Justice you thought it was safe to go back in the courtroom

Justice is an interesting concept. The first three definitions my dictionary offers are: just conduct; fairness; and the exercise of authority in the maintenance of right.

The first of these definitions requires further resort to the dictionary wherein we find the first definition of just to be acting or done in accordance of what is morally right or fair. So essentially what we have is an agreement among those first three definitions that justice is about what is morally right and fair. That doesn’t seem to match up terribly well with some of the examples of our so-called Justice system in New Zealand. Nor does it have much of an existence in any other aspects of our lives where you might expect to encounter ‘the exercise of authority in the maintenance of right’ or people ‘acting in accordance with what is morally right or fair’.

One reason might be the fact that if you base your concept of justice upon morality you are always going to have a problem when there are so many individualised definitions of that particular concept. Perhaps three better opening definitions for this hard to pin down concept might be:, the exercise of authority in the maintenance of the right (wing): the exercise of authority in the hands of the privileged few who can afford a high-priced lawyer; or acting in accordance with what matches most closely the policy objectives of the Government of the day.

I have been trying hard to understand where this Government stands in relation to the concept of justice. It talks the talk when it suits it or when it makes for a good photo op or PR headline, but when it comes to actually exercising that power or authority it would seem it works on its own set of secret rules that nobody else can fathom.

Individual MPs trample on the rights of their constituents on a regular basis as did Paula Bumfat when she deliberately leaked private details of a woman who had the temerity to complain about her treatment by WINZ.  Then we have that dufus Horon the Moron who seems to think he can stay in parliament as an independent MP when the only people who ‘elected’ him were his own party caucus who have now unelected him. We won’t even go there about what led to his expulsion other than to say if the stories are true it is another example of an MP not acting in accordance of what is morally right.

The Kim Dotcom case is another well publicised example of Government agencies acting in a way that defies the three definitions of justice I mentioned at the start of this. They should just own up. The matter is very simple. He is a New Zealand resident and as such cannot be spied on by the GCSB. He was and therefore they are in the wrong. He had a high profile and had been in the news not long beforehand so there was absolutely no reason why they would not have known he was a Kiwi albeit one with an accent. And it is inconceivable they wouldn’t have known the law in that regard (mind you they are just glorified dumb coppers with sunglasses and shiny suits – so who knows).

But the case that really has my bile mobile is the David Bain compensation issue. If this isn’t one of the greatest injustices ever perpetrated by an unholy coalition of the NZ Police and the NZ Government upon one of its citizens, then I don’t know what is. I realise this is hyperbole and I will now probably bombarded with a thousand other cases more worthy of this honour(?) but I am sure you get my point that this is one I feel very strongly about.

I wasn’t sure at the outset about David’s guilt or innocence as initially I didn’t take much of the case on board. I realised at the time of his conviction that some of the ‘evidence’ was questionable and I felt that he was convicted more on a ‘he must have done it because who else could have/” basis than any solid evidential grounds. At the very start I expressed concern that this might be another miscarriage of justice like the Arthur Allan Thomas case, but I could never have dreamed it would turn out to be such an ongoing Circus of Horrors where the injustices keep on occurring.

The Minister in charge of The Exercise of Authority in the Maintenance of Right (Little Bo-Tox) has trumped even herself this week with her eminently ‘fair and just’ decision to criticise the independent report by Justice Ian Binnie into whether or not David Bain should receive compensation from the Crown for his 13 years in prison.

What makes Bo’s criticism so vile is the fact that she will not release the document so we can all be the judges of whether her assessment is fair and just. But worst of all she won’t even let David Bain see it until she has had the chance to roll in a couple of her own tame lawyers to tear it to bits and discredit it so comprehensively that the question of compo for Davo will sink into a deep pit where she can bury it forever. (Tui ad tagline anyone?)

What makes this stupid woman so stupid is that she actually believes her own PR and hyperbole and she believes we will as well. She is right about a part of that; many of the sheeple of Godzone will believe her bollox. However many others will not; Justice Binnie won’t for one and Joe Karam certainly won’t. A guy who has devoted as much of his life to this case as Karam has is definitely not going to slip away into the shadows of the night. He will come out with guns blazing.

