Speaker by Various Artists

A Clayton's Bill of Rights

by David Haywood

The New Zealand Bill of Rights can be a dangerous subject. As constitutional lawyer (and former Prime Minister) Geoffrey Palmer has observed: "Extremely eccentric people seem to gravitate to constitutional issues and lavish their attention upon them." And he should know. But with the ongoing Ahmed Zaoui case and the recent controversies over freedom of speech -- or, at any rate, the freedom to draw cartoons -- it seems a good time to reconsider our precarious Bill of Rights legislation.

Most people would have little complaint with the protections that the New Zealand Bill of Rights purports to offer. It is a worthy document that has been developed by a group of highly intelligent and capable people. But what is -- or should be -- of major concern is a single extraordinary fact: the New Zealand Bill of Rights actually offers almost no protection at all. Despite its title, it is not really a Bill of Rights as ordinarily understood.

What is a Bill of Rights? It is a special piece of legislation that is designed to protect the civil and political rights of the public from the actions of government. At first glance, the New Zealand Bill of Rights would appear to do an excellent job of this. In commendably plain language it sets out the rights of the public in relation to Ministers of the Crown, Parliament, and the Judiciary. These include: Life and Security of the Person (the right not to be deprived of life or subjected to torture by the government); Democratic and Civil Rights (freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and the right to vote); Non-Discrimination and Minority Rights (freedom from discrimination by the government on the grounds of sex, race, or religion); and Search, Arrest, and Detention (freedom from arbitrary arrest or detention, and the right to a fair trial). A Bill of Rights only applies to the activities of government -- a fact which is frequently misunderstood. In no way does it place any constraints on private citizens, organizations, or companies.

However, in order to fully protect the public, a true Bill of Rights must incorporate two other important features. Firstly, it must be entrenched legislation. Entrenchment would mean that a government could only change the Bill of Rights under special circumstances, for example: by holding a referendum of voters, or by gaining a majority of at least 75 per cent in parliament. Secondly, it must be supreme law. This would mean that the Bill of Rights had supremacy over all other legislation. If another law contradicted the Bill of Rights, then that law would be struck down.

These two extra features are obviously essential. After all, what is the point of a Bill of Rights that is not entrenched? If a government wanted to violate a protected right then -- by the simple majority that enables it to govern in the first place -- it could merely amend the Bill of Rights to make its actions legitimate. Even more nonsensical is a Bill of Rights that is not supreme law. This gives a determined government carte blanche to ignore the Bill of Rights altogether, and simply overrule it with other legislation.

Unfortunately, this is exactly the ludicrous situation that applies to the current New Zealand Bill of Rights. It is not entrenched, and neither is it supreme law. It can be changed or abolished by the government at any time. And the government can also pass new legislation which directly contradicts the Bill of Rights. In fact, New Zealand governments have done this on at least six occasions. On one of these occasions the enacted legislation also breached the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

These significant flaws in our Clayton's Bill of Rights are well known. Such legal eminences as Lord Cooke of Thorndon have observed that it is: "regarded internationally as one of the weakest affirmations of human rights". And -- to their great embarrassment -- the New Zealand government has been repeatedly taken to task by the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations for providing inadequate protection of human rights.

So why isn't our Bill of Rights entrenched as supreme law? It comes down to the very thing that the Bill of Rights is trying to protect us from -- the government. Because the majority of voters have elected them to govern, our politicians claim that any check on their behaviour by unelected judges or jurors would be a violation of the fundamental principles of democracy.

This is plainly a nonsense argument. It implies that the will of the majority is more important than basic human rights. True, the politicians have been elected to govern, and no judge or jury should attempt to interfere with that. But there are clearly some areas where the government -- regardless of the size of its majority -- has no business. For example, a government has no right to determine what religion the public should follow, or to prohibit the speaking of certain languages, or to order the imprisonment of anybody without a fair trial. If a government attempts to interfere in these areas, then there must be a mechanism whereby their actions can be challenged through the legal system.

Most New Zealanders would be quick to acknowledge the fallibility of our politicians, and indeed -- occasionally -- of the voting public. From time to time it is inevitable that governments are elected who will be tempted to bend the rules on human rights. Don't forget that -- in the absence of a Bill of Rights that is supreme law -- the current government has incarcerated a refugee, Ahmed Zaoui, for over two years without convicting him of any crime. Amnesty International's investigation of the Zaoui case has found that his treatment did not meet international standards for human rights.

