Stuff reports:

Parliament will open with a new prayer on Tuesday after the Speaker of the House listened to criticism about him removing mentions of the Queen and Jesus Christ.

While the Queen is back in the new version to be read ahead of Question Time next week, references to Jesus Christ are still on the chopping block.

The National Party had demanded the Speaker reinstate the old parliamentary prayer and properly consult with MPs before removing mentions of the Queen and Jesus Christ for good.

While I agree with the substance of the changes Mallard made, I also agree with the criticism over the process. He should have consulted on proposed changes and then made a decision. Instead he made a unilateral decision to change the prayer and then consulted on it.

It’s good to see he has heeded the criticism.

The old and new versions are:

THE CURRENT PRAYER:

Almighty God,

Humbly acknowledging our need for Thy guidance in all things, and laying aside all private and personal interests, we beseech Thee to grant that we may conduct the affairs of this House and of our country to the glory of Thy holy name, the maintenance of true religion and justice, the honour of the Queen, and the public welfare, peace, and tranquillity of New Zealand, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

PROPOSED VERSION:

Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed on New Zealand.

Laying aside all personal interests, we pray for guidance in our deliberations, that we may conduct the affairs of this House with wisdom and humility, for the public welfare and peace of New Zealand.

Amen.

I muchprefer the proposed version.

Grant Robertson announced:

Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Revenue Minister Stuart Nash today announced the Terms of Reference for the Tax Working Group and that the Group will be chaired by Sir Michael Cullen.

The Tax Working Group that National established in 2009 had no politicians on it – just experts. Sir Michael is very experienced in this area but he is basically Grant’s mentor and the Tax Working Group in no way can be seen as independent.

“Final recommendations to Ministers are expected by February 2019. As promised before the election, any significant changes legislated for from the Group’s final report will not come into force until the 2021 tax year.

This indicates they will seek to pass them into law in 2020, but just not come into effect until 2021.

The key test for me is whether this will be an exercise to increase the level of taxation in NZ (which I oppose) or will be revenue neutral (any new taxes are compensated by reductions in existing taxes).

I’m all for a Capital Gains Tax so long as company and income tax is reduced to compensate.

The Select Committees have now elected their Chairs. This is pro-forma as in fact they were agreed to at the Business Committee. The Chairs are:

• Economic Development, Science and Innovation: Chair: Jonathan Young (N)
• Education and Workforce: Chair: Sarah Dowie (N)
• Environment: Chair: Deborah Russell (L)
• Finance and Expenditure: Chair: Michael Wood (L)
• Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade: Chair: Simon O’Connor (N)
• Governance and Administration: Chair: Brett Hudson (N)
• Health: Chair: Louisa Wall (L)
• Justice: Chair: Raymond Huo (L)
• Maori Affairs: Chair: Rino Tirikatene (L)
• Primary Production: Chair: David Bennett (N)
• Regulations Review: Chair: Jacqui Dean (N)
• Social Services and Community: Chair: Jan Logie (G)
• Transport and Infrastructure: Chair: Darroch Ball (NZF)

What is unusual, possibly unprecedented, is that two select committees are chaired by members of the Executive – Parliamentary Under-Secretaries Michael Wood and Jan Logie.

It is not uncommon for members of the Executive not in Cabinet to serve on select committees, but I’ve never known one to chair a select committee, let alone the powerful Finance and Expenditure Select Committee.

When the Chair is a member of the Executive, how can you have confidence the Committee will properly scrutinise the Executive?

The Federalist reports Tom Coburn:

However, they are probably less inclined to concede that the constant growth of the welfare state produces inversely diminishing returns. “In 1966 when the massive means-tested entitlements to address the poor began, the overall poverty rate in the United States was 14.7 percent,” Coburn notes. “In 2013, and more than $15 trillion later, the poverty rate was measured at 14.5 percent. That could be a statistical error, rather than even this miniscule 0.2 percent decline.”

$15 trillion for 0.2% decline!

Stuff reports:

A blogger previously jailed in Australia over a racial attack has tried to enter New Zealand and wound up in custody.

Brendon O’Connell, 46, is an outspoken critic of Israel and what he describes as “Zionist power.”

