Category: Public Media

Source: Radio New Zealand

State Highway 6 and the upper Buller Gorge Road which straddles the West Coast and Tasman regions is closed on Thursday morning because of a large slip.

The slip is blocking the road near the Eight Mile Creek Bridge and includes large downed trees.

The section of State Highway 6, between the intersection with state highways 65 and 69, has been closed since early Thursday morning.

The slip follows recent heavy rain on the West Coast.

Motorists are able to take a detour.

Westbound traffic should go onto SH65, turn right onto SH7 at Springs Junction, then right onto SH69 at Reefton and then going on to return to SH6.

The reverse applies for eastbound traffic.

The Transport Agency advises motorists to consider delaying their journey or using an alternative route.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

University entrance has long been the gold standard result from our schools – but there’s hope that planned changes will improve life for those who want to tread a different path

Just three of every 10 school leavers head to universities, those halls of learning long considered to be the gold standard of education.

But a tradie can earn as much as a policy analyst – and a plumber’s job can’t be done by artificial intelligence. Some studies suggest that the retirement-age pay gap between both paths has closed.

There’s also no rule to say you can’t do both, and having a construction career under your belt is a good way to go into an engineering degree, for example.

Today on The Detail we talk to two experts in the area of education pathways – both welcome the shifting of government funding from fees-free university tuition to vocational education and trades training.

Josh Williams is the principal consultant for the Skills Development Group, and former head of the Industry Training Federation. He’s also been a senior policy manager at the Ministry of Education and has been involved in managing school transition programmes such as Youth Guarantee and Gateway.

Skills Development has issued a White Paper called Multiple Pathways to Success which discusses this issue.

Williams says we need to make it really clear what the alternative pathways from school to work are.

“Because at the moment we’re pigeon-holing people into ‘it’s university, or not university’.

“Well, what’s in the ‘not’?” he says.

“Getting university entrance can’t be the only goal of 13 years at school.

“We have to prepare our young people for a wider range of opportunities, and in particular that exposure and experience which means they’ll be able to make that successful step and find their pathway.”

One block when it comes to this is called ‘parity of esteem’ – where non-university pathways aren’t seen as prestigious, and the qualifications levels aren’t equitable.

“Although even the phrase ‘parity of esteem’ pretends like there’s two things, there’s academic and there’s vocational. I kind of reject that and honestly where the situation’s going now where we’re talking about a shared curriculum that has industry subjects and curriculum subjects sitting within a shared curriculum I think is very positive.

“Look, every young person is on a trip to the workforce.”

Williams says the whole idea behind NCEA was that it could recognise and reward learning from a much wider range of things.

“Effectively any credit on the framework could count towards your NCEA. That flexibility was absolutely seen as a strength, but that flexibility was also ultimately a bit of a weakness, because the assessment system that came in under NCEA has effectively been grafted on to a schooling system that hasn’t changed very much.

“The main game is to chase a thing called University Entrance because it’s really the only clear recipe in the whole cookbook of school. Everything else is a bit of an add-on.

“Certainly it was the case that the flexibility of NCEA could be misused, that ultimately kids could come out with an NCEA qualification that was made up of an incoherent grab-bag of things that didn’t really add up to a purposeful direction or a set of foundation skills for employability.”

Williams says there are a range of schemes that exist that do work, such as Gateway, but at the moment only about 15 percent of our Year 11 to 13 population access them.

It’s hoped that a change in the curriculum will help build better connections between schools and the workplace.

Dr Michael Johnston, a Senior Fellow from the think-tank New Zealand Initiative, has written a report called Working Knowledge – Designing Industry-Led Subjects for Students and Schools.

He chaired a 2024 Ministerial Advisory Group for the Education Minister on the development of a knowledge-rich curriculum for English and mathematics. He’s now a member of the Curriculum Coherence group, which advises on the development of knowledge-rich curricula across all school subjects.

He’s been in Germany studying their system and tells The Detail today what he does – and doesn’t – like about it, and what we could adopt.

Johnston says in New Zealand there’s never been a formal national curricula for vocational education at secondary school.

