Matthew Hooton speaks out about Sabin and Key.

Nicky Hager

 This is a straight reproduction of a blog published by the NBR...remember Matthew Hooton is a big fan of and ex-employee of the National Party... In his report he states clearly what is the view of many, many followers of the NZ Political scene.

After reading this you may like to attend the visit of Investigative Journalist and author Nicky Hager at Te Manawa at 6.30 pm on Monday the 30th of March...   

Matthew Hooton wrote:

Matthew Hooton

Of course, National might still win.
Year after year, John Carter’s Northland electorate won internal party plaudits for its huge membership.  For this weekend’s by-election, no less than the economic development, regulatory reform, science and innovation, tertiary education, skills and employment and associate finance minister took full personal control of the campaign.  Pretty much the whole cabinet was whisked in by ministerial limo.
The Public Finance Act was assaulted with election bribes.  John Key cut short his state visit to Japan to hit the mean streets of Moerewa.  Dark stories were told about the risk to Tim Groser’s free-trade agreement with Korea if National were to need the support of UnitedFuture’s Peter Dunne.
Luckily for National, the Labour candidate’s name remains on the ballot paper.  Maybe there’s some methodological flaw in Wednesday’s TV3 Reid Research poll that gave the edge to Winston Peters.

Sigh of relief

Ex-cop Mike Sabin

At the time of writing, National had also been spared the full story becoming public about the resignation of former MP Mike Sabin.  Those close to Mr Peters suggested he would return to Wellington before the by-election to reveal all under parliamentary privilege.  Instead, the NZ First leader elected to stay in Northland talking about his proposal to expand the port at Marsden Point, a referendum on cannabis and his forthcoming bill to remove name suppression from alleged paedophiles if victims say they don’t want it and to launch a register for parents to check there are no sex offenders in their neighbourhood.
No doubt there was a sigh of relief at National Party Headquarters.  But that may be short-sighted.
Arguably it would be better for National had the full Sabin story become known well before by-election day.
Fragments are on the public record: that Mr Sabin has been under police investigation since August, that Mr Key was “happy” for him to remain chairman of the law and order select committee overseeing the police budget while that investigation was under way, and that Mr Sabin resigned “due to personal issues … best dealt with outside Parliament.”
Mr Sabin himself is no longer that important: the police and any other relevant arms of government will now deal with him as they see fit. 
But Mr Key’s government stands accused of somehow covering up after Mr Sabin, with Labour leader Andrew Little going so far as to say he believes Mr Key is lying.
That is not entirely implausible.  Although NBR has been unable to substantiate allegations the National Party top brass knew all about Mr Sabin as far back as before the 2011 election, police commissioner Mike Bush has made clear that he and his officers did not “drop the ball” when it came to informing the Beehive about the Sabin investigation in August.
Mr Bush has not commented further.

