Stuff reports:

It’s now over to councils to decide whether shops can open on Easter Sunday after controversial legislation passed into law amidst heated debate.

That is despite public calls from New Zealand sporting greats David Tua and Michael Jones for Pacific MPs to oppose the change.

Tua flew to Wellington to speak to media shortly before the final vote, flanked by Labour’s Pacific MPs.

“I think Easter Sunday needs to be protected. As a young boy growing up in South Auckland Easter Sunday, you looked forward to it – to spending it with your family, you go to church, and you have a good lunch,” Tua said.

National’s Pacific MPs needed to be “courageous” and defy their party and vote down the law change “for our families”, the boxer said.

Last week rugby great Michael Jones – a devout Christian who has links to the National Party – also went public with a similar call.

However, all National Party members voted for the Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill, which will allow councils to pass bylaws to allow trading on Easter Sunday and passed its third and final reading by 62 to 59 personal votes today.

Great to see Parliament vote for slightly saner shop trading hours.

The current law is a farce. Queenstown and Taupo could open but not Rotorua and Wanaka. How can anyone defend the status quo? You either need all areas to be open, none to be open or have a procedure (which we now have) where each area can decide for itself.

It is also worth noting that many shops already can legally open on Easter Sunday anyway. Dairies, service stations, souvenir shops, duty free shops, fast food outlets, public transport terminal stores, and pharmacies can all open.

The new law also explicitly states no employee can be forced to work on Easter Sunday, and can refuse without having to give a reason. This protects employees far more than the current law where employees who did work in one of the exempted category or exempted areas could be forced to work.

So it is a small step towards a saner shop trading hour regime.

What will be interesting now is to see what each territorial authority decides. I am sure areas such as Wanaka and Rotorua (who have wanted this for a long time) will decide to allow Easter Sunday trading. What will Wellington decide? Tauranga?

A guest post by David Garrett:

Regular readers of my pieces may recall my mentoring of a “strike” offender – I’ll call him J – who I met by chance during the summer when buying some tyres. I got into conversation with J after I noticed the MMM [Mighty Mongrel Mob] tattoo on his neck. It transpired that he had been released after serving a prison term for his first strike offence – not his first time in jail – and he had realised that if he didn’t change path he would end up spending most of the rest of his life behind bars.

The first thing that surprised me was his comprehensive and accurate understanding of how 3S works – he knew it better than many lawyers, although his explaining of how it worked was of course in the vernacular. I shouldn’t have been so surprised – many prisoners are very smart, despite having limited education. I decided – with J’s consent – to check in regularly and see how he was doing at his tyre fitters job as time went on. Sadly, when I visited the workplace this week, I was informed that J had quit, without notice, and leaving an unpaid debt of more than $1000 which his generous employer had allowed him to run up for tyres and a battery.

Although he told his employer he had a better offer, it was not hard to find out in this small community that he is currently unemployed. He has also apparently lost a lot of weight, and has other signs of using P. Sadly it is very much more likely than not that J will end up reoffending – as more than 75% of prisoners do within five years – and be back inside, probably after committing another violent offence.

While that is very sad for J, it is even sadder for the parolee population as a whole – here is one more employer who has taken a chance, employed a parolee, and been kicked in the teeth. When I asked J’s former employer if he would be prepared to give some other parolee a similar opportunity, he laughed and said “Not a bloody chance”.
J’s stumble, and listening to Kim Workman arguably making stuff up on the radio last week, got me thinking about rehabilitation rates generally – but more of Mr Workman later. The sad reality is that around 75% of prisoners reoffend within five years of release, and about 60% end up serving another prison sentence within that time. It has long been so, despite many different approaches in many different and varied jurisdictions over a long period of time.