“We’ve had technology for a long time, but not subjects that are so completely geared towards getting young people into apprenticeships and tertiary training, where these subjects will be very responsive to the needs of industry. This is the first time were we would have had formal curricula for that kind of subject.”

Johnston also questions the qualifications framework and the parity between them.

“We see Bachelor’s degrees at Level 7, and most trades qualifications at Level 4. Why is that? Do we really think that to be a skilled electrician is trivial compared with getting a Bachelor of Arts?”

Asked what makes him think we have an opportunity now to change things, Johnston says he’s “an eternal optimist”.

“It comes down ultimately to a cultural prejudice, and I think that is borne of a time when, first of all, I would say university education was of higher quality, and when far fewer people went to university, so it had this elite status.

“And to be fair in those days it probably did lead to the higher incomes on average. But I think those days are gone.”

Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here.

You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A person has died and two others have been seriously injured in a crash on the Te Puke Highway.

The two-vehicle crash happened between Bell Road and Poplar Lane about 7.15pm on Wednesday.

The road is open.

Enquiries into the crash are ongoing.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Auckland man Dylan Barford’s body lay undiscovered near a motorway off-ramp for almost three weeks after he was reported missing and his family want to know why he wasn’t found sooner.

The body of Dylan Barford, 34, was found in grassland near the Hobsonville Rd off-ramp in Westgate on October 13, 2023. He had been missing since September 24.

There had been public appeals for information from police and multiple searches in the area.

Coroner Janet Anderson released her report into Barford’s death on Thursday, and found he died from accidental meth toxicity between September 24 and October 13.

Barford, the father of young twins, had been a passenger in a car driven by his ex-partner in West Auckland’s Massey on the night of September 23. Coroner Anderson said after an argument, he got out of the car and his partner drove away.

Coroner Anderson said Barford had a long history of drug use including meth and GBL, but had been using drugs less frequently in the year before his death.

But in June 2023, Coroner Anderson said Barford told his doctor he was experiencing low mood and anxiety which was getting worse and he had relapsed and smoked meth.

Barford’s ex-partner, who was also the mother of his children, told Coroner Barford he contacted her that night wanting GBL, and when he left her car he had both GBL and meth on him.

The search for Dylan Barford

Barford’s body was eventually found by contractors who were sent to a field near the Hobsonville Rd off-ramp to catch feral goats.

One of the contractors saw what he thought was a goat in the grass through binoculars, but it turned out to be Barford’s body. He was about 200 metres from the motorway.

Police told Coroner Anderson due to the knee-length grass he couldn’t be seen from the road, and while he was found in the general search area he was not seen by ground or aerial crews.

Barford’s family were concerned by the adequacy of the police investigation along with the communication from police, the search operation and issues related to the scene where Barford was found.

They laid a complaint with the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA), but it decided no action was needed.

During the search the bush area below where Barford was found was searched but not the open space, Coroner Anderson said. Police’s Eagle helicopter was tasked with looking in the open area.

Police said a debrief had been sent to helicopter crew to see if there were any system failures that contributed to not finding Barford sooner.

Barford’s family told Coroner Anderson they did not accept where Barford’s body was found was not easily accessible by the public, and believed tyre tracks in the field near his body, which police said was made by a gurney when transporting the body, were from a car.

They were unhappy with how the scene was secured and told the Coroner they believed police saw Barford as a drug user and “did not bother to investigate properly”.

Police told Coroner Anderson they would work with Eagle helicopter crew to see if there were any system failures that contributed to not finding Barford during the aerial search.

“I strongly encourage police to take this step,” Coroner Anderson said, “It is clear that the delay in locating Dylan’s remains caused significant additional distress to his family during what was already a devastating time for them.”

When contacted by RNZ, a police spokesperson said the officer in charge was on leave so was unable to provide a statement on whether police had taken that step.

Concerns about ex-partner

Barford’s mum, Rachel Barford, told Coroner Anderson, four weeks before her son disappeared he told her he’d overheard a conversation his ex-partner was having on the phone with another person who told his ex-partner to get rid of Barford.

