A Facebook page vilifying so-called Christchurch ”skanks” has been removed by the social media giant – but not before it was seen by thousands of people. [Read more…]
‘Name and shame’ Facebook page sparks outrage
A Facebook page that names and abuses so-called Christchurch “skanks” is “hurtful and degrading” says the father of a New Zealand teenager murdered by her violent boyfriend. [Read more…]
Alex Swney – Auckland’s Heart of the City CEO – fired for tax evasion
Auckland’s Heart of the City chief executive Alex Swney has been fired from his job after it was revealed he had been charged with tax evasion.
Swney has been charged with 39 counts of tax evasion involving a total of more than $3 million, including penalties and interest.
Judge Grant Fraser lifted name suppression this morning in the Auckland District Court. [Read more…]
Dunedin lawyer admits defrauding clients of $2.8m
A retired Dunedin lawyer has admitted misappropriating investments of $2.8 million from mainly elderly clients in what appears to have the hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme.
The Serious Fraud Office will be pressing for a starting point of eight years’ jail when his sentencing is considered, and he was told today that home detention was not an option.
Losses caused by 79-year-old John David Milne totalled about $2.3 million, Serious Fraud Office prosecutor Rachel Reed told the Christchurch District Court today when Milne pleaded guilty to 34 charges. [Read more…]
SPCS revitalised campaign against gratuitous sexual violence in films – ignited censorship debate
Prior to its application to become a registered charity with the Charities Commission, the Society for Promotion of Community Standards Inc. (SPCS) engaged in a “revitalised campaign” against gratuitous sexually explicit movies screened in New Zealand cinemas, focusing on those such as Baise-Moi (French = “Rape-Me”) which was scheduled as an opening show-piece in the now defunct Beck’s Incredible Film Festival (B.I.F.F.) directed by Mr Ant Timpson. The R18 classifications issued to this morally putrid film and others like the Japanese film Visitor Q, were appealed by the Society to the Film and Literature Board of Review, to test whether or not the Chief Censor Bill Hastings and his staff had correctly applied the censorship laws to safeguard the “public good”.
Both films were effectively shut out of Timpson’s B.I.F.F. and after protracted litigation through the courts, the Court of Appeal issued decisions upholding in large part the concerns raised by SPCS. The Society contended that the Chief Censor had well passed his “use-by date” as a competent censor, having become “desensitised” by excessive exposure to the injurious, corrupting and toxic impact of so many films containing explicit sexual content and gratuitous sexual violence he had had to view. The vast bulk of publications (films, videos, DVDs and magazines etc) he had “examined” over his lengthy career as a censor involved the degradation, dehumanisation and demeaning of women and are “injurious to the public good”. The Society’s concerns about the Chief Censor and his Deputy Ms Nicola McCully, were taken up by a number of MPs in the House of Representatives and eventually Hastings left the job.
Bill Hastings served as NZ’s tenth Chief Censor from October 1999 to July 2010. Prior to that he was Deputy and Acting Chief Censor from December 1998 to October 1999. He was a member of the Indecent Publications Tribunal from 1990 to 1994 and Deputy President of the Film and Literature Board of Review from 1995 to 1998. He played a key role as Deputy of that Board in issuing a highly controversial decision that banned the “talking heads” Living Word videos. This decision was subsequently overturned by the Court of Appeal and the videos were classified as “unrestricted”. The Board was forced to concede the obvious – the videos contained nothing that remotely came within the five censorship “jurisdictional gateways” of the censorship Act – involving “sex, horror, crime, or cruelty or violence” – the basis upon which a publication can be classified “objectionable”.
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