Another long wait for the truth

BY PAT BOOTH

OPINION: Just how sick is our justice system? Same topic, more depressing evidence of unacceptable and cruel time-lags.

How come it has taken the normally-active and well-led Independent Police Inquiry Authority four and a half years to come up with an obvious finding?

The verdict: That police stuffed up when they allowed a Taranaki drunk to drive off undetected from a police stakeout and kill three young people in the crash that followed.

They died in July 2005.

The authority has just released its critical report.

The criticism is totally justified. But four and a half years. Why so long? How many more devastated families are waiting for final words on other terrible tragedies?

What's the government planning to do to speed up a scandalously slow system?

Then there's the courts log jam reflected once again in the aftermath to a holiday season death at Orewa.

When a woman appeared charged with murder, Judge Barbara Morris allowed her bail on strict conditions.

Why? Because the judge is reported as saying that it would be at least 18 months before the charge could come to trial.

Another absolutely unacceptable delay. Interesting that MPs who can pull out all the stops when it suits them - crashing through new laws and the like - have major blind-spots when it comes to the rights of the people who vote them in, pay their salaries and pick up the tab for their various expenses.

Let's get some urgency on these issues and avoid applying long-term, heartless pressure on families who've lost loved ones - and accused who are entitled to the earliest possible opportunity to argue their innocence or, at least, put their case.

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So the government is going to attach one of its senior advisers to the hearing on the application to pen thousands of milking cows indoors for most of the year in the MacKenzie Basin.

If that Cabinet move is an indication of concern, then it'll be applauded by those who share that misgiving.

That's one of four New Year developments on this controversial issue.

The second was a thoughtful contribution from the Green Party's Jeanette Fitz-simmons who effectively defined the difference between cubicle farming and cow houses.

She sees a telling difference - and so do I.

In cubicles, which seems to be what is planned for the MacKenzie development, cows might have very restricted movement for eight months of the year.

In cow houses, they can move as they like - in, around and out of the large, purpose-designed buildings, giving them access to natural surroundings as they choose.

The corporate cow cockies wanting to farm very differently have been cagey which option they're aiming for.

Until they come clean the suspicion is still of a totally unacceptable version of sow crates for cows.

A third voice: The Commissioner for the Environment wrote to the government concerned about the project.

Fourth development, a continuing flow of letters on the issue - several from Taranaki farmers in my old neck-of-the-woods who've taken time out of their conventional milking sheds to chew the fat on this issue.

Good on ya, mates:

T Hurley: "I am totally against housing cattle in this way but accept that it is the norm in some cultures. We don't need this type of farming here, there's plenty of land to be converted to dairying in the south before we even look at this system.

"Fonterra are only against this because it seems that the people who are developing this are intending to supply another company, hence their extreme dissatisfaction with the news.

"I am a farmer of 220 cows in Taranaki and am 1000 percent sure this is nothing but greed, pure and simple, but what do I know?

"I've only been doing this for 30 years and raised my four kids in a state of ignorance and small mindedness."

Chris Ball: "Several of my relatives have had dairy farms, running them in the traditional manner. However, one always carried with him on the farm a length of plastic hosepipe which he regularly whacked the cows with - on the surface a standard traditional farm but I didn't like it one bit.

"So you got it right. The issue here in the MacKenzie Basin is not an issue of farming method and whether it is humane or not as cows can be treated well or badly, depending on the farmer.

"The facts are that the companies have bought cheap land; they hope to get cheap and abundant water (which these days is really well understood by Aussie farmers).

"And they anticipate a typically slack regional council will simply tut-tut a little when the local streams and rivers are clogged and heavily polluted following their dumping of millions of tonnes of dirty dairy effluent on to the surrounding pastures.

"This will happen, just as night follows day, if they are allowed to carry on with this proposal.

"I hope the locals fight like hell on this one, and that they can persuade their local council that, like the issue of windfarms on the Lammermoors, this area is too valuable in its own right to be despoiled by money-grubbing modern businessmen, who in all likelihood will never even set foot on the land in contention."

Joe Mac: "Farmers don't comment on Aucklanders' ability to keep children in shoebox apartments. Equally, Aucklanders could keep to themselves comments on a farming system of which they know nought."

And from someone in my long-ago past, who provides a high school cap badge number as part of his bona fides:

Trevor Taylor, high school badge No 945: "I attended Hawera High the same time as you. I think I was in the agriculture classes. I feel that this issue of housing the herds for eight months of the year, although contrary to New Zealand's traditional methods, could work very well in the area proposed because the weather's not kind to farming.

"The collection of the effluent, while a big problem, would be easier managed with this set-up as it would be sprayed on the farms at a suitable time, eg, when the weather was suitable.

"I have been involved with farming for a great part of my working life so I'm talking from a point of experience. A lot of misinformation is being bandied about, some is a lot of emotional lies."

- To contact Pat Booth email offpat@snl.co.nz. All replies are open for publication unless marked Not for Publication. Because of the large numbers of responses it is not possible to answer all correspondence.

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