Now the Australian man is in New Zealand, where it’s understood he fled for political asylum but ended up under arrest. 

Immigration NZ confirmed that O’Connell had been detained at the border. …

“This individual had his entry permission to New Zealand revoked on character grounds and is now in custody,” a spokesperson said.

It’s not yet clear where he’s being held. The Corrections Department has declined to comment.

O’Connell is a proponent of conspiracy theories related to a Jewish elite. In a recent video on his website, he blamed this month’s Las Vegas shooting on an “Israeli kill squad.”

Why detain him? Why not just deport him immediately?

Anyway if you want to be amused, read what his mates are saying:

Australian man Brendon O’Connell who blew the lid off Operation Talpiot and exposed the Jewish State’s “kill switches” in most major Western infrastructure, has been held in a NZ jail since October 11th.

Apparently nobody has heard from him since.

When did the NZ authorities start detaining so called ‘refugees’ (in fact just Australians) at the border and holding them without trial or even giving them the chance to issue a statement or speak to anyone, for up to 20 days?

Well – ever since our Government was taken over by Zionist Jewish terrorists and associated infiltrators of course. Something we have certainly well covered. Just think meth trafficking, record child abuse, housing crisis and on and on – there are no rules anymore under the New Jew World Order of global corporate government.

It is a boot stamping on a human face for eternity – welcome to the future.

The Jews will have their agents right throughout the prison system here in NZ, so let’s hope they are not torturing the poor man. Or something worse, like trying to replace him.

The Jewish torture squad! They have such vivid imaginations.

Stuff reports:

A northern Rodney breakaway council could make an operating surplus of up to $5 million in its first year of operation, a new feasibility report shows.

The report ‘disproves’ the Morrison Low report, commissioned by the Local Government Commission to inform its decision on options for local government reorganisation in Auckland.

But the commission says its too far along in the process to consider the report.

Morrison Low’s report claimed the proposed northern Rodney council would operate at a first year loss of $13.5m deficit, leading to a 48 per cent rates rise.

The Northern Action Group (NAG), which is proposing the breakaway from Auckland Council, commissioned their own report by APR Consultants in response to the commission’s report, which it believed wrongly used figures from Auckland Council.

I suspect that Auckland Council figures will of course be hostile to a part of the region breaking away.

The NAG report is online here.

The APR study was based on three councils of similar size and make-up – the Tasman, Marlborough and Gisborne district councils.

It used internationally recognised methods to benchmark the councils’ operating income and expenses on a per capita and per ratings basis.

This produced 12 different financial performances for the proposed Northern Rodney Unitary Council (NRUC), NAG chairman Bill Townson said.

Depending on the model, year one operating figures ranged between a $5m surplus to a $5.5m deficit, with a surplus occurring more times than not.

“The average of all 12 outcomes shows that a stand-alone unitary council could achieve a healthy operational surplus and disproves the Morrison Low report’s contention that the proposed NRUC would not be a reasonably practical option,” Townson said. 

NAG has submitted the report to the Local Government Commission asking it to now considers the breakaway proposal as a viable option.

It will be interesting to see what decision is made.

Richard Baker at the NZ Initiative writes:

On 3 November I wrote about the Manukau DHB’s refusal to entertain the idea of a Ronald McDonald house at Middlemore Hospital. On further enquiry this decision becomes even more risible.

It appears that the decision was an executive decision on the advice of health professionals, not a board decision. I cannot elicit any response or explanation from the DHB. This is disappointing from an institution that needs to be engaged with its community and stakeholders.

So who actually made the decision? This is a taxpayer funded DHB and we should know who actually decided families of kids with cancer rate so lowly with them.

Secondly, contrary to media reports, there was never an offer to provide a Ronald McDonald house to Middlemore. The Ronald McDonald charity was surveying several tertiary pediatric institutions on unmet needs. Middlemore never responded to the survey questions. Its later public statement  was unprompted and unsubstantiated.

How rude and arrogant is that. The charity merely asks DHBs if they have unmet needs, and some w***er at Middlemore sees it as an opportunity to grandstand and rather than response to DMH, they rush out a release rejecting an offer which was never even made.

