MFAT'S MALAYSIAN MALAISE

I am concerned over the "trial by media" of the diplomat Muhammad Rizalman bin Ismail sent home in a murky deal with MFAT over charges of burglary and assault with intent to rape resulting from behaviour that is alleged to have occurred in the Wellington suburb of Brooklyn in May this year. I think the way this case has been reported has created an environment that would enable the Malaysian Embassy to argue their diplomat could not receive a fair trial in NZ. Essentially the media have robbed the diplomat of his right to elect trial by jury. There is scant chance of any jury pool being untainted by prior knowledge and the spin regarding this case. The only person who hasn't heard that the man's neighbour thinks he was odd, or about any other matters regarding the case and his personality would had to have been in a coma. As for a judge alone trial,  research from Australia suggests that if you elect trial by judge alone you face an 87% chance of being convicted, whereas if you elect trial by jury you face a risk of conviction of under 50%. These figures don't apply to each case and are only averages. I just find that for all the media's puffery about bringing this man back to "face justice", they have created an environment where the Malaysian Government could argue that he would not receive a fair trial. 


There is clearly a presumption in favour of the open reporting and the public administration of justice, and any assessment of suppression must adopt that presumption as a starting point. The presumption is not a “fundamental principle” and is capable of being displaced. Priestley J states in GAP v Police at paragraph 40:

Although the Judge here has correctly articulated all the relevant factors, the risk of this trap manifests itself in para [3] of his judgment (supra) where he refers to the open justice factor, not once but twice, as a “fundamental principle”. The characteristic of fundamental principles is that they are immutable.  But as is  clear from the Court of Appeal authorities to which I have referred (supra), in some cases the presumption can indeed be displaced.  The principle of open justice is the starting point.  In the balancing exercise which must occur after the start it remains a potent factor.  But, if viewed as a presumption, it is an error to regard it as irrebuttable or so “fundamental” as to be impossible to displace.  Nor should courts use the presumption as a pretext to avoid weighing the vital constitutional interests and the individual circumstances of a case to ensure that a just result flows from the discretionary exercise.

In this particular case the presumption is displaced by the fundamental right to a fair trial provided for by section 25(a) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990:

25 Minimum standards of criminal procedure

Everyone who is charged with an offence has, in relation to the determination of the charge, the following minimum rights:

(a)The right to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial court:

The right to a fair trial is capable of displacing the presumption of open justice. The Court of Appeal held in R v Burns (Travis) [2002] 1 NZLR 387, 404 at paragraph 10:

[10] In the sphere of the criminal justice system the right to a fair trial has been jealously guarded by the Courts. No right is more inviolate than the right to a fair trial. Not only is it the fundamental right of the individual but it permeates the very fabric of a free and democratic society. The notion that a person should be required to face a trial and endure the punishment which a conviction would bring, when the fairness of that trial cannot be assured, is repugnant. Indeed, it has been judicially observed that the right to a fair trial is as near an absolute right as any which can be envisaged. See R v Lord Chancellor, ex parte Witham [1997] 2 All ER 779 at p 787. It is for this good reason that the Courts at times insist that the right to a fair trial must prevail over the principles of free speech and open justice. As Cooke P in R v Liddell stated at p 547, in considering suppression orders "Departures from the principles [those of free speech and open justice] are necessary at times to avoid prejudice in pending trials."

At paragraph 11 the Court held:

[11] The comments in R v Liddell and the Gisborne Herald case clarify the nature of the balancing exercise to be undertaken when considering whether to grant or revoke a suppression order. The public's right to receive information, the principle of open justice, the type of information in question, its public importance and interest, its likely circulation, methods of diluting its effect on the minds of potential jurors, the presumption of innocence, and other issues are all to be balanced against its prejudicial effect. But once this exercise has been completed and it has been determined that there is a significant risk that the accused will not receive a fair trial, the issue ceases to be one of balancing. The principles of freedom of expression and open justice must then be departed from; not balanced against. There is no room in a civilised society to conclude that, "on balance", an accused should be compelled to face an unfair trial.

[Bold added]

 In Gisborne Herald Co Ltd v Solicitor-General [1995] 3 NZLR 563, the Court of Appeal held at pg 575:

…But the absence of current empirical data to support a long-standing assumption embedded in public policy is not, in our view, adequate justification for shifting policy ground in favour of another approach which is also deficient in supporting policy data and analysis. The present rule is that, where on the conventional analysis freedom of expression and fair trial rights cannot both be fully assured, it is appropriate in our free and democratic society to temporarily curtail freedom of media expression so as to guarantee a fair trial.

