Summary: If you're interested in this case, you'll find a summary in the four page Waikato University Perjury Trial Summary above. With the new disclosures provided you'll suddenly understand what this case was really all about, why a university would commit perjury to prevent a public trial, why the New Zealand courts would help them and how I was forced to comment after suffering silently through such prolonged public cyberbullying for so many years.

Introduction

This article started off with only the Main Article section below. The section is purposefully abstract and vague because it was really just meant as advice to show Waikato University that they should change their aggressive strategy before clever people begin to read the case documents and see how the case is being misrepresented on-line by the Waikato University's proxies.

But they didn't. Instead they compounded their mistakes with the help of a system biased towards model litigants.

As the case was public under the rules of Open Justice, all their strategic errors are open for you to read and I collected the documents for you in the Updates section below as the case progressed.

The documents show Waikato adopting an immensely aggressive and risky strategy that, given the case was open to the public as soon as they forced it to go to court, was clearly bound to damage their and their students' reputations. The strategy seems all the more peculiar when you consider:

all that would have been required to settle things quietly was an e-mail to tell students that cyberbullying was inappropriate

in accordance with the advice the university got from their own semi-external investigation on the matter, as is standard in other educational institutions (even in New Zealand), to show support for the criminal law introduced in New Zealand after this case series got national press and as I had been reasonably requesting to help abate the continued public attacks against me from Waikato's proxies for years.

After the case was over, I added the Annotation note below the Main Article with some points academic researchers may wish to consider, the quick summary link above and this Introduction to tie things together.

It's all very sad for Waikato University. Especially given the last update below showing how the ERA responded to my letter by effectively judging in my favour even though I was forced to drop the case.

All that for, apparently, just a small subset of one of my programs that took me a week to write and document, I haven't updated for years and I give away free... I guess if a university is willing to risk such reputation attacks backfiring my software must be "better than average" -- dangerous words :). The funny thing though is that, after all that effort and backfired damage, they didn't even get any rights in any of my software anyway. Food for thought.

Main Article(from December 2015 with [annotation])

When I was at university we had what was called the "honour system". It started in the college library where we could borrow priceless books without even needing to sign them out. We were "honour bound" to return them, there was no need to sign them out.

It continued in the course work where we never dreamt of submitting plagiarised work, through the exams and into our thesis. There was no need for sites like Turnitin we had the "honour system".

Things have changed. At some international universities today

the honour system is dead.

Plagiarism is now a way of student life. The third years are giving zipped files of past coursework to the second years, the second years enter the parallel lab marking sessions in groups so the same plagiarised work can be submitted to different markers at the same time, assessed individual homework questions where everyone passed with an "A+" get only a 10% pass rate when retested under exam conditions and there are sites that actually trade in "example" coursework ready for students to cut and paste together or simply copy wholesale.

Teachers turn a blind eye to all this because they are afraid of student retaliation through career damaging cyberbullying (there's a link to my notes on that at the end of this article) and because their rewards are connected, directly or indirectly, to the number of students that pass their course -- irrespective of how difficult the course subject is, the number of trained support staff and whether it's a self-selecting elective or not -- at least at some international universities.

But teachers teach students more than just the facts they present in their, now poorly attended, lectures. They teach them honour as well. Teachers allowing plagiarism and supporting cyberbullying leave students thinking

the law doesn't apply to them

but things get worse when educational institutions entrusted with shaping the minds of future generations take the next step and actually give their students the message that

if they get caught doing something wrong, they can just lie and they'll get away with it anyway.

The New Zealand cricketer Chris Cairns may well have been exonerated of perjury charges by a jury requiring proof "beyond reasonable doubt" in the UK recently (and to be clear, I'm not saying he was guilty), but this is far from the only case where people in or from New Zealand (a place with less than 4.5m people) have been accused of perjury; and with recent perjury cases being raised against whole New Zealand universities like the one below:

The Waikato University Perjury Trial (6MB, released under the rules of open justice)

which comes with what is considered "beyond reasonable doubt" evidence already supplied publicly (see for example the university's e-mail here and point 5.1 of the university's submission to the ERA here) and irrefutable proof of the New Zealand university's perjury in submissions and on oath that the court is being asked to allow, you begin to wonder:

Are New Zealanders actually being taught the Art of Perjury by their universities?

And your question becomes even more poignant when you learn Waikato University has already gone on the official record saying they think:

"the overall interests of justice would be best served" if the court turned a blind eye to their (at least officially) illegal acts

while at the same time asking the court to agree that the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights adopted into New Zealand law in 1976 does not apply to their employees (a view that may well be supported given recent decisions relating to the Human Rights of the families of lecturers at New Zealand universities). For those interested in the details of the case, Waikato University's full quote and the implications of their view for those thinking of working with people from Waikato if the court supports their view are available in the official Notice of Opposition to Waikato's Perjury Trial Strike Out Application which was recently released under the rules of open justice.