Let’s make four more points about Middlemore’s misguided decision to rule out any chance of a Ronald McDonald care centre.
 
First, the decision is regressive. Poor families in south Auckland and beyond will be most negatively affected. Hospitalised children, fearful and anxious, will be separated from hard-up parents at a time of maximum need. These are poor children, many in poverty.
 
Secondly, the decision is selective or at least amnesiac. About ten years  ago the charity funded two hospital care rooms at Middlemore. These are still in operation. 
 
Also, the charity funded two Ronald McDonald Care Mobiles, large specially equipped trucks. These provide mobile dental care in South Auckland and Northland. They continue to operate with an additional annual grant from the charity. I await the announcement they are being mothballed, the service discontinued and the grants refunded because of a clown painted above the front bumper.

So now we know they’re hypocrites also.

Readers may have noted two new counters in the sidebar. They track how many houses need to have been built and trees planted to meet Labour’s promise to build 10,000 houses a year and plant 100 million trees per year.

Every 53 minutes another house has to be built to make their Kiwibuild target and every 0.3 seconds another tree has to be planted to make their forestry target.

Once they actually start building and planting I’ll deduct those from the counters so people can see the deficit and judge whether they are making credible progress.

Simon Bridges released:

Regional Development Minister Shane Jones is already backtracking from his promise to plant a billion trees in 10 years, National Party Economic Development Spokesperson Simon Bridges says.

“From his statements earlier today it appears he’s realised that the pledge of a billion new trees is entirely unachievable and now he’s attempting to back away from it,” Mr Bridges says.

“His problem is that the target is recorded unambiguously in both the Labour-New Zealand First coalition agreement and the Speech from the Throne on the new Government’s programme.

“Now he wants to count around 50 million trees that are already planted every year, about half of the billion he’s committed to over a decade. These are happening regardless of his slush fund or the kind of Government in power.

“So his first action is to cut his target in half. Not exactly impressive.

So much backtracking so early in the life of a Government. It’s almost as if they were dishonest with their pledges.

Their pledge of 100 million trees a year equates to 274,000 trees a day. That is 11,400 trees and hour or 190 trees a minute or three trees a second.

The Government has been in office 27 days so they are already 7.4 million trees short of their target!

No Right Turn notes:

Partnership with the private sector is one thing, but misleading the public about the ambition of the policy is another. Because the 50 million trees a year private industry currently plants is almost entirely replanting, replacing trees which they’ve already cut down. In other words, that’s just planting to stand still. Worse, the required replanting rate is going to soar over the next decade, as the forests that were planted in the 1990’s are harvested. If private industry wants to avoid deforesting land (and paying the carbon costs for doing so), it will probably end up planting that billion trees itself.

Meanwhile, if we want to get the emissions benefits, we need to plant additional trees, not just replant harvested land. The billion trees policy looked like it was an ambitious target to do this, and bring our emissions under control. Instead, it looks like it is just more bureaucratic fudging, designed to give the impression of action while deliberately avoiding achieving anything substantive.

Stuff reports:

A new open-cast coal mine on the South Island’s West Coast has been granted resource consent, but critics say the project will push endangered species closer to extinction.

Rangitira Developments Ltd, which includes Stevenson Mining, holds the mining permit for the ridge on Mt Te Kuha, about 12 kilometres from Westport.

The open-cast coal mine will cover 144 hectares, including 12ha of conservation land, 100ha of the Westport Water Conservation Reserve and the remainder on private land. …

In the company’s application, Stevenson Mining chief operating officer Anne Brewster said the mine would create about 58 jobs. 

“The plan of having day-shift operations only at Te Kuha will mean employees will have to reside in the Buller District, which is beneficial to the local community,” she submitted. 

The West Coast Regional Council granted the project resource consent on Tuesday, following a nine-day hearing before a three-person panel in September to help the various parties develop consent conditions together.

Regional council chief executive Mike Meehan said the council had undertaken an “extremely robust process” involving various experts, which assisted with the commissioners’ final decision.

The hearing process ensured the “very best outcomes for the community, the environment and business are achieved”.

