Kiwiblog

Judith Collins continues to show very good instincts as a Minister. The Herald reported:

Police Minister Judith Collins says she will change the law if police and court staff fail to find a way of routinely making public lists of convicted drink-drivers.

The bureaucrats get so detail obsesses sometimes, they forget the big picture. They were basically saying a conviction is a personal private matter and should not be publicised unless a reporter actually happened to be in court during the hearing.

That was and is an outrageous view. Criminal convictions are not private matters. They are by their very nature public, unless a name is suppressed.

I actually think all convictions should be publicly available through a searchable database.

Her comments come after police yesterday rescinded a decision to stop releasing lists of convicted drink-drivers to media. The about-face came after Ms Collins met senior police staff on Monday and requested they re-examine the decision.

Requested. Ha. I bet you that is a polite word for it.

Police spokesman Jon Neilson said the issue of “ownership of information” was at the heart of the review.

As it stood at the moment, police laid charges with the court, but their involvement effectively ended with prosecution. The information belonged to the court, he said.

No convictions are not private property of the court. They are public information.

From Hansard yesterday:

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Will the Minister give the House a further assurance that she will not be releasing private information held on Department of Corrections databases about these prison officers—or any other staff who choose to exercise their democratic rights and oppose her Government’s policies—in an attempt to intimidate them in the same way that her ministerial colleague Paula Bennett did in respect of two solo parents?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I do not think that question even deserves the dignity of an answer. It is so bad. Quite clearly I do not have access to such information; I do not want access to such information. Frankly, if I wanted to intimidate someone, they would know it.

Heh indeed they would. I understand there was a huge amount of laughter from all sides for that rejoinder.

The Press reports:

Tough new laws allowing boy racers’ cars to be seized and even crushed for “cruising” city streets are likely to be in force by the end of the year.

Police Minister Judith Collins warned that “every new offence (for street racing) will bring them closer to the crusher”.

Judith got her law!

Yesterday, police welcomed the Government’s move to target illegal street racing, saying two bills introduced to Parliament yesterday would make a “significant difference”.

Under the proposals, authorities will have more power to seize and, as a last resort, crush the cars of boy racers on their third street-racing offence within four years.

Doubt it will result in many cars being crushed but it may have a deterrent value – especially after a second offence.

About 100 crashes a year are attributed to illegal street racing, and the Government says the activity is responsible for an average 10 deaths per year.

Another 46 people are seriously injured by street racing, with a further 125 minor injuries. The social cost of the crashes is estimated at $30 million a year.

That is more than a minor nuisance.

Lyndon Hood at Scoop has a very funny piece of Judith Collins as The Hulk. Extracts:

Collins ANGRY!

Collins hear car! It loud car!

Collins see boy in car!

Car shiny?

Car shiny!

Him BOY RACER!

Collins fine racer? No! Him not pay fine already!

Collins impound car? No!!

Collins Crush car! Collins CRUSH!

Why Collins impound when Collins can POUND?

Collins Smash! Collins Destroy! COLLINS CRUSH!! Rargh!!

Heh.

This is getting to be a habit. Two days in a row, and all four major dailies again have editorials on much the same subject.

This time we will start in the South with the ODT:

There was some evidence taxpayers had been saved money by private enterprise: one study showed the cost of keeping an inmate in a high security prison run by the Corrections Department at the time was $72,000 per year; the cost in a minimum security prison was $54,000, and the cost in the privately-run remand prison $43,000 a year.

The Treasury also told the Labour government that the Corrections Department was unlikely to run the remand prison for a cheaper price. Nevertheless, it was taken over by the department. At the time, the co-leader of the Maori Party, Tariana Turia, commented the prison had operated “extremely well” under private management.

Today, we have record prison inmate numbers, about half of whom claim to be Maori, and an exceptionally high recidivism rate. The state system is clearly far from properly addressing their rehabilitation. It is this failure that needs to be the focus of the Government’s attention, rather than whether private enterprise can do a better (read cheaper) job.

The ODT is wrong to interpret better as meaning cheaper only. The private managed prison has lower levels of drug abuse and violence – both major factors into recidivism I would say.

