By: Larry Williams | Wednesday, June 27, 2012 6:40 PM

GPS Criminals

Convicted child abusers are to be first in line for planned satellite monitoring of high risk offenders.

GPS monitoring of high risk offenders is to be introduced to improve public safety.

It'll see offenders fitted with special ankle bracelets upon their release back into the community.

The initiative will have a staged introduction beginning in August, and it'll be 11 child sex offenders who'll be the first to be subject to the new regime.

She says the number will increase to 90 by the end of the year, and up to 200 by the end of 2013.

This is an initiative that is due. The technology is there and should be used on the worst offenders who are at high risk of re-offending.

The fact that they will know they are being tracked 24/7 is in itself a deterrent.

It may not stop re-offending in total but it’s certainly an improvement on what we have now.

ACC

A rape victim whose privacy was breached by ACC says she will not be taking a $250 compensation offer from the corporation which requires her to keep silent on the issue.

ACC emailed the details of 6748 clients - including nearly 250 claimants who were the victims of sexual or violent assault - to another ACC client, Bronwyn Pullar, who exposed the breach.

The corporation has now sent a four page letter of apology to the sensitive claims clients, Fairfax Media reported, offering them $250 compensation for the breach.

ACC has got this horribly wrong.

There was no need to offer compensation in the first place and the lowball offer makes ACC look like fools.

If a person’s privacy was seriously breached then $250 would not cut it. It’s a pathetic amount.

However, the privacy breach was at such a low scale compensation was not warranted at all. An apology, sure, but not compensation.

The limited details were sent to just one person. They were not disseminated.

ACC just keeps digging the hole deeper. They are remarkably inept.

Shearer

David Shearer is doing a good job at faking his outrage at the asset sales. He's not the only one. There is a lot of mocked outrage.

Yes, a lot of this opposition is just politics and acting.

Shearer said the passing of the Bill was a "national tragedy".

"Peter Dunne and National MPs will pay dearly for their actions when voters get their say at the next election."

The truth is, if this is an election winner for Labour, and it could be, rather than being outraged, Shearer will be popping the champagne corks. Labour desperately wanted this legislation to pass because it might help them.

The fact is the forecast cost savings from this venture are less than the foregone profits. That could haunt National.

What Mr Shearer should be focused on right now is the nasty, outrageous and stupid comment from one of his MP's.

Labour’s Wigram MP, Megan Woods, said yesterday: “Hitler had a pretty clear manifesto that he campaigned and won on … does this make what he did OK?”

Apart from the total ignorance of history, Woods, who is unknown to most, is clearly a novice and needs to be brought into line, if that is possible.

She has apologised but defended her comments at the same time. The apology therefore is hardly genuine.

The scary thing for Mr Shearer would be that he has this kind of warped mentality within his party.

He should be asking how the hell she got there in the first place.

Another Trip

Len Brown says his trade mission to the Pacific is worth every cent of ratepayers' money.

The mayor and council member Mike Lee will lead a group of Auckland business leaders to Samoa, Tonga and the Cook Islands next week.

Mr Brown says the council's economic development budget will be covering his and Mr Lee's costs.

He says they're out there promoting Auckland to the world, and in particular promoting the business community to markets in the Pacific, which is important to help the country recover economically.

The business folk who are going are paying their own way so they must see some value there somewhere.

As for the mayor and Mr Lee if there is value in them tagging along that's fine, but I'm not sure what it is.

I'm still interested to see what has come out of the last trip to China where the aim was to look at funding and ideas on infrastructure. Like, what did the mayor learn from the Chinese on building tunnels and bridges, considering they build them at a fraction of the cost we do?

I see a lot of buzz words in the press release with regards to this Pacific Island trip, but I'm unsure it will mean much.