Nipples of discontent
Tuesday, October 1st, 2013It seems the whole of NZ’s media are carrying stories of the “nipple ban”. The stories say the Commercial Approvals Bureau has denied the NZ Breast Cancer Foundation permission to run an ad about breast cancer because it features nudity. Reading through the storms of readers’ comments, I’m encouraged to find that most people think this is daffy. (Take a look at the Scottish […]
What took us so long?
Friday, September 27th, 2013Great news that NZ has decided to join up to the Open Government Partnership, an international effort to increase government transparency. It’s a bit odd that our PM made this announcement as a sort of a postscript to a press release about his chummy meeting with UK PM David Cameron – and essentially described our […]
My pick for best protest of the year
Wednesday, August 28th, 2013Take a bow Greenpeace. Somehow Formula One has forced YouTube to take down the video with a copyright claim. Not at all sure how that works: the film is by Greenpeace.
Vince Siemer and Supreme Court accuse each other of contempt
Wednesday, July 31st, 2013When Vince Siemer was charged with contempt for flagrantly breaching a court suppression order, he made a novel argument: he was upholding the rule of law. The suppression order was made by Winkelmann J in the famous proceedings against the Urewera 18 relating to their alleged para-military exercises in the bush. Winkelmann J ruled that […]
Has the Harrassment Act just swallowed the law of defamation?
Wednesday, July 31st, 2013In a landmark judgment, a court has ordered a blogger to indefinitely remove more than a hundred posts and comments attacking the reputation of a lawyer, and not to write about her again. The decision (Flannagan v Sperling DC Waitakere, 4 June 2013, Harvey DCJ, CIV 2012-090-986) may have opened up a cheap highway through […]
Read this, if you haven’t already
Tuesday, May 21st, 2013Andrew Geddis nails the government for another constitutional abuse.
Defamation and satire
Wednesday, April 24th, 2013Memo to anyone thinking of suing or threatening someone else for defamation after that person made fun of them. Don’t. It’s not that the law clearly protects humorous speech and satire. That question is a bit vexed. It’s defamatory to say something that brings another person into ridicule. So it looks like that is fairly easily satisfied. […]
Information-sharing by the government: deja vu
Thursday, April 11th, 2013Radio NZ is reporting that: The Government is considering a massive expansion of data-sharing between ministries and agencies and has asked the Treasury to assess the potential impact on people’s privacy. This seems to be a closely-related extension to the recent information-sharing legislation, which was preceded by a ministerial briefing on information-sharing by the Law Commission. […]
Review of law of contempt: deja vu
Thursday, April 11th, 2013The Law Commission has announced that it will review NZ’s laws of contempt of court. This will involve a discussion paper about the issues, to be issued next year. I wonder how this fits with another issues/discussion paper commissioned by the government and issued almost exactly two years ago: Reforming the New Zealand Law of […]
Interim injunction against EQC blogger
Wednesday, April 10th, 2013I feel as if I write this same thing about once every year. Someone rushes to court to get an injunction preventing the release of information. It’s based on breach of confidence. Here it’s the Earthquake Commission seeking to prevent the release of a database containing assessments about 83,000 Christchurch claims. The court grants the […]
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