Yet, what do we find in the most recent review of the department, by commissioner Ian Rennie: the Labour government failed to provide anywhere near enough funding to pay for required extra parole officers; it refused to pay for the much-needed 10 additional psychologists; it refused the department’s request for more funding to meet just “satisfactory” standards of service.

I think the ODT overlooks the Auditor-General saying very very clearly that any lack of resource can not explain the massive breaches of their own procedures and policies, that resulted in incraesed risk to the public.

Next The Press:

The minister had no doubt expected that this latest report would lead to the sacking of Corrections’ chief executive, Barry Matthews, by Rennie, who is technically his employer. Matthews had refused to resign.

But to Collins’ chagrin, the report said that sacking Matthews could not be justified. Rennie acknowledged that non-compliance with parole management procedures was too high, but said there had been recent improvements.

His report also pointed to the increased workload of the department and said that requests from Matthews for more staff had been rejected by the previous government.

This finding might create the suspicion that the head of the public service bent over backwards to clear the chief executive, and Collins is certainly correct to say that most New Zealanders do not have confidence in the department or Matthews. But, realistically, Collins had no real choice but to grit her teeth, accept the findings of a report which she had ordered, and promise to put more resources into Matthews’ department.

The alternative would be for her to tell Rennie that she could not possibly work with her chief executive, which would virtually force the commissioner to replace him. Yet after being cleared by the latest report, Matthews would almost certainly have sought a substantial payout, especially as he had two years of his $375,000 a year contract to run. That would have been politically unacceptable.

Yep. In one sense Barry Matthews has been put onto probation rather than given a recall!

The Dom Post:

Strip away the verbiage and State Services Commissioner Iain Rennie’s report on Corrections Department accountability can be read two ways.

Either it is an elaborate exercise in buck-passing chief executive Barry Matthews cannot be held accountable for his department’s failings because the last government woefully under-resourced it or it is a charter for mediocrity: departments should not be expected to follow their own procedures.

To be fair to the last Government, I understand funding for Corrections has been:

99/00: $427m
08/09: $965m

Departments always say they want more money. Corrections has had its budget double and they still couldn’t follow their own procedures in the *majority* of their own cases.

Protecting the public is the department’s No1 priority. The Burton case should have have served as a wake-up call to all within Corrections. Mr Matthews has devoted extra attention to high-risk parolees since the Burton case, but it is surprising that he appeared to be unaware of the extent of his department’s failings till the auditor-general conducted his review.

It is almost as surprising that Mr Rennie does not consider that a sackable offence. The department’s failure to follow its own rules put public safety at risk.

In standing by his beleaguered chief executive, Mr Rennie has made himself accountable for the department’s performance. If the department continues to fall short of public expectations, he will find that an uncomfortable position.

That is very true.

And finally the Herald:

The Corrections Minister’s instructions to the State Services Commissioner, Iain Rennie, were quite explicit. He was to “establish who is accountable for serious failings identified by the Auditor-General’s report into the management of offenders on parole”. By any yardstick, Mr Rennie has failed miserably. He has found no one accountable in terms worthy of justifying dismissal. That includes the chief executive of the Corrections Department, Barry Matthews, and the parole head, Katrina Casey. And there is not a murmur about who else, among the problem-plagued department’s staff, should be held accountable for these “serious failings”. The Government’s quest for public-sector accountability seems to have passed Mr Rennie by.

To be fair to Mr Rennie, he is hamstrung with our employment laws that basically do not allow you to sack people just because they have failed at their job.

His report is the more abject in that he confirms the department has been failing to make the grade. Corrections’ internal standard is 85 per cent compliance with its own parole management procedures. Last December, it managed 80 per cent. Further, Mr Rennie judged that the department could have moved earlier last year to manage the potential risk to public safety caused by far more offenders being placed on community-based sentences.

But he excuses these grave shortcomings by pointing to improvements in performance. Compliance with parole management procedures had dipped as low as 60 per cent in November, 2007, he notes. What he does not mention is that this was almost three years after Mr Matthews took the Corrections reins. It was also about the time community-based sentences came into force, a move that necessitated the training of new probation officers. This innovation may, as Mr Rennie suggests, be a mitigating factor. But it is not an excuse. It should not distract from the long-term problems under Mr Matthews’ watch.

