government, politics, social issues
In Rory MacKinnon on February 10, 2010 at 2:02 pm
So National’s Simon Power has ordered a review of the law surrounding violent crime and knives and there’s a good chance possession will be criminalised – in the same discretionary sense that, say, smacking is. Meanwhile ACT’s David Garrett is cheering them on from the sidelines:
“It’s too easy for would-be offenders to pick up a knife without thinking of the consequences. We need to send a message that knife possession is not acceptable in our society and harsher penalties will do this.”
I don’t have much more to add – a review is a review is a review, and it’s obvious that National and ACT lean towards a fairly authoritarian, retributive model of the justice system – but it is interesting that this wasn’t brought up much, much earlier.
Say, oh, January 2008?
education, government, politics
In Rory MacKinnon on February 3, 2010 at 2:04 am
[First things first, some great news: I've now joined Scoop as their new duty editor, which means that in between copy-pasting press releases I'll be writing the odd story and doing weekly segments on Radio Active and bFM. Should you be interested I've already got a couple of things here, here and here.]
So the government’s surprise press conference yesterday wasn’t such a surprise after all. The PM and Education Minister Anne Tolley are sticking to their guns on their national standards policy; the one that guarantees young New Zealanders get a fair go, etc. etc. through regular testing on the three ‘r’s. They’re so confident, in fact, that they’re refusing to trial it in a few schools first.
Except that they are. As we heard yesterday, they will be trialling the national standards for te reo Maori in some kura kaupapa to make sure they’re appropriate – an eminently sensible decision, but one which makes this battle with the teachers’ unions over the rest of the curriculum all the more absurd. Read the rest of this entry »
