Okay a positioning episode with little conflict. Key points are:

Radio NZ reports:

National MP Nuk Korako has announced his retirement after roughly five years in Parliament.

The list MP will be replaced by Paulo Garcia, who will become National’s first Filipino MP.
Mr Korako is the chair of National’s Māori caucus and was an unsuccessful contender in the Port Hills electorate for the past two elections.
He said he wanted to leave Parliament now to allow his successor time to get to know the issues and people of Port Hills ahead of next year’s vote.
Mr Korako will give his valedictory speech on 1 May, 2019.

I wish Nuk well in the future.

The new List MP will be, as stated, NZ’s first MP of Filipino ancestry. Paulo has a strong background in commercial law. He is also the former honorary consul general for the Filipino Embassy.

The NY Times reports:

For months, employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross have made weekly visits to a detention camp in northern Syria bearing a photograph of a petite woman in her early 60s.
They show the image to camp officials, comparing it with pictures of tens of thousands of other people in the camp’s database. All of them are escapees from the Islamic State’s last stretch of territory, which fellto American-backed forces last month.
The woman in the photo is Louisa Akavi, 62, a New Zealand nurse and midwife who was abducted in late 2013 in the northwest Syrian city of Idlib. She is one of the last links to the group of at least 23 Western hostages held by ISIS, a majority of whom were released for ransom while others were killed in widely publicized beheadings.
For more than five years, her employer and her government imposed an especially strict media blackout, warning that any mention not only of her identity, but even of her nationality, could endanger her. But now that ISIS’ caliphate has collapsed, the aid group has broken its silence in hopes that the public can help find her and two Red Cross drivers, both Syrians, kidnapped alongside her.

I know Louisa slightly – one of the nicest kindest people around. I worked in the 1990s for the head office of the NZ Red Cross. The absolute highlight of working there was meeting the delegates when they returned home, who had worked overseas in war zones and disaster areas. They did amazing things and make a huge difference helping those most in need. Nurses would save lives, sanitation engineers would provide safe drinking water to tens of thousands etc.

The delegates would live in rough conditions, often in risky areas, and for very modest pay. They did it because they were motivated to make a difference. Louisa was the recipient of the rare and prestigious Florence Nightingale award for her exceptional courage and devotion to victims.

The Red Cross is strictly neutral in all armed conflicts and most warring parties will never deliberately harm someone who is under the red cross (or red crescent). But the barbarians of ISIS are the sad exceptions.

Hopefully someone out there has some information on where Louisa is, or what has happened to her. Thoughts are with her family, friends and colleagues who have had to endure her absence for the last five and a half years.

The ABC reports:

A major opinion polling company used by GetUp!, Greenpeace, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and some political candidates is co-owned by union heavyweights the CFMMEU and the ACTU, an ABC investigation has discovered.
Melbourne-based uComms, which uses the robo-polling technology of veteran pollster ReachTEL, is now facing a backlash from clients who say they had no idea the company was controlled by two of the most powerful forces on the left-side of politics.

Amazing it took so long for this to come out.

Polls by uComms have received widespread media coverage in the past 12 months, including a recent front-page splash commissioned by The Sydney Morning Herald predicting a Labor win in the New South Wales state election.

Whoops. In fact Labor got 12 fewer seats than the Coalition.

Group executive editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, James Chessell, said the paper was not aware of who owns the company and will no longer commission uComms in the future.
There is no suggestion the outcome of uComms polling is influenced by its ownership structure.

The ownership shouldn’t matter, however the ownership should be known.

MFE has published the latest greenhouse gas inventory and its inconvenient for the left.

The left claimed for nine years child poverty increased under National, when in fact it fell on seven out of nine measures.

They also claimed that greenhouse gas emissions skyrocketed under National, when in fact they fell.

Here’s gross emissions for 1999, 2008 and 2017:

• 1999: 74.1 mt
• 2008: 81.3 mt so an increase of 9.7% under Labour
• 2017: 80.9 mt so a decrease of 0.5% under National

Here’s the change from 2008 to 2017 by sector:

• Energy -5.5%
• Industrial +15.6%
• Agriculture +3.7%
• Waste -12.0%

Now consider this against the fact James Shaw is promising emissions will rise under Labour/Greens for the next six years.