As I said previously, the improvements in performance had better continue.

The Herald reports:

The father of Karl Kuchenbecker says Corrections Minister Judith Collins is “all bark and no bite”, after she failed to remove Barry Matthews.

Paul Kuchenbecker said Mr Matthews now appeared to be “untouchable” as the department’s chief executive, despite presiding over a string of failures such as parolee Graeme Burton being left free to murder his son.

To be fair to Matthews, the story notes:

Mr Rennie noted that Mr Matthews had failed last year to get the Government to fund 61 extra staff to monitor parole.

Ms Collins said she had asked for extra funding in this year’s Budget and the Government would be responsible when considering it.

So maybe the former Minister has some responsibility? But having said that, the Auditor-General made it clear that the failings can not be attributed to lack of resource alone.

John Armstrong also comments:

The “crusher” crushed? Well, for the time being at least.

But don’t expect Judith Collins to take defeat sitting down. Though the Corrections Minister may have been comprehensively wiped in her battle to have her department’s chief executive Barry Matthews removed from his position, he would be fooling himself if he thinks he has won the war. …

She said later that she had told him exactly what she was telling the media. If so, she would have served notice on him that he would not have her confidence until he had rebuilt public confidence in the department. She would have dropped a strong hint that requires a clean-out in the department’s senior management which has been seen as an obstacle to the “culture change” she is seeking in the way the department operates.

She is not the first minister to demand that. Labour’s Damien O’Connor pleaded with Matthews to do it. Unlike O’Connor, Collins is not going to allow herself to become a victim of the department’s failings.

As I said yesterday, the improvements need to continue. If so, that is a win-win. If not, then I see more interventions by the State Services Commissioner.

Also worth highlighting a comment by former State Services Minister Trevor Mallard on this blog:

My advice on colleagues was always to say :- “Matters of confidence in Chief Executives is a matter for the State Service Commissioner.” And nothing else. It didn’t always feel great especially when I thought a CE was being unfairly criticised but is really the only approach if one wants to maintain the integrity of the appointment system.

Reasonable advice, but does it apply when you think the criticism is fair, and you don’t have confidence?

The Auditor General’s report into how the Corrections Department manages parole is a shocker:

My staff looked at how the Department managed offenders released on parole. We chose 100 offender case files in the four areas we visited to assess whether probation officers and other staff were managing offenders in keeping with the Department’s requirements. We deliberately included 52 offenders considered to pose a high risk to the public.

In most of those 100 case files, the Department had not followed one or more of its own sentence management requirements. Five of the requirements that my staff checked are the most important, in my view, for keeping the public safe, and one or more of these five requirements had not been followed in most of the 100 cases. There were several cases, some of which I have included in my report, where the Department had not completed important sentence management requirements at each stage of an offender’s parole, and we concluded that the Department was not managing these cases adequately.

They are damning words, coming from the Auditor-General. Equally damning was the response of Minister Judith Collins:

Corrections Minister Judith Collins today asked the State Services Commissioner to establish who is accountable for serious failings identified by the Auditor-General’s report into the management of offenders on parole. …

“I have today asked the State Services Commissioner to work with Corrections Chief Executive Barry Matthews to establish who is accountable for the deficiencies identified in the report and what should be done to restore public confidence.”

Ms Collins has asked the Commissioner to report back within 10 working days.

This is about as subtle as John Cleese. I mean you do not need to run a competition to guess who the State Services Commissioner will find is responsible for management failings in the Department. This must qualify as the most unsubtle ever request to SSC to remove a CEO. But not wihout considerable merit – the OAG report is damning, and the mistakes in this area do and have cost lives.

The Herald reports that Corrections CEO faces the axe:

Barry Matthews’ future as head of Corrections is in serious question, after his Minister Judith Collins pointedly refused to express confidence in him yesterday. …

Ms Collins would say only: “I have confidence Mr Matthews understands exactly just how seriously I am viewing this issue.”

Again, you don’t exactly need a PhD in Politics to read between the lines here.