In New Zealand I am not aware at least in recent times of any Court having the courage to say that the media have gone too far in the way they have reported a case and stayed it. The current reasoning appears to be that a judicial direction to ignore any pre trial publicity can operate as a magic salve and jurors can remove any prejudice from their minds.

This however begs the question of how jurors treat such directions and whether the direction itself is informed by an accurate assessment of the statistical importance of the previous history itself. In the debate around loosening up New Zealand's laws regarding proof of relevant previous convictions (propensity) the New Zealand Law Commission appears to take comfort in the fact that juries will place great store in and follow judges’ directions when considering propensity evidence. In part this position is described by the Law Commission as being “almost an article of faith” and is informed in part by findings of New Zealand research contained in the study Jury Trials in New Zealand: A Survey of Jurors.

The Law Commission notes the need for caution with this research. In the 2008 paper Disclosure to Court of Defendants’ Previous Convictions, Similar Offending, and Bad Character[1], the Commission notes in chapter 7:

7.34 As stated, there is a need for caution in applying this 1998 New Zealand research. the study itself notes a “potential limitation inherent in the methodology” employed:

(1) primary reliance on self reports by jurors, whose perceptions may not have

been accurate, and who may have been influenced by assumptions or

prejudices of which they were unaware;

(2) a possibility jurors deliberately underplayed the influence of factors such as

speculation or prejudice upon their behaviour because they were aware it

was contrary to judicial directions;

(3) the passage of time between trial and interview, with some interviews not completed until a week or two after trial;

(4) a possibility that jurors who agreed to be interviewed (54.3%) did so for reasons which may have biased their responses (they may have had a particular criticism or felt particularly positive);

(5) a possibility that knowledge the research was taking place may occasionally have influenced behaviour. the researchers were able to crosscheck to some degree on (1) and (2). The remainder are unknowns.

Against this study there is the work of the Australian Law Reform Commission and international research into the effectiveness of judicial directions to juries in regards to prior criminal history, which demonstrates that directions to disregard such evidence or to ‘ring-fence’ it for a limited purpose, are often ignored not complied with. 

The ALRC in their 2006 comprehensive overview of the research in this area reference the research of Wissler and Saks, which concludes on this topic:[2]

On the basis of the available data, we conclude that the presentation of the defendant's criminal record does not affect the defendant's credibility, but does increase the likelihood of conviction, and that the judge's limiting instructions do not appear to correct that error. People's decision processes do not employ the prior-conviction evidence in the way the law wishes them to use it. From a legal policy viewpoint, the risk of prejudice to the defense is greater than the unrealized potential benefit to the prosecution. A change of the rules to exclude evidence of prior convictions for defendants would protect defendants while not disabling the prosecutor. The defendant automatically has exceedingly low credibility for a jury, and the prosecution still has "other recognized means to challenge the credibility of a witness" (Margolis, 1972, p. 525).

This material indicates that even judicial officers can be affected by unconscious bias against an accused once they are aware of previous convictions, despite being aware of the cautions that attach to the admission of such evidence.

3.18 The prejudicial effect of evidence of previous misconduct has been confirmed in research conducted by the Law Commission of England and Wales involving magistrates and mock juries.[3] In relation to mock juries it was found, among other things, that information of a previous conviction for indecent assault on a child can be particularly prejudicial whatever the offence charged and will have a significant impact on the jurors’ perception of the defendant’s credibility as a witness.[4] In relation to magistrates, the study concluded that:

In general the results indicate that information about previous conviction is likely to affect magistrates’ decisions despite their awareness of the dangers and their efforts to avoid bias. These findings did not offer confidence that the rules on admitting previous convictions can be safely relaxed for magistrates anymore than for juries.[5]

The point being, that if actual research shows that jurors in fact do not pay heed, despite the dogmatism of our Courts to juror cognisance of judicial directions as an article of faith, then in reality how can an outsider looking in at New Zealand, have any faith in fair trial rights based upon a judicial direction remedy? 

This case is not the one to run the sexual conviction rate versus acquittals debate. What is annoying is the trial by media that has occurred. That may mean that no trial will ever occur. Responsible reporting would have meant the story could still have run, but with the focus on MFAT and the Minister without the need to publish matters germane to any prospective trial. I dislike mob rule and populism and how it appears to have been used to erode fair trial rights. 

