I thought I should go to hear Baroness Stern condemning imprisonment, just in case she had more to offer in person than appears to be the case from googling her public utterances. One should be open to argument. But listening to such people is often like sitting through bad church sermons.

This liberals' version of the evangelical revival meeting has a standard pattern.

A limited range of self evident "truths" are recited. They draw spurious support from:

• anecdote (rehabilitations we have known)
• folk myth (deterrence doesn't work)
• straw man arguments ('prison doesn't work' because it doesn't reform) and
• "research" which confuses correlation with causation and omits fundamentals like control groups and realistic counterfactuals. 

The sermon starts with recitation of universal desiderata such as, less crime, more rehabilitation, better parenting, money spent on "intervention" instead of punishment. Then there is the appeal to elite vanity (we who are unlike other men because of our superior compassion and intelligence) followed by identification of the enemy (the rude unwashed, the majority, rednecks). Cliche solutions arelisted but not articulated (much more early 'intervention', fences  at the top of the cliff, instead of…. etc). If they were articulated the preachers could be tasked with explaining what level of personal liberty compromise they'll accept for interventions that co work.

Then there will be some exploration of false alternatives with which to revile opponents (we're too quick with prison for minor infractions, they should have had more chances with 'community sentences. many are not dangerous, they should be left to care for their families) and the sermon finishes with denunciation of the sins among those who do not share the faith.

But I took the Stern address out of my diary when I was reminded of just how personally unpleasant so many of these defenders of the justice establishment can be by a long attack on Garth McVicar. So The Sunday Star Times  saved me from myself.

I like to assume that most New Zealanders campaign from a sincere wish to see a better world, and disagreement is just on how to get there. We should presume that local opponents are largely decent, if misguided. The Sunday Star Times reminds us not to be naive. To the left in the culture wars the key point is to identify the other tribe, to highlight tribal belief markers, and to justify personal dislike of its members.

I know from personal involvement how false are the SST article's attacks on Garth McVicar and the victims who have joined him. And some of the  SST critics quoted in the article have had plenty of invitation to test their theories directly with victims. Unlike the lamented Greg King, they've chosen not to.

I think those hostile to Mr McVicar don't want to risk losing their excuses for personal animosity. They've too much invested to risk letting reality (like the staggering fall in US crime rates) invalidate their faith. Hence my ruminating on the close paralells between left/liberal sanctimony, and religious bigotry. 

I suspect some of  the critics have a personal need to punish.So they must vilify neretics.

Police Minister Anne Tolley's suggested sex offender register must be satisfying for Deborah Coddington.

Whenever tempted to let exasperation at her outweigh respect, I remember the extraordinary courage and time she invested in the 1996 and 2004 editions of the New Zealand Sex Offender and Paedophile Index. She took a pounding for them.

The Sensible Sentencing Trust has picked up where she left off, so they too will watch closely to see if the Tolley reform is useful, or gets watered down by officials.

The better solution is of course more simple. Restore freedom of speech and reinstate the normal operation of reputation mechanisms, aided by the great gift of Google. Just reopen court records. Then we must all live with unrestricted public knowledge of our convictions. Open justice and courts were our heritage. Just give them back.

Twenty years ago my father-in-law organised for all his children and grandchildren to walk the Banks Peninsula Track with him. It was great then, and it is great now.

This time we broke the superstitious rule and our party comprised 13 friends. It attracted no disasters. The one morning of sleety weather was a highlight, not a disappointment because it gave reason to spend more time in the wonderfully quirky huts at Stony Bay  (below)

The farm owners have refined their management. We hardly saw them. The self-service honesty box shops at each night's accomodation worked perfectly, with just the right range of food.

The liesurely four day trip should not stretch the unfit.

The backs and legs which 20 years ago looked forward to the end of carrying tired infants, this time did not even have to carry sleeping gear. For an extra charge the postman takes it from place to place then back from Otanerito Bay (below) to Akaroa on the last day.

Will Obama wake in the morning after a night of deserved jubilation to say "Oh dear – what now"?

I hope for our sakes that he has the wisdom that made Clinton a great president. In 1996 Clinton reached across party lines to adopt Republican criminal justice and welfare reform policies. To the dismay of many on his own side it worked. US crime rates and welfare dependency increases stayed in decline for more than a decade. The crime rate has continued in almost uninterrupted fall ever since.

The West needs to see an ability to disarm the culture warriors on both sides of the US divide.

The adline challenge on my local bus shelter set me off this morning.