Anne Tolley

The Beehive line is that Mr Bush told police minister Anne Tolley about the investigation in August – and her successor Michael Woodhouse after the election – but didn’t name the MP concerned. Nor, we are meant to believe, did Ms Tolley or Mr Woodhouse ask.
The Beehive will not answer questions about whether or not either passed this information to Mr Key or his office. Answering such questions, according to chief of staff Wayne Eagleson, would violate the privacy of natural persons.
Public duties
If the Beehive’s account of the Sabin matter is true, then Mr Key’s government has become deeply dysfunctional.  Reflect on the type of conversation we are being asked to believe happened, just weeks before a general election:
“Minister,” says Mr Bush, “you need to know that we’re investigating an MP for assault.”
“Cheers,” says Ms Tolley. “Thanks for letting me know.”
Given the proximity to the election, Ms Tolley in fact had a public duty to ask the commissioner who was involved.  Was it Mr Key or David Cunliffe, the candidates for prime minister?  Was it Bill English, David Parker or Russel Norman, the candidates for finance minister?  Or Murray McCully, David Shearer or Mr Peters, the candidates for foreign minister?  Maybe Judith Collins or Mr Little, the candidates for justice minister?
Even if Ms Tolley neglected her duties to the public, is it plausible her political duty to the prime minister didn’t lead her to inquire?  “Please god, let it be Cunliffe!” she would surely have thought.
Mr Woodhouse’s story is just as odd. When briefed by Mr Bush after the election, we’re told he too ignored his public and political duties to inquire further.
Perhaps even more incredible is Mr Eagleson’s claim that, when he was contacted on November 26 by Labour’s chief of staff Matt McCarten about the Sabin situation – which he says he already knew about from others – he waited until the following week to mention it to the prime minister, who remained, he claims, utterly ignorant until December 1.
“Prime Minister,” the Beehive says Mr Eagleson or his underlings never said, “we have a problem.  We’ve just been called by the opposition, which has some serious dirt on Sabin, and it’s all around town because we’ve heard about it from others a while ago.  You might be asked questions about it as soon as today.”
Are such calls from the opposition really so routine they don’t get escalated?
The risk for Mr Key is that if the full Sabin story becomes known in a week, a month, six months or a year, it will look as if his government covered it up not just through a general election campaign but then again through the by-election as well.  The clock keeps ticking.

A day or two in the life of Bill English.

State Housing  stuff-up…

Finance [supposed] whiz-kid Bill English, while in the shower one Thursday [that’s the day he never goes to Parliament] had a brain-storm, to help get into surplus he would sell off around 4000 state houses…this would win him Brownie points with the PM and aid the policy of selling off state assets…without actually asking permission to do so. His second thought was, ‘Salvation Army…they are a wealthy cash cow, they love the down pressed, they help the poor, they play musical instruments and shout ‘hallelujah’ from time to time. So he’d make them an offer they couldn’t refuse…and turn them into the biggest landlord in the country. He was so elated by his wonderful idea that he leaped out of the shower and shouted to his wife…”eureka…I’m brilliant… His wife shouted back, you’re not; your bloody naked and not a pleasant sight, for god sake get a towel…

All this took place some months ago…Old Bill…set the plan in motion amid an up roar of those working in the social housing field…and with those living in State housing. He was a hero amongst the super right-wingers as well as many, local council’s like the Palmerston North City Council who believed they too could cast off the odious role of running social housing stock.

Sadly poor wee Bill English dropped into a pool of crap when the Salvation Army turned down his sneaky, unworthy and shameless effort to sell them a rotten apple… While the Salvation Army may shout hallelujahs from time to time, they are wise when it comes to rotten business deals. Anyway after being given the news, Wee Bill climbed back into the shower and turned on the cold tap…    

This from the NZ Herald…

The Salvation Army has decided against buying state homes off the Government, a blow the Labour Party says is "hugely embarrassing".

The decision came after a study to test its capacity to become a major social housing landlord.

Prime Minister John Key confirmed earlier plans to go through the transfer in January. The plan is to transfer more of the responsibility for housing low-income and vulnerable tenants by selling a portion of housing stock to community providers such as churches, iwi and non-government organisations.

But Major Campbell Roberts, of the Salvation Army, says the church organisation does not believe "the lives of tenants would be sufficiently improved by such a transfer".

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11421462

This is from someone who was involved in repairing state housing stock…his comments give balance as we need to recognise how short-sighted it is to let maintenance slip to such an extent.  

“I am very pleased for the Sallies that they have seen the offer for what it is. All they would be getting for their Hard Earned would be a bunch of old, out dated wooden houses, in very poor condition from a maintenance point of view, which would cost telephone numbers to restore to even a basic minimum living standard. It only takes a short drive through any State Housing area to see the numbers of houses in serious need of repainting. What they are like inside is anybody’s guess.

I worked for a couple of clowns some years ago, ostensibly refurbishing elderly houses. Everything was done to a minimum standard. Sure, in some cases new baths were installed. But in other areas it was a different story. In the kitchens I had to replace drawer runners that with years of usage had become hopelessly worn out. Not only was that, but the bottoms of the drawers themselves completely worn out and for the best possible result, the drawer would have needed to be machined and a new runner fixed to restore it to its correct standard. That just didn’t happen.

