Ronald Young J’s 88 page judgment is commendable for being prompt, easy to read, apparently comprehensive and decisive. He records the essence of the plaintiff’s arguments then deals with each in logical order.

Let’s hope the Supreme Court on appeal does not muddy the clear water. On past performance they may substitute confusion for refreshing clarity of principle.

I think the judgment vindicates my earliest assessment of the claim, but there are also “public good” bonuses in the litigation.  Justice Young has clarified several issues that have been open to argument among the select group of experts on SOE Act legalities. He has affirmed the ‘normality’ of the shares in SOEs. There was always a concern that a court might be attracted to the view that Ministers cannot exercise normal common law shareholder rights. The judgement’s statement that section 22 of the SOE Act is not the source of the Ministers’ powers as shareholders, reduces the likelihood of challenges claiming that Ministers need statutory powers to act like ordinary shareholders.

Good for float values

 The analysis should also comfort investors in the partly owned companies.. The Judge has reinforced the barriers to activist mischief-making. Court claims will be less viable, that shareholder rights in partly owned companies are less than those in ordinary companies, or subject to vague over-riding public interest duties.

Implicit criticism of the Waitangi Tribunal

There is an indication why the Waitangi Tribunal is not intellectually robust. While noting the speed with which the interim findings were produced, the judge records the risks of conflicts of interest arising from “shares plus”. Naïve support for shares plus and other intervention rights is judged indirectly in the comment –  “The result is potentially a serious diminution of value of these assets with little or any parallel advantage to Māori”

Correctly, the judgment does not support the PMs assertion that no one owns the water. The Court's reiteration of orthodoxy that resource consents are not capable of being property goes in the other direction:

“ [218] I am satisfied that the resource consents held by MRP are not property. One of the essential planks to the claimants’ argument is, therefore, removed.“

It may become unhelpful in the near future if the government is unable to establish a clear conceptual foundation for the contradictory recommendations of the Land and Water Forum.

Maori veto on water reforms

More worrying is the unequivocal record that the Crown has purported to give Maori a veto over sensible water policy reforms. If true, it is further evidence of the casual constitutional vandalism of  the National  “pragmatists”:

 “[15] The intention is that once policies relating to freshwater are developed there will be wider consultation with Māori. At the beginning of the discussion with the Iwi Leaders Group the Crown agreed that it would not dispense with or create property rights or interests in water without agreement with iwi. Further, the Leaders Group are to be involved in further reform of the Resource Management Act relating to freshwater.”

That confirms my concerns about National's lack of commitment to property rights, and the true principles of the Treaty which uphold them.

The Life of Pi is an unexpected marvel.

I'd read the book. To support victims I attended the Sensible Sentencing Trust's fundraising pre-release showing with some apprehension that it would turn into duty.

I do not like magical realism. And I could not imagine how they could turn a philosophical novel into gripping film without exploiting irrelevant dramatic elements to the point of nausea. When I read it I thought that the book's monologue would be better as a play, on stage, in dialogue with the Tiger.

But the film is a feast – visually and dramatically.

The Hobbit next week has a new standard for my comparison.

Honest lawyers would not forge documents to damage an enemy. And if their medications made them susceptible to such  temptations they would be so mortified on realising what they's done that they would not try to evade detection. They would confess and seek better treatment and not work while they were exposing their clients to such terrible judgment.

So lets hope the Law Society now promplty and publicly takes a position to ensure that Ms Killeen is never again in a position to discredit the profession as she has today. There are plenty of satisfying jobs for people with legal training and experience that need not leave them in the profession. We do not need  more reminders of the inequalities that benefit middle class, white female defendants caught in disgraceful conduct.

I note that the Crown did not oppose the discharge without conviction. Presumably they accept the medication excuse. That might protect the judge from appearing hopelessly credulous, though I doubt that the publice will appreciate the significance of the Crown position.

We must support such judging from time to time as the price of judicial independence. But it makes it very hard for lay-people to respect the institution.

Sensible of Ray Smith to settle this case. I was involved with Garth McVicar when we decided so long ago that the law had to be tested to help end the scandalous state of Corrections. Full credit to Mr Henry (and David Garrett) who put so much free time into this long struggle.

 But parole continues. All involved are guilty collaborators in pretence.