So the mine has resource consent. Now it needs the permission of the land owner.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said earlier this month there would be “no new mines on conservation land”.

Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage said the policy related to new mines, so existing mines like the Te Kuha project would not be affected.

“The mechanism by which we implement policy is being developed and obviously taking advice and heard very clearly, [is] the need for clear guidance on applications that had already been lodged,” she said.

“We determine applications under the current law.”

One can only assume Sage will decline. But this may cause tensions with NZ First and their desire for regional development. Watch this space.

The Herald reports:

North Korea has reportedly banned gatherings that involve drinking alcohol and singing.

The new measures are designed to stifle the impact of crippling international sanctions over the hermit kingdom’s ongoing missile tests.

The apparent ban on fun was reported by South Korea’s National Intelligence Bureau during a closed-door briefing to parliamentarians, according to Daily Telegraph.

“[Pyongyang] has devised a system whereby party organs report people’s economic hardships on a daily basis, and it has banned any gatherings related to drinking, singing and other entertainment,” news agency Yonhap reported the NIS as saying.

The crackdown follows the surprise cancellation of the popular Pyongyang Beer Festival in July, during a period of sustained drought.

North Korean public health officials must be very pleased.

The Herald reports:

Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe resigned as president after 37 years in power, as parliament began impeachment proceedings against him.

“My decision to resign is voluntary on my part and arises from my concern for the welfare of the people of Zimbabwe and my desire for a smooth, non-violent transfer of power,” said Mugabe in his letter which was read out in parliament, sparking cheers and dancing.

Cars began honking horns and people cheered in the streets, as the news spread like wildfire across the capital, Harare.

The best way to judge what the people think of a dictator is how they react when he leaves office.

Mugabe once had some popular support, but had for a long time been a hated despot.

It seems inevitable that Emmerson Mnangagwa will become President. He won’t be worse than Mugabe, but he may not be a lot better. Time will tell.

Mike Yardley writes:

But in contrast to providing temporary relief to productive, working parents, why should the taxpayer be left holding the baby for sole parents claiming a benefit, who refuse to disclose the identity of the child’s father?

The parental disclosure requirement has been government policy for 27 years, with the financial sanctions introduced by a Labour Government in 1990 and subsequently increased by the Helen Clark-led regime in 2005.

A variety of exemptions shield sole parents from coughing up a name, if they genuinely don’t know, if there is a risk of violence, or if the child was conceived as a result of sexual assault. But that hasn’t stopped the Greens from gunning to eliminate these sanctions, and now Labour has tacked left to make it a reality.

Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni thinks the disclosure rule is “discriminatory against sole parents”, while furnishing in the cynical cloak of identity politics: “97.7 per cent of people sanctioned are women, and 52.8 per cent Maori.”

There’s some blokes who won’t name the mother?

The latest government figures indicate 13,000 mothers drawing a sole-parent benefit have been sanctioned for refusing to name the biological father. Over 100 of those mothers have had at least four children. Even more bizarrely, there are 300 men on a sole-parent benefit having their welfare payments docked for playing dumb who the mother is.

Watch these numbers grow. Basically child support obligations have now become voluntary.

Anyone who parents a child should be held financially accountable, particularly when we shell out over a $1 billion on the sole-parent benefit alone, in addition to the billions lavished on the accommodation supplement.

It’s clear many parents are stiffing the taxpayer by doing a no-names deal, whereby the mother drawing welfare won’t divulge the father’s name to the state, on the proviso that the he flicks her some regular cash payments, on the sly.

Exactly.

Beyond the financial abuse of taxpayers, National’s Bill English has quite rightly issued a note of caution about the unintended consequences of this retrograde win for welfarism.

He worries women could face a greater risk of violence as absent fathers pile on the pressure not to name them. Oh the irony.

Under current policy women could point out that they are required to name the partner. Under this new policy they won’t face any sanction, so will indeed have great pressure from deadbeat dads to leave them out of it.

In addition to the 13,000 non-disclosure benefit sanctions, nearly 15,000 other beneficiaries had their welfare payments reduced in September for breaching their work obligations, like attending arranged appointments.

