In 10 Years Time…

History

on marriage equality
Natasha Leggero: If you say you are against this in 10 years time you’re going to look like the people who didn’t want black people to use their drinking fountains. You’re going to look so stupid.

Steven Price sez:

The wrong side of history

Shane Ardern (N); Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi (N); David Bennett (N); Chester Borrows (N); Simon Bridges (N); Bill English (N); Christopher Finlayson (N); Nathan Guy (N); John Hayes (N); Phil Heatley (N); Brendan Horan (NZF); Colin King (N); Melissa Lee (N); Asenati Lole-Taylor (NZF); Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga (N); Tim Macindoe (N); Tracey Martin (NZF); Todd McClay (N); Mark Mitchell (N); Alfred Ngaro (N); Damien O’Connor (L); Simon O’Connor (N); Denis O’Rourke (NZF); Winston Peters (NZF); Richard Prosser (NZF); Ross Robertson (L); Eric Roy (N); Tony Ryall (N); Mike Sabin (N); Katrina Shanks (N); Su’a William Sio (L); Nick Smith (N); Barbara Stewart (NZF); Lindsay Tisch (N); Anne Tolley (N); Louise Upston (N); Andrew Williams (NZF); Michael Woodhouse (N); Jian Yang (N); Jonathan Young (N)

How much contact did Anne Tolley have with students when she was the Minister of Education?

Image credit: Phil Manker

OIA Adventures: Learn From My Mistakes

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Information

I wouldn’t have picked this post to cause so much drama. But it did.

 

Here’s a couple of tweets I liked:

“Why don’t you research something that is educationally significant” – Like OIA compliance at schools, Ms Kelly? matthewtaylor.co.nz/2012/02/12/oia…

— David Ritchie (@dritchie) February 13, 2012

@timoslimo @MattTaylor Love the way schools insist on knowing who are you and who do you represent. #panicpants

— Bill Blackstone (@SirWB) February 13, 2012

And this post from drone on supplying ‘who are you?’ information:

‘[in response to another post] This, and your other suggestions, are undermining the spirit and intent of the OIA. It is not up to the schools to decide whether they should hand over information based on any criteria of use or who is requesting it.

It’s not about being polite, it’s ensuring that the “norm” does not become something where those providing information under OIA have more wriggle room out of providing it than the law provides.’

Official Information Act guidance for schools

If anyone is curious, this is the only guidance schools have over Official Information Act requests, from the New Zealand School Trustees Association:

Official Information Act (OIA) Requests: From time to time boards bear the brunt of broad requests or fishing type expeditions. A recent case in point is a request in the past couple of weeks from the Leader of the Oppositions office to principals for information relating to national standards.  We have had calls from boards and principals about the time and effort these sorts of things create. A reminder of the process when dealing with an OIA request (see very helpful guidelines from the Ombudsmen).

  • you should ensure that the board are aware of any information that is intended to be released from any member of staff
  • you have up to 20 days to respond to the request (in certain cases you can defer for administrative reasons – but this is limited)
  • If the request relates to “work in progress” you may not be able to provide a definitive answer to what is requested and you should identify that is the case.
  • you should ensure that what information the board supplies does not compromised the privacy of any individual(s)
  • you are not required to write an extensive response – often a yes/no, numbers or simply a copy of the material will do
  • sometimes it is not possible to establish the exact information eg if you are asked how much training has been undertaken specifically for one purpose it may be difficult to separate this out from the normal PD undertaken in the school.  There is no requirement to establish new separate databases for such things, particularly where this would require additional administrative costs.’

The 20 day bullet point is interesting because the OIA states: “as soon as reasonably practicable, and in any case not later than 20 working days”.

In fact, in 2008 the Office of the Ombudsman released this statement (via), titled ‘Some public servants play games with OIA requests’:

‘Beverley Wakem says the Office has observed an increasing tendency by a few government departments and Ministerial offices to ignore the provisions of the Official Information Act over the timing of responses to requesters.

“While in some cases this was clearly a misunderstanding of their obligations, there is also a regrettable tendency to game the system and delay responses until the complainants’ interest in the matter had passed,” she says.’ [emphasis mine]

Learn from my mistakes

Wording of the emails

1) When sending a request to multiple recipients, test it with a few first. Then make appropriate changes. Including ‘procedures and practices’ in my request might have been a good idea. However most schools got the idea that by policies, I also meant procedures and practices.

The follow-up email

2) Ask for the recipient to tell you when they have received your request. That opens the door for you to send a nice email a few days later to make sure they got your first email if they haven’t replied.

Some schools appreciated the half way follow-up reminder. Others didn’t. Probably because of the Ombudsman line.

3) Let them know that you know the time limit. “I look forward to your response within 20 working days.” Or you can calculate the day.

Helpful links

Image credit: Heath Brandon

THAT’S A RECORDING DEVICE!

Spilt tea

Someone has finally released the teapot tapes, the recording of John Key and John Banks talking at a Newmarket café, inadvertently recorded by cameraman Bradley Ambrose. This should have happened before the election.

Stuff are probably referring to the partial phone number John Key gives out when they say the authenticity of the tape is confirmed by information in the tape.

Here’s Steven Price on why it’s okay to link to.

Apparently police want to talk to six people who were in the café during the talk, because, you know, they probably recorded the conversation as well! (Or they can provide better details than the camera footage the police have?)

Mirrors: YouTube, SoundCloud and here.

Highlights:
(first four based on XboomcrashbangX’s comment on YouTube)

2:40 National Party are working with someone they would rather not. They are careful not to mention who.

4:08 A lot of Winston Peters’ constituents/supporters will have died.

6:10 John Key purposely doesn’t text John Banks so that it appears they are not working too closely, so they can say that they haven’t been in contact.

6:52 Don Brash is a strange fellow.

7:22 Is that yours? That’s a recording device!

7:40 What’s that? Someone’s recording device. Let’s take it with us.

10:30 It’s right here and it’s still going. [something about turning it on/off.] Take the batteries out.

Image credit: Lee Jordan

Celebrity Justice and Name Suppression

“Well-known comedian”

In case you’re not familiar, here’s a recap:

A television “comedian” gets drunk and comes home, his partner declines his sexual advances and goes to sleep. Later, their four-year-old daughter joins them in bed. He pulls down her pyjama pants and her pull-up nappy and sexually assaults her by way of oral sex (described ambiguously in recent news reports as kissing).

His partner wakes up to him doing this and the police get involved. The charges get shaken around in court (a charge of unlawful sexual connection with a child aged under 12 is taken off the table, along with the possibility of jail) and he pleads guilty to performing an indecent act on a child.

Things that irritate me regarding this case:

  • He says that he thought his daughter was his partner, which implies that this non-consensual sexual act would have been fine if it was performed on an adult (his partner had already said no earlier in the night).
  • He says that he thought his daughter was his partner, which implies that a four-year-old and a fully grown woman don’t have extremely obviously differences in body shape and size or that fully grown women wear pull-ups.
  • That the judge treats him like a victim because people know what he did. “Despite suppression orders it was widely known in his industry who he was and that had taken a toll on his career. He must have significant strength of character to deal with all of that.” She says that he’d “paid an extremely high price already”.
  • Alcohol being used as an excuse.
  • The judge felt it worth mentioning that the assault happened in front of the mother which she says is very “unusual”, as if that means it wasn’t real abuse because it didn’t happen in secret.

PaparazziHe gets discharged without conviction by Judge Philippa Cunningham. The Auckland Now and Dominion Post articles conflict as to if voluntary community work was imposed as a condition (and my definition of voluntary conflicts with theirs).

To add insult to injury, here’s part of her reasoning:

“He’s a talented New Zealander. He makes people laugh, and laughter’s an incredible medicine that we all need a lot of” and that the effects of a conviction “outweighed the gravity of the offending”.

What exact context these comments are in, I’m not sure, but they seem extremely stupid.

Yes, he must feel, quite frankly, shitty for doing what he did to his daughter, but to comment on what a funny guy he is and how disastrous a conviction would be for, I assume, his career…?

Is prison the right place for this guy? No. However, is being discharged without conviction the best choice? No.

But, maybe the discharge won’t stick. The Crown has gone to the High Court to seek a judicial review of the case.

Automatic Name Suppression

Steven Price reminds complainers that the name suppression in this case is automatic and is to protect the identity of the child.

Though Graeme Edgeler points out in the comments that there is a way to name the offender while still protecting the identity of the victim, something that crossed my mind too: if the media don’t report on the relationship between offender and victim, naming the offender won’t out the victim.

Déjà vu

Spot the differences (or more like spot the similarities) between the comedian case and this musician’s case1 (name suppression wasn’t automatic here though, and was dubiously granted).

“The man admitted a charge of inducing an indecent act but was discharged without conviction and given permanent name suppression on the grounds that naming him would affect his record and concert ticket sales.”

Alcohol was involved with the musician too: “He said the man has also addressed his attitude to alcohol”. The comedian: “The entertainer had since sworn off alcohol completely”.

And of course being convicted would adversely affect the musician’s career:

“A conviction would have an adverse affect on his chances to break into international markets.” “It would also have a negative impact on musicians that he performs with.” “Naming the man could destroy the man’s chances of succeeding overseas and could have a negative affect on New Zealand music overseas.”

Preferential treatment of celebrities? Of course not.

Side note: Google is either pretty smart, or someone puts in a bit of effort to influence related search terms in order to out people with name suppression.

1. Stuff took that article down, so here it is:

Teen victim slams musician’s name suppression
By JONATHAN MARSHALL – Sunday News
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/news/3085484/Teen-victim-slams-musicians-name-suppression

THE TEENAGE girl attacked by a prominent entertainer has broken her silence, describing the musician as a “disgusting, self-righteous pig”.

And Brittany Cancian’s mother has also spoken out, saying the musician’s permanent name suppression was “totally disgusting”.