My father's generation would have have seen it as a commonsense question. Men he respected, most of the men with whom he served through Africa and Italy, would have answered with a simple yes. More importantly their answer would have expressed their commitment to practical intervention. If my father came across bullying he would intervene, as would most of the returned men he served with overseas. It was part of his self respect that he should risk personal injury remonstrating with bullies of any kind, and if necessary doing his best to restrain physically, whether the apparent victim was a women or a child. And he could expect strangers to join in and help if needed.

That was why the New Zealand of my childhood was without no-go areas, and locked doors were rare. Security guards were unknown. My mother could wander Wellington as a teenage schoolgirl on her own during the war, even after 17000 marines arrived, knowing that almost any adult (including most marines) would step in to protect her from offense, right down to the disrespect of foul language in her presence. Even villains would have joined in bashing any thug who chose to rob defenceless old people.

But I live now, in an era of jobsworth judges and police officers. They  first legitimised official cowardice and have now made it compulsory.  Judges fled from  the core function of deciding who was right and who was wrong in fights. They bravely decided instead that all non-police coercion and 'violence' are equally to be deplored as "taking the law into your own hands" despite the Crimes Act protections for just such natural and essential social action.  The only 'appropriate' 'intervention' is now calling the police, as the agents of the state monopoly on effective coercive action.

So the adline 'Are you man enough to stop violence toward women?' is now a parody of masculinity. Google does not surprise with an indication that the 'challenge' seems to originate with churchmen. We live in the post macho era. Effeminized middle class men are urged to feel guilt and collective determination to stop doing things they do so rarely as to be immaterial. Meanwhile they must continue to abjure the one thing that could restore a reasonable expectation of safety for women (and the old and children) – re-empowering all decent men to do exactly what Sir Robert Peel and the founders of our police force expected of them, to uphold the law and to protect those who cannot protect themselves, whenever and wherever necessary.

In Sir Robert's famous founding principles of policing, the police were to be citizens, employed to do full time only what every citizen should do part time. 

I find myself wishing for a graffiti artist's improvement of the bus shelter adline. It needs the ironic "Yeah right".

When my wife Cathy posted on Facebook a  snap of Sam Judd and me celebrating his first stag, downed with the second centrefire rifle shot of his life, she did not expect the comment thread that  followed. Sam was lambasted for hunting. That quickly gained vegetarian support.  I was not surprised. The 25% of New Zealanders who own or use rifles forget how many fellow citizens now copy their politics from the  US. Without knowing our indigenous tradition of routine firearm availability and use, and aligning themselves with the faux compassion left/liberal side in the culture war that now passes for US political debate, they assume Bubba characteristics for New Zealand gun owners and hunters.

But Sam Judd is an environmentalist. As founder of Sustainable Coastlines he practices what he preaches, a long way from  the path sought by most ambitious law graduates. And after his pithy contribution “Delicious, this pest control” the Facebook thread was left to those who shared his glee in shooting the meat for his forthcoming wedding breakfast.

 My work colleague Jordan Williams had a similar reaction to pictures of his hunting success on Facebook last year.

These young people are part of a resurgence in deer hunting.  James Passmore has written The New Zealand Hunting Rifle recognising their needs – “With this book I hope to equip the new shooter with enough knowledge to recognise a rifle that is a keeper from one that is unsuitable for his needs, while the experienced hunter may learn techniques that extend his abilities. With the experience shared in these pages and some shooting practise, the reader should become confident and knowledgeable about rifles and how they can be used in his style of hunting”.

The book succeeds. I learnt from it things I wish I’d known years ago. After 40 years of hunting and a number of rifles, for me muzzle velocities and ballistics remain eye-glazing. For years I considered myself a poor shot. My first good rifle (a Mannlicher Steyr) was an object of covetous awe from many hunters, but inexplicable misses meant I felt I did not deserve the rifle. I had bought it cheaply from a friend without knowing its high status. Then ten years ago my shooting improved dramatically when I tried a cheap but heavy production line Japanese Howa. The Mannlicher was sold soon after. This book explains why – the Mannlicher was so light it delivered a bruising recoil with each shot. Unconsciously I was flinching with each trigger squeeze. Many trips would have been more productive if I’d had this book 35 years ago.

I only shoot for eating. I want the least risk that anything I shoot at will suffer for longer than 10 seconds, or run away and disappear.  To me, 10 seconds contrasts with the hours of fear and confusion facing stock taken to slaughter houses. The comparison makes hunted meat more humane than supermarket meat. So a rifle and ammunition should be judged by the speed and certainty with which the target ceases to feel anything. No one I know boasts of hunting with under-sized gear. There's no equivalent to the disgraceful  "light tackle" fishing school.

Speed and certainty are James Passmore’s tests (along with beauty). He is not prescriptive or opinionated, but he’ll steer you away from what is unsuitable.