Criminologists are roughly divided into the “nothing works” camp – of which Newbold is for the most part a member, and others who promote and champion various different kinds of programs, most of which have been tried before in some jurisdiction or another. The results of those programs – like Workman’s He Ara Hou in the early 90’s – become spectacular failures if left to run long enough, often with increased rather than decreased reoffending rates. The “nothing works” camp holds that rehabilitation is not program but offender dependent – in other words offenders who want to be rehabilitated will be, and the rest won’t.

But back to Mr Workman. I heard him on the radio last week gravely informing Mark Sainsbury that New Zealand has one of the best records of reforming sex offenders in the world, with only 4% reoffending within ten ¬not five years of release. As usual, Mr Workman is plucking figures out of thin air. Or to put it more bluntly, making things up.

A 2011 Department of Corrections study shows that 39% – almost ten times what Workman claims – of sex offenders reoffended within five years of release. The picture was slightly better for child – i.e under age 17 – offenders with 30% reoffending within five years. The figure for adult sex offenders was 54%.

These statistics are consistent with other jurisdictions. It must also be noted – and the New Zealand study does – that such stats only include reported cases, and that sex offences have one of the lowest rates of reporting. Therefore, the actual rate of re-offending over the five year period is almost certainly higher – perhaps much higher – than these stats indicate.

To be fair to Mr Workman, the above figures include all sex offenders – those who have been through treatment programs in prison and those who have refused to. I am assuming Workman’s 4% figure is the claimed success rate of graduates of the Kia Marama sex offender program, one of several run in New Zealand prisons.

If Workman’s claims are true, then New Zealand has discovered a wonderfully successful sex offender program which achieves rehabilitation rates far in excess of anywhere else in the world. This is of course possible – the citizens of our little country at the bottom of the world have achieved many things: splitting the atom, climbing Mount Everest first, and possibly flying before the Wright brothers. Or alternatively, perhaps the figures are spun?

Here is one way you can do it. In the first instance, carefully select candidates for the course. The Kia Marama program only takes child sex offenders who, as we have seen, have reoffending rates significantly lower than adult sex offenders. Second, ruthlessly eliminate from the program any offenders who break the rules in any way, even once. That means that those completing the program were the most motivated and least likely to reoffend in the first place. Lastly, closely monitor the graduates so they know their behaviour is being watched.

Even with all this, the Department of Corrections reports a reoffending rate of 10% from Kia Marama – more than twice what Mr Workman told Mark Sainsbury. How can this be? Did those who prepared the evaluation and statistical analysis of Kia Marama for the Department somehow get their figures wrong? Or has Mr Workman once again gilded the lily? You decide.

For what it’s worth, here’s my view. Sex offenders – particularly paedophiles – are primarily born not made. While I am aroused by adult women, and gays are aroused by members of their own sex, paedophiles are aroused by children. I do not believe paedophiles can be “cured” of their arousal triggers any more than I could be “cured” of heterosexuality. In the past, when homosexuality was still considered a psychiatric disorder, a number of treatment programs aimed at changing gays’ orientation were tried. All were a spectacular failure.

Rather than be swayed by smoke screens created by people like Kim Workman, we must accept reality: sex offenders are very difficult to treat, and impossible to cure. The Californians came to this realisation years ago, and built a facility called Coalinga to house those who, because of their perverse sexual urges or ability to control them, would always remain a danger. Incarceration there is not unpleasant – much less arduous than a regular prison. But rather like the Hotel California, you can only check out in a pine box, or by convincing a panel of therapists that you are safe to leave alive. Very few do.

We are slowly but surely moving in the same direction here, with Extended Supervision Orders, and other devices to keep offenders like Stewart Murray Wilson (the Beast of Blenheim) and Lloyd McIntosh – who has a compulsion to molest babies – confined within prison grounds. In the meantime, journalists like Mark Sainsbury – who clearly don’t do even basic research – continue to allow people like Kim Workman to spread misinformation on the wireless.

d

NZIER has released:

In this Insight, we bring the techniques of policy analysis to the issue of whether prohibition is the best way to reduce harm from using marijuana. Our conclusion is that a better way of lowering harmful marijuana use would be legalisation, combined with heavy taxation, regulation and education. The result should be less use, considerable fiscal savings to the government and the removal of a valuable source of revenue for criminals.

