I am liking the sound of a law change being introduced in New South Wales, where they are no longer going to allow good character references to be factored into court sentences.

You know the drill. Someone is found guilty of a crime, they get their mates to write to the judge saying what a great person they are and how they’ve done all these good things.

The judge reads all these glowing references and, when it comes to handing down a sentence, gives them some sort of discount because of their “good character”.

The New South Wales government has decided it’s not having any more of that. And I think we should do the same thing here. Because someone’s so-called good character means zilch to their victim or their victims, doesn’t it?

If we’re going to make noises about the criminal justice system needing to be more victim-focused, then this would be a pretty good start. Because how galling must it be for the victim of a crime to turn up at the sentencing and hear about all these wonderful things that have been said about the person who offended against them?

What’s more, how galling must it be to not only hear how wonderful this person apparently is, but to also then witness the judge discounting their sentence because of these glowing reports.

Even if someone has done amazing things in the past, that doesn’t make their offending any less serious. It doesn’t diminish the impact of their offending on their victim or their victims, does it?

Not that good character references are going to disappear altogether in New South Wales. They’re still going to be allowed during the trial process. But they’re not going to be coming across the desk of judges when they’re about to dish out sentences.

The change follows a report by the New South Wales Sentencing Council which said the references are based on a vague and uncertain concept.

It said just because someone has a good character reference, that doesn’t tell the sentencing judge anything about the likelihood of someone re-offending or the likelihood of them being rehabilitated.

Which makes total sense.

It also says that good character discounts are traumatising for victims.

I couldn’t agree more.

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Talk about déjà vu.

The smell from the burnt-out wastewater treatment plant at Bromley has been a shocker this week and people have had a gutsful.

City councillor Yani Johanson says making people wait for another three years is totally unacceptable and the council needs to get it sorted sooner.

I think it’s ridiculous that it has taken over four years for the problem to still exist. I agree that it should be fixed sooner. But I don’t have any hope of that happening.

Because the council has cocked this up from the outset and seems incapable of doing it any faster. Which tells me that it has learnt next to nothing.

Remember it did the big mea culpa and admitted that, at the very least, it could have communicated better with people living in the area? And how it was going to do a better job blah blah blah.

Right from the start, the council had this “we know best” attitude and was very dismissive of people’s concerns. And it’s still at it. It’s doing a very good job of explaining why it’s so bad this week - that the recent heavy rain seems to be behind it.

Which is all very well. But, as I’ve said many times, people don’t care what you know - until they know that you care.

And I don’t see the council showing too much care. Did you see the council guy on the news last night go all sheep-ish when he was asked about compo or support for people living with the stench?

But it’s not just Bromley that’s affected.

I was in Mairehau yesterday and the smell was really bad.

But I’m not living with it all the time. Unlike Gaylene Ratima. She lives in Bromley and she woke up at 4 o’clock the other morning thinking the dog had done something on the carpet.

She soon realised that the rotten egg smell had nothing to do with the dog and that it was coming from outside the house.

It was the stench from the wastewater treatment plant seeping-in through the windows and doors - which were all closed.

Imagine what that must be like.

In fact, she reckons the smell this week is worse than it was after the treatment plant fire back in November 2021.

Which is why councillor Yani Johanson is saying today that making people wait for another three years for the smell problem to be fixed is totally unacceptable and the council needs to get it sorted sooner.

As he points out - the way things are going, it’s going to take longer than it took to build the new One New Zealand stadium.

The fire was in November 2021 - over four years ago - and the council’s going to take another three years to fix it.

Totally unacceptable.

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Before the weekend, questions were already being asked as to why the campground at Mt Maunganui wasn’t evacuated before last week’s devastating landslide.

That will be one of the things looked into as part of this independent investigation the local council is initiating. There will be all sorts of questions and, hopefully, a lot of answers.

But there is one thing we know for sure already. We don’t need an investigation to tell us that what happened on Thursday is a wake-up call for all of us.

As tragic as it is, it is a wake-up call. But will we learn from it?

I'd like to think so. But, based on history, I’m not so sure. Because I was very surprised to find out over the weekend that, historically in New Zealand, landslides have been more deadly than earthquakes.

Tom Robinson is a senior lecturer in disaster risk and resilience at the University of Canterbury, and he was saying at the weekend that landslides have claimed more lives than all of our earthquake disasters.

That landslides are our most deadly hazard. I had no idea.

Which tells me how little we have learned from previous landslides. And, even though we’re all gutted by what’s happened at Mt Maunganui, chances are we’ll all move on.

We’ll keep doing things like removing trees from hillsides - something that people in the Mt Maunganui area are already making noises about.

We’ll have this council review and we’ll hear that, yes, perhaps the early warnings raised by locals on Thursday morning should have been acted on sooner. But that will be about it.

I remember growing up in Dunedin when the Abbotsford landslide happened.

It was 8 August 1979. That was major. More than 60 houses lost. 600 people evacuated. Thankfully, no fatalities or major injuries.

The Abbotsford landslide happened after people in the area had been saying for years that there were signs of land movement. Cracks on people’s properties - inside and out. And then, on the night of 8 August, away it went.

That was 46 years ago. So, if we didn’t learn anything from that experience, what hope that we’ll learn anything from this?

Or more to the point, what hope that - whatever we learn - leads to the kind of change and accountability needed to, at the very least, limit the chances of it happening again?

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