Karl du Fresne

Memo to Bill English: perhaps you could start here

2012-01-28T10:28:00.001+13:00

THE GOVERNMENT insists that it’s trimming the flab from the public service, yet I keep seeing advertisements for pseudo-jobs such as “Chief Advisor, Maori Development” for the Ministry of Science and Innovation.

It was a wordy, long-winded ad but after reading it I had little idea what the job actually entailed. This is par for the course with executive positions these days, in the private as well as the public sector. The ad was written in impenetrable HR-speak, with liberal use of vague phrases such as “focused strategies and policies” and “building connections throughout New Zealand’s science and innovation systems”.

Here’s a sample: “The Chief Maori Advisor [note the capital letters] will be the visible champion within the organisation to ensure that MSI gives priority to the Vision Matauranga policy, including through cross-government work in support of Maori economic development. The role will provide iwi with a primary point of contact and also support the CE and Senior Management [those capitals again] team by providing appropriate advice and cultural support for all significant engagements with Maori.”

It finished with a flourish, advising that the successful applicant would have a genuine opportunity [as opposed to a fake one?] “to make a difference to Maoridom by linking, influencing and driving economic development through research and development”.

I’m suspicious of flatulent language like this because it can mean anything and nothing. The description of the position advertised is so vague that I concluded it’s just another stab at feel-good bicultural tokenism. If a vacancy can’t be described in words that actually mean something, it’s probably not worth filling.

If Bill English is really determined to cut out wastage and feather-bedding in the public sector, perhaps he could start here.

Is free speech too cheap?

2012-01-19T17:44:00.000+13:00

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, February 18.)

One of the claims made for the internet is that it has opened up public dialogue on a scale never experienced before.

And it’s true. Anyone with a computer and an internet connection – or indeed any of the myriad devices now available that enable users to communicate online – can enter cyberspace and contribute to the discussion of the day, whether it’s about sponge cake recipes, the relative merits of different dog breeds or the war in Afghanistan.

They can start a blog, as I did, or they can contribute to the comment threads (as they’re known in Net-speak) that allow people to respond to blog entries with their own opinions.

On news media websites, too, readers can submit comments responding to published opinion columns. These comments are usually moderated – in other words, vetted before publication – but the moderation is typically light-handed. Only the most outrageously defamatory or offensive language is filtered out.

Never in history has so much opinion poured forth largely unchecked in public forums. In the old days, for example, anyone wanting to take issue with a newspaper columnist had to sit down, write a letter to the editor and sign it with his or her real name and address.

There was no guarantee it would be published and even if it was, it might be abridged because of space limitations in the correspondence columns. (Human nature being what it is, the bit edited out was always the one the letter writer considered the most vital.)

You can still go through this quaint, old-fashioned routine, but there’s a much more effortless way to have your say. You can submit a comment to the paper’s website. It’s virtually instantaneous, you can say as much or as little as you like, and it doesn’t have to make sense.

What’s more, you don’t have to put your name to it. You can use any enigmatic, vaguely menacing or downright silly pseudonym you choose. Only a few commenters on websites and blogs use their real names.

Some newspaper websites attract hundreds of online comments. Depressingly, the opinion columns that provoke the strongest reactions are often about sport – for example, the column by Australian sports writer Paul Sheehan criticising the All Blacks’ Kapa O Pango haka, which so infuriated New Zealanders that 868 responded. (Question: what conceit makes commenter number 868 think anyone is going to read his or her contribution?)

The best-read blogs, such as Kiwiblog and Hard News, also routinely attract hundreds of comments, whereas I consider I’m doing well if my modest effort gets five or six.

All this is held to be liberating and good for democracy – and so it is, up to a point. No one can complain any longer that newspaper editors (or talkback producers, for that matter) are the gatekeepers controlling entry to public opinion forums. Now anyone can have their say, at any time and from anywhere on the planet.

But while the sheer volume of comment on the issues of the day has increased exponentially, no one could pretend that there has been a commensurate rise in the standard of debate.

In fact, quite the contrary. Far from being the stimulating, uplifting marketplace of ideas fondly envisaged by free-speech idealists, the internet and blogosphere is a seething, toxic cesspit of jeering, name-calling, vulgarity, bile and mendacity.

Its dominant characteristics are malice, rage and ignorance – a lethal combination that extinguishes any hope of civilised, intelligent dialogue.

Anyone scanning the comments sections of media websites and blogs soon notes recurring patterns. The first is the sheer volume of personal abuse – the tool most frequently resorted to by those who disagree with other people’s views, and deployed with equal ferocity by those on both the left and right of the political spectrum. The strategy is to intimidate one’s opponent not with force of argument but with vituperation.

Often the anonymous commenter fails to see, or more likely pretends not to see, the central point of the other side’s argument, preferring to introduce extraneous issues, thereby diverting the debate from the central issue under discussion. Another tactic is to wilfully misconstrue what has been written or wildly extrapolate it so as to justify derogatory conclusions about the author.

If the tone of online debate wasn’t so deeply depressing, some aspects of it might be almost amusing. A typical pattern is for the first few comments to be reasonably lucid and relevant, then for the thread to rapidly spiral downwards into a deepening well of viciousness and rancidity that steadily becomes further removed from the subject supposedly under discussion.

By the time you get to about the 30th comment, the participants have totally forgotten what started it all and are intent only on insulting each other.

It’s tempting to draw a comparison with a sharks’ feeding frenzy. It takes only one commenter to draw blood and then it’s all on. In short order the thread is splattered with entrails and severed limbs.

Another analogy is with the troublemaker who throws a punch in a crowded, bad-tempered bar and then quietly slips out the door as the place erupts in an all-in brawl. By the time the premises have been trashed and the last bodies carried out, no one remembers or cares who or what started it.

And here’s something else I’ve noticed: the same pseudonyms crop up time and time again, denoting an abundance of angry and bitter losers who have nothing better to do than trawl the net all day looking for someone to “flame” (another internet buzzword). Often the combatants know each other well from previous encounters.

As a low-grade spectator sport, it’s like a stock car demolition derby – something of transient appeal to people of limited intellect. Not even the most ardent champion of the Internet could argue that these venomous and cowardly outpourings have elevated public debate.

I now wonder whether the choleric tone of debate on the internet has begun to contaminate wider public discourse. A friend who hosts a radio show remarked to me recently that the emails and text messages sent to his programme have become noticeably more vicious and vindictive over the past couple of years.

I don’t think it’s because his show has deteriorated (it has a large and loyal audience). It’s just that people now feel they can get away with abusive language that was once considered beyond the pale. Cowards and bitter ranters who previously fumed in private have licence to vent their bile publicly under the cloak of anonymity.

The sad conclusion is that perhaps free speech now comes too cheap.

"Dropped in it" - NZ on Air and that Bryan Bruce documentary

2012-01-18T10:26:00.001+13:00

New Zealand on Air, which funded the politically loaded Bryan Bruce documentary on child poverty that screened three days before the November election, is now considering a new rule that would prevent the funding agency from being “dropped in it” – NZOA chairman Neil Walter’s phrase – again.

Critics are alleging political interference, and on the face of it, they have a point: Stephen McElrea, the NZOA board member who raised the issue – as revealed in documents obtained by media commentator Tom Frewen – is John Key’s electorate chairman.

McElrea is also a former TVNZ producer, so has professional credentials, but the fuss that has blown up over Bruce’s Inside Child Poverty documentary shows the messy situations that can arise from the time-honoured New Zealand practice of appointing people with political connections to public bodies. In this case it has given oxygen to Labour’s broadcasting spokeswoman Clare Curran, who is able to insinuate that NZOA’s decision to seek legal advice on a rule change is politically motivated. Rightly or wrongly, McElrea’s appointment undermines the public perception of NZOA as an impartial funder.

But all that aside, there’s no getting around the fact that TV3’s decision to schedule the pseudo-documentary four days before the election, in a prime-time slot usually given to cheap reality shows, was at the very least mischievous and provocative. And I have to take issue with John Drinnan from the New Zealand Herald and Radio New Zealand media commentator Colin Peacock, who have suggested that the programme wasn’t overtly political.

It was a politically charged statement, to use Neil Walter’s description, from start to finish. I choked on my toast when I heard Bryan Bruce on Summer Report this morning declare, hand on heart, that his one-hour polemic didn’t favour one political party over another.

As I wrote in this blog at the time, the programme couldn’t be construed as anything but a deliberate attempt to tilt the political playing field in Labour’s favour. “That couldn’t have been clearer than when the host – who clearly aspires to be New Zealand’s answer to the sanctimonious John Pilger – genuflected, metaphorically speaking, before the Michael Joseph Savage monument and reminded us of Labour’s proud historical commitment to feed, clothe and house the poor. Another overtly political moment occurred when Bruce asked rhetorically: “Who builds state houses? Labour. Who sells them? National.”

The question now is whether this warrants a new rule restricting what can be shown on television in the leadup to an election – which media lawyer Steven Price has described as too broad and heavy handed – or whether it can be dealt with under existing Broadcasting Standards Authority provisions requiring broadcasters to be fair and balanced.

I’m no lawyer, but I find it hard to imagine how a new rule could be drafted that didn’t threaten to stifle perfectly legitimate pre-election coverage of controversial political issues. Yet NZOA can hardly be blamed for reacting the way it has.

Interestingly, the only silent party in this row so far is the one that created it: TV3 itself. The papers released to Frewen show that the network expressed its regret to NZOA for the timing of the programme and gave an assurance that it wouldn’t happen again, but I’d be far more interested in an explanation of why it did it in the first place.

Memo to police: spare us the lectures

2012-01-17T16:55:00.000+13:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, January 17.)

WHEN did the police decide that their role extended beyond preventing crime and apprehending lawbreakers?

Clearly, a new generation of officers is under the delusion that they have a remit to provide moral guidance and matronly advice to the rest of us on how to lead wholesome lives.

Last week the head of the Canterbury police alcohol strategy and enforcement team, Sergeant Al Lawn, was publicly tut-tutting over the granting of an alcohol licence to a new Christchurch supermarket.

With respect, Mr Lawn should pull his head in. The law allows the police to have their say when submissions are heard on liquor licence applications and once the decision is made, that should be an end to it.

Obviously not satisfied with this state of affairs, and probably smarting because the decision didn’t go his way, Mr Lawn seized the opportunity to lecture supermarkets on their supposed moral responsibilities.

He doesn’t think supermarkets should discount alcohol because it supposedly encourages binge drinking. But I know lots of people who are happy to buy discounted wine and beer from supermarkets and they couldn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, be labelled as binge drinkers.

Mr Lawn went even further, suggesting that stores should reduce the price of milk, fruit and vegetables to attract customers “in a way that is also good for the community”. What pompous moralising.