Rachel Barford said her son had been upset with his ex-partner for hanging out with two male associates, and had gone to one of the men’s homes to confront her about “hanging out with random guys”.

Police interviewed Barford’s ex-partner several times, and GPS had shown after their argument the pair were not together.

A forensic pathologist told Coroner Anderson there was no evidence of injuries to Barford’s body and meth was present in his blood at a level of 0.24mg/l. That amount could increase the risk of sudden death, the pathologist said.

There was not other disease or injuries present that contributed to his death, the pathologist said.

Police said during their investigation they found nothing suspicious and nothing to indicate foul play.

Coroner Anderson said she was satisfied there was enough evidence to conclude Barford died from meth toxicity.

“Given Dylan’s background and drug use and the delay in locating his body, it is understandable people close to him harbour concerns about the nature of his death.

“However, general unease, suspicion and prior arguments with associates do not provide sufficient basis to conclude that his death was untoward.”

Coroner Anderson said Barford’s death was a “tragic, drug-related accident”.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

It is clear that many people in Marlborough just want to see work get underway on the port redevelopment ahead of the new ferries arriving, after years of disrupted services.

The Marlborough District Council is seeking feedback on whether to lend the port $110 million for its share of the Picton ferry redevelopment, and there is broad support among those who have weighed in on the proposal.

The money would come from the Local Government Funding Agency and go towards the Waitohi Ferry Redevelopment Project which was estimated to cost $531m, with the government funding the rest.

The council has said debt would be at no additional cost to ratepayers, with the port to pay back the loan, including interest, while also paying its annual dividend to the council.

At a public meeting held in Picton on Wednesday, many expressed support for the proposal. More than 80 percent of the submissions published online were also in favour of the council financing Port Marlborough’s share of the project.

Aileen Walker has lived in the port town for 40 years and said having a resilient link across the Cook Strait was vital, but admitted that the $110m cost made her “gulp”.

“Numbers like that make our minds go bananas, it’s a huge sum of money but it has to be spent. We need this and it’s not just in Picton that we need it, but we need it to link the two islands together.”

She said she was devastated when the former ferry project was canned, because of the money that had already been spent on preparation work in Picton.

Last May, it was revealed that $39.1m had already been been spent on investments at the Picton port as part of the iRex (Inter-Island Resilient Connection) project which included a new terminal and walkways, a new mechanical depot and an upgraded culvert.

Walker said she understood why the government scrapped the former ferries, but said the way it was managed was “hopeless” and the half finished upgrade left Picton in “absolute chaos”.

Dublin Street had been closed for over a year so underground services could be moved and an overbridge built as part of the iRex project, but it was shelved before the bridge was built.

“It’s going to be chaos again, but at least it’ll be positive chaos. We’ll know it’s leading somewhere that is going to benefit everybody,” Walker said.

‘Everyone’s ready to just get cracking’

Blenheim resident Henry Voordouw was also supportive of the loan and said he was not worried about the price tag.

“It’ll either cost $110m or it will cost $200m, everything seems to double these days.”

He said the ferries were run down and becoming less reliable.

“It’s disappointing that that has been allowed to happen and we’re stuck with it now, but we have to do something otherwise they just seem to run off track and have all these sorts of breakdowns.

“You want tourists to travel on these ships, they don’t want to have to put their lives in danger. It’s bad enough for us, the locals, to have to put up with that, let alone bloody tourists.”

Cliff Bowers, a longtime Picton resident and former Marlborough district councillor, said the loan made sense – given the port is a council controlled organisation.

But he was concerned about what it could mean for Marlborough’s assets if the council was forced to amalgamate, as per the government’s regional council shake up.

“We don’t know what they’re going to force onto us. I just hope that they don’t make us amalgamate with Wellington, that would cripple us.”

Julia Kennedy moved back to Picton a few years ago after living in Australia and said she supported the proposal, as creating a more resilient link across the Cook Strait was a “no-brainer”.

“It’s a bottleneck for everybody, for the whole country. Freight-wise and it’s obviously really important in terms of moving people.

