by frog
Nandor had the unenviable task of fielding countless media enquiries yesterday, asking about him missing out on Parliament.
Imagine missing out on a job, and then having lots of people you don’t know calling you up asking how you feel about it. I can’t imagine it would be all that much fun, but Nandor acquitted himself with his trademark graciousness, good humour, and humility. He told the Sunday Star-Times:
I did want to do another term, I have a lot of unfinished business but at the same time I can spend more time with my family and I have other things I want to do. I will still be involved in politics, of which parliament is only one form, and not necessarily the best… I have been really proud and humbled to be part of a Green caucus and I really thank them for the opportunity. I am now going to go bush for a little while, do some meditation, clear my head, and see what comes.
His greatest achievement? Having clean slate legislation passed, so that people convicted with minor crimes have their criminal record wiped after seven years without offending.
His biggest disappointment? Not achieving cannabis law reform.
Nandor will be sorely missed by Parliament. I’m sure everyone will wish him well for the future, whatever form that future takes…
Published in Campaign | Parliament by frog on Sun, October 2nd, 2005
Tags: environment
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Yep, it’s really great when criminals with convictions are able to lie about it in the future. What an achievement.
Disgraceful.
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I’m gonna miss having your cheery and inspirational presence round Wellington Nandor.
Huge respect for everything you’ve achieved.
Hope you enjoy your newfound freedom!
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ChrisBishop, how would you feel if it were your child who had got a conviction for a minor offence such as possession of pot and as a result had their employment and travel opportunities curtailed. Clean slate legislation is common throughout the world – they have it in the UK for example, so it can hardly be described as “disgraceful”.
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a) Having a law in lots of other places, even the UK, does not make it good law.
b) Tough. Don’t do the crime if you’re not prepared to live with the consequences.
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ChrisBishop,
You seem really bitter and unhappy . If you want to “share” I can be here for you
Love Weka xx
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The reason why the Right wing nut jobs hate Nandor is precisely the reason they have lost the last three elections
sort of the same as “The reason that the Americans can’t understand why every one dislikes them is the reason everyone dislikes them”
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Well as someone in a position to take advantage of the Tanczos Act I have to agree with Chris Bishop. If it the offending is insignificant and the Judge thinks it will be wrong to have it against their name then the Judge will not enter a conviction (esp. for a first offence). There are loopholes for certain selected professions, eg. teachers, and travel restrictions (abroad) do still apply.
For all it’s good intentions I think it in effect creates state secrets by concealing information from the private sector and individuals – and for that reason it just doesn’t sit right with me. Furthermore people (like myself?) may in future use it to justify misinforming others. I may have misunderstood the law but that is how it seems to stack up to me.
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Chris
Are you unhappy about something in your past ?
Sure sounds like it. Share the pain !
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Isn’t it funny how every damm thing creates those for and against it. Let me hypothetically propose some legislation that doesn’t have a chorus of naysayers…mmm…I know! How about we allow women to vote! Anyone want to argue against that ???
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Weka
Hey! I represent that remark!
Actually, the second American civil war should be vastly less entertaining than the first. You see, some Americans DO understand.
respectfully
BJ
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I like it how everything’s “disgraceful”.
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Nandor was an effective MP – esp in select committee – but I think his absence is actually a good thing for the Greens. The sad fact is that many New Zealanders were never able to see past his appearance. People my parents age who are sympathetic to the Greens never voted for them simply because they found Nandor too frightening.
Case in point – I remember watching a debate on the justice system during the 2002 elections. Goff was there, so was Peter Dunne, so was Nandor (I can’t remember who the Nats fielded). Nandor gave intelligent, articulate answers to every question and impressed the hell out of me. The next day at work I discussed the debate with my collegues, all of whom made comments such as: ‘as usual Nandor was too stoned to make any sense.’ They never saw past the dreadlocks.