Out of curiosity I googled Mr Lawn and on the basis of what I saw, I concluded that he has well and truly crossed the line between objective law enforcement and political activism. He makes emotive statements about liquor industry “drug pushers” and condemns politicians for not getting tougher on alcohol.

He is entitled to those views as a private citizen, but to push them as a police officer is an abuse of his position.

If he feels so strongly, he should run for public office. With his propensity for interfering in other people’s business, Labour or the Greens would welcome him.

* * *

MR LAWN’S pronouncements are consistent with a growing tendency for police officers to lecture the rest of us on how to live.

Just before Christmas, Wellington district road policing manager Peter Baird was wagging his finger at drivers who had enjoyed a couple of drinks at end-of-year lunches. Even if they weren’t over the legal limit, he was concerned that they were “taking risks”.

In other words, it’s no longer enough to stay within the law. Mr Baird should have been congratulating the Christmas revellers for knowing when to stop drinking.

These uniformed nags represent an unwelcome new style of policing – one that could soon test the tolerance of the public who pay their salaries.

It is not the function of the police to act like Mother Hens, treating us as incapable of making sound decisions without their patronising guidance. If we want sermons, we can go to church.

* * *

WHEN will someone admit that sex education, at least as it’s practised in New Zealand schools, is a cruel hoax?

We have one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in the developed world. In the past decade, teen pregnancies have been trending upward – as has the abortion rate for the same age group.

To complete this ugly trifecta, there has been a steady upward trend in the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases. The per capita rate of STDs in New Zealand is estimated to be twice that of Australia and Britain.

All this has coincided with highly explicit sex education in schools, mostly funded by the state. It has demonstrably been a failure, yet the champions of sex education insist the solution to teen pregnancies and STDs is – wait for it – more of the same.

We are the most sexually aware society in human history. To pretend the problem is that we don’t know enough about sex is laughable.

Admittedly, teenage pregnancy and STDs can’t be blamed entirely on what’s taught in schools. Sexual promiscuity has been normalised by television, videos and the Internet. But sex education, rather than countering those influences, has compounded them by promoting the ruinous notion of sex without consequences.

Perversely, a high priestess of sex education and abortion, former New Zealand Family Planning head Gill Greer, was recently honoured with a CBE in Britain for her work on “sexual health” while leading the London-based International Planned Parenthood Federation.

That she should be honoured by a Tory-led government shows how industriously the champions of the disastrous sexual revolution have infiltrated the halls of power.

The heartening thing is that teenagers see through all the fraudulent bullshit. In a recent survey of 600 young people, undertaken for Family First, 34 percent of respondents wanted values, abstinence and consequences (such as pregnancy) taught in sex education classes – nearly twice the proportion who supported the simplistic “safe sex” message currently emphasised.

Two versions of Blanket Man

2012-01-17T10:13:00.004+13:00

I sometimes get the odd feeling, reading the Dominion Post, that I’m reading two entirely separate and distinct newspapers.

Take today’s edition, for example. The editorial offers a bracing antidote to some of the sentimental maundering that has attended the passing of Ben Hana, aka Blanket Man, the Wellington street identity who finally paid the sad, inevitable consequence at the weekend for years of self-neglect.

The editorial rightly observed that there was nothing to celebrate about the way Hana chose to spend the last years of his “sad and tormented life”.

“He was not, as some regarded him, a happy-go-lucky vagabond cheerfully thumbing his nose at the establishment and living without a care on the streets of Wellington. Rather, he was a broken man, mentally unwell, haunted by personal demons, chronically malnourished and with a serious drug and alcohol problem that caused him to waste away before the eyes of those who genuinely tried to help him.”

The editorial went on: “The near-glorification of him by some as a symbol of liberty and non-conformity, a ‘Wellington icon’ or, even more grotesquely, a tourist attraction to be pointed out and photographed like a circus freak, is said to have contributed to his refusal to accept the help he was offered and so desperately needed.”

Right on the nail. I wonder if the editorial was read by the compilers of the Capital Day page in the same paper, where an item on Hana’s death exemplified the mushy romanticism that the leader-writer deplored. It reported that locals “mourning the loss of Wellington icon Ben Hana” had taken to the web – that first resort of the inarticulate and emotionally incontinent – to share their memories of him.

“I will miss your presence on Courtenay Place, it won’t be the same without you”, one commenter was reported as saying. Another expressed the hope that Hana would “always bathe in the light of the sun.”

The item went on to say that many people lamented that more wasn’t done to find Hana a safer place to stay. On a similar note, elsewhere in the paper, local Labour MP Grant Robertson – clearly not one to let a chance go by – is quoted as saying (let me guess: Twitter): “RIP Ben Hana. Let’s make his memorial addressing homelessness in Wgtn and its causes, esp access to mental health and addiction services.”

In fact it’s been reported that Hana repeatedly rejected efforts to help him. The life he led was of his own choosing, as is often the case with street people. As the editorial noted, “Hana came to believe that his Blanket Man persona gave him a public identity that was more important to him than his health and wellbeing”.

The need for the media to create and nurture its own myths too frequently overcomes sound journalistic judgment. We saw this recently with the exaggerated tributes to the late Carmen – a colourful character, misrepresented in death as an indefatigable campaigner for human rights – and we are seeing it again with Hana.

Of the two contrasting pictures of Hana’s death presented in today’s Dom Post, I think I know which was the more accurate.

Footnote

Singer Hollie Smith was reported to have posted the following tribute: “RIP Ben Hana AKA blanket man. Had good times listening to music gettin’ high with you fa long time ago.”

Says it all, really.

The satisfaction of having one's prejudices confirmed

2012-01-16T10:17:00.001+13:00

Every time I start to wonder whether I might be missing out by not being on Twitter, something happens to reassure me that my original assessment of it as an essentially useless novelty, embraced by compulsive early adopters who are suckers for any new technology regardless of its value, wasn’t far wrong.

Today the reassurance came from an unlikely source: Kim Hill’s producer Mark Cubey, who has appeared regularly on Summer Report (the holiday substitute for Morning Report) to give us the benefit of his wisdom and insight on … actually, I’m not quite sure on what. You’d have to ask RNZ.

Anyway, there he was this morning, boasting about how many followers he’d acquired on Twitter and how he was, like, only 300 followers short of Morning Report’s total. (Wow. I’m not sure I’d want to admit on national radio that my self-esteem was related to the number of Twitter followers I had, but there you go.)

Cubey predicted that 2012 could be a “huge” year for Twitter and went on to talk about how the social networking service appealed to “technologically savvy”, “cutting edge” people (like himself, by obvious implication) who were “really on to it”, “up with the play” and liked being first with the news.

Then, as if to prove his argument beyond all doubt, Cubey pronounced triumphantly that he had heard about the death of the Wellington street identity known as Blanket Man on Twitter “before it was on the news”.

The Summer Report host didn’t think to ask Cubey what seemed a highly pertinent question – namely, how is the common good of humankind (or indeed anyone) advanced by hearing about the death of a tragic derelict five minutes, half an hour or even half a day before it was on a radio news bulletin or news website?

Cubey’s telling comment reflected a common preoccupation among Twitter evangelists: a peculiar, childlike desire to be first just for the sake of being first, regardless of the intrinsic importance of the information conveyed or the value of hearing it ahead of others. It seemed to confirm that Twitter is essentially a forum for vacuous chatter, rather like the chirping of birds after which it’s named.

All my prejudices having been reinforced, I remain a contented Twitter sceptic.

From France to New Zealand via Denmark

2012-01-05T16:57:00.002+13:00

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, January 4, 2012.)

We grow up in a vacuum, many of us.

After my father died in 1984, I realised I knew virtually nothing of his early life. He hardly ever spoke of his childhood or upbringing, still less of our family history.

Born in 1907, he was of a generation that focused on the present and the future. Life was something you got on with; dwelling on the romantic past didn’t put food on the table or a roof over our heads.

Both Dad’s parents had emigrated from Denmark (though his father was of French descent), but we grew up largely ignorant of any cultural heritage. His knowledge of Danish, as far as we were aware, was limited to a few words.

It was almost as if the du Fresne family had magically sprung into being fully formed in the Manawatu, where Dad was born. Our deeper origins went unacknowledged.

In this respect, the du Fresnes were typical of many New Zealand families with non-English roots who were subtly discouraged from keeping alive their cultural traditions. There was pressure to conform and assimilate: to learn English, knuckle down and not make waves.

The several thousand Scandinavian migrants who settled in the lower North Island in the late 19th century – my grandparents among them – quietly complied. They rolled their sleeves up, went to work and learned to become New Zealanders (much as Dutch immigrants did several decades later).

For them, the past literally was another country – one they left behind psychologically as well as physically.

It’s often the following generation that seeks to recapture what has been lost, and so it turned out with my family. In our case it was my cousin Yvonne du Fresne who immersed herself in the family history.

The oldest of my generation by some margin, Yvonne grew up amid the Danish community in Palmerston North , the older members of which still spoke their mother tongue, at least in private. An observant and precocious child, she soaked up their language, their songs, their food, their traditions and their stories.

The experience of being among these people shaped Yvonne’s life and her later career as a writer of novels and short stories, which drew heavily on her Scandinavian heritage and on the experiences of migrants struggling to preserve their identity in an Anglo-Saxon society.

The rest of us cousins, it must be said, showed little interest. We had our lives to get on with and would sometimes roll our eyes, figuratively speaking, when Yvonne talked, as she frequently and earnestly did, about our Danish and French connections. But it has become clear to us in recent months that we owe her a great debt.

You see, the first-ever du Fresne family reunion will be held next month in Nelson. To coincide with this occasion, a family history has been written (also a first). Had Yvonne not accumulated such a body of knowledge about our past, the publication would have been … well, perhaps not impossible, but certainly not as complete.

Largely as a result of her efforts, we have been able to piece together a narrative that traces our family’s origins back to the birth of Lambert Dufresne (as the name was then spelt) in the town of Warquignies, in what is now southern Belgium, in 1688.

The Dufresnes were French Huguenots – Protestants forced to flee religious persecution by Catholic France. They initially resettled in Prussia but in 1720 found permanent sanctuary, at the invitation of Denmark's Protestant king, in the Danish town of Fredericia. There they remained part of a tight French Huguenot community, on good terms with their Danish neighbours but determined to preserve their distinct identity.

My grandfather, Abraham Heinrich Dufresne, a master builder, emigrated to New Zealand in 1890 and made for the Manawatu, where his cousin, Reformed Church pastor Abraham Honoré, had settled years earlier. There my grandfather met and married Anna Clausen, youngest daughter of a family that had arrived from Denmark in 1875.

Like the Dufresnes two centuries earlier, the Clausens had been displaced by the turbulent currents of history. When the Prussian army invaded Denmark in 1864, bent on reclaiming the region of Schleswig, the decisive battle was fought on the Clausen farm near the town of Dybbol. The graves of Danish soldiers, buried where they fell, still surround the farmhouse today.