In fact, a Bill of Rights is especially important to a democracy like New Zealand, because we have none of the other checks on government power -- such as an upper house or president -- that are features of the political systems in other countries. A Bill of Rights can never, of course, offer complete protection against a government determined to tyrannize the populace. But it is an important safeguard against the gradual erosion of human rights that can occur through the misguided actions of politicians. And, in a post-September 11 world, this is something that can happen all too easily.

The current New Zealand Bill of Rights took a long time to become legislation. It was first proposed at an official level in 1985, but proved so contentious that it was not finally enacted until 1990. Many politicians were vehemently opposed to its implementation, and predicted that it would lead to the collapse of the New Zealand government in a cloud of litigation. Obviously these fears were unfounded, and -- over the years -- even its opponents have gradually become resigned to its existence.

Canada had a similar experience with its Bill of Rights legislation. The Canadian Bill of Rights was enacted in 1960, and -- as with the New Zealand Bill of Rights -- concerns that it would limit the sovereignty of parliament meant that it was not entrenched as supreme law. However this resulted in legislation which was widely acknowledged to be ineffective, and consequently the government was impelled to introduce the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. The Charter extended the existing human rights protections, and entrenched them as supreme law. It has come to be regarded as one of the cornerstones of Canadian identity, and has consistently enjoyed widespread support from the Canadian public.

Our own Bill of Rights is now 16 years old, and this seems an appropriate age for it to grow up. The next election would be the ideal time for a referendum that seeks to entrench the New Zealand Bill of Rights as supreme law. Only by taking this step can we fully protect important liberties such as freedom of expression and the right to a fair trial. Otherwise the New Zealand Bill of Rights will continue to be only what it is now -- merely a collection of fine words.

RELEVANT LINKS:

  • An admirably clear description and analysis of the New Zealand Bill of Rights is given in Chapter 16 of Bridled Power by Geoffrey Palmer and Matthew Palmer.

    NOTES

    • "... in order to fully protect the public, a true Bill of Rights must incorporate two other important features":
      Of course, it should be acknowledged that the current 'aspirational' Bill of Rights does offer some degree of protection to human rights in New Zealand. In particular, this arises from Section 6 which dilutes the inferior status of the Bill of Rights by providing that: "Wherever an enactment can be given a meaning that is consistent with the rights and freedoms contained in this Bill of Rights, that meaning shall be preferred to any other." Geoffrey Palmer gives his view of some of the protections offered by the current legislation in paragraphs 14 to 20 of a recent speech he made to a Ministry of Justice Symposium.
    • "... the government can also pass new legislation which directly contradicts the Bill of Rights":
      The Attorney-General is required to notify parliament when the government tries to introduce a new law which appears to be inconsistent with the Bill of Rights. In theory this is supposed to embarrass the government into not passing the new legislation. In practice, however, governments have managed to weather this embarrassment on a number of occasions (see below).
    • "In fact, New Zealand governments have done this on at least six occasions":
      See: Palmer, G. and Palmer, M. (2004), Bridled Power, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, p.326.
    • "These significant flaws in our Clayton's Bill of Rights are well known":
      For non-New Zealanders the Oxford New Zealand Dictionary kindly gives this definition of the word Clayton's: "a quasi-adjective indicating a pretence to or a largely unsuccessful imitation of the 'real thing'. [From] Clayton's: the proprietary name of a substitute for hard liquor [featured on] the 1980 TV advertisement with its punch-line 'It's the drink I have when I'm not having a drink'."
    • "Such legal eminences as Lord Cooke of Thorndon have observed that [the New Zealand Bill of Rights] is: "regarded internationally as one of the weakest affirmations of human rights"... the New Zealand government has been repeatedly taken to task by the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations for providing inadequate protection of human rights":
      See: Re-evaluation of the Human Rights Protections in New Zealand, Paragraph 51.
      • "... the current government has incarcerated a refugee, Ahmed Zaoui, for over two years without convicting him of any crime":
        Ahmed Zaoui's two year imprisonment included a ten month period spent in solitary confinement. A brief summary of the Ahmed Zaoui case is given in a recent article by Robert Fisk.
      • "... in a post-September 11 world, this is something that can happen all too easily":
        As in the case of the new counterterrorism laws proposed in Australia. Australia does not have a Bill of Rights, but -- interestingly -- a Bill of Rights was proposed in the Australian constitution, and was rejected because "it undermined [emphasis mine] some of the discriminatory provisions of the law... which disadvantaged Aboriginal people and the Chinese" (see A Bill of Rights for Australia -- But Do We Need It?).
      • "[The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms] has consistently enjoyed widespread support from the Canadian public":
        Surveys have shown that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has enjoyed public satisfaction rates of more than 80 per cent on an ongoing basis.

