An anti-vaccination campaigner who this year became the first person ever accused of breaching New Zealand’s sabotage laws has again appeared in court.

Taupō man Graham Philip was charged with seven counts of sabotage in May, relating to an alleged attack on New Zealand infrastructure late last year. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The exact details of what the Crown alleges remain suppressed until trial, due to what Open Justice understands is a fear of copycat offending.

Philip appeared via audio-visual link in the High Court at Rotorua yesterday, sitting calmly in the booth as his lawyer addressed Justice Graham Lang.

Philip’s previous lawyer Matthew Hague has withdrawn from the case, with Philip now represented by Tauranga lawyer Bill Nabney.

Philip is currently held at Waikeria Prison in Waikato after his bail application was denied earlier this year.

A planned Court of Appeal challenge to the bail decision has been abandoned and Philip will remain in prison until his trial, set down for late next year.

Sabotage defined
Under the Crimes Act, sabotage is legally defined as any activity which impairs or impedes the operation of “any ship, vehicle, aircraft, arms, munitions, equipment, machinery, apparatus, or atomic or nuclear plant” on New Zealand shores.

A person can also be charged with sabotage if the person “damages or destroys any property which is necessary to keep intact for the safety or health of the public”.

A conviction also requires a proven intent to prejudice the health or safety of the public.

Each charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald under the Public Interest Journalism Initiative funded by NZ on Air.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

How quickly things change.

If, as the old cliche goes, a week is a long time in politics then a month is an eternity.

As a story on the front page of the Weekend Observer revealed, the caretaker government is once again seeking to shape the outcome of judicial decision-making.

Caretaker Prime Minister Tuila’epa Dr Sa’ilele Malielegaoi and the Attorney-General, Savalenoa Mareva Betham-Savalenoa, have presented the Supreme Court with a motion requesting that certain judges not preside over a contempt of court motion filed against them.

The justices the pair are seeking to have removed via a recusal motion are the Chief Justice, Satiu Simativa Perese, Justice Vui Clarence Nelson and Justice Tafaoimalo Leilani Tuala-Warren (“Tuilaepa wants judges off contempt case”).

Saturday’s revelation is the latest in a long and complex string of attempts by the caretaker Prime Minister to influence the judicial branch of government in his favour. But is also reflective of a curious trend: that Tuila’epa’s hand-picked jurist has fallen out of the caretaker Prime Minister’s favour.

Efforts to influence and bombard the court have recently reached their peak as the nation undergoes a constitutional crisis over Parliament’s failure to convene after April’s national election.

But these attempts to make the court empathetic to the caretaker Prime Minister were in fact underway long ago. They date back to when Tuila’epa was searching for a Chief Justice to replace Patu Tiava’asu’e Falefatu Sapolu who resigned in April 2019.

That time feels like a different era: before the measles epidemic, the global covid-19 pandemic and our current constitutional crisis.

Tuila’epa took an unhurried approach to choosing a permanent replacement for Patu, the longest-serving Chief Justice in Samoan history, with nearly 27 years of judicial experience under his belt.

In fact, Tuilaepa openly admitted that he was taking a passive approach to selecting the appropriate candidate and waiting for divine inspiration to guide him to select the best candidate.

“I am still praying and once I acquire the whispers from God, then a decision will be made,” Tuilaepa said at the time.

“If it takes up to six months, that’s not a bad thing at all,”

In fact, it took much longer than that. Samoa was without a permanent Chief Justice for more than a year while the Prime Minister waited for that divine whisper.

He eventually settled on Justice Satiu who was sworn-in in June last year.

The Prime Minister did not disclose the contents of any whispers he may have received from on high to guide his choice.

But at his swearing-in ceremony, Tuila’epa defended the amount of time he took in selecting a replacement, again maintaining that Justice Satiu’s installment was guided from above.

“It takes time to seek God’s face and turn to the Bible for guidance. And these things take time and the whispers [from the Holy Spirit],” he said.

As it happens, Justice Satiu has been resolute in changing the direction of the court.

But it has not been in the way that the caretaker Prime Minister perhaps envisioned; he has proven to be more of a thorn in Tuila’epa’s side than a blessing.

Justice Satiu, born in Magiagi, is deeply rooted in Samoan tradition, but he has also been influenced by the principles of judicial independence taught at the universities he attended in New Zealand and America. This commitment has been shown in his rulings on a flurry of post-election legal petitions.

His Honour, has time and time again, shown his loyalty to the principle of judicial independence during a time of intense legal wrangling.

But in doing so, the Chief Justice has countered widely held expectations about how he would rule from the bench.

In an April statement, issued shortly after national elections which are the root cause of our current power crisis he issued a short statement outlining his simple judicial philosophy.

“We are in a state of uncertainty after the General Election, but I wish to reassure ourselves as a community, that the role of the Judiciary as the Independent Branch of Government is to do right by all manner of people, without fear or favour affection or ill will,” he said.

“As sworn members of the Judiciary, we uphold that Oath to the best of our abilities so to adhere to the Rule of Law.”

All jurists know to affirm their commitment to judicial independence; sticking to them in practice is a different question altogether.

It was widely assumed that because such a long time was taken to approve his selection, Justice Satiu would lean towards the constitutional interpretations of Tuila’epa and that of his Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP).

But much to the caretaker Prime Minister’s frustration, Justice Satiu has upset all expectations by remaining cool and composed throughout the current legal onslaught and applied the law completely straight.

Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, the leader of the Faatuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party condemned his early release from quarantine in May as a political manoeuvre “so that he [could] sit in on the electoral petitions.”