• Pretence that they can predict which offenders will not hurt others again while out on theoretical "trust".
• Pretence that the conditions imposed will make risk "manageable" (i.e. they will not be held responsible for the consequent sufferinf of innocent fresh vicitims) and
• Pretence that the system has the will and the means to enforce the conditions.

The government did not have the honesty to settle the Kuchenbecker claims for the predictable death of  Graeme Burton's victims.

The compensation decision must come shortly. It is astonishing that the government has been able to sit on the decision since September when the Canadian judge delivered his report. 

I  predict an announcement after Christmas that there will be no compensation, or that it will be confined to some nominal element. The Minister will be damned by the disappointed side, whatever she announces.

Astonishingly John Key  is reported today  as I read it confirming speculation that:

1)  the judge recommended compensation (confirmed by inference);

2) the Minister of Justice is opposed to paying; and

3)  the decision is unlikely to be released before Christmas.

Announcement after Christmas will mean that it is old news by the time eveyone is back at work. Bain supporters won't get a critical mass of the knee-jerk commentators on their side, because they are at the beach. Ordinarily, even if they agree with the decision, they would have a feast over a government commissioning and funding an independent outside report to duck political responsibility, then dismissing it.

I have no view on whether compensation is fair. I honour Joe Karam for his dedication, whatever the truth of the matter. But I think the Minister will be strengthening our "constitution" if she does refuse to go along with a recommendation. Decisions on compensation for wrongful conviction and exercise of the prerogative of mercy should allow for sentiment to prevail. By their nature they will leave intense disappointment whichever way they go. The law often cannot give an answer with the certainty that it should have, to prevent floodgates opening, given how often there is uncertainty.

It is proper that such decisions be rare, and that the responsibility be taken by someone who must answer to the people directly. The recognised uncertainty of politics and the conscience of the politician is a shock absorber for the system. We cannot leave such powers for the conscience of judges, or administrative bodies, because we do not want them to act on sentiment or prejudgement, or opnions as to who will be the most upset side. But politics is largely about reconciling the irreconcilable. An elected politician can pardon and be merciful without the result becoming a precedent straitjacket.

In other words, the Mininster may show in this case that the compensation discretion remains just that. Despite a judges inquiry, the advice of the judge has not become cemented by custom into a de facto judicial decision. Nobody will acquire a right to compensation which in a future case might outrage the community.

It was odd for Minister Simon Power to get a Canadian judge for the job. Canada's Supreme Court is known more for political correctness than intellectual rigour. It may be quite unfair to tar the judge concerned with the general sogginess of that Court, but lawyer gossip predicted trouble of this kind. 

Captain Oates did it,  to increase the chance that his South Pole trip mates could survive. Self sacrficial suicide is clearly honourable.

But what about suicide as extreme remorse? Ship's masters do it, when they deliberately go down with a ship they've captained to disaster. Thousands of Japanese officers did it when they lost the war. Bushido (the Japanese culture of chivalry) expected seppuku (ritual sef disembowelment to atone for failure).

Closer to the present and to a strong thread in our cultural inheritance, hundreds of young Samoans do it, in one of the most painful ways possible (with paraquat) when they've shamed their families or themselves.

So why do we make such strenuous efforts to prevent suicide by people who've deeply dishonoured themselves? There are falls from grace so abject, and deeds so despicable, that life should for ever after be almost unendurable. Pederasty is so reviled that it is hard to imagine why pederastst do not all try to end their lives when caught.

Respect for honourable suicide survives in our language ("falling on their sword") but not in our practice. There was a time in our history when doing the honourable thing (committing suicide) after particularly ignoble conduct was thought partially to redeem it. It saved the suicide's family and friends from the embarassment of working out how to deal with him. Today we are lucky if dishonour even spurs resigning.

Why have we changed? Is it because we're in the middle of an experiment in trying to run a culture and a legal system without shame? I've argued elsewhere that  shame is an essential part of any healthy social response to offending. Without shame we are condemned to harsher official punishments, to compensate. 

When the Hon Maryan Street's euthanasia Member's Bill is drawn from the ballot there will be a debate about the right to end your own life when it has become not worth living. Perhaps then we will also consider again just why we've started to treat all deaths as "tragedies".  Many are far from tragic. Some are "good riddance".

