Posts by izogi
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Hard News: Terror panics and the war imperative, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Tonight on the news, responding to the discovery of a previously unidentified fault through wellington harbour, which was last active 6000 years ago
I’ve been thoroughly confused about why this story’s been given so much airplay today. First all day in the background on National Radio, then all over TV news. Sure, it’s academically fascinating, but it was discovered 2 years ago. There’s always been a high probability that there are many of these undiscovered faults, this really is geological time, and it’s not like anything’s changed in terms of risk or threat or planning. This is exactly what all those people being interviewed are saying over and over again. You wouldn’t know it from the tone of some of the journalistic assertions, though.
Mostly though, I was thrown by my local Wellington Civil Defence Controller’s comment that an earthquake in Wellington wouldn’t be as bad as a power outage in Auckland (2 minutes into this TV3 report). Obviously trying to be reassuring and maybe he didn’t expect it to be replayed so much, but to me it just came across as a back-handed insult to people of Christchurch who are still experiencing that sucky ongoing situation.
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Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Kumara Republic,
I also wonder if police speed cameras are less to do with actual road safety, and more to do with gathering revenue to make up for budget cuts.
My understanding has always been that Police don’t get to keep revenue from speed cameras and that it all goes into the government’s consolidated fund. That’s also what Police claim, but I can’t find the legislative reference (if any) right now.
Not to say that it couldn’t be used to collect revenue for the government generally and maybe there could be some nudge nudge wink wink stuff going on when it comes to allocating budgets, or Cabinet influencing Police priorities, but the direct incentive doesn’t seem to be there.
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Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
The police are far from perfect, but I still think they’ve proven to be fairly independent.
I’m as concerned about whether those making the decisions in the Police are competent as I am about whether they’re independent.
It doesn’t necessarily take a secret meeting and a direct request from the PM or another Minister for police to make a dumb and/or badly biased decision about which avenues are most important to investigate.
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Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
The Press: This necessitated a process where all items had to be catalogued, secured, sealed and countersigned by both police and Mr Hager’s lawyer prior to being removed from the address.
Would police have had an advantage in this process with Nicky Hager being out of town? Even if he's on the phone and with his lawyers present, the cynic in me just wonders if they'd hope he might mis-identify something of interest to them, based on a verbal description, and therefore not invoke the journalistic privilege. Especially after 10 hours of it, probably pulling out each bit of underwear and asking him about it, or whatever other tactics could be involved to distract.
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Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Grant McDougall,
Serious question: can anyone figure out why the police were there for 10 hours ?
I haven't seen the wider context of this tweet, but apparently Police claimed something about it having taken that long because he was being given the right to claim journalistic privilege, whatever that means.
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Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Russell Brown,
It can be if you like. Just tick the box.
I see there's a voucher system, which would also help to avoid tracking of credit card details for anyone who cares about that. Is there anywhere out there which sells GiveALittle.co.nz vouchers in exchange for cash? The FAQ doesn't seem too clear on this.
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Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Jack Harrison,
No problem with that.
Sofie's comment just reminded me of the specific public school I attended, which was sadly the type of school where lots of kids were there because their parents had conveniently arranged for them to be in zone instead of because they necessarily cared about being there. From what I saw I'm fairly sure some of those influential parents wouldn't have been happy about compulsory reading of "those" sorts of books. :) I'm sure the odd teachers could easily slip it in with enthusiasm, but a formal policy of compulsory reading might be hard.
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Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
I’d like it compulsory reading in high school along with Hollow Men.People seem pretty complacent.
That'll be a tough one to get past some of the parents.
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Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
I’m not convinced that journalists are entirely off limits to a police investigation, provided proper process is followed.
I notice you also said earlier that being a journalist doesn’t necessarily prevent police from a search. Maybe so, if the journalist is actually thought to be responsible for criminal acts, but police have already identified Nicky Hager as a witness, not a suspect.
S68 of the s68(1) of the Evidence Act seems fairly clear to me when it states:
neither the journalist nor his or her employer is compellable in a civil or criminal proceeding to answer any question or produce any document that would disclose the identity of the informant or enable that identity to be discovered
So, what on earth are they actually looking for if not evidence of the identity of the informant?
Maybe a judge has already ruled for police, under s68(2), that (1) doesn’t apply due to a lack of public interest in what Hager published, in which case I expect to see evidence of this order that so far doesn’t seem to have surfaced.
Or maybe police believe that he isn’t a ‘journalist’ and hope to successfully argue this in court. The same act defines ‘journalist’ as anyone who in the normal course of their work expects information given to them to be published in a ‘news medium’, which is in turn defined as a medium for the dissemination of news and observations on news. Maybe there are legal precedents to go on, though. Even if this, however, the statement you made above about how it should be okay for journalists to be subject to this stuff doesn’t seem relevant.
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Hard News: Doing over the witness, in reply to Keir Leslie,
I think it’s pretty legit to say that the cops should investigate the possible interference of a senior minister in a major criminal investigation before they raid the homes of any journalists.
Plus, even if it could somehow be considered reasonable to search Nicky Hager's home and take his stuff, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that with $1.6 billion per year, the Police should be able to do two things at the same time. It'd be nice to see a sign or two that Police actually are doing two things when it comes to this general collection of happenings.