They first state this is about cannabis only, and not other drugs. The reasons you can treat cannabis differently is:

• deaths from overdose do not occur
• strength of addiction is very low
• use tends to start early in life or not at all and declines with age
• many of the adverse social effects of marijuana are the result of its legal status, not its chemical properties

So cannabis is not the same as P.

Yet despite its illegal status, marijuana use is prevalent. According to Ministry of Health figures, 11% of New Zealanders aged 15 years and over reported using cannabis in the year ended June 2013, with 3.8% reporting that they consumed it at least weekly. 42% of the population reported that they had used marijuana at some time in their life. 11

The result is laws that are routinely flouted by large sections of the population, which brings other laws and the wider law enforcement system into disrepute. The rule of law is important and many studies have shown that countries where laws are respected by the citizenry and enforced justly have higher standards of living than those where laws are allowed to fall into disrepute. 12 We also want to highlight the unintended, but inevitable, consequences of the criminalisation of behaviour that is seen by a significant portion of the population to be pleasurable and acceptable. Because there is high demand for marijuana, but it is illegal, suppliers, who are by definition criminals, will be able to demand higher prices for the product.

Basically this represents a wealth transfer from users to suppliers.

There are many different sources of marijuana available to users in New Zealand, from home production through to purchase from commercial suppliers. Illegality of a popular good is an invitation to organised crime to enter the market. The New Zealand Police has stated that organised crime is linked to every step of the marijuana supply chain.

Buyers and sellers risk victimisation when transacting in a criminal market.

Producers will also probably supply lower quality products than would be likely under a “market” scenario and, of course, the usual protections of consumer and contract law are not available to consumers. Producers will also have to use methods other than recourse to the courts to enforce contractual obligations owed to them.

I think we know what they are.

NZIER recommend:

We would suggest that a five-pronged approach should be studied as a solution to these problems:

1. legalisation
2. reduce demand using a tax
3. regulation; to ensure that consumers are using a safe, quality product and have recourse to consumer protection laws to enforce their rights
4. education, to ensure that consumers are making informed choices
5. monitoring of use and effects.

Sounds a good way forward to me.

After a decade or so of the same design, we’ve done a refreshed look for Kiwiblog. Thanks to Rachel and the team at cre8d design for the work in doing this. Also thanks to the Inspire Net team for making it happen and keeping Kiwiblog running.

The major change is the site is now responsive and should automatically adjust to the size of your device be it phone, tablet or PC. Previously those viewing on phone were directed to a separate mobile site – m.kiwiblog.co.nz which is no longer needed.

A few other changes also. The comments now allow threading so you can reply to a comment directly. This was meant to be the case on the old site but a bug stopped it working. Also only 100 comments per page now loads. This should speed up loading time massively but may mean a bit more scrolling.

We’ve gone to only one sidebar so there is more room for content in the main section of the page. Some of the links previously on the sidebar are now at the top or bottom of the site.

Stuff reports:

Dairy giant Fonterra has been accused of “economic treason” after shipping thousands of dairy cows from Timaru to China. …

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said this trend would “cripple our competitive strength” and exporting dairy cows to China was a betrayal of the nation’s economy.

The person guilty of economic treason is Peters who campaigned against the China FTA which has seen exports to China soar.

As usual, Peters is making things up.

However, a Fonterra media spokesperson said the cows that left Timaru had not been sold to the Chinese, but they would be going to one of five farming hubs in China owned by Fonterra.

“We import our own animals to help us maintain our high standards of milk quality, which ultimately helps us secure a premium price for our milk in the Chinese market,” she said.

So this helps Fonterra sell more milk in China. Farmers should tell Peters to butt out of telling them what to do – just as they have with Silver Fern Farms.