 I’m happy hunting all day whether or not I come home with meat. But it does make a difference to the home reception. Mockery waits for empty hands.  Studying this book should reduce the scope for mockery.

 The book has flaws. With no index you can’t use it as a quick reference consumer guide tocheck on a rifle purchase. It would not have been hard to summarise the conclusions in tables, with ratings on the various characteristics. Instead you have to read it as a narrative.

 The book is a long conversation with a wise man who knows what he is talking about, but you have to let him conduct it at his pace, with his diversions, and just wait for the nuggets. You can hurry him up, for example by going directly to chapters on what to look for in used rifles, or in telescopic sights, and in shooting techniques, but most topics just emerge in the sequence he selects. Best to assume that you will need to read it as a whole, rather than dipping into it as a reference book. And dont bother if you have no existing interest in hunting.

From a book review for that excellent Wellington arts weekly ‘Capital Times’

A pity that all the energy going into looking for symbols and unity does not go into finding ways to get the existing Councils out of the way of people who want to build, replace, create, experiment  and develop.

It could have filled gaps left in the government's timid attack on the  RMA tyranny. For example more would be acheived by making unsuccesful objectors (and Councils that block projects) liable for the losses they cause, and all costs of proceedings, than all the handwringing and tinkering with Council authority.

Still, Sir Geoffrey was asked to think about structural issues. He has. The token community councils and figurehead mayors without rating authority will not be able to protect their people from funding transfers to pet constituencies and causes. So we get a Super City in effect, though with a smaller Council. 

I look forward to reading the detail, though it could be wasted time..

Unless I completely misjudge the republican temper of political Wellington, and the feelings of the rest of the country toward us, a push for our own Lord Mayor will sink the whole project in scorn.

Herald writer John Roughan puts the layman’s case against Simon France J’s stay of the Red Devil prosecutions.
There is also legal logic against what the judge did, hopefully to be tested on appeal.
I can understand the judge’s outrage. I would not have been as charitable as him about the police serving up a late-manufactured purported operations manual entry. From the judge’s account there should be prosecutions for false swearing or some other perjury or serious deceit charge.

But the Judge also notes that the deceptions have no connection to the charges he stayed. They do not taint the evidence. The stay is therefore intended only as a punishment for the Police, it has nothing to do with the merits of the charges against the Red Devils. They win and if they were guilty as charged the rest of us lose because he wants to send a message to the Police.

Exercising leverage by intentionally hurting innocent third parties is the operating strategy of terrorism. It is distinguished by its purpose from the military willingness to injure civilians as “collateral damage”. International conventions and the ICC criminalise the deliberate targeting of non-combatants, but actions against combatants that harm non-combatants unavoidably are legitimate. The test is whether the injury to third parties is deliberate.

Terrorists believe their purposes over-ride all others. They believe their objectives are so pure that the deliberately caused suffering of the innocent is just a necessary price. Their ends justify their means.

Alternatively, to justify the hurt to their victims they impute collective guilt to them as a class (capitalists, citizens of the great Satan, Christians, Jews, night club patrons, Shia – to Sunni and Sunni to Shia).

They turn to terrorism to defeat the safeguards that protect majorities from minority oppression. They can’t persuade voters, or get a privilege from due process.

The Red Devil case judicial approach has many paralells. Judges who trash prosecutions to punish breaches by particular Police officers seem to feel they have insufficient direct power over those they want to control or to punish. Perhaps they believe usual procedures for punishing wrongdoing deliver inadequate deterrent sentences. Perhaps they think the process is too slow or cumbersome or gets insufficient media attention. We do not know because generally they do not explore the alternatives. Justice France does not in this Red Devils case.

Welcome to the law judges, as citizens experience it every day. Citizens are told smugly that they have no excuse for taking remedies into their own hands. Judges do not condone them taking their deterrent vengeance to an organisation that employs the wrongdoer. Wronged individuals may not take out their frustration on the wrongdoers associates or colleagues.

As John Roughan makes plain, staying a prosecution punishes the community. It is conceivable that it may punish the culpable police officers with embarrassment. But does the judge know who is culpable? Who gave the orders? Is the behaviour so widespread that the organisation will instead close ranks behind those who just happen to have been caught.

Perhaps there are mechanisms by which those in charge will pay a price for anything bad which happens on their watch. Terrorists act on the assumption that a government which cannot protect its innocent citizens will lose power, and have to concede. In fact the opposite often happens.

The punishment chosen by this judge is a very long way from the the simple wisdom of an eye for any eye. He has not identified whose eyes have been or will be put out on any side.

Those who pay the highest price for a stay are the next victims of offenders who would have been in custody or deterred by the charges proceeding. Next comes the community’s trust in the law. If the consequence is the emboldening of a gang the outcomes of this application of the terrorist approach could be as dire as the physical harm of “normal” terrorism.