      Irritating in children and deplorable in adults

      by Joseph Young

      I spent most of last week at an academic conference in Tasmania, partly working but mostly watching half a dozen sensible, articulate, educated young ladies get smashed on dollar-a-mouthful wine and fall off the furniture with their tops wide open. In the entire week I saw not a single newspaper, heard no radio and had my TV consumption cut to half a Doctor Who rerun. So it was a surprise when I got home, flicked on the TV and saw a scene almost as alarming as the one in the Sydney delegation's conference suite.

      You'll have seen the footage - it's wire-service stuff, from the BBC I think, and both news channels are playing it. This heavily bearded guy in a turban - let's call him George - leaps onto a mate's shoulders waving a Koran, absolutely enraged over The Danish Cartoons. He jumps down and rushes through the crowd towards the Danish embassy in Syria, bug-eyed and screeching with fury. I looked at George and thought the same thing I thought when that girl from Sydney capered on a chair on the balcony, unprotected from a three-storey fall into the rock garden - how can we possibly take this person seriously?

      Who gets that upset? I mean really, who gets that upset about anything? When did you last feel that strongly about something? Sydney-girl acted like a hysterical idiot for a clear, obvious reason, albeit a bad one. She'd been drinking for four hours. Do you really think George's opprobrium is entirely born of an unknown stranger's impolite disregard for his religious faith? What's he been given to make him that annoyed?

      My guess would be Syria. Syria is a country where one could easily be forgiven for mistaking a newspaper for a government. It's a despicable little despotism run by a fatuous, Saddamesque oligarchy with delusions of grandeur and few scruples about manipulating the faith of the population to serve them. Consequently there is little division between mosque and state. Trying to distinguish self-interested, borderline-apostate clerisy and terrorist secular authorities is a fool's errand. Exactly how seriously you should take your own beliefs is tricky, too. The Syrian Ba'ath Party, cynically promoting radical Islam for its value in their pursuance of continued and expanded power, aren't doing much to clear up the issue. Multiply that by ten and chuck in some Jews to keep things interesting and you've got the Middle East.

      In such an environment people can behave in alarming ways. We saw this during the Protestant Reformation, where some of the most learned men of the age straddled the religion/government divide and advocated burning people at the stake for such crimes as disagreeing with their jailors on exactly what communion wafers are supposed to represent. Nowadays, those guys are sitting in church offices quietly pointing out that Popetown - depicting Catholic clerics as corrupt, foully debauched imbeciles - is silly. This time they're right, and putting away the kerosene and matches hasn't made their faith any less genuine or commendable.

      George had a Koran, which indicates he can read. Like many squawking morons - Osama, Marilyn Manson, Sydney-girl - he's probably an intelligent guy with a sense of humour and an interesting, constructive hobby. But he lives in a society where, thanks in large part to a government as bad as the teenagers of the western world secretly wish the Bush administration was, the arson of a diplomatic mission is more acceptable than a feeble attempt to amuse through the oafishly transgressive depiction of religious figures. Indeed, given how enjoyable it can be to join a crowd espousing a fashionable truism (consider the manifold big smug grins at the anti-American protests of 2003), George may even have been having fun raving about drinking infidel blood. This is not a healthy society. Compare it to the angry but basically peaceful and certainly justifiable protest by Muslims in Auckland.