[1] NZLC R103 Disclosure to Court of Defendants’ Previous Convictions, Similar Offending, and Bad Character, 12 June 2008

[2] R Wissler and M Saks, ‘On the Inefficiency of Limiting Instructions: When Jurors Use Prior Conviction Evidence to Decide on Guilt’ (1985) 9 Law and Human Behaviour 37, 47

[3] Law Commission, Evidence of Bad Character in Criminal Proceedings, Report 273 (2001), Appendix A, [A 35]–[A 38].

[4] See Law Commission, Evidence in Criminal Proceedings: Previous Misconduct of a Defendant, CP 141 (1996) Appendix D, [D 63]

[5] Law Commission of England and Wales, Evidence of Bad Character in Criminal Proceedings, Report 273 (2001), Appendix A, 

INCHWORM

By Michael Bott


John Fenton was a geeky kid, with sticky out ears, rubbery lips, and blond hair that projected from his misshapen head like the bristles of a toothbrush. He was tall and lanky and made my life hell when I was 9 at school. What I didn't know was that he was an orphan and lived down the road at a foster house run by Mrs Black.

John found out that I was adopted, "Hey Bott ya bastard!" This taunt rang across the playground. Stung by this label - "what the hell was a bastard?" I responded with a feigned disinterest, "Aw shut up Fenton." The bell rang, back to class.

I was sitting in my class, when there was a knock at the door. A student who was acting as a runner had spoken to the teacher. Mr Milne looked at me. "Michael, Mr Scott wants to see you." I got up and didn't know why.

Mr Scott was the deputy principal, he lived at home with his mother, who was in her 80s. He drove the same car an old immaculately maintained Singer Vogue, and always wore a suit with a hand knitted vest. Once a week we held school assembly outdoors. All of us children would form lines, boys on one side, girls on the other and we would march into the asphalted central ground and line up in rows for inspection, in the middle of the baking heat of summer or the frosts of winter. Mr Scott would then address the school. "School attention!" We crack to alert, arms at our sides, backs straight and eyes ahead. "At ease!" That meant we stood with our arms behind our backs, legs apart, facing straight ahead. Teachers looked down the rows. I remember one occasion on a baking summer morning, when my mate Kevin couldn't cope with the heat, he fainted after half an hour in the sun. We broke rank to pick him up. "Leave him be! Attention!" Barked Mr Scott. So we left Kevin to bleed on the padder tennis court as Mr Scott continued to address the school. Messages over, national anthem sung, we were ordered to attention and turned as one, as we marched  back to our class rooms to an old recording of Colonel Bogey as it blared out over the school's loudspeakers.

I was sent by the school secretary to Mr Scott's classroom Room 5, packed full of standard 4 students - the biggest kids in the school. I knocked on the door and walked in. Mr Scott looked up from his desk and said, "Yes, what?" "I'm Michael, you wanted to see me?"

Mr Scott said "Yes, step out into the corridor." As he said this, he pulled open his desk drawer and grabbed a strip of thick brown leather. "Oh no, the strap!" As I turned to walk outside I saw the entire class look at me and smile "Dead man walking. What had I done?"

Mr Scott followed me out to the corridor, he glared down at me, "Well why did, you do it?" "Do what Sir? What do you mean?" I asked. I looked at Mr Scott, he glared down at me, as I looked into his face, I discovered that one of his blue eyes, was lifeless - he had a glass eye! 

Years later he told me, that in the Second World War, he and his best friend were resting in a shallow dugout. A Japanese grenade was thrown, his friend rolled onto the grenade taking the blast and losing his life. A piece of shrapnel took Mr Scott's eye. Damaged he came home, carrying the scars of a shattered youth he became a teacher and visited in turn his scars upon us.

This one eyed giant was now glaring down at me, demanding to know what I said and why? I had no idea what he was talking about and was scared, humiliated and began to cry. I asked for my mother,"Don't give me that mummy treatment!"  I wanted to talk to someone, to get some advice. What had I done? "Hold your hand out." I held my hand out. "Whack, whack, whack!" "Hold your other hand out, "whack, whack, whack". Mr Scott lifted the leather strap to his shoulder and bought it down on my open nine year old hands, for a crime, the facts of which I had no idea. 

After punishment I was told that I was getting the strap for swearing in the playground. "But I only said shut up, after I was called a bastard." "Well you should have told me that when I asked", was Mr Scott's reply. What could I say? I was scared and had no idea, what he was even talking about. The pain was nothing, what stung was the injustice of it and the reality that I was powerless to do a thing about it.