Rearing and grazing livestock for export also provided an important additional source of income for many farmers in New Zealand, she said.

So Peters is against farmers being able to produce more income for themselves.

Stuff reports:

WikiLeaks’ global crusade to expose government secrets is causing collateral damage to the privacy of hundreds of innocent people, including survivors of sexual abuse, sick children and the mentally ill, The Associated Press (AP) has found.

In the past year alone, the radical transparency group has published medical files belonging to scores of ordinary citizens while many hundreds more have had sensitive family, financial or identity records posted to the web.

In two particularly egregious cases, WikiLeaks named teenage rape victims. In a third case, the site published the name of a Saudi citizen arrested for being gay, an extraordinary move given that homosexuality is punishable by death in the ultraconservative Muslim kingdom.

They’re becoming like Gawker!

“They published everything: my phone, address, name, details,” said a Saudi man who told AP he was bewildered that WikiLeaks had revealed the details of a paternity dispute with a former partner. “If the family of my wife saw this … Publishing personal stuff like that could destroy people.”

Assange doesn’t care.

The Saudi diplomatic cables alone hold at least 124 medical files, according to a sample analysed by AP. Some described patients with psychiatric conditions, seriously ill children or refugees.

“This has nothing to do with politics or corruption,” said Dr. Nayef al-Fayez, a consultant in the Jordanian capital of Amman who confirmed that a brain cancer patient of his was among those whose details were published to the web. Dr. Adnan Salhab, a retired practitioner in Jordan who also had a patient named in the files, expressed anger when shown the document.

“This is illegal what has happened,” he said in a telephone interview. “It is illegal!”

The AP, which is withholding identifying details of most of those affected, reached 23 people, most in Saudi Arabia , whose personal information was exposed. Some were unaware their data had been published; WikiLeaks is censored in the country. Others shrugged at the news. Several were horrified.

One, a partially disabled Saudi woman who’d secretly gone into debt to support a sick relative, said she was devastated. She’d kept her plight from members of her own family.

“This is a disaster,” she said in a phone call. “What if my brothers, neighbours, people I know or even don’t know have seen it? What is the use of publishing my story?”

Medical records are widely counted among a person’s most private information. But the AP found that WikiLeaks also routinely publishes identity records, phone numbers and other information easily exploited by criminals.

Disgusting.

The Privacy Commissioner, John Edwards, writes:

Under current law, there is little to stop the NZSIS accessing any public or private sector database with the consent of the agency concerned, and allowing the SIS to have access is never a breach of the Privacy Act. Cullen and Reddy described this as “open slather”. It also lacks transparency.

Part 5  of the Bill provides for the intelligence and security agencies to have routine direct access tospecified databases, but this access will be governed by “direct access agreements” entered into between the minister responsible for the agency with the database, and the minister responsible for the intelligence and security agency. In preparing those agreements, the ministers have to consult with the Privacy Commissioner, and the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security, and must have regard to our comments. We will be looking for proportionate access, good record keeping and audit, and sound policies around the retention of the data accessed.

Those agreements will be publicly available. That represents a significant improvement on the status quo in relation to those databases.

That is a significant change.

for the last 23 years, the intelligence and security agencies haven’t even had to worry about complying with the information privacy principles everyone else has to comply with (except for 6 and 7 which provide for your access and correction rights, and 12 which is about unique identifiers).

Neither the Law Commission in its review of the Privacy Act in 2011, nor the Cullen/Reddy review recommended changing that position. However, my office continued to advocate for the agencies to be subject to a greater range of privacy principles.

As a result, the government has agreed that the intelligence and security agencies should be exempt only from principles 2, 3 and 4(b). I’ll be taking that up with the Select Committee, but the Bill as introduced represents a significant advance. Principles will have exceptions to allow the agencies to carry out their statutory functions, and I want to look at whether those are sufficiently clear to ensure the application of the privacy principles will be meaningful. I’d like to have seen a link to a more clearly defined imperative to protect national security, but we’ll keep working on it, and see if we can come up with something workable for the committee to consider.

