Two a penny

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The Government is giving people the chance to “kick the tyres” of the MMP electoral system although it is working well, Prime Minister John Key says.

Justice Minister Simon Power announced today there would be a referendum at the same time as the 2011 general election, asking voters whether they want to retain MMP.

If they don’t, they can tick one of several alternative voting systems that will be set out on the same paper.

It will be a run off between MMP and the alternative that was given the most votes in the first referendum.

A second referendum will be held at the same time as the 2014 general election if a majority want a change.

“But we promised New Zealanders on the campaign trail they would have an opportunity to kick the tyres.

“I think we’ve proved in close toly a year in government that the system is working well,” Mr Key told reporters.”

Mr Key said he didn’t believe voters would be likely to choose to go back to the old first-past-the-post system, which MMP replaced in 1996. .

Mr Power told there was a widespread expectation at the time MMP was introduced that there would be a chance for another say on the system.

If a majority of voters prefer the alternative voting system to MMP, the 2017 general election will be held under the chosen alternative.

Cabinet was yet to make decisions around wording of the questions and the alternate electoral systems to be offered.

It was also cheaper than other options, although holding two referenda would still cost $23 million.

Mr Power said holding a referendum alongside a general election ensured a good turnout, which was important if the referendum was to be legitimate.

Mr Power said the Government was determined to ensure there would be a strong public information campaign explaining the different alternatives.

Mr Power said the Government was determined to ensure there would be a strong public information campaign explaining the different alternatives.

“The Government wants to ensure New Zealanders have time to consider all the issues fully before making their decision.

“If a majority of voters opt for a change from MMP, there will be plenty of time for public discussion on the merits of MMP versus the preferred alternative voting system, before the second referendum,” he said. It would include the wording of questions and the options to be considered.”

Legislation to allow the first referendum would go to Parliament early next year.

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Input would be considered at the select committee stage

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Simon Cowell has blasted The Beatles, claiming they would have failed auditions on The X Factor.

The music mogul – who once rejected the Spice Girls, the best-selling girl group of all time – says he would have kicked the iconic band off his British TV talent show unless they fired drummer Ringo Starr.’

“With Ringo, I’m afraid, we would have said ‘bad news’.

The 49-year-old star said: “If The Beatles came on the show we would have said, ‘We’ll take those three – Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison – but probably lose the drummer. That’s what excites me.”

Speaking in a US television interview with his Britain’s Got Talent co-star Amanda Holden, Simon also revealed what drives him, saying: “I like winning, Amanda.

Her debut album is due for release in November, and is expected to shoot to the top of the charts in America and Britain.”

Simon is now focusing on the career of Scottish singing sensation Susan Boyle, who will perform on the final of America’s Got Talent next week. .

* Would The Beatles succeed in today’s music world? below

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Well-known television host, author and clinical psychologist Nigel Latta says he only agreed to help review policies around the smacking issue if he was free to speak his mind about the conclusions.

Prime Minister John Key yesterday released the Terms of Reference for a review of policies and procedures used by Child, Youth and Family and the police when investigating smacking.

Mr Latta was opposed to the law change and voted no in the recent related referendum.

Mr Latta, Social Development Ministry chief executive Peter Hughes and Police Commissioner Howard Broad will conduct the review.

In a referendum the previous month, 87 percent of those who voted said no to the question: “Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?”

The review will look at procedures, including the referral process and identify any changes that are necessary or desirable.

The law as it stands bans smacking for the purposes of correction but the police have the discretion not to prosecute for inconsequential smacks.

Mr Latta said he did not believe that a parent smacking their child, in the common sense understanding of what that meant, should be subject to criminal investigation.

It will also “consider any other matters which, in the reviewers’ opinion, will assist in ensuring that parents are treated as Parliament intended”.

He intended to find out whether the law meant good parents were being subjected to investigations that were intrusive or traumatic.

The debate on the issue had become polarised with both sides reducing complex social and moral issues into simplistic extremes that had consumed time, energy and money, when everyone agreed children needed protection from abuse.

“I can understand that Mr Key wanted someone who believes (parents) should have the legal right to bring up their children using physical discipline,” she said on Radio New Zealand.

Green Party MP Sue Bradford, who drafted the law change that banned smacking, said she hoped Mr Latta would work with the team in a professional and unbiased way. .

“I do understand Mr Latta is a professional.

“Family First has been documenting substantive evidence of good families being investigated and prosecuted as a result of the law, and it is essential that Mr Latta meet these families and views the evidence,” said Family First’s national director Bob McCoskrie.”

The Family First organisation, which campaigned for parents’ right to smack their children, welcomed Mr Latta’s appointment but said it was concerned because he had said he was not going to meet any lobby groups.

