The farce of ACT + Greens offering NZ citizens debt to get out of Australian detention camps

By
Martyn Bradbury
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24
1

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ACT and the Greens want to offer NZ citizens publicly funded Legal Aid to get out of Australian detention camps.

That’s not really much of an offer unless the Legal Aid is actually free. What most NZers don’t know is that Legal Aid is now treated as a loan and if you don’t pay the loan back the penalty rate is a staggering 8%!

The perverse impact of changing the law in 2013 means the working poor can either choose pleading guilty or pleading innocent with the possibility of debt slavery hanging over them so the incentive is to simply plead guilty rather than rack up massive debt.

How is that a justice system? The working poor have to enslave themselves in debt to just have an attempt at justice.  To qualify for Legal Aid to be free would require that you earn less than the minimum wage.

Most NZers have no idea this is the case or that the law has been changed because like the NZ citizens in detention camps, NZers have been conditioned not to care or think about those charged with crimes. So if we are going to support these NZ citizens being detained in Australian detention camps with free legal aid, let’s re-look at the incentives the Government have built into Legal Aid for every other NZer.

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24 COMMENTS

  1. Excellent points. I too had no idea until recently that ‘legal aid’ is not free at all.

    I found out was when a friend was involved in a bitter custody battle and one side kept flouting the court orders. Nothing happened to him apart from being made against to keep to the order, but the other party had to pay for the ‘legal aid’ again and again to keep the court orders that she had already fought and paid for.

    This litigation strategy is a way now for anybody with money and no scruples to screw over other people. It’s happening across the board, including environment court, criminal court and so forth. People are put into debt when they win. The worst is when the state does it for political reasons, aka the Dotcom case.

    In the context of the Detention camps, hard to believe that this is happening in 2015 from Australia to NZ.

    One of the most alarming developments in NZ and overseas is this Kafka style situation of having to prove innocence when the law is supposed to be the other way around. Innocent until proven guilty. And people in power are allowed to lie and cheat with little consequence.

    With the Ports of auckland and Prof Kelsey’s win over the TPP documents, even when you are right and win – you lose because you have had to pay and spend all your time just trying to achieve something which you should have been getting anyway under the law and it supports those in power who are often using state funds to abuse the legal system.

    Everything is wrong now. My fundamental concern above all else, is the death by 1000 cuts of justice and the use of courts as a tool to suck money and energy out people who are right about the law, while those that lose openly flout it, and win by delaying decisions and removing funds from their opponents.

    This is the tobacco industry way of staying in the business of killing people, and then blaming their victims. But the litigation strategy is on the rise in many areas both large (TPP) and small (ports of Auckland, family court).

    The courts is something to be feared because it is not a justice system anymore.

    • Another example of ‘justice’ at work in NZ

      When family carers took their claim for equal pay (with private sector workers doing the same job) to the HRRT, (and won), High Court(and won), the Appeal Court(and , bugger me, won again) the Government set up a Technical Advisory Group for the…

      “Purpose
      The Group’s purpose is to draw on the experience and expertise of members to identify and examine potential ways to resolve the Atkinson & Others v Ministry of Health (payment for family carers) litigation, through informed discussion on a without prejudice basis.”

    • “One of the most alarming developments in NZ and overseas is this Kafka style situation of having to prove innocence when the law is supposed to be the other way around. Innocent until proven guilty.”

      Actually, this is only true in countries that follow the Anglo-Saxon style of law. Much of Europe follows the Roman style in which people have to prove their innocence. I’m not suggesting for one second that the Roman-based system is better, though I would like to see juries replaced by a panel of judges. The law is vastly more complex than it was back before the Norman Conquest when trial by jury was developed, and it’s unreasonable to expect a dozen ordinary people to understand it well enough to bring in an appropriate verdict in every case.

  2. The Greens are losing the plot imo

    …one would expect this from ACT…but now the Greens are working in with ACT?!…after being in with Jonkey Nact over the Red Peak flag to undermine Labour

    Really the heat should be kept on the Australian Government for free legal aid for NZers in detention…after all the ‘undesirable’ NZers in Australia were nurtured and created by Australia and should not be deported…

    we should be suing Australia for making a botch up of their upbringing…not letting Australia off the legal hook ( itself with origins as a convict settlement)

    …a NZ Appeal should be made to the UN for wrongful persecution and detention of people who have been in Australia since children

    • 1000% Chooky,

      Greens are toast and Greenpeace now looks more like the real deal as GP has as you say just lost the plot entirely.

      They used to care about transport, pollution & and using less chemicals.
      But now they are rubbing shoulders with NATZ who use dirty policies on all those issues???

      • The people losing the plot are those who don’t remember the Greens have always worked with ACT, and anyone else, on issues they agree on. Sheesh.

        • yeah well working in with John Key over Red Peak corporate logo flag is NOT a winner! (with Green voters …and potential Green voters)

          …and plain STUPID to thwart Labour .. ( supposedly their coalition partner) which wanted ALL flag options including the existing NZ flag (which most NZers want) on the first referendum to save the cost of a second referendum and give NZers a REAL choice …

          using NZ legal aid is also half baked and stupid ( typical of ACT) to get Australia out of a legal hole of their own making

          1.).. NZ legal aid is not free and

          2.)what the Australians are doing to people who have lived and been brought up in Australia since childhood (virtually Australians)is criminal imo….and should be taken to the UN

          3.) John Key is rolling over to the Australian bully racist tactics…and once again the Greens try to help him out along with Act by providing NZ legal aid which is not free and will come back to bite the victims of Australia

          • When ACT want to do the right thing on rare occasion, the Greens are not so tribal as to refuse to advance their own policy by not working with them. If they had that attitude, they’d never work with Labour either.