After the Danish forces were routed, thousands of families emigrated rather than live under Prussian rule. The Clausens chose to come to New Zealand because the Lutheran bishop Ditlev Monrad, a former Danish prime minister, had spent time in the Manawatu and returned to Denmark promoting New Zealand as a destination.

The Clausens remain a well-known family in the Manawatu (and stalwarts of the Lutheran Church) to this day. And evidence of my grandfather’s skill as a builder survives in the form of Kaingahou, the magnificent homestead that he built for Bishop Monrad’s grandson on the main highway just south of Palmerston North.

Abraham and Anna produced an interesting family. In the 1930s they moved to Eastbourne, near Wellington, where the du Fresne home was the venue for lively left-wing political discussions and celebrated musical soirees attended by Jewish refugees from Europe.

My apolitical father bemused his radical family, and caused consternation in the Danish Lutheran community of Palmerston North, by marrying a girl from a staunch Irish Catholic family and converting to Catholicism.

Dad’s youngest sister Elsie and her husband, the journalist and historian Dick Scott, were members of the Communist Party at a time when involvement in left-wing politics carried considerable risks. (Both quit the party in protest at the Soviet Union’s brutal putdown of the 1956 Hungarian uprising.)

Nelson figures prominently in the family story too. My father’s two younger brothers settled there in the post-war years – Viggo at Ruby Bay and Chris at Mapua. Viggo became the first licensed commercial winemaker in the South Island, pioneering viticultural techniques (such as planting classical European vines in unforgiving stony ground) that have since become the norm.

Chris was one of the earliest Nelson potters and later campaigned tirelessly for official action over the highly contaminated Fruitgrowers’ Chemical Company site at Mapua. Often dismissed as a stirrer, he was ultimately vindicated long after his death when the government took over the site in 2004 and instituted a massive cleanup. (Ironically, the decontamination project was supervised by Chris's daughter, my cousin Jenny Easton.)

Pulling these stories together in a coherent family history has been richly satisfying for my cousins and me. The sad irony is that Yvonne, who did so much to make us aware of our heritage, won’t be around to enjoy the forthcoming celebrations. She died last March, aged 81.

A propos of nothing in particular ....

2012-01-05T12:37:00.001+13:00

I wish to place it on record that my wife makes the finest sausage rolls in Christendom. If a Boeing 747 were to fall on my house at this moment (admittedly an unlikely prospect, since the only aircraft around here are topdressing planes), I would die the world's most contented man.

Could someone please tell us what's going on here?

2012-01-05T12:12:00.002+13:00

I’m intrigued to see that the Labour Party and at least one Green MP (Steffan Browning) are having second thoughts about legislation governing food safety standards.

The New Zealand Herald reports today that the Food Bill is under fire because of its possible impact on community growers, farmers’ markets and small food traders.

As the Herald says, the bill was reported back from a select committee more than a year ago with broad cross-party support, but Browning now says he will push for further amendments to exempt small traders from having to comply with unnecessary red tape. Browning has also labelled proposed new powers for food safety officers as excessive.

Meanwhile, Labour’s primary industries spokesman, Damien O’Connor, is quoted as saying: “We will not be giving our support to this bill unless a number of areas are clarified, including areas affecting small growers.”

But hang on a minute. This bill went through the select committee process. Presumably it’s the same bill now as it was then. So why have Labour and Browning, having earlier indicated assent, now decided they don’t like it?

Presumably the bill’s flaws were pointed out in submissions. Weren’t the Labour and Green members of the committee paying attention, or have circumstances somehow changed since the bill was reported back? I think we’re entitled to an explanation.

The select committee system removes legislation from the gladiatorial arena of the parliamentary debating chamber and is often cited as an example of parliamentary co-operation and scrutiny at its best. But clearly there’s something wonky about the process if a bill that everyone was happy with a year ago is now deemed to be unsatisfactory. What’s happened in the interim?

I know little about this bill and have no opinion on it either way – it’s the position-changing that interests me.

At the back of my mind, there’s a persistent little voice asking whether this might have something to do with the fact that the media generally no longer report select committee proceedings. Until relatively recent times, parliamentary debates and select committee hearings were reported in some detail, most conscientiously by the now-defunct NZPA. Media coverage often alerted the public to contentious legislation before the House, giving people time to mobilise in opposition. But nuts-and-bolts reporting of day-to-day parliamentary business is today deemed unsexy and has largely been abandoned by the Press Gallery in favour of the controversy du jour.

I wonder whether, as a result of this, flawed legislation is sometimes presented to the public as a fait accompli – passed into law before people know it exists.

In the case of the food bill, is it possible the centre-left parties are having second thoughts because word of the bill has only now belatedly seeped out to the people affected, and flaws that should have been picked up at the select committee stage are finally being pointed out? If so, could this be at least partly a consequence of the way the media now reports (or more precisely, doesn't report) parliament?

Just a thought. There may of course be darker political factors at work here of which I’m innocently unaware, in which case I’ll be happy to pull my head in.

Footnote: The other intriguing aspect of this bill is that it clearly introduces a new level of bureaucratic intrusion and red tape into the food sector. Am I alone in thinking it seems bizarre that a supposedly centre-right government is promoting more Big Brother legislation, and that the left are the ones complaining about excessive powers being given to clipboard-wielding busybodies? Cheesh.

Bitten on the bum by MMP

2012-01-03T16:15:00.000+13:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, January 3.)

HOLD everything!

Dismiss the government. Call another election.

The John Key-led coalition government has no legitimacy and no mandate to do anything. This is the logical conclusion to be drawn from the non-stop wailing emanating from those still smarting over the election result.

Labour and the Greens insist the government has no mandate for the partial sale of state assets. As Labour stalwart and marijuana law reform activist Phil Saxby explained it in a letter to this paper, parties supporting partial asset sales won only 48.98 percent of the vote. Because parties opposed to asset sales won an infinitesimally greater share (50.29 percent), he seems to suggest, the government is morally obliged to abandon its plan.

But if that’s the case, the Left can surely argue that none of National’s policies were endorsed by a majority of voters. It follows that the party must abandon everything in its manifesto.

There would therefore be two choices: hold another election (and just see how the voters like that), or go into a state of suspended animation for three years during which nothing would happen.

But let’s back up for a moment. In the general election of 2005, Labour and Jim Anderton’s Progressive Party formed a centre-Left coalition with a combined share of only 42.26 percent of the vote. Funny, but I don’t recall the democratic purists of the Left protesting then that the Clark government had no mandate.

The truth is, of course, that it’s mightily difficult for any party to secure an absolute majority under the MMP system. If National can’t even do it with 59 seats to the combined 48 seats won by the two main centre-Left parties, chances are that no party will ever pull it off.

This is the very reason so many anti-MMP campaigners complain that the system can lead to political paralysis.

Of course it suits the Left to argue, now that we have a centre-Right government, that it has no mandate. It must be a bitter disappointment that MMP, which the Left saw as a way of weakening the National Party’s traditional dominance in New Zealand politics, has let them down.

The exquisite irony is that Mr Saxby was one of the original promoters of MMP, but cries “unfair!” when the system delivers a centre-Right coalition. Well, he asked for it.

* * *

ARE GREYING rock fans being played for a bunch of suckers?

In recent years a steady procession of reformed 1960s and 70s bands has passed through New Zealand on the concert circuit, hoping to capitalise on nostalgia for the glory days of rock.

Some are still capable of “doing the business”, as they say. But with others, you get the impression that things are a bit – well, desperate.

Ads for the forthcoming “Creedence Clearwater Revisited” tour trumpeted the fact that the band includes original Creedence Clearwater Revival members Stu Cook and Doug “Cosmo” Clifford. But anyone familiar with CCR knows that the heart, soul and creative brain of the band was John Fogerty, who wrote and sang the band’s songs as well playing lead guitar.

Promoting the tour on the basis that it features Cook and Clifford (the original CCR bass player and drummer) is like announcing a reunion of the Beach Boys featuring David Marks and Ricky Fataar, or the Bee Gees starring Colin Petersen and Vince Melouney.

Of course you’ve never heard of these individuals. They once played in those groups, but no one remembers them.

That the faded remnants of CCR continue to tour, even after Fogerty tried to prevent them from using the name Creedence Clearwater Revisited (which cleverly retains the initials of the original band), is testament to the public’s enduring fascination with the music of rock’s golden era. But a decent pub covers band could probably replicate the CCR sound just as well.

* * *

ALL MY LIFE, the word “fatality” has been pronounced with the stress on the second syllable: fa-TAL-ity. But in some radio news reports on the holiday road toll, the emphasis has mysteriously shifted to the first syllable, so that it comes out as “FAY-tality”.

A similar fate has befallen the word “flotilla”. Traditionally it has been pronounced as flo-TILL-a. But when Israeli commandos boarded a fleet of Turkish relief ships approaching Gaza in 2010, television and radio newsreaders decided this was all wrong. Suddenly it became FLOW-tilla.

Similarly, broadcast reports on the Foreshore and Seabed Act often referred to the public DO-main, rather than do-MAIN. This quaint pronunciation is reminiscent of parts of the American South, where people call the POL-lice when someone’s causing trouble.

Why these peculiar inflexions? It can only be ignorance. A new generation of journalists and newsreaders appears not to have encountered these words before, so makes up whatever pronunciation feels right. Then it starts to spread virally.

Sadly, resistance is probably futile. This is a language in flux – a process as unstoppable as the phases of the moon.

Peter Baird and the nanny school of policing

2011-12-22T15:26:00.003+13:00

Is it just me, or do other people also get irritated by the increasing tendency for the police to lecture the public as if we were a class of backward children?

In the Dominion Post this week, Wellington district road policing manager Peter Baird was quoted as saying that police had noticed an increase in the number of drivers with alcohol in their system in the middle of the afternoon – due, presumably, to end-of-year lunchtime celebrations.

While it was clear from the report that no one had actually been charged for exceeding the legal limit, Inspector Baird was still concerned that people were taking a risk by driving after a few drinks. “As soon as you have a drink you are impaired to some level.”

So people are now being warned for staying within the law. This is an intriguing new direction for policing. Can we also now expect to be pulled over and given a warning for driving at 98 kilometres per hour?

Not content that drivers are responsibly staying within the legal alcohol limit determined by the government, Inspector Baird is wagging a finger in their faces and tut-tutting that it’s not good enough.

Does this man not have enough to do? If the people being pulled up and tested by the police are under the limit, there’s an end to it. If anything, he should be congratulating people for drinking responsibly. Lectures on the perils of moderate alcohol consumption should be left to sanctimonious academics and health bureaucrats, of whom there’s no shortage.

In a recent issue of the Wairarapa News, the same Inspector Baird sounded almost disappointed at the low level of drunk drivers (0.44 percent) detected in a weekend blitz - a figure that inconveniently undermined attempts to portray New Zealand as a nation gripped by addiction to liquor. Rather than celebrate this encouraging result, Inspector Baird could only scold his fellow New Zealanders for “making the choice to drink and drive”.