In the lounges and bedrooms the damage to the wall linings was a revelation. In one bedroom I repaired 17 small holes in the walls. In some cases the damage required a cut out in the lining and insertion of a patch and replastering, a slow, time consuming, job. Many of those houses were approaching sixty years of age and long past their useful use by dates. All were built mainly of OB Rimu (Ordinary Building) a timber very prone to borer attack. The supposition promulgated by Estate Agents that by buying a State House you would be getting a SOLID home is a complete fable. What you in fact get is a heap of rubbish well past its ‘use by’ date!

What the Government has done, is to have surveyed the entire scene and decided the levels of deferred maintenance represent a cost, that as the nation’s biggest housing provider, is a cost it is not prepared to envisage, hoping instead to flick those liabilities to some other poor mug, who due to greed and ignorance would be prepared to add utter liabilities to their rental portfolios. I doubt very much if any of the houses I worked on were scheduled for repainting.

It is an unwritten rule in this country that any timber house must enjoy a five year painting cycle for maximum preservation of the asset.

Not only that but repainting of the interiors should be on a ten year painting cycle. It goes without saying that the range of interior damage I witnessed would need to be addressed during that stage. Only then could those houses be considered to be maintained to a reasonable standard. A feature of weatherboards which clad most of the houses is that when paint perishes with age the effect of the sun is to dry out the timber and cause hairline cracks in the surface. Which even if painted caused the paint to fracture along the cracks as the timber proceeds to expand and contract with the normal action of the weather, causing accelerated paint breakdown.

The kitchens, which can be considered the action centre of every house, were modern sixty years ago, but hopelessly out-dated in this day and age. As a minimum every house should have been fitted with a modern kitchen doing away with the hopeless cupboards, pushed hard up to the eight foot high ceilings, which saw the top shelves, in most instances, never used. With that they would have been a slightly more saleable proposition and drawing possible purchaser’s attention away from the other defects, outlined here". Comments end.

Bill English was a flop as leader of the National Party, and it would appear that the same title can be used in regard to his effort as Finance Minister...but he is ideal for John Key, one because he never argues with the boss and secondly he never lets the truth spoil his behaviour.

Have you had a chain letter from William Young?

This strange message was sent to me by one William Young, he sends me lots of junk mail mainly about how bad Muslim’s are and how wonderful Israel is, to him Israel can and has never done anything wrong. Whereas Muslims do everything wrong. 

Here is what he said in his email to me, and I quote:

“You didn’t think Obama was a Muslim you will after reading this !

What would happen to the funding of the scheme if everyone became Muslims?

The word "Dhimmitude" is found in the new health care bill; so what does it mean? Thought this was interesting and worth passing on. Obama used it in the health care bill. Now isn't this interesting? It is also included in the health care law. Dhimmitude -- I had never heard the word until now. I typed it into Google and started reading. Pretty interesting. It's on page 107 of the healthcare bill. I looked this up on Google and yep, it exists. It is a REAL word. Dhimmitude is the Muslim system of controlling non-Muslim populations conquered through jihad (Holy War). Specifically, it is the TAXING of non-Muslims in exchange for tolerating their presence AND as a coercive means of converting conquered remnants to Islam. ObamaCare allows the establishment of Dhimmitude and Sharia Muslim diktat in the United States . Muslims are specifically exempted from the government mandate to purchase insurance, and also from the penalty tax for being uninsured. Islam considers insurance to be "gambling", "risk-taking", and "usury" and is thus banned. Muslims are specifically granted exemption based on this. How convenient. So I, as a Christian, will have crippling IRS liens placed against all of my assets, including real estate, cattle, and even accounts receivable, and will face hard prison time because I refuse to buy insurance or pay the penalty tax. Meanwhile, Louis Farrakhan (the Muslim) will have no such penalty and will have 100% of his health insurance needs paid for by the de facto government insurance.Non-Muslims will be paying a tax to subsidize Muslims. This is Dhimmitude. I recommend sending this on to your contacts.  All American citizens need to know about it !! Keep this going. Every non-Muslim in the United States of America needs to know about it 2. I checked out William Young’s email by going to: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/may/30/chain-email/dhimmitude-page-107-health-care-law-exempts-muslim/  Here is what it said… It proves how wrong Williams Chain letter was…it’s almost as if there are whole teams of people paid to misinform, lie, bullshit on behalf of religious nutcases and supporters of Zionist Israel

