Neither the Law Commission nor the media are democratic institutions.
So what we have are two undemocratic institutions virtually determining
(in this, and many other cases) what the laws of New Zealand are going
to be.
But it is worse than that. Both the Law Commission and the media operate
on the basis of the principle:
"It's Women, Stupid!"
The Law Commission has long run on a Feminist agenda. Even when Fathers'
Rights protests forced a review of some aspects of Family Law, the Law
Commission put a woman in charge of the review and recommended minimal
changes, as regards the Fathers' Rights agenda. It is typical of the
Law Commission that it should now be headed by a former Labour Party
politician.
Specifically, as regards the Provocation defence, the Law Commission
has both recommended its abolition and also recommended the adoption
of the Battered Woman defence (see
www.lawcom.govt.nz/UploadFiles/Publications/Publication_80_193_PP41.pdf)
– largely on the grounds that the Provocation defence was more
useful to men than to women.
It is quite clear that this Bill has been introduced as a reflex action,
in the face of the hysteria generated by media coverage of the Clayton
Weatherston case. Therefore, I attach, as an appendix, the text
of a webpage which I have written about media and blogosphere coverage
of his case.
Specific Submissions
I submit that the (partial) defence of Provocation
should be retained, unless the Battered Woman's Syndrome is also explicitly
abolished in the same Act.
The Explanatory Note to this Bill states:
Concerns have been raised that the partial defence of provocation
enables an accused to tarnish a victim's character, without the victim
being able to respond to the accused's allegations or version of events.
That applies just as well to the Battered Woman's defence, but no one
in New Zealand seems to care about men's characters being tarnished.
The Explanatory Note to this Bill also states:
It has been concluded that the partial defence is fundamentally
flawed, in that it assumes ordinary, reasonable people, when confronted
with severe provocation, will act with homicidal loss of control,
when in fact (my emphasis) only extraordinary people
do.
It is hard to characterise this statement as anything other than a
barefaced lie. What scientific evidence could the author of that statement
possibly have which would enable her to use the phrase in fact
in connection with the opinion that ordinary people
would not react in that way? It is ethically impossible, as far as I
can see, to construct an experiment which would establish how, in fact,
an ordinary person would react in such circumstances. And how do you
define "ordinary"? I have studied Abnormal and Therapeutic
Psychology, and it is clear to me that Psychologists and Psychiatrists
are ludicrously far from being able to define "ordinary" in
an appropriate sense for present purposes, and also far from being able,
therefore, to determine how an "ordinary" person would react.
The Explanatory Note to this Bill also states:
Further, there is considerable unease that a successful claim
of provocation effectively rewards a lack of self-control for those
who intentionally take another's life.
Again, no one seems to feel any unease that successful pleading of
the Battered Woman's defence also rewards a lack of self-control for
those who intentionally take another's life. Of course, the life involved
is only that of a man, and the media and the Law Commission are not
interested in that!
It is symptomatic of the gross sexism inherent in this Bill that the
Ministry of Women's Affairs was consulted in the process of drafting
it, but not the Ministry of Men's Affairs. Yes, I know that there is
no Ministry of Men's Affairs!
Appendix