A couple of months's later I had forgotten about the shame of being strapped and our standard 3 class were having a choir lesson with Mrs Treecher in the school hall. We were singing Inchworm. "Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds.... " Two students away from me was John, he was mouthing the words, but no sound was coming out. "Silence!" Mrs Treecher demanded. "You, Snow" she pointed a finger at John, "come here!" "You weren't singing, were you?" "No miss" he grinned an embarrassed grin.

"Right, you think it's funny? Get on the stage and lie on your stomach!" For the rest of the choir lesson we were made to sing Inchworm again and again and again as John Fenton, orphan was made to grovel worm like from one side of the stage to the other as we stood and watched the spectacle of a child belittled because he annoyed a teacher. At first I delighted in the payback, but after two minutes I had had enough.

Te Pataka Ohanga the Tip of The Ice Berg - Just Wait For Partnership Schools

The public and numerous commentators have been rightly concerned about the lack of controls and insights into the use of public money granted to the Te Kohanga Reo National Trust, once they then paid part of that money to a privately owned subsidiary company Te Pataka Ohanga. Reports contained allegations about credit card spending on personal items and a $50,000 koha paid to Te Pataka Ohanga.

The Minister Hekia Parata undertook an inquiry and paid more public funds to Ernst and Young to undertake a review of the Te Kohanga Reo National Trust. That review found no fault and she was delighted. However Ernst and Young were not tasked with looking at Te Pataka because it was a private company. As Ms Parata says:

"I have no power over them. They are a private company that works for an organisation that has a contract with my department that reports to me."

"Only they can tell us what's going on in their commercial arm and they do need to front the public on that," 

"I have no power over them. They are a private company that works for an organisation that has a contract with my department that reports to me."

[Hekia Parata Minister of Education responding to calls as to why she had no control over allegations of misspending by the Te Kohanga Reo National Trust's wholly owned subsidiary company Te Pataka Ohanga (http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/trust-s-subsidiary-needs-front-up-parata-5871352 23 March 2014).]

The trouble with this is, is that the lack of open and transparent insight into private organisations tasked with handling public money has become the norm under this Government's charter schools policy. As the New Zealand Herald reported on 14 February 2013

"Associate Education Minister John Banks has defended a proposed law change that would exempt charter schools from scrutiny under the Official Information Act, saying they will be more accountable than other schools.

Chief Ombudsman Dame Beverley Wakem told a select committee yesterday the provision in the Education Amendment Act 2012 was unconstitutional and could be "catastrophic".

Today Mr Banks said there were 5000 early childhood facilities that were not subject to the Official Information Act and he didn't believe the public-private partnership charter schools should be subject to the acts.

"The Government respects the views of the Office of the Ombudsman. However, it would be inappropriate to extend the jurisdiction of one of the Ombudsman to partnership schools.

"They are not crown entities, they will be private organisations - they are similar to the 5000 licensed early childhood education care centres, independent schools, private training establishments and industry training organisation who are not subject to the Official Information and Ombudsman Act.

Mr Banks said the ultimate safeguard for ensuring charter schools were accountable was that the Secretary for Education could request any information from any charter school and that information would be subject to the Official Information Act."

The trouble with this is that how will the Secretary for Education know what to ask for, without open and transparent accounting and auditing? Further, how will the Secretary know that he or she has been provided with the complete answer, rather than some carefully manufactured and scripted response? The public reach in terms of  the Official Information Act will therefore be limited those items of information asked for from partnership schools by the Secretary of Education and provided to him or her by the partnership school. That is a weak protection, and amounts to mere lip service.

So there you have it. The Minister is currently cringing because of the alleged private spending of Te Pataka Ohanga. Yet she has presided over establishing a regime where the same thing can happen again and again with charter or "partnership schools" 100% taxpayer funded but with des minimus accountability to taxpayers via Parliament or the Official Information Act. There's an old saying, "when the cat's away, the mice will play." Without full transparency and proper accountability the public can have no confidence that public money is being spent wisely or properly. I find myself increasingly agreeing with my friend and Auckland barrister Jeremy Bioletti who succinctly put his finger on the problem when he recently remarked, "[p]enny finally dropped. We are letting ourselves be ruled by a bunch of bozos!" Watch this space.

"Sid-i-ney, I'm Stuck"

Michael Bott

My great aunt and uncle Beryl and Sid were a couple of Ohiro Road identities. Beryl met her Sidney at the end of the Second World War and they remained in love until the day they died.