John Armstrong comments:

Wielding a calculated, but ruthless combination of raw power and tactical guile, Corrections Minister Judith “Crusher” Collins has torn up the public service rulebook and effectively engineered the sacking of her departmental chief executive.

Technically, she cannot fire Barry Matthews, the long-suffering head of the problem-plagued Corrections Department. But “technically” is not a word in this Collins’ dictionary.

Indeed.

But regardless of this, Matthews’ resignation letter should have been on the desk of State Services Commissioner Iain Rennie yesterday, so damning was the Auditor-General’s report on Corrections’ management of its parole responsibilities. …

The report shows the department failing to follow its own procedures in monitoring potentially dangerous prisoners on parole – procedures tightened after the murder of Lower Hutt father-of-two Karl Kuchenbecker by Graeme Burton in January 2007.

This is the scary thing. The audit was done after the Burton fiasco, and was meant to measure the new improved processes in place.

Audrey Young blogs on National’s women making a mark. She even gives them names that they could use in the WWE:

• Crusher Collins
• Tolley the Terminator
• Bruiser Bennett

Audrey talks about Judith:

Police Minister Judith Collins has been dubbed Crusher Collins since she touched a popular nerve with her desire to crush the cars of the criminal boy racers and make them watch.

You can tell she relishes even uttering the words.

She will also have wide support for her aim as Corrections Minister to spend a lot less on building prisons, perhaps prefabricated buildings on existing sites.

Huge support I would say.

But Collins has also showed she is not one-dimensional. She did the right thing in visiting early the grieving family of Halatau Naitoko who was accidently slain by a police bullet and publicly showed the sort of sensitivity the situation demanded of her.

But not a caricature.

The Herald reports:

Police Minister Judith Collins is seriously considering crushing boy-racers’ cars – and inviting the drivers to watch as it is done.

Hell don’t just have he drivers watch – the local neighbours would probably happily pay $10 each to also watch!

More seriously, the boy racer attack on a Christchurch police officer has sparked a mood that the time is right for tough action.

The Herald reports that Corrections Minister Judith Collins is hoping to be able to construct new prisons at $300,000 per cell compared to $660,000 it was costing under Labour:

Corrections Minister Judith Collins has slammed the “extravagance” of the previous Government’s prison building programme and is looking at using pre-fabricated modular units to slash construction costs by more than half.

She said new jails – which will be required to accommodate the boost in inmate numbers flowing from National’s tougher stance on sentencing and parole – would be “functional, humane and safe” but not “luxurious”.

As an example of Labour’s extravagant spending, she cited the $380 million Spring Hill Corrections Facility in the Waikato which worked out at around $660,000 per cell to build once all costs were taken into account.

“You can buy two houses for that. You’ve got to do better than that.

“There has been a lack of accountability because there has been too much money. We don’t have the luxury of taxes rolling in.”

Ms Collins said she had asked her officials to present her with ideas on prison construction which had been rejected by the previous Government. They had presented her with a modular design used in Australia which, including infrastructure and other construction costs, worked out at around $300,000 a cell.

If they are good enough for Australia, they should be good enough for us!

We now know that at least one activist has been working for the Police, and also that several activists worked for private investigators.

I wonder if it is possible that some of the smaller activist groups are 100% made up of informers?

Trevor Loudon has blogged the reaction on Indymedia to the revelations.

Also Bryce Edwards has blogged an e-mail from three years ago raising concerns about Gilchrist.

The Dom Post reports what John Key said on Breakfast:

Mr Key today said police investigations were an operational matter and the Government could not direct who it investigated.

But the spying allegations raised some concerns, he said.

“I think the main point here is we would need to be satisfied as any New Zealander would that those being investigated were worthy of investigation, in other words, they present a real or credible risk to the safety and security of communities, not just a group the police target because they feel like it,” he said on TVNZ’s Breakfast programme.

He said he would be concerned if frivolous investigations led to a loss of public loss of confidence in the police’s judgment.

“I wouldn’t like an individual group like Greenpeace to be targeted,” he said on Newstalk ZB.

However, he would be more comfortable if it was individuals who were being investigated rather than organisations.