NB: I’ve used gross emissions as the offsets from forestry tend to be relatively short-lived.

The final season of Game of Thrones starts tomorrow. I will try to blog after each episode (with spoiler alerts) for those who share my addiction to both the books and the TV series.

Below are the unresolved questions that I hope will get answered over these final six episodes.

1. Who sits on the Iron Throne at the end – Jon or Daenerys or their child or Tyrion or Jaime or Gendry or someone else?
2. Is Tyrion a third Targaryen? Or are Jaime and Cersei?
3. Who will kill Cersei? Tyrion or Jaime or Arya? Will her baby survive?
4. Who is Azor Ahai, the prince that was promised, and who will they have to kill to forge Lightbringer?
5. What impact has Bran had on the past? Did he cause the Mad King to go mad? Did he create the Night King?
6. What secrets lie in the crypts under Winterfell?
7. Who will win Cleganebowl?
8. Who else will Arya kill? Will she complete her list?
9. What does Varys do before he dies?
10. How does Melisandre die and what does she do before then?
11. What happens to Gendry?
12. Jaime and Brienne?
13. Will we see Nymeria in action? Ghost?
14. Which dragons, if any, survive?
15. What happens to House Greyjoy?
16. Does Sam survive?
17. Which cities fall before the Night King is defeated?
18. Does Bronn get his castle?
19. How does the Night King get killed? How is the undead dragon killed?
20. Does Tyrion betray Dany?

After each episode, I’m going to recap (with spoiler alerts) the main points and then repost these 20 questions with the answers as we get them.

The Washington Post reports:

House Democrats are giving the Trump administration a hard deadline of April 23 to turn over the president’s tax returns, pushing back against Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s skepticism over their request for the private records.

I’m a Never Trumper but on this issue the Democrats are the bad players.

Trump decided not to release his tax returns before the election. He was the first candidate for 40+ years not to do so. He got criticised for it, but got elected despite it.

Having politicians use an obscure power to force a political opponent’s tax returns to be published is appalling. Where will it end? Will the Democrats start to publish tax returns of journalists they don’t like?

Stuff reports:

Auckland mayoral challenger John Tamihere backs concerts being staged at Eden Park and a new covered sports venue adjacent to the stadium.
He made the announcement in his first major policy release, covering parks, open spaces and stadia, at Chamberlain Park on Saturday.
He said rugby league’s Warriors would eventually have to shift to Eden Park to avert a costly overhaul of their home at Mt Smart stadium.

Eden Park is losing money big time and costing ratepayers. It needs to be allowed to do more than the status quo.

Stuff reports:

A ban on women at a marae building site could deter young women from working in construction, according to a company which encourages Māori and Pasifika people to learn trades.
Mokau Marae in Helena Bay, 46km north-east of Whangārei, has banned women from its grounds while its wharekai (kitchen) and wharenui (main meeting room) are built. The work is expected to be finished in 2020.
A sign on the marae’s gate reads: “Please respect our tikanga. No women allowed by order of the Marae Committee.”

This could be an interesting legal issue.

A marae as a private body has the right to exclude women, just as some gentlemen’s clubs have in the past.

But does that right extend to employment? If they are saying that any contractors can’t allow female staff onto the site, then I suspect that does breach the law. You are not allowed to discriminate by gender in terms of employment.

The Herald reports:

Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck took to Twitter to slam the Tax Working Group’s capital gains tax proposals within hours of their announcement on February 21.
“Just saw the NZ capital gains tax recommendations. Taxing IP [intellectual property] and stock will decimate the already fragile NZ startup industry. NZ already has big problems around creating large valuable technology companies and this will not help,” Beck posted.
Now he’s had more time to digest the recommendations, has his opposition mellowed?
No. It’s hardened.

The more you get into the detail of it, the worse you realise it is.