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The four men accused of brutally attacking two young couples during a violent rampage in Auckland’s North Shore have pleaded guilty this afternoon.

Harlem Haynui Kirton, 19, Piri Valli Kirton, 18, Ruamoko Taiapa, 21, and Jono Wilson this afternoon entered guilty pleas on all charges on the second day of their trial at the Auckland District Court.

The four had been accused of aggravated robbery, intent to cause grievous bodily harm, wounding with intent and assault with intent to rob, the NZ Herald reported.

The mother of one of the accused, Kiriana Taiapa, also entered a guilty plea today to being an accessory after the fact.

The charges were related to events that occurred on the North Shore on January 15 last year when two couples were violently attacked. .

She had been accused of trying to dispose of 3 metal bars which were used during the attack.

Ms Taiapa was released on bail.

Ms Mandeno said their first victims were a young Russian couple, Dennis Khotchenko and Valeriya Nesterova, who were parked in a red Mercedes on the roadside near Milford Beach enjoying a beer.

As the trial opened in Auckland District Court yesterday, Crown prosecutor Sarah Mandeno said Harlem Kirton took his girlfriend to see the film American Gangster then met up with his brother and friends and went “cruising the streets of the North Shore, examining for trouble”. He then asked Mr Khotchenko if he had “ever met a real gangster”.

She said Wilson walked up to them, struck up a conversation and asked for a beer. “From there the nightmare unfolded,” Ms Mandeno said. Wilson then hit Mr Khotchenko around the head with a metal bar. The frenzied attack left Mr Khotchenko “dizzy and bloodied”. The frenzied attack left Mr Khotchenko “dizzy and bloodied”. On reaching the shore, she sought help from a resident. She eventually managed to escape by running into the water and swimming across an inlet. This time they attacked Oskar Carroll and Ericka Rancourt as they walked home after a night out.

Ms Mandeno said that two hours later the four men struck again.

. Both were badly hurt and could remember little from the attack, Ms Mandeno said

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Murderers will no longer be able to claim they were provoked into committing their crime under a law change the government is planning.

Cabinet will consider the proposal in the next two to three weeks but Prime Minister John Key has given his approval, making it almost certain to go ahead.

Justice Minister Simon Power, in a speech to the Institute of Policy Studies in Wellington today, unveiled a raft of areas the government was looking at including updating the law around sexual crimes, better protection for children and the partial defence of provocation.

The jury yesterday found him guilty of murder.

The defence has sparked heated debate after Otago University tutor Clayton Weatherston argued he was provoked into stabbing girlfriend Sophie Elliott stabbed 216 times and was only guilty of manslaughter.

He told reporters: “I think (the defence has) had its time, I think there are other mechanisms on the statute book that deal with some circumstances that may arise”.

Mr Power said the defence “wrongly enables defendants to besmirch the character of victims, and effectively rewards a lack of self-control”.

Once Cabinet gave approval a bill would be drafted.

“It would be fair to say there would be lot of support around the Cabinet table for the move that Simon Power is leading,” he said.

Mr Key indicated Cabinet would be advancing it.

His defence argued that Mr Brown came on strongly to Ambach and might have attempted to rape him, leading Ambach to lose control and beat him with a banjo before ramming the stem down his throat.

Ferdinand Ambach this month favourably used the defence in his trial for killing Auckland man Ronald Brown, 69.

“It was on its own time track, I have been very careful to make no comment on the Weatherston trial or for that matter any other trial.

Mr Power denied today’s announcement was knee-jerk reaction to recent cases saying the work had been going on for some time.”

He would have delayed the speech had a verdict not been delivered.”

He would have delayed the speech had a verdict not been delivered.

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Two Americans have been convicted of money laundering and investment fraud in a scheme involving the sale of century-old railway bonds to investors, many of them said to be New Zealand farmers.

Steven Fishman, 59, of Corona, southeast of Los Angeles, and Joseph Thornburgh, 61, of Mounds, Oklahoma, were convicted in a Tulsa, Oklahoma court, Associated Press reported.

US Attorney David O’Meilia, of Tulsa said the two men bilked more than 400 investors worldwide – “many of whom were sheep farmers in New Zealand” – and including about 20 Americans.

Thornburgh and Fishman were indicted in November 2007 and will be sentenced on September 29.

The fraud was claimed to have collected more than $US4 million by promoting as risk-free the purchase of bonds issued by a Chinese government that was overthrown in 1949, and of bonds issued in the 1850s by a now-defunct railroad. He will be sentenced on August 28. In April, a third man charged in the case, Robert Searles, 71, of Loudon, Tennessee, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering. .

Investors were told the railroad bonds were backed by the US government and Amtrak and included bonds issued by the Galveston, Houston, and Henderson (GH&H) Railroad – which raised funds to start track construction in 1853. A grand jury was last year told he was living in New Zealand at least part of the time the scam was run from 1998 through to 2003.

The bonds were actually worth no more than their value as collectors’ items.

Witnesses testified that Thornburgh and Fishman had said the bonds could be used to obtain lines of credit from European banks, which could then be used in high-yield investment programmes to reap millions of dollars of profit for investors.

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Trustees of real estate baroness Leona Helmsley’s estate say they’re giving US$136 million to charity – with just US$1 million going to the dogs.

Helmsley’s estate announced 53 charitable grants overnight, the bulk of which went to New York City hospitals and medical research.
Animal rights groups had rejoiced a year ago at public reports that Helmsley, sometimes called “The Queen of Mean” for the imperious way she treated her staff, had wanted her entire fortune to be donated to care for dogs.
But a subsequent judgment ruled Helmsley was unfilt when she executed her will.
The hotel queen’s will had named her dog, Trouble, as a US$12m beneficiary -but cut out two of her four grandchildren entirely, allegedly because they failed to name any of their children after her late husband.
The largest grant announced overnight, US$40 million, went to a digestive diseases centre at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Centre, while US$35 million went to start two research facilities in Helmsley’s name at Mount Sinai Medical Centre. Trouble’s trust fund was reduced to US$2m and the disinherited grandchildren were awarded US$4m.
The estate for Helmsley – who died in 2007 at age 87 – divided US$1 million equally to 10 animal rights charities, including the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and several groups that train guide dogs for the blind.
“Throughout their lives, the Helmsleys were committed to helping others through the innovations of medical research of responding to those in need during critical times and in other areas,” the trustees said in a statement.
A surrogate court judge ruled in February that trustees for the Leona M and Harry B Helmsley Charitable Trust had sole authority to decide which charities benefit from her estate.”
The grants include US$25 million to create a Helmsley Centre for Electrophysiology – the study of electrical properties of cells and tissues – at Mount Sinai, and US$10 million for the Helmsley Inflammatory Bowel Disease Centre. “We now have the privilege of continuing their good works by providing support where it will make a difference.
The foundation gave several US$200,000 donations to New York City homeless and poverty programs such as Citymeals-on-Wheels and Bowery Mission.
More than US$15 million was donated to health care systems in South Dakota, including funding for advanced cancer treatment and pharmacies at hospitals.
Helmsley was famously quoted as saying “only the little people pay taxes” before going to jail for tax evasion.
Helmsley was famously quoted as saying “only the little people pay taxes” before going to jail for tax evasion.

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Not guilty of friend’s manslaughter

Tuesday, 24 February 2009

CLEARED: Mossburn man Colin Bruce Taylor has been cleared of the manslaughter of Alistair Day. A fight broke out after Taylor discovered Mr Day was having an affair with his wife.

A Mossburn man accused of the manslaughter of one of his closest friends walked free after a jury in the High Court in Invercargill found him not guilty yesterday. Mr Day, 42, died after the incident. .
It took the jury little more than an hour to reach the not guilty verdict, a decision that was met with applause from the public gallery. The fight broke out after Taylor discovered Mr Day was having an affair with his wife.
During the course of the six-day trial, the jury heard from witnesses at the hotel, two pathologists and listened to 111 calls relating to the incident. Justice Christine French convicted and discharged Taylor on that charge, citing his previous clean slate and the stress endured during the past 12 months.
Taylor had already pleaded guilty to an alternative charge of assault.
It had been tough year not only for the family but the entire Mossburn community, and he felt sorry for the people who had had to give testimony, he said.
Reacting to the verdict, a male family member said the decision was a relief.
Despite evidence the punch thrown had been "lame" there was still a risk of injury involved, Ms Thomas said.
In her closing, Crown solicitor Mary-Jane Thomas said the question was not whether a heart event had caused Mr Day's death but whether the punch thrown by Taylor was the substantive cause of the death.
"If I punch somebody on the jaw when they're drunk on the tarmac, that in itself is dangerous, and a reasonable and responsible person would know that," she said.
"If I punch somebody on the jaw when they're drunk on the tarmac, that in itself is dangerous, and a reasonable and responsible person would know that," she said.
"No-one, not even the experts, can be sure of what caused Mr Day's death," he said.
Defence counsel Bill Dawkins said in his closing statement the jury could not be sure beyond a reasonable doubt that Taylor's punch was the substantive cause of death because evidence from both pathologists and witnesses suggested a heart event could have happened just before the punch.
A second pathologist enlisted by the defence, Dr Kenneth Anderson, said it was possible for someone to remain standing for several seconds after suffering a heart event.
Last week, the jury heard that an autopsy revealed Mr Day's heart was 50 per cent larger than normal and he was suffering from severe atherosclerosis (narrowing of arteries), which meant he was at risk of a fatal heart event.
The situation outside the hotel, which involved heated words, accusations and pushing, could have led to such an adrenaline rush in Mr Day, Mr Dawkins said.
In some circumstances, he said, adrenaline surges, such as those experienced in highly charged situations, could help a person overcome feelings of unwellness.
Mr Taylor's wife Bernadette declined to comment on the verdict yesterday when contacted at her home by .The lack of bruising on both of Mr Taylor's hands and only superficial bruising to Mr Day's jaw was also proof the blow had been weak, he said.

