New Zealand financial markets have been dogged for 25 years by Securities Commission Chairman, Colin Patterson’s throw-away line to the Wall Street Journal, characterising his patch as a “Wild West”. He was campaigning for nominee disclosure and new takeover rules.

In fact our laws were at least as effective as those in most of the world, and far more intrusive than in countries like Switzerland. They were not as prescriptive as Australia.

So the Reserve Bank’s tart response to the NZX attempt to panic politicians and curry media favour for its new products was well deserved, and should not have been necessary.

 The weekend’s shameful behaviour of the Police and ambulance service to the Singh family of Manurewa prompted me to have an overdue look at Annette King’s Policing Bill, reported back from the Law and Order Select Committee this week. The Bill too is deplorable. Somewhere in the last 15 years New Zealand policing has lost its way, and instead of trying to correct that, the Bill cements in place the new model.

We needed inspiring words. There are fears of political corruption at the highest levels in the police (Labour’s immunity from prosecution), and headlines run for months revealing bad character and incompetence. The times call for a Bill with an uplifting vision of policing.

The Bill goes in the opposite direction. There is absolutely nothing in it about selfless service, nothing to inspire, nothing to recognise that without public willingness to enforce the law, and to take risks themselves there can never be enough police to protect the helpless and the innocent from thugs. Nothing in it recognises that we ordinary citizens will come to the aid of the Police when they need it, only if we feel there is reciprocity, only if we feel that we ought to, because that is what the Police are willing to do for us.

There is nothing to balance the last two decade’s dreary elevation of personal safety above all other values, nothing to put back on their pedestals “foolish” courage, and initiative, nothing to honour the nobility of self sacrifice.

Of course these values have not been lost among emergency service workers. The problem is that their bosses value other things more.

This is a big topic. I’ll set the scene in this post and conclude later. I’ve always tried not to criticise if I could not propose a constructive solution. That was how I worked as an MP. So we’ll get to my remedy last.

We inherited from Britain a then novel and fantastically successful civilian model of policing. Sir Robert Peel was determined to avoid the evils from using the soldiery to repress crime. Essentially the Police were there to stimulate, and to ensure, citizen self policing of civil behaviour. Constables were neighbours doing full-time what every decent citizen could and would do when necessary.

The “Peelers” were to command public support by moral claim.  The claim was to be founded on their courtesy and respect for even the most humble of citizens, and the law. Like firemen, they gained it, for the obvious devotion to duty, and willingness to sacrifice themselves for others.

Here’s the philosohy, extracted from  the influential 1829 formulation of Sir Robert Peel’s nine principles of policing, by the first (London) Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Richard Mayne.

1  To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.

2 To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

3 To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.

4 …

5 To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion; but  …, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour; and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.

6 ….

7 To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

8 ….

To my astonishment the Cabinet Policy Committee Minute of 19 September 2007 shows a government poised to rejuvenate that model. In approving the drafting instructions for the Policing Bill they record:

6 agreed to recognise that policing is a shared responsibility, which takes place in a networked and cooperative policing environment, by referencing in legislation the fact that:

1. all citizens can help uphold the law, keep the peace, prevent crime and crashes, and bring offenders to justice;

2. local authorities can work with police to support the social well-being of communities….

8 agreed that the following principles of policing in New Zealand should guide the drafting of the Policing Bill:

•1.    reflecting the tradition of policing with public support and cooperation

•2.    …

So how did those instructions emerge in the Bill?

Here are the relevant extracts from  the Policing Bill as reported back by Parliament’s Law and Order Select Committee this week:

8 Principles This Act is based on the following principles:

(a) ….

(b) effective policing relies on a wide measure of public support and confidence:

(c) ….

10 Roles of others acknowledged

(1) It is acknowledged that important and valuable roles in the performance of the functions of the Police are played by:

(a) public agencies or bodies

(b) the holders of certain statutory offices (for example Maori wardens); and

(c) parts of the private sector (e.g. the private security industry).

(2) It is also acknowledged that it is often appropriate, or necessary, for the Police to perform some of its functions in cooperation with individual citizens, or agencies, or bodies other than the Police.

The Bill has turned Sir Robert Peel’s principles on their head. Instead of public involvement being at the heart of policing, the public are in the subordinate role of “support”. We are to have “confidence”.  Instead of steering Police toward partnership with the public, so that support is mutual, it “acknowledges” that Police are part of a state apparatus which is to work together to rule the rest of us.

The grudging “acknowledgement” that sometimes police must work in “cooperation” with individuals is a mockery of the principles which so distinguished British citizenship and policing from the continental models 170 years ago.

If it takes the Police 28 minutes to arm themselves while the victims are telling them the robbers have already gone, lets go back to unarmed Police.

At least then they were willing to be as brave as the victims.

The same brave cops who won’t front without their armour and guns tell people they must not protect themselves, so they face evildoers unarmed and helpless.

And the consolation prize is a promise “there’ll be no stone left unturned to catch them”. Too late, always too late.

Where is the precautionary principle when its needed? As I said yesterday as soon as the news broke, this will turn into a scapegoating exercise at a local level. 