Simon Bridges says start-ups and other companies will be inhibited from spending money on research and development if they know a third of any ultimate sale of their company will go to the Government in the form of a CGT.
The National leader has claimed the CGT is a way of clawing back the recently introduced 15 per cent R&D tax break.
Beck agrees with Bridges’ first point.
“It the last thing the [business] community needs,” he says.
“We have a real problem in New Zealand building high-value, entrepreneurial businesses and start-ups.
“Where are all the billion-dollar companies? There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have them
“New Zealand has fantastic entrepreneurs. There’s no shortage of good ideas
“It’s just the entrepreneurs are cocooned in an environment that’s just globally not competitive – and adding another layer on that [CGT] on the start-up community is just not sensible.”

The focus should be on becoming more competitive, not more taxed.

Newshub reports:

Shaw, co-leader of the Greens, recently said emissions are not likely to start falling significantly until the mid-2020s. It has left Professor Robert McLaughlin of Massey University and New Zealand Centre for Planetary Ecology feeling disappointed.

The Greens and Labour claim climate change is the most important issue of all time, and that emissions must be cut urgently. They say that by 2050 we must have zero emissions.

But then they say “Oh, but we won’t actually cut emissions ourselves for at least six years.” Hypocrites.

Sir Bob Jones writes:

Australian footballer Israel Folau, a devout Christian, quoting Corinthians, warned on social media that “drunks, homosexuals, adultery, liars and fornicators will end up in hell unless they repent. Jesus Christ loves you and is giving you time to turn away from your sin and come to him.” A number of questions arise.

First, these remarks are totally consistent with the Bible (and the Koran) so why the uproar?

Second, why did the critics, including the Prime Minister, solely complain about the reference to homosexuals? What about us drunks and fornicators? Doesn’t she care about our pain?

A few of us on Twitter have been comparing scores for how many of the eight criteria for entry to hell we meet. Folau’s tweet said that hell awaits drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolaters. I qualify on between five and a half and six and a half of them!

I can understand journalists concentration on homosexuals as few are whereas make no mistake, the vast majority I’ve known are drunks, adulterers, liars and fornicators to various degrees, so too heaps of MP’s.  A double-standard here methinks.

Heh.

This whole episode is a classic pack-hunting media contrivance. I have difficulty believing a single drunk, fornicator, homosexual, adulterer or liar reading Israel’s remarks gave a damn. He’s entitled to express his religious beliefs as much as I for example am, to continue pursuing my life-long mockery of religion.

I think mockery is the best response, not outrage that a devout person believes various things are sinful and sins lead to hell.

Mind you Israel should be careful here for he could be in for a shock when he reaches heaven and meets Jesus, at least if Hugh Montefiore, the former Bishop of Birmingham is correct. In 1967 Hugh, a respected academic, in a lecture to churchmen at Oxford University, suggested Jesus was a homosexual. Subsequently, numerous theists and scholars have put forward the same proposition.</p>

So, when big strapping Israel finally meets Jesus in heaven, rather than the expected greeting it could be, “Ithwail, lovely to thee you.”

The argument by Bishop Montefiore is quite interesting. He says that Jesus did not know he was the Messiah until he was 30 years old. He was celibate all his life so Montefiore asks why was he celibate up until age 30? Back then men were celibate either because they could not afford to marry, or there are no girls to marry or because they were homosexual. So Montefiore thinks Jesus being homosexual is the most logicial answer, and explains why he identified so much with the poor and oppressed.

Israel deserves Christians’ admiration for his absolutism rather than picking and choosing what suits him. The downside is when he does finally bowl through the Pearly Gates, he might find heaven a rather lonely place. Far better to get stuck into a bit of fornicating and end up with the rest of us in Hell. It promises to be quite a fun place, putting aside the racket of non-stop screaming coming from Catholic clergy being boiled in vats.

Heh.

The Herald reports:

The bulk of the revenue expected to be gathered from the proposed Capital Gains Tax will come because the Tax Working Group has not made allowances for inflation.
This is according to lobby group the Taxpayers’ Union, which this morning released a report which took aim at the proposed tax’s failure to adjust for inflation.
In February, the Tax Working Group (TWG’s) released its recommendations which included a broad capital gains tax (CGT).
The Government will soon outline which, if any, of the report’s recommendations it seeks to adopt.

