The Solicitor-General's Prosecution Guidelines:

The Solicitor-General's Prosection Guidelines are particularly interesting when viewed in the context of the letter from Peter Whittall's lawyers to the Crown Prosecutor, which can be viewed at THIS LINK and OTHERS.

Rebecca Mcfie recently published a book which has received excellent reviews.

Dr Cohen also wrote a book which can be read at THIS LINK.

Many of the families of the men who remain inside the mine to this day despite all the big talk of the people responsible for seeing that justice is done for them and their men, husbands, fathers, much loved, every single one of them, many of the family members feel deceived, angry and betrayed, and they have a lot of support.

If you have trouble viewing the file embedded above, try clicking on the small left facing arrow in the top left hand corner, which will remove the left hand panel and move the document to full frame view, or view it directly at THIS LINK.

These Prosecution Guidelines were rewritten in 2013 - here's the link to the 2010 version.

And here is the Department of Labour Prosecution Guidelines:

Letter from Peter Whittall's lawyer to Crown Prosecutor - the price of what passes for justice in NZ:

This is the letter from Peter Whittall's lawyer to the Crown Prosecutor, which led to the prosecution being dropped and Whittall discharged - the charge could have been withdrawn but the Crown Prosecutor appears to have conspired with Whittall's lawyers to defeat justice for a price:




If you have trouble viewing the document as it's embedded here, it can also be viewed at THIS LINK.
- TIP - Click the little left pointing arrow icon in the top left hand corner - it makes the left hand panel disappear and moves the file to full frame view ;)

And this is a photograph of the ladder the twenty nine dead men in the Pike River mine were expected to climb in the event of an emergency.  Evidence was given at the Commission of Inquiry attested to the fact that it was not fit for the purpose, and there was effectively no way out of the mine in the event of a rockfall or other common occurence, let alone an explosion.  As the mine management knew perfectly well.

The fact that this letter was received the same day the renamed Department of Labour successfully prosecuted Gloria Davis for the Easy Rider tragedy is cruelly ironic indeed, and further evidence that there's one rule for some and another for others, Mrs Davis didn't even have a lawyer to defend her.

In a disturbing twist, Minter Ellison et al have asked for the personal details of everyone requesting access to this "open letter".

IPCA report into perjurous and corrupt actions of local officers and wider systemic issues:

Here is the recently released report into the complaints received regarding the perjurous and corrupt actions of a local officer:  If you have trouble viewing the report below, it can also be accessed at this link.

This shows Police are still in denial and the IPCA is still in the business of minimising complaints instead of dealing with them constructively.

It also highlights the reasons behind the popular policy of delay, deny defer, which is utilised throughout what is ironically known as 'the public service'.

Police hire sacked engineering firm to not look at fake engineer:

The NZ Police have announced that they are hiring an engineering firm, Beca, to help them decide who is responsible for the collapse of the CTV building in the Christchurch earthquakes.  One hundred and fifteen people were killed when the building collapsed.

Detective Superintendent Peter Read says police have contacted Beca to give its expert opinion on engineering issues raised in the ongoing assessment.

He says the review is the next phase of the police assessment, which follows on from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission.

While the findings of the royal commission were helpful, it did not make any determination of who is liable for the building's collapse, Det Supt Read says.

I'm not the only one to question this.  Maan Alkaisi, who lost his wife in the CTV building collapse, is a Professor of Engineering at Canterbury University. Appearing on Firstline this morning, he said there was enough evidence presented at the royal commission for the police to lay a charge.

"If you have followed the royal commission hearings and the reports from experts, it's not hard to pinpoint what exactly went wrong with that building," says Prof Alkaisi.

"It's really very clear to us how this building collapsed, why this building collapsed and who is responsible for that."


The former construction manager of the deadly Canterbury Television building, Gerald Shirtcliff, stole the identity of a professional engineer and faked an engineering degree. 

Shirtcliff stole the identity of an English engineer called William Anthony Fisher in 1970.  He had worked with Fisher in South Africa in 1968 and 1969. Shirtcliff has lived as William Fisher in Australia for over 25 years, he now resides in Brisbane, driving a late-model Mercedes and enjoying a spacious house and a $200,000 motor launch.

When Shirtcliff left South Africa towards the end of 1969 to settle in Sydney he took on Fisher's identity including his birthplace, birthdate and his Bachelor of Engineering degree from the University of Sheffield.

Shirtcliff then used the real Will Fisher's BEng to gain entry into a masters programme at the University of New South Wales in 1971 and also to become a member of the Australian Institute of Engineers in 1972.