“It’s the lifeblood of lots of small towns from Picton all the way down to the larger centres.

“I think everyone’s ready to just get cracking and get it rolling. Let’s start seeing some shiny new boats and being able to have some faith and some trust in our transport infrastructure again.”

Out of 49 submissions on the proposal to finance Port Marlborough’s share of the project, 41 were in support.

Those against the proposal cited concerns over adding to council debt, the shifting of risk to ratepayers and the suitability of the repayment terms.

“The push for upgraded ferry infrastructure is being driven at a national level, not by Marlborough ratepayers. It is unreasonable that local ratepayers are expected to underwrite a $110 million investment to support what is effectively a national transport objective,” one submitter said.

A long wait for a port upgrade

Work began on the iRex project in late 2022, with plans for a new ferry terminal building, a new wharf and passenger walkway, a new rail yard, new vehicle boarding, and an overbridge in Dublin St over the railway lines, to improve traffic flow through the town when larger ferries were in port.

But by December 2023, the government announced the project was being canned after costs had quadrupled from $775m in 2018 to about $3 billion in 2023.

It was revealed last year that the total cost for the scrapped project was $671m, which included $449m spent on landside infrastructure, project management and wind-down costs, and $222m total paid to the South Korean shipbuilders, Hyundai Mipo Dockyards, including for a previous deposit and the settlement.

Ferry Holdings was established by the government last March, to lead the revised Cook Strait ferry programme, bringing together vessel design, port infrastructure, and national transport requirements under a single entity.

Marlborough mayor Nadine Taylor said there was a sense of deja-vu given the council had previously agreed, after consultation, to lend the same amount to the port under the former iRex project.

“Essentially, a lot of it’s the same, it’s two ferries, it’s new port [infrastructure], the roading infrastructure is very similar, the proposal is for an overbridge again which is really important to the people of Picton.”

She said so far, the submissions council had received showed support for the loan.

“A lot of people are saying to me, we’ve been here before, let’s just keep moving, let’s keep going forward with this.”

Ferry Holdings chair Chris Mackenzie said once the council had made its decision, the company would finalise agreements so contractors could start work.

He said there had already been demoliton work done at both ports, and the aim was to start building new infrastructure by mid-year, with a completion date of December 2028.

Port Marlborough CEO Rhys Welbourn said its focus during the redevelopment was to build a new wharf that would allow vessels to come in, berth safely and load and unload efficiently.

He said new vessels, no matter what size, required new infrastructure.

“Picton is vital for New Zealand’s supply chain, not many people realise, but New Zealand relies on the infrastructure at Waitohi/Picton, every day.

“Every day we have ferries coming, unloading and loading, so it’s really important that we get that right.”

A public meeting is being held in Blenheim on Thursday night and consultation closes on 19 May, with the council to make a decision on 26 May.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Staff at Wellington Hospital say they could do with a hundred more beds, but the year-old High Dependency Unit has gone some way to easing the bottleneck.

The unit has 12 beds for people too sick for the ward, but too well for intensive care.

On this particular Tuesday, nurse manager Stephen James takes us past the family room, staff office, sleuce room, and a desk behind which a number of screens show patients’ vitals in real-time, making it easy for staff to monitor every patient from a central location.

The rooms are light and airy, with windows – unlike intensive care – and it is mostly quiet, aside from the steady beep of machines and the sound of nurses discussing medication at the foot of a patient’s bed.

Many of the processes mirror those used in the ICU, including paper charting.

“This is where we’re not electronic,” James said. “The transition of the technology is still so expensive we’re just not ready to make that yet.”

The staff monitoring patients are looking for trends – someone getting worse will head back to ICU, or if they are getting better, to a ward.

That meant patients were able to recover somewhere a bit quieter, while still being monitored closely, and beds on wards and ICU were freed up, improving patient flow through the hospital.

“Sometimes we would be forced to push patients to the ward sooner than we were happy to,” he said. “And we have statistics and data that we analyse where we see patients bounce back from the ward. So if we transferred somebody in the middle of the night, it’s not great to come in the morning and see that they’re needing to come back.”