To the extent crime rates generally are affected by any obvious ineffectiveness of the law the decision could have as many victims as a bomb targetting random innocents. The bomber says ” I destroy or kill something or someone valuable to you if you do not behave as I want”. The judge has said much the same to the Police collectively.

For gangs there must be little more encouraging than to get a free pass because the law’s agents are fighting among themselves. The law truly is cutting off its nose to spite its face.

I look forward to reading Justice Simon France's reasons in the Red Devils case for the considering it a good idea to express his view of  Police misconduct by leaving alleged crime unpunished.

I've criticised the policy before, here, and here.

There may be compelling reasons why it should have been applied in this case. The charges may have involved no obvious victims to be outraged by the loss of justice for them.

I hope that the reasoning reflects more than the common arrogance of our law, lawyers and judges toward victims and potential victims of crime. They see the criminal law as their game. In that game the lawyers (including the judges), criminals and the Police win or lose in each round according to whoever best exploits arcane rules. They regard as incidental any right to justice of third parties (the community and victims).  

The costs to others when staying proceedings against alleged offenders who may be guilty should be calculated. They should be weighed against the expected benefit of the "message" sent to the Police by a discharge or stay, in comparison with more targetted disciplines. Conceivably a cost  could be a Police resentment that becomes cynicism and greater disrespect for the law.

The Aussies have won a two year Security Council seat at the UN. Reportedly it took approximately 10 foreign service EFTs 3 years and over A$26m in directly attributable lobbying expenditure. Plus the strategic aid grants and other use of foreign relationship capital needed to buy swing votes from Africa and other countries.

And what will they get? Clearly for those who want the world stage, much more attention while they hold the seat.

But how is that a benefit for a country which is trying to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds. Australia's special relationship with the US is part of a containment policy. Yet Australia is a debtor nation, dependent like us on overseas money to continue spending more than it earns (standard of living). It also depends on continuing Chinese buyers for what it digs out of the ground. And now, unlike a few years ago, there is a world surplus of iron ore and coal and other resources. Ask Solid Energy. So China will not necessarily 'cut off its nose to spite its face' if it interrupts imports from Australia from time to time  to remind them where their bread is buttered. Australia will not want to offend China.

So how could it be good to be on the Security Council now. It may enhance one's value to the US and the idealistic Scandinavians and other western countries that aspire to moral geopolitics. But why get under such a spotlight where one is trying to stay in with, or avoid offending the two parties most likely to spar on the Security Council?

The Australian special relationship with the US responds to fear of 240m potentially militant Islamists immediately to their north, and a China that may not be confined by the idealistic constraints of the Anglo American century,. Instead it might throw its rapidly growing weight around in ways much more familiar to humans, as imperial power nearly always has been. The Chinese experienced the normal order of things at the hands of Europeans for the previous century, then more brutally under the Japanese. Realpolitik is seen in Tibet and of course wherever Chinese interests are aligned with power in Africa and Asia. China could easily arm and finance proxies (Indonesia) to cause trouble for Australia without even directly involving itself.

Apparently we harbour ambitions to occupy a Security Council seat in 2015-2016. Why? We are even more vunerable to a conflict between our beliefs about human rights, and our international rhetoric and our friends interests, on the one side, and on the other, our trade interests and our terrifying inability to muster the political consensus to live within our means. We are vulnerable to even minor twitches and sneezes from those who keep lending us the money to maintain our lifestyles (enviably more comfortable, by the way than most of those in the countries lending to us).

And we do not have a special relationship with a big friend to call on. We told them to stuff off with a unilateral reneging on a treaty. So why on earth would we not prefer to creep around hoping our irritating moralising does not stir anyone into swatting us.  The day when we are no longer hopelessly incapable of deciding to be self-reliant, let alone being self reliant, may be the day to start strutting again on a world stage.

But clearly it is very hard to dump the habit.  Our Minister of Foreign Affairs has been lecturing the world on Syria. With no apparent modesty or even caution about what may replace the current brutal ruler, we are lambasting those who have to pay for mistakes under intense uncertainty about outcomes. We seem to think moral conviction makes up for not having an air force, or a fighting navy or an economy that could pay its way even with allies in armed defence of our interests.

I have to hope he is a mouthpiece for a Foreign Affairs establishment that acquired the lecturing habit a long time ago. Or is this our Security Council election strategy?  Are we going for the votes of countries that always support people and causes embarassing to the big players? If so, how many future Afghanistans will we have to suck up to pacify our traditional friends who may find our new friends unpalatable.

Is there theory behind our ecclesiastical bombast in weakness. Lets hear it, along with the moralising if we must have both.