If perjury isn't part of the student curriculum (and if employees do in fact have UN Covenant rights) at New Zealand educational institutions, one would expect the courts to send a clear message in this case. But the courts generally give low penalties and even reward perjurers in New Zealand if they can be persuaded to look into these kind of matters as discussed in this news article about serious prior perjury at Waikato University dating back 20 years where the perjurer was rewarded with name suppression and community service while the victim of their perjury was punished by unwarranted lifelong stigma and negative press from local Waikato papers. The Waikato University Perjury Trial will check if attitudes to perjury have changed in New Zealand over the last 20 years or if

the truth really doesn't matter in New Zealand

at least as far as educational institutions and the courts are concerned (more later).

[Annotation:

When this article was first released, a certain set of people seemed insistent on saying the article was about "plagiarism" on public forums. I wondered why that was for a while and thought it perhaps best explained by them only bothering to read the first part of the article and then just jumping to the first comment to confirm the topic and to take as a summary. If you want to see examples of people thinking this article is about "plagiarism", check-out this recent Reddit post where you can also see examples of academic racism with Kiwi's saying plagiarism is only by foreign students in New Zealand. (cv.skills += ", reading books by their covers, academic racism";).

But you, having read this far and not having had your true potential crippled by a disabling society that attacks performance, know this article only started off with the topic of plagiarism (a.k.a. cheating). It then quickly moved on to the topic of cyberbullying (a.k.a. backstabbing) and then to perjury (a.k.a. lying). These topics (lying, cheating and backstabbing) were all brought together in an academic context in the wider case against Waikato University.

The first comment happened to be on the same topic as the first topic discussed in the article, but that was coincidence. The comment was written by a clever person as sarcasm.

"Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but the highest form of intelligence." -- Oscar Wilde.

It was certainly not meant as a summary of the article and it is rather worrying to think people may be reading that way. This worry raises the question of how social media has affected reading approaches and how we should structure modern documents to address that. This is an important academic research question raised by this case with a potential impact on many parts of society.

As the above shows, this case raises important questions for far more than just the CS and Law departments of a modern university. There is something for everyone and the evidence files ultimately made public because of Waikato University's early strategic error of inappropriately vigorously claiming a symmetric Open Justice argument with a biased system to prevent a cyberbullying victim getting name suppression make this case an important and rare resource that will keep international academics entertained for decades.

As another example, it is interesting to note the ERA member (think lower court judge) that accepted the invalid argument which led to the files becoming public was acting as a lawyer for Hamilton City Council when they did this -- a role she apparently had to leave soon after when her disregard for the law and her support for the criminal acts of unscrupulous employers were highlighted through one of the largest payouts in New Zealand's history. But of course she is not biased towards "model litigants" in Hamilton at all because a higher court found (without a hearing) there were not even any allegations of bias against her :) -- there's that sarcasm again. Ironically though, and here's the point, I hear she is one of the best members the ERA in New Zealand has to offer. This begs the business questions: what cultural aspects would make such performance the best you could hope for (see here for hints on that)? what impact would such aspects have on an organisation's efficiency and apparent (cross-cultural) "white knight" support network? would such an organisation be ripe for "take-over"/replacement etc? and what would you need to do to reliably change the culture when you took it over? As I said "there is a mountain more" and something for everyone.

Whatever facet of this case you choose to focus on, when you are ready, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or want a quick "facts check" for what I am sure will be your next highly cited academic paper. ]

Updates

This section gives some updates that follow the status of the Perjury case through the courts in New Zealand. You'll be amazed at the court's bias (assuming of course you, unlike them, actually do read the documents before blindly publishing your decision on bias, you don't secretly have an axe to grind and that you aren't affiliated with a university that encourages their students and staff to cyberbully lecturers so they are ready to secretly attack their future coworkers and managers in unwitting companies when they leave... that is :).

11 January 2016, in a quite unusual pre-hearing memo, the Employment Court judge tries to persuade the victim to choose a route through which Waikato's perjury and the ERA's bias may never be examined in a public trial. The memo notes that the victim may be being disadvantaged by not having representation.

13 January 2016, the Tertiary Education Union (TEU) in New Zealand confirm (through lack of response) that they will continue in their refusal to provide legal or other support to the victim despite having been forwarded a copy of the judges pre-hearing comments on disadvantage.

04 March 2016, Waikato University supplies a detailed strike out application to the court. The application is written in a way that requires the plaintiff to supply evidence to rebut -- contrary to Waikato's previous indications.

08 March 2016, the Employment Court produce a memo (without being requested) that requires the unrepresented victim to follow a very difficult and costly evidence submission process (it may be the only process, but seems not to be -- and the NZ court refuses to confirm) and reduces the victim's effective response time from the original 3 weeks to just 2 weeks despite the extra work.