Says the word "Dhimmitude" is on page 107 of the health care law and means "Muslims are specifically exempted from the government mandate to purchase insurance."

— Chain email on Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 in a chain email

'Dhimmitude' on page 107 of the health care law exempts Muslims, claims chain email

By Angie Drobnic Holan on Thursday, May 30th, 2013 at 5:40 p.m.

Have you ever heard of "Dhimmitude"? A chain email claims "dhimmitude" is on page 107 of the health care law, and it means Muslims will be exempt from the health care law.

We don’t want to keep you in suspense, so we’ll tell it to you straight: The word "dhimmitude" is not in the health care law.

We know this because of our previous reporting on the law, and also because we did a full-text search on both the main law (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) and a companion law (the Health Care and Reconciliation Act). It’s not in either one.

What is "Dhimmitude"? Well, here’s what the email claims:

Dhimmitude -- I had never heard the word until now. I typed it into Google and started reading. Pretty interesting. It's on page 107 of the health care bill. I looked this up on Google and yep, it exists. It is a REAL word.

Dhimmitude is the Muslim system of controlling non-Muslim populations conquered through jihad (Holy War). Specifically, it is the TAXING of non-Muslims in exchange for tolerating their presence AND as a coercive means of converting conquered remnants to Islam.

ObamaCare allows the establishment of Dhimmitude and Sharia Muslim diktat in the United States. Muslims are specifically exempted from the government mandate to purchase insurance, and also from the penalty tax for being uninsured. Islam considers insurance to be ‘gambling,’ ‘risk-taking,’ and ‘usury’ and is thus banned. Muslims are specifically granted exemption based on this.

How convenient. So I, as a Christian, will have crippling IRS liens placed against all of my assets, including real estate, cattle, and even accounts receivable, and will face hard prison time because I refuse to buy insurance or pay the penalty tax. Meanwhile, Louis Farrakhan will have no such penalty and will have 100% of his health insurance needs paid for by the de facto government insurance. Non-Muslims will be paying a tax to subsidize Muslims. This is Dhimmitude.

I recommend sending this on to your contacts. American citizens need to know about it.

We turned to a reputable reference book, The Oxford Dictionary of Islam. It does not contain the word "Dhimmitude," but it does include the word "dhimmi."

The dictionary says that dhimmi is a historical term used to describe a "non-Muslim under protection of Muslim law," which could include Jews, Christians or Hindus. Adult male dhimmis were required to pay taxes and follow regulations on dress, occupation and residence. In return, dhimmis received "security of life and property, defense against enemies, communal self-government, and freedom of religion practice." The dictionary notes that dhimmi status has lost relevance in the present day because of the rise of nation-states and modern legal codes.

Some call "‘dhimmitude" the condition of non-Muslims being subject to Muslim rule, but the word seems to be a recent coinage of academics and commentators.

We won’t dwell at length on the concept of dhimmis or of dhimmitude, since neither word is part of the health care law.

The email goes on to claim that the health law specifically exempts Muslims. But that’s not the case either.

The health care law has a general exception for religious conscience (see page 128). But it does not mention any particular religion, denomination or sect. During the debate over the law’s creation, the people most often mentioned as wanting an exemption were adherents of Christian Science, a faith that prefers prayer to conventional medical treatment.