But he said police based their actions on a wide range of information and even environmental groups could “undertake quite violent behaviour”.

And Judith Collins is sounding more concerned than initial reports suggested:

Mrs Collins said she wanted to know the facts before deciding whether an inquiry was needed, but would be concerned if innocent people were being watched.

She has asked Mr Broad for a report at their weekly meeting today. “I would be very concerned if law-abiding groups and activities were being spied on.”

It will be most interesting to see if anything eventuates. Ministers need to be very careful about second guessing the Police, but there certainly seem to be some questions that need answering.

Starting at the top, the three northern seats of East Coast Bays, North Shore and Northcote were solid blue. Their party votes went up 9%, 4% and 11% respectively.  In East Coast Bays almost three times as many people voted National as Labour. These seats now are counters to the South Auckland seats.

The personal majorities were 12,800, 13,200 and 8,500 respectively. Northcote was held by Labour up until 2005 and Jonathan Coleman this tme incraesed his majority by around 6,000.

Out west we saw the near impossible – National won the party vote in all three West Auckland seats. Tim Groser worked hard on New Lynn to lift the party vote by 10% to 41%, with Labour dropping 12%. Te Atatu went from 32% to 42% and Waitakere from 33% to 42%. Listing the vote 10% in Westieville was great work.

Paula Bennett’s win in Waitakere is all the more remarkable because of the new boundaries. They had her 6,000 votes behind in 2005 and she won by 900. Groser reduced Cunliffe to 3,500 from a paper majority of 12,000 – also one of the biggest swings! Finally Chris Carter dropped to 4,500 from 7,500.

In central Auckland we have Auckland Central. National lost the party vote by 12% in 2005 and won it by 5% this time. This seat has been held by Labour since 1919 (apart from once going further left to the Alliance), making Nikki Kaye’s 1,100 vote victory all the more remarkable.

Mt Roskill also just went to National on the party vote, and Goff’s majority went from 9,400 to 5,500 – still very safe. His leadership predecessor in Mt Albert won the party vote by 6%, and had a slight dent in the electorate majority from 11,400 to 8,700.

Epsom went from 58% to 63% for National on the party vote, with Labour falling to under 20%. Rodney Hide drives his majority from 2,000 to a staggering near 12,000. They liked his dancing. Tamaki also remains solid blue with another 60:20 split on the party vote. Allan Peachey saw his majority go from 10,300 to over 15,000.

Maungakiekie was another big mover. The party vote went from a 13% deficit to 45 lead. And Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga scored an 1,800 majority from an close to 7,000 majority to Labour previously. Sam is one of the most well liked guys in the National Party, and had one of the biggest teams in recent memory on the hustings. He had between 10 and 25 people door knocking both days every weekend.

Out East we have Pakuranga which was no surprise. It is another close to 60:20 seat. Maurice is very popular locally and scored a 13,000 majority.

Botany. This brand new seat got the second highest party vote in Auckland for National – 62%. Pansy Wong also got a 10,000 majority. ACT’s Kenneth Wang was in third place but got a respectable 4,500 votes.

Papakura. The party vote went 52% to 28% for National, and Judith Collins took a 6,800 paper majority and turned it into a 9,700 real one.

Finally we have the three M seats in South Auckland. Mangere, Manurewa and Manukau East. Mangere saw Labour’s party vote go from 73% to 61%. In Manurewa it was from 61% to 50% and Manukau East from 65% to 57%. But turnout was down also and in absolute terms, Labour went from 55,000 votes to 38,000 over the three seats.

Thankfully Labour’s Sio beat Taito Phillip Field by 11,300 to 4,700

Note the above comparisons are all to 2005 results adjusted to new boundaries. Also a more formal analysis will be done when we have final results.

In Auckland we interviewed three National MPs. First was Judith Collins MP for Clevedon and candidate for Papakura.

Judith became MP for Clevedon after defeating the incumbent MP, Warren Kyd, for the nomination in 2002. She then went on to win the general election by 3,127 over Dave Hereora. In 2005 Judith scored a massive majority of 12,871 in Clevedon. However a big change in boundaries sees her paper majority cut to an estimated 6,820 in the new seat of Papakura. So still far from marginal and Judith is expected to be a front bench Minister if National wins.