He was at it again in this week’s edition of the same paper. Commenting on the results of the latest police operation (as a result of which only 0.41 percent of the 12,077 drivers tested will face charges), he huffed and puffed that even drivers within the legal limit were more at risk than if they were not drinking. “Every glass affects your impairment in some way.”

Inspector Baird went on to say that New Zealand’s legal blood alcohol limit – 0.8 mg per 100 ml – was much more generous than in most developed countries. “We are not currently in line with the OECD.”

In fact Britain, Canada and the US all have a legal limit of 0.8, and research is inconclusive about the number of lives that would be saved by reducing it to 0.5. (Bear in mind that most serious accidents involving alcohol are caused by drivers who are well over 0.8, and therefore wouldn’t have been avoided even if a lower limit had been in force.)

But that’s hardly the point. New Zealanders elect governments to make laws and the job of police officers is to enforce them, not publicly bemoan their supposed inadequacy. If Inspector Baird wants the law changed, he can stand for Parliament. If he's on a mission to achieve the perfect society, someone should gently explain to him that it's been tried already.

In the meantime, he should spare us the patronising lectures.

What's that yelping noise? Must be the Jackal

2011-12-21T14:41:00.000+13:00

I stumbled today across a left-wing blog that I hadn’t encountered before. It’s called the Jackal.

I came across it because it had named me the “Asshole of the Week” for my recent column about Bryan Bruce’s hand-wringing documentary about child poverty in New Zealand.

Infantile abuse is par for the course on the web, so no surprises there. But I noted that the author of this blog, like so many other gutless non-entities in the blogosphere, is anonymous.

I posted the following comment: “A jackal is a cowardly cur that skulks in the shadows. I can’t think of a blog that’s more appropriately named”.

Half an hour later the Jackal had returned to the post, like a dog returning to its vomit, and responded to my comment. I reproduce his response here, complete with its puerile Net-speak and clumsy grammatical errors:

“LOL Thems fighting words.

“As well as being ignorant about inequality, you also appear to have zero education on eukaryotic organisms.

“Do you like how this post rates higher in searches than most of your articles Karl du Fresne?

“Hurray!”

I have no idea whether the Jackal’s blog is better read than mine and don’t give a toss either way. The fact that he thinks I might be jealous gives a clue to how his puerile mind works. (As for his bizarre reference to “eukaryotic organisms”, your guess is as good as mine.)

But here’s the interesting thing. When I tried to post a further comment, a notice came up advising that I was now blocked from the site.

Like the scavenging canine he names himself after, the Jackal attacks only when he can be sure his prey isn’t going to bite back. What a loser.

The teacher unions are at it again

2011-12-21T08:10:00.002+13:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, December 20.)

AUCKLAND University academic Peter O’Connor at least got the first line right in his overwrought article in these pages last week attacking the proposed charter schools trial. “There is a fight brewing in schools,” he wrote.

Yes, there is a fight brewing. But we should be clear about who’s forming the battle lines, and why.

It’s the teachers who are gearing up for a stoush, and the reason is that they see a limited trial of charter schools as a threat to their control of the education system.

Teachers believe the only changes governments are entitled to make to education are those that they approve.

No other branch of the public service operates in this fashion. The police, the armed forces, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Treasury – all accept that governments are elected to make policy and the job of public servants is to put that policy into practice. Teachers alone consider themselves exempt from this principle.

The teacher unions haven’t revealed how they intend to oppose charter schools, but you can be sure they will do everything in their power to thwart the experiment.

As in the past (most recently with national standards) they will present themselves as taking a principled stand on the public’s behalf, but their primary motive is good old-fashioned self-interest. They will fight tooth and nail to preserve the status quo.

Unfortunately, timid governments have encouraged teacher intransigence in the past by backing down whenever the unions dug their toes in over reform initiatives.

It remains to be seen whether the Key government is made of sterner stuff. That it stuck to its guns over national standards suggests it may be.

Perhaps Hekia Parata, the new minister of education, should talk to Julia Gillard, the head of Australia’s Labor government. As minister of education, Ms Gillard overrode teacher opposition to push through some of the very changes the unions have steadfastly opposed here.

As for associate professor O’Connor, we should remember that what’s proposed is only a small-scale trial. To read his lurid rhetoric, you’d think the government was proposing a wholesale reinvention of the system from the ground up.

His slogan-laden article, in which he described charter schools as a “corporatist attack” serving the interests of a “transnational capitalist elite” was an example of the drearily predictable, left-wing group-think that passes for rigorous analysis in the universities.

The PPTA is even more hysterical, likening charter schools to Dotheboys Hall in Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby – a place where boys are whipped, starved and abused by the ghastly headmaster Wackford Squeers.

In a provocatively insulting letter to John Key, PPTA president Robin Duff suggests the prime minister might like to watch the DVD of Nicholas Nickleby rather than read the novel, as it’s a long book with small print.

It would be idle to expect rational debate from these people. They have spent so much of their lives confined in classrooms with adolescents that their emotional maturity is irreparably impaired.

* * *

A CONSTANT refrain from the Left during the election campaign was that the National government had rewarded its wealthy mates with massive tax cuts.

Don’t expect this to let up any time soon. On TV3 last week, Greens co-leader Russel Norman claimed that only the top 10 percent who had got “$2 billion worth of tax cuts” from the Key government could afford to buy shares in Mighty River Power.

But does the tax system really favour the rich at the expense of low-income earners? Figures provided by national accountancy firm Markhams suggest that if anything, the reverse is true.

According to Markhams, households earning over $120,000 pay 97 percent of net individual income tax revenue, while the top 10 percent of households – the people Dr Norman reckons get favourable treatment – generate 71 percent of the individual tax take.

But wait, there’s more. Households earning less than $50,000 (43 percent of households) receive more in income support than they pay in income tax, on a net basis. Income tax paid by households earning between $50,000 and $110,000 effectively pays for this net refund.

Keep these figures in mind next time you hear a politician playing the envy card by claiming that the tax tables are tilted in favour of the wealthy.

* * *

FINALLY, a small but cheering antidote to the annual pre-Christmas deluge of anti-alcohol propaganda.

Of 68,000 motorists recently breath-tested in a nationwide police blitz, 373 returned positive results. That’s about 0.5 percent. In the Wellington region, 11,188 drivers were tested and 50 were over the limit – only 0.44 percent.

These figures are not only remarkably low, given that we’re constantly told we’re a nation of helpless drunks; they are also slightly down on last year’s.

They confirm that hazardous drinking is not a community-wide curse, as the wowser lobby wants us to believe, but is confined to a small segment of abusers. The rest of us should enjoy a guilt-free Christmas.

Documentary producer responds

2011-12-10T14:41:00.002+13:00

The Dominion Post yesterday published a letter from documentary producer Bryan Bruce, responding to my latest Curmudgeon column. In the interests of fairness I reproduce it here:

Karl du Fresne's column on my Inside Child Poverty documentary contains many errors. He states that its message was "the welfare state has failed our poor ". Wrong.

The message was that the free market economic model fails about 20 per cent of our children. We need a "fair market" economy.

Du Fresne says the solution I propose is more welfare spending. Wrong. I suggested we spend smarter, re-distribute the existing money, spend more on prevention, and spend less on crisis management. I also advocated bypassing parents to get the aid more directly to children, as happens in Sweden.

He says, "Socialists never bother to ask where the money comes from". Wrong again. I asked, "So how are we going to pay for free meals and free health care for children" and supplied five possible sources and solutions within the existing welfare budget.

I don't expect balance in an opinion piece, but I do expect accuracy. Children don't get to choose their parents.

Solving the child poverty problem won't happen through poverty of mind and spirit.

BRYAN BRUCE
Producer

Capitalism has mislaid its moral compass

2011-12-09T09:36:00.000+13:00

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, December 7.)

Cast your mind back to the 1990s. The Berlin Wall had collapsed, and with it the entire rotten edifice of Soviet communism. Democracy and free enterprise were taking root in countries previously kept under repressive state control.

Internationally there was a marked swing from left to right. Thatcherism in Britain and Reaganism in the United States had radically changing the political landscape.

Even in countries such as Britain, Australia and New Zealand, the traditional parties of the left were shedding their socialist heritage and reaching a new accommodation with economic liberalism.

Political scientist Francis Fukuyama was sufficiently emboldened to write in 1992: “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

It was hailed as the ultimate triumph of capitalism over socialism. The great battle of the ideologies that had raged for much of the 20th century was proclaimed to be over. But was it?

Many of us thought so at the time, but we reckoned without one very important factor – that old human impulse, greed.

Capitalism’s golden age – if that indeed is what it was – turned out to be disappointingly brief. The Western world went on a delirious spending binge using borrowed money, precipitating what is now known as the Global Financial Crisis.

Consumerism – the urge to acquire the newest and best of everything – was rampant. In New Zealand, we joyously threw off the shackles after decades of tight economic controls by going on a residential property spree that drove house values, especially in fashionable suburbs and coastal resorts, to preposterous levels.

The new princes of capitalism, the bankers and financial traders in centres such as London and New York, acquired wealth previously undreamed of. Taking full advantage of an environment that spurned regulation and control in the belief that markets could safely be left to govern themselves, they created complex financial instruments tied to real estate values; and as these continued their apparently limitless upward trajectory, the money men rewarded themselves with stratospheric bonuses.

In New Zealand, investors fell over themselves in their eagerness to entrust their money to dodgy finance companies, some of them run by the same sharks who had feasted on the gullible during the sharemarket and property boom of the 1980s.

As is often the case, those closest to the centre of the action were the least capable of foreseeing how it would play out. They seemed to think the party could go on forever, but of course it couldn’t, and didn’t.

A catastrophic economic collapse reverberated throughout the West. Once-solid banks fell over like dominoes and had to be bailed out by the taxpayer, even as the bankers – by now completely detached from reality – continued to reward themselves with huge bonuses.

America was traumatised by unemployment and mortgage foreclosures. Thousands of New Zealand investors, many of them elderly, lost the savings they had counted on to keep them in their retirement.

More recently, the European Union has been through convulsions as incompetently managed economies collapsed under a mountain of debt and had to be rescued by more responsible member states.

Where this will end is hard to predict, but the unravelling of the EU can’t be ruled out. The industrious Germans can’t be expected to prop up the feckless southern Europeans indefinitely. And in the meantime, democracy itself is being undermined as elected politicians are replaced by technocrats appointed from Brussels.

Capitalism hasn’t covered itself in glory in Russia, either. There, assets that once belonged to the state have been corralled by a small coterie of ultra-rich and often corrupt oligarchs – hardly a good advertisement for the free market economy. Small wonder that the communist party still appeals to many Russian voters.