Our fellow fact-checkers over at Factcheck.org dug even deeper into the question of religious exemptions. They looked at religious groups that have filed for religious conscience objections over Social Security’s payroll taxes; the health care law defines the criteria for religious conscience exemptions in a similar way. Using a Freedom of Information Act request, Factcheck.org found in 2010 that no Muslim groups have requested religious conscience exemptions for payroll taxes.

Moreover, Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations told Factcheck.org that he had never heard of Muslims having religious objections to health insurance. "I have health insurance. We give health insurance to our employees. Every Muslim group I know of does the same thing," he said.

Finally, we’ll note that the email claims Christians who don’t want insurance will face "crippling IRS liens" or "face hard prison time." This is also plain wrong. Members of Congress did not want the penalties for going without insurance to be too strict, so the law specifically states that people who fail to pay the penalty "shall not not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty" nor may government officials "file notice of lien with respect to any property" (page 131).

In fact, this email is wrong on just about everything: The word "dhimmitude" is not in the law. Muslims are not specifically exempted. And if anyone is exempted, it’s a small number of Christian groups.

For promoting absurd notions and wild fabrication, we have three words: Pants on Fire!

If you have recieved any emails from William Young I'd be most interested to hear your views...

Teina Pora...a miscarriage of justice...a police stuff up.

The Pora Case…a miscarriage of justice…or an indicator of police stupidity…you decide.

Is this but yet another example of a police operational stuff up and evidence of the police’s inability to ever admit to its obvious blunders and official cover-ups? Is because our police and the many legal people, lawyers etc., which are employed by them, are simply incompetent, poorly trained, poorly supervised and organised?

For the habit of jailing innocent people, falsifying evidence and creating false confessions appears to now be what could only be called an epidemic sized national problem.

This from a reader;

“Over the years I have been astounded at the ham-fisted approach of the police. Arthur Allen Thomas was most likely the best example. What a come down for them when they had to admit to planting the evidence!

David Bain was another. Permission for the family to raze the house was a neat way out of destroying any evidence.

Scott Watson: where the police flatly denied, the Launch-master’s evidence about a two masted boat with a blue stripe in the court.  My view is that guy would know just what he was talking about. Two masts are two masts. Scott’s boat which also had a blue stripe was single mast. Was this another example of how easily they can get out of their depth?

John Barlow: Two trials, two hung Juries. “Keep on trying him boys until we get the verdict we want?” You will note his wife stuck by him through thick and thin. If he was guilty would that have been the case? There was the case where they trumped up charge of rape against David Dougherty only to find three years later the DNA matched someone else Maybe that was an extenuating circumstance. How long had DNA evidence been available?

The ‘Tahoe’ Raid: That went off half-cocked, when they found the Terrorism Legislation was faulty, perhaps not a Police fault but still a bad look”.

My reader was kind enough to leave out a few other cases:

The Kim Dotcom over kill and illegal operation has been well documented and now the absolute shambles of the Teina Pora and Malcolm Rewa relating to the Susan Burnett rape and murder cases…

There was the shocking police behaviour when they closed the ‘Roast Busters’ case because the son of a police officer was involved in the illegal sexual behaviour with under-aged females in Auckland, go to the reference below for more shocking details.

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=918672081160600879#editor/target=post;postID=1923330593095758827;onPublishedMenu=posts;onClosedMenu=posts;postNum=11;src=postname

Louise Nicholas:

Then there was the famous or infamous events surrounding the multiple mass rape [s] of Louise Nicholas by top police officers:

  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Nicholas

Returning to the latest revelations regard police behaviour and low quality investigation skills that revolve around the questioning and confession of Teina Pora gained by police investigative officers. Let’s take a closer look at the Time line relating to this case:

Teina Pora timeline

1992, March 23: Susan Burdett raped and murdered in her home in south Auckland.

1993, March 23: Teina Pora charged with burglary, sexual violation and murder.

1994, June: Pora convicted as a party to the rape and murder on the basis of confessions he made…Sentenced to life in prison.

