There are five parties in Parliament. One of them is guaranteed to be in Opposition (ACT) and one of them guaranteed to be in or supporting Government (NZ First). One or two of the other three will be in opposition also. So what do the parties in opposition need to do to prosper?

Below is my genuine best advice for each of the four parties that may or will be in Opposition as to how to best prosper there.

Let’s start from smallest to largest.

ACT

Have fun. NZ First is going to be part of Government which means it will be a big spending Government with lots of waste to target. Make yourself the party against wasteful spending. Also steer through the euthansia bill – for nine months this will be very high profile.

Effectively you want to be the opposition to NZ First. The other parties will be reluctant to do so, in case they need them in future. Don’t hold back. Use the OIA and call in the Ombudsman and Auditor-General as often as necessary.

Also keep Epsom happy.

Greens

Elect Julie-Anne Genter co-leader. Leave the door open a fraction to National, so Labour and NZ First can’t ever take you for granted again. You don’t have to ever go with National, just leave open the possibility.

Carry on the campaign on dirty rivers and climate change. They are your bread and butter issues where you can differentiate from Labour. You need to give young urban liberals a reason to vote Greens instead of Labour. Propose something inspirational for cycling.

Never ever again mention Metiria Turei. Use your new MPs Chloe and Golriz as star power on campuses and around the country.

Labour

Relax. You are going to be in Government in 2020 if NZ First went with National. You just need to do the basics right, and run a tight ship and you’ll get there.

Jacinda is uncontested as Leader so caucus infighting should be a thing of the past. Work out how you effectively oppose a National – NZ First Government while keeping Jacinda’s brand as relentlessly positive. Assign some attack dogs.

The way to bring National down will be the same as in 1997, associate them with the antics of NZ First (recall Undiegate). Make the Prime Minister every day defend what some NZ First Minister or MP has done.

You’ve got 20 more MPs, and proportionally more funding and staff. Recruit some top staff from the Clark era. They’ll want to work for you if they think you will win.

Give some decent portfolios to some of your star new MPs such as Deborah Russell and Kiri Allen. Don’t make them “wait their turn”. But be aware a couple of your new MPs can be very loose, and make sure the Whips keep a close eye on them.

National

You won the election, but Winston did a coalition of the losers. So this is very different to any other Government going into opposition. You are going to dominate Parliament as no Opposition party has since 1983.

Absolutely essential is not to have a leadership change in 2017, if at all. The stupidest thing an opposition can do is put in a new leader while the new Prime Minister has a honeymoon. It means no publicity at all for any new leader.

Yes of course senior MPs may want to consider whether or not they want to contest 2020. These are not decisions needed for 2017. What is needed is an Opposition that gets straight to work destroying the moral authority of the coalition of the losers.

Many NZ First supporters in provincial and rural New Zealand will feel betrayed if Winston goes with a Government of Labour supported by Greens. It means he has given the Greens a veto on all government legislation. So National needs to get out around the country whipping up discontent.

You have a huge caucus of 56. Don’t worry too much about the House for the first few months – what happens there is beltway. Get out into the provinces. Just have a small attack team for the House.

Stuff reports:

The mother of murdered teenager Jane Furlong was stunned to learn blood samples taken from her daughter at birth were later used by the police to identify her body.

Police are able to seek access to the blood samples of more than two million New Zealanders under “exceptional circumstances”. …

For Judith Furlong, it felt like another betrayal to find out that a sample from her only daughter had been used by police without her consent or knowledge.

“Forty two years ago they certainly didn’t say they were keeping it. I had no idea.

“It’s invasive because they didn’t inform you of anything.

“I’m gobsmacked by it all, 42 years on and suddenly they’re using it.”

How is this a betrayal? They used it to identify your daughter’s body. Would you rather the body had never been identified?

The Herald reports:

The Green Party has put the stalled Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary on the table as part of its deal with Labour – a rare leak of details from negotiations to form the next government.

It is understood progress on the 620,000 sq km ocean sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands has been considered as part of the Greens’ deal with Labour should NZ First opt for Labour to form the next government.

It is the first policy detail to be leaked from the talks, which have been held under strict confidentiality.

This is how weak the Greens are. They have to ask Labour to ask Winston if the sanctuary can go ahead.

If they had negotiated with National, this would have been a no brainer. It was only the Maori Party stopping National from progressing the legislation further, so Greens wouldn’t even have to ask to have this one agreed to.

I did a very unscientific Twitter poll (430 responses) yesterday asking people if they voted left or right and if they wanted Winston to choose National or Labour.

Now normally you’d expect say 90%+ of people who voted left to say they want Winston to choose Labour and ditto for right and National. The reason you vote for a party is so they can get to form Government.

The results however were:

• Left/Labour 19%
• Left/National 17%
• Right/National 43%
• Right/Labour 21%

Now again this is unscientific but I think still telling. Only 62% want Winston pick the side the voted for and 38% want Winston to choose the other side.

What this indicates is over a third of those responding think that going into Government with Winston will be worse in the long-term for the party they support than going into opposition.

This is why when he makes the decision I won’t be happy or sad.

Stuff reports:

The United States plans to withdraw from UNESCO, citing financial reasons, as well as what it said was an anti-Israel bias at the UN’s educational, cultural and science organisation.

The decision to withdraw from UNESCO, which the United States helped found, was announced on Thursday morning (Friday NZ Time) by the State Department, which said the United States would remain involved as a nonmember observer. It will take effect at the end of 2018.

Some UN bodies do a good job. UNESCO is not one of them. The US has pulled out before in 1984 and the UK in 1985.

UNESCO has been captured by anti-Israel countries and passes resolutions so extreme that its own Director-General and the UN Secretary-General have condemned them.

Eric Crampton writes:

It is difficult to see what good purpose was served by this study.

The Otago people (in conjunction with Auckland’s public health group) put cameras on kids that would take snapshots every six seconds. Then they poured through the footage to see how often the cameras, and presumably the kids, saw things that Otago people have long wanted to have restricted, like ads for food they don’t like or alcohol. They counted the number of times things were seen. And then published the numbers in (at least) two separate studies expressing horror at the number and calling for bans on the things that they counted.

$800,000 of our money went on this.

Is there any number that would have been low enough? Almost certainly not.

Is there any context for the number that might assist in anyone telling whether a number is low or high? Heck no. The news story on it talks about kids being bombarded with 27 junk food ads per day. Would there be fewer than 27 ads for candy in any 80s kid’s daily bundle of comic books? I’m not the only one who remembers being bombarded with ads for Life Savers, am I?Is there any number that would have been low enough? Almost certainly not.

This was research with a pre-determined outcome. To establish a numeer that would be higher than zero, and them condemned as too high, allowing for a ban to be argued for.

I don’t think the 1989 legislation that allowed sales in supermarkets said anything like “Oh, and we totally expect that parents will cover their kids’ eyes as they go past the wine aisle, so it’s ok, but if anybody ever shows that kids might actually see what’s down the aisle, then we totally need to re-think this.”

Kids probably see alcohol at home a lot. In my home Benjamin crawls past the wine rack often so he is obviously going to become a problem drinker. The answer surely is to ban alcohol being stored in private homes, by the logic of this research.

Did they count how often the kids at home saw alcohol? Did they see their parents have a wine over dinner? Surely that has to be stopped also.

I don’t know if this is the stupidest study in the world. Otago also had that one where they recruited 13 people, mostly from Facebook, interviewed them about their smoking, then called for a ban on smoking outside of bars on the basis of those conversations.

Hard to decide which is more stupid. I think the one that costs taxpayers the most.

What would be sufficient basis for a call to ban alcohol sales at supermarkets? Strong evidence that the substantial inconvenience cost imposed on shoppers would be outweighed by reductions in external harm imposed by drinkers as result of the ban.

Exactly. That is what good research would look at and try to quantify.

The Herald reports:

Venezuelans have been told expired passports are valid for another two years because they have run out of paper and ink to print new ones.

President Maduro has signed an emergency decree to extend their validity because of chronic shortages at the national passport agency.

Who says socialism doesn’t work. Thanks to the wonders of socialism, lucky Venezuelans get passports that last two years longer.

A guest post from a reader:

Have each party list ranking order determined by voters rather than the political parties.

To do this, each prospective MP would be required to stand in an electorate. The list ranking order is then determined by the proportion of votes each prospective MP secured in their electorate.

Consider a party which secured 15% of the party vote which entitles them to 18 seats in parliament. Assume they won 12 electorates; they are therefore entitled to another 6 List MPs. Rank all their unsuccessful prospective MPs by the proportion of votes each won in their electorate (i.e. their personal vote, not the party vote). If the top six secured proportions of 23%, 22%, 20%, 20%, 19% and 18% then any other prospective MP who secured less than 18% would not be in parliament as a List MP.