It’s fair to say, then, that capitalism is in crisis. In fact you could say it’s on trial.

You can sense a distrust of capitalism lurking behind public unease about our own government’s proposed partial selloff of state assets. People haven’t forgotten that when this last happened, state-owned businesses were flogged off at fire sale prices, stripped of assets and, in several instances, had to be bought back in order to save them.

There’s also a perception that unbridled capitalism runs counter to the spirit of egalitarianism that New Zealanders pride themselves on. I think too much is made of the gap between the rich and the poor; we shouldn’t worry that some people are stonkingly rich as long as everyone has enough, in the words of Listener columnist Joanne Black, to live decently. Yet there’s little doubt that social cohesion is undermined if people perceive that they live in a stratified society where status is determined solely by wealth.

One consequence of capitalism’s recent failings was the emergence of the Occupy movement, but it’s impossible to take seriously the ragtag protest groups that have taken over public spaces such as the steps of London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, New York’s Zuccotti Park, Auckland’s Aotea Square and Dunedin’s Octagon. They are mostly young and their idealistic minds are unencumbered by knowledge or wisdom.

Their objections to capitalism are vague and often incoherent. They express a fervent conviction that there must be something better, but they don’t know what it is.

The truth is that if there is a better way than free-market capitalism, humanity has yet to discover it. Capitalism may have temporarily let itself down, but it remains the world’s best hope for prosperity and peace. The world’s most liberal, humane, peaceful and prosperous states are all capitalist democracies – something the naïve young idealists of the Occupy movement don’t seem to grasp.

Certainly, socialism is no solution. Capitalism may not work perfectly all the time (what human system does?), but socialism has never worked anywhere, under any circumstances.

What’s needed, then, is for capitalism to rediscover its moral compass. In the words of Ken Costa, a former chairman of international investment bankers Lazards, the markets have “slipped their moral moorings”.

Costa was asked last month by the Anglican Bishop of London to lead discussions on how a form of “ethical capitalism” might work. While he believes markets are still the best system for creating growth and jobs, Costa said the market economy had shifted from its moral foundations “with disastrous consequences”.

The challenge now is for capitalism to set about regaining public trust. It may be a long haul, but it must be done.

More on that emotionally manipulative doco

2011-12-07T09:24:00.001+13:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, November 6.)

TV3’s RECENT prime-time documentary on child poverty in New Zealand had exactly the intended effect. Viewers were aghast at the evidence of sub-standard housing and preventable illnesses such as scabies and school sores. Anguished writers of letters to the editor wondered how this state of affairs could have arisen in a country once considered the best in the world for raising children.

In one respect, the viewer reaction was encouraging. It was a reminder that we are still a decent, compassionate society.

The problem is, the programme represented a very one-sided view. Its message was that the welfare state has failed our poor – and so it has, but not in the way that documentary maker Bryan Bruce wanted us to think.

The welfare state is now part of the problem. Originally designed to tide people over hard times, it has created a culture of long-term dependency, helplessness and entitlement.

There is ample evidence that dependence on benefits, more than any other factor, causes the poverty trap that Bruce professes to despise. Yet the solution he proposes is more welfare spending.

The documentary ignored the risk that more spending on benefits and state housing would serve to make a welfare-based lifestyle look more attractive and end trapping up even more people.

Neither did Bruce concern himself with the inconvenient fact that more welfare spending increases the burden on the diminishing productive sector of an already weak economy.

Socialists never bother to ask where the money comes from; they are interested only in spending it. But consider this: New Zealand in 1972 had 26 working people for every beneficiary. Today that ratio is down to 7 to 1 (in fact 3 to 1, if you include superannuitants).

This was a disgracefully simplistic, emotionally manipulative programme, but fortunately not everyone was fooled. This newspaper published letters from people who had grown up in state houses and pointed out that the mould Bruce was so appalled by in some of the homes he visited could be avoided simply by proper ventilation – in other words, opening windows – and wiping away condensation. But of course it’s far more dramatic to present state house tenants as the helpless victims of Dickensian indifference and heartless, right-wing politicians.

I agree with Bruce on one thing: child poverty is deplorable. But the problem is far more complex than this slanted programme would have us believe. As I wrote on my blog, a film maker could just as easily produce a documentary proving the exact reverse of Bruce’s thesis – namely, that the welfare state and the culture of dependency it encourages are the cause of, rather than the solution to, the poverty and deprivation that Bruce finds so intolerable.

* * *

I KNOW NOTHING about cricket beyond what I read in the sports pages. I managed to navigate my way through childhood without ever playing the game and it remains a mystery to me.

However I was intrigued by a recent article in Britain’s Spectator magazine, prompted by the death of English cricketer-turned-journalist Peter Roebuck, which examined the abnormal suicide rate among former cricketers and asked: “How is that cricket drives so many players out of their minds?”

The best answer it could give was that top players devoted themselves wholly to the game and were left feeling lost and bereft when their careers ended. With no team at the centre of their lives, many didn’t know what to do with themselves and succumbed to drink and depression.

It certainly seems true that cricket, being a game that lasts days rather than hours, requires players to spend a disproportionate amount of their life with other young men in pavilions and hotel rooms. I wonder whether this results in some being emotionally stunted – trapped in an eternal adolescence of high-fives and howzats – and thus less able to cope with the rigours of ordinary life. Certainly some first-class cricketers give the impression of being unusually self-absorbed and perhaps even mentally fragile.

Spending a large part of your life in the company of other blokes, especially at a time when you’re biologically programmed to search for a long-term female partner, just seems downright unnatural.

Of course I didn’t grasp any of this when I decided never to play cricket, but I’m pleased that I made the right choice.

* * *

ANOTHER outbreak of Acute Sensitivity Disorder has made headlines, this time in Britain. Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson said on TV that striking public sector workers should be shot – taken out and executed, preferably in front of their families.

It was a typical Clarkson line, clearly intended as a provocative joke. But even the Poms have lost their sense of humour.

The BBC, intimidated by unionists’ howls of outrage, apologised. Worse still, so did Clarkson.

When political correctness stifles humour and free speech in the country that once gave us such outrageously irreverent and wickedly funny programmes as Monty Python’s Flying Circus, we should all be very afraid.

Were we too quick to dismiss John Banks?

2011-12-06T10:00:00.001+13:00

The announcement that National will trial charter schools in low-income areas as part of its coalition agreement with ACT suggests that John Key’s government will be a lot more adventurous in its second term than in its first.

It’s an extremely significant policy gain for ACT and runs counter to the suspicion expressed by many commentators (me included) that John Banks is a political impostor; a National MP in disguise. Charter schools and parental choice in education have been core ACT policy from the start but until now, have never looked like gaining mainstream traction.

It rather looks as if National is using its tiny ally in Parliament to advance policies that it knows will resonate with National supporters – and no doubt with many of its MPs too – but which it hasn’t had the nerve to embrace itself. Radio New Zealand political editor Brent Edwards also pointed out this morning that it’s in National’s interests to help ACT rebuild so that it continues to have a dependable partner on its right. Allowing ACT a few important policy gains – and several ministerial positions – would be consistent with that strategy.

That John Key went on Morning Report this morning to defend the coalition deal with ACT – and took a pot shot at the “vested interests” of the teacher unions that oppose charter schools – is another indication that National has experienced a testosterone surge as a result of its election triumph. In the past Key has only rarely been interviewed on Radio New Zealand, leading to accusations that he wasn’t up to aggressive questioning.

We should all now brace ourselves for a furious co-ordinated offensive from the teacher unions, which have been remarkably successful in bullying governments in the past and will see the introduction of charter schools - even if only on a very limited scale - as a threat to their iron grip on the education system. To the teacher unions, parental choice is a seriously subversive concept. Inevitably, they will seek to forcefully remind the government just who the system exists for: the teachers.

The big question then will be whether the government stands up to the unions or shamefully capitulates, as National did over bulk funding in the 1990s. To its credit, the Key government stood its ground over national standards in the face of an almost hysterical outcry - the first setback for the teacher unions for as long as most people can remember. I hope it demonstrates the same resolve over charter schools.

It is, after all, just a trial, although we can rely on the NZEI, the PPTA and the school principals' organisations to portray it as tantamount to the sacking of our schools by Barbarian hordes.

The horses will remain unfrightened

2011-12-05T07:20:00.001+13:00

(Written for NZCPR Weekly - www.nzcpr.com)

Let’s get the congratulations out of the way first. National’s election triumph was as emphatic as they get, at least under MMP. Admittedly, it’s rare for a government to be tossed out of office after only one term: it last happened in 1975, and the circumstances then were unusual. Norman Kirk had died in office and the Labour Party leadership had been assumed by the mild-mannered Bill Rowling, who was ill-prepared to deal with the aggression and firepower of a political streetfighter named Muldoon.

But for National to strengthen its hold on power after one term, especially following a year as challenging as any in memory, was some feat. Colin James reports that it’s only the fifth time in 75 years that a first-term government has increased its vote. (Labour did it in 2002, but not as resoundingly.)

Perhaps desperate to inject some drama into a dull campaign, the media talked up Labour’s chances, arbitrarily declaring Phil Goff the winner in two bland TV debates; but it only served to demonstrate – again – that political journalists in Wellington are poorly equipped to read the public mind. Even the predicted narrowing of the gap in the last stages of the campaign never happened.

The vital statistics – 60 seats for National (up two) and 34 for Labour (down nine) – tell only part of the story. Even more striking was the fact that in Labour strongholds such as Christchurch East, Te Atatu and New Lynn, National won the party vote. That humiliation was compounded by Labour’s loss of well-regarded up-and-coming MPs such as Stuart Nash and Kelvin Davis, and by the thrashing handed out to glamour candidate Andrew Little in the previously ultra-marginal seat of New Plymouth, Little’s home town. The ambitious former union boss still gets into Parliament at No 15 on the Labour list, but his star has lost a lot of its lustre.

So, a romp for National. But this was an election where the sub-plots were more interesting than the main action on centre-stage.

Everyone commented on what a great campaign the Greens ran. Certainly they seemed to pick up a lot of former Labour supporters, and their electoral appeal can only have broadened since the departure of polarising figures such as Sue Bradford and Nandor Tanczos. In fact it looks as if the Greens are re-positioning themselves as a mainstream party of the centre-left (watch out Labour) rather than one on the beansprouts-and-sandals fringe. Russel Norman’s stylish suit and tie are a clue to that; the eccentric garb of the late Rod Donald is already a distant memory.

But just wait: the Greens have yet to be fully tested. They have never been exposed to Minor Party Curse, the fatal affliction that strikes small parties once they formally become part of coalition government arrangements. That’s when the stresses start to tell and party discipline starts to fall apart.

