So was it a crime before?

The case of Jimmy Mason raises a very basic question.

Mason apparently flicked his son's ear and punched him. Would that have been "reasonable force as correction" before smacking was banned? Punching a 4 year old hardly seems to be reasonable.

I'd have thought the charges related to pushing over the bikes of a 4 year old and a 2 year old while they are riding them also would not be "reasonable force" (though he was found not guilty of such actions as the details and description are not clear).

The case was brought as a bystander observed Mason "disciplining" his son in a public place.

The point being this. What did the abolition of the defence of reasonable force as correction do to this case? I'm no fan of smacking - but it appears on the face of it that had the law not been changed, Mason could still have been facing charges.

Or was it just that the Police wouldn't have bothered before?

One mistake in appointing Families Commissioner

is having one at all. Christine Rankin's unsuitability is moot, given that the role itself is completely inappropriate.

The post can remain vacant, whilst legislation is introduced to abolish the role.

The only people who would be upset are those who work there and Peter Dunne, who got it as a "gift" from Labour in exchange for granting Labour confidence and supply in 2002, when his party had 8 seats. Now he is the sole MP.

Give one good reason why taxpayers should be forced to pay for this bureaucracy. It should be first on the list of cuts by Bill English.

So here's a question for Mt. Albert voters to put to the candidates. "Why should I be forced to pay for the existence of a Families Commission and Commissioner?"

Melissa Lee and John Boscawen can't disagree with it can they, unless either plans on disagreeing with the government they support? Neither can David Shearer nor Russel Norman, since both were in parties that supported it in the first place.

Only a vote for Libertarianz candidate Julian Pistorius will help Mt. Albert elect an MP that will demand the abolition of this useless bureaucracy, and that's just for starters!

Rudman: People use something they don't pay for

That's Brian Rudman's latest piece of genius. He is pleased that public transport patronage went up a fair bit in the last nine months in Auckland.

Much of that is due to the Northern Busway, and a lesser extent due to greater use of rail services. Not that surprising when you consider how much the price of petrol went up for part of that period, which made public transport more "competitive" price wise.

However, the increased usage isn't from people paying for what they use. The Northern busway cost NZ$210 million (paid for by all road users) and has a lot of unused capacity (empty space that other vehicles could used). Rail passengers moreso don't pay anything towards upgrades to the system, and only pay a third of the cost of running the trains through fares.

For ARTA Chairman Mark Ford to regard it as an "investment" under circumstances where the investment costs more money is a little stretch.

However, Brian is making a far bigger claim saying "These were 3.7 million trips that were not taken in a private car on our congested roads." How does he know what would have happened otherwise? How many train trips were previously bus trips? How many trips were previously people car sharing? How many trips wouldn't have been made at ALL?

How many of those trips would have occurred had the bus and train passengers had to pay the same proportion of cost of providing those services and infrastructure as motorists do?

Brian goes on about the Tamaki Drive bus lane, which he thinks shouldn't be allowed to be used by other vehicles. Far better for trucks and fully loaded cars to be stuck in congestion, rather than the near empty bus lane let a few more vehicles in, right Brian? Those evil car drivers and their passengers should catch the bus!

The real issue in Auckland is congestion, which is a result of supply not matching demand, which is itself a function of price and funding. Pouring a fortune into subsidising public transport is tinkering at the edges, and the most successful example is, funnily enough, the one that requires the least ongoing subsidies - buses.

However, what I really want to know is has ARTA done surveys as to where new bus and train users come from? What were they doing before? After all, if a majority of them weren't driving cars, then isn't this all a great big subsidy for people who weren't on the roads in the first place?

Talk about a bad investment?

Stuff reports: "Transmission Gully could be one of a host of shelved projects to get the green light under a radical idea that would see KiwiSaver funds channelled into long-term strategic infrastructure assets.

The brainchild of Tower Investments chief executive Sam Stubbs, Public KiwiSaver Partnerships (PKPs) would allocate a proportion of funds directly into core infrastructure projects, freeing up government cash for investment in goods and services."

Well nice idea, if the investments were profitable. Commercial enterprises make sense of course, but Transmission Gully? What's he on?

Tolls wouldn't pay for more than 10% of the road, there isn't enough money in the National Land Transport Fund to pay for it either, so is he suggesting that taxpayer funds be poured into a road (lent to pay for it) that taxpayers would have to pay for? A road that users can barely pay a fraction of the cost of isn't profitable.

Sorry Sam, try again.

Sri Lanka poisoned by nationalism

Tamil protestors have been out in force in London for several weeks. I said to one that the tragic support of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) meant I saw both sides as equally in the wrong. However, none of this takes away from the humanitarian disaster that this war has seen inflicted on Tamils and the Sinhalese. The apparent ceasefire by the LTTE may hopefully see an end to the killing, but it wont resolve the underlying sore - the malignancy of nationalism on both sides.

The LTTE is a terrorist organisation that maintained a gangster "state" in the north of Sri Lanka for years. It's own tactics which included, until recently, child soldiers as well as bombing civilian targets have badly hurt the cause of Tamils in Sri Lanka. The LTTE, with shades of Hamas, happily has used civilians as human shields. However, which most Tamils support a cause which is based on resisting the nationalist chauvinism of the Buddhist Sinhalese, there is a darker side to this resistance. It is based not on promoting a Sri Lanka where the state is blind to nationality, but on separatism. To resist bigotry and nationalism by promoting your own nationalism by murderous means is not claiming the moral highground. For Tamils to start to claim that, they need to condemn and reject the LTTE, and demand equality under the law and before the law in Sri Lanka. After all, Tamils in India have little appetite for separatism, as India itself is not ethnically or religiously defined.

However, while Wikipedia has lists of attacks by the LTTE, it also has them of the Sri Lankan military. There is little doubt that the Sri Lankan military is far from innocent in this conflict. Its own application of severe censorship on reporting the war means its own antics will be hidden. Sinhalese paramilitary have assisted the Sri Lankan government in attacking Tamil areas. China too has helped armed the Sri Lankan government, demonstrating its willingness to turn a back while its customers kill.

So it looks like the Sri Lankan government will win, but for the conflict to truly be over, Tamils must no longer fear that government - which means it should be open, which means removing restrictions on the media - it should seek transparency and reconciliation, acknowledging what wrong has been done, so Sri Lanka as a whole can start to put this conflict behind it. Tamils and Sinhalese both have to admit people in their communities have assaulted, murdered and destroyed, and the will must be to live side by side.

However, whilst too many in Sri Lankan politics pander to Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, they will continue to see Tamils as the "other", a group that deserve nothing, instead of treating all those in Sri Lanka as individuals. Sri Lanka has tremendous potential in tourism, and in enjoying a share of India's economic revival.

It can only do it best if the religious, nationalist and Marxist elements of Sri Lanka's politics can be eschewed. Yes, Sri Lanka, start treating each other as individuals, not as Tamils, Sinhalese, Hindu, Buddhist or whatever.