 

Each prospective MP then has an incentive to campaign in an electorate; the more successful they are at doing that, the greater the chance they have of becoming a List MP. It would also encourage prospective MPs to work hard in their electorate between elections and not just at the time of an election.

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Stuff reports:

Political parties should be required to use consistent, independent methods to give firm details of the financial cost of the policies they promise, think tank NZIER says.

Principal economist Peter Wilson said the public needed to understand the impact of parties’ fiscal promises before they went to vote.

He said much of the recent election campaign was tied up in arguments about how the costs of various policies and pledges were determined, not whether the parties’ intentions had merits.

 “New Zealanders deserve better that. We propose that before the next election, New Zealand establish a transparent system that will allow voters to judge the costs of promises based on independent and consistent information.

“We also propose that each election a Parliamentary Commissioner for Policy Costings should be appointed. The commissioner would be an eminent person appointed for a limited period who would have the assistance of experts from the Treasury to undertake detailed costings.”

A great idea. The Greens support this, to their credit. National and Labour should do the same. Voters deserve to know how much a party’s promises will cost.

In the absence of official costings, the Taxpayers Union did ballpark estimates of costs and they were eye wateringly large – especially for NZ First.

He said the fact there is no official requirement for political policies to be costed by anyone independent made New Zealand something of an outlier. In Australia, details of the costs of parties’ promises are provided on a website.

“Larger parties sometimes will get things costed by outsiders but then you get, like Labour did, debate about how their spreadsheets were put together.”

New Zealand had world-class systems to hold the government to account for its fiscal policies once it was elected, but no requirement for how political parties made election promises, he said.

“New Zealand isn’t at the cutting edge of best practice… New Zealand has a Rolls Royce system with what the government is doing but a tricycle with what happens at elections. There seems to be quite an odd disparity.”

It’s too late to have this in place for 2017 but would be great for 2020. Could be a great members’ bill from a Green MP.

This analysis by Text Ferret is interesting. It analyses articles from the NZ Herald and Stuff to see what were the major issues covered.

It shows how much of an issue tax became for Labour while Bill English got coverage on social investment.

Text Ferret by David Farrar on Scribd

Stuff reports:

A man who bashed his teen flatmate to death has been granted parole for the seventh time.

George Charles Trounson, 45, is serving a life sentence of imprisonment for the murder of Russell Neil, 17, in Dunedin in June 1990.

Trounson was 18 when he bashed Neil to death with a broken balustrade. He was sentenced on February 26, 1991.

The New Zealand Parole Board noted Trounson’s “unsatisfactory history on parole” in a decision released this week.

Trounson was previously released six times and recalled to prison after breaching the terms of his parole.

Why does the Parole Board think he will not breach parole this time?

According to the Sensible Sentencing Trust his record is:

• Murder of his 18 year old friend Russell Johnstone in Dunedin in June 1990 
• Assaulted a police officer in 2003 
• Also assaulted a woman in the same year 
• Convictions for wilful damage, drink driving and shoplifting from 2003 to 2011 
• Has broken parole no less than 16 times and been released from prison five times

So he has broken parole 16 times and they are giving him a 17th chance!

Stats NZ reports:

The number of actively used fibre-optic connections in New Zealand reached 397,000 in the year ended June 2017, Stats NZ said today. This is up 67 percent from the June 2016 year. Fibre-optic connections now make up 21 percent of all broadband connections in New Zealand, compared with 12 percent in the June 2016 year.

That’s huge growth. Over the last three years fibre connections have gone from 46,000 to 397,000 – a 750% increase.

Over the last three years we have seen:

• Fibre connections up 750%
• Monthly data usage up 420% to 276 Petabytes
• Percentage who have a download speed of over 50 Mb/s up from 7% to 25%.
• Percentage who have no data cap gone from 8% to 62%

The top 10 electorates for Labour were:

1. Mangere 71.0%
2. Manukau East 65.7%
3. Ikaroa-Rawhiti 65.5%
4. Hauraki-Waikato 62.6%
5. Tamaki Makaurau 60.0%
6. Te Tai Hauauru 59.1%
7. Waiariki 58.9%
8. Manurewa 58.8%
9. Te Tai Tokerau 58.5%
10. Te Tai Tonga 56.3%

Their top 10 are the seven Maori seats and South Auckland.