Brittany, 17, was in central Wellington on March 5 when two of her friends were led away with the drunk man around 3.30am. Brittany’s mother Racheal, of Lower Hutt, said her daughter was attacked by the man while she was checking on her friends.

“I think he’s an animal, when I heard what he had done I thought it was animalistic. He wasn’t at all gentle about it,” Racheal said.

“What happened has absolutely been downplayed. She never followed him down the alleyway. She went to see that her friends, who had followed him, were OK. She has quite a caring heart and she wanted to check on her mates. When she went around the corner he grabbed her.”

Earlier this month the Auckland District Court heard how the famous entertainer asked Brittany and her friends to “kiss my balls” before he grabbed the teenager’s head and pulled it towards his crotch. His genitals brushed Brittany’s face.

The man admitted a charge of inducing an indecent act but was discharged without conviction and given permanent name suppression on the grounds that naming him would affect his record and concert ticket sales. The charge carried a maximum jail term of two years.

The musician was ordered to pay $5000 reparation to Brittany, who is yet to receive the money.

Racheal said police never asked her or Brittany if they wanted the man’s name suppression application opposed. Court documents reveal police maintained a “neutral” position on the matter.

“As a mother I am disgusted that he could get name suppression and I’m disgusted that he could do this to my daughter.”

Brittany said in a statement that the entertainer should have been named so other females could be “wary” of him.

Brittany and her mother’s comments come just days after the Law Commission released a report recommending an overhaul of New Zealand’s name suppression system to make it harder for offenders to keep their names secret.

Commission president Sir Geoffrey Palmer said if recommendations in the report had been adopted by the government prior to the musician’s court appearance, he “certainly would not” have received suppression.

“He would have to show extreme hardship and that is very difficult to do … that is hardship out of the ordinary, not ordinary hardship, and that is a much higher threshold than the law currently provides.”

“We all have to have equality before the law. The person who is a grave-digger has to be treated the same as a person who is an All Black.”

Asked whether families’ views on suppression should be taken into account, Justice Minister Simon Power said: “The issue of name suppression needs a very broad overhaul and I’m not closed to any suggestions.”

Racheal was reluctant to discuss why her daughter, aged 16 at the time, was out in central Wellington during the early morning.

“I don’t really want to go into that part but, yeah, she was quite naughty.”

The entertainer last week said he was “too busy” to be interviewed and had “no wish to discuss” the incident.
© 2009 Fairfax New Zealand Limited

Image credit: internets_dairy

Judging a Book By Its Cover

A book on the deaths of the Kahui Twins, written by Ian Wishart in conjunction with Macsyna King, is going to be released soon. A bookshop advisory on new titles was leaked to TVNZ and publicity around the book started earlier than intended, unfortunately directly coinciding with the inquest into the death of the twins.

A Facebook group is calling for the boycott of the book, and apparently the boycott of shops who choose to sell the book, and a couple of bookstores listened. From reading some of the comments on the page, it is clear that some commenters are misinformed. Paper Plus and The Warehouse have both said that their stores won’t be stocking the book. Whitcoulls is still considering whether it will or not. Paper Plus chief executive Rob Smith said: “The health and wellbeing of children is always front of our mind when we are faced with decisions which might impact the stores and the communities in which they operate”. It’s not clear to me how stocking a book not intended for children, and which doesn’t encourage child abuse would impact the health and wellbeing of children. There actually isn’t a clear reason why the book is harmful at all, nor is there a clear reason why it shouldn’t be stocked, apart from “we don’t like it/Macsyna”. Like Steven Price says, no one has actually read the book, how can they make an informed decision that they don’t like it?

Censorship causes blindnessMacsyna King cooperated with the police and was a prosecution witness, she hasn’t just decided to speak now. She isn’t profiting from the book either, Ian says: “Apart from sharing a Domino’s pizza during lunch, Macsyna has never received anything nor will she.” Ian will earn money for the book, but points out that researching and publishing a book takes time and money and that media organizations get paid for their reporting too (apologies if there’s a country block on the video): “When I worked for TVNZ, I earned a six figure salary to do investigations into cases like this one. I had the luxury of expenses being covered, helicopters at my beck and call, and lots of lovely advertising to pay for all this.”

Books like Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler (Amazon, Book Depository) are stocked not because the sellers agree with the content, or approve of the author, but because as a society we value all viewpoints, although don’t necessarily agree with them.

Booksellers New Zealand, which represents Paper Plus and many others, says such a move is rare, and dangerous.

“It would be an attack on democracy if we started banning books that some people didn’t like,” said Booksellers. “It’s a matter of personal choice and it’s something we cherish in our democracy”.

Perhaps ironically, criticism was directed towards family members who didn’t want to speak out at the time of the death of the twins. Now someone is speaking out and people don’t want to listen to her. It’s great that companies are taking feedback into consideration, but maybe this a case of the loud minority being listened to. Boycotting a book by deciding not to buy it yourself is fine, but those people shouldn’t make a decision on behalf of everyone else. Macsyna King wants to shed some light on how her lifestyle was molded, maybe we should be listening.

Do you think the book should be stocked? Will you read it?

Image credit: Tracey R