Money Won't Stop Pressure On The Courts

Thursday 20 May 2004

Stephen Franks Press Releases -Crime & Justice

Announcing an increase of $18 million a year for the courts won't fix the justice system -in fact, a seven percent increase over the current $250 million just feeds the problem, ACT New Zealand Justice Spokesman Stephen Franks said today.

"The number of judges and tribunal members has grown at three times our rate of population growth since 1970, my whole working life," Mr Franks said.

"We will never keep up with the voracious legal industry as long as we keep feeding it with more laws, more discretions for officials, more incentives to cry over spilt milk and blame others for life's misfortunes, and to block others from using their own lands and lives as they choose.

"A government that boasts about appointing more Family Court judges can never curb the `lawyerisation' of New Zealand. Our chief Family Court judge told us would need at least five extra judges when, for property sharing purposes, Labour compulsorily `married' up to 200,000 people who had chosen to live together without marrying.

"When the community is struggling to find volunteers who will run the new legal risks in organising school trips, traditional races and other events, and even lolly scrambles, $73 million more for the courts should be a cause for shame - not boasting - by Minister Barker," Mr Franks said.

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>