            • all very well if the policies are good …but there are numerous times recently when Green policies are not good ( like the one above)and they have worked against their coalition partners

              * arguing “crude racial profiling” by Labour which pointed out that overseas Chinese could be buying up huge amounts of scarce Auckland housing( Greens buying into John Keys framing)

              * arguing for John Key’s Red Peak corporate logo flag and undermining Labour’s attempt to have existing popular NZ flag on first referendum

              * supporting ACT in arguing that New Zealand should be forking out legal aid ( not free) for Australian persecution victims of racism and incarceration..letting Australia and John key off the hook

              • I was only reacting to the complaint that the Greens would work with ACT at all, as though that was something new and automatically bad.

                Labour’s foray into the housing issue *was* crude. The Greens weren’t trying to support Key, but simply didn’t want to defend Labour’s approach, though on the issue itself, there’s no doubt where they stand, which is squarely against the Nats.

                Agree the flag move was a mistake, though it is hyperbole to call red peak Key’s flag.

                I wonder they didn’t know the legal aid had to be paid back, though that would be a mistake in itself.

  3. “The perverse impact of changing the law in 2013 means the working poor can either choose pleading guilty or pleading innocent with the possibility of debt slavery hanging over them so the incentive is to simply plead guilty rather than rack up massive debt.”

    Well that sounds like a win-win for elites. In 2015 NZ the poor (which ideally will be everyone) are either debt-slaves or in prison. In either case you’re obedient to your elite masters, which is what it’s all about.

  4. I’m sure the Greens would make legal aid free again if they were part of a government. The trouble is that at this rate we are never likely to see the Greens as part of a government. The fact that a significant party in New Zealand has never been allowed to be part of a government and is unlikely to be allowed to in the forsellable future due to the actions of all the other major parties (including New Zealand First), permanently disenfranchising a good section of New Zealand society and those that represent its most progressive citizens is a issue in itself.

    • quite frankly the Greens with their silly tactics are turning off many Green supporters and potential Green voters

      …they are seen as a flakey and unreliable with their silly deals and one upmanship manoeuvres and not sticking to core environmental activism issues…they need to look to themselves

      • Every time I see this “Chooky” entity commenting on this site, it’s to rehash the same anti-Greens key messages, over and over again:
        * Greens are working with Key (true on one or two trivial matters like the Red Peak distraction, but generally misleading)
        * Greens are pro-business not pro-workers (despite years of empty pro-worker rhetoric from Labour and NZ First, Greens policies have always been more pro-union in practice)
        * Greens are undermining Labour (Labour’s neoliberal rump are quite capable of doing that without anyone else’s help eg running against Hone in TTT)

        This stinks of divide-and-rule tactics, and I smell a sock puppet. Whether it’s NZ First messaging intended to drive a wedge between Labour and the Greens for their own benefit, or whether its a NatACT attempt to divide their opposition against each other, I hope nobody is falling for it.

        • “and I smell a sock puppet”…well i was thinking that about you actually …the way you defend the indefensible

          …are you a new Blue- Green spinner ?

          …because you sure as hell don’t have your finger on the pulse as to what old Green voters and environmental activists are thinking…or for that matter Labour voters who were considering voting Green

          …time will tell as to how well the Greens do next Election

  7. The great majority of these NZ-born crims have committed acts of violence against the person. Some have racked up 12 months of jail time due to the cumulative total of relatively minor offences (and this group disproportionately focused on by the bleeding-heart media), but these are a minority. Australia cannot be blamed for wanting to get rid of such violent thugs. Witty comments by a number of commentators,including one on this thread, about it once being the case that you had to commit a crime to get into Australia are tiresome (and ignore the fact that actually NZ had been the first choice for prisoner transportation, but ‘savage’ Maoris put paid to that).

    It has been weird seeing Key and Little and other senior politicos going in to bat for ‘our’ criminals. An MP even visiting them on Christmas Island to see if they are being looked after to his satisfaction! I reserve my sympathy for the victims of crime (see, e.g., the post about Tony Veitch’s former partner on this website), not those who commit them.

    • Not true. Many of the claimed crimes were as piffling as shoplifting, and happened literally decades ago. Whatever their crimes, these people have ‘done their time’, and are now entitled to be free citizens. Instead of incarceration in appalling conditions for an indefinite length of time, they should, provided they have been decent citizens since their release from prison, have been offered the opportunity to become Australian citizens, given that most of them have spent most of their lives in Australia, often from a very young age.

    • @ Tom Gardner re – “and ignore the fact that actually NZ had been the first choice for prisoner transportation, but ‘savage’ Maoris put paid to that”

      I doubt whether you are either an Australian or a New Zealander because your knowledge of the early history of both countries is plain wrong…. if not racist and derogatory

      …NZ was NOT set up as a convict colony as was Australia …This is common knowledge

      …The New Zealand Company had as the two categories of first choice “respectful hard-working labourers and cultured men of capital” (‘Colonization and Development in New Zealand between 1769 and 1900: The Seeds of Rangiatea’ by Ian Pool, University of Waikato)…

      The colonisation of New Zealand was ratified by the Treaty of Waitangi…an agreement between the Chiefs and the Crown

      https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=-nmBCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA180&dq=NZ+first+choice+for+convict+settlements?&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAGoVChMIxOzlhrPfyAIV462mCh0cfgmY#v=onepage&q=NZ%20first%20choice%20for%20convict%20settlements%3F&f=false

  8. The Association of Consumers and Taxpayers – ACT. Bring back Rodney!
    Bring Back Don! Bring Back Richard! Bring Back Roger!..

    ACT has become a political JOKE. MBIE spends $800,000 on media-monitoring and not a f-ing squeak out of David Seymour.

    David needs a name change in the new ACT Party – David See-Less. Ask Rodney what ACT stands for David – then resign immediately.

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