As long as a party remains outside government, as the Greens have done, it can safely occupy the moral high ground. Its high-minded principles are unlikely to be compromised. But the moment a party is drawn into a coalition, deals are done and principles get stretched. Ambitions are unleashed and tensions arise between idealists and pragmatists. It happened to the Alliance and it happened to ACT – both parties, like the Greens, with a strong ideological base. Being in government also means a minority party is subjected to much more intense media scrutiny. All things considered, the Greens might have a more assured future if they remain in opposition. A memorandum of understanding with National may be as far as they can safely go.

Then there’s Winston Peters, whose comeback was the big story of the night. (Obviously, someone forgot to drive a stake through his heart.) Peters too has an unhappy record in government. This may explain why he declared before the election that New Zealand First wouldn’t align with either National or Labour – although as with all Peters’ hand-on-heart declarations, that vow could be relied on only for as long as it was expedient for him to stick to it. So Peters is back doing what he does best, which is opposing.

Being in government never suited him; the burden of office, with its requirement to toe the line, curb his tongue, make decisions and accept some form of collective responsibility, was far too onerous. Heck, he was probably even expected to read briefing papers. No, at his age (66) it’s much more fun huffing and puffing from the cross-benches, feuding with the media, stoking the fears and prejudices of his ageing support base and holding court at the Green Parrot. Already there are hints that Peters will set out to hijack the first sitting of the new parliament, as only he can, by using it to divulge the transcript of the secret conversation between the two Johns, Key and Banks, at the Café Urban.

And finally we come to ACT, a Shakespearean tragedy that has unfolded in slow motion. Its disintegration began with the acrimonious leadership struggle that split the party after Richard Prebble’s departure in 2004 and now we are observing the painful last act (pun not intended).

Where did they go wrong? Well, it’s clear that the leadership contest between Rodney Hide, Ken Shirley, Stephen Franks and Muriel Newman created tensions that have never gone away. (Deborah Coddington, who left Parliament in 2005, still can’t comment on her old party without sounding as if she’s settling scores.) Under Hide’s leadership, ACT’s focus drifted away from the party’s founding principles, thus deepening the divisions. In embracing the Sensible Sentencing Trust’s law-and-order agenda (a worthy enough cause, but hardly consistent with ACT’s classical liberalism), Hide strayed perilously close to Winston Peters territory. His foray into television on Dancing with the Stars – a misguided attempt to court mainstream popularity – not only devalued the ACT brand but gave the media a fresh excuse to belittle the party by showing endless replays of Hide dropping his dancing partner. The David Garrett sideshow didn’t help either, and neither did perkbuster Hide’s credibility-damaging acceptance of an overseas holiday paid for by the taxpayer.

For all that, Hide was a capable, committed and hard-working politician who knew the ropes and made some significant gains in parliament. So it seemed churlish and high-handed that when Don Brash launched his hostile takeover bid for ACT, he made it clear that Hide had to go. That now looks like a bad mistake. ACT has lost one of its most effective performers and Brash’s own political career is probably beyond resuscitation. History will record that while the former Reserve Bank governor's principles were unimpeachable, his political judgment was too often woefully astray. ACT is now represented in Parliament – nominally, anyway – by a man with no history in the party and no record of commitment to its philosophy. John Banks has some admirable personal qualities, but he presents the absurd image of a man wearing an ill-fitting suit tailored for someone else.

But back to National. Will the Key government show more daring in its second term than it did in the first? It has the excuse that the global economic crisis calls for bold action, but it could just as easily argue – and probably will – that a period of international uncertainty is no time for making radical changes that might create anxiety. And of course it won’t have an eager-beaver ACT caucus prodding it to take bolder steps to arrest our relative economic decline. So while we can expect modest reforms in such areas as welfare, youth wages, accident compensation, partial privatisation of state assets and the Resource Management Act, no one’s bracing themselves for tough action to curb the state spending binge that began under the Helen Clark government and has continued largely unabated under National. Stability is likely to remain National’s soothing mantra. The horses mustn’t be frightened.

Reflections on a carefully stage-managed campaign

2011-11-25T09:50:00.000+13:00

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, November 23.)

Older readers of this column will recall a time when election campaigns were momentous events – part politics, part entertainment spectacle and part sporting contest.

Those were the days when party leaders such as Norm Kirk and Rob Muldoon attracted packed halls on barnstorming tours and local candidates were energetically heckled at street corner meetings.

Membership of political parties was much greater then (according to one estimate I’ve seen, 10 times greater) and the electorate was less jaded and cynical. Besides, there weren’t so many distractions competing for people’s attention.

There’s been precious little of that sense of drama and excitement, still less enthusiastic public participation, in the campaign that is now in its last days.

Election campaigns these days are carefully stage-managed affairs conducted largely through the media, notably television. The only big public event I’m aware of in this campaign was the leaders’ debate sponsored by the Christchurch Press – the one made famous by National leader John Key’s repeated taunts to Labour leader Phil Goff to “show me the money”.

Otherwise it’s all about sound bites and photo opportunities, principally with the 6pm news in mind. Everything is obsessively controlled by party strategists and PR advisers to minimise the risk of something going wrong.

Political reporters get very little advance warning of where the party leaders will be and are left scrambling in their wake, hoping for an unguarded remark, an unexpected drama – such as Mr Key being confronted by an ACT member unhappy that his party was getting the rough end of the stick over campaign arrangements in marginal seats – or a scrap of new information.

This campaign has lacked defining ideological issues. It has largely been about debt and borrowing figures – National’s versus Labour’s – and about who offers the best prospect of stability and progress in an extremely uncertain world.

Those figures are probably pointless, because they are of such magnitude that voters’ eyes glaze over. In any case, what credence can we attach to forward fiscal projections when the international environment is so unpredictable? Even at the best of times, forecasts are dodgy.

As the campaign has progressed, Labour has latched on to National’s proposed partial state asset selloff as the crucial point of difference between the two main parties. Obviously Labour’s polling has indicated this is the issue on which National is most vulnerable.

There’s an acute irony here, since the public suspicion of asset sales that Mr Goff hopes to exploit can be traced directly back to the actions of a former Labour government in which he was a high-profile minister. That’s politics for you.

Given the relentless focus on the two men vying for the prime ministership, the campaign has also been about leadership.

Neither man has turned in an entirely convincing performance. Mr Key came perilously close to seeing his campaign derailed over the symbolic cup of tea with John Banks (another exquisite irony, since the stage-managed meeting at the Café Urban was supposed to shore up their parties’ positions, not undermine them).

My view is that Mr Key and Mr Banks were too clever, too cocky, for their own good. That the stunt rebounded on them was poetic justice.

Polls indicate that National was correct to gamble that public dislike of the media would outweigh any concern about Mr Key’s supposedly indiscreet comments or the more general issue of electoral jiggery-pokery in Epsom. Yet he may still rue the meeting, since it had the undesired effect of breathing life into Winston Peters’ campaign.

Arguably the worst possible outcome of this election is that the former MP for Tauranga, a man who has exhausted his credibility several times over, should end up holding the balance of power.

As for Mr Goff, he has given the impression of sleepwalking through much of the campaign. He speaks in a whiny tone of voice that lacks fire or conviction. A capable senior minister in the Clark government, he appears to have risen above his level of competence. If he loses, as seems inevitable, it’s impossible to envisage him surviving as party leader.

And what of the other parties? The Greens have run a good campaign and been rewarded in the polls with their highest ratings yet.

Doubtless they have benefited from events such as the Pike River disaster and the Rena grounding, which have raised public consciousness about environmental fragility. But the Greens have also gone to some lengths to present themselves as a party with credible economic policies, presumably with a view to making themselves acceptable as a coalition partner for National should they find themselves in that position.

While that would stick in the craw of diehard Green supporters, it can’t be ruled out, especially when the Greens have been treated with such casual disregard in the past by their preferred partners, Labour.

And the Maori Party? People tend to give it the benefit of the doubt because Pita Sharples seems a likeable bloke, and even Tariana Turia is a lot less strident than she used to be. But there can be little doubt, after the past few days, about who the Maori Party represents, and what its agenda is.

It is the party of corporate Maoridom and its main purpose is to achieve privileged treatment for the Treaty-enriched tribes that it acts for. This couldn’t have been made clearer than when Dr Sharples said the Maori Party opposed partial asset sales, but would go along with them if the government gave iwi preferential purchasing rights. What’s “each-way bet” in te reo?

This might play well to the Maori corporate elite, but it can only have damaged the party’s credibility among the electorate at large. Perhaps the best that can be said about Dr Sharples in the present circumstances is that at least he’s honest.

What's going on at TV3?

2011-11-23T16:00:00.003+13:00

In a post on this blog site yesterday I mentioned my reluctance to accuse media organisations of political bias. I have seen those allegations hurled about far too often and far too loosely, invariably by politically aligned people frustrated that their side wasn’t the only one getting newspaper space or air time. But in the past couple of weeks I have begun to wonder seriously whether TV3 is running some sort of political agenda.

My suspicions were aroused by political coverage that in recent weeks has too often seemed slanted to discredit National. An example was Patrick Gower’s report last week about a supposedly hush-hush meeting between John Key and the head of the international oil exploration firm Anadarko. As only he can, Gower reported this in such a way as to suggest that there was something underhand going on. (“TV3 can reveal that Prime Minister John Key made time in his diary this week for a secretive meeting with the boss of an oil company that wants to undertake deep sea drilling off New Zealand’s coast.”) Never mind that prime ministers probably have meetings with international businessmen all the time without necessarily alerting the media. If there was something dodgy going on, it certainly wasn’t substantiated by the TV3 report. But never mind: Gower nonetheless raised dark connections with the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster in 2010 (Anadarko had a 25 percent share in the Deepwater Horizon rig) and generously gave Greens co-leader Metiria Turei an opportunity to link Key with “catastrophic oil spills”. In other words, the story was spun to put the worst possible complexion on what may have been an entirely innocent and legitimate meeting.

This technique appears to be something of a Gower specialty. On October 26 he reported: “3 News has learned that John Key has had a private meeting with a controversial right-wing British billionaire, Lord Michael Ashcroft.” Recognise the style? The loaded phrases “3 News has learned” and “TV3 can reveal” immediately create the impression that something sneaky is being covered up.

Gower went on to say that Ashcroft was “best known for pumping his time – and millions – into the British Conservative Party and right-wing politics.” Ah, so he’s a shadowy political manipulator, then. But hang on: Ashcroft is a former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party – hardly a secret society – and sits in the House of Lords as a life peer. Nothing overtly sinister there. He’s also a philanthropist who founded Crimestoppers, a crimefighting organisation now established in New Zealand, and he put up the reward money for the return of war medals stolen from the Waiouru army museum. All of these seem perfectly valid reasons why he and Key should get together while Ashcroft was in New Zealand for the Rugby World Cup. But Gower seemed more interested in the fact that the left-wing Guardian newspaper had reported a controversy over Ashcroft’s tax status – a shocking blot on his character that he shares with innumerable British rock stars.

