Posts by Matthew Poole
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Sacha, I do have to say that it feels like a really long way between Waterview and Rosebank. I know it's psychological, but I actually wouldn't be in the least bit surprised about the accuracy of that assumption.
Also, it's not the distance from Waterview to Rosebank that matters, but rather the distance from CMJ and the CBD. That extra three km is, what, another 50% of the CMJ-Waterview distance? More? -
Fundamentally what is the difference between Destiny & Proton as opposed to Global Plus/AA/Airpoints as a means of cornering a segment of the market?
Well, for one thing, "user rewards" (for want of a better term) aren't coupled with the threat of eternal damnation if you don't buy from the approved outlets. The usual term for threatening people if they don't give you money is extortion, and there's certainly no extortion involved in the relationship between, say, AA Rewards and BP - to the point that no number of AA Rewards Points could induce me to buy my petrol from BP, unless it's the difference between running out of petrol or not.
Pope Brian, on the other hand, waves the stick of hellfire and damnation if his followers don't hang off his every word. Were he hanging over them the stick of a visit from "the boys" would you be so quick to dismiss the Proton/Destiny link as akin to BNZ Visa and GlobalPlus? -
It's not just churches, though. Charities in general are exempted from tax, churches are just the ones that people think of. The broad classes within which charity can be deemed to fall are the promotion of education, the promotion of religion, the alleviation of poverty, and the promotion of culture. The major churches come in under at least two of those grounds (religion, obviously, and also poverty), and arguably under eduction also for the ones that run schools. Potentially they're also promoters of culture, given that there are quite a few churches that are classified as heritage buildings and thus objects of cultural interest.
To try and strip churches of their tax-exempt status would require a complete overhaul of the entire structure of charities, revoking their tax-exempt status and making the country as a whole significantly poorer in the process.I know it's distinctly unfashionable on PAS to not bag organised religion at every turn, but there's a saying involving babies and bath-water that springs to mind when people start agitating to remove the tax exemption on churches because they see the likes of Scientology and Pope Brian.
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Gifts may not ordinarily be taxable, but there is a wonderful case in NZ's tax history that goes by the title G v CIR. It's been over a year since I studied G, so my memory is a little rusty, but a quick precis of the facts (and surely subject to correction by our legal readers) is roughly as follows:
G was an itinerant preacher. He relied largely on donations from the groups to whom he preached in order to survive. Being donations, G did not declare them as income. These donations reached fairly significant proportions, as G's reputation grew and he spoke to ever-larger groups of people, to the point that G was able to acquire a house and raise a family.
Eventually the Revenue took a look at G's affairs and proceeded to chase him for unpaid tax. At the end of the legal wrangling, it was held that, because the donations were regular and expected and were given as thanks for his spiritual guidance, they were of the nature of income and must be declared as such. G was allowed to pass a few clear gifts (along the lines of Christmas and birthday presents) as untaxable, but most of the donations were deemed to have actually been income.I wouldn't be too concerned about Pope Brian getting a huge increase in income that's right out of the reach of the IRD, to be honest. G fits so very nicely that you can be sure there are investigators at the Revenue who're busy sharpening their best HB pencils as I type. I imagine they're quite interested in that half-mil he got from the "first fruits" collection, too, since that sounds like it's a regular occurrence.
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Just thinking, what is your response to the closing quote?
And how do you know what caused Ashton's weapon to explode? All that article says is that it did.
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I don't recall ever seeing it mentioned it through my casual reading of the media from afar this last two or so years.
I don't recall ever seeing it mentioned through my not-so-casual reading of the media from a-near, either. Probably because the first five pages of Google results for sites in NZ that refer to "immigration bill" returns only one relevant result from an actual news outlet (as opposed to Scoop). One result! And as you can see, it's a very, very lightweight result.
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Rich, I have to ask, why would the Police go to all the trouble of gathering sufficient evidence to support a restraining or forfeiture order when there are far easier ways to harass and disrupt protest groups? Things like getting search warrants alleging criminal activities that would necessitate the seizure of computers and hard-drives, and search warrants are handed out on the basis of your "reasonable suspicion". The added bonus to seizing computers for evidentiary purposes is that the e-crime units are backed up months, if not years, in examining systems, so the organisation would be without its data for a long period of time. That's much, much more disruptive in the short term, and very much easier to organise.
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George, you're most welcome. It's nice to be appreciated :) It helps that I've spent a lot of time learning how to interpret legislation, aimed as such light reads as the Income Tax Act 2007 (which comes in at well over 2000 pages). Figuring that out - and it comes with many, many thousands of pages of tribunal and court decisions that must also be considered - makes this Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act look like a couple of minutes with finger weights.
