Another U-Turn On Crime From Labour?

If Prime Minister Helen Clark is correctly reported this morning, she has an open mind on hard labour for idle prisoners - this must be the quickest U-turn so far for this Government, ACT New Zealand Justice Spokesman Stephen Franks said today.

"Less than one month ago, Miss Clark's Government and the Greens ganged up to block my amendment to Corrections Minister Paul Swain's massive Corrections Bill - an amendment designed expressly to leave open the possibility of hard labour," Mr Franks said.

"The amendment did not oblige the Government to introduce hard labour, but simply protected New Zealand's freedom of action by eliminating Labour's late addition to that Bill of an express submission to the UN rules that forbid `afflictive labour'.

"I argued that it was nuts for a Government, that pretended to worry so much about our sovereignty that it dumped our right of appeal to the Privy Council, to subject itself - without debate - to UN rules prohibiting something as commonsense as hard labour for punishment.

"Mr Swain did not deign to debate the issue, nor did he explain why the provision referring to the UN rules was beefed up after the public's opportunity for submissions had closed.

"This Government U-turns for popularity, but a one-month U-turn beats even Education Minister Trevor Mallard's turnaround on school closures," Mr Franks said.

© 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>>