Gower’s report concluded: “Mr Key is usually quite open when it comes to his meetings with the rich and famous. His critics will argue he kept this one on the quiet because of Lord Ashcroft’s controversial baggage.” So there we are, then: the two men were quite clearly up to no good. This style of reportage, where two and two are added together to make 22, relies on innuendo and loaded phraseology and is devoid of integrity.

Then there’s Duncan Garner. When Labour recently announced its welfare policy for beneficiary families, Garner found a South Auckland mother on the DPB with six children whose desperate plight was clearly meant to impress upon us the urgent need for more spending on benefits. They were living in a four-bedroomed state house and getting by on $560 a week which, under a Labour government, would increase by $60 – enough, Garner informed us, to fill their fridge and freezer.

The oldest of these six kids would have been about seven and the youngest were toddlers. I waited for Garner to ask a few pertinent questions such as who the fathers were, where they were, why they didn’t provide any support and why she continued to have children knowing the taxpayer would have to pick up the tab. But of course these questions weren’t asked; they never are. Instead we heard Garner ask a leading question about what she would like to see as a result of this election, to which her reply – hardly surprisingly – was “more money for beneficiaries”. We then cut to Phil Goff talking about Labour’s empathy with the downtrodden before ending with Garner’s line that “help is on the way, but Labour has to win the election first”. Take from that what you will. Only a brief reference was made to the estimated cost of Labour’s desperate bid to win more votes by promising to expand the welfare state.

There was more in a similar vein on 3 News last night. In a review of the day’s campaigning, Garner praised Goff’s performance in the leaders’ debate the previous night and said the Labour leader’s message on asset sales and the minimum wage went down well on the campaign trail in South Auckland (well, of course it would). National, on the other hand, was continuing its “scare tactics” over Winston Peters. Then, just in case we hadn’t got the message, Garner referred again to National’s “scaremongering”. He wrapped up his summary of the day by referring to National minister Steven Joyce’s latest cost estimate of Labour’s election promises ($25 billion), and quoted Greens leader Russel Norman as saying that Joyce should consider a career with the “bankrupted and discredited Lehman Brothers”. The way this was reported implied that Garner endorsed Norman’s cheap shot, or at the very least considered it the most newsworthy statement of the day. A balanced assessment on a national television network just three days out from the election? What do you think?

Speaking of that TV3 leaders’ debate, some critics have suggested that John Campbell’s questions highlighted issues where National was on the defensive. Whether they did – and if so, whether it was deliberate – I couldn’t say; but I do think TV3 has now got into itself into such a position that even when it does something in complete innocence, people will be looking for signs of bias.

I should state here that I am not a supporter of Key or the National Party (I’m certainly right of centre, but I’ve voted for Labour far more often than for National), and I repeat that I’m not in the habit of alleging institutional editorial bias based on one or two examples. Now and again a report may lean one way or the other, but generally things balance out in the long run. What worries me about 3 News is that a persistent pattern seems to have emerged. And what finally convinced me that the channel has abandoned all semblance of political neutrality was its screening last night of a pseudo-documentary entitled Inside Child Poverty, written and presented by Bryan Bruce.

I say pseudo- documentary because it was an undisguised, overwrought piece of hand-wringing political polemic that made no pretence of objectivity or balance. To screen it at any time would have courted controversy, but to show it in prime time just three days before a general election couldn’t be construed as anything but a deliberate attempt to tilt the political playing field in Labour’s favour.

That couldn’t have been clearer than when the host – who clearly aspires to be New Zealand’s answer to the sanctimonious John Pilger – genuflected, metaphorically speaking, before the Michael Joseph Savage monument and reminded us of Labour’s proud historical commitment to feed, clothe and house the poor. Another overtly political moment occurred when Bruce asked rhetorically: “Who builds state houses? Labour. Who sells them? National.”

I waited at the end for the announcement that this had been a party political broadcast. It never came.

Inside Child Poverty was disgracefully selective in the way it approached its subject and nauseatingly pious in the way it attempted to manipulate viewers’ emotions. Bruce sought to demonstrate that the poor in New Zealand had been systematically beaten down by heartless right-wing politicians (cue shots of Ruth Richardson and Roger Douglas) and called for a revival of what he called our “socialist” traditions to ensure there is food on every poor family’s table.

Lindsay Mitchell (www.lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com) has demolished some of Bruce’s flawed arguments more effectively than I could. Suffice it to say that he couldn’t even get basic historical facts right – recalling, for example, that he had grown up in "a socialist country". I grew up in New Zealand at the same time as Bruce and it was never socialist; a welfare state, yes, but not socialist. But why bother with such nitpicking distinctions? “Socialist” has such an uplifting, righteous ring.

He took us to Sweden to show his vision of a Utopian society where well-scrubbed, state-subsidised, middle-class Scandinavian fathers stay at home to look after their babies, and where doctors tut-tut when told of the incidence of scabies and school sores in New Zealand, but he ignored the huge cultural differences that make comparisons pointless (such as the fact that Sweden has no Pacific Island and Maori populations, the two groups that are grossly over-represented in New Zealand welfare statistics).

He didn’t bother to consider the capacity of the fragile New Zealand economy to fund the potentially limitless demands of the enlarged welfare state he seeks. He didn’t consider the probability that providing more generous welfare assistance will simply encourage more people to become dependent on it (the so-called moral hazard). He talked loftily about morality but didn’t consider the morality of having large families sired by multiple fathers and then expecting other people, working people with mortgages to pay and their own children to raise, to pick up the tab. All too inconvenient.

Instead he marshalled every half-baked assertion and catchy bumper-sticker slogan he could think of (example: “The we society became a me society”) to make his point, and he was careful to interview only people who agreed with him. (It was no surprise to see Gareth Morgan, who has positioned himself as New Zealand’s leading capitalist-with-a-conscience, pop up.) But here’s the thing: a film maker could just as easily produce a documentary proving the exact reverse of Bruce’s thesis – namely, that the welfare state and the culture of dependency, entitlement and helplessness it encourages are the cause of, rather than the solution to, the poverty and deprivation Bruce professes to despise. Trouble is, NZ On Air would never fund it.

This was the first Bryan Bruce documentary I had watched and I won’t be bothering with him again. I’m tired of being lectured by smug, self-righteous baby boomers (a generation of which I, unfortunately, am one, and which has largely created the unholy mess we’re now in).

But the bigger issue is why TV3 chose to show this particular programme, with its very explicit political message, in this particular week. I’m not entirely averse to the screening of ideologically one-eyed, intellectually dishonest and emotionally manipulative crap, but I think TV3 needs to explain the timing. Perhaps someone will complain to the Electoral Commission.

Scalp hunting: the new style of political journalism

2011-11-22T19:35:00.000+13:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, November 22.)

THE ELECTION campaign has brought to the fore a new style of television journalism.

It is aggressive, confrontational, highly opinionated and designed to provoke a reaction. Its chief practitioners are Patrick Gower and Duncan Garner of 3 News.

Both are astute political journalists who clearly see their role as much more than simply reporting. When Garner announces “This issue isn’t going away”, under the guise of making an objective statement about the political controversy du jour (such as the Café Urban furore), he does so with the certainty of a man who will make damned sure it doesn’t go away.

But it’s Gower who has obviously been designated TV3’s resident attack dog, with a brief to get in politicians’ faces.

3 News recently showed Act leader Don Brash saying to Gower outside Wellington’s Amora Hotel: “You are a deceitful bastard, quite frankly, and I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

To goad the almost painfully polite Brash into responding so vehemently must have taken some doing, but I bet Gower went home that night feeling pleased with his day’s work. It’s just a shame that 3 News didn’t explain the background to the exchange so that viewers could decide whether Brash’s accusation was justified.

Former Act MP David Garrett subsequently wrote on Kiwiblog: “Gower is the prick who tried to goad me into dropping my bag and dropping him at Wellington Airport a year ago.” Garrett, who was up to his eyeballs in political strife at the time, accused the journalist of blocking his path at the security gate until a security man pulled him out of the way.

I watched that news item and agree that Gower seemed intent on provoking the volatile MP into lashing out. But as Garrett said, that would have played into his hands.

Tripping politicians up, catching them out, is an honourable journalistic tradition. Gower had the usually cocky John Banks on the ropes last week over what was said over tea at the Café Urban, and even John Key looked rattled in the face of Garner’s questioning. Neither journalist lacks guts.

Yet there’s something disconcerting about Gower’s approach. You get the feeling that its purpose is to claim political scalps for the sheer sport of it.

He is a journalistic picker of scabs, a scavenger who swoops on the wounded. He scans the political landscape looking for any story that, with judicious editing and sneering voice-over, can be manipulated for maximum effect.

The Gower approach illustrates two trends in modern political journalism. One is to strive at all costs for what former British prime minister Tony Blair called “impact” – something to excite the public blood lust.

The other is to put the journalist at the centre of the story. The modern political reporter is no longer content to be a passive observer, but wants to be a player – a maker and breaker of careers.

* * *

HIGH COURT judge Forrie Miller acted sensibly and compassionately in discharging without conviction the mother of a toddler who drowned in the family swimming pool while she was distracted inside the house.

Mary-Anne Illston will serve a life sentence anyway, metaphorically speaking. She hardly needed a conviction to realise the terrible consequences of not supervising her daughter more closely.

But the case raises an important question about the need for consistency in the way police deal with such matters.

Illston was charged with manslaughter. Similarly, last April, Ashish Macwan was charged with careless driving causing death after his three-year-old son Aarush drowned in Lake Dunstan. The family van, with the boy inside, rolled into the lake after Macwan inadvertently left the handbrake off. In that case too, an enlightened judge discharged the bereaved parent without conviction.

Most people would say that in both instances, the parent’s grief was punishment enough. Yet police followed the book.

It will be interesting to see, then, whether they take the same uncompromising approach in the case of two-year-old Sukhraj Singh, who recently drowned in the Taruheru River at Gisborne. News reports said Sukhraj and his cousin, who also nearly drowned, wandered off from Sukhraj’s home and it was 10 or 15 minutes before anyone noticed they were missing.

The family blamed Gisborne District Council for not fencing the river. But the primary cause of this terrible accident, if news reports are accurate, was a failure of parental supervision.

Only the stony-hearted could not feel sorry for the Singh family. But as Justice Miller pointed out, there have been 85 pre-school and infant deaths in the past decade, most of them the result of adult complacency. Water Safety New Zealand accepts that prosecuting parents can compound their grief, but says it’s an effective way of drawing attention to the problem of child drownings.

What’s important, surely, is that the police are seen to be even-handed. The law should not be a lottery.

* * *

AT AN ELECTION meeting last week, Wairarapa MP John Hayes mentioned that of 25 young men who went on a forestry work course, 22 subsequently failed a drug test.