I will make a prediction now. David Bain will get compo despite Bo Tox’s manoeuvres. All this stupid bint is doing is adding to our costs as a nation both in terms of the amount of cash all of this is going to end up costing us and also in terms of our reputation as a place free from corruption and where justice actually exists in accordance with the three dictionary definitions I listed at the start of this blog.

So far this lot has cost us all the time keeping David in jail for 13 years; all the costs of Crown opposing his appeals along the way and the major expenses leading up to and including the appeal to the Privy Council all of which I gather has cost us well in excess of $3M and then we have just forked out the better part of half a million for the report from Ian Binnie and now Little Bo Tox wants to enrich even more of her lawyer mates at our expense before ultimately we will be enforced to pay David out at least a million bucks.

So what does justice really mean in New Zealand given this scenario? Well it means that justice is when the wrong guy gets sent to prison for 13 years, then spends several more years trying to appeal his unsafe conviction and several more years battling for compensation, while the nation foots a bill for what will probably be the thick end of $5-$6M and those responsible for all this expense – the incompetent/crooked cops, various gold-digging lawyers and the Munter of Just-Is walk away scot free.

I must contact the compilers of the Oxford Dictionary and get them to add that definition and put in brackets (NZ).

You must never go down to the end of town without consulting me

For many years now Government Departments and Councils have been using consultants for all kinds of things. Often the organisation concerned has shed a whole load of staff and taken on consultants to do the work which they were unable to shed along with the staff who used to do it.

Probably like me you have scratched your head when you have heard how much the consultants are paid and wondered where the savings are actually occurring. Most people would guess there is a saving because there is no need to pay sick leave, annual leave, or give paid public holidays. However between them, these extra costs to an employer would only add the equivalent of five unproductive paid weeks for each employee at the most. So it all depends on how much more the consultants are paid than the employees they replaced as to whether there is any saving at all.

But the use of consultants has other implications as well. Consultants as independent contractors have no loyalty to the organisation they are contracting to and are not part of the organisation’s ‘culture’. In the case of many Government Departments and Councils this might not be considered such a bad thing, but given the need for teamwork in such organisations, it could hardly be seen as helpful either.

During the term of the last Laboured Government the National Disgrace Party regularly harped on about how much Government was spending on consultants, but now the mangy moggy is out of the bag and we get to see how well the NDP actually ‘fixed’ this problem under their watch.

Their solution seems to be a case of “do as I say, not as I do”. Freelance journalist Keith Ng who writes on Scoop, must have had an inkling of this when he recently requested data on consultant expenditure by Government under the Official Information Act.

He discovered that expenditure on consultants under the current government has exceeded that of the previous administration by an outrageous amount. He also found that Governments (for many years) have failed to keep proper records of consultant expenditure in some departments. Furthermore they were aware of this when they used figures that did not show the full picture to ‘prove’ their ‘sound economic management’.

The current rag-tag Government has also made a great fuss about how they are capping departmental expenditure and this has led to a good deal of staff lay-offs. When challenged by opposition parties over the tactic, the National Disgrace claimed the staff being shed were not being re-hired as consultants after being dumped (and paid out redundancy compensation). It would seem in the light of the figure Keith Ng has obtained under the OIA that they were making this assertion based on woefully incomplete data. Many Government departments including Land Transport, Education, Economic Development, Conservation, and Te Puni Kokiri are missing from the expenditure.

So the fact is the Government cannot give us a true figure, although some of the departments Ng was able to get figures for are revealing enough in themselves.

Housing NZ has doubled its consultancy expenditure last year compared with the last year of the Laboured Government as did MFAT which is particularly interesting as they are contemplating another re-jig so expect their $7.3M figure of 2011 to be exceeded in 2012. MAF managed to triple their bill for consultants over the same time period but Treasury (those great guardians of our loot) managed the largest increase to their 2008 spend on consultants with a figure almost six times that of 2008.

Our spendthrift Treasury was not the largest donor to the consultants’ benevolent society however. That honour goes to the Ministry for the Environment who managed to spend a cool $57M on consultants since National Disgrace snuck into office.

These figures are worrying enough, but what horrors lie in those we are not currently privy to?  Land Transport NZ has just recently (no doubt) wasted money on consultants to ‘advise’ on the introduction of the altered Give Way rules. This was another waste of money as the adverts were littered with confusing images and despite the fact the changes are minor they were presented in a way that has left half the country wondering what the hell has happened.

We know that TPK is already in the gun and is in line for a restructuring, so more consultants are bound to be involved in that and we also know there are considerable plans to revamp the Ministry of Economic Development so a small fortune will be spent on consultants for that too.

And last, but certainly not least we already know a huge amount will be spent on consultants in order to effect the State asset sales, for which no accurate figures to prove the Government’s case have ever been produced.  But despite that small hitch consultants will be hired an eye-watering fee and the $165M spent in 2009, which ballooned to $174M in 2010 and then to $188M last year will be blown out of the water.

So if you think about it, it becomes obvious the National Disgrace was well aware of the situation regarding their expenditure on consultants before and during the election while they were trying to discredit the Laboured Party over the same.

It is a shame we don’t have a written constitution in this country – something that could be used to challenge election results where the winner has clearly lied to the voters about material matters.

Something needs to be done quickly because we seem to be heading down a very corrupt path at the moment. It seems every day we discover something else that was going on around election time that was hidden away until the voting was done. For example we have just learned this week that two major meth dealers had to be let go just before the election because the cops had misled the court and hidden vital evidence from the defence. These were not small time crooks; they were busted with $1M worth of P and with the stuff all over their hands. But because the cops didn’t play it straight, (the judge described them as ‘consciously reckless’) they have both walked free with name suppression still firmly in place. Originally they were to have been convicted when the judge thought the police had been muddled and careless because he felt the offending was too serious to let them go. However when more evidence came to light Judge Christopher Allen began to see the actions of police in a more sinister light and overturned the convictions. His decision was made on August 5 but not released until Granny Herald requested it. Ironically (and I might add, rather typically) Detective Sergeant Rod Carpinter who led the investigation was promoted to Senior Sergeant just two months before the judge made his decision. An internal investigation into the police actions is under way and although neither Carpinter nor his fellow officer Constable John Grantham has been stood down, it is quite possible criminal charges could follow.

Interestingly the Ministry of Justice was the second biggest spender on consultants with $56M spent over the last three years. It certainly sounds like the sort of work to get into and it is clear governments are only too keen to shell out a truckload of our money to anyone bearing the proud title of consultant. I think I feel a change of career coming on....   

Whatever happened to the goodies?

Maybe I was just a naive kid, but it seems to me that once upon a time you could tell the goodies from the baddies. I like to think I still can, but it is definitely a tougher job these days, especially when it comes to those we don’t have a personal relationship with.

I can recall the time when we accepted a lot of things at face value. For example most people believed policemen were honest upholders of the law rather than cynical pursuers of ‘clear-up figures’. Lawyers, priests and, yes, even to a certain extent, politicians were generally thought to have the best interests of those they were paid to work for at heart.

To say that we have now discovered these people have feet of clay would be a gross understatement. They are up to their knees in brown stuff alright; but it ain’t clay.

I just began ticking off a list of disgraced persons the other day and it really started to make me a bit paranoid (who said that?). It reinforces the unfortunate fact that you can’t trust any bugger these days and the consequence of that is much more serious than any ‘loss of innocence’ on the part of the wider public. It will ultimately make it harder for genuine people to be heard.

The agonising thing is that most of these people actually did do some good for a while or were good people for a while or in certain settings. One is left wondering whether they were actually always heading towards the dark side or simply encountered circumstances in their life that made it easier for them to change than to remain honest.

The money sharks

One category that shouldn’t surprise us is the finance sector. We have always known that money men are part of a secret society that seems to operate according to its own rules and to the benefit of nobody other than its own membership. Banks have always operated on a basis of usury under the guise of ‘lending’, but even they have become more rabid of late and you have to blame the advent of fractional banking for this. It came into being well over a hundred years ago, but in the beginning it was only a fraction (pun intended) of what it is now. Banks were required to back up most of their funds with reserves of gold, but over the years the requirement has been loosened to the point where most could not afford to pay out even 10 percent of their creditors if they had to.

This means they are trading most of the time with ‘funny money’ that actually isn’t worth even the cheap paper it is printed on. Furthermore the same sort of jiggery pokery has been going on in the finance companies only they are not as universally supported by governments, so they have been crashing and burning all their investors. The only survivors from these smoking ruins have been the directors who usually caused the car wrecks that once held the hopes and dreams of those trying to save for their retirement.

