Public Address | Cafe | Legal Beagle: The hopeful disallowance of the New Zealand Teachers Council (Conduct) Rules 2004

Joshua Grainger

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:02:41 +1300

Victoria has a police check system that’s used for mildly-sensitive roles, called the “working with children check” (http://www.justice.vic.gov.au/workingwithchildren/ ). It covers more than you’d expect, specifically anyone who volunteers at an event where school kids go as part of their school activities (ScienceWorks, for example). So there have been times…

Russell Brown

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 19:40:18 +1300

Thanks for swinging by, Jonathan.

Jonathan Milne

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 17:12:13 +1300

Graeme, good work on your submission. If the Teachers Council declines our request to amend their rules (www.tiny.cc/teacherscouncil) then we'll be lining up alongside you to give evidence to the Regulations Review select committee.

The blanket suppression rule, as it stands, is more draconian than any other statutory professional body…

Graeme Edgeler

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:26:26 +1300

I said child porn because R18 material is normally called porn

R18 stuff can include a variety of non-porn things (horror, for example, like The Exorcist).

By definition, anything that is R18 is not child porn. Child Porn is R(Everyone) (or should that be R(No-one)?).

Moz

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 09:52:27 +1300

Graeme, the charge is normally producing it, not showing to an under-18. Although that would be one of the alternative charges available. You'd get laughed at, I suspect. Convicted of showing a photo of yourself undressed...

Just to make it clear: I said child porn because R18 material is normally…

Graeme Edgeler

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 22:41:58 +1300

t is an offence to produce or disseminate photos of people under 18 when those photos would be classified as R18 by the censor. Obvious enough. The maximum penalty for that is 5 years jail, because bulk distribution of child pron is bad.

Child porn is not R18. Child porn…

Keir Leslie

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 22:24:46 +1300

In general, any statement of the form "x is a bad thing and x happens in the US criminal justice system" is true.

Moz

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 19:40:12 +1300

If a bus driver gets disciplined and it doesn't end up at the employment tribunal or in criminal proceedings, then it's a confidential employment matter with the bus company, right?

Depends very much on the situation. It's definitely not a firing offence for the driver to tell her spouse that…

Rich of Observationz

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 18:36:57 +1300

Doctors are not more special than judges or bus drivers

If a bus driver gets disciplined and it doesn't end up at the employment tribunal or in criminal proceedings, then it's a confidential employment matter with the bus company, right?

Matthew Poole

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 17:46:58 +1300

Don't forget that even if we ignore NZ, the nonsense that Moz describes is utterly rife in the US. Kids who send pictures of themselves end up being charged with producing child pornography and then end up as registered sex offenders before they've even finished high school.

Moz

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 17:28:55 +1300

The Victorian situation is mildly convoluted but I think worth describing. Few politicians are silly enough to come right out and say "I want a lifetime ban from being on school grounds for any teenager who takes a photo of her breast", but somehow they have built that legal arrangement.…

Moz

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 17:17:11 +1300

To be fair Moz is from Australia, now I look, so I’m being a bit devious in my restatement.

Necessarily so, in this case. There is indeed a register in Victoria at least, and there are a number of teenage sexters on it who are trying to get off. The…

Keir Leslie

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 16:48:23 +1300

Yeah, I agree that there’s heaps and heaps of downside risk from sexting. I just don’t think that in NZ, if you’re between 16-18 and engaged in consensual exchange of vanilla pics, one of those downside risks is prosecution or conviction. My research on this consists of not much at…

Graeme Edgeler

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 16:45:17 +1300

One might end up on an unofficial register drawn up by one of the various groups that abound, but pending confirmation from Graeme I’m pretty sure there’s no public government register.

Confirmed.