The Greens are now on the warpath to repeal all “excessive sanctions”, suggesting the long shadow of Metiria Turei is undeservedly getting the last laugh, while the taxpayer gets royally screwed.

It’s a gratuitous leftie overreach that will rile middle ground voters. I’m staggered that New Zealand First hasn’t scuppered it.

And it’s precisely the type of policy change that will ensure Labour doesn’t pocket the 10 to 15 per cent honeymoon bounce in the polls that’s typically showered on new governments.

Add to that Jacinda Ardern’s blinkered crusade over Manus Island and Labour will be lucky to get beyond 40 per cent party vote support in the next round of polling.

Just wait until they try to repeal the three strikes law and Kiwis realise which criminals will benefit the most from this law change.

Jenna Lynch writes at Newshub:

Surely people should be able to choose how they’d like to kick off their lives as parents.

Aside from the fact that it is a special time in a parent’s life to spend together, there are a number of challenging scenarios that come up in parenthood that this policy could help ease.

One example cited by the Opposition is mothers who have caesareans and cannot drive for six weeks. Surely having a partner around to help out makes sense.

Another is parents of premature babies who have other children to care for as well. Wouldn’t it be helpful to have the other parent around to share the burden?

There are many many reasons why a couple may not want the father to head back to work after just a fortnight.

Workplace Relations Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says no because the policy could (at its most extreme) result in parents halving the leave and taking it together, meaning babies would have less time with parents, which is the opposite of what the extension to leave seeks to do.

With all due respect, Minister, aren’t parents the best people to make this call?

Yep.

In fact, a mother in your own Government, Willow Jean Prime, has a three-month-old and says having her husband around for the first few weeks would have been greatly helpful. Is she not in the best position to decide what’s best for her family?

If we trust parents to raise our next generation, surely we can trust them to make the best decision when it comes to using their parental leave in a way that suits every family’s unique situation.

National’s policy is common sense and progressive – two things the new Government is looking to define itself as.

Adopting National’s policy adds nothing to the cost of the overall package.

Plus it presents an opportunity for the new Government to look reasonable and pragmatic.

It’s a no-brainer.

But one they turned down, purely because it wasn’t their idea first. Sad.

The story about Jacinda Ardern having told a mate that Donald Trump mistook her for Mrs Trudeau has gone global with reports in the UK, Australia, US, Ireland and India.

There’s a few lessons to be learnt here.

The first is that Ardern needs to be more discreet in recounting tales of interactions with global leaders. She is the Prime Minister of New Zealand, and it is reasonably likely the stories have been seen by the US Government and Trump is unlikely to appreciate a story that makes it look like the PM of NZ has been telling stories that make him look like an idiot.

But the bigger lesson should be with Tom Sainsbury who betrayed Ardern’s confidence. He should have never ever recounted what she said on air. Sure to him it is just his mate Jacinda, but again she is the Prime Minister of NZ. He should have known that repeating what she said would lead to stories.

Over the years I have had countless conversations with MPs, Ministers and even PMs. Do you know how many I have ever repeated on air? Zero. I regard conversations as private.

The final aspect of this saga is how precious left activists are because a journalist vigorously questioned Ardern on the story she created.

For all the critics of my IV with the PM this morning:
When a PM tells a story that embarrasses the U.S President and isn’t 100% true… it’s my job to ask questions. Just as I do with National MPs.

— Jack Tame (@jacktame) November 19, 2017

Tame even had columns appear in Stuff condemning him because he kept persisting with trying to get a straight answer from Ardern for six minutes. If Tame had challenged John Key for six minutes on an issue, he’d be held up as a champion of journalism and Key be condemned as evasive. But many on the left can’t abide anything that is challenging of Ardern.

Stuff reports:

McDonald’s and its namesake charity Ronald McDonald House have been compared to the late Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

Canterbury Medical Officer of Health Alistair Humphrey made the comment as he joined a chorus of medical professionals speaking out against the charity, which supports sick children and their families.

This shows how demented some public health activists have become. They have long abandoned rational dialogue and debate for hysterical caricatures.

Humphrey told Stuff that McDonald’s made a lot of money “out of selling a product that is killing a lot of New Zealanders”.