The fact that the agencies will be subject to nine of the 12 privacy principles means that my office will play a greater role in the oversight of the agencies, and concerned individuals will have a right to make complaints about a wider range of activities.  I’ll work out with the Inspector-General which cases it will make more sense to transfer to her, but again, that represents an improvement on the status quo.

Worth remembering this as the Greens and Peter Dunne denounce the bill.

The Inspector General has been very active in examining the practices and procedures of the GCSB and NZSIS. Of course she is there to ensure they are complying with the law, but she has increasingly pointed out risks and practices that could be improved, even when they are not unlawful.

Take security vetting for example. The SIS holds very personal and intimate details about thousands of New Zealanders who needed to undergo vetting as a condition of their employment. She has reported on her concerns that vetting information could be used by the Service for unrelated purposes. I share that concern.

The Bill proposes that that information be subjected to protections even more stringent than the Privacy Act, so that is another improvement on the what we have at the moment.

Also sounds good.

Overall the new Parliamentary website is a huge improvement. The layout is cleaner, and information is much easier to find.

It is now much more than just a web version of offline content.  For example the Daily Progress in the House page has hyperlinks to each bill or item before the House.

The draft transcript for each day is no longer one hard to navigate page, but is split up into each debate and much much easier to utilize.

It also has good social media interaction.

But one failing is the site is not responsive. If you look at it on a mobile phone, you get the full site instead of a site designed for phones or tablets. They should fix that asap.

Transport Blog has a chart showing how each Councillor voted on the Auckland Unitary Plan.

It shows the two Councillors who voted against the Independent Panel’s recommendations the most were Mike Lee and Cathy Casey. So they kept voting against measures which would help lower house prices.

Newshub reports:

Long-time Newstalk ZB Wellington and weekend host Justin du Fresne has passed away after a short illness #RIP pic.twitter.com/ZK5wCUw0Ae

— Newstalk ZB (@NewstalkZB) August 24, 2016

This is very sad news. Justin was a gentleman and a top broadcaster. I always enjoyed going being part of his Friday panels and more recently talking to him on Saturdays. I don’t think he had a mean bone in his body.

Condolences to his family, friends and colleagues.

Whispers have reached Kiwiblog of intense negotiations occurring between Labour and Greens in Wellington to try and conclude a deal. The gist of what is on offer is:

1. Green Party formally endorses Labour candidate Justin Lester for Mayor
2. Labour stands down its candidate in one of the three Wellington seats and endorses the Green candidate to give them a parliamentary seat
3. Annette King goes list only, freeing up Rongotai
4. If Labour-Greens win, Annette is made High Commission to Canberra
5. The Labour Deputy Leader would normally be Deputy PM, but if King takes a diplomatioc posting this means they can offer Winston Deputy Prime Minister

The negotiations have hit a snag though. While Labour effectively just needs the agreement of the caucus, the Greens would have to have any such deal agreed by their grassroots members in Wellington and they are less than enthusiastic.

If they do manage to conclude a deal, it would be interesting to see which seat Labour offers up. Wellington Central is the best seat nationally for the Greens (they beat Labour on party vote) but I can’t imagine Grant Robertson wants to give it up.

Rongotai is also strong for the Greens, but it is not guaranteed a Green candidate would win as National did win the party vote there.

Ohariu is attractive for them as CR votes get split between Peter Dunne and the National candidate. But if Labour and Greens did a deal, I suspect the CR voters would vote even more tactically to stop a Green MP.

Some in the Greens say they don’t need an Electorate MP, and at 10% are safely over the 5% threshold. Others have looked at what happens overseas when you finally make Government and are worried that they could be at risk in the future and want an electorate seat as a safety net.

The Herald reports:

School-age students will be able to enrol in an accredited online learning provider instead of attending school, under new Government legislation.