      George provides, in short, one of the most compelling microcosms I've ever seen of the argument that the real issue in the War On Terror is an internal problem within Islam. Also that the Islamic world needs help. Imagine how much smoother the Reformation might have gone if there had been a third party going around spanking firebrand clerics and telling autocratic monarchs to take a hike. Sure, some innocent kids get caught in the crossfire, but as far as groups like al-Qaeda seem to be concerned, that's what they're there for. And it won't necessarily be worse than leaving these guys to their own devices. By the time anyone paused for breath in the Reformation, a quarter of the population of Germany had been rubbed out.

      The production and publication of The Danish Cartoons was insensitive and stupid. It sprang from the same juvenile drive for attention-seeking misbehavior that leads people to publish 'offensive issues' of student magazines and attend Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings in costume. Such behavior is irritating in children and deplorable in adults and everybody involved should feel ashamed. Apart from quandaries of ideological sensitivity, it's thrown us into yet another of these palsies of navel-gazing about free speech, which may be necessary but get really boring after the first two hours of Morning Report.

      And the media organizations covering the brouhaha should probably have a rethink about how they're doing so. There's a relatively simple reason the Middle East pickle is always in the news. Islamic grief is telegenic. Whack an Israeli and you get a funeral. Whack a Palestinian and you get, visually speaking, a suburb full of foreigners in silly costumes ululating and beating their breasts and roaring for vengeance. On TV that has a rather sordid, voyeuristic entertainment value. Certainly, George gave me the same twinge of mingled amusement and self-reproach that I got when I noticed Sydney-girl schmoozing onto a female roommate. As I say, it's not entirely their fault they look so silly, but if outfits like the BBC want to keep broadcasting this footage they better not start criticizing the way True Lies and Black Hawk Down depict Muslims again.

      In any case, I'm sure George isn't behaving like that now. He's probably at work. Sydney-girl is - I last saw her in flannel pajamas and a hangover grump as I left to catch my flight, but her conference presentation betrayed a woman of commendable academic dedication. I doubt that George differs from her very much, except that he can't catch a plane home.

      Everybody makes a public spectacle of themselves sometimes. And sometimes, just sometimes, they have an excuse, though it's usually best to avoid it, and get help doing so if you can. Sydney-girl enlisted the help of Jetstar, which took her home to her boyfriend, tutoring and thesis. Whose help will George call on? I suggest the Marines.

      Licence to Ill

      by Adam Hunt

      Many of my friends are baffled and bored with my relentless ranting about photographic driving licences. Where's the harm in a simple, single form of biometric ID? It makes the lives of honest people easier, and those of villains harder. What's your problem?

      My problem can be divided into two categories, one of principle and one of practicality.

      The point of principle is my belief in the right to presumption of innocence. A world of madness would ensue if the burden was on the accused to prove their innocence. Employment law is minefield enough: imagine if anyone could accuse you of anything with no evidence and the burden would fall on you to provide evidence of innocence? We would rapidly enjoy a situation analogous to the Tort law in the United States, where lawsuits are often settled simply to avoid legal costs - it's nothing more than sophisticated blackmail, and it detracts from the real cases that should be decided in court.

      When someone asks me for ID, they are accusing me of lying about my identity, and requesting me to produce the evidence.

      But I can accept that in a pragmatic world certain situations make it easier for me to prove my ID than my accuser proving that I am lying. So lets move on to the practical issue.

      My big fear with the introduction of photo-licenses was that the simple fact they were widely carried would mean that all and sundry would start asking for a level of evidence of identity that was out of all proportion to the risk evolved in the transaction: for example, registering with the local video store.

      Wide scale, dispersed ID records increase the chances of fraud, simply because they are held in multiple locations. And the more widely a form of ID becomes accepted, the more attractive it is to fraudsters.

      The Department of Internal Affairs have just released their Draft Evidence of Identity Framework for consultation. It is a well thought out, pragmatic document that encourages moderation and a sense of perspective with regard to proof of identity. It places great emphasis not on some panacea for ID theft (such as an ID card) but the process by which identity is continually assessed.

      Of note is the elimination in the report of the NZ Drivers Licence as an acceptable form of ID in serious matters. Speak to people in the know off the record, and they will discount the photo driving licence as not being worth the plastic it is printed on.

      I want to say this just once: I told you so.

      How has it come to pass that a government document that has entered circulation widely as a simple, single form of ID has now been discounted by the authorities as being too open to fraud?