Political and Headquarters heads should roll, not the poor cops who’ve been emasculated by them.

Annette King had good reason to be ashamed of what her DHB model has done to our hospital, even before it became clear that the rebuild would diminish capacity

Given the job frustration of our dedicated health care people, deaths of heart patients waiting for care, children with no paediatric oncologists, and losses of other specialists, this survey of Singapore’s success is another reminder of what is achievable when politicians are focussed on what works, instead of ideology.

The World Health Organization’s most recent full report on global health statistics says we spend 8.9% of our GDP on healthcare, while Singapore spends just 3.7 percent. Their health statistics are better than ours. Their infant mortality (under 5 years) is half ours (3 per thousand live births compared with our 6).

“What’s the reason for Singapore’s success? It’s not government spending. The state, using taxes, funds only about one-fourth of Singapore’s total health costs. Individuals and their employers pay for the rest. In fact, the latest figures show that Singapore’s government spends only $381 (all dollars in this article are U.S.) per capita on health—or one-seventh what the U.S. government spends. 

Singapore’s system requires individuals to take responsibility for their own health, and for much of their own spending on medical care. As the Health Ministry puts it, “Patients are expected to co-pay part of their medical expenses and to pay more when they demand a higher level of service. At the same time, government subsidies help to keep basic healthcare affordable.” 

The reason the system works so well is that it puts decisions in the hands of patients and doctors rather than of government bureaucrats and insurers. The state’s role is to provide a safety net for the few people unable to save enough to pay their way, to subsidize public hospitals, and to fund preventative health campaigns. ”

Of course it would all be easier here if we had their levels of average income, and their sustained growth rate (on the back of no natural resources). We’ve chosen to be poor.

When I first visited Singapore, from recollection their per capita incomes were about half ours. Now they earn an average US$4500 more per capita. They spend in total on health US$ 1,140 per person, about half what we spend.

I’m not surprised to hear on Radio New Zealand that Miller J has found fault in the Abortion Law Supervisory Committee’s performance.

I do not share SPUC’s view that abortion is murder. I think we are lucky that in New Zealand for thirty years we’ve had a muted conflict between those who have that passionate conviction and the rest of us.

Unfortunately that muting has been at the cost of integrity in our law. The 1977 statute was a compromise deal. Those who feel that they are being made complicit in murder through their government, backed off in reliance on the deal. The rest of us almost immediately reneged. And Parliament refused to investigate the minority complaint. It was a sleeping dog MPs were happy to leave sleeping as long as the people being let down by the law remained polite and ineffectual.

Now the cat may be out of the bag. The ASLC’s attitude must deeply worry anyone committed to the rule of law. The Committee regularly tells the Justice and Electoral Select Committee of Parliament that it does not like the law. It pleads with Parliament to change it, and openly admits that it ignores the law to allow abortion as they thought the law should be, not as Parliament had passed it.

Not a good precedent for any future governement that wants to persuade a passionate minority to accept a legislated compromise.

Boris Johnson, the new Lord Mayor of London, wrote as editor of the Spectator:

“It is a sign of the decline of any great civilisation that its people begin to worship strange gods. Now we have a new divinity that commands the adoration of the governing classes, as nannying and multiple breasted as Diana of Ephesus. Her name is Phobia and sacrifices are being made at her altar.”

Those sacrifices are human sacrifices. Mr Singh of Manurewa, who died early this morning, is another sacrifice to that god.

An ambulance arrived within 10 minutes, but was kept away by Police for nearly half an hour while Mr Singh’s co-owner begged for help, told them the coast was clear, and was told not to take his friend to hospital himself.

Boris Johnson was driven into print by fatal shootings near Henley where police officers were not allowed to go to the scene for 64 minutes.

Two women bled to death. No paramedics were allowed in for 87 minutes after the first call to the police. Instead frightened civilians went to help. On mobiles they repeatedly told the police the killer had decamped. Two brave neighbours cradled the dying women in their arms. Emergency services continually assured them over the telephone that help was on the way when it was not. The lie was to cover the shame of not admitting that help was frozen by police rules determined to stamp out risk. They left no room for individual bravery, or initiative or even commonsense.

New Zealand had two similar incidents while I was an MP, but unlike Britain there was no public outcry or even media enquiry. A woman died slowly of gunshot wounds over hours in a Fielding house, begging for help on the phone, long after the killer had left. Police refused to let anyone near the house.

Not long after that a constable died on the front lawn of another Manawatu house, while police stood clear in case the killer was still there waiting to shoot more police. I made myself unpopular by asking the Minister of Police questions. The responsible officer treated them as insults to Police courage. I received messages through friendly officers to back off, or my party would suffer. I also asked why our police were not equipped with transparent Kevlar ballistic shields, to enable them to rescue their colleagues under fire. While few shields will stand up to high velocity rounds, the answers to all the questions were grudging, and incomplete. They were evasive bumf.

When Sir Robert Peel laid down the principles of policing, no one would have questioned the principle that you should not join the Police unless you are prepared to lay down your life for others. Under modern policing others can wait.