I know the Greens feel that Nandor attracts youth voters and that this makes up for alienating older sections of the electorate. But young people simply don’t vote. I don’t doubt that Nandors absence is a loss to the party, but I think it’s a huge step forward in selling the Greens to ‘mainstream’ New Zealand.
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I have a kneejerk antipathy to dreadlocks, but I’m not proud of it and try to see past it.
I regret Nandor’s absence from Parliament and hope to see him as an MP in 2008.
But there is a point here: it would be good to see in Green ads a few “respectable” (!) middle aged men to whom the mainstream (!! again)
can relate.
One reason why the “End of Suburbia” film was so convincing was the fact that many of the speakers were in suits and obviously not us trendy greenies. Ridiculous of course, but that’s the way a lot of people react (I won’t write “think”!)
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sadly, Dim I think you make a strong point. Nz isn’t quite ready for Nandor
we need to grow our vote and can’t afford to hover around the 5% shedding votes to labour everytime they look shaky in the polls.
I think Our enviromental policies have a lot of resonance in “mainstream” NZ however we are seen to be fringe lefties which dilutes the enviromental message.
Having said that, I was drawn to the greens precisely because of the “Red centre” rather than the green outside but I, certainly ain’t mainstream…
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Nandor’s legacy is exactly as Chris Bishop said it would be. The whole ‘be nice to criminals and maybe they’ll be nice to us’ ethos hasn’t worked for a long time now, and his soft on crime beliefs will only take that further.
New Zealand isn’t ready for Nandor? No, New Zealand just doesn’t like what Nandor represents. There’s a reason the Greens dropped him down the list this time round.
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‘be nice to criminals and maybe they’ll be nice to us’ ethos hasn’t worked for a long time now.
And the other option does? How many prisons do the US have to build each year and what about the Asian countries with “tough” drug laws where the black market and trafficking problem continues to grow
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dim wrote:
“Nandor was an effective MP – esp in select committee – but I think his absence is actually a good thing for the Greens. The sad fact is that many New Zealanders were never able to see past his appearance.” …
and
“I don’t doubt that Nandors absence is a loss to the party, but I think it’s a huge step forward in selling the Greens to ‘mainstream’ New Zealand” …
I am left wondering what DIM thinks “the Green message” is, that it would sell better to New Zealand without Nandor in Parliament.
I am reminded of Nandor (during a joint TV political interview with Sue Boag and someone else(?) … both of whom spent most of their valuable time “on air” obsessing about his hair … why he didn’t cut it, and did he wash it? etc …) gently and with humour, making the point that if he were not in Parliament there would be no one there to represent people like himself.
His friendly, gentle and accepting attitudes and behaviour towards others seem to be exactly what many “Mainstream New Zealanders” would do well to emulate!
eredwen
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Mike Heine writes:
“New Zealand isn’t ready for Nandor? No, New Zealand just doesn’t like what Nandor represents. There’s a reason the Greens dropped him down the list this time round.”
My reply:
NO!!! Your implication that there was “a reason” why Nandor was “dropped” futher “down” the Green list is NOT at all accurate.
The Greens’ list selection process is complex, inclusive and as demographically accurate as possible. Nandor’s place on the list was possibly affected in the name of “demography” as set out in the rules of the process. (There would also have been the expectation that the number seven was a safe bet!)
Nothing Machievellian here! Just a deep sadness among Greens, that the vote for Green didn’t quite make it to a seventh MP in 2005 … and the knowledge that Aotearoa New Zealand lost a very effective MP as a result.
eredwen
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eredwen..green party members voted nandor down the list…(something for some of them to rue..i would hope)
it is them and the boofheads who voted aotearoa legalise cannabis party who are responsible for no nandor…
and the greens are paler..somehow…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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eredwen and phil: you are actually both right.