James explained planned surgeries would be cancelled if acute patients demanded the bed space, so making more beds available for the sickest patients meant planned surgeries went ahead more often.

But when it came to beds, they could always use more.

“I think you would say we need another 100 beds in every hospital, and that we would fill them. And it’s because there’s so much we can do for people.”

While work was underway at a national level to understand how care in the home could add capacity to the system, the sickest people still needed to be in hospital.

“We’re very much in the middle of it all in the acute setting, so we can be a bottleneck,” he said.

The unit was built following the Covid pandemic, at a cost of $17.3 million, financed through annual hospital depreciation funding.

It was part of a government push in 2024 to bolster the country’s preparedness in the event of another pandemic.

“We were very underdone internationally in our critical-beds-per-100,000-population, and we’ve made great strides in the last several years to improve that, which these 12 beds are part of,” James said.

Winter illness, too, increased demand every year.

Health minister Simeon Brown announced a winter funding boost of $25m earlier this year to increase capacity and staffing nationwide.

Dr Paul Young, intensive care specialist and co-clinical leader in the ICU, said it would not increase the HDU’s numbers, as the unit was at or near capacity year-round.

He said the ICU had 24 beds, and along with the 12 in the HDU, the units required a combined staff of between 250 and 300 nurses, 14 intensive care specialists, and 28 registrars.

Another four were being added to the ICU currently.

“The entire hospital doesn’t have enough beds, and beds need to have people in them,” Young said.

But winter would likely increase the acuity of the patients.

“We’ll probably basically stay as busy as we are now, just looking after slightly different people.”

Variability was a hallmark of the job. On this particular day, Dr Young would work his shift and then remain on-call overnight, treating anyone from trauma patients, to those recovering from major surgery or with acute medical conditions.

“Intensive care medicine is the triangle you get if you chop the top off all the other triangles and make a new triangle,” Young said. “The kind of things that we see from day-to-day are really varied.”

The one thing they had in common was that they were among the sickest people in the hospital – and for them, having one of those 12 beds could make all the difference.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

• Submissions on legislation highlight fears about compliance powers, appeal rights
• Law Society said its views were not properly represented in regulatory impact statements
• Lawyer questions how staff will identify what makes someone look like they might be breaking immigration rules

The Law Society says an immigration bill extending search powers and curtailing appeal rights should not proceed in its current form.

Campaigners and immigration lawyers said proposed compliance measures were reminiscent of random stops and risked breaches of the Bill of Rights Act.

The immigration minister Erica Stanford said immigration officers would only be able to demand identification when they already have a legitimate reason to be at a site and a reasonable basis to suspect someone is liable for deportation or breaking immigration rules.

“It empowers immigration officers to demand identification papers from everyone, with only a “good cause” threshold, and anyone who fails to comply, citizen or not, will be arrested,” said a submission from the Council for Civil Liberties on the immigration bill. “The Council believes that the time has come to end ‘immigration police’ within our borders.”

The council recommends changing wording from a “good cause to suspect” to a “reason to believe” standard for compliance officers demanding identification. It calls for a new Bill of Rights assessment, saying the current one put immigration’s ‘core duties’ over people’s rights.

The Law Society, which was consulted ahead of the bill being introduced, said its objections were not well represented in regulatory impact statements. “While some aspects of this consultation are referenced in materials relating to this Bill, they do not clearly identify where the Law Society objected to proposed changes, or reflect concerns that were raised by the Law Society.”

Its submission said further policy work was needed to avoid “disproportionately harsh and unfair outcomes” for visa holders, and inconsistencies with New Zealand’s obligations under domestic and international law. Limitations on natural justice in appeal rights were not identified or discussed in the justice ministry’s advice on the bill’s consistency with the Bill of Rights Act, and criteria for searches were too broad.

From this month, migrants face automatic deportation liability if they get a discharge without conviction for less serious crimes such as traffic offences. Under the new proposals, migrant workers, students and visitors would have no right of appeal to the Immigration and Protection Tribunal (IPT) for those offences, and residents’ deportation liability would increase from the current two years after gaining residence.