The statutory clarity situation is helped a lot by the fact that a lot of legislation has been carefully considered during drafting, often over a period of months or even years. That gives the learned minds that do such work time to figure out holes, and also to investigate what has been done in other legislation, be it in NZ or in other jurisdictions. As an interesting point, if you're reading legislation and see "cf. <some law or other>" as a footnote to a section it means "compare with...". I've seen references to Canadian, Australian and Hong Kong statutes in my travels through the NZ statutory space, so the net is thrown wide when drafting.
And a good example of the benefits of the consultation process, as I've mentioned, is this Surveillance Powers Bill. If the disconnect between intent and interpretation is as wide as it appears to be, that speaks to a bill that was rushed through drafting. We must be thankful that National weren't on their urgency horse that week.
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I don't know why I'm bothering to try and argue against wilful distortion of the law, but I figure I'm already in this so I may as well continue.
The link between activities that raise an organisation's profile and the donations that result from that raised profile is incredibly tenuous. To make such a link, and then get a judge to accept that it was from those criminal acts, and no other activities, that the donations flowed, would require some incredible aptitude and circumlocution on the part of the Police. To make such a claim is one thing, but to demonstrate on the balance of probabilities that donations were the result entirely of those criminal activities, and not because of any other pre-existing profile, is quite another. Also, trespass and criminal nuisance don't constitute "significant criminal activity" as defined by the Act. Criminal damage does, but best of luck trying to pick out the individual strands of that tangled web and then quantify the outcome of those actions that do qualify when placed against those that don't.
Might the Police find a High Court judge who was prepared to entertain such a notion, swallow the incredibly convoluted supporting evidence, and not be in the least bit swayed by the counter arguments that would be put forward by Greenpeace? Yes, I guess that could possibly happen, though I wouldn't want to put money on it. Could they then manage to find two-out-of-three randomly-assigned Court of Appeal judges who would also be similarly swayed and not overturn the ruling of the High Court? Vanishingly tiny odds, but I suppose that it might happen. Could they then get the Supreme Court - and you can be quite certain that the first time any such order was presented it would make it all the way to the top - to also support such an application? Vanishingly tiny odds multiplied by odds that you would struggle to see with an electron microscope.
Judges are required to interpret an Act as a whole, not just by, as you have done, picking individual sections so that they can choose the worst possible light. Also, where there is potential ambiguity, the intention of Parliament in the passage of the Act is considered. Was this Act passed with the intent of allowing the Police to harass protest groups? Not in any of the discussion that I've read. Was it passed to allow the Police to seize and dispose of the assets of organised criminal groups, such as drug rings and gangs? Yes. Appellate courts tend to pay heed to such things, even if this notional pliable High Court judge were inclined to find some way to justify a ruling that a protest group has been enriched by way of "the proceeds of crime".[edit]
It's one thing to question the motives and integrity of the Police, but quite another to question the integrity of the entire judiciary. And to entertain as plausible the outcomes that you are convinced are possible, one must accept that the NZ judiciary are gullible, stupid and thoroughly ill-disposed to any concept of justice. That is a step too far.Even if the police can't ulimately forfeit the property, they might use restraining orders (s24) to disrupt the activities of groups they dislke. This doesn't require balance of probabilities, just reasonable suspicion, which can mean anything.
Where'd you find this "reasonable suspicion" thing? A restraining order, like any other order under the Act, is the result of a civil hearing, as per section 10. That means that a restraining order is granted or denied under the same balance of probabilities tests as a forfeiture order. The only difference is the outcome of the hearing, not the process that is followed in the hearing. Same standards of evidence apply.
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Just to clarify what "balance of probabilities" actually means, it's also known as the "more likely than not" test. That is, is what is alleged is more likely than not to be the case? Alternatively, the 50-per cent-plus-one test.
For the Police to get a seizure order, they can't just bowl into court and say to the judge "The person has lots of assets, and no job, and we want you to let us seize them." They must produce evidence to convince a judge that, more likely than not, your assets were financed through illegal activities.The balance of probabilities is not a new test in the legal system. It's the standard of proof in most civil disputes, so there is quite a significant body of case law that's developed around how to make rulings against such a measure. That won't suddenly go away just because on applicant is the Commissioner of Police, and I suspect that judges will expect a fairly high standard of evidence from the applicant as a way of discouraging fishing expeditions. After all, much of what would be presented to justify a seizure application will likely have been developed with an eye to supporting a prosecution, and that bar remains high no matter what happens at the edges with asset forfeiture.