Judith says law and order is the biggest issue in her area. Says people just want the crims locked away.Favours looking at a law change to protect shop keepers defending their stores. For the US election, Judith is a strong supporter of John McCain – partly a reflection of her work in NZ with Vietnam Veterans. Says McCain is a man of incredible courage, decency and tenacity. However predicts Obama will win.

Finally she predicts Goff will get there first, but not last long. Personally hopes Cunliffe gets it, and all National MPs are hoping it is Cunliffe!

Colin Espiner reports that Social Development Minister Rith Dyson is denying any secret polygamy agenda, despite a speech on the Beehive website saying the Government was moving to recognise triples.

Dyson says she never even delivered the speech, and doesn’t even know what triples refers to.

To assist Minister Ruth, we provuide the following from Wikipedia:

1. polygamy: the practice of multiple marriage (a Greek word)
2. polygyny: a man who has more than one wife (poor bastard
3. polyandry: a woman who has more than one husband
4. polyamory: having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the consent of all involved
5. polyfidelity: multiple romantic relationships with sexual contact restricted to specific partners in a group

Of course with same sex relationships, it gets even more complicated. What is the term for a trio of lesbians all joined in a civil union? No it isn’t pay per view

Asked what the Government’s policy on polygamous relationships was, Dyson said: “The social security legislation is very clear about what a relationship is you’re either single or a couple. A couple is in the nature of marriage, which includes civil union and de facto.

“It’s been the same for years. It’s been tested in court. There’s no interest in changing it.”

An interesting response. The first part is stating what the law is, and the second part is merely saying there is no interest in changing it. That avoids the question of whether the Minister thinks polygamy should be legal? I mean did this speech just appear out of a vacuum?

Finally they ask Judith Collins for comment:

Collins said she was “intrigued” that the Government’s new social development model “now includes something called triples, and my mind just boggles”.

Asked for her view on Government recognition of polygamy, Collins said: “I don’t worry about what consenting adults get up to. I just don’t expect the taxpayer to pay for it.”

Absolutely.

Well even though Winston has said it is all lies, Sir Robert went on to Radio NZ this morning to discuss his donations. Extracts from the NZPA story:

Sir Robert today confirmed to Radio New Zealand he made a $25,000 donation to the party for the last election (2005).  He had now written to NZ First president Dail Jones after speculation that money he donated had not got to the party.

I believe a number of donors are now asking where their money went. Owen Glenn thought he donated to NZ First and it went into Winston’s legal expenses. Sir Robert thought he donated to NZ First and it went into The Spencer Trust – the second secret fund we have learnt of this week.

Sir Robert also said he had made large contributions to NZ First in the 1990s when the party was being established.  “I’m not worried about the $25,000, that’s not a lot. I’m worried about the other $150,000 he took off me in the early days,” he said.

And these have never been disclosed. Now before the 1993 Electoral Act was amended in 1995 they might not have to have been. If they were paid into a Trust and the Trust donated to NZ First or paid bills on its behalf, then that should have been disclosed.

Sir Robert said he hated NZ First’s attacks on Asians but the last time he saw Mr Peters “a lot of drinking went on” and Sir Robert begrudgingly gave $25,000.

Note that Sir Robert has said explicitly Winston was directly soliciting the money – something he denies he ever does.

Sir Robert said the cheque was written out by one of his staff members to Spencer Trust — described by The Dominion Post as sometimes being used to pay NZ First bills.

There had been payments of $50,000 “here or there” to other parties, Sir Robert said. He would be concerned if donations to the party never reached the party.

Sir Robert has said he has not voted National since 1981 so unlikely to be National.

“I’ve never been approached by the Greens and Maori Party, I must confess,” Sir Robert said.
He did not like the thesis of the Maori Party and wouldn’t have given them money but asked if he would give to the Greens he said: “I probably would, but I don’t want to say that”.

Frog better get onto this!

Also interesting stuff on the money Brian Henry solicited:

In Parliament yesterday National MP Judith Collins, a lawyer, said Mr Henry could not run a trust account.  “He is a barrister sole, and one of the things about barristers is they don’t have trust accounts,” she said during the general debate.

