Sunday 17th May 2009: Q+A’s panel this week – Paul Holmes, Therese Arseneau, Business Columnist Fran O’Sullivan and union leader & former Cabinet minister Laila Harre.

The panel discussions have been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning’s Q+A can be seen on tvnz.co.nz at,
http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news

PANEL DISCUSSIONS

Response to SIMON POWER interview

PAUL So what did our panel think of the stuff from Justice Minister Simon Power. Political Scientist Therese Arseneau, Fran O'Sullivan and Laila Harre with us. First of all let's look at what he's talking about with the juries, here's what he said in this respect.

Simon Power: 'I'm very keen to see that threshold raised. (To what?) Oh well I think three years would be appropriate, you would see a savings on jury trials about a thousand a year along with a couple of other smaller changes we could make in that area.'

So what he's saying is no jury trial unless you're up for three years in gaol or more. What do you make of that Fran? Radical stuff.

FRAN O'SULLIVAN – Business Commentator
Reasonably radical stuff except he did put it in the context of what was happening internationally, big shift, needs to be debated, clearly he's flying a bit of a kite here today, it's not confirmed policy yet, but I think the whole comments he made about lawyers gaming the system using perhaps the trial system to drag out trials further, I think that’s a very interesting thing, particularly I'd be interested also in how many people become further offenders in that time while they're waiting for trials.

PAUL Exactly, I've no doubt legal aid lawyers would do it, and of course it's to their advantage to do so do you think?

LAILA HARRE – Union Leader
Well I think that what we saw today was somebody taking a pretty objective and considered approach to the criminal justice reform, and that’s a good thing because there's usually far too much emotion vested in this and most of that emotion will be coming from lawyers over the next week, it's probably a pretty good distraction too from the inevitable continuing fallout of the Rankin debacle I would imagine too.

PAUL Wow. Exactly so. But of course the notion of juries is a very British thing isn't it, I mean it's not written on stone from God that you should have a jury, I mean they operate very well right through Europe with judge panels don’t they?

THERESE ARSENEAU – Political Analyst
Well it goes back to the Magna Carta, so it is quite a rich history of right to be tried by your peers, but we also have a basic right to a quick and speedy trial and in a sense you’ve got two rights perhaps in conflict here, and I agree with Fran that my understanding is that it's the pre trial battles that eat up so much of the time, so the fact that the Minister is also going to look at what lawyers do before the trial I think is really important too.

PAUL There's also the other end of this too, not just the person who is facing the charges, but the person who's been a victim has a right to see some justice occur to the person who perpetrated the crime I spose. Let's just have a look again – do we have what Mr Powers said about lawyers stringing things up – no we don’t have that – but there will certainly be some discussion from that. Do you think they string it out?

FRAN Yes I do, and I would encourage Simon Power to look also at the civil system, I've been on the back myself of a major defamation writ years ago for about eight million bucks. Every year without fail the protagonist would come up with a whole pile of interrogatory questions just before Christmas, the thing was never taken to trial, it was never prosecuted, it was a war of attrition on costs, ultimately they withdrew six years later and I think all round the system there needs to be this presumption of getting things done speedily.

PAUL And that’s what he's trying to talk about isn't he, trying to reduce a thousand jury trials a year. The other matter of course was a conviction if you don’t turn up, if you’ve entered a plea you're sposed to turn up at a certain day, the victim expects you to do so, you don’t turn up you're gonna get convicted – bit draconian?

LAILA Well I would have thought that will be the most controversial of these from a public policy point of view because there will be all sorts of reasons why people don’t get to trials, and there will be lots of opportunity for appeal and contest over the entering of these convictions. He's floated it as an idea but clearly they’ve got not clear policy around this issue yet.

THERESE I think the devil will be in the detail as well. He's floated the ideas, I think there's a lot of blanks to fill in, for example how are you going to enforce, who's going to judge the lawyers' behaviour and lots of things, for example the three years, the three years the right cut off point or would two years be more likely because the right to a jury trial tends to be most important when you're talking about incarceration.