The move has dismayed the primary school teachers’ union who say education is about learning to work and play with other children.

Have they not heard of the Correspondence School? Home-schooling?

The radical change will see any registered school, tertiary provider such as a polytechnic or an approved body corporate be able to apply to be a “community of online learning” (COOL).

Any student of compulsory schooling age will be able to enrol in a COOL – and that provider will determine whether students will need to physically attend for all or some of the school day.

The Ministry of Education says this requirement may depend on the type of COOL.

Regulations will set out the way in which attendance in an online learning environment will be measured.

The change is part of legislation that has been introduced by Education Minister Hekia Parata.

She said it was the biggest update to education in New Zealand in nearly 30 years.

“COOLs will be open to as wide a range of potential providers as possible to gain the greatest benefits for young people,” Parata said.

So basically it is about allowing flexibility.

Te Kura is currently the only correspondence school. The change would open it up to competition.

Act leader David Seymour, who is Under-Secretary to the Minister of Education, said the changes announced today were not about clearing the way for online charter schools.

That was because there was nothing in the current law that would stop a partnership school allowing students to learn online from home.

An application to establish an online partnership school was rejected by the Government-appointed authorisation board in 2013.

“In principle, partnership schools have offered this opportunity for a long time…who knows what future applications will come forward,” Seymour said.

“I think the jury is still out about whether learning content online is a substitute for the social aspects of actually being part of a school community. But, look, it’s quite possible for some kids that’s exactly what they need.”

Dame Karen Sewell, chair of the correspondence school’s board of trustees, welcomed the changes.

“They will give young people and their whanau the right to choose the education that best suits their needs. Students could choose to learn online or face-to-face, or a mix of both, and have access to a much broader range of subjects regardless of the size and type of school they are attending.

“Many of these young people are referred to Te Kura after long periods of disengagement from education and when all other options have been exhausted,” said Dame Karen.

“Under the proposed changes students, with the support of their whanau or school, could choose to come to Te Kura – or to another COOL – and continue with their learning programme in an environment which may be better suited to them.”

Currently about 23,000 students use the correspondence school each year. About half of those students use Te Kura for subjects or curriculum adaptation which their own school does not provide.

The idea of more than one correspondence school is a good one, with the potential for specialist schools.

Radio NZ reports:

Yugraj Singh Mahil is pictured on the billboard with another candidate, Anna Casey-Cox. Both are first-time candidates in the city’s east ward, standing as part of the Community Voice group.

Mr Mahil had a busy day handing out leaflets yesterday and did not find out about the defaced billboard, on the corner of Carrington Ave and Vesty Ave, until RNZ told him last night.

“It’s more than insulting,” he said. “People mostly change the appearance of the person but tagging such a group is very harsh, very distressful.”

Mr Mahil said in his 17 years in Hamilton he had never faced that sort of behaviour. “I think this is due to the turban; that happens sometimes, people get confused, they think only Muslims wear turbans.”

The person or persons responsible obviously have a very low IQ, plus equally low decency.

The Daily Beast has an article on Ajamu Baraka, the Green Party candidate for Vice-President of the US. They focus on his writing for a book edited by a Holocaust denier which includes an article by someone who once made a video explaining how Hitler was right!

His Wikipedia page gives us a lot of other insights into him. Extracts include:

• referring to the US as a corrupt, degenerate, white supremacist monstrosity
• that Israel has more repression than North Korea
• the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers was a false flag operation by Israel
• opposed the 2015 Ukrainian revolution as a US supported coup
• said the shooting down of MA17 over Ukraine may have been a false flag operation
• said the Boko Haram kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls is probably exaggerated
• says TPP is designed to “benefit a parasitic white minority ruling class”

The Herald reports:

It played a key role in one of Sir Edmund Hillary’s greatest pioneering adventures, one which elevated him alongside the great Antarctic explorers of Shackleton, Amundsen, and Scott.

