Open Journal Systems at the Victoria University of Wellington Library
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The Criminal Law, the Intelligence and Security Act and the Protective Security Requirements
No full textNew Zealand was a pioneer in the codification of its criminal law. The Criminal Code Act was passed in 1893, after a lengthy gestation period. The work owed its origins to law reform activities in India, a tendency spread from India to other British jurisdictions, notably Canada and parts of Australia, but never England. The requirement that common law offences were no longer valid and criminal offences had to be clearly defined in statutes passed by Parliament became accepted orthodoxy here and never questioned. But it is possible, as this article argues, that New Zealand has forgotten the legal implications of its own history of codification. This article argues that s 78AA of the Crimes Act 1961, inserted by the Intelligence and Security Act 2017, is in breach of the codification principle. The vice of the provision is that the content of the Protective Security Requirements is dependent upon the actions of the executive and what it posts on the Internet, not upon law passed by Parliament. It is submitted that the present situation is poor legislative practice and leaves the state of the law in doubt. For security issues to be handled in this fashion is less than satisfactory in a free and open society. The article goes on to analyse the background of New Zealand's criminal law codification and outlines the extensive range of the modern law dealing with the intelligence agencies and how it has expanded in recent years. This history of the agencies is briefly canvassed, including controversial features that have arisen in the past. It concludes that remedial action is necessary and mentions work that is going on within the executive to bring about change. It concludes that issues of legality, human rights and the agencies deserve careful attention and require analysis of the risks to an open society from these developments
Consent in Modern Criminal Law
Get PDFThis article considers the law, of New Zealand and England and Wales, relating to determinations whether P consented in various kinds of interaction with D. (The interactions considered are between persons old enough to validly consent to the conduct at issue and who are capable of evaluating and reflecting upon the consequences of their actions.) In the context of sexual interactions, the law in both jurisdictions is in a process of fitful change—from a regime in which consent could be vitiated only by threatened or actual force, impersonation, or radical misunderstanding, towards a position where the question of consent is less categorical and at large. A contrast is drawn between sexual and other interactions, including offences against the person and, especially, commercial misconduct. In the former cases, the central concern is justice between the parties. By contrast, in delineating the boundaries of what amounts to lawful commerce, it is permissible to consider what a ruling about consent may entail for the commercial system as a whole: something that can lead to a very thin conception of what makes for valid consent. The most general lesson that goes with this argument is that consent in law is not a pre-legal phenomenon
Discovery of Neural Network Weight Update Equations Through Genetic Programming
Get PDFThe current state of machine learning algorithms is that they mostly rely on manually crafted designs. How to update the weights in a Neural Network (NN) is still a currently researched and open topic of discussion. Genetic programming (GP) is a machine learning technique that can automatically generate functions. It does this by simulating the process of natural evolution, where programs are encoded as chromosomes and undergo mutation, crossover, and selection. This process allows genetic programming to find new and innovative algorithms that may outperform those that are manually designed. Apply GP to the task of discovering functions describes how the weights can be changed in a NN. The proposed method has the potential to discover new equations that can enhance the performance of machine learning algorithms, such as an evolved weight change equation or the back-propagation operation of neural networks. The performance of these new algorithms are compared with the commonly used handcrafted designs. This research could potentially lead to overall improvements in the performance and efficiency of machine learning algorithms, contributing to more advanced and accurate models. The current findings from the GP developed are equations that are similar to the manually crafted weight change equation (back propagation) used in Neural Network’s hidden-layer weights. The GP algorithm also re-discovered the standard weight change equation for a perceptron. The end goal is to re-discover the whole weight change equation for all layers of a Neural Network and show that GP is able to discover complex equations
Design and Develop a Game for Teaching Programming Concepts to Beginners
No full textThe field of software engineering education faces a significant gap in addressing the vital aspect of software testing, particularly teaching exploratory testing that goes beyond the happy path. Existing educational resources often fall short in preparing students to test software thoroughly early, leading to deficiencies when furthermore learning real-world application development. To bridge this gap, project embarked on the development of a Java-based educational game. This game serves as a dynamic platform for imparting programming concepts while placing a specific focus on cultivating non-happy path exploratory testing skills. The motivation behind this project stems from the pressing need to equip software engineering students with the skills and mindset required for testing, which is undervalued in a software engineer. The innovative educational game was meticulously designed to engage players in a stimulating environment that challenges them to think beyond first-thought programming. By encouraging exploration of non-standard scenarios and testing the behaviour of simple programs, the game not only enhances players' programming acumen but also helps the learner appreciate and better quantify the importance of testing. Key functional requirements of the game encompass progressively advancing levels, each increasing in complexity, ensuring that players unlock the next stage upon successful completion. Furthermore, the game offers players the autonomy to seek hints when needed, striking a balance between fostering progression, and preserving the gratification of independent problem-solving. In the landscape of educational games, this project stands apart, as it uniquely explores the domain of testing—a facet rarely ventured into. The distinct style and content of this game offer a fresh perspective, filling a void in the educational gaming arena
