blamed for close to 100 crashes a year.

This is correct, but let us out in context. In 2007 cellphone use contributed to 94 out of 11,667 crashes. That is 0.8% of crashes. And only 3.2% of crashes are fatal, so that suggests three fatal crashes a year have cellphone use as a factor (that does not mean no cellphone use would have resulted in no accident – there are often many factors).

But let us look at all things that are cited as having caused a distraction that was a factor in a crash:

1. 262 – cigarette, radio, glove box
2. 130 – scenery
3. 122 – passengers
4. 96 – cellphone
5. 30 – animal/insect in vehicle

So are we going to ban radios? Are we going to ban passengers? How about banning animals – that may stop 30 crashes a year.

106 crashes have a factor if impairment due to old age? Should old people be banned from driving?

The jury, thank God, has rejected Weatherston’s defence of provocation and found him guilty of murder.

This means he will be sentenced to life in prison. What is really important is what his non-parole period will be. It could be as small as ten years. I believe it must be much longer than that.

The actual murder by Weatherston is horrific enough. Rather than let Sophie go off to a new job and life in Wellington, he decided to firstly kill her, and then try to kill her reputation. He went around to her house with a knife, so he could murder her.

He did not just kill her but he slaughtered her. He did not strike her in anger. He slowly stabbed her to death torturing her. He cut off her nipples and nose and ears (and hair). He stabbed her in the genitals a massive amount of times. And he did it all while her mother was outside the door hearing her screams.

Then even worse he claimed she deserved it. He said he was “over it” – it being his killing of her. He got upset that people set up a trust for her. He got up in court and put her down at every occasion. He said he was not destroying her beauty because she wasn’t that attractive anyway. He joked that he was an arse man and her arse wasn’t that great.

I have never encountered such a wellspring of hatred towards one man. The e-mails, phone calls, conversations have been almost full of disbelief that such an evil unrepentant man could exist. His total lack of repentance was chilling.

And it is that total lack of repentance that means he must be locked away forever, if possible.  No-one could have any confidence that this man would not kill again, after his justifications for why he killed Sophie.

Weatherston’s own testimony condemned him. I can only assume it was against his lawyer’s advice. Every day as he testified, more and more people were outraged by him.

Personally I was disgusted by the defence put up. It was cruel and vindictive towards the Elliott family. It also backfired. Rather than succeed in painting Sophie as some sort of monster, she just came across as a pretty typical 22 year old girl – albeit a very bright one. And Weatherston came across as pretty much a sociopath.

The Elliotts have been through so much, I hope they can be spared having to turn up to parole board meetings in 10 or even 15 years time and arguing for why Weatherston should stay in jail.

National campaigned on a new sentence of “life without parole” for the worst murderers. Weatherston is the poster child for who should get such a sentence. It is a great pity the law has not yet been changed to allow such a sentence. But I do hope under current law he gets at least 20 – 25 years non-parole. Hell I hope he gets 150 years like Bernie Madoff, but the court has sentencing guidelines.

And while we are at it, we should get rid of the defence of provocation, so no other family of a murder victim has to put up with what the Elliots have had to endure. The Law Commission recommended in 2007 it should go. The Government should act on this and introduce a bill, or support the one by Charles Chauvel. That way there may be some small good, come out of this very tragic case.

The Press, had a big stuff up yesterday when they prematurely published on Stuff a story announcing a verdict in the Weatherston trial. It was only up for a few minutes, but was cached by Google and seen by many on Twitter.

I won’t say what verdict they announced, until after we get the actual verdict.

It is no surprise a newspaper works on stories in advance of a verdict. I am sure they had one for the other possible verdict also.

What was more surprising was they already had comments from friends of both the victim and the killer. To be fair, the comments were not a reaction to a verdict yet to be delivered, but if you were reading the story you could assume they were made after the verdict.

Google Cache is a wonderful tool, but very unforgiving. It can capture for days or even weeks a story that was only accessible for a few minutes.

UPDATE: Weatherston has been found guilty, which is what the Press story yesterday said. The story run yesterday is almost identical to this one now appearing.

Labour and the Greens have set up their own inquisition inquiry into banks. The Herald reports:

An expert in banking has rubbished a planned inquiry and says banks are being treated as scapegoats.

Massey University Centre for Banking Studies director David Tripe said the inquiry should not be taken seriously.

Little danger of that.

What I find amusing is the opening statement on the inquiry site:

Many New Zealanders are concerned about the high level of interest rates

The floating mortgage rate averaged 6.44% in June 2009. In June 2008 when Labour were in office it was 10.9%. So they were not concerned about 10.9% but are concerned about 6.4%?

That reduction means a $250,000 mortgage homeowner is paying $11,250 a year less interest or has an extra $215 a week in the hand.

The Herald report:

A Labour Party official is being investigated over immigration irregularities, just weeks after he helped Labour MP Su’a William Sio facilitate a meeting with Pacific Islanders duped in a fake-visa scam.

Immigration New Zealand confirmed it was investigating Semisi Faka’osikimuli, the secretary of the Labour Party’s Tongan branch, but would not disclose details or comment further while the investigation is going on.

There comes a point at which you wonder if certain problems are due to individuals, or are institutional. We have the current trial of Taito Philip Field. We have the unresolved issue of why Bill Liu was granted citizenship by Shane Jones despite official advice of his criminal record in China and offences in Australia. We have the Choudary immigration scam. There was also the dropping of list candidate Steven Ching over allegations of bribery. And now this case. Important to note only Choudary has been convicted of crimes.