      The answers are simple: we used it too much, thereby dispersing information widely and making it attractive to fraudsters.

      It was attractive simply because it carried a biometric (a photo) - it was a nice simple, single form of identification that anyone could use and accept.

      It is vital that we learn from this experience. The definition of insanity, to quote Einstein, is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. One group of people will probably say we just didn't do it hard enough. Make the biometrics tougher, make it harder to forge or get in the first place.

      The more pragmatic amongst us will take another view. Get rid of the photo. Diminish the importance of the document (so at least it once more becomes reliable as a licence to drive) and revert to the multi-faceted way in which we used to do these things. Don't ask for ID. Do discreet background checks, but don't tell everyone how, that way criminals will have to produce a full false persona rather than just one document. They will never know what you are going to look for.

      We must take the lesson from this experience that creating a single monolithic point of authentication is dangerous. It becomes all or nothing: if a false ID works, you can do anything, making it very valuable and worthwhile investment.

      DIA and State Services are consulting on a unified way for citizens to authenticate with government; in effect giving you a single login and password to access any government service.

      Imagine the value of that...

      I don't think occasionally having to go through an ID check when I need a different government service is that big a deal. Is it really worth the millions that are being invested in this project? Given the risk, why would they do this? Could it be they just want to find a way to move us up the OECD e-Government ranking?

      Don't forget, a single login is effectively your citizen number. It will be universal across health, tax, benefits, education ... use your imagination. They are investing significant effort in encryption and so on, but the only certainty about locks is that villains always find a way, and a single login is so valuable it will be worth some serious investment.

      I urge you, please respond to this piece of consultation with a simple message. The consultants and advisors should pack their bags and wind up the project. We don't want it.

      And while you're at it, I want my lifetime licence back.

      Breaking the Mould

      by Jehan Casinader

      Jehan Casinader is a freelance journalist in Wellington. In the week that Bailey Junior Kurariki was denied parole, this piece explores new directions for youth justice in New Zealand in the next political term. Now that the election circus has well and truly wound down, Casinader goes back and re-examines his interviews with Helen Clark and Don Brash during the campaign.

      Taxes, health, education and immigration dominated election year politicking, but significant changes to our youth justice infrastructure, proposed by the right, slipped under the carpet. Labour is now back in power and looking to extend its focus on youth justice in the next political term.

      It was one of the most polarising cases the New Zealand justice system had ever seen, framed by the image of the country’s youngest convicted killer, Bailey Junior Kurariki, awaiting sentencing in a dock for his part in the death of pizza delivery worker Michael Choy. Kurariki has since been labelled a poster boy for youth crime; a symbol for young offenders, and a product of a system that failed the community. Prime Minister Helen Clark reflects on an event that was something of a realisation for New Zealand. “That case was just so horrific. People find it very hard to understand how a 12-year-old can kill. It brings home to people that horrible crimes, which in the past have been associated with adults, are now being committed by children.”

      While the societal view of youth justice has been ineradicably tainted by large-scale youth offending incidences, youth crime has remained relatively static over the past decade, at almost a quarter of total offending. Does this suggest that there has been little progress in proportionately decreasing youth crime in New Zealand? Clark refuses to comment on trends in youth offending due to its periodic stability. “The good news is that it hasn’t been going up. With youth unemployment having come down dramatically, we can expect to see better results in youth justice over time. As we get more young people on good transitions from school to training or work, we will be able to knock the youth justice rate back further.”

      In its first two terms in office, the current Labour Government has worked to further New Zealand’s youth justice infrastructure to be equipped to resolve youth crime without issuing criminal convictions. Ninety percent of young offenders are now kept out of the court channels, and it is looking to extend this, coupled with an increased focus on early intervention and domestic violence.

