yeah, I thought that particular comment was a bit flaky, but his comments about home detention and also the bit about parole being an opportunity to monitor previous offenders hit a chord with me. Also the fact that National seem to be quite a flippy-floppy on the issue.

My old man went and saw him speak at a breakfast in wgtn about a month ago and he reckoned that brash was saying all the right things but when questioned by the audience about how he'd put his policys into place and how they would work, he had no idea.

where's the money gonna come from? same place as usual. maybe a few cut backs could help, ie. not wasting 30 million on another damn boat, there's 3% right there, maybe they could stop funding bile like nz idol, cut back on their free travel, take a few less payrises for the sake of public safety or (here's an original thought)- a paycut!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!pigs at the trough eating at fancy pants restaurtants, with a million and one perks, buying art and refurninshing their offices, rebranding their public owned orgies, maybe they could cut their pay back to the average wage and truly represent the rest of us, maybe they could chill on the 'official business trips', stop rinsing the accommodation allowance shut the fuck up about any kind of equality they supposedly perpetuate or represent, because they clearly don't believe in it and have only ever seen their political careers as a two faced, morally bankrupt grasp for whatever they can get

and for all those supposed diplomats out there who start yapping about the great legal highs (drugs) you can afford with those government funds ((whilst in new york) to people you've only just met) ,think twice about who you are representing and stop wasting people's taxes getting fucked up!

that's killing people.....big leap

it's not so much the fruit, as the public humiliation, week after paraded through townon the tailor of a very slow dirty cattle truck, as bystanders laugh and point and hold their noses

In its last report, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child had criticised New Zealand saying the age of criminal responsibility was too low, both at 10 for serious crimes and also the general age at 14.

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//noncommitally express your benign and unoriginal opinion

I hardly have a benign and unoriginal opinion. That post was non-committal because it wasn't my opinion. I don't have the time this afternoon to dredge out the facts I need to elucidate what I think on the issue. I was merely summarising some issues I thought worth mentioning.

As to your half-baked refutation of the herald's points. 1) Only 19 states in the US have the death penalty -- that hardly equates to "america executes" 2) There certainly will be some variation in what works in different countries, but the evidence that recidivism is increased by longer prison sentences is not just a US thing. the US is merely a very salient example.

I point out that only 19 states execute as it shows that the US is not a large amorphous blob. It would be interesting to compare different states imprisonment policies, as well as across different countries.

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// Its about time the govt takes priority...

The 7 priority areas selected for the Crime Reduction Strategy are:

1. Family violence and child abuse
2. Other violence and sexual violence
3. Serious traffic offending
4. Youth offending and reoffending
5. Burglary
6. Theft of and from cars
7. Organised crime

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clearly 91.75% of the population wanted a reform in the justice system placing greater emphasis on the needs of victims, providing restitution and compensation for them and imposing minimum sentences and hard labour for all serious violent offences

I didn't say that one part cancelled the other out. However, if you were to ask anyone skilled in opinions surveying (either commercially, or in a psychological sense), they'd tell you that the answer to that question is quite uninformative. You are right in that it can probably be best interpreted as a call for reform. If I were to ask people if the wanted 100,000 dollars and a pile of rubbish dumped on their lawn, I think we could be pretty clear that people answering yes were motivated by the money rather than the rubbish. That is an extreme example, but similarly, if I went round asking people if they wanted a dress, a barbie, a tonka truck, and a barbecue, I'd also get a high yes response. In this case, all of the options are probably viewed positively, but different people answering yes will be more motivated by some of the options, and only relatively few will want all of them.

1. they want reform in the justice system placing greater emphasis on the needs of victims,
2 . they want reform in the justice system providing restitution and compensation for them
3. they want reform in the justce system imposing minimum sentences and hard labour for all serious violent offences

for the surevyors to asume that every one who voted is as foolish as them is insulting
i voted yes

i want a dress, a barbie, a tonka truck, and a barbecue,
i want the waste on my lawn and the $100,000 to clean it off so my son can take the barbie for a ride on the tonka truck while i cook a barby in my new dress.

just how retarded is the main stream popultion in these surveyor's eyes?