That led to Tuila’epa to leap to his defence as a principled jurist, while he was attacking unnamed members in Samoa’s judiciary of being biased against him:

“It’s apparent from the criticism that the Chief Justice is an honest person,” he said on his programme on state-owned radio 2AP.

“[Fiame’s…] criticism is due to the fact [the Chief Justice] is independent.”

But now Tuila’epa is seeking to avoid having him preside over a trial in which he is involved. How quickly perceptions change.

Before the month of May was out and the FAST party held its own swearing-in ceremony on the lawns of a locked down Parliamentary precinct, the appraisal of the Chief Justice’s integrity has changed considerably.

The office of the government’s lawyer, the Attorney-General, maligned his integrity in a later retracted media statement claiming he had too often ruled in FAST’s favour and was even a “close relative” of Fiame’s.

He also drew criticism for walking to Parliament to try and open its doors on May 24 after being on a panel that determined Parliament had to sit on that day. (The doors had been locked on orders of the former Speaker Leaupepe Toleafoa Faafisi, who is himself facing a motion of contempt).

“The actions of the Chief Justice indicate that he may be in contempt of Parliament,” a statement from the Attorney-General’s office said.

But throughout this personal disparagement during our current constitutional crisis, Justice Satiu has maintained cool and composed and methodically applied the law and stayed true to his oath to protect and uphold Samoa’s constitution.

Perhaps His Honour Satiu Simativa Perese was indeed a gift from God — just not the kind that the caretaker Prime Minister was hoping to receive.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Papua New Guinea’s police and courts must work closely with media for transparency to inform the public on the daily investigation and court processes taken over the death of young mother Jenelyn Kennedy late last month, a men’s gender justice advocate says.

Man Up group representative Ganjiki Wayne said Jenelyn’s death had shown a call for justice and the entire country would be behind her families and relatives as the justice process served the country, reports the PNG Post-Courier.

“Papua New Guinea is offended by this crime committed and police, courts and media must work together to tell the people that the investigation is complete,” Wayne said.

READ MORE: Background and reports on gender-based violence in PNG

He said police must make daily briefings to media just like during the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic so the nation was aware of the process being taken.

“We need to know the evidence and witness process, we need to know the prosecution process,” he said.

“If there is a bail application file and processes on suspects, people need to know about it.”

He said the “PNG village” was much closer now and the community must be informed of every detail of her case being investigated.

“We don’t want Jenelyn’s death [investigation] to be incomplete or something happening to stop [the justice process],” he said.

Other cases of gender-based violence needed to be investigated also.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

New Zealand’s unprecedented “internet-native mass shooting” attack on two mosques, the New Caledonia independence referendum, Fiji’s general election and news media responses are featured in the latest Pacific Journalism Review being published next week.

Analysis articles in the “democracy and terrorism edition” include award-winning New Zealand Herald cartoonist Rod Emmerson and RNZ Mediawatch presenter Colin Peacock who says New Zealand will be learning to live with its “loss of innocence” for many months ahead.

Melbourne-based journalist, broadcaster and academic Nasya Bahfen also contrasts how multicultural Australia is “in real life” and “in broadcasting” with a breakdown of Census data.

READ MORE: Pacific Journalism Review on Tuwhera

“Including reflections in the wake of Christchurch, she shows how lack of media representation feeds into hateful stereotypes,” says PJR.

The research journal critiques the united stand taken by New Zealand’s mainstream news media over a set of agreed protocols for coverage of the trial of the accused perpetrator over the killings of 51 people – including one victim who died later – on 15 March 2019.

PJR notes in an editorial that “although many commentators view the protocol and coordinated policy around coverage as a considered and responsible approach to the atrocity and maintaining the principles of ‘open justice’, there has also been some criticism, especially internationally”.

The journal includes strong criticism of social media responses such as by Facebook and highlights the research on representations of Islam in New Zealand by assistant PJR editor Khairiah A. Rahman and Azadeh Emadi of Glasgow University published in the October edition, which was given widespread international coverage.

Fiji’s ‘coup culture’
Last November, Fiji held its second general election in 12 years – and the second since the 2006 military coup – and Sri Krishnamurthi of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre returned to his homeland to cover it.

He was determined to come to grips with the legacy of the “coup culture” and PJR publishes his analysis while Jope Tarai of the University of the South Pacific examines the impact of social media.

November also was the controversial referendum in New Caledonia when both Kanak and Caldoche (settler) citizens voted on whether the island territory should become independent from France.

Although the predicted “non” vote happened, it was far less decisive than expected, opening the door to two more referenda on independence and ongoing political fallout.

David Robie, who covered the New Caledonian uprising as a journalist three decades ago and wrote the 1989 book Blood on their Banner about the conflict, files a special report on the referendum and Lee Duffield, who also visited New Caledonia, analyses the future options.

This double edition of PJR also includes articles about the China Global Television Network’s news values relating to the 2015 Tianjin port explosions that killed 173 people, climate change in Bangladesh, the political economy of iwi and te reo radio broadcasting, the 2018 Malaysian general election and an anti-free speech law, communication narratives of Latin American women in New Zealand and many other topics.

A compelling colour photo essay, “Gangsters in Paradise”, by Todd Henry, linked to a project by Vice Zealandia is one of the edition’s highlights.

The journal, published by the Auckland University of Technology and now in its 25th year, is edited by David Robie and Philip Cass, assisted by Khairiah A. Rahman and Nicole Gooch.

As well as the hard copy edition, Pacific Journalism Review publishes on the open access indigenous Tuwhera digital platform at AUT and on several global databases:

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz