Tell me something: 

How on earth have we ended up with the guy who broke out of managed isolation in Hamilton to buy booze, copping a sentence of only 40 hours community service and a fine of $1000?   

But the woman who broke three of her kids out of the same hotel to see their dead father one last time has just been sent to jail to for two weeks? 

That seem fair to you? 

If you had to ask me which of the two crimes deserved the harsher sentence it would be the guy nicking out to buy booze because surely that’s the more selfish of the two acts isn’t it? 

You could hardly accuse of the woman of being selfish.  She had just returned a negative test so she knew she wouldn’t make anyone sick.  And actually, she did what she did out of her concern for her children who wanted to say good bye to their dad before he was buried. 

Now, of course, this has prompted accusations of racism because the woman is Maori and the man is Pakeha.  Look, I’m not going to join that chorus.  I don’t think we know enough about the details of each case yet to say it’s institutional racism at play.  I mean, it could just be two different judges having two different emotional reactions to this particular crime.  And actually, that means we really can’t compare these two sentences at all really. 

But we can ask whether we think two weeks in jail is fair for what this woman did.  I’m not condoning what she did, but it has got to be mitigating circumstance that we know how badly she was being dicked around by the ministry of health.  We know she’d waited hours for them to give her permission to take her kids to see their father’s body and they kept on delaying their answer and time was running out. 

And if you ask that… the answer is absolutely not.  This sentence is unduly harsh.  She has five children, she was being dicked around by authorities and she and her family were in grief.. .even the judge accepts that would likely have clouded her judgement. 

I hope that this woman appeals this sentence because this is ridiculously unreasonable.