Tony Robertson appears for sentencing in the Auckland High Court for the rape and murder of Blessie Gotingco. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Opinion
The dairy price dumped during the week and so too the pay-outs to farmers. It's a tough times ahead for farmers. Some will have to survive on bank loans. This will all seep through to the economy. It affects all of us.
Blessie Gotinco's killer Tony Robertson has more or
less got a lifetime sentence. I say more or less because with the NZ justice system there are never guarantees. It was the worst murder/rape imaginable. Robertson should never have had the opportunity. A judge should have given him preventive detention when he kidnapped and sexually assaulted a five-year-old girl in 2006. Had the judge done the right thing, the obvious thing, Blessie Gotingco would be alive today.
The Government dumped papers on the Saudi sheep deal. The upshot is there was no threat of legal action as Murray McCully claimed. It was an unconventional under the table business deal that paid off a person who had influence and could block an FTA with the Gulf States. The backhander failed miserably - we still don't have an FTA. Despite the faux outrage from the opposition, I doubt many care.
The great housing debate soldiered on after the latest QV House Price Index showed prices still escalating. It's crazy - we all surely know this. Every time I refer to a "bubble" or a "bust" or a "correction", I get a flow of emails telling me I'm wrong. I think the PM is right when he says people don't want prices to drop. That is the dilemma for Labour, who wants to introduce policies that dump prices. Let's see how that one flies.
Leaked IAAF data showed widespread athlete doping. Nick Willis was not surprised, saying it was easy to spot the cheaters. The appalling thing about this is that the IAAF hid the data. They didn't act on the data. They effectively covered it all up. The IAAF is no better than FIFA.
