About a dozen people waved placards outside the Galaxy Takeaways shop in Otara last Saturday morning.

The shop's 18 pokies have been operating without a licence since it was revoked by the Department of Internal Affairs last month.

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I follow his case with interest. Nobody who was at university at the same time as Rick could forget him, in part because he was a top English literature student, in part because of his vocals in local bands, and partly because he was there in the great late 60s rush into dope, which back then was a novelty.

I'm not breaking confidence here, since Rick has admitted to a long-standing use of cannabis.

He has now been jailed twice for drug crimes, has 14 previous drug convictions, and is three months into a two-year sentence for having cannabis to sell, along with having small amounts of cannabis oil, ecstasy and cocaine at his place.

My point is not about him in particular - I'm sorry to see he's in this position - but about the attitudes among middle-class people of that era that surface when they run into difficulties with the police.

They adopt a posture that's part aristocratic disdain, and part disbelief: police exist to hassle other people, surely, not people who've read Dostoevsky and know how to hold a knife and fork. You get this, too, with fraudsters who are suddenly called to account, and with bad drivers.

Perhaps it was this instinctive understanding that made ACT leader Don Brash, keen to slash Government spending, moot legalising cannabis and making dope-dealing OK.

That might be the one politically appealing idea Brash will ever come up with that could attract old stoners, though unfortunately they're the last people who would vote for him.

Rick wants home detention, and who can blame him? He has a music room at home, and creature comforts, and could easily pretend the whole darn court thing had never happened. Prison is not a nice place: he knew that already: its unpleasantness is meant to be its point.

But his arguments could only have been dreamed up by a white middle-class offender who'd woken from a bad dream only to discover he was living it.

No Maori, let's say, the 12 per cent of the population who make up half this country's prison population, would dream of appealing on the grounds - among other things - of not belonging there because you don't get enough sunshine, and you don't like air conditioning.

What made me think about this is Hone Harawira, who snarled about the appalling Maori rate of imprisonment on TV7 the other night. I wonder how successful Maori are at getting home detention.

Harawira is hard to take, but often right.

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• Source: Rosemary McLeod in The Press
• Image: topnews.net.nz

Kereama Pene, an apotoro rehita (senior minister), in the Ratana church believes Mr Hone Harawira closely embodies this prophecy.

"The founder of Ratana carried two books - the Bible and the Treaty. He always believed that one day the Treaty should become the foundation document of New Zealand. Not just a piece of paper." However, prophecy was also important said Mr Pene

• Hone Harawira said he was humbled by the support and talk that he might be the northern Treaty man spoken of, but he was not actively pursuing it.
• Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia has expressed surprise that an individual member of the Ratana Church has been elevated to speak for its membership. "I would have thought that any position purporting to be the views of Te Haahi Ratana would have come forth from the Tumuaki, Hare Meihana," Mrs Turia said. I always find it difficult when his great name is associated with political tactics of the day - we need to hold fast to his memory and rise above the lobbying."

Mr Pene, who is ineligible to vote in tomorrow's by-election because he lives in the Tamaki Makaurau electorate, is from Te Tai Tokerau. He is campaigning for the Mana Party.