LIKE IT OR LUMP IT

In April 2008 Lombard Finance went into receivership owing $125 million to 4400 investors and former Cabinet ministers Sir Douglas Graham and Bill Jeffries as well as fellow Directors Lawrence Bryant and Michael Reeves were all charged with making false statements and misleading investors. This year, in spite of their fierce defence against the charges, they were all found guilty. Graham and Jeffries were sentenced to 300 hours community work and a $100,000 fine each, while Bryant and Reeves got 400 hours community service each. Secured creditors are expected to be repaid less than 24 cents in the dollar while investors will get nothing. Some of them spoke in court of shattered lives.

Meanwhile, in April 2010 Darcy Te Kiri and Boudene Mahiawere were arrested for the aggravated robbery of a Superette in Rotorua. They’d pretended to have a gun and had demanded cigarettes and cash from the owner's son. When he refused and pushed an alarm they took off with a $2.90 packet of pineapple lumps instead. Te Kiri is now serving 20 months in jail for this crime, and Mahiawere two years and four months. Their victim lives in fear of the next attempted robbery.

There is something wrong with this picture, and it’s not just the criminality of the offenders in both cases or the lack of justice for their victims. Rather it is the difference in the sentences for the criminals who are in high places and have friends there, and those who aren’t and don’t.

It’s a difference that should be carefully noted by all New Zealanders as this country continues its slide towards fascism; particularly those of us without friends in high places. We may never rob or mislead anyone, but if we are involved in protest or activism of any kind whatsoever, under recently passed law changes we are at risk of being arrested and charged with terrorism, and, unlike Doug Graham, if convicted our punishment would likely include jail time.

As she left court after his sentencing, Graham’s wife told waiting reporters he had nothing to say. But the haughty patrician couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “Well,” he smirked to her, “last time we ran over them,” a clear reference to an incident during the trial when his car had seemed to be deliberately swerved at a cameraman. Hardly the look of remorse his lawyer had earlier claimed his client felt. And the statement of his fellow criminal Bill Jeffries that he is considering appealing the conviction is, in the words of the Crown prosecutor, “The antithesis of remorse.”

Like it or lump it, Graham and Jeffries, who once dished out justice to the likes of Te Kiri and Mahiawere, should just be quiet and get on with paying for their own wrong doings; especially when their punishment is more comparable to a packet of pineapple lumps rather than the harder lumps they deserve, and others get, in prison.