Matthew Poole

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 16:33:48 +1300

automatically leading to sex offender registration under NZ law

There’s not, as far as I’m aware, “sex offender registration” in NZ for any offence. One might end up on an unofficial register drawn up by one of the various groups that abound, but pending confirmation from Graeme I’m pretty sure…

Keir Leslie

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 16:02:54 +1300

I think that talking about “behaviour” is massively under-interrogating the various ways online actions are mediated by corporate power with explicit interests in exploiting personal information.

(Also I am quite suspicious of the assertion that sexting is a crime automatically leading to sex offender registration under NZ law – is…

Moz

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 15:46:58 +1300

I don't think argument-from-Daily-Mail is exactly the best way of establishing a broad social consensus for renegotiating privacy and openness.

I don't think is a good way to proceed either. I thought your objection was that people do actually value privacy much more than their behaviour indicates. In which case,…

Keir Leslie

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 15:40:14 +1300

Again, I don't think argument-from-Daily-Mail is exactly the best way of establishing a broad social consensus for renegotiating privacy and openness.

Moz

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 15:30:55 +1300

I think the idea that the public is on board with radical openness / lack of privacy (however you want to put it) is pretty far ahead of the facts

I suggest looking at what people do rather than what they say puts the lie to that. TV programs that…

Keir Leslie

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 15:22:21 +1300

I think the idea that the public is on board with radical openness / lack of privacy (however you want to put it) is pretty far ahead of the facts.

Matthew Poole

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 15:21:08 +1300

knowledge that a teacher has been before the council will have a negative impact on their relationship with future students, potentially damaging their education

And students never gossip, or pass rumours. There's also no communication between students at different schools, and no global electronic communication system that allows students to…

Moz

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 14:59:31 +1300

(quoting Graeme, not John)
There are also very good reasons to suppress identity in disciplinary proceedings relating to doctors and other medical professionals. They decisions are appropriately made on a case-by-case basis.

I would generalise that to any disciplinary proceeding. Doctors are not more special than judges or bus drivers.…

John Holley

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:55:28 +1300

I was involved, due to some forensic investigations I conducted, some years ago with a case.

I only found out well after the fact that the person had lied on to the Teachers Council when appearing in front of them. This allowed the person to get off without any penalty.…

Graeme Edgeler

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:25:08 +1300

Without trying to untangle the legal side, there are very good reasons to suppress identity in Teachers Council proceedings

There are also very good reasons to suppress identity in disciplinary proceedings relating to doctors and other medical professionals. They decisions are appropriately made on a case-by-case basis. You decide what…

Rich of Observationz

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:02:45 +1300

Without trying to untangle the legal side, there are very good reasons to suppress identity in Teachers Council proceedings:

– the identity of minors are almost always suppressed in all proceedings. Most cases before the Teachers Council will involve minors, and their identity is likely to be revealed to some…

Thomas Goodfellow

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 10:53:57 +1300

Capital stuff! it's always a delight to see an argument presented concisely and clearly yet with plenty of reference to the law. The layman's routine experience of boilerplate contracts (seemingly sold by weight, like dung), coupled with the drizzle of sensational cases like that Moz linked all corrodes faith that…

Moz

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 10:10:51 +1300

Now if only I could invoice someone for it! You out there, Bryce Johns? I'm very reasonably priced :-)

In the context of this report I think you should be cautious about wanting to invoice someone for absolutely everything you do that is related to legal practice...

Graeme Edgeler

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 09:59:48 +1300

Good to see someone prepared to do the hard yards on these matters

Now if only I could invoice someone for it! You out there, Bryce Johns? I'm very reasonably priced :-)

Yamis

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 09:58:40 +1300

As a teacher I'd like to see the Teachers Council sod off completely, and leave the police and courts (and media) to deal with dodgy teacher behaviour. We pay them a decent amount of money from our stingy pay and they do a freakin useless job.

Raymond A Francis

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 09:15:50 +1300

Good to see someone prepared to do the hard yards on these matters

Public Address

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 08:05:08 +1300

Discussion from blog post.