Repeat drunk drivers who kill only themselves may be losses to their families, but for most of us it is just desserts, and a saving to the criminal justice system. Other similarly self induced are not tragic.

But nor are they honourable. The category of honourable suicide should be reserved for those who choose to show their shame by ending their capacity to embarass, both themselves and those who care about them while they live.

When it was first reported that David Ross of Ross Asset Management had lost hundreds of $millions of investor money, he was said to be unavailable to interview,  in hospital with head injuries. He later issued a statement that he'd been hospitalised for compulsory treatment under the Mental Health Act. Runour has it that he'd tried to take his own life.

The client who passed on that rumour, who'd trusted him, added that he should have been left to complete the job.  A bit harsh I thought. But it was not me who lost my savings or my faith in my community.

Thinking more about that comment I realise how steeped we are in the current relativism, that does not discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving.

I realise that Mr Ross's help was wanted,  to work out where assets were. And there has been no judicial finding of wrongdoing. But if things are as they appear at present, and if Mr Ross has lied for years, what social purpose was served by stopping him from "doing the decent thing"?

Why should he not have the same right to end his life as a person with nothing to look forward to but pain. We all die sometime. To allow a person to bring their own death  forward when life has little prospect but disgrace seems to me to be a minor mercy to all concerned.

Or are we so corrupted that Mr Ross can look forward to enjoying (after the initial condemnation) the rewards of celebrity? A Martian could understandably think our worst offenders are our leaders. They are treated respectfully, protected and fed without having to lift a finger. They consume enormous state resources in legal aid and polite hearings in court.  Sure there is a price for crime. But it is pitiful here. We have no equivalent to the life-in-prison US sentencing of  fraudsters like Madoff.  In New Zealand a fraudster might expect to be out in time for a book tour, selling the book he'll be allowed to write in prison.

Dean Parker has commented on my review of his Circa play.

"If you go back and have another look at the play, and ignore Pauline and Trish (impossible, I know), you’ll see the key to the lawyer’s character is his failure as a writer. His daughter is on to this. I share his pain."

I appreciate him taking the time. He may be right that I was identifying too closely with the lawyer in his Oliver character, and not recognising the writer. I've responded, but he deserves a substantive explanation of why I thought his depiction of Oliver's temptation and fall were too stereotypical.

I was distracted by the signalled doom in the Dellabarca enticement, . I realise a playwright must signal, to build suspense, but it made the eventual financial disaster outcome too predictable. I did not lose my interest in just how it would work out though.

Then Oliver's rationalisations and predicament at the end recycled cant stereotypes of the presumed stupidity and callousness of finance company directors. Again, I acknowldge a playwright's need to provide morality play symbols and stories in a few words the audience grasps quickly. But for me it jarred.

From having now lawyered thru two boom and bust cycles, and been closely involved in securities law for three decades, and knowing many directors and lawyers who've been involved, I react to stereotyping that reflects a minority of cases. Few collapses and losses are caused by cynical or ruthless opportunism. Many more are inevitable as the cycle turns. High  returns must end lest we create a class of permanently privileged risk takers. We actually need collapses to reduce the risk of permanantly rich dynasties, and the political oligarchies they spawn.

I fear that our recent legislative reaction to loss cycles will be more likely to protect incompetent holders of capital, and reinforce the trends to inequalities and South American style politics.

The loss stages of cycles in healthy markets result from the usual herd blindness and good intent and misjudged pursuit of duty that most of us operate under. But at the end each time, as well as the crooks who should go to jail for much longer, we pillory a quota of scapegoats, and change our law to make it even more torturous. That benefits lawyers and politicians. But it is vain and expensive for the dynamism of our economy.

Simple determined enforcement of our oldest laws on dishonesty throughout the cycle, plus the powerful residual memory of losses to greed and collective optimism (such memories have about a 7 year half life as a meme/prophylactic) would do  far more. Through-out my career I've tried to ensure crooks were pursued, including chasing some at my own cost and risk.

In my view the law changes of the last decade make even less likely  the needed official and political consistency, and the necessary support form business people generally.