11 March 2016, after a formal objection to the reduction in time which the victim published on-line for others to read and a memo objecting to the victim's objection by Waikato University based on an apparent "time machine" argument, the court reverses their position and increases the victim's effective response time from 2 weeks to 4 weeks (i.e. original 3 weeks + 1 week for extra work).

11 March 2016, following Waikato University's time machine arguments which the judge rejected for some reason, the victim updates his official title on LinkedIn to be "Educator and Time Traveller".

31 March 2016, the victim releases a detailed response to Waikato University's perjury strike out application here on LinkedIn for you to read first. The response highlights:

Waikato University's strategic error invalidating their own strike out application the day they submitted it (Section 2.2), Waikato University's abuse of the New Zealand justice system to attack an employee with information they know to be ill founded (Section 3.4) and New criminal cyberbullying apparently aimed to try to pervert the course of justice by people with a close connection to the case at Waikato (Exhibit C)

not to mention the justice issues detailed in Section 6.





01 April 2016, the victim releases the Waikato University Perjury Trial Satirical Calendar summarising a few of Waikato's (many) strategic errors and some of the justice issues this case highlights for New Zealand.

04-07 April 2016, in a series of memorandum the New Zealand court refuses to confirm the difficult and costly process insisted on by the judge on 08 March 2016 was not just a way to try to prevent an unrepresented lay litigant from submitting evidence against government funded bodies, apparently signal they routinely breach the Hague Convention of 1961 for international employees and apparently compound their financial and other discrimination against international employees contrary to Article 14(1) of the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Bodes well for the TPP :)

15 April 2016, the Employment Court publishes their judgement on Waikato's summary strike out application. There are several issues with the "on the papers" judgement, but most notably it:

effectively provides a judgement on the perjury based on unsubstantiated misleading submissions from a "model litigant" without having seen a single piece of the perjury evidence which would have been supplied at trial (see the brackets in [para 67]) at once completely ignores and exemplifies the victim's claim that accepting perjuries against objections and available evidence represent a "...specified and recognised lack of impartiality towards him." (see [para 18]) effectively sanctions more cyberbullying against the victim and his family if he continues with the case (see [para 78])

thus the New Zealand court has judged on perjury by a university without seeing any evidence, key points of the appeal have been completely ignored to allow a strike out to prevent a public trial and a signal has been sent that will, one expects, encourage cyberbulliers to attack someone for highlighting undeniable perjury by a "model litigant".

19 May 2016, after trying for weeks to get the Employment Court to at least reword their apparent consent for criminal retaliations if he continued the case and the court refusing, the victim, in fear of further undue harm to his family, was forced to withdraw the case saying he has:

absolutely no faith in the New Zealand employment justice system whatsoever following the judgement from Chief Judge GL Colgan on 15th April 2016

You can read the full withdrawal notice in this four page open letter to the ERA. The first page is the withdrawal, the second and third pages provide a case summary with some new disclosures that would have been presented at trial and last page provides the three lessons you need to learn from this case to protect your family:

Withdrawal of the Waikato University Perjury Case because of Fear of More Criminal Attacks afterthe New Zealand Court ApparentlySanctions Waikato's Criminal Retaliations (4 pages, released under the rules of open justice)

So, it seems we now have our answer on how seriously perjury is taken in New Zealand at least when it is done by a model litigant. The answer is not at all and you and your family will get attacked if you even mention it.

It's just not "cricket" when your opponent cheats, the umpire lets them and then awards penalty runs against you when you show them the chalk on the ball.

14 June 2016, after around a month (with the delay representing a possible indication of an undisclosed internal investigation) with no correspondence copied from the defendant, the ERA responded to the withdrawal letter saying the victim does not have to pay any costs for any part of the case.

This has been seen by legal professionals as a clear judgement in the victim's favour because:

the judgement effectively reverses the previous decision from the higher court saying Waikato was entitled to at least some costs

no matter what happened next. So a lower court has overruled a higher court. That is impossible.

A clear message to New Zealand employers not to use cyberbullying and perjury to try to get an employees personal property.

But are things over or are they just about to get interesting? Keep watching and you'll soon see...

Related Articles

If you found this article interesting, don't forget to "Like" and "Share" it so I write another. You may also be interested in the following related articles:

I was Literally "Begging to be Cyberbullied" on LinkedIn. Are You?





Social Media Risk: How Waikato University Ostensibly Lost 100 Rank Places for Attacking People On-Line

(article image by Marie-Lan Nguyen released in the public domain here, PDF icon by Sunil Kumar available from here, LinkedIn icon from here used within the terms discussed here subject to clarifications specifically given to the author by LinkedIn, The Waikato University Perjury Trial document is released under the rules of open justice as discussed here)