Hillary’s Hut – the first building at Scott Base – was the launching pad for the famous Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1957-58.

The coast-to-coast crossing of Antarctica, using the now legendary Ferguson TE-20 tractors, was the first overland expedition to reach the Pole since Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated voyage in 1912.

But over the last 60 years, the hut – one of Antarctica’s most precious heritage sites – has slowly fallen into a state of disrepair.

It has a leaking roof, asbestos that needs removing, melt-pools forming under its floorboards, while unique and historically-important memorabilia inside it are showing signs of damage or corrosion.

Today, the Antarctic Heritage Trust has launched a major fundraising drive to help raise $1 million Sir Ed’s Hut which would maintain it for the next 25 years.

I was lucky enough to visit Hillary’s Hut in January. It is a huge part of history and would be awful to see it fade away.

It has revealed ‘Expedition South’, a month-long journey from one of Sir Ed’s favourite places, Piha Beach where he had a bach for many years, to Aoraki Mount Cook, finishing in sight of the Hillary Ridge.

They will travel the same distance of 2012kms that Hillary and his team did on three
tractors – two of them similar Ferguson TE-20 model tractors that Sir Ed and his
team had, the other a new Massey Ferguson MF5600.

Along the way, the Expedition South team will be stopping at various schools, events, and Hillary hot spots to collect donations from the public.

“We are calling on Kiwis to give a fiver,” Antarctic Heritage Trust Executive Director Nigel Watson said.

“The $5 note has Sir Ed’s face on it so we can’t think of a better use for it than saving his Antarctic legacy.”

I’ll definitely be donating.

Stuff reports:

An Auckland Council candidate’s campaign launch has been violently interrupted by a sword-wielding man.

Ngapuhi leader David Rankin, who is standing in the Waitakere Ward, was joined by former National and ACT party leader Don Brash for the launch on Great North Rd in Glendene on Monday afternoon.

During a media interview with TVNZ a man pulled up in a car with a young child in the passenger seat.

Brash, who was there to support Rankin, said on Tuesday morning that the “enormous” man was clearly agitated and jumped out of the car holding a sword at least a metre long.

“It looked like a ceremonial sword but it looked like it could do some serious damage if used with appropriate force.”

He believed the man had randomly happened across the interview, rather than arrived to interrupt it on purpose.

Most of those present quickly left the scene but Rankin attempted to calm the man, Brash said.

“I think we were all a bit dismayed by the spectacle.”

Brash said police were called and he left the scene shortly afterward.

Rankin said his main concern was for the young boy in the car and he believed the man to be under the influence of drugs.

“He was ranting and threatening us with his sword.”

A police spokeswoman confirmed they had received a call about the man, aged 42, “yelling and waving” a sword about 1.30pm.

When they arrived the man was gone but his car was later located in Kelston.

A low-speed chase ensued and police drove alongside the man, who still had his child in the car, pleading for him to stop.

Police managed to block the vehicle in on Victor St in Avondale and detained the man for treatment under the care of health authorities.

The child was unharmed.

Good that the kid is unharmed but the man involved obviously has some serious issues and I doubt should be in charge of a kid for any period of time.

The Herald reports:

One of New Zealand’s most controversial citizens will forfeit nearly $43 million to the police following a money-laundering inquiry.

The Herald this morning revealed William Yan – also known as Bill Liu, Yang Liu and Yong Ming Yan – struck a deal as the final settlement in a civil case two years after the police raided his Metropolis penthouse.

Most of the settlement is secret but the police have now issued a press release with some of the key details.

“In accordance with the settlement, the High Court has made assets forfeiture orders in respect of property to the total value of $42.85 million.

“This is the single largest forfeiture that has occurred in New Zealand to date and is the first that relates to crimes alleged to have occurred in China.

“The activity underlying the forfeiture orders is alleged money laundering.”

