Friday 14 December 2012

Chief Hobbit Crusher Collins bites deep.


Has his Tax Lawer has cost us millions? 

Have you ever heard such a blatant and hypocritical statement from a politician and so-called Minister of Justice? [Judith Crusher Collins] She said:

“I feel for Mr. Blain that he has suffered a further unfortunate delay and I wish to reassure him that ultimately these circumstances will not have an impact on his claim”.

I’ve no doubt she was smiling as she released the press release to the main stream media. The facts tell a different story and it’s a political story of a woman who wants to be Prime Minister. She was and still is a tax lawyer turned politician and this is obvious from her weird behaviour regarding David Bain. He has been found not guilty. She simply appears not able to accept that David Bain’s second trial, ordered by the Privy Council, found him not guilty. All she had to do was grant compensation or not. Justice Binnie was hired to recommend which of those options she should take. He recommended compensation. But sadly he offered advice that politically was not what she wanted. Her behaviour matches that of the PM over the Hobbit affair, the GCSB stuff up and the ignoring of the law or changing the law to suit political goals rather than upholding the law.  

A blogger [No Right Turn] said the following:

Justice Binnie gave us that independent, outside review. And the Minister rejected it and ordered a secret, one-sided hatchet-job because she disagreed with the conclusions and/or thought that accepting them might harm her political image with the politically valuable sadist bloc. Whatever you think of the Bain case: that's not justice. Instead, it’s a rejection of some of justice's basic principles: neutrality, independence, and hearing both sides of a dispute.

The reason the government went to an outside judge in the first place to assess David Bain's compensation claim is because we needed a fresh, independent look at the case. Everyone in New Zealand - lawyers included - either has an opinion on it, or like me finds it such a turnoff that they'd rather gouge their own eyes out than trawl through it. In the case of lawyers it’s also a problem because of the incestuous nature of our legal community - everyone knows everyone else, and it would be difficult to find someone of sufficient expertise who wasn't associated somehow with one party or another. So the only credible reviewer would be an outsider, someone with legal expertise who wasn't tainted by the New Zealand debate about the case.
Given our constitutional structure, the involvement of politicians in ultimately deciding compensation for miscarriages of justice is unavoidable. But I expect them to adhere to basic principles of justice in doing so. Collins hasn't. And that is simply disgraceful.

Tony Wallace a Wheelers Corner blog reader wrote:

“I have been reading the publicly released reports into the David Bain compensation application. Without going into the legal arguments, which I am not qualified to judge, I am left with the question of the police's duty of care.

Justice Binnie's report makes excellent reading, well worth the 6 hours it took. It becomes abundantly clear that the police failed to collect evidence from the crime scene that would have established David's factual innocence. This botched investigation removed his ability to defend himself, and now impedes his application to clear his name and seek compensation for wrongful imprisonment.

One aspect of safety is freedom from false and wrongful accusation. Perhaps combining the roles of investigator and prosecutor within the police is wrong and leads to a conflict of interests, where the interests of justice are set aside in the interests of obtaining a prosecution”.

After spending four hundred thousand on seeking a recommendation and then a further couple of hundred thousand more on reviewing that report and even another five hundred thousand on a new report not to prove if compensation should be paid…but one that Judith Collins agrees with.
This proves that giving a Tax lawyer and National part hack like Collins, a bottomless bag of tax payer money to enhance her intelligence level is a very dangerous and costly exercise. Our children and our justice system deserve better, and so does David Bain.  

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