In some ways they really were opposites. Sid was short in stature and was so skinny that he could divest himself of his jacket with a shrug of his shoulders, while Beryl towered above him and had an impressive girth that was held in with mysterious stays, fixed so tight that her mid drift felt like a 44 -gallon drum. Sid always wore the same thing, winter or summer, wool trousers, a white shirt and an old brown cardigan. Beryl, always wore one of a number of floral dresses, with her feet encased in comfortable soft slippers.

Beryl alongside her enormous girth, was also possessed of “nana arms” or “bingo wings”, those lovely large arms, with floppy folds of skin that loosely hung from her upper arms. Yet those arms were capable of beating a sponge, cream, or egg whites with a speed and strength, seemingly without effort in a way that would rival the most high spec electrical appliance.

Beryl stood a shade under 6 feet and Sid lovingly described her as being “a couple of axe-handles wide across the beam.” As a child I had no idea, what that meant, but I remember the loving glint in his eye, when he said it. They were both quietly spoken, smoked Rothmans cigarettes and lived in the same small weatherboard house built by Beryl’s father and Sid in the 1950s.

Both Beryl and Sid had faces lined with age but these furrows and crags were exacerbated by a lifetime of smoking. Gradually over time the smoking had rendered their skin the same colour as the wallpaper. Indeed in some light, were it not for the floral colours of Beryl’s dress or the grey of her shoulder length hair, she would have blended chameleon-like into the background!

I recall the walls of the entire house were papered with Anaglypta wallpaper, painted cream, but several decades of continuous smoking had rendered them brown with the surface slightly sticky to the touch.

There was a hallway that ran the length of the house and if the front and back doors were open you could see from the footpath to the garden that meandered upwards at the back. In summer there were plastic strips that hung from the back, where the small kitchen was located. In the summer if the back door were left open the breeze would catch the strips creating a soft, hypnotic swishing sound.

The kitchen. like most kitchens of its vintage was designed by a man who did not cook, for the woman who predominately did.  Because of that it was completely impractical. The kitchen was tiny in proportions, there was a stainless steel sink, a few handmade wooden cupboards and a formica benchtop.  In the corner was a small four-seater formica topped dining table with chrome legs, where they ate their meals. I can remember the smell of the house even now. In summer if you approached the house from the back you would be first greeted by the delicate smell of sweat peas, then as you got to the back door the heavy thick spicy scent of the old roses that grew in the grey soil adjacent to the back door. When inside the scent changed again, the air contained a curious comforting amalgam of old apples and stale smoke.

One time when I called over I saw Beryl and Sid laughing. They didn’t just laugh like normal people, Beryl’s whole body convulsed and as she shook, her face went a brilliant red, when Sid laughed, he wheezed and his lungs rattled almost like a pair of maracas. What was the joke? “Oh Michael, you should have been here last night” Beryl heaved. “What happened?”

Sid explained that Beryl was having her evening bath. She always had an evening bath after dinner, and would fill the bath with steaming hot water to have a soak. Anyway she had filled the bath, disgorged her body from its stays and slowly eased herself into the steaming water, when somehow Beryl dislodged the plug with her toe. The water had drained before she could get out of the bath. As the water drained, Beryl’s skin had suctioned to the sides of the bath, creating a vacuum. She was trapped!

“Sid-i-ney, Sid-i-ney, I'm stuck!” Beryl called for the aid of her husband. In vain Sid tried to pull his wife from the cast iron shell in which she was now trapped. Sid had as much chance of releasing his wife as an ant did of pulling a Christmas cracker. In their panic, Sid felt he had no option and called the fire brigade. A fire engine and crew were dispatched, with sirens blaring, to their house. Neighbours from down the street, went to their front doors, looking for the smoke, of which there was none.

What to do? Several fire-fighters squeezed into the bathroom, to examine the scene and to plan a rescue. After several minutes a plan was hatched.

Beryl was covered with several towels to protect what little dignity remained and one of the officers got a grease gun and carefully shot squirts of grease between Beryl’s body and the walls of her prison. Once this was done the bath was carefully refilled with water. Slowly a long pole was wedged beneath Beryl and the bath to create a lever. After several minutes of effort, Beryl said, “she popped free like a cork from a bottle.”

Sid, recounted that after the incident when he made a pot of tea for the rescuers, one of the officers was mulling over the events of the night as he looked down into his mug and quietly exclaimed to no-one, “Geez, I’ve been called out several times to free bloody cats from trees, but this is the first time I’ve had to free a woman from a bath.”

“Daaaad!”

“Daaaad!”

