Two a penny

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Maori Party MP Hone Harawira has proposed a novel way to cut his travel costs – he will hitch-hike around his electorate.

Te Tai Tokerau MP Mr Harawira, who with travel expenses totaling $67,000 in the first six months of the year was one of Parliament’s more prolific travelers, said hitch-hiking was one way to cut costs but it carried a number of other benefits.

He said that by travelling this way he would run into people that he would not otherwise meet and it allowed him to relax and “enjoy the day”.

“It’s not a big deal, I’ve been doing it for the last three years,” he told Radio New Zealand.”

He said it was the best way to talk to people about what was important.

“You get into a car and sooner or later they’ll start talking to you about the issues that are important to them.

“It doesn’t matter who picks you up, you get to enjoy talking to everyone,” he told the broadcaster.

Mr Harawira said it wasn’t difficult to know who was potentially one of his voters and who was not, but it wasn’t necessarily important. .

The MP for the northern-most Maori electorate defended his high expense bill, saying his home was remote and it took him two planes and a taxi ride to get to work.

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The ACT Party is pushing the Government to immediately review bail laws following yesterday’s sentencing of Haiden Davis for the murder of Augustine Borrell.

Davis was found guilty of murder by a jury and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 10 years.
He also had a list of previous convictions, many of them for violence.
The jury was not told during the trial that when he murdered the Auckland Grammar School student he was on bail for other violent offending and had twice breached his bail conditions.
“This case highlights the myriad serious failures that exist with our bail laws,” he said.
ACT’s law and order spokesman, David Garrett, said today bail laws were a disgrace.
“This has denied the Borrell family the right to make victim impact statements before sentencing. .”
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