However there’s more to it on top of that. We’ve spoken to Nandor about this on numerous occasions and he reckons it has a lot to do with the fact that he hasn’t been as ‘visible’ this (past) term relatively speaking (as opposed to the previous two). A large part has to do with the fact that he now fathers a daughter, and a lot of his time has had to be spent with her and his partner. Therefore his perceived ‘inactivity’ has resulted in *some* members interpreting this as ‘ineffectiveness’…
That said, there’s certainly many factors as to why Nandor was placed at – or ended up in – 7th place on the list…
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The “Be Nice to Criminals and…” comment did not single out cannabis policy and is, to my way of thinking, entirely separate from it. It isn’t about putting people in jail for smoking wacky tobaccy, it is about making sure that violent and dangerous people are kept out of our homes, parks and businesses.
That means that there’s a position someplace in the middle of the Nats and their ilk who would lock up all manner of jaywalkers and toss away the key and the “we can rehabilitate anyone” believers here in our own party. You have to have enough prison cells for the nasty ones to be sent up the river to stay. You have to make sure that you only do that with the nasty ones.
US drug policy is someplace to the right of the Nats, and Attila the Hun had nothing on the current US Attorney General. That’s not relevant to NZ.
What is relevant is people being released back into society without being sure that they are rehabilitated, without really serving time to the measure of the crime. The victims of their NEXT crime do not deserve this.
So when someone with a “Green” label says “Lets not build any more prisons” I feel the hair on the back of my neck coming to attention. We have to either say a LOT more and make our position a lot clearer or we need to back off the issue entirely. This is one of the areas of policy realism we have to examine.
I think Nandor is one of our better assets and I regret his loss, even if it is only temporary. To make SURE it is temporary we have to temper our enthusiasm for some or our least popular (and this IS one of them) policies.
IMHO pushing this one back a bit would give our cannabis policy a better chance of moving forward.
respectfully
BJ
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I think the point, BJ, is that building prisons should not be a central focus.
Stacking up prisons with criminals/convicted persons is not the objective of law enforment. The criminal justice system isn’t about siphoning people off to the cells, nor is high imprisonment rates indicative of an effective justice system.
The Right seems to think that “the more people we imprison, the safer our communities become” or that “the higher the rates of conviction, the more our criminal justice system is strengthened”. Such a stance is both ludicrous and superficial.
Placing victims at the centre – as it should be – isn’t about dealing a crushing cast-iron fist to the perpetrators of wrongdoing. Sounds a lot like ‘playground politics’ to me when we shape policy along the lines of “I’m gonna kick you in the guts for snatching my lollipop”.
I think it would be beneficial if we move beyond the whole ‘eye for an eye’ mindset when it comes to criminal justice policy. The Greens are, thus far, moving in the right direction.
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RedGreen – True… it should NOT be a central focus, and keeping drug use in the medical vs legal domain is an important factor. My gripe is that when I read our justice policy this phrase leaps into focus rather close to the top of the form. So who is making prisons new or otherwise, a central focus?
http://www.greens.org.nz/election2005/justice.asp
“No New Prisons or Private Prisons”
That’s pretty damned definitive and it is VERY hard to ignore. Under that rule we can’t even replace a sub-standard prison (though I doubt that it was intended or would be invoked to prevent such replacement).
The entire rest of the document can be ignored because of that single phrase, and most of New Zealand will rubbish even the good parts of the policy on account of that single phrase.
respectfully
BJ
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Granted, BJ; however I believe that a number of things can be said about this:
1) The phrase is better read as – and perhaps could have been worded as – no MORE prisons (as opposed to ‘new’).
2) The placement of that statement as the first point could mean that
(a) Halting the building of more prisons is a STARTING point rather than the MAIN ISSUE.
(b) The Greens wish to present the opposition to unfettered prison-building as an alternative to the position taken by the Right.