//just how retarded is the main stream popultion in these surveyor's eyes?

Aw, c'mon, noone's accusing the mainstream population of being retarded; but if you're asked that question and you want one or two but not the rest of the different offers, then instead of a straight yes or no, you're asked to balance how much you want one compared to how much you don't want the other.

So...only those who are really really against hard labour would answer the question "no" in the face of other issues regarding victims rights... Thus the government would be out of turn justifying introduction of hard labour just because people are showing compassion toward victims.

Personally I thought the way the question was worded, they're suggesting hard labour as a kind of victim's revenge thing.

Woah, I voted no because I was confused. I'd love to see reform in the justice system (along with most every part of the government, but never mind).

price!!!!!(i need to work more)

ultimately i understand your confusion jet, the question was poorly worded, but this is not the problem of the question itself. Here we have a government ,safely tucked away in their plush little offices , sipping on their lattees and holding special interest jokeathons with havoc and news, unwilling to take the time to carefully word and or seperate this referendum into it it's key 3 or 4 points.
here is a government where key members have the time and opportunity to sue the government owned broadcasting network over some crappy wee scandal that will never make winston look worse than his own racist public policies, a government that will waste $400,00 rebranding a charity organization to help the unemployed, but a government lacking the foresight to consult key opinion survey experts to ensure a referendum (of the utmost importance to social stability) has the wording to be implemented effectively.
Here is a government of whom's prime minister will royally ask ;"who do you think you are, talking to the prime minister like this?" (possibly rhetorically), a government who will spend wagon loads of cash, advertising and publicising a referendum to change the political system to the level a nine year old can understand, and then when said nine year old is brutally raped and murdered, they will gift the perpetrator with name supression and a colour tv.
When a citizen of our nation canvases our population, achieving an undeniably popular level of public support , they will fob off his referendum, and instead waste tax payers money printing and counting an intentionally poorly worded question, in order to ignore the result so they can concentrate on voting themselves another payrise or legalise prostitution(which isn't really helping anyone to a large extent).

*and for you sex 'workers' out there i mean no offence , big ups on the hot job, i look forward with mirth to the day that unitech or some other reputable organization offers a prestigious student loan applicable qualification in your field.

Christianity, I have a three word response to you:

Citizen-Initiated Referenda

Technically the Clerk of the House has a small input into the phrasing of the question. But basically some member of the public came up with exactly that question, an enormous number of signed the question, binding the referendum to exactly that question. In the case of this referendum, I would speculate that the people starting the petition may have deliberately made the question biased and ambiguous to create a very strong perception of change. That might be a conspiracy theory, but the same people trained to create objective questions can use their skills to create highly biased questions. I hadn't considered this as a possibility before, but given the financial resources of certain groups associated with this topic, they could not only employ experts, but focus groups to ensure their question created the appearance of an outrageously large majority. Alternatively, a lay person could have just put their strong emotion on the topic into the question, creating the issues.

// 1. they want reform in the justice system placing greater emphasis on the needs of victims,
// 2 . they want reform in the justice system providing restitution and compensation for them
// 3. they want reform in the justce system imposing minimum sentences and hard labour for all serious violent offences

So how are we doing post-referendum? Serious violent offenders are no longer automatically eligible for parole after 2/3 of their sentences, longer sentences are available to judges (which appear to be being used), and minimum non-parole periods are also available. Thus, excluding hard labour (which is illegal anyway), point 3 seems well covered.
Less work has been done on addressing victims needs, so there is perhaps some work to go there. Compensation seems to be common for certain types of crime (although not generally violent offending). My pick is that most violent offenders can't afford to pay, so should that money come from the government?

Hell my grandmother, who worked her guts out most of her life, didn't get it that good.

It's just a point that fucks me off