The Council of Trades Unions’ submission said an offence with a maximum sentence of three months would seldomly involve a custodial sentence. “Suffering deportation on top of a minor sentence for a lower-level offence could be seen as disproportionate, and extending the time this can affect a resident visa holder out to five years is unhelpful.”

Lawyer Richard Small, of Pacific Legal, said the changes were a “hammer looking for a nail”. “You’re getting into people who end up in deportation from, not quite a parking ticket, but just one step above that, such as obstruction. These are minor, minor offences. There’s no proportionality. There will now be no humanitarian appeal.”

He said abolishing the right of appeal to the IPT for overstayers who were previously on visitor visas left no accessible recourse for people with humanitarian reasons to stay.

“The ombudsman now has a very minimal role, and any suggestion that the ombudsman looks at humanitarian factors is misguided. All they look at is Immigration New Zealand’s record-keeping, and that they have made a note on paper of humanitarian obligations. If they have done that, they will not look further.

“So the idea that the ombudsman provides a meaningful remedy is very misplaced. They don’t review humanitarian circumstances. We’ve seen a 90 percent plus drop in the ability to go to the ombudsman since a law change in 2015 took away reasons for unlawful decisions. So that is not a real option. And the minister has absolute discretion. People don’t get reasons for decisions there.”

Random stops

He said greater powers for compliance officers came despite concerns about their existing ones.

“We have had cases of residents arrested or detained because of mistaken identity. It is a real thing. Again, we have no transparency, no statistics, and no independent oversight, effectively, of these actions. They may start with a good intention, but they tend to stick and be reapplied in the future.

“And it really does bring back to mind random stops, because if there’s no threshold to suspect someone, what kind of characteristics will compliance think might make a person liable for deportation?”

Lawyers had advocated for compliance officers to use digital recording on their work cell phones to ensure they use interpreters, tell people their rights and act fairly, but that had been rejected, he said.

Immigration New Zealand (INZ) national compliance manager Fadia Mudafar said staff make written notes of what occurs.

“Clients are always offered an interpreter, and their rights are explained to them to ensure full understanding and transparency. There are no plans to make it a requirement for a compliance officer, during deportation activity, to record their interactions on a smartphone. Compliance officers use notebooks to record observations as well as documenting what was said and what was done. Notes are recorded as soon as practicable and copied onto the client’s file.

“If a person is detained, they are advised of their rights at the time of detaining by both the compliance officer and by police (when custody is transferred from compliance to police).”

Misleading information

‘Broadening the net’ to catch and punish people who provide false or misleading information to immigration authorities overlooked INZ’s own role, said Small.

He said INZ did not discharge its obligation under the Immigration Advisors Licensing Act not to accept applications from unlicensed Pacific advisors, such as travel agents.

“It affects people who had an expired conviction in another country where the unlicensed travel agent never discloses that. That will now be interpreted as fraud. There’s a whole range of stuff.

“Someone who didn’t understand the concept of partner in their Pacific cultural context, and did not tick that they were in an early-stage relationship until they were officially married because of cultural and religious beliefs. Those people are going to be criminalised.”

INZ deputy chief operating officer Jock Gilray said travel agents are able to submit applications on behalf of applicants and perform administrative tasks as part of that process, and it was aware that was a common practice in the Pacific.

“However, travel agents cannot provide immigration advice to the applicant. Where we are concerned they have offered immigration advice, we remind agents of their responsibility. If this behaviour continues, we can take steps to ensure they do not continue this behaviour, including refusing to accept applications.”

Makes existing power workable

Stanford said a ‘reasonable suspicion’ for requesting identification would depend on what staff see when they arrive at premises, when they already have a legitimate cause to be there.

“For example, that could be as if an individual tries to hide or escape when immigration officers arrive – previously Immigration has not be able to do anything about this. The proposed change is not a general stopping power, does not change standard deportation processes, and doesn’t allow officers to stop random people or conduct street checks.”

The change is intended to make an existing power workable, she said.

“It is not correct that failing to comply with a request for identification would result in arrest. Immigration compliance officers do not have powers of arrest. If someone does not comply with the immigration officer’s request without reasonable excuse, they could be temporarily detained for up to four hours.

