Astrid Andersen had her life damaged by misguided police, a misguided judge and a misguided jury, all serving a misguided society.
The issue is risk. We are a society that wishes to abolish risk and attendant mishaps. When risk turns to mishap, we look for someone to blame.
In the United States that blame is applied through tort actions in civil courts. Here the ACC system all but closes that avenue for accidents. So there is a temptation to turn to the criminal courts.
The Labour party has learnt that it cannot lock New Zealand industry away from the world as it once thought. Now it may be learning it can’t lock up the conservation estate. It is too valuable an economic resource.
Earlier this week Conservation Minister Chris Carter said on radio that he was trying to speed up the processing of concessions for tourism and recreation ventures on the conservation estate, up 350 since 2000. But tourism is only part of what might over time become a bigger story.
The next Governor-General will be white and male. Why?
Balance, of course after two women and one Maori among the past four. But, more important politically, it will be a conservative gesture from a government seeking re-election no more than a year from now.
First, the government wants to de-fang a potential killer, “political correctness” — that is, being thought to be out of step with majority instincts, too socially liberal or “academic” on law and order and a raft of other social policies and too eager to promote minority interests, such as of republicans, unions, homosexuals and Maoris.
Here are two bits of advice. Do not go to Indonesia unless it is essential because you might get caught up in a bombing. Do not go to Indonesia because bombers are targeting your country.
The first applies to New Zealanders, the second to Australians. The Australian embassy in Jakarta has been attacked. The New Zealand embassy is unlikely to be attacked unless as collateral.
Such a beast as United Future is surely not to be found in nature: part liberal centrist and part evangelical Christian; generally right-leaning on moral and economic issues but keeping in office a leftish, moral-liberal government.
Who in the congregations of the churches behind the conservative half of United Future would have stood by a government which has promoted the legalisation of prostitution and, in all but name, the marriage of gays?
I interviewed John Howard a year or so before the “unlosable” election in 1993 which John Hewson nevertheless did lose for the Australian Liberals. Howard was shadow industrial relations minister.
It was a lifeless exchange, with no hint of the battler who overcame his 1980s failure as leader to outlast Hewson and then Alexander Downer and lead the Liberals to three terms in power in 1996 — and maybe a fourth on October 9.
Labour shortage is the single biggest obstacle to expansion for business right now. And tangled up in this shortage is a bigger question: can we grow a big enough working population for the future?
This is a population question — and not as simple as it looks.
The focus has been on population ageing when the baby boomers retire and in the context of superannuation and health care affordability. Demographer Ian Pool of Waikato University argues this ignores the looming changes in population structure and policy issues wrapped up in that — particularly for Maori.
The quick-fix slogan for education is to say you will ram the three Rs into kids by hook or by crook. Listen for Don Brash to say that in his looming big speech on education.
Such rhetoric will resonate with employers scraping the employables barrel and scouring the surrounds for escapers. But will it re-skill the nation?
Society deemed him an animal. “Who made me that? Me. What was I fighting? Myself. Who created me? Me. I own that.”
So said Mark Stephens, the vicious Parnell Panther rapist, in an ownership-of-past-wrongs message to ACT deputy leader Muriel Newman’s welfare symposium on Saturday.
The right likes hearing stories that tell of taking responsibility for one’s misdeeds. They are the obverse of taking responsibility for looking after oneself, getting a job, getting off welfare, fulfilling obligations.
Australia has something New Zealand doesn’t have, right? A free trade agreement with the United States, yes. But also tougher labour practices.
They may be about to get tougher if the impending election bounces Mark Latham’s way.
From some comments from business lobbies here, you would think doing business in Australia is a doddle. Adopt Australia’s regulatory environment and, hey presto, we will be rich like Australia.