3) In line with point 2(b), the statement, succinct as it is, is perhaps a way for the Greens to highlight the theme of restorative justice – that we should move away from thinking of prisons as the solution to crime and criminal offending and instead look to other modes of addressng grievances and punishing offenders, such as Family Conferencing. The concept of imprisonment is usually associated with retributive justice, and the statement was probably made to state the Greens’ position on ‘looking beyond prisons’.
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Honestly I have to say I am glad to see Nandor go from parliament. It is nothing personal as he seems by all accounts a decent person and has pushed a few good issues in the past. My big non-negotiable issue has always been his drive towards Legalising Cannabis. I honestly believe that if the greens were to discard the whole legalise cannabis campaign then you would get greater support from the NZ public. I just cannot understand why the Greens do not strive for a Clean, Green, Nuclear Free and Drug Free NZ?
In terms of Law & Order the Greens should just keep out of this area of policy as I have grave concerns with regards to restorative justice and also that your policies leave me with the impression that you have absolutely no idea (or refuse to acknowledge) that often the ambulance is late or does not even get to the bottom of the cliff in the first place. Also your statement of no more prisons means that the Greens do not realise that many of our prisons have been overpopulated for years and that the current program is in catchup mode as well as to provide some additional capacity for the increase in criminals as per the increase in our population.
Cheers Toa
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What are your grave concerns about restorative justice? That it inherently cannot be made to work, or is it a moral conviction that criminals should “pay” for their crime rather than go to a place for “rehabilitation”. What exactly are your arguments?
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Nandor’s loss is a tragedy for parliament. From all the things I’ve seen and heard of him, he’s a great person, very reasonable, and a great thinker- quite a contrast to the bullies that usually inhabit Parliament. While I do think it might be better for the Green Party to appeal to more “mainstream” voters, I don’t think the Green Party should be compromising its values (and the real value in question here is tolerance of other cultures- the “mainstream” voters make fun of his hair, religion, smoking cannabis, all part of being rastafarian) in order for wider appeal- it should be fighting to convince people of its existing policies.
On prisons and justice- I agree that “the Right” to go with the popular term, often tries to demonise criminals a bit too much. You have to think of it in terms of social responsibility: Society is responsible for making sure it doesn’t encourage people to become or to stay criminals- this in term reduces net crime and makes everyone happy. It’s not “being soft” on existing criminals, it’s trying to prevent future crime.
Supporters of proper rehabilitation don’t believe that it will always work. They don’t believe it is the only thing that can hold up the justice system. But they do believe it’s an important part of the whole and needs to be done to the best of our ability- we would most certainly have trouble with many criminals, but there are some who will show they’re ready. We also believe it’s a basic human right that we should try to integrate offenders back into our society- trying and failing is accepable, as long as we’re doing our best. Personally, I think instead of “ending” parole, we should ABSOLUTELY REQUIRE a high degree of rehabilitation for it. That’s the whole point of parole- to test whether we’ve done our job in rehabilitating offenders.
On drug law- it’s not a popular view, but I think the Green Party has the right idea. Current law relies on circular reasoning- “Drugs encourage crime” and “because criminals use drugs” are certainly going to hold true when drug use is illegal. It’s time to stop turning sick people who need our help to get off the drugs into criminals, and persecute the real criminals- the people who are supplying them.
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My grave concerns about restorative justice revolves more around the Greens focus on it as the silver bullet while missing the obvious weaknesses in Law & Order. I suppose restorative justice would be good in early intervention cases and children but I am not too sure about the hardened crims or the real evil crims.
In South Auckland our local paper has been doing an investigation into the culture of violence that is now common among our South Auckland youth. Having been involved on and off over the years in community safety it has become apparent to me that our youth are getting involved in increasingly serious acts of violence. Often this is done for very little criminal gain or even for the “entertainment” value of fighting rival gangs. Last year Counties-Manukau had the highest total of 11,000 priority 1 being calls of which nearly 50% were domestic violence. By comparison the second highest was Waitakere/NorthShore at 9,000. Last year Counties-Manukau attended only 61% of these P1 calls within the target time of 10 minutes (ie “ambulance is late or does not even get to the bottom of the cliff”) .
