My Right

The nation is going under the spotlight and New Plymouth is going to be centre stage.


Next month a hundred ordinary kiwis – 50 Maori and 50 pakeha – will take part in a live televised show, broadcast from Puke Ariki, and tell each other what bugs them about race relations in this country.

There will be no politicians and no radicals, from either side, just "middle New Zealand" facing off.

Called State of the Nation, the two-hour TVNZ show will broadcast live on TV One from the Puke Ariki foyer on June 10.

Justice Minister Phil Goff has backed away from law changes taking a more permissive approach to sex between consenting children aged between 12 and 16.

He says the Government will take its lead from the public, and has suggested that retaining the status quo is now the most likely outcome.

Earlier yesterday, Mr Goff was quoted as firmly favouring the law taking a more tolerant approach to teenage sex.

He said the law as it stood risked turning teenagers into criminals and had to be changed.

National's law and order spokesman, Tony Ryall, accused the Government of trying to sneak through the legislation and doing an about-turn in the face of negative reactions.

Foreign Affairs officials are said to be upset by the Government's use of the report of Dr Brash's meeting. So they should be. They have every right to expect that reports written on a classified basis will not be used for cheap political gain. In one swoop, Helen Clark has soiled an important tool of their trade. No matter how great the temptation for a Government on the backfoot, it had to be resisted. A Prime Minister should never put a party's interests ahead of principle.

When the Government is raking in $7.4 billion more than it needs it is time to look at tax reductions more generally. The promised relief in the coming Budget for low- and middle-income earners could, and should, take the form of income tax cuts, except that this Government seems to have a philosophical objection to them. It prefers to reimburse taxpayers through benefits and public service spending, which keeps state servants employed and wastes money on the way around.

Although Idiot is bang on in his analysis of the predicament that the middle class find themselves in, the "struggling middle class family" in question's problems are largely of their own making. At the end of the day they chose to have children that they couldn't afford...its no use whinging to Helen Clarke about it.

She elected not to have treatment and to be nursed by her daughter, an experienced intensive care nurse, so she could die at home.

In her book, To Die Like a Dog, Lesley Martin described how her mother asked her: "Don't let me lie there, not alive and not dead ... Please help me ... Be quick."

In the book, written as a screenplay, Martin quotes herself as saying: "I'll know ... I'll know when it's time ... I won't leave you like that ... I promise."

Hospice nurse Wiki Alward told the jury that Martin told her she gave her mother 60mg of morphine on the night of May 26-27, 1999.

Mrs Alward said Martin told her the morphine was not because her mother had increased pain but because "my mum had indicated she didn't want a slow painful death, and I did not want that either".

The Crown alleged Martin had refused help to care for her mother, as she wanted to be alone to administer the morphine.

The defence said Martin was stressed, under "intolerable pressure" and exhausted because of a lack of back-up, and that her book could not be relied on for evidence.

Maharey said a start had been made to improve the lot of families but "no one is saying we are finished yet in terms of trying to transfer the prosperity of the country into the pockets of middle-income families like this".