1996, May: Rewa arrested after attacking a young woman in the inner Auckland suburb of Remuera, DNA from Rewa's father found to match semen from Burdett crime scene.

1998: Rewa eventually convicted of the rape of 27 women, including Ms Burdett but two juries fail to reach a verdict on murder.

1998, May 30: In 1998 Rewa was convicted on multiple sex charges dating back to 1987 and sentenced to preventive detention with a minimum non-parole period of 22 years. He was convicted of the rape of Ms Burdett the following year.

1999: Court of Appeal quashed Pora's convictions as a result of the DNA evidence implicating Rewa and evidence that Rewa acted alone.

2000, June: Pora was again convicted at his retrial, based on his confessions and witnesses, some of whom it later emerged were paid. His appeal to the Court of Appeal was dismissed.

2009, September: Private investigator and former police detective Tim McKinnel visits Pora in prison and is given permission to make inquiries on Pora's behalf.

2011, September: Pora team file notice of application for the Royal Prerogative of Mercy but two years later are granted an appeal to the Privy Council.

2012, May: Police's criminal profiling expert goes public in Herald with view Pora not involved; Pora's team sue police claiming it is unlawfully withholding evidence, Ms Burdett's brother says Pora is innocent.

2013, February: It is revealed police paid some prosecution witnesses.

2013, August: The Police Association call for an independent inquiry into Pora's convictions.

2014, April: Pora granted parole at his 13th appearance before the board and after spending 21 years in jail.

2014, November: Five-member Privy Council panel hears appeal.

2015, March 3: Privy Council quash convictions.

Serial rapist Malcolm Rewa:

Legal experts say Rewa could stand trial for the murder of Susan Burdett for a "very rare" third time, After 22 years in custody, the Privy Council yesterday upheld Teina Pora's appeal and quashed his convictions for the 1992 rape and murder of Ms Burdett.

The move has opened the possibilities for a retrial of Rewa. In 1996, DNA from semen at the scene linked the attack to Rewa, a serial rapist with a modus operandi of offending alone.

Here are some other references where you can learn more about the case:

• Justice after 21 years in jail: Teina Pora 'set up for new life'
• How the Herald broke the story of Pora's innocence in 2012
• Expert says Pora confessions can't be relied on
• Police failed to check rapist Malcolm Rewa's alibi

Dean of the University of Canterbury's School of Law, Associate Professor Chris Gallavin, said there was "a good chance" that the Attorney-General, on advice of the Solicitor-General, could push for a fresh Rewa murder trial.

"They will be taking a very serious and hard look at the question of the culpability of murder for Rewa. I'd like to think they would've examined this already in some detail," he said.

"What is clear from the Privy Council's opinion is that they have recognised some striking similarities, including the DNA that places him at the scene, and the signature, or trademark, of Rewa offences and the death of Ms Burdett."

Given that the two previous juries were hung on the murder charges, it meant that new evidence would not have to be brought by the Crown.

"Hung juries are different to an acquittal, and you can just start again," he said.

But he suspected Rewa's defence counsel might challenge the move for a third trial, given the length of time that has lapsed.

Dr Gallavin said it was "very rare" to be tried three times on the one charge.

Susan Burdett was brutally raped and murdered in her south Auckland home in 1992. Photo / Supplied

A spokeswoman for the Crown Law Office today said it was "far too early" to say whether Rewa would face a third trial.

"We are reviewing the decision in consultation with the police and family members of the victim as to the issue of a retrial. That's all we can say at this time."

Private investigator Tim McKinnel told Radio New Zealand that he believed a retrial for Rewa was a possible outcome from the Privy Council's decision.

He hinted that there was more to be told about Mr Pora's case that would come out in due time.

"There are a lot of things we want to say in time about this case ... but we really need to be careful at the moment as we take the next step."

Pora in line for $2m compo

Mr Pora could be in line for compensation of around $2 million after his convictions for the rape and murder of Susan Burdett were quashed.