The unfortunate reality is that many of the youth in South Auckland are growing up in families where domestic violence is a normal part of life and this obviously is one of the main causes of the issue. There is of course the huge numbers of liquor outlets (I have 5 within 15 minutes walk of my home), the high availabilty of soft/hard drugs (often in our schools and the main reason I am against Cannabis legalisation), our youth going into prostitution (for easy money or by force), the high number of youth gangs, family history of violence, abuse etc.
I could go on all day about this but hopefully you get the drift in that we should really be working on ways of preventing crime in the first place especially with the concerning trends towards gratuitous violence among the youth in South Auckland.
Cheers Toa
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Redgreen – Lets take as a starting point the constructive aspect, that we oppose the building of MORE prisons. It beats the current phrase and I accept your argument that it is probably what was meant (vice the wording on our policy page).
I would still argue that it does not address the possibility that more prisons might actually be required. It provides an argumentative point of departure, a contrast to the right, but I do not think that this is the correct way to frame policy. We can minimize the rate of incarceration and organize alternatives where alternatives are warranted, but the point as stated (again assuming the word “more” rather than new) is still going to cause extreme problems for any reader who is really familiar with the darker aspects of our society.
Clara – One of the issues is the recidivism rate. Which is way more than too high… I don’t mind the concept of “restorative justice”, but vengeance IS the rock on which justice is based. If someone does intentional harm to my daughter or son, that person had BETTER wind up in a jail cell. His/Her survival may depend on being locked up. There is a problem with letting people out before our society can feel safe with them walking freely among us. There is a problem with the justice system giving up on actually punishing people for doing harm to others.
There is also a problem with locking people up who pose no real threat to the society, people who commit victimless crimes, people whose circumstances are unique and where the law is just plain wrong… which may be part of the problem with the size our prison population. Unfortunately, outlining only one side of this issue as we do is going to pit most New Zealanders against us… and it is also going to split the party a bit, as I am sure there are others who are also uncomfortable with “No Additional Prisons” statement in our policy and no balancing hand on the victim’s side of the scale of justice.
I think however, that the biggest problem is simply, and without explanation, coming down against building new prisons, as though the NUMBER of people hurting other people and needing to be in jail isn’t going to increase at least as fast the population increases. That’s just plain silly. The prisons we have house a NUMBER of people, not a PERCENTAGE of people. Saying we will build no more is simply not supportable.
respectfully
BJ
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My grave concerns about restorative justice revolves more around the Greens focus on it as the silver bullet while missing the obvious weaknesses in Law & Order. I suppose restorative justice would be good in early intervention cases and children but I am not too sure about the hardened crims or the real evil crims.
In South Auckland our local paper has been doing an investigation into the culture of violence that is now common among our South Auckland youth. Having been involved on and off over the years in community safety it has become apparent to me that our youth are getting involved in increasingly serious acts of violence. Often this is done for very little criminal gain or even for the “entertainment” value of fighting rival gangs. Last year Counties-Manukau had the highest total of 11,000 priority 1 being calls of which nearly 50% were domestic violence. By comparison the second highest was Waitakere/NorthShore at 9,000. Last year Counties-Manukau attended only 61% of these P1 calls within the target time of 10 minutes.
The unfortunate reality is that many of the youth in South Auckland are growing up in families where domestic violence is a normal part of life and this obviously is one of the main causes of the issue. There is of course the huge numbers of liquor outlets (I have 5 within 15 minutes walk of my home), the high availability of soft/hard drugs (often in our schools), our youth going into prostitution (for easy money or by force), the high number of youth gangs, family history of violence, abuse etc.
I could go on all day about this but hopefully you get the drift in that we should really be working on ways of preventing crime in the first place especially with the concerning trends towards gratuitous violence among our South Auckland youth.
Cheers Toa
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