Paul Holmes: Again we must ask: 'Is this fair?'

Smooth, sophisticated Roger McClay had everything going for him in life. Photo / Chris Skelton

I'm writing this on a cold night in Wellington towards the end of one of those bizarre and wonderful weeks on the fly, a week of getting my news on my new iPad.

My Gosh, I think they might catch on, these iPad gizmos.

I've seen no television news and it doesn't seem to matter. You check your iPad the moment you wake up and you're up to date with anything you want.

In hotel foyers, however, I still grab a newspaper. For what reason I don't know, but I ask myself all the same. I grab the paper for some kind of extra, I'm sure, but I don't really know what that extra is.

The paper, the front page anyway, seems to enhance one's understanding of the texture and the sinews of the day. The layout of the page, the emphasis given to one story over another seems to qualify the day, to bed it in, to context it and give it perspective.

In the taxi, you have the radio and with that you get the extra understanding the live voice can give you, so even on the fly you can stay well on top of the enemy - or whatever it is we are driven to stay on top of.

Should I worry about missing television news, I wonder? I should worry about that, they'll say at TVNZ this morning, I suppose, but the really nice thing is that television people are so wrapped up in television that they won't read this.

And if they do they won't care because television is everything and people are allowed their little flirtations with not thinking it is the centre of the universe. But the truth is, I don't seem to worry about not seeing the television news. In fact, it seems so not to matter that it may be that this in itself may be what really worries me.

Should I worry that I've missed the whites of the eyes of the decision makers, I wonder? Well, I don't think so. Rome conquered the world without either television or the telephone, I like to tell myself.

All the television and the telephone would have done for Rome, really, was to delay the end, probably, because no matter what we're talking about in life, neither the television nor the telephone can stave off the end if the end is coming.

Once I would have considered the thought of missing the television news night after night to be intolerable and stupid, but these days my thinking tends to be that you only need to see local television news once a week in New Zealand in order to be on top of the place.

What's really important for New Zealanders, however, I think, is to stay well up with the international news channels, otherwise we fall victim to the dangerous New Zealand delusion of believing that we are the only country in the world, certainly the most important one and that even Australia doesn't really exist.

The reason I mention the hotel lobby newspaper today is that on Thursday morning, the Dominion Post offered an arresting and moving front page.

The Wellington paper is an enemy of this newspaper of course and I hasten to add that all New Zealand newspapers are becoming very good at the sexy, arresting front pages.

They grab you and enhance the morning. They demand you look at them and attend to them.

But the Thursday front page grabbed everyone I spoke to here in Wellington. Under the simple, prominent, headline: Is This Fair? the newspaper compared the sentence handed down to the former MP, the Honourable Roger McClay, to that dished out to a troubled and talented 17-year-old Christchurch boy after he and a 15-year-old went on a burglary and car theft crime spree and were finally stopped by armed police who found a loaded airgun on their backseat.

This boy was sent to jail for over two years by Judge Tony Zohrab in a Nelson court. The newspaper was asking us to compare the two sentences in light of the offences.

Roger McClay, a man I always enjoyed when I ran into him over the years, is completely disgraced. He used his position of privilege to swindle World Vision and the New Zealand taxpayer out of nearly $30,000. McClay got 300 hours' community service.

Now, the thing about these two is that one had everything going for him all his life (that's McClay), and the other, young Andrej Schwaab, is a boy adopted from a Russian orphanage where he spent the first two years of his life tied to a potty.

He was brought here when he was 7. He is highly intelligent. He plays the clarinet and reads a book a day. But he has gone terribly off the rails and thanks to Judge Zohrab has also gone away for a couple of years in jail with hardened criminals.

His adoptive mother is heartbroken. She gave herself a hell of a challenge of love when she brought him to New Zealand, of course, but those first damaging seven years have reared their head at last and he is driven by a terrible turmoil.

Well, I found myself angry as hell reading all of this and a lot of that anger is for the judge. Zohrab is quoted as saying, and either the quote is wrong or Zohrab is an idiot: "The best nurture could not undo what nature had done to you."

Surely the judge could not have said, much less meant, such nonsense. Surely he meant in his cack-handed way that the best nature, that is, the care of his New Zealand mother, could not undo what a lack of nurture as a little boy has done to young Andrej?

And we don't have to have degrees in psychology or to be district court judges to recognise what damage being deprived of love and affection and being tied to a potty in a Russian orphanage must have done to the boy.

Nature didn't do anything bad to the boy. But the kind and loving nature of his New Zealand mum, could not, on its own, demolish the hateful demons that buried themselves in his heart a long time ago and have now gained ascendancy. But none of that means the lad is irredeemable, either.

But the boy is troubled, no doubt about that. And he had to be stopped. People have to be protected. And the boy shows that very worrying sign, a lack of empathy. But he is 17. Where are the systems we spend billions on to turn people like him round?

As for Roger McClay. What a fall. No one is suggesting Roger would benefit from jail time. Sorry, Roger, but it could be that when we look at the lad in Nelson, some might think you should be in jail too. It just don't seem right.

McClay's violation was that of the sophisticate who should have known better but could not resist a little bit here and a little bit there. Andrej Schwaab is a confused, angry and tormented little boy in a grown-up body. Andrej may never have had a chance. Smooth, successful McClay had every chance a New Zealand upbringing could give.

And took them too. Greedily.