Mr Pora, 39, is today a free man after serving 21 years in prison for a crime the Privy Council found he was wrongly convicted of.

Lord Kerr said while delivering the decision that evidence from two medical experts that Mr Pora suffered from a form of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder - and in their opinion that could explain why he made what is now believed to be false confessions - was a big factor in the outcome.

The board will receive submissions on whether a retrial should be held over the

next four weeks.

Stuart Grieve QC - who was commissioned by the Government to assess David Dougherty's eligibility for compensation after his acquittal in 1997 - said today that Mr Pora could be in line for around $2 million in compensation.

If a retrial is not ordered, or if Mr Pora was acquitted at a retrial, he would be eligible to apply for compensation.

Cabinet guidelines specify around $100,000 for every year spent in custody.

"He's had what a lot of people would say is the best part of his life taken from him," Mr Grieve said.

"He was only 17 when all this happened... he's missed out on an awful lot."

Mr Grieve said other factors such as loss of earnings while in prison could push the figure higher while a person's actions before imprisonment could reduce the final compensation figure.

However, compensation would only be granted if Mr Pora's case made it through "significant hurdles", Mr Grieve said.

"Assume for a moment there is no order for retrial, then Mr Pora crosses that hurdle.

"The next hurdle then is the Queen's Counsel... has to be satisfied that the claimant is innocent on the balance of probabilities."

Mr Grieve said he couldn't predict how long the process could take, but said David Bain's five-year bid for compo was a bad example.

"Certainly compensation on its own after acquittal has taken some time [in Mr Bain's case], that's for sure.

"If there was no order for retrial [of Mr Pora] then I imagine the process could begin relatively quickly."

Mr Bain is seeking compensation for more than a decade he spent in jail after being convicted of the murders of his family in 1994. Advocate Joe Karam told NZME. News Service the process people were forced to go through in a bid for compensation was "absurdly unjust". He said Mr Pora's successful appeal showed New Zealand's criminal justice system needed an overhaul.

"I think we need a public royal commission of inquiry into the criminal justice system in New Zealand so that we don't have these cases happening."

He said a retrial of Mr Pora would be "ridiculous from so many points of view".

Mr Bain was found not guilty at a retrial in 2009. If he is successful in his compensation bid, it is estimated that he could receive a multi-million dollar pay-out.

In 2001, the Government awarded David Dougherty $868,728 in compensation for the three-and-a-half years he spent in jail after being wrongly convicted of abducting and raping an 11-year-old girl.

Mr Grieve said since the compensation was made to Mr Dougherty the Cabinet guidelines had specified $100,000 per annum.

To wind up this blog, it would be safe to say that when the police stuff up many people are forced to pay a price for that stuff up. Many people simply can’t replace the lost years, but what we can do is to put in place processes and procedures that will reduce the chances of massive mistakes being made. In the case of Mr Pora it was only the relentless pursuit of a police officer now an ordinary citizen who was convinced that Pora was innocent and was being railroaded into a confession. He and others stood by Pora, and we should thank God they did. We of course don’t know how many innocent people have been railroaded into doubtful confessions, refused genuine legal presentations, told lies to or misled in various ways. We would like to think that we can trust our police men and women to do the right thing. And the right thing is not to cover-up police shady behaviour, not to pretend that all is well went it isn’t, the police need to firstly ‘know the law’ secondly obey the law, and speak out when they know the law is being broken of ignored. If they had of done that then many, yes many individuals would have moved down a different path.

If I was a policeman and played some part in steam-rolling the Teina Pora case I would seriously consider departing the policing scene. Having a backbone and some ‘guts’ to speak up could have seen a different outcome in both the Tahoe Raid episode and the Kim Dotcom attack by the boys in blue dressed up like soldiers pretending they were in Iraq or Afghanistan or New York or even Israel and in all the other cases in this blog.

Let’s hope for better days, better behaviour and a little bit of community heart and a little less unenlightened and shameful behaviour for one that leads to clear and lasting hope for those who want to have faith in our very politically controlled justice system.