“The immigration officer is required to warn the person of this when they are asking for their identity-based information or documents and even at that point, detention is not automatic and is not a decision that is taken lightly. Compliance officers must record in writing when they use these powers and why they had good cause.”

The bill was assessed as being consistent with the Bill of Rights, and additional proposals would go through an assessment if they were included in the legislation.

Deportation liability could still be cancelled or suspended by decision makers, she said.

“Some offences that may appear minor, like obstruction, can carry a maximum penalty of up to three months’ imprisonment, meaning they could meet the threshold for deportation liability.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

David Tamihere will likely have to wait until July to find out whether he will be retried for the 1989 murder of two Swedish tourists.

The Supreme Court quashed his convictions six weeks ago for the murder of Urban Höglin and Heidi Paakkonen, saying Crown prosecutors must decide whether to hold a retrial.

The 72-year-old had been due to appear at a procedural High Court hearing on Wednesday but that did not go ahead and was now set down for July.

When his convictions were quashed, Tamihere returned to being a murder-accused, facing the original two charges in the court.

The question now was whether he would go on trial for them again.

Former High Court judge and former crown prosecutor Hon Simon Moore KC said there were a “galaxy of different matters” the Crown weighed up when making decisions on retrials.

Speaking generally, rather than about Tamihere’s case, Moore said the Crown had to ask itself whether it had a reasonable prospect of conviction.

“If witnesses are not available or the complexities of running a trial decades later mean that test isn’t satisfied, then that is a factor the Crown will take into account – along with whether it is in the public interest to continue,” he said

There were a number of aspects to consider when it came to witnesses, he said.

“The first one obviously is whether those witnesses are still alive or available. And obviously if you are talking about decades, there will be challenges in those areas.”

It was possible memories or perceptions of events had changed, although witnesses had statements from the time to help, he said.

Prosecutors also weighed up social factors – such as the health of the defendant – in their decisions and they would consider any sentence that has already been served.

The cost of running another trial was a consideration, but never a determinant on its own, Moore said.

Since Tamihere’s original trial, some crown witnesses had died, and one, prison informant Robert Conchie Harris, had been convicted in 2017 of perjury in relation to the case.

That conviction sparked the round of appeals by Tamihere that led to the Supreme Court.

The compensation question

Tamihere served 20 years in prison before being released in 2010 and was on parole until his convictions were quashed.

If the Crown did not seek another trial and the charges were dropped he could seek compensation for wrongful imprisonment.

If successful, he could get millions of dollars.

But that was not a given.

Former High Court judge Hon Rodney Hansen, KC, was appointed to oversee two high profile claims for wrongful murder convictions and imprisonments – Teina Pora, who got $3.5 million and Alan Hall who got $4.9 million.

If Tamihere sought compensation, the onus would fall to his legal team to prove he was innocent on balance of probabilities.

That was different to a trial where the onus was on the crown to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Proving innocence was not normally an easy task, Hansen said.

“It’s not sufficient to show that he was wrongly convicted, he must show that on balance he is innocent, he did not do it,” he said.

It seemed any compensation claim relating to the case would be complex, because the case itself was complex, he said.

“It was a real who-dunnit from beginning to end and it went through many twists and turns,” he said

“There would be a lot of evidence there would have to be traversed and a lot of highways and byways you would have to explore.”

If someone was seeking compensation, the government normally appointed a retired judge, or someone with expert legal credentials, to investigate and make recommendations.

But the decision about whether to give compensation was ultimately with the government, usually cabinet, which would review the recommendations before deciding.

In its March decision, the Supreme Court said one of the key reasons for quashing Tamihere’s convictions was the fact the Crown’s case had changed so much since the original trial.

“We emphasise that there are simply too many questions on the Crown’s new theory of the case, which have not been tested, for an appellate court to reach a conclusion about guilt,” the decision said.

“That does not mean that a jury, properly directed, could not possibly be satisfied of guilt, but that would need to be decided on a retrial, which this court has now directed.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand