What is Life?

What is Life is a very famous song written and performed by George Harrison of the Beatles fame. It is also a question that was addressed by Justice Douglas White in the High Court recently.

 

Justice Douglas White sentenced Bailey Pirini to life imprisonment for the murder of his partner, Lola Paraha, in January. Pirini and Ms Paraha had been drinking and arguing in front of his two-year-old daughter, when Pirini launched into what Justice White described as a brutal, but not a pre-meditated, attack.

 

Justice White imposed a minimum non-parole period of 12 and a half years. In doing so, he reminded Ms Paraha's family in the public gallery that Pirini is in fact instructed to spend the rest of his life behind bars, and it is unlikely he will be released right when the non-parole period is up. Justice White says recent media attention on the length of life sentences has created a wrong impression.

 

This is a blatant attempt to justify his inept use of the correct sentence that should have applied.

 

So how would Justice Douglas White describe death, unlikely to be a forever, a life time of 12 and half years?

 

This is just another case of a Judge failing to do the correct thing by the public and hiding behind legal precedent and other legal mumbo jumbo that does nothing to give the family of the deceased nor the public in general the faith in justice.

What if this was your daughter that had just been killed…. would you feel that justice has been done? 

 

LOPNZ 

The Effectiveness of Trying to Creating Change 

At the beginning of 2010 I decided to start the Law and Order Party New Zealand to try and do something real to change “the system”.  Subsequently I have learnt a lot about people and the media and where the real power sits in getting Parliamentary change to happen in New Zealand.

 

When the law and order subject comes up with either friends or complete strangers almost unanimously they are totally behind the LOPNZ and what it stands for.

When 94% of New Zealand referendum voters want a tougher stance on law and order you know that you have the pubic on your side, but how do you get the message out there to the masses so they know that there is an alternative to the current status quo?

 

The Media

 

A political party will never make significant headway unless they have media coverage and lots of it. To get coverage you either have to have a media baron on your side, have high profile people involved that will attract the media, create a stunt that attracts attention or be very rich and be able to throw a lot of money their way.

 

Occasionally there are journalists that want to do what the media are supposed to do and that is inform the public about something new that is happening and I have experienced this with TVNZ and the Truth Weekender for which I thank them, unfortunately these journalists are few and far between.

 

In general it would seem that main stream news papers do not think it worthwhile to report the start of a LOPNZ but prefer to indulged themselves   with their  columns and articles full of self important journalists that actually do nothing other than voice their own opinions to fill the space because they are contracted to do so. They never actually do anything about anything, they just write.

 

One of the most powerful but unbalanced of all the media is the radio talk back shows. Whilst most of their presenters are quite knowledgeable in many areas, a number of them tend to force their own opinions on listeners.  

 

The bottom line is no matter what you try and do to change “the system” it rarely happens unless you have the media on your side in a substantial way.

 

Luckily there are now other media alternatives available such as the World Wide Web, Face Book, U-Tube etc. all of which help to spread the word, but then if you don’t own a computer how will you ever know?

 

The Political System

 

There is a glimmer of hope under the system of MMP. MMP will allow smaller parties to grow, however the danger is that under this system deals have to be done to get parties to work together to form governments thus smaller parties with minimal voters support can have a power influence much above the support it actually has.

 

On the flip side with first past the post, history has shown us that in New Zealand there is only two parties and neither of these have in over the 100 years they have been in respective governments have never done anything really tough on crime.

 

Political Parties and Law and Order

 

Some parties make a difference in the areas they wish to, but by and large they will not make the changes required to make New Zealand safe as they want to stay in power which is so important to them and anything that might upset that is generally turned away from.

 

In fact the political parties are the easiest part in the whole equation of trying to change the system as they generally do little but make noise and so therefore it is easy to criticize their policies but very importantly the LOPNZ offer a constructive proven corrective method. The problem here is if they don’t see you in the media and therefore are not seen by the public they ignore you…. and why wouldn’t they!

 

The Police and the Justice Players

 

The main issues here are not complex as just about all the agencies involved in law and order are reactionary and governed by law as pasted by Parliament and so have to operate within those set boundaries. There is however an exception to this and that is the Judges. Judges interpret the written law and then apply it in that way.

 

Why will New Zealand never be a really safe place?

 

The answer to this is quite straight forward. If the politicians wanted to make it safer then they could do so tomorrow. This would mean examining the Bill of Rights, criminal legislation and possibly pulling out of international charters, because to fix crime you have to be tough on it but they won’t do this as they want to stay in power.

 

The main media in New Zealand are owned by a very small controlling group and they set the policy of reporting and it suits them to stay with the main stream political parties views.

The wishy washy trendy lefties that numerically are a drop in the New Zealand public bucket have access to large amounts of New Zealand’s media and use it to create smoke screens so large as to bamboozle the public and scare the politicians. But it is good copy for the media as their propaganda and flow on reaction fills columns and air and viewing time.

 

There are two main reasons why the New Zealand public won’t participate in change even though they clearly want it. The vast majority will never know the choices available to them as the media will see to that. How do you know what you don’t know exists? The second reason is if the public did know there was an alternative then apathy could be the killer, it is an unfortunate New Zealand trait.

 

Lastly, Judges will never give the maximum sentences that are available to vicious killers, rapists or robbers as they are caught up in legal mumbo jumbo that has no relevance to today’s society and also they are not accountable for their actions.

Conclusion 

LOPNZ will continue to fight for change for tougher laws on criminals and better rights for the victim. It lives in hope that somewhere someone “connected” will decide that they too want to make a difference and will actually do something positive by becoming involved.