      The National Party’s revised youth justice policy, slammed for being punitive to beneficiary parents, was released to both fanfare and cynicism in March last year. It promised to tackle the age-old objectives of such legislation: combat youth reoffending; prevent youth offenders from becoming career criminals; turn off the power switch for what Brash dubbed ‘the conveyor belt to crime’. The intentions certainly were not new; rather, they are fundamental to any effective approach to youth justice. Within hours of the release, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters claimed that parts of the policy had been taken straight off New Zealand First’s website. Peters’ explicit concern for the integrity of National’s policy was echoed by other parties, a response that resulted in the notion that National’s policy, reportedly compiled just days prior to release, was simply a generic, right-wing outlook on a complex social issue, hastily tabled as the election approached. A number of months down the track, Brash was still unsure if his youth justice policy was distinct. “I haven’t looked sufficiently carefully at New Zealand First’s youth justice policy to know where the differences are, I’m afraid. [But] we’ve got the most elaborate policy laid out. [It is] supportive, but firm enough to ensure that young offenders don’t get the impression that they can easily damage the community.”

      While National ultimately wasn’t granted the mandate to execute that aim, it formed the basis of proposals by a number of parties to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 12 years old, to act as “a major deterrent” for youth crime. Brash claimed that while this would cover all offences, young offenders will be placed in youth facilities rather than jail. Helen Clark: “They [children] don’t consider the impact of their behaviour in terms of the law, at all,” says Clark. “I don’t think a 12-year-old has much comprehension of the law. I’ve got an open mind on whether it should be 12 or 14, but you catch very few cases between 12 and 14. Very, very few cases.” I asked Brash whether a 12-year-old, when presented with opportunistic crime, would consider the potential implications and consequences of his actions; criminal or otherwise. “I don’t know the answer to that question,” says Brash,” but it is unacceptable for a 13-year-old to commit a really serious criminal offence such as murder.” He pauses. “Well, murder, of course, is caught anyway. [Look at] the case of Tuariki – er, Kurariki. Had Mr. [Michael] Choy been left in a vegetative state, and hadn’t died, Kurariki could have effectively escaped criminal sanction. That’s unacceptable.” The New Zealand Police confirms that this assertion is correct, but the Prime Minister, charged with making traction over the next three years, is still adamant that a lower age of criminal responsibility will not be instrumental in preventing youth offences.

      Over 70 percent of hardcore youth offenders are not enrolled at school, so in many cases it is a matter of non-enrolment rather than truancy. Gabrielle Maxwell of Victoria University, who is currently working to document options for change in this area, says this statistic needs to be treated with care. “A large proportion of young people who appear on relatively serious matters before the Youth Court are no longer attending school regularly for a variety of reasons, including truancy. Finding ways of meeting these children's educational needs is a challenge and one which a number of recent initiatives have been endeavouring to respond to. It is no easy matter - it takes time to develop good alternative programmes, time to test them and time and resources to make them more widely available. If you criminalise young people by bringing them into the justice system early and dealing with them harshly, you will increase the chances of later offending. We need effective programmes that support parents and schools, without labeling and blaming [children] for offences they have not committed.”

      The Family Group Conference model has come under broad attack for ineffectiveness. The Conference is a meeting between relevant parties to decide how a young offender can best be held accountable for his or her behaviour. Family Group Conferences can extend to involve an array of consequences including reparation, community work, curfew and non-association orders.

      Recent statistics show that after Family Group Conferences, two-thirds reoffend and one in five ends up behind bars in five years. Clark says reoffending doesn’t mean that these youth have failed the system. “Some people are in a very bad headspace,” she says. “Sometimes they grow out of it in their 20s, but they’ve put the whole community to a great deal of worry, anxiety and expense in the meantime. We just have to do the best we can, but sometimes the very best efforts won’t make a difference.” Most young people who have a Family Group Conference do not require any further meetings. National claims that up to 12 Family Group Conferences have been held in some instances, while former ACT MP Muriel Newman told Parliament that there were 16 Family Group Conferences on one occasion. Child, Youth and Family’s Senior Communications Advisor, Rhiannon Symmons, disputes both assertions. “There have been a few isolated instances – we're talking two or three young people in the whole country here – of up to 11 Family Group Conferences. This includes reconvened and reviewed conferences, when further information or assessments are sought and/or to monitor a young person’s progress against the agreed plan. [This is] not indicative of a breakdown in the process. Nor does it necessarily mean that there were 11 separate incidents of offending by the young person concerned.”

      The Prime Minister is optimistic about Child, Youth and Family’s outlook following major changes to its structure under Labour. “CYF is in a much better state today than two to three years ago,” says Clark. “It has got new management, and you won’t see it as much in the headlines. They really have worked very, very hard – and we’ve given them a great deal more funding – to get on top of the issues.”