The Taxpayers’ Union report said more than two-thirds of the proposed tax’s forecast revenue can be attributed to the effect of taxing “paper gains”.
In other words, the Government would be getting more money through taxing the on-going process of inflation, even when asset holders – such as a someone with an investment home or a bach – aren’t getting richer.
For example, the report said a $500,000 rental property could face a real capital gain of almost 56 per cent when sold after 20 years, as a result of the compounding effect of two per cent inflation over that period.

It may be even worse than that. From the report:

You buy a rental property for $500,000. It increases in value by 4% a year and inflation is 2% a year. You sell it for $1.095 million so a capital gain of $595,000 which gets a tax bill of $196,535.

But the actual real gain in value in the property has only been $242,973 so you are paying tax of $196,000 on a real gain of $243,000. When you take into account inflation on the tax also, the effective tax rate is 56%.

Claire Trevett reports:

A poll on capital gains tax out this week provided the first glimpse of the political impact of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s handling of the Christchurch mosque shootings.
The Reid Research poll was commissioned by Business NZ, and intended to gauge public support for capital gains tax.
It began on March 15 – the same day as the terror attack. It ran until March 23 – two days after Ardern announced the detail of gun reforms at her post Cabinet press conference.

As part of it, the 1000 polled were also asked which party they supported.
Those figures showed Labour very nearly cracked the 50 per cent mark for support.
Once those who did not give a choice of party are taken out, Labour was on 49.6 per cent, National on 41.3 per cent and NZ First and the Green Party were languishing on 2.3 per cent and 3.9 per cent respectively.
In the last Newshub Reid Research poll from February, Labour was on 47.5 and National was on 41.6 per cent.

The poll literally started (by chance) on the day of the Christchurch terrorist attack. It is no surprise that Labour has gone up. The PM handled the attack very well. Labour should in fact go up in the polls when they do stuff well. And responding well to such an attack is of such importance, that I don’t begrudge any poll boost. To be blunt they deserve it.

But what is interesting is it was relatively modest. Here’s what the changes are from the last poll in February:

• Labour +2.1%
• National -0.3%
• NZ First -0.6%
• Greens -1.2%

So the increase for Labour has been mainly at the expense of NZ First and the Greens, who are both under the 5% threshold.

Those in National looking for a silver lining are pointing to the likes of US President George Bush, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Norway’s former leader Jens Stoltenberg who led their countries in times of great trial, but ended up losing elections on bread and butter issues such as jobs and taxes.

Labour are in a good position at the moment, but as the focus goes back on issues such as Kiwifarce, CGT, drug funding etc things could well change.

Newshub reports:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
Scotland Yard says the Australian has been taken to a police station and will soon appear in court.
Assange claimed political asylum at the embassy since 2012, but British police say the Ecuadorian government has withdrawn asylum and invited them in.

Julian shouldn’t have bitten the hand that protected him.

It will be interesting to see what happens now. His arrest in the UK is over breaching bail but he doesn’t face substantive charges there. He has been charged with rape in Sweden and there is speculation the US may have laid charges against him related to Wikileaks.

The rape charges in Sweden are not clear cut and some have effectively expired. Again not clear if the Swedish Government will proceed or not.

There is always a limit to free speech. I’m against any changes to our current laws, but that doesn’t mean I think all speech is acceptable.

Stuff reports:

The man was swearing and saying that Muslims were terrorists, according to the post. He also told Muslims at the mosque “we all need to leave” New Zealand, the post said.

Yelling out to victims of a terrorist attack that they are the terrorists and need to leave New Zealand is disgusting.

“He was there for about 15 minutes, he also kicked and tried to damage some of the memorial items along Deans Ave in front of the masjid.”

Also disgusting.

Armed police have been stationed outside the mosque since the attack. Police were present while the man was yelling abuse, but did not arrest him. A spokeswoman said officers made the decision not to “potentially inflame the situation at that significant location”.
Police were now actively looking for the man. He could face a disorderly behaviour charge, the spokeswoman said.