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More bad loan advice received

By KATHERINE NEWTON Thursday, 19 February 2009

At least five more letters may have been sent from Work and Income telling Mangere clients to take out loans, despite Work and Income's claim a similar letter was an aberration. .
Ms King said she believed a letter she tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, that advised a Mangere client to take out loans and pawn possessions, was not a one-off."
Each of the letters seemed to have been written by the same person.
"I do know out of that Mangere office there have been at least six letters."
Ms King did not believe the problem was systemic, but was concerned by a similar case in Hamilton brought to her attention yesterday. "They're saying the same things.
In an email, the Hamilton woman told how a case manager advised her to take out a loan with QCard, an offshoot of Fisher & Paykel Finance, after her car broke down.
"The case manager saw this as an option for me even though I would be charged interest.
"I specifically said to her that I did not want to go to a finance company," the woman said.
Social Development Minister Paula Bennett has asked her ministry to investigate, saying such advice was unacceptable."
The woman said she was shocked at the advice she was given and disgusted that other clients had been told the same thing. He would follow up the Hamilton case.
Ministry chief executive Peter Hughes said he was not aware more than one letter had been sent out, calling the Mangere incident an "aberration".
Telling clients to take out loans was not ministry policy, he said.
Telling clients to take out loans was not ministry policy, he said.
"I'm disappointed that we did not do more to discourage that."
Some of the suggestions in the Mangere letter Ms King had tabled were made by the client herself, Mr Hughes said."
The ministry was clarifying its procedures rather than focusing on the case manager involved, a spokeswoman for Ms Bennett said. We need to make sure that the rest of our staff are clear that this is not an option.

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Shortage of canine cops worries police

By JODY O’CALLAGHAN – Thursday, 08 January 2009

MURRAY WILSON/
NEW RECRUIT: Thirteen-week-old German shepherd Harbin, whose name means little warrior in German, is raring to become a fully grown and trained police dog. But Constable Jason Trembath will have to watch while another handler takes him on as a partner because they are a puppy short in Palmerston North.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks, but it's hard to find a young one that fits the bill.
There are currently five dog handlers on staff and all but Constable Jason Trembath have canine partners assigned.
The criteria for good quality police dogs are notoriously strict, but right now, Palmerston North police dog section would welcome any offers of German shepherd puppies to be considered for the team.
Despite calling breeders, pounds and pet shops around the country, there was none to be found, Mr Trembath said.
Mr Trembath's first partner when he became a handler a year ago – Kaiser – died in an off-duty accident recently and he has been partner-less since.
And the unforeseen loss meant that even the police dog breeding scheme at the training college in Trentham did not have a replacement, as orders had to be in ahead of time.
Acting officer in charge of the Palmerston North police dog section, Senior Constable Peter McDonald, labelled the puppy "drought" a "bit of a predicament". .
The last time the section had this much trouble finding a replacement was about 12 years ago," he said.
"When you want them, there's none; when you don't, there's lots.
So police are seeking offers of German shepherd puppies younger than about 20 months willing to embark on an exciting career, Mr McDonald said.
Even though the breeding programme was producing top-quality dogs, there were still not quite enough for everyone.
They would go through the stringent selection process to ensure they had the temperament for general purposes in the police force.
They would go through the stringent selection process to ensure they had the temperament for general purposes in the police force.
Any other suitable dogs offered would fill some of the gaps in other regions.
If chosen, they would be assigned and trained as Constable Trembath's partner and welcomed into his home to be "part of the family". .
"There's an old saying, you can't teach an old dog new tricks, which is quite true really .we look at the best of the best," Mr McDonald said. . They work their weight of gold more often than not.
"But having said that, some of the best dogs in the police have been given to us from the pounds and all over the place.

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* Anyone with a German shepherd puppy that may be suitable can call Constable Trembath on 027 322 2145 or the station on 351-3600