He likened the fast food giant and its charity to Escobar, who was revered for building homes for the poor in Colombia, despite killing 4000 people.

About 4 million people die from obesity each year, including 3000 in New Zealand.

Oh can we all play this game. Never mind Escobar murdered 4,000 people and McDonalds sells food that people like to eat. What other inane comparisons can we make.

Cadburys sells chocolate. Chocolate can lead to obesity. So Cadburys kills 3,000 people a year. Charles Manson only killed 35 people so Cadburys is 100 times worse than Charles Manson!!!

Wow this game is easy to play.

Humphrey, who did not support the facility in Christchurch, congratulated Public Health South and hoped the Southern DHB endorsed their stance.

Those who opposed had a “similar misguided gratitude” to the 25,000 people who attended Escobar’s funeral.

“They are drawing themselves into the deal with the devil, in my view.”

This guy is a taxpayer funded official. Well an official zealot that is.

Stuff reports:

The Government had budgeted $7.6 million a year for three years, up to $23m, for the agency and re-entry.

An explosion ripped through the West Coast mine on November 19, 2010, killing 29 men. Their bodies have not been recovered.

$23 million is a lot of money. I don’t begrudge it, if a re-entry can be done safely. But it does make me wonder whether the families would appreciate an offer of spending that $23 million on them directly, rather than a re-entry attempt that might not even be successful.

The Herald reports:

Charles Manson – one of America’s most notorious killers and cult leaders – has died at the age of 83.

Manson was connected to the brutal slayings of pregnant actress Sharon Tate, the wife of filmmaker Roman Polanski, and other Hollywood residents, but was never found guilty of committing the murders himself. …

Manson and his followers, often referred to as the Manson Family, committed a series of nine murders at four locations over five weeks in the summer of 1969. In 1971, he was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the murders of seven people.

The most heinous killing is arguably that of Sharon Tate, who despite pleading for the life of her eight-month-old unborn child, was mercilessly stabbed in the stomach by Manson family member Susan Atkins.

She was one of four people who died on August 9, 1969, at Polanski’s home in Benedict Canyon.

It is thought they may have killed in fact up to 35 people. There are few pure evil people around but Manson was one of them.

A guest post by David Garrett:

Andrew Little has kicked off his plan  to repeal three strikes (3s) with a lie – that the law “has done great harm” – and a stated desire to find “a better way”  than prison for dealing with repeat violent offenders. Who could argue  with that desire? After all, incarcerating prisoners supposedly costs $100,000 a year, and the re-imprisonment rate after five years is around 75%. Surely there is a better way of dealing with such persons, and turning them into good citizens? Well, sadly no.

First some context. Although they don’t always say so explicitly, the left clearly regard almost all prison inmates as poor hapless chaps who have found themselves in an awful  predicament almost by accident, or at least  after just one failing – a drugged or drunken decision to rob a liquor store perhaps. The reality is very different.

Recent OIA’s reveal that on average, inmates have 46 convictions yes, you read that right, forty six. On average, new inmates will have appeared before the courts eleven times before finally being sent to jail. By that time, prisoners will usually have received the whole gamut of “alternative” sentences, probably beginning in the Youth Court, and then graduating through community service, community detention, home detention and suspended prison sentences. So by the time they go to adult prison for the first time, many of the alternatives to prison have already been tried – and failed.

What about “alternatives” in jail? Well, we have tried many of those too. Sadly they don’t work particularly well. Two perennials are faith based units and Maori focus units. Faith based units are for those who find God inside, and resolve to take a different path, both in jail and on the outside – disciples of Jesus Christ and Kim Workman if you like.

As in the Maori focus units, prisoners in faith based units tend to be better behaved inside than ordinary inmates – they have to be of course, or they find themselves back in the general population. There is a difference in recidivism for graduates of faith based units, but sadly it fades over time . Within five years or so  their recidvisim rate is little different from inmates who did not spend time in a faith based unit before release.

The picture is somewhat better  for graduates of Maori focus units. According to data released under the OIA, there is a significant difference in two year reoffending rates as  between the general population and the Maori focus units (Te Tirohanga). Just over 49% of graduates of Te Tirohanga reoffend within two years of release, as opposed to 59% of the general population. Given that these units cost very little in the scheme of things, that’s a pretty good result.