It was the wrong decision. A charge of disorderly behaviour would have been appropriate.

The Herald reports:

For months, Shana Grice had been telling police that her ex-boyfriend was stalking her.
The 19-year-old had caught him trailing her in her car and creeping into her bedroom after stealing a spare house key, breathing near her as she hid under her comforter and waited for him to leave, prosecutors later said. Then there were the seven phone calls from a blocked number in one day, with silence on the other end, according to the Argus.
Michael Lane was told to leave her alone, but Grice was punished, fined for wasting the authorities’ time.
Then, in August 2016, Lane killed her – cutting her throat in her home in England and setting her bedroom on fire, according to local news reports.

They fined her for reporting his stalking. What the hell is wrong with them. Maybe they were too busy investigating people for hate speech!

After an investigation from the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) into the Sussex Police Department’s response, two officers – one of whom has since retired – will face disciplinary action next month, police said today. Another officer will face “internal misconduct proceedings,” and three others have received “management advice and further training.”
“When we looked at the circumstances leading to Shana’s murder, we felt we may not have done the very best we could,” Sussex Police Assistant Chief Constable Nick May said.

No shit Sherlock. May not have done the very best!! And those involved get a slap on the hand.

Grice reported Lane to the police for stalking at least five times before her death – and so had 13 other women, according to BBC News.

This was a preventable death. Appalling.

A guest post by David Garrett:

Since  the Sentencing and Parole Reform Act came into force  in June 2010, the sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole (LWOP) for murder has been a sentence available to New Zealand judges. On 15 occasions since June 2010, LWOP was either applied for by the Crown, or was the mandated sentence under  the three strikes regime. In none of those 15 cases was LWOP actually  imposed. In short, the judges have simply refused to impose a sentence which  was intended by parliament in the majority of those cases to be virtually mandatory.
 
There are two quite separate and discrete routes to an LWOP sentence: 1) under the  “three strikes” regime for second and third strike murderers; or alternatively, 2) by the application of s.103(2A) of the Sentencing Act which, quite separate from the three strikes (3s) regime, allows a judge to sentence an offender to LWOP for murder regardless of his prior history  if no lesser non parole period would satisfy the purposes set out elsewhere in the Sentencing Act.
 
There have been three cases where LWOP could reasonably have been imposed pursuant to s.103(2A), and 12 cases where murder was a second or third strike offence. In the first category –  the three cases under s.103(2A) – LWOP was an entirely discretionary sentence. In the twelve  3s cases the story is quite different – the 3s regime made LWOP mandatory in each case unless what has become the “manifestly unjust” judicial escape clause – it was never intended to be such – was invoked. Miraculously, on all 12 occasions where the 3s regime mandated a sentence of LWOP, various judges have found it would be “manifestly unjust” to actually apply the law as written.
 
The s.103(2A) cases
Let’s look first at the discretionary sentence cases where the Crown has sought a sentence of LWOP pursuant to s.103(2A) of the Sentencing Act. The first such case was Jeremy McLaughlin, who killed a 13 year old girl, the daughter of his previous partner, during a  burglary of her home. McLaughlin had been  found guilty of the manslaughter of a 14 year old boy in Australia in 1995, and had served 12 years in prison for that crime before being deported back here.
 
In November 2011, McLaughlin broke into his previous partner’s Christchurch home  to burgle it, and there encountered Jade Bayliss, aged 13. McLaughlin strangled and killed  Jade before leaving with various household items from the house, and then burning it down. Bizarrely, he admitted burglary and arson, but denied the killing.
 
In the High Court, Justice Panckhurst said it was “simply fatuous” to claim that McLaughlin had burgled and then burnt down the house, but that he had not also killed Jade. His Honour said that McLaughlin was “on the brink” of being imprisoned for the rest of his natural life – but then he declined to do so, sentencing him instead to life with a minimum non parole period (NPP) of 23 years.  If he gets out on his first parole application, he will still be under 60 years of age – well able to kill for a third time.
 
So, a person who has killed not one but two young persons will almost certainly be released from prison with 15 or 20 years of life still to enjoy. I suspect many people will think that is “manifestly unjust”. But McLaughlin was convicted of a manslaughter, and then a murder. Perhaps two murders would be enough to trigger the LWOP sentence? Well, apparently not.
 