The bottom 10:

1. Hunua 22.3%
2. East Coast Bays 23.2%
3. Rodney 23.3%
4. Taranaki-King Country 23.9%
5. Waikato 24.2%
6. Clutha Southland 24.2%
7. Tamaki 24.5%
8. Epsom 24.5%
9. Pakuranga 24.8%
10. Helensville 25.5%

Of the 71 electorates, Labour’s party vote was:

• Over 50%: 11 electorates
• 45% to 50%: 4 electorates
• 40% to 45%: 12 electorates
• 30% to 40%: 25 electorates
• Under 30%: 19 electorates

An interesting article at the Times Higher Education:

The chief science adviser to the prime minister of New Zealand has accused scientists of displaying “hubris” and “arrogance” when they comment on government policy.

Sir Peter Gluckman, who also chairs the International Network for Science Advice to Governments, levelled a series of sharp criticisms at researchers and science organisations during an event in Brussels that debated the role of policy and evidence in a “post-fact” world.

He argued that scientists needed to appreciate that politicians made their decisions based on values as well as scientific evidence.

“Individual scientists, professional and scientific organisations too often exhibit hubris in reflecting on policy implications of science,” Sir Peter told delegates at “EU for facts: evidence for policy in a post-fact world”, held on 26 September.

“This arrogance can become the biggest enemy of science effectively engaging with policy – the policy decisions inevitably involve dimensions beyond science.”

Scientists needed to appreciate that political ideology, financial and diplomatic constraints, and “electoral contracts” also had to be taken into account by politicians, Sir Peter said. “It is important that [scientific] knowledge is provided [to policymakers] in a way that does not usurp the ability of policy process to consider these broader dimensions: otherwise trust in advice can be lost as it becomes perceived as advocacy,” he argued.

We see this in New Zealand a lot. Some scientists become crusading activists. They don’t provide advice – they demand their solution be implemented.

He also said that he avoided using the “somewhat arrogant” term “evidence-based policy”, preferring “evidence-informed” instead.

A much better term.

The top 10 electorates for National were:

1. Hunua 63.0%
2. East Coast Bays 62.9%
3. Pakuranga 61.9%
4. Tamaki 61.7%
5. Botany 61.0%
6. Rodney 59.6%
7. Clutha Southland 59.3%
8. Selwyn 59.1%
9. Waikato 58.7%
10. Epsom 58.6%

Seven of the top 10 are in Auckland.

The bottom 10:

1. Waiariki 4.7%
2. Ikaroa-Rawhiti 4.9%
3. Tamaki Makaurau 6.6%
4. Te Tai Hauauru 6.6%
5. Hauraki-Waikato 7.0%
6. Te Tai Tokerau 7.5%
7. Te Tai Tonga 12.6%
8. Mangere 17.3%
9. Manukau East 22.9%
10. Dunedin North 27.8%

Of the 71 electorates, National’s party vote was:

• Over 50%: 25 electorates
• 45% to 50%: 13 electorates
• 40% to 45%: 11 electorates
• 30% to 40%: 10 electorates
• Under 30%: 12 electorates

There is a very easy way to work out what Winston means, and that is to assume the exact opposite of what he says. We saw this with the Owen Glenn donation when he held up the no sign scores of times, and we then all learnt no meant yes.

So let’s look at recent stories in this light. Stuff reports:

Peters says he’s not favouring either side when it comes to who will form the next government.

This means Winston has already decided who to go with.

“I said I’d go into it with a total open mind, and I’ve asked my caucus and the board to have the same approach… I can honestly tell you I wouldn’t take a guess of what anyone is currently thinking.”

This means he has already decided and is now working to get everyone else to agree with him. That will not be hard.

In July Peters told Newsroom the public would know about NZ First’s decision by “Writ Day”.

“I make this guarantee that whatever decision New Zealand First arrives at post-election, it will be made public by the day the writs are returned, which is within three weeks from polling day,” Peters said.

Which means of course it definitely would not be made public by Writ Day.

Peters said late on Wednesday night that he doubted his caucus would make a final decision by Thursday evening, but he expected they would have an array of options to take to the NZ First board.

This means the caucus will make a decison and the board will ratify it.

“We’re not going to think about offices and positions until we’re happy with the policy,” he said on Wednesday night.

