Is this ruckus the first of many?

BY PAT BOOTH

OPINION: A public dispute over Civil Defence planning for the not-so-supercity is the first of many matching scraps we can expect in coming months.

The new team of bureaucrats with fresh responsibilities and plans will have their sincere ideas on any number of projects challenged by equally sincere survivors of the replaced systems and methods.

It will be an era of "stop, you're wrong" and "don't panic, we're not". There will be a great and continuing need for open minds and diplomacy on both sides.

Example: A frontline Civil Defence veteran was quoted in the column last week as deeply concerned by proposals he saw as weakening long-established systems. He talked of closures, risks and what he viewed as damaging changes.

Reading his summing-up and the response of those leading the charge, you could get the feeling they were talking about two entirely different regions – and two very different outcomes.

One predicted problems and dangers, the other is confident that new systems will serve a bigger community better.

What the critic said: "The promoters of the new supercity intend to cut the current Civil Defence local operations centres from four to only one. Manukau, Auckland city, North Shore and Waitakere response centres are to be closed as operating bases and one operations centre only will be based in Pitt St in the supercity."

The reply from Auckland Transition Agency spokesman Colin Dale: "Your (unnamed) correspondent is wrong. Civil Defence operations across the region will not be cut. Under the new arrangements, all existing staffing levels and budgets have been retained, as have all facilities (with the exception of the Auckland City Council-owned Bledisloe Building in the central city).

"What is proposed to support a major event impacting the region is to have a strong centre operating out of the specifically designed Emergency Co-ordinating Centre in Pitt St (the former ARC Building).

The critic: "The North Shore operations building may be retained but without any staff.

"This centre is the best-equipped, best-positioned and has the best communication networks in the region, plus a very valuable emergency welfare network. Would those making the current changes also promote closing North Shore fire and police stations as well?"

The reply: "The specifically designed Emergency Co-ordinating Centre in Pitt St will be the central location for liaison with the police, fire and other essential emergency service providers. This centre will be supported by the existing emergency operations centres in Manukau, Orewa and Henderson.

"The Henderson and North Shore facilities will be used as alternate emergency co-ordination centres as required. This new arrangement now aligns to the emergency zones for police and fire."

The critic: "The central city base will have real communication problems during any emergency or disaster.

"If there's a regional or national power failure communication links will rapidly decrease. Cellphones will become overloaded, home or office cordless phones will not work without power."

The reply: "Communications infrastructure has been assessed in recent months to ensure continuation of emergency communications and information management across Auckland."

The critic: "Without bases to operate from, how and where are the communities' volunteers and the local resources to work from? Who are the emergency services to work with when the nearest Civil Defence centre has disappeared?

The reply: "Local knowledge and the need for highly-motivated well-trained volunteers is very much a part of the new arrangements as it was for the old, and training will still be carried out in all the existing locations. Civil Defence is very much a community effort and the new structure will strengthen our links with our community and the essential emergency service providers who support it."

The critic: "Our emergency services are already stretched to cope with everyday problems and are too thin on the ground to cope with any major emergency the diminished system will simply not serve the new supercity."

The reply: "The new structure will provide greater effectiveness in both planning and emergency response across the region. Not only is your correspondent wide of the mark, he or she is simply wrong."

As with so many disputes to come, both groups honestly interpret key issues differently.

No secret that there have been times when the law – how it operates and how it fails – has been a issue with me. Well it's happened again.

Sadly the latest example involves someone I have had tremendous respect for.

Former Cabinet minister Roger McClay and I had regular contact on child abuse issues in his later term as Commissioner for Children.

Unfortunately his years of service to his community now lie under the shadow of fraud convictions involving two well-respected and unsuspecting community groups, World Vision and Keep New Zealand Beautiful.

But his guilty pleas and community service sentencing also highlight what seems to me yet another serious and growing trend in court hearings.

The basis for the charges was an illegal and undetected process he followed with travel expenses.

Although he was at times drawing more than $90,000 a year from the two organisations, he boosted his income by secretly using his 90 percent free air travel perk granted to him as a former parliamentarian while at the same time charging expenses as if he had driven those journeys.

In the process, he double-dipped more than $12,000 from Parliamentary Services.

He originally faced and pleaded not guilty to 56 charges. Then after some last-minute discussions between the various lawyers and the trial judge he pleaded guilty to only three "representative charges" – promised reparation of more than $24,000 – and the other 53 were withdrawn.

The report of that hearing said: "Judge Jan Doogue described the $24,687.10 fraud as `significant', but indicated that a sentence of community work would be imposed if McClay pleaded guilty.

"The charge of using a document to gain a pecuniary advantage has a maximum penalty of seven years in jail.

"After a short consultation with his lawyer Guyon Foley, the former Children's Commissioner accepted the offer."

If the Crown and police investigators believed those other 53 charges involved proveable crimes why were they dropped?

When the judge came to sentencing did she somehow block out any memory of those other charges she was fully aware of and sentence solely on the basis of the final three?

And then the final absurdity when she apparently allowed a quarter deduction of the 400 hours of community work she could have given him, instead sentencing him to only 300 because of his previous career and guilty plea, a guilty plea he decided on when faced with the certainty of jail if he continued to claim innocence but was actually found guilty.

"Plea bargaining," they call it.

A legal source says it's becoming more common. Something about clearing potentially long trials out of our cluttered trial system. But does that make it right?

I think it's wrong. What do you think?

- © Fairfax NZ News