Our feminised leadership has laid the Health and Safety in Employment Act over all occupations. Head would roll if a senior officer let his staff go “all macho” in the service of a victim. Front line police are the humiliated servants of the idea that nothing is worth risking life and limb for, that almost every injury must be avoidable. Disagree as a manager? You’ll find that avoidable injury to your staff is self-evident fault which must never happen again.

What has gone wrong? Are our police less courageous? I believe not. But they repeatedly emphasize that valour is for mugs. Whenever some brave citizen stands up to a robbery, or an attempted rape, any media praise is followed by a Police warning that is was nevertheless foolish.

The rights of citizen arrest in the Crimes Act are never explained, and the Police have charged people who try to exercise them.

People in rural areas get the same fatuous advice “don’t aggravate them, don’t try to defend yourself, just call us or try to get away, don’t take the law into your own hands etc, notwithstanding the practical impossibility of police help arriving in time, if the criminals are bent on mayhem.

The Police peddle the falsehood that it is safer to do whatever criminals order. If it was ever true when our criminals were less vicious, it is not true now. As that doctrine has taken hold it has become much safer to be a robber, and of course they’ve multiplied, like germs when the anti-biotic has been replaced by a herbal remedy.

When I was an MP I asked the Police for their evidence to justify their claim. They had none.

I asked the Parliamentary library researchers. They could find nothing to back up the Police assertion. Instead they found studies pointing the other way, including US Bureau of Justice statistics from reviewing 6 million cases. The conclusion was that vigorous defence was far more likely to reduce the risk of loss or injury to victims of violent crime, including rape and robbery. Interestingly the effect was not just a benefit to others (making such crime less rewarding or more costly to would be villains). Vigorous defence reduced the likelihood of serious injury to the primary victim as well.

This is the season for government apologies. But we’ll never get an admission of fault from those who’ve made the rules that effectively order that our many Mr Singhs must die.

From the lamentable evasions of spokespeople on Morning Report this morning we can know that eventually a local staff scapegoat will be pilloried for some fault in applying the rules. There will be senior vows to review them.

But I’m sure there’ll be no undertaking to dump the mindset that has produced those complex and energy sapping rules –  the hostility to “foolish” muscular valour and initiative and the other “macho” virtues so unpopular with our current rulers.

They will sail serenely above all this, looking ‘compassionate’ and ‘tendering their regrets’.

It’s a 1955 Classic VW

Trans-Tasman this week pans Green opposition to mining, with the headline “Miners among the saviours”. The normally penetrating newsletter goes on to say:“…the mining sector is proving how vital a component in the NZ economy it is becoming. The 1000MW Huntly power station, fuelled by coal, is running flat out because of low hydro storatge, and the Govt hopes it will prove the diffference between this year’s winter and the last power shortage in 2002, when there wasn’t enough coal available for Huntly to run at capacity”.

I don’t have recent trial experience as a lawyer. So I’m content to leave the debate over depositions to others. It is just one facet of the bigger scandal – the inexcusable delays in criminal trials.

There is simply no excuse for a system that can not try Sophie Elliott’s red-handed killer and sentence him within the time it takes to (say) diagnose and identify a cancer. There is no doubt that he did it. The only question is his mental state at the time.  Most human systems can cope with questions of equal or greater complexity in much less time. We give ourselves, typically, 12 weeks for the whole nation to decide whether to change governments in an election.

A system focussed on delivering justice to the Elliotts and the killer would have had it all over well before now.

The servants of the justice system sincerely believe each element of the status quo is vital. They fear that any change could nudge them onto the slippery slope of haste, where the innocent are carelessly convicted. They don’t see what the rest of us see, a self-important crowd standing in a swamp doing tai chi with their eyes closed.

The system will not survive unless the rest of us have faith that those servants can be clear eyed. Faith is hard to maintain when they treat as heretics questioners who ask whether a rule is the best way to get at the truth, and worry about cost (to victims as well as financially).

For example, a system focussed on justice would not allow a guilty party costlessly to game rules designed to protect the innocent.It would ensure he and his lawyer knew he’d add substantially to his sentence for any extra insult to victims from his defence tactics, including a not guilty plea, and the provocation or insanity arguments Sophie’s killer is presumably preparing to run.

Today’s NZ Herald reprints a UK Telegraph column deploring the softening of the British stiff upper lip. Drawing on a report of US research into the relative resilience of 9/11 survivors the Telegraph column summarised the message “Not speaking about one’s worries is a reliable way of getting over them; while the culture of Yak Yak Yak has done the opposite…”

Signs of a revisionist revival of a lost tradition? 

There’s never been more than opinion behind the view that letting it all hang out is “natural”, and the stiff upper lip was unhealthy repression.

This needs more study. If there is truly little evidence of benefits in counselling after traumatic events, if recounting the events can just cement memories into victims, then we could save a lot of humiliation (and money) by respecting the instincts of those who do not want to  wallow in the unkindness of fate.

Probably there are many best ways to deal with tragedy, depending on the individual. I suspect that counselling and yak yak yak is best for a small minority, and the rest of us can fairly treat the industry with some suspicion, however well-meaning its practitioners.