The Herald understands the investigation centres around fake skilled employment offers to help immigrants get New Zealand work permits and residencies, but it is not clear how much money or how many people were involved.

No doubt details will emerge in time.

Mr Sio said he had known Mr Faka’osikimuli for two years and had worked with him in various capacities – most recently at a meeting with Pacific Islander victims of a fake residency stamps and visa scam on July 4, where Mr Faka’osikimuli chaired the Tongan group.

“He’s an active member of the Labour Party, and like many members of the local Pacific community, Semisi comes regularly to my electorate office in Mangere,” Mr Sio said.

The question is whether the alleged scam was being run out of Sio’s office, and whether that office was used for meetings. Regardless of the criminal allegations, commercial money making ventures should not be using MPs offices.

Han Jian, a former client of Mr Faka’osikimuli – whom he knows as James Semisi – said he decided to lodge a report to the police and Immigration, after receiving a letter from Immigration accusing him of fraud and submitting fake employment job offer documents, and for falsely claiming he had an offer of skilled employment from a company, TVP Computers.

“I was shocked, because I didn’t go for any interviews and didn’t even know I had any job offer, and I definitely did not submit anything to Immigration,” said Mr Han in Mandarin.

“After paying James about $14,000, all he said was to trust him and that is what I did. I thought with his involvement in the Labour Party, he will have good connections with Immigration.”

And this is what I mean about is there institutional issues. Regardless of the criminal issues against Field, it is very clear that his mate the Associate Minister was massively more likely to allow someone to gain residency here if Field acted on behalf of the migrant. There seem to be strong incentives that if Labour is in Government, you deal with people connected with Labour to gain residency or for Bill Liu citizenship.

Regardless of the change of Government, I would like to see much more transparency around MPs involvement in immigration issues. Maybe a quarterly report of the number of applications sponsored by MPs, and their sucess rates. If we had this years ago, it would have been obvious that Ministers were whitelighting almost all applications sponsored by Field.

According to Immigration documents, the application papers were submitted by Rosie Brown, JP, a community worker who works part-time out of Mr Sio’s electorate office.

Again, this may not be about individuals, but institutions.

The Herald reports on the sad case of Bruce Burgess, who has lost his job and risks losing his property.

I find the story frustrating because it does not provide enough information to properly reach conclusions. I should say at he outset that Mr Burgess and his wife seem wonderful people, in a very difficult position. My questions are not a criticism of them, just what springs to mind from the story.

A Helensville man is wondering how, after a life spent working, saving and paying his mortgage, he can be in danger of losing his property just months after losing his job.

Bruce Burgess, 60 years old and a qualified engineer, has been busy his entire adult life.

Aside from a couple of years overseas in the early 1970s, he has worked, paid his taxes and saved his money.

His wife Jo has held down regular work as an office administrator and accounts person.

Neither of them smoke, they don’t take extravagant holidays, and drink only occasionally.

They do regular community and church work and have never been on any type of welfare benefit, save for Mr Burgess’s short stint on ACC about seven years ago.

As I said, sound a wonderful couple.

In 1989, the couple bought a 2.5ha lifestyle block on Old North Rd. They moved on to the property in 1992.

My first question is how much does such a lifestyle block cost? I genuinely have no idea. Was it a $200,000 purchase or a $800,000 purchase?

Since then, the pair have tended the sheep, chooks and fruit trees, all the while working at steady jobs to cover the mortgage. They have also worked to protect a stand of native bush, and have put a house on the property.

But about four months ago, Mr Burgess lost his Avondale-based engineers job – and with it a $750-a-week paycheck.

That works out to around $51,800 a year gross.

To make matters worse, Mrs Burgess’ income – which totals about $21,000 a year – makes the couple ineligible for any type of unemployment benefit.

Which suggests their joint income was around $73,000 a year gross.

And my God it will be damn near impossible to cope with dropping back to $21,000 a year.  Possibly they may be eligible to get the Accommodation Supplement which is an extra $125 a week, but still not much.

“I was told that because the wife was working, I couldn’t get any [benefit],” Mr Burgess said yesterday. He now fears he will “soon” lose the lifestyle block the couple have worked 20 years to build – possibly within the next couple of months.

This is the part, where I don’t have enough information. They have presumably had 20 years of paying off the mortgage. Over that time the principal remaining should be greatly reduced, and the value of the property greatly increased. So I would have thought one could borrow against the property for the months you are out of work.

So while very sympathetic to their situation, I can’t work out what caused the situation where four months of unemployment can force the sale of a house purchased 20 years ago. If it was a more recent purchase, then it would not be a surprise. But normally 20 years of repayments should give you flexibility with the bank.

Regardless I hope Mr Burgess is successful in finding work soon, and they keep their property.

The June migration stats came out yesterday. This graph shows the net PLT (permanent or long-term) migration of NZ citizens.

There is huge seasonal variation, so I have shown them year by year. Generally January has the highest net departures, and the number of net departures reduces every month during the year.

The net departures of citizens in 2009 are well down on 2007 and 2008. And it isn’t Kiwis returnign home, so much as Kiwis staying put.

If we take the April to June quarters, the no of Kiwis returning home was 4,302 in 2007, 4,503 in 2008 and 5,108 in 2009 – a small increase. While Kiwis departing was 14,414 in 2007, 15,685 in 2009 and 9,990 in 2009.

So while Kiwis returning home was up 600 in the quarter, Kiwis departing was done around 5,700.