Paul Wilson aka Paul Pounamu Tainui was jailed in 1995 for the murder of his 21 year old girlfriend on the West Coast – having earlier tried to shoot her in front of witnesses  with a shotgun which misfired. While in prison, Wilson met David Bain, and later became the groomsman at Bain’s wedding. He also underwent 300 one on one sessions with a psychologist.
He was granted parole in 2011 on his fifth application. It is clear from reading the Parole Board’s decisions declining his applications – the last in June 2010 – that they were wary of him. Although three psychologists assessed Wilson’s risk of offending as low – but much greater if he was in “close or intimate relationships” – the Board of its own motion had Wilson assessed according to an assessment tool known as the psychopathy checklist. The “expert” who prepared that report thought Wilson could “effectively manage his low actuarial risk of reoffending….”, and Wilson was duly  released in January 2011.
 
For a time all went well. The Board monitored Wilson’s progress and was happy with it. Several years after his  release Wilson met a young “spiritual teacher”  called Nicole Tuxford, who both socialised with him, and tried to help him.  Wilson apparently became infatuated with Tuxford, and became enraged when he learned she had a boyfriend. He lay in wait for her in her home, and when she returned, he raped her and cut her throat multiple times after tying her up. So, two murders, both of young women with whom he was infatuated. A clear case for LWOP you would think? Sadly No.
 
At trial, Justice Mander rejected the Crown’s application for LWOP under s.103(2A), and instead imposed a life sentence with a minimum NPP of 28 years, meaning Wilson would be over 80 when he became eligible to apply for parole. He was also sentenced to Preventive Detention for the admitted rape of  his victim, but that additional sentence is effectively meaningless. Is allowing him even the possibility of another release on  parole justice? Not in my book. In 28 years memories will have faded, and God knows who we will have on the Parole Board; it might be headed by a retired Green MP.
 
The three strike cases
As noted above, there have been 12 cases of murder as either a second or third strike offence. As written, the three strikes sections of the Sentencing Act mean that those 12 ought to have all been sentenced to LWOP – being the maximum possible sentence – unless in any case such a sentence was “manifestly unjust”. Absurdly, in all 12 cases, the judges have defied the clear will of Parliament and found that NONE of those murderers ought to face the full force of the law.
 
The Judges in the High Court at least have some excuse for their failures – they are bound by the precedents set in the Court of Appeal, most notably  in the cases of Justin Vance Turner, and Shane Pierre Harrison. Let’s look at those cases in turn.
 
Turner was the first second strike murderer. He viciously beat a girlfriend in 2011 causing her serious brain injuries. He was jailed for what many would think was an absurdly light term of three years and four months for that, and given his first strike warning.  In February 2015, while on parole, he was convicted of murdering a homeless man. The circumstances of the murder were horrific, with Turner jumping on the much older man’s head until it bounced off the pavement.  Turner was assessed as having an “alarmingly high” risk of reoffending. LWOP then, as required by the 3s law? No. The sentencing judge instead thought a ridiculously light 15 year minimum NPP was sufficient. The Crown appealed that sentence to the Court of Appeal.
 
In the Court of Appeal, the Judges embarked on what has become the familiar legal contortions to find that the 3s regime doesn’t actually mean what it clearly says. Despite the phrase “manifestly unjust” having already been what lawyers call “judicially defined” for the purposes of  a different section of the Sentencing Act, the Court of Appeal decreed that that phrase has a completely different meaning when applied to 3s cases. Worse still, they have inserted an extra limb to the test, claiming that parliament “must have intended” that such a sentence would never be grossly disproportionate when compared with similar cases.
 
In coming to this conclusion, they are being what is known as “wilfully blind”, by citing my third reading speech on the Bill, but completely ignoring the several instances where the question of disproportionality was discussed during the Committee of the Whole stage.
 