Most of the culprits from these disasters have been the usual sorts of vermin that have scuttled out from the skirting boards of finance houses for years, however lately there have been a few who probably seemed okay to large sectors of the public before these fiascos.

One such person would have to be Sir Douglas Arthur Montrose Graham, former Attorney-General, Minister for Courts, Minister of Justice, Minister for Disarmament & Arms Control, Minister of Cultural Affairs and Minister in charge of Treaty Negotiations. Doug Graham has a pedigree that should make him one of the relatively good guys, although I won’t tell you what my wife always said he looked like unless one of his rich mates (does he have any other kind?) decides to sue me. He was a National Party MP for from 1984 to 1999, his great grandfather was an Independent MP from 1855 to 1868 and his brother Kennedy Graham has been a Green Party MP since 2008.

However Dougie has been convicted along with another former Justice Minister Bill Jeffries of breaching the Securities Act in regard to the failure of Lombard Finance of which they were both directors. At this stage I should declare a (hostile) interest. I once hired Bill Jeffries when he was practicing as a lawyer and he was bloody useless. But I digress...

So Sir Dug (a hole for himself) who for about 15 years had the support of many thousands of New Zealanders turns out to be just as dodgy as the rest of those finance guys.

Another who put himself about as a goodie was Allan Hubbard, that affable old duffer who seems to have hoodwinked thousands of investors in his South Canterbury Finance Company into thinking he was a financial whizz-geriatric who upheld all the old fashioned values of honesty and integrity. The reality turns out that he was about as on to it as the old grocer we all used to go to with a pencil behind his ear to add up your purchases in the days before electronic tills. As for his honesty and integrity; all I can say is that we will never really know because proceedings against him by the Serious Fraud Office have never been completed due to him being killed in a car crash a few months back. The fact that others associated with the companies are facing charges probably indicates this was no idle witch-hunt by the SFO.

Our esteemed sports stars seem to be just as likely to turn up in some messy situations of their own making, too. We have had allegations of match fixing and New Zealand cricket stars mentioned in connection with this. I can only assume these allegations do not involve Black Caps games because frankly there is no need to get them to deliberately lose matches; they can do that quite easily without any incentives.

But one sportsman who has turned up and been linked to dodgy financial stuff is sadly the late Jock Hobbs. Jock always seemed like a good honest bloke and he had a lot of mana through his roles as a core member of the Canterbury NPC team during the mid 80s and as an All Black who played 39 matches for the team and captained them on a tour of Fiji. After he had to give up the game following one knock too many on his scone, he got into the administration side of the game and chaired the NZRFU through some turbulent times. He has been credited with swinging hosting rights for NZ for the 2011 Rugby World Cup. I don’t know how I missed this, but blame it on me being distracted by said RWC; but Jock was investigated last year in connection with the failure of Strategic Finance of which he was a director. Strategic Finance went into receivership in 2010 owing $368M to 10,000 investors and the Financial Markets Authority launched an investigation into whether Hobbs and others had committed a breach of the Securities Act. They dropped their investigation against Hobbs in June last year when they discovered how advanced his cancer was. However the matter is not closed and others still might be prosecuted.

This is just the tip of an enormous ice-berg which is threatening to destroy our faith in bloody nearly everyone. In the last couple of months we have heard about Martin Elliott, former principal of Fraser High School in Hamilton who was charged with diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars of Ministry of Education funding towards building projects on personal homes of his. He cut a deal with the prosecutors and pleaded guilty to a pair of representative charges in return for having most charges dropped.

We have just heard of a Corrections Department Officer, Chanel Scanlan who took bribes of cash, drugs, booze and firewood (?) to fudge records and let offenders off their community work obligations. As if most of the sentences weren’t weak enough to begin with!

We have had countless cops convicted of everything from theft to rape and countless priests and care-givers convicted of abusing their position of trust by sexually assaulting and robbing those who needed their professional help most and I haven’t even started on MPs who steal the identity of others or use their headed notepaper to push the cause of people they might have had an inappropriate relationship with.

Whew! I think we should make all the good guys wear white hats so we can tell the difference more easily. Mind you I don’t think we need to put in a very big order for those chapeaux.      

Now there’s not many people know that

This week I thought it was time to enlighten you, dear readers about some little known pearls I have recently become aware of. Some might make you laugh, some might make you cry, some might make you begin looking for a heavy calibre weapon and others might just make you go, “Huh?”