PAUL Of course there's also question these days about the quality of juries isn't there, I mean some of the busy people in the community who perhaps are able to make judgements of detail decline to go on juries, but anyway I spose one reason people don’t turn up in court is they prefer to sit outside having a glass of wine.

LAILA Oh well that certainly happened this week didn’t it?

THERESE He said it wasn’t a problem getting jury people to come in the interview at least.

PAUL But the debate's been about the quality of jurors hasn’t it, I mean I do worry sometimes when you read the details of big cases, such as the big case in Christchurch, how a jury can cope for weeks and weeks with that kind of…

LAILA You know I'd hope this examination of the gaming issue by lawyers will also look at the institutional way that lawyers work in the legal aid system, there have long been suggestions that a public defender's office could be established that would group lawyers together in a specialty providing that kind of defence to people instead of the fee for service approach we have now to legal aid, which does provide an incentive for lawyers to clip the ticket and also overloads legal aid lawyers.

PAUL I fail to see how grouping lawyers together in a room would benefit.

LAILA Well I think it might turn out to be a cheaper and more efficient way of providing people with a good criminal defence.

PAUL Do we appreciate Simon Power's concerns about the difficulties of gun control? Basically the kind of person like Molenaar who's got 18 guns ain't gonna go and get a license for them is he? The sawn off shotgun will not come out from under the bed and be presented down at the Police Station, they're right.

LAILA Well but you begin to change the culture around guns and when you know in Australia when they had the massacre in Port Arthur, Howard took this issue to the people, required the registration of firearms, bought back a third of Australian firearms.

PAUL Bought them.

LAILA And as a result there has been a huge reduction in firearm theft and in the illegal sort of transfer and so on of firearms over this period.

THERESE Well the trick is putting money into enforcement then isn't it? From the Canadian experience which did move towards a gun registry it is about enforcement, but let's talk about how it has worked. Police Officers in Canada consult that registry at least 65 hundred times a day, because before they go into a domestic dispute they want to know if there are guns in the house. And the other way it's really worked is it's really about public education and the fact that the gun owners realise that the gun is their responsibility. Most of the guns that get into trouble are through negligence, they get into the wrong hands, they're stolen, and the person who owns the gun bears some of the responsibility, so they look after the gun better.

PAUL But fundamentally how do you know through a wall whether there's a gun there or not no matter what kind of registry you’ve got?

FRAN Well I think one of the things that really did scare me was the actual trade on Trade Me of such things, and I think on that you would think the owners of that site might have a little bit of responsibility to actually close that down without waiting for the government to actually say so. That’s a fairly pernicious way of dealing with things.

PAUL And they are very responsible from that point of view, Trade Me, as I've found with my own experience. Booze – Mr Espiner was appalled at the crowd he saw outside the all night pub at seven o'clock in the morning, Mr Power himself was upset by what he saw at eight o'clock, I have to say it was the Crusaders Blues last night so it was a bit of residual of that I spose. But anyway booze and hours of licensing seems to be his target.

FRAN Yes it does, and I guess there's some force to what he's saying there, but I think there's a bit of a danger when it goes too far like removing off licenses in your own areas, that sort of thing, people might actually not like to have to go to a booze barn or a big major liquor outlet to acquire a decent bottle of wine for a Sunday dinner and stuff like this, so I think we do need to look at it. The thing that actually struck me though was I'd forgotten how much excise tax that the government was pulling from liquor and I thought well goodness if they double that they can give us our tax cuts back, so you know just in terms of you know shifting the tax base, ramp it up.

THERESE It's another pendulum, it used to be our laws were too tight, the feeling is that they’ve become too liberal and it might be you know a good time to look at whether we've got things like where the licenses are, how late they are open, and again the excise tax. I think the Law Commission makes a pretty good argument about that.

PAUL And as for that bar you should have seen the 4.30 in the morning when I used to come to work.

*****

Response to ANDREW FERRIER interview

PAUL Some things from the Andrew Ferrier Laila, the Australian banks he thinks they're doing very well by us.