This means they have done nothing all week except think about offices and positions.

Vernon Small writes:

But even he, in common with almost every politician and staffer, clams up whenever the talks themselves are raised. It might be going too far to call it fear, but there is something odd, unsettling and disturbing about the forelock-tugging and unwillingness on the part of Labour, National and the Greens to  .. what? Upset Peters?

Settling aside the ridiculous lack of dignity the process is forcing on the parties, it is also an affront to the public. No-one is saying all the details of the talks should be revealed, but it is hard to see where the harm would be in a daily briefing of the topics discussed and a clear statement of how the final deal will be done and ratified.

 

I suppose it gives you some idea of how beguiling is power – and the baubles and salaries of office – that Labour, National and the Greens are willing to play such a demeaning game.

In an ocean of uncertainty we do know one thing: That the Greens are going to ratify something and require a 75 per cent majority of up to 155 delegates.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand children are being exposed to alcohol every nearly every time they go to the supermarket, sparking a call from from researchers to have it banned from such stores. 

Health researchers want alcohol banned from supermarkets after their study revealed 85 per cent of children were exposed to it in Wellington supermarkets.

The study’s lead researcher from Otago University’s Department of Public Health, Tim Chambers, said the over-exposure of alcohol to children put it on par with everyday products such as bread and milk, causing children to drink it earlier in their lifetime. 

It would be Otago University of course!

So because your kid sees alcohol in a supermarket they will treat it like milk and start drinking it earlier.

He said the study proved previous changes in alcohol advertising laws were not enough and the Government needed to ban it from supermarkets to protect children.

Far better to ban children from supermarkets!

Winston Peters released:

New Zealand First values our board members’ privacy, says New Zealand First Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters.

“They are not politicians but New Zealanders who believe in the party and wish to make a contribution to the decision-making process.

“They give up their valuable spare time to take part in board meetings and attend to other matters, and we are grateful for that.

“By putting their name forward to serve on the board they do not expect to have their privacy invaded and to become public figures. This privacy extends to all party members.

This is a reminder of the chaos to come with whichever party is unlucky enough to get chosen by Winston.

The board of a party is its supreme governing body. It is the equivalent to the officers of an incorporated society or directors of a company. These are all positions that are automatically public.

No other political party hides the identity of its board members.  Most even have them on their website.

According to Winston his board will decide who will be the next Government, yet he thinks there is no need for knowing who they are.

Again this is the chaos and stupidity to come.  And he has form for this. He refused in 2014 to confirm the employer of one of his candidates (Mahesh Bindra). So his veil of secrecy extends to both candidates and his board.

A guest post by David Garrett:

It is relatively well known that the “life” sentence imposed on the vast majority of our  murderers almost never means what it says – but then  it never did. Minimum non parole periods (NPP), a creature of the Sentencing Act 2002, make things a little clearer these days. What is even clearer, from even cursory research,  is that the meaning of “life” has become very different in New Zealand as compared to Australia and Britain. But first a little history.

From 1840 onwards, English common law  became the law of New Zealand. Capital punishment  was first carried out in New Zealand in 1842 –  on a Maori called Maketu who had murdered five Europeans. With one exception, a case of treason, all death sentences pronounced in New Zealand were for murder, the last being in 1957, when a Wanganui farmer called Bolton was hanged  for the murder of his wife by poisoning.

During the first  60 years of  20^th century, before effective abolition in 1961, the application of the death penalty was anything but consistent – which was also  the case in England during the same period. In short, whether the sentence was carried out or commuted depended on your sex – only one woman, baby farmer Minnie Dean, was ever hanged – your place in society, and most importantly the government of the day.

Following the  election of  the first Labour government in 1935 all death sentences were commuted  and replaced with “life”, and in 1941,  the death penalty was abolished by statute and replaced with “Life with hard labour”. After the National Party returned to power in 1949 the death penalty was restored, but its actual application remained  capricious, and largely dependent on who the Attorney General of the day was. Those whose sentences were commuted had them replaced with “life”, but between 1950 and 1961,  there was no statutory definition of that sentence, and it became common practice to consider such prisoners for parole after seven years.

It is important to note that even during what some would call  the “good old days” of the 1950’s and 60’s, a life sentence  very rarely meant the prisoner would die in jail. Even a notorious rapist and murderer such as Stan Reid – whose file was marked “never to be released”– was in fact  released several times, the last in 1985 when, six weeks after his release on compassionate grounds at the age of 83, he tried to rape a nun.