“This settlement is a full and final settlement of the proceedings under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act without any admission of criminal or civil liability.”

Heh, there may not be an admission but you don’t get up $43 million unless they have you by the short and curlies.

The $43m settlement is the latest twist in a saga dating back to 2001 when Yan arrived in New Zealand.

He first made headlines for his links to the previous Labour government and the decision to give him a New Zealand passport, despite having multiple identities and an Interpol alert against his name.

Former Labour Minister Shane Jones overruled the advice of DIA officials, who said Yan did not meet the good character test for citizenship, following lobbying from Dover Samuels, a Labour MP at the time.

By coincidence he was a donor to various Labour Party MPs.

Stuff reports:

A South African psychiatrist who poisoned his wife is unwell and unable to be deported, his lawyer says.

Colin Bouwer appeared via video link before the New Zealand Parole Board from Rolleston Prison, near Christchurch, on Tuesday.

Bouwer, who has served his non-parole period of 15 years after being convicted in 2001 of murdering his wife, has been served with a deportation order by Immigration New Zealand.

“He will be deported at the end of his sentence,” a spokesman said.

However his Dunedin-based lawyer, David More, said his client was unwell and could not return to South Africa. Release was not sought at Tuesday’s parole hearing for that reason, he said.

This is an interesting case. Most prisoners want to get parole but here Bouwer it seems would rather be in prison in NZ than living free in South Africa.

If he had a fixed term sentence, then he would be released eventually even if he never gets parole. But as he has a life sentence, should we continue to pay the bill to imprison him, when we could deport him?

Can you give someone parole against their wishes?

I tend to think he should be released and deported.

Robyn Hunt writes at The Spinoff:

I assure David Seymour that assisted suicide is a really big and complicated deal. It is no coincidence that disabled people all over the world oppose it.

Really? Every single one?

Disabled people see assisted suicide as dangerous because of their already marginalised status.

I congratulate the disabled people of the world for having elected Robyn Hunt to speak on their behalf.

There is one small problem.

They didn’t.

A 2015 poll by Populus found higher support for assisted dying or euthanasia laws amongst disabled people, than those without disabilities. The level of support was:

• Have a disability: 86%
• No disability or longstanding physical or mental condition: 81%
• longstanding physical condition 86%
• longstanding mental condition 89%

It is quite appropriate to raise issues of concern over any proposed law. It is not appropriate to claim to speak for an entire group of people, when you don’t and in fact your view is very much in the minority of that community.

Stuff reports:

The Prime Minister has weighed in on the All Blacks bugging debacle – and come under fire from the opposition in the process.

When John Key was drawn into the speculation of how the listening device could have made its way into the rugby team quarters – or who could have done it – he revealed that he himself had been a victim of bugging.

In fact, the Prime Minister said he was under the expectation he was being recorded in some instances.

But these revelations didn’t move Labour leader Andrew Little – who doubted the Prime Minister had ever been bugged in New Zealand. …

“I have to say I doubt very much whether he’s been bugged certainly internally in New Zealand. What happens overseas, particularly visiting foreign countries, who would know? But it’s typical John Key – say something outlandish that who knows whether it’s true or not and see what happens. And that’s what he’s done on this occasion.

“I don’t trust him when he says he’s been bugged in New Zealand.

Little again thinks calling the PM a liar is a good political strategy. How has that worked for the last ten years?

Also depending on your definition of bugging there was the secret recording of Key and Banks in 2011 and also in 2008 (off memory) the left activists who secretly recorded National MPs at a function.

Apart from those events already in the public domain, it is now routine for some National MPs and officials to have their offices checked for listening devices, and you don’t do that (which costs a bit of money) for no reason.

As some people think hacking e-mails is a legitimate political activity, why would they stop there and not also try to bug political opponents? My first reaction after the last Hager book was to find out how I could check if my apartment and office were bugged. In the end I concluded a human spy was put into my office, rather than an electronic one. So reassuring.