LAILA Not quite as sanguine on my part I have to say after this week with Westpac cooperating in the redundancies at Lane Walker Rudkin, with news about the milking of the margins between the cash rate and the interest rates by the Aussie banks, all these banks backed now by government guarantees, reneging on the promise they made at the Job Summit to develop an equity fund with the government to help bail out New Zealand companies that had a future, I don’t think they're doing nearly enough to help New Zealand through this recession.

PAUL Quick word from you Frances are the trading banks milking us?

FRAN I think actually when you compare them line ball by line ball with what's happening in Australia there is a bit of a question about whether they could get their margins down a bit further here. Re the equity bank there's a bit of kind of blame shifting between government and also between the banks on what was happening there, but I think you know they could be doing more frankly given they’ve got a guarantee.

PAUL What did you make of Andrew Ferrier as one of your countrymen?

THERESE Well I thought it was interesting that he said that when you asked him how he will be judged and I think when you look at the importance of Fonterra to our economy I was pleased to hear him say that he sets pretty high goals for himself in terms of upping the impact and the importance of Fonterra for us

PAUL How did he survive Sanlu do you think? I think he has a fundamentally decent aspect, honest, yeah?

LAILA We're not psychologists Paul.

PAUL I beg your pardon?

LAILA We're not psychologists.

PAUL You are so, you probably have a degree in it.

THERESE It would be interesting to hear what lessons can be learned from the experience.

PAUL Yes. Very good. Fran, is Sanlu behind them in China, did you get that impression?

FRAN Yes, I think really what was happening there was a public smoothing over, both sides want to put this behind them because of course the Chinese government doesn’t want any more focus on its own internal dairy industry which you know the major companies also had a bit wipe out from melamine contamination, and the consumers don’t trust dairies so they’ve got a big rebuilding exercise. So it's in everybody's interests, all the backsides over the wire have all come together and it's let's put this behind us and move forward.

PAUL And isn't it amazing the company that was involved with Sanlu is now the company that the Chinese are coming too in their flight to quality.

Right the week ahead, what are we expecting in the week ahead in politics, Therese.

THERESE Well I think people will be taking a breath and catch up after this week, it's been an incredibly busy week politically, the House is in recess but I think now we're gearing up for the big budget, the first budget from a new government is something we always anticipate greatly and given the present economic situation I think we're actually a bit fearful of what's going to come in this budget

PAUL This budget that we're anticipating if it's tough, if it's a black budget and it's hard to see how it won't be, will the country nevertheless understand why it has to be?

LAILA Well I think the deferral of taxcuts is going to be applauded by most people particularly given that they were going up there not down there. What the government will need to explain in this budget though is how it is going to be improving the job situation for New Zealanders. I mean we agreed at the beginning of this programme that the honeymoon is over, I think the focus is going to come hard and fast now on growing unemployment and if this government hasn’t got something real to say about job creation and job replacement through this budget then I think they’ll get marked down and rightly so by New Zealanders.

PAUL Quick word about the coming budget Fran.

FRAN Yes I think Laila's got a point, I mean fundamentally jobs are an issue, the government put it right up fair and square at the beginning of the year as the major issue for them, they’ve got to deliver on it and they haven't as far as they could.

THERESE Yeah, and it's about leadership, it's the ultimate test of leadership, doing what they need to do to help the economy to help people in terms of their jobs and then selling it, bring the public with them, explain why they’ve done what they’ve done.

PAUL But I'm sure behind the scenes there'll be some analysis going on at very senior levels in the government this week about why so many little wheels came off the trolley over the past week, and they’ll be having a look at that. And of course there's going to be much discussion I'm sure about what Simon Power was saying on the programme this morning about the involvement of juries and trials, about being convicted if you don’t turn up and the liquor business.

LAILA I suspect he's probably tried to take Christine Rankin off the front page and I suspect he will probably fail in that, I think that is going to be the gift that keeps on giving.

PAUL His own answer helped some more column inches.

FRAN Yes it did – a Cabinet decision.

ENDS

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