He later worked as an engineer for a Sydney firm, then called MacDonald, Wagner and Priddle (to become Connell Wagner and then Aurecon), before returning to New Zealand in the mid-80s, to work under his Shirtcliff name.

In New Zealand he purported to be a "registered" engineer and at one time a "chartered" engineer.

Shirtcliff used his new identity on company documents and also to try to avoid extradition to New Zealand on the fraud allegations. He spent a week in a Brisbane jail in 2003 before conceding he was actually Gerald Shirtcliff.

Shirtcliff, now 67, supervised the construction of the CTV building, which was finished in 1987 and collapsed on February 22 last year, killing 115 people when Christchurch was hit by an earthquake.  He gave evidence at the commission hearings, but was revealed later that he had stolen the identity and forged the qualification.  Despite calls for the commission to be reopened this was refused.

So that's Gerald Shirtcliff, now, what about Beca?  Well let's have a look at the secret deal done between Beca and the Masterton District Council over the Homebush sewage plant for a start.

Beca admitted to culpability for a "bombshell" they dropped on Masterton ratepayers in 2011, a six million dollar error in their quote for the sewage works.  ""Inaccurate advice" was how it was described, and amount of their underestimation was $6.6 million dollars.  It was announced that this would cost ratepayers - to the tune of a 19% rates rise.

The Masterton District Council blustered on about taking legal action, after strong pressure from the community.  They sought legal advice from a Queens Counsel - and I wonder what that advice cost them (will be making enquiries, watch this space), and claimed to have initiated action of some sort although there is no evidence of that.

Beca were sacked for this, and replaced with a more competent firm.  The project has been an utter disaster for ratepayers, running well behind schedule and "contractual difficulties" led to thirteen people's jobs being cut.

Finally, in October 2012, Masterton Mayor Gary Daniell announced that a secret deal had been reached with Beca.  Other councillors were outraged that the deal was so secret event that even they didn't know about it.  Makes a mockery of the tender process, that's for sure - Beca knew full well they couldn't do it for the price they quoted!

One hundred and fifteen people died when the CTV building collapsed, and the Police are hiring an engineering company who are clearly dishonest AND incompetent, to 'help' them decide who's responsible?  - What a joke!  - What an INSULT to the tax payers of NZ!

Wairarapa Police refuse to lay charges again.

Despite a witness contacting the media as well as Police to corroborate the victim's formal complaint Police have yet to lay charges regarding this matter:

In the meantime, the offender has been convicted following a defended hearing on 15 April 2014 of assaulting the victim again, this time right in front of the Masterton Courthouse, in front of witnesses.

So called Ministry of Justice continues to corruptly assist fraudsters to pervert the course of justice:

Michael Murphy and Michelle McGreal defraud taxpayers of over $88,000 plus another similar amount - and are let off for it by the Police and the so called Ministry of Justice:

Michelle McGreal was charged with ten counts of benefit fraud.  She is the partner and co-offender of Michael Francis Murphy, local violent criminal and Police informer.  After Murphy's violent attack was publicised many other people in the community came forward with other information about them and their activities.

Together Murphy and McGreal deliberately planned to defraud the tax payers and government of New Zealand and did so to the tune of over eighty eight thousand dollars over seven years.  Murphy is also the person behind the untrue allegation contained in the letter to me from the Board of Trustees of the South End School - that I had 'recently been charged by the local Police with an offence involving a child' - McGreal and Murphy were guilty of an offence involving a child!  Of course Murphy was never charged - being a Police informant and a member of the Wairarapa Paedophile Network!

In addition to this, during the same period of time, Murphy successfully sued the 'Ministry of Social Development' for a sum of money that is apparently roughly equal to the other amount they defrauded us of, for "alleged" abuse he suffered as a child.

It is now clear that the charges against McGreal never included any pertaining to the very considerable amount of paid employment she and Murphy have been failed to declare to the IRD - or MSD or anyone else - over the years.

The so called 'news' paper reported that McGreal and Murphy defrauded us of around $77,800 - the actual amount was $88,130.69.  The so called 'news' paper also failed or willfully omitted to mention anything about the sentence McGreal received - Murphy got off scot free of course - and then the Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Social Development procrastinated and applied the policy of "defer, delay, deny" to the requests made under the Official Information Act from interested parties - as of course did the local "reporters" - who had been in Court and heard the sentence but refused to publish it.

 

 

Finally, nearly two years after these requests were made, a copy of the Court decision - of Judge Kelly - was delivered. 

The sentence?  Six months home detention - to the home she shared with Murphy - in other words nothing, and 200 hours "community work" - and NO order for reparation - crime obviously pays in the Wairarapa, where we have the most corrupt Police in New Zealand. 

McGreal and Murphy continue to actively defraud the Ministry of Social Development, and the Police continue to turn a blind eye to it.

The decision can be viewed at THIS LINK.

The secret life of information - Jacob Huebert:

While the NZ National Government is following its puppeteer masters and ramming through legislation to increase the power of the state to spy on and record citizens as they innocently go about their daily business, they're already planning the next step, and reducing civil and human rights - we can spy on you but you can't record what we do. 

The National government has rammed a lot of legislation through as 'Omnibus Bills' and rushed Bills through undemocratically - allowing one day for submitters to write and present their submissions.

By Jacob Huebert:

Earlier this year, the Illinois Supreme Court struck down a state eavesdropping law that made it a crime for citizens to record conversations with police or anyone else without the other person’s permission. The court held that the old law “criminalize[d] a wide range of innocent conduct” and violated free-speech rights. In particular, the court noted the state could not criminalize recording activities where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, including citizens’ “public” encounters with police.

Now the old law is back, with just a few changes, in a new bill sent to the governor’s desk by the Illinois Senate on Dec. 4. The bill not only passed, but did so overwhelmingly with votes of 106-7 in the House on and 46-4-1 in the Senate.

The new version is nearly as bad as the old one.

Under the new bill, a citizen could rarely be sure whether recording any given conversation without permission is legal. The bill would make it a felony to surreptitiously record any “private conversation,” which it defines as any “oral communication between 2 or more persons,” where at least one person involved had a “reasonable expectation” of privacy.

When does the person you’re talking to have a reasonable expectation of privacy? The bill doesn’t say. And that’s not something an ordinary person can be expected to figure out.

A law must be clear enough for citizens to know in advance whether a particular action is a crime. This bill doesn’t meet that standard, which should be reason enough for a court to strike it down if it becomes law.

But lack of clarity isn’t the only problem with this bill.

Although it appears to be designed to accommodate the Illinois Supreme Court’s ruling striking down the old law, the bill actually is designed to continue to prevent people from recording interactions with police.

The bill says it would only be a crime to record someone where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy, which should mean that recording public encounters with police would not be a crime, and the old law’s fatal constitutional flaw would no longer exist.

But the bill doesn’t really fix the problem. Again, citizens can’t be expected to know for sure precisely which situations give rise to an “expectation of privacy” and which don’t. The Illinois Supreme Court said that police don’t have an expectation of privacy in “public” encounters with citizens, but it did not explain what counts as a “public” encounter. So if this bill becomes law, people who want to be sure to avoid jail time will refrain from recording police at all, and the law will therefore still effectively prevent people from recording police.

The bill would also discourage people from recording conversations with police by making unlawfully recording a conversation with police – or an attorney general, assistant attorney general, state’s attorney, assistant state’s attorney or judge – a class 3 felony, which carries a sentence of two to four years in prison. Meanwhile, the bill makes illegal recording of a private citizen a class 4 felony, which carries a lower sentencing range of one to three years in prison.

There’s only one apparent reason for imposing a higher penalty on people who record police in particular: to make people especially afraid to record police. That is not a legitimate purpose. And recent history suggests it’s important that people not be afraid to record police wherever they perform their duties so that officers will be more likely to respect citizens’ rights, and officers who do respect citizens’ rights will be able to prove it.

The bill might also provide an excuse to scuttle body cameras for police. Police may argue that using body cameras to record encounters with citizens outside of “public” places would violate the law, as citizens have not consented to being recorded.

We should mention one more thing about this bill. It was introduced on Tuesday, Dec. 2, as an amendment to an existing bill on a completely different subject. The amendment removed all of the bill’s previous content and replaced it with the new ban on recording. The House passed it the following day, and the Senate passed it the day after that. So the people who would have cared most about this bill probably didn’t notice it in time to object. They might have had their attention focused on other issues that were in the news, such as the recorded police killing of Eric Garner.

Even if this bill were constitutional, it would still be unnecessary and a terrible idea. Most other states allow a person to record a conversation with only one party’s consent and don’t try to scare people out of recording police by threatening them with felony charges.

Despite its bipartisan support, Gov. Pat Quinn should do one more thing to bolster his legacy before he leaves office and veto this bill.

Jacob Huebert
Senior Attorney, Liberty Justice Center