“They are not audited. They are not subject to Law Society rules about trust accounts and the reason is they don’t hold other people’s money.

“They simply render an account and it gets paid.”  Ms Collins said she had been a lawyer for more than 20 years and had been a member of the Auckland District Law Society and the New Zealand Law Society.

“I have never once come across a situation where a barrister’s job is to ring up people in Monaco and ask them to pay $100,000 into a fees account,” she said.

“I have never once heard of it and I sat for years on the complaints committee of the Auckland District Law Society…not once did we ever hear anything about barristers ringing up trying to solicit money for their clients’ fees.”

It is indeed very unusual for barristers to be involved in the money side of things – that is meant to go all through the solicitor.

Now people may be interested in NZ First’s disclosed donations of over $10,000 since 1996:

1996 Peter McCardle $10,000
1996 Charles Sturt $12,500
2002 WestpacTrust $10,000
2002 Gold Times Sports $15,000
2003 Contact Energy $10,000
2004 Contact Energy $10,000

This is a very low level of disclosed donations. Every minor parties like the Alliance have disclosed far more than this. Now looking at this you would think they have not had any donors of over $10,000 since 2004. And in fact we know there have been significant donations of over $10,000 for the benefit of NZ First and Peters.

There are two issues with The Spencer Trust. The first is NZ First’s of trust funds to hide donor’s identity. This is perfectly legal but something he has railed against in public. So total hypocrisy.

The bigger issue is why there is no record of The Spencer Trust donating to NZ First. Because by not disclosing its relationship to NZ First, it removes the ability of the public to be critical of the use of the trust fund. You see people know National gets large donations from the Waitemata Trust. National then has scrutiny from the media and the public on those donations and their political image gets somewhat tarnished by the use of the Trusts (even though quite legal).

But what NZ First appears to have done is kept the existence of both the “legal fund trust” and the Spencer Trust a total secret, hence removing the ability of the media and the public to pass judgement on their practices. This is of course a lack of transparency that is worse than anything Peters has criticised other parties for.

And if the Spencer Trust has been paying bills on behalf of NZ First, then that could well be seen by electoral authorities as an effective donation which should be disclosed.

How many more secret trusts are out there?

UPDATE: Extracts from the transcript are after the break:

(more…)

Later today we will have an official apology to the Vietnam Veterans for their treatment over the years. It is not just overdue, but is the end of some shabby behaviour from both the former National and current Labour Government.

In 1998 a National government commissioned the Reeves Inquiry (headed by Sir Paul Reeves) to look at the effects of Agent Orange on the children of Vietnam Veterans. The Inquiry Report stated that our troops were not exposed to Agent Orange. That untruth was repeated in the later McLeod Report (authored by Dr Deborah McLeod from the Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences) commissioned by Labour in 2001.

In the uproar that followed the release of the McLeod Report John Masters, commander of the last artillery unit to serve in Vietnam, remembered that hidden away at the bottom of an old trunk he had a classified map which detailed the extent to which Phouc Tuy Province had been sprayed. He got  Ross Miller to approach Judith Collins to see if she might be prepared to help. She was (it turns out one of her cousins also served and still has chronic ill health from the experience) and Judith went public with the map.

On the day existence of the map was revealed, the then Minister of Veterans Affairs (Hawkins) went on the 6.00 News and derided the map as a possible forgery. This allowed Judith to persuade the the Health Select Committee to unanimously proceed with an inquiry.

Of particular interest to Vietnam veterans is that the inquiry revealed the existence of a secret file in the New Zealand Defence Force which detailed chapter and verse how NZ servicemen in Phouc Tuy Province were sprayed with just under 2 million litres of Agent Orange. That file was never made available to either of the two Inquiries.

Thanks to John Masters, Ross Miller and Judith Collins, the truth came out. Without them, the Agent Orange story would have never been told.

The ‘Apology’ will go some way to healing the wounds. For then 700 who have died since then, many before their time, it comes too late.  We all owe Judith Collins a debt for taking up a cause no-one else wanted to listen to.