Beyond the Four Key Metrics: Quantifying DevOps Practice
Get PDFThis project extends the standardized methods of managing software delivery, to ensure developers are provided with meaningful in-depth feedback on their practices. The problem with the standardized metrics is that they are too broad and do not consider the wide-ranging statistics that GitLab repositories have to offer. Some repository statistics such as milestones, pipelines, and epics, to name a few, are presently unexamined by management features such as GitLab's 'Value Stream Analytics'. This project provides richer statistics that should be analyzed when the software delivery process is being managed, which will also enhance and give guidance to how features such as 'Value Stream Analytics' can be extended. This project follows the structure of ‘Process Mining’ streamlining the process of collecting source workflows, comparing them against the model workflows, to perform discovery methods to understand how to improve the model workflows. This allows the chance of introducing important statistics which are pivotal for measuring DevOps performance - through taking source workflows and judging their performance against the existing DevOps metrics, along with additional analytics that should be considered when measuring productivity in a DevOps environment
Reflections on Justice
Get PDFThis paper is an edited version of Sir Edmund's Valedictory Lecture delivered at the University of Auckland on 15 February 2018
The Demise of Effects-based Resource Management: what went wrong with internalising the externality?
Get PDFA core principle underlying the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) is that of effects based resource management: managing the effects of activities on the environment, rather than the activities themselves. In economics parlance, this has strong links to the concept of internalising the externality, where the costs or benefits of activities are borne by those undertaking the activities, rather than by third parties. When externalities are internalised, society’s wellbeing is improved. However, the widely held view is that the RMA has not made society any better off. A contributor to this was the poor implementation of the internalisation principle in the RMA, particularly the limited use of price signals, high transaction costs, and the poor application of cost–benefit analysis. The replacement for the RMA, the Natural and Built Environment Act (NBEA), proposes to shift the focus away from an effects based approach to an outcomes-based one. While the NBEA could be used to better implement an internalisation principle, its proposed drafting does not always attempt to do so, and its explicit shift to an outcomes-based approach is likely to make it even more difficult for externalities to be internalised
Māui, Polynesian culture hero: a nineteenth century tradition from Ruapuke Island
Get PDFThe appearance of the culture hero is an important moment in the development of a distinctively human society following on from the initial stages of creation. These heroes are best known for introducing culture to humanity; they are “the source of uniquely human institutions.” The hero wrests key elements of human life, such as fire, from the world’s creative powers, and in so doing ensures that such things become accessible to ordinary people, thus setting the stage for the emergence of human civilisation. The heroes themselves are not human, but rather part of an intermediate generation linking the spiritual powers that formed the universe and human beings. These heroes are often depicted as demi-gods, being part human and part god. While they assist humanity by providing the building blocks of culture, they are themselves not confined by cultural norms or the boundaries of time and space. Some culture heroes reveal a particularly mischievous aspect to their behaviour: they become the trickster, the hero’s alter ego. The trickster plays a more subversive role of clown or buffoon, a restless being who typically indulges in lots of eating and sex; the antithesis of the hero. Such hero-tricksters have the power to transform themselves into various shapes, often appearing as animals.
 
Ngā ritenga pai: Māori and Modernity in the 1850s
Get PDFModernity and education have always been a double-edged sword for Māori. On the one hand Māori have embraced and co-opted new knowledge since encountering and engaging with missionaries, traders, officials and school teachers, but this pursuit has also entailed engagement with institutions that have imperilled their reo, mana, and tikanga. One could argue that this is as true now within what is termed the “mainstream” education system as it was in its earlier missionary and colonial antecedents. Hēnare Wiremu Taratoa was a product of the missionary education system. This essay explores a number of his late-1850s writings on the schooling he experienced, and his ideas on the value of education and modernity
Mothers in the House: Iriaka Rātana and Whetū Tirikātene-Sullivan: Text, Contexts, Resonances
Get PDFIn May, 1854, 37 men were sworn in for the first sitting of New Zealand’s House of Representatives. For the next 79 years, those deep voices were the only ones thought to be capable of public debate in the chamber. The political sphere, the context in which “maiden speeches” are given, was initially reserved for men, and the language was to be English. With the election of the first Māori members of Parliament in 1868, te reo came to be spoken, but only, of course, by men. Absent from the Pākehā parliament was the karanga, “the first cry of welcome on the marae”: the customary task of women.
 
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