So, following effective abolition in 1961 (the death penalty remained on the books for treason and piracy until final abolition in 1989) the sentence for murder was “life”, without there apparently ever being a statutory definition of what that might mean,  until the passing of the Sentencing Act 2002.  That Act provided for a minimum non parole period for lifers of 10 years, and the following year the Act was amended to provide for a 17 year minimum NPP in cases where at least one of the “aggravating factors” set out in section 104 (1) of the Act was present: examples include murders involving a high level of depravity or cruelty; murders for payment; or where the victim is especially vulnerable, by reason of age or state of health.

In 2010 there was a further refinement added by the Sentencing and Parole Reform Act. This provision, largely overshadowed at the time by the “three strikes” (3S) provisions contained in that Act, provides for the imposition of life without parole (LWOP)  where the murder is a stage two or three offence under the 3S regime, “unless the court is satisfied that, given the circumstances of the offence and the offender, it would be manifestly unjust to do so”. Miraculously, on each occasion where murders fitting the criteria for LWOP have come before either the High Court or the Court of Appeal, this so-called “manifestly unjust” proviso has been applied to avoid the imposition of LWOP.

Both in that regard, and with regard to minimum non parole periods for murders falling within s.104 (1) of the Sentencing Act, my research reveals that we are now very much out of step with the jurisdictions we most commonly compare ourselves to, particularly Australia and Britain. Both of those countries have “whole of life tariff” sentences as an option, which are for all practical purposes identical to LWOP as provided for in our Sentencing Act.

In Australia, minimum NPP’s of 25 or 35  years are, if not common, at least not rare, and are imposed for cases of murder which in New Zealand would only warrant a minimum NPP of 20 years or so.  In cases such as R v. McLaughlin, an Australian court would, I have little doubt, either impose LWOP or a minimum NPP of 35 years or more.

Before killing 13 year old Jade Bayliss in Christchurch in November 2011  McLaughlin had served a sentence of 12 years for manslaughter in Australia.  After his New Zealand murder conviction, the Crown sought a sentence of LWOP. The High Court refused, and instead imposed a life sentence with a minimum NPP of 23 years. There was no appeal by the Crown.

Across the Tasman, it would seem that the value of a human life – expressed in years of sentence imposed for taking one – has long been greater than over here.  LWOP has been available in Australia since the abolition of the death penalty in that country in 1973, but its imposition is apparently fairly rare, with only 15 “lifers”  – out of a total of more than 1000 – serving a whole of life sentence in 2016.  As I have noted however, the Aussies readily impose much longer NPP’s for aggravated murder than do our courts.

Among the Australian  lifers who have lengthy minimum NPP’s is one Adrian Bayley, serving life with a minimum NPP of 35 years  for the rape and murder of a  female journalist. To attract an NPP that long in New Zealand you pretty much have to kill multiple times; the high point remains William Bell’s 30 year NPP for the murder of three people at the Panmure RSA in 2001.

The British too are much more ready than our Judges to impose either very long NPP’s or whole of life sentences. British Judges have been able to sentence  their worst murderers to LWOP since 1983, almost 30 years before our parliament saw fit to give New Zealand  Judges that power. The whole-of-life sentence has apparently been imposed in the UK about 100 times since 1983.

So what conclusions can we draw? New Zealand legislators have lagged far behind their British and Australian counterparts in recognizing that some murderers belong in jail for the rest of their natural  lives. Judges in both Britain and Australia are far more ready than ours  to impose either sentences of LWOP or very lengthy NPP’s of 30 or even 40 years. But while our Judges have only had the power to impose LWOP for seven years, compared with thirty years in the UK, and forty years in Australia, they have that power now.

In my view our Judges need to stiffen their resolve and send foul repeat killers like Jeremy McLaughlin, and   Pauesi Brown  (who killed  “good Samaritan” Austin Hemmings in 2010, after serving a sentence for manslaughter in Australia) to LWOP, or at least to  very lengthy NPP’s that ensure that if such vermin  are released at all, it will not be until they are very old men. Was Austin Hemmings’ life really only worth an NPP of 16 years? Not in my book. An NPP of at least twice that would have been appropriate, and that is certainly what Brown would have got if his second killing had been in Australia where he killed the  first time.