Michael Bott

“Daaaad, are we there yet?” That old chorus, familiar to all parents on trips with their children, now came from the back of my car as my three children, all under ten, complained in unison about the time it was taking to travel from Taupo to Wellington in the old Peugeot 504, as it glided along the State Highway.

Desperate to buy silence, what could I do for a diversion?  Outside the rain has morphed from drizzle to solid driving rain, snow will be falling soon. The mountains in their snow-capped glory are now obscured in a thick cloak of cloud. Taihape is still some time away. Mmmm, I know! Yes a story.

“Hey kids, do you know anything about your great, great, grandfather Edward Fraser and how he used to be a shoemaker or cobbler in Glasgow?” “No,” came the reply. “Great, and very convenient I thought.” As I looked in the rear view mirror, I saw smiles forming on their faces.

“Well a long time ago, way back last century, people in Scotland, like a lot of places came to New Zealand by sailing ship.” “Why dad?” “Well a lot of people were desperately poor, and so would sell all they had, for the chance of a better life in this new country, New Zealand.”

To try and encourage settlement, scrub and bush covered land was balloted to settlers who could purchase land cheaply, break it in, plant pasture and farm stock.

Well Edward was like that, he owned a small run down stone building in Glasgow, from where he used to earn a living making shoes. Glasgow in winter was extremely cold, money was tight, and he realised he could barely make enough money to himself and his new wife, Esmé, your great, great grandmother, let alone provide for the children when they came along. So after discussing it with his wife, they decided to sell all they had to buy a passage to New Zealand and hopefully have enough to buy some land!  So they did just that.

After bidding farewell to their parents and family, realising with heavy hearts that they would probably never see their faces again, they boarded the sailing ship, and went beneath the deck for the long voyage to New Zealand.

They had so little money, that they had to sell almost everything they had. After paying for their passage, and putting aside money for the land ballot, all they had left, apart from the clothes on their backs were a small knapsack and a pair of largish tweezers.

Anyway, after arriving in Wellington, they won a ballot and wound up with a modest block of land in the middle of the bush in place that would later be known as Dannevirke. They couldn’t afford transport, and so Edward and Esmé had to walk to their property along crude tracks and muddy dirt roads all the way up the Hutt Valley, over the Rimutaka Hill and through the length of the Wairarapa to their section. Along the way they would talk with other settlers, swap stories and Edward, would make repairs to peoples shoes. In return they were given food and a roof over their heads.

Eventually they made it to their block, for a second they gulped as they looked around them, and all they saw were huge trees and dense dark green impenetrable bush. But being nuggety and not easily put off they began breaking small branches, and making a rough bivouac to provide slight shelter from the rain that began to fall.

The next day they awoke at daybreak and your great, great grandparents began to clear the land, using only their own strength and the only tool they had, that pair of tweezers.

This was their life in this new country of promise – back breaking hard toil. For food they ate fern roots. Using the tweezers, bound onto a tree branch with flax fibre, Edward found he could fashion a crude spear that he could use to bring down the odd pigeon, skewer bush rats and spear slippery eels from the nearby streams. At night they would sleep on fern branches, with their shared body heat for warmth.

After three years, your great, great grandfather despite his efforts had just cut half way through a totara tree with his tweezers, but Edward didn’t give up, he kept going. He wanted to provide a better future, made with his own hands and sweat for his family.

At night Esmé would call him in to the bivouac for dinner, usually for a meal cooked on an open fire of sooty fern roots and rat or whatever meat was to hand. Edward was slow in coming in, he would be out chipping away, determined to at least bring down one tree within five years. Despite being desperately poor, Esmé did not mind, as she told her children in later years, “we might have been poor, but I had the best shaped eyebrows in the district!”

One day a party of marauding Maori were going through the bush. They crept stealthily through the undergrowth, taiaha and mere firmly in their grasp. They were on the run from troubles up country and did not take kindly to settlers, especially the ones they saw before them now.

Edward looked up and saw these strong half naked men before him. The only weapon he had were those tweezers he had bought all the way from Glasgow. He was going to fight, not just for himself, he had added incentive, he had to protect his Esmé.

The warriors advanced on him determined to attack. Bravely Edward fought them off with the tweezers, savagely pinching their skin. A taiaha would swing, Edward would duck and swerve then deftly move to deliver a savage savage pinch to the cheeks, thighs, anywhere he could target on the bodies of his attackers. After half and hour of intense and desperate fighting, the marauders gave up exhausted and badly bruised. As they beat a dejected and bruised retreat into the safety of the bush they cursed as they went, “that plucking fakeha!”