Category: Crime & Justice
Under an aboriginal child welfare system, the best interests test, namely the cardinal rule in child welfare that an agency must do what is in the best interests of the child was abandoned. Instead, racial identity was given primacy.
Last week, Anne Tolley launched the new vulnerable children’s service to replace the Child Youth and Family agency. You can’t doubt the Minister's sincerity, but she's facing an uphill battle unless other laws that are contributing to the problem are changed as well.
Our family law system has the characteristics of a cultural and ideological war, where the ‘facts’ too often have the properties of propaganda and policy is seemingly developed politically rather than by sound social research. We urgently need a total change of direction.
Sir Salman Rushdie understands the importance of free speech more than most. In 1988, the British writer was accused of insulting Islam in his fourth novel, The Satantic Verses. A year later a fatwa calling for his death was issued.
The carnage on New Zealand’s roads is continuing, with 326 fatalities last year - seven more than in 2015, and 30 more than in 2014. While one in four of the drivers were going too fast for the conditions, drugs and alcohol were factors in 40 percent of the crashes.
No one would be happy to know that the driver heading towards them on the road was drunk. That’s why we use a lot of Police time and taxpayer’s money to try and keep drunk drivers off our roads. But what about if the driver heading towards you was stoned instead?
The government is to blame for the high numbers of Maori in jail, according to a Treaty of Waitangi claim filed by retired probation officer Tom Hemopo. An urgent Waitangi Tribunal hearing was held in Wellington through the last week of July, to investigate Hemopo's claim.
The principle that nothing should create even a suspicion that there has been any improper interference with the course of justice, underpins our legal system. In Latin it is stated as nemo judex in causa sua - ‘no-one should be a judge in his own cause’.
The papakāinga provisions should apply to all properties, or they should not apply at all. One’s connection to land and environmental effects are, after all, not defined by race. Many of us more recent immigrants also have an ancestral connection with our land, or would like to create a legacy property for future generations. Why can't they have the same rights as Maori?
The Tribunal has embarked on round two of its hearings concerning a variety of claims relating to New Zealand’s fresh water resources. The nature of the claims are discussed in exhausting detail in the Tribunal’s first report made in 2012.
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