In short, I explained to the House on numerous occasions that disproportionality in sentencing under 3s was the whole point  of the regime.  If a person kept offending violently it was intended that their sentences get exponentially worse.
After concocting a test which is directly contrary to the intention of  parliament, the Court of Appeal rejected the Crown’s application for LWOP for Turner on the grounds that because of his age, he would likely spend up to 50 years in jail, and parliament “cannot possibly have intended that”. That is exactly what parliament intended in 2010, for a vicious thug like Turner, with 111 previous convictions – yes, you read that right, one hundred and eleven previous convictions – many of them for serious violence. The Court did graciously impose an extra two years on Turner’s NPP. He will still be a relatively young man when he is released, as he almost certainly will be, if not on his first application.
 
The other Crown appeal was in the case of Shane Pierre Harrison, a charming looking gang member with a face covered in tatts and half his teeth missing. Harrison was 46 when convicted as a second strike, of being a party to the murder of a rival gang member. Harrison has been a gang member since he was a  teenager. He also has a conviction for manslaughter, albeit long before the 3s regime was introduced. At 46, Harrison is 16 years older than Turner, and given his lifestyle, he is unlikely to make old bones, and therefore LWOP would probably mean a much shorter time in prison for him. But no, the Court found that in his case also, LWOP would be “manifestly unjust”, and in about 10 years time (he was sentenced three years ago to a minimum NPP of 13 years) he also will be up for parole.
 
The first case where murder was a third strike was that of Dylyn Davis, who severely  beat his young girlfriend and left her to die while he went around trying to establish an alibi. His two previous strike offences were aggravated robbery and injuring with intent to injure. He killed his victim a mere five months after being released from prison for his second strike offence.
 
Under the 3s law, Justice Davison was required, if LWOP was manifestly unjust, to sentence Davis to a minimum NPP of 20 years, unless that also was manifestly unjust. As it happened, the judge kicked for touch, and largely on the grounds of Davis’s age, refused  to impose LWOP – which might have led to a term of 60 years – but imposed a minimum NPP of 20 years, which was confirmed on appeal.
 
I believe that what has occurred in most if not all of the 15 cases where LWOP was either available or supposedly mandatory  is nothing less than outrageous judicial activism, with our judges not simply ignoring the clear will of parliament, but going directly against it.
 
The next test of course will be Tarrant who, when inevitably found guilty – unless he is either found unfit to plead or succeeds in running an insanity defence – will be eligible for LWOP pursuant to s.103(2A). Will 50 murders be enough to cause the judges to do their clear duty? Who knows; Tarrant is about the same age as Davis, and might spend  60 years or more  in prison if LWOP is imposed on him. Time will tell. Since  the Sentencing and Parole Reform Act came into force  in June 2010, the sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole (LWOP) for murder has been a sentence available to New Zealand judges. On 15 occasions since June 2010, LWOP was either applied for by the Crown, or was the mandated sentence under  the three strikes regime. In none of those 15 cases was LWOP actually  imposed. In short, the judges have simply refused to impose a sentence which  was intended by parliament in the majority of those cases to be virtually mandatory.
The

The Guardian reports:

Benjamin Netanyahu was on track on Wednesday morning to become Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, despite his Likud party winning the same number of seats as his rivals.
With 97% of votes counted, both Likud and the Blue and White party, led by former army general Benny Gantz, had won 35 seats in the 120-seat parliament, the Knesset.
However, results showed Netanyahu would be in a much better position to form a majority governing coalition made up of nationalist, far-right and religious allies. Gantz had fewer potential factions to partner with.

The results at this stage are:

Right 65 seats

• Likud (right) 35 seats
• Shas (ultra-orthodox, right socially, left economically) 8 seats
• United Torah Judaism (ultra-orthodox right) 8 seats
• Yisrael Beiteinu (secular, right, Russian) 5 seats
• United Right (religious Zionists) 5 seats
• Kulanu (centre-right, economic issues) 4 seats

Left 55 seats

• Blue and White (centrist, liberal) 35 seats
• Hadash-Ta’al (communist) 6 seats
• Labor (centre-left) 6 seats
• Meretz (socialist left) 4 seats
• Ra’am-Balad (Arabic) 4 seats

Imagine governing with six parties!