I commend Circa's play running till 1 December, The Tigers of Wrath. Seeing it with a daughter this evening stirred some powerful memories. I should have squirmed at the character of Pauline, since I was in the camp that thought going to the Great Wall, and shopping, were frivolous when I was in China for 6 weeks in 1976. But the play relationship tensions dwarfed the political tension, and mockery saved the play.

To me it was the best kind of skewering. Dean Parker recreates the self-important self-mutilation of my generation of left-wingers. But not with contempt. Instead this is a sympathetic shafting of hypocrisy and human weaknes from a saddened and more realistic continuing believer in the original faith. He can mock but not excoriate the pretension because he still wishes communismt would have worked out as it should, if only humans had been more worthy.

The acting, particularly of Heather O'Carroll as Pauline, and Kate Prior as Trish was so evocative that I cannot be sure whether the brilliance in the play was in Dean Parker's script, or more in Jane Waddell's direction and the outstanding acting.

To me the play is deadly in its capture of the dehumanizing influence of political passion, and weak in its depiction of the lawyer. Oliver's moral erosion and "feelings" were too predictable. The stereotypical left wing view of business made him interesting only as the foil for the women.

I thought I should go to hear Baroness Stern condemning imprisonment, just in case she had more to offer in person than appears to be the case from googling her public utterances. One should be open to argument. But listening to such people is often like sitting through bad church sermons.

This liberals' version of the evangelical revival meeting has a standard pattern.

A limited range of self evident "truths" are recited. They draw spurious support from:

• anecdote (rehabilitations we have known)
• folk myth (deterrence doesn't work)
• straw man arguments ('prison doesn't work' because it doesn't reform) and
• "research" which confuses correlation with causation and omits fundamentals like control groups and realistic counterfactuals. 

The sermon starts with recitation of universal desiderata such as, less crime, more rehabilitation, better parenting, money spent on "intervention" instead of punishment. Then there is the appeal to elite vanity (we who are unlike other men because of our superior compassion and intelligence) followed by identification of the enemy (the rude unwashed, the majority, rednecks). Cliche solutions arelisted but not articulated (much more early 'intervention', fences  at the top of the cliff, instead of…. etc). If they were articulated the preachers could be tasked with explaining what level of personal liberty compromise they'll accept for interventions that co work.

Then there will be some exploration of false alternatives with which to revile opponents (we're too quick with prison for minor infractions, they should have had more chances with 'community sentences. many are not dangerous, they should be left to care for their families) and the sermon finishes with denunciation of the sins among those who do not share the faith.

But I took the Stern address out of my diary when I was reminded of just how personally unpleasant so many of these defenders of the justice establishment can be by a long attack on Garth McVicar. So The Sunday Star Times  saved me from myself.

I like to assume that most New Zealanders campaign from a sincere wish to see a better world, and disagreement is just on how to get there. We should presume that local opponents are largely decent, if misguided. The Sunday Star Times reminds us not to be naive. To the left in the culture wars the key point is to identify the other tribe, to highlight tribal belief markers, and to justify personal dislike of its members.

I know from personal involvement how false are the SST article's attacks on Garth McVicar and the victims who have joined him. And some of the  SST critics quoted in the article have had plenty of invitation to test their theories directly with victims. Unlike the lamented Greg King, they've chosen not to.

I think those hostile to Mr McVicar don't want to risk losing their excuses for personal animosity. They've too much invested to risk letting reality (like the staggering fall in US crime rates) invalidate their faith. Hence my ruminating on the close paralells between left/liberal sanctimony, and religious bigotry. 

I suspect some of  the critics have a personal need to punish.So they must vilify neretics.

Police Minister Anne Tolley's suggested sex offender register must be satisfying for Deborah Coddington.

Whenever tempted to let exasperation at her outweigh respect, I remember the extraordinary courage and time she invested in the 1996 and 2004 editions of the New Zealand Sex Offender and Paedophile Index. She took a pounding for them.

The Sensible Sentencing Trust has picked up where she left off, so they too will watch closely to see if the Tolley reform is useful, or gets watered down by officials.

The better solution is of course more simple. Restore freedom of speech and reinstate the normal operation of reputation mechanisms, aided by the great gift of Google. Just reopen court records. Then we must all live with unrestricted public knowledge of our convictions. Open justice and courts were our heritage. Just give them back.