The difference remains over time (May 2017 figures)  – 64.8% of Te Tirohanga units graduates reoffend within five years of release as opposed to  73% of those in the general population. Again that’s not bad, given the limited cost of such units – a 10% lower rate of offending is not to be sneezed at.  It must be noted of course that a 64% reoffending rate cannot be said to be “good”.

The granddaddy of spectacular failures of  “a different way” remains Kim Workman’s baby He Ara Hou (A new way), a program from the 90’s when Workman was Assistant Secretary, penal institutions. The basic idea was that the “traditional” authoritarian method of running prisons – an us and them environment  – would be completely changed: co-operation, respect and harmony would replace antagonism, acrimony and apathy. (Newbold: 2008, 387).

At first Workman’s theories appeared to work: a dramatic increase in  inmates engaged in education programs was reported, and violent assaults on officers fell  from 43 in 1991-92  to 34  the following year (ibid.). There was also a decline suicides by Maori prisoners. So far so good.

But in the end, the scheme was a disaster. Family days in jail and a general relaxation in security left prisons open to  the smuggling of drugs, money and other contraband. Close relationships between staff and inmates sometimes became corrupt, and there were instances of sexual misconduct between male prisoners and female officers. As Newbold tells it: (op.cit.):

Giving administrative freedom to managers with little experience led to an embarrassing series of scandals involving staff trading with inmates, theft of governmental property, submission of fraudulent pay returns, failing to supervise dangerous inmates and allowing them to escape, drug dealing and serious abuse of prisoners who were unpopular. At  [Mangaroa Prison], which had been marked as a showcase for the new method, allegations of corruption, neglect and violence resulted in the firing of 12 officers…A Ministerial enquiry …led to the resignation of the Secretary for Justice and his prisons head, and the end of He Ara Hou.

Twenty five years later, rather like an old communist who insists that the ideology was never properly implemented, which is why it failed,  Workman and his youthful followers is  pushing for  more of the same, notwithstanding his earlier spectacular failure. With the change of government, he and his supporters will have the ear of the cabinet, in particular the ideologically driven Justice Minister Andrew Little. There is no doubt in my mind that any He Ara Hou 2.0 will have exactly the same results as the first version.

So what hasn’t  been tried over the past 40 or 50 years? Well don’t laugh, but the one thing we haven’t tried since liberalization began in the 60’s is making prisons much  tougher. An “old lag” from the 1940’s would not recognize life in today’s prison: work is voluntary, inmates can wear their hair how they like, dietary fads are indulged, the cells are centrally heated. A very far cry from a cold cell in Mt Eden or Mt Crawford with a pisspot instead of a toilet, and 10 hours hard work  a day in  the quarry next door while dressed in striped pyjamas.

How did that work? Sadly recidivism figures for New Zealand were not kept back then. It is clear however that in England, there was, as Hitchens notes:

“…a small, slowly circulating group of more or less incorrigible crooks and troublemakers, going in and out of prison despite its dismal conditions… the  important figures, however,  are the unrecorded ones for people who might have committed crimes but chose not to because they knew what to expect  if they did” (Hitchens: 2004, 143)

In other words, the “habitual criminal” is not a 21^st century phenomenon created by relatively benign conditions: there have always been criminals incapable of reform; what has changed is the number of them as a percentage of the population as a whole.

A return to 1920’s penal policy is most unlikely even with a National led government: it is positively unthinkable with the government we have now.  That doesn’t change two inconvenient truths: firstly,  100 years ago all but a small minority avoided prison like the plague, and secondly, harsh conditions designed to make life in prison  most unpleasant is the one thing we haven’t tried in recent times.

The Herald reports:

Pike River Mine minister Andrew Little says he cannot guarantee a re-entry of the mine and has told family members that he will do what he can but safety is the top priority.

The coalition agreement says nothing about safety. Labour and NZ First condemned National for putting safety first. The coalition agreement says “Commit to re-entry to Pike River” – not ifs and no buts.