      National hooked onto justice specialist Celia Lashlie’s claim that teachers are capable of picking the children in their class who are most likely to become criminal justice statistics. If we are so good at identifying risk, it asked during the election campaign, why do we fail in preventing that risk from becoming a reality? “We actually know from the kids at the early childhood centre which ones are going to be a problem,” says Clark. ”That’s why our government has put a lot of money into early intervention, giving the teachers, the parents, the families, the support at an early stage to deal with those problems.”

      A government official, who cannot be named due to contractual obligations, says that National’s youth justice policy applied punishment rather than encouragement. “It is like beating a dead horse; ‘you’re already down, and we just want to kick you some more’. The tough love approach is naive. They don’t understand the complexities of the factors that families need to be caring for their kids.”

      Justice is a high-profile portfolio, and issues relating to youth and the law are becoming more pronounced on the political spectrum. While opinions are divided on how best to address the issues of this sphere, the Prime Minister’s long-term goal in youth justice echoes a sentiment across New Zealand politics. “To ensure that there’s a smaller proportion of young people who go on to cause us a lot of misery. [But] it [youth justice] is one of those areas like mental health, like probation, like parole, where you can have the best system in the world, but someone will let you down.”

      [email protected]

      Judge Orders Quotation Marks for NZCPD

      by David Haywood

      NZPA-Reuters: A High Court judge in Wellington has ordered Dr Muriel Newman to place quotation marks around the word 'think' on any written material referring to the New Zealand Centre for Political Debate (NZCPD).

      The NZCPD is a one-woman organization that was set up by Dr Newman -- a former member of parliament in the ACT party -- following her defeat in last year's general election. On the NZCPD letterhead and website, the organization is described as a "conservative think tank".

      In a 72-page report, Judge Carl Crowley found strong objections to the word 'think' being used in reference to the NZCPD. He described it as a clear breach of the Fair Trading Act 1986. His most damning criticisms were directed at Dr Newman's claims that the Domestic Purposes Benefit (DPB) is the cause of child abuse. Judge Crowley described this as: "one of the stupidest things I've ever heard -- and I say this as a man who was once stuck in a lift with John Banks". In his report, he writes that: "Dr Newman's crazed conspiracy theories remind me of the Aztec belief that the sun wouldn't rise unless a human sacrifice was offered up. She concocts a completely imaginary link between supposed cause and effect."

      The judgement had originally required Dr Newman to replace the word 'think' with the word 'moron'. Dr Newman's lawyer suggested placing the word 'think' in quotation marks, in order to indicate that the word was being used in an ironic sense. Judge Crowley accepted that this would be a satisfactory and "more grammatical" compromise.

      Sources close to Dr Newman report that she has been under considerable stress since losing her seat in the election, and having to find a real job. "She has well and truly flipped out," says an ACT member of parliament, who did not wish to be named. "If she doesn't end up in a psychiatric care within the next few months, then I'm not a 220-kg bald man from Rangiora."

      The judgement has angered some commentators, such as National Party Spokesman for the Eradication of Political Correctness, Dr Wayne Mapp. "This judgement completely misses the whole point of the NZCPD," says Dr Mapp. "People call me stupid, but even I can see that Muriel isn't serious about the stuff on her website. The whole thing is just a brilliant piece of satire. Muriel should be hailed as one of New Zealand great comic geniuses -- not dragged through the legal system. In my opinion, the only thing that this court case proves is that our judiciary -- like all politically correct institutions -- has no sense of humour."

      As a result of the court case, Dr Newman says she will be taking a break from the NZCPD to concentrate on her new self-help book for beneficiaries. "I'm calling the book 'Three Things You Can Do With Water'," says Dr Newman. "It's written specifically for solo mothers on the DPB, and gives detailed descriptions of how you can use water as a drink, or as a 'cleansing agent' to wash yourself, or your illegitimate children. Women on the DPB are very stupid and usually don't know how to use water. In fact, most of them have never even learned to recognize letters, colours, numbers, or shapes -- and quite a few of them hardly know how to speak."

      When asked if the intended audience would be able to read her book -- given their alleged literacy problems -- Dr Newman replied: "Oh -- I hadn't thought of that."

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