Author: Martyn Bradbury

If we want real cannabis reform in NZ, it will have to be caused by a huge referendum turn out with numbers so large that not even Labour can ignore it.

The punishment handed out to those who seriously breach our laws is a loss of liberty. For a species as communal as ours, there is no greater punishment. Needing to add suffering to that loss of liberty by portraying prisoners as subhuman isn’t justice, it’s vengeance and until we as a nation are prepared to look in the mirror and ask why we need vengeance over justice, we as a culture can not advance. 

We have become a nation of passive malice, the malignancy of which overshadows all our creations. 

…We should be doing far more than criticising Israel, we should be kicking their embassy out and revoking their work visa status. Israel uses NZ as a safe holiday destination for their soldiers to chill out from all that oppression. We shouldn’t allow them to do that.

…when I look at the way NZ treats prisoners, beneficiaries and the mentally ill, I have zero confidence in any suggestion of state sanctioned euthanasia. 

While Labour desperately work out how to sell the new prison build there to their activist base who are already disenchanted by the National lite Budget (I’ve suggested how Andrew Little should spin the new prison announcement here), we shouldn’t take our eye off the ball of what is happening in Christchurch Men’s Prison….

Our authority worship culture that is so intent on giving the Police any power to bash, chase and kill who ever they like just wouldn’t be acceptable in any other public policy field.