Not many....#1

The first of these is a bizarre contradiction I personally encountered in the last week. I recently developed an abscess under a tooth and had to go to the dentist. As is the norm, the dentist prescribed some antibiotics to help with the healing. However when I went to fill my prescription the pharmacist demanded a payment of $15 for the common antibiotic amoxicillin. I asked why this prescription cost $15 rather than the $3 that is normally charged for the same drug. What they told me was a real eye-opener as to the fiendish lengths governments go to in order to save a couple of dollars while trying to tell us all that they are backing our health needs.

It transpires that I had to pay $15 because my prescription was written out by a dentist and not a GP. My dentist is a Doctor of Dental Surgery and not just a Bachelor of Dental Surgery, which means her qualifications are the equal of my GP; and yet if he had written my prescription for the same medication it would have only cost me $3.

Either this is the height of stupidity or it is part of an evil plan to hoodwink the public into thinking the government actually cares about our health needs. After all such medications are only prescribed when there is an infection and whether that infection is in my tooth or my leg, really doesn’t much matter.

Not many...#2

This next one I saw a few weeks ago and I only saw the one reference to it so imagine not too many people know about it yet, which is probably how TAG Oil and Apache would like it to stay.

A report appeared on Stuff on January 29 that had my eyes bugging out. It turns out the Gisborne District Council has already granted some consents to a joint venture between the two Canadian oil companies to begin “activities associated with drilling shallow shot holes and seismic testing," No supwises there you might say, given the current government’s long held desire to leap headfirst into an orgy of drilling and fracking and whatever else they can think of to ensure every minute particle of ‘valuable resource is extracted from our soil, rivers, lakes, mountains, beauty spots and (coming soon to a house near you). Okay I made that last one up – but it might not be too much of a stretch for these turkeys.

But what makes this little snippet different form all the other clodhopping the government is doing in the face of substantial popular opposition is that these consents were issued without any prior public consultation at all. In fact they were so secretly approved even Mayor Meng Foon didn’t know they had been granted. GDC Councillors are defending their actions because they only have to notify consent applications if "the activity will have, or is likely to have, adverse effects on the environment that are more than minor". Of course they know this will not be the case, eh? Well they must do because TAG Oil & Apache have both assured them the fracking they will be doing and the drilling of two wells up to 2500m deep will not be a problem. When the council said they didn’t have the expertise to assess the effects, the consortium agreed to send council officials on a paid trip to Canada to consult with some experts (of the consortium’s own choosing, of course). I wonder what sort of conclusion they will come to.  GDC’s chief executive (Chief FullofBull) has defended the trip saying it was a chance for council staff to upskill. Yeah, right; only if upskilled is a synonym for brainwashed.

Not many....#3

This one is a real shocker, I think. Have you ever wondered why so many convicted sex offenders re-offend? I’m sure most of you have your own theories about this, but I recently happened upon a little nugget of information that must surely be playing a big part in this.

It has recently come to my attention that there are no mandatory programmes for sexual offenders while they are in prison. Programmes are there but the offenders can choose to take them or choose not to take them. Now that seems ludicrous to me. What better time to address their offending than when they are unable to simply not turn up to their sessions. I wonder if the expression ‘captive audience’ has any resonance with the Departments of Corrections and Justice.

And if you think that is bad; get this – when they leave prison, if they wish to do something about their rehabilitation they must pay for the courses themselves. There are no funded community programmes for those who have sexually offended against adults. So the justice system is leaving it to the good sense and consideration these people might have towards their potential victims and is also reliant upon them being either willing or able to fund such a course. Duhhh!

Not many....#4

This next one comes literally from the twilight zone. Sanwa Corp, an enterprising (?) Japanese company has come up with the ultimate accessory for those too stupid to get the fuck away from Fukushima. It is a handy little Geiger counter designed to work with your i-Phone. For just 9800 yen (or NZ$165) you can detect exactly how many thousand millisieverts you are being exposed to while simply breathing in and out.  The press release didn’t say whether the device could detect how much you were subjecting yourself to from the i-Phone, itself, but I guess that’s a market they could expand into as well. Somehow I can’t help feeling it is a bit like sticking your hand deliberately into a furnace and then hankering for a little device to go on your phone so you can morbidly enlighten yourself as to how hot that fire is that is peeling the flesh from your bones.