This is an aspect of the drug problem that the pro-dope lobby doesn’t mention. Present laws may not be very effective, but at least they serve as some sort of curb on usage. Legalise cannabis, and even more young men may be condemned to lives of uselessness.

"Undecided" voters strangely decisive

2011-11-22T09:20:00.000+13:00

I’m not one to shriek “bias!” at the drop of a hat and I’m no cheerleader for John Key, but there was something decidedly suspicious about the behaviour of the “worm” in last night leaders’ debate on TV3.

As Stephen Franks pointed out on Morning Report, the worm moved up every time Phil Goff opened his mouth, even before anyone had a chance to digest what he was saying. David Farrar joked on Kiwiblog that Goff could have confessed to the Crewe murders and the worm would have gone up.

The reverse happened the moment Key began to speak. The worm immediately tracked downward.

The 65 people in the studio audience, whose responses determined the worm’s movements, were supposedly non-committed voters. Perhaps this means that undecided voters are those who can’t quite make up their minds between Labour, Mana and the Greens.

The funny business at the Cafe Urban

2011-11-14T18:31:00.001+13:00

My first reaction, on hearing the Herald on Sunday had obtained a clandestine recording of John Key’s meeting with John Banks in Newmarket last Friday, was to let out a groan of dismay and disbelief. Did we really need this London-style tabloid sleaze?

Now, having learned the full circumstances, I’m inclined to take the paper’s side.

I could understand Key getting up on his hind legs, but I heard HoS editor Bryce Johns on Morning Report and his explanation of how it happened struck me as plausible. Besides, I worked with Bryce for several years and unless he’s changed, I don’t think he’s a journalist in the Clive Goodman/Rebekah Brooks mould.

Quite apart from anything else, leaving a recording device on the table right in front of the two politicians, even if it was in a little black pouch, seemed too clumsy by far to be a serious attempt at eavesdropping. It was sure to be spotted, and it was.

The fact that the paper chose not to report what was said during the conversation supports its case. The HoS appears to have acted ethically. This is not the behaviour of an editor bent on getting a sensational story that might blow the election wide open.

In any case, why go to the trouble of planting a recording device, and risking the inevitable hullabaloo that would ensue, if you weren’t going to take maximum advantage of it by splashing the taped exchange all over page one?

This affair has the potential to rebound on Key. He dismisses his exchange with Banks as “bland” but refused permission for the HoS to publish the transcript of the recording, on the ground that he didn’t want to give the paper the satisfaction of getting the story after behaving unethically (if indeed it was unethical).

The problem now is that there is real public curiosity about what was said, and about the contradiction between Johns’ claim that the recording is potentially game-changing (the political phrase du jour) and Key’s insistence that it’s really of no interest. The stakes have been raised to the point where it becomes increasingly likely that someone will divulge what was said.

TV3 disclosed tonight that it too has a copy of the tape, and there are likely to be others circulating. There are hints that the recording contains statements about ACT leader Don Brash that would not look good for either Key or Banks. I’m picking that it will all spill into the public arena sooner or later. That’s the way these things normally play out.

It demonstrates that even at this late stage in a carefully orchestrated and generally successful National campaign, things could still go pear-shaped for Key. It only takes one indiscreet comment, and Johns hinted at such a comment in the tape from the Café Urban.

In fact it would be exquisitely ironic – you might say poetic justice – if the meeting between Key and Banks blew up in their faces. It was a PR stunt staged to attract maximum media attention. People talk about the cup of tea as being symbolic, and so it was – not just in the strictly political sense, but also because it was symbolic of a tightly controlled media operation in which political journalists are expected to dance to a ballet choreographed by Beehive spin-meisters.

It was assumed the media would turn up en masse at the Café Urban and film the palaver; indeed the whole pantomime would have been pointless if they hadn’t. But the journalists and photographers were then expected to retreat to a respectful distance, noses pressed up against the window (almost literally), and allow the two men to go into a cosy huddle.

It was a highly public event, deliberately so, yet at crunch time Key insisted on asserting his right to privacy. I don’t think I’m alone in thinking there’s a bit of a contradiction, a double standard, here. The whole affair was conducted entirely on the politicians’ terms, for the politicians’ benefit, and to that extent, pretty much summed up what the modern election campaign, with all its jiggery-pokery, has become; and I have to admit I’d find it quite satisfying if something hideously embarrassing came out of it all.

Parading our inferiority complex

2011-11-11T10:41:00.000+13:00

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, November 9.)

Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, defines “mania” as a state of abnormally elevated or irritable mood, arousal, and/ or energy levels.

Sound familiar? Strike out that word “irritable” and you’ve got an accurate description of the mood that gripped the country for the duration of the Rugby World Cup.

Like any patriotic New Zealander, I was pleased at the outcome of the event; but I was also relieved when it was over. The media hype was relentless and overwhelming.

Harmless fun? Yes, most of the time. Yet occasionally there was a nasty edge to it, and it didn’t escape attention.

A columnist in the Sydney Morning Herald, Paul Sheehan, brought the collective wrath of the nation down on his head in the last week of the tournament when he criticised the throat-slitting gesture in the All Blacks’ Kapa O Pango haka.

The criticism came at the tail end of what I thought was a fair and perceptive column in which Sheehan commented on the “immense emotional stake” New Zealanders had invested in the RWC final, which was to be played the following weekend.

“The cumulative weight of the 24 years since the All Blacks won the World Cup for the first and only time has become a burden on the nation that can be lifted only when the All Blacks captain lifts the cup once more,” Sheehan wrote.

Had the Wallabies won the semifinal against the All Blacks, he added, the result would have been a “psychic scar” across New Zealand.

The column concluded with Sheehan saying that the violence implied by the throat-slitting gesture had no place in sport.

To say he touched a raw nerve would be to understate the case. More than 560 comments were posted on the Sydney Morning Herald’s website, many of them from outraged New Zealanders. When Fairfax Media’s Stuff website in New Zealand picked up Sheehan’s comments, a further 868 comments were posted – depressing proof that nothing, not even politics or religion, arouses New Zealanders’ emotions more than sport.

Some readers remonstrated with Sheehan for supposedly misunderstanding the throat-slitting gesture. A handful sided with him. But most readers accused Sheehan of being a sore loser because the All Blacks had beaten the Wallabies a few days before.

This was a lazy and churlish response. Far easier to accuse Sheehan of sour grapes than to engage with his arguments, which were that the Kapa O Pango haka sends an unfortunate message (whatever its defenders may claim) and that New Zealanders depend far too heavily on one sport, rugby, for their national pride and sense of identity.

A few readers seized Sheehan’s column as an opportunity to boast of New Zealand’s superior race relations and to condemn Australia’s treatment of Aboriginals – hardly relevant in this context. One commenter labelled Sheehan a convict.

The tone of the responses was overwhelmingly vitriolic and depressingly puerile. A fairly typical comment (anonymous, of course – they always are) ran: “I think [the haka] is awesome. What have Australia got? That Waltzing Matilda crap.”

Another, in similar vein, went: “Thanks for your input skippy, now back to Waltzing Matilda, and leave us to our affairs.”

At such times we New Zealanders reveal an ugly aspect of the national character: touchy, defensive and acutely sensitive to criticism, especially when it comes from our big, brash neighbour. It wasn’t just the silver fern on display during the RWC; we grabbed the opportunity to parade our national inferiority complex too.

Sheehan was provoked into writing a second column in which he described the torrent of condemnation as “an outpouring of dog-in-the-manger, chip-on-the-shoulder, small-country-small-minded, defensive churlishness on an industrial scale.” I have to agree.

He reminded readers that he had described the haka as “the greatest ritual in world sport” (it was just the Kapo O Pango version he disliked), and had also acknowledged that it would be an injustice if the All Blacks didn’t win the RWC (so much for the accusations of sour grapes). But as I’ve learned myself in 40 years of writing newspaper columns, you can’t control the meaning readers choose to take from what you write.

The response to Sheehan’s column wasn’t the only unattractive New Zealand trait on display during the World Cup. The demonisation of New Zealand-born Wallaby Quade Cooper, encouraged by idiotic elements of the media, was just as distasteful. The booing whenever Cooper touched the ball was a disgrace.

One Australian commentator on The Roar website paid tribute to the good-natured reaction of New Zealand fans after the All Blacks had demolished the Wallabies. But how would we have behaved, I wonder, if the Aussies had won? It’s easy to be gracious in victory; much harder in defeat.

The most telling point Sheehan made in his original column was that rugby occupies too big a place in the New Zealand psyche, and our response to the All Blacks’ narrow win in the final proved his point.

Like any patriotic New Zealander I was pleased by the result, but the euphoria that enveloped the country for days afterwards was over the top. Our national pride must be very fragile if it rests on something as ephemeral as a sporting trophy.

I found the self-congratulatory tone of the celebrations intriguing too. Anyone would think the entire country had been playing the French on Eden Park rather than an elite team of highly paid professional sportsmen.

And I couldn’t help wondering about the ugly flip-side of victory. The consequences if the All Blacks had lost don’t bear thinking about.

The nation would have been plunged into a mood of dark despondency. If previous experience is anything to go by, the incidence of domestic violence would have soared as neanderthal males took out their frustrations on their partners and children.

Graham Henry and his team would probably have needed police protection. Former All Blacks coach John Hart received death threats and hate mail after the defeat by France in the 1999 semifinals. Just imagine how much more extreme the reaction would have been had they lost again this time.

Sheehan was right. New Zealand had too much emotion invested in the RWC and some of the side-effects weren’t pretty. As an Australian living in New Zealand commented on the Sydney Morning Herald website, we need another way, besides rugby, to define ourselves on the world stage.

What we need is a Lange - or even a Muldoon

2011-11-09T10:44:00.000+13:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, November 8.)

THE ELECTION campaign reminds me of a catchphrase made famous by British television comedians Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise. “What do you think of it so far?” Morecambe would ask halfway through their show. And the answer was always the same: “Rubbish!”

One of the consequences of MMP is that the major parties have become more risk-averse and more centrist. The defining ideological differences that once separated National and Labour have narrowed to the point where they are reduced to fighting over a shrinking patch of centre ground.

What this means is that election campaigns are matters of tone and nuance rather than the great contests of ideas that they should be. It’s all about “branding”.

There’s no fire, no galvanising vision. At a Business New Zealand pre-election conference addressed by the party leaders last week, it was the minor parties that presented the bold ideas (and Pita Sharples the wit).

In difficult times like this, an election campaign provides an opportunity for the nation to debate whether to tear the house down and start again. But John Key and Phil Goff are like a married couple squabbling over which shade of off-white to paint the kitchen.

Both are decent, well-meaning men, but this campaign could do with the fiery idealism of a Norman Kirk or the biting wit and charisma of a David Lange.

In fact it’s almost enough to make you yearn for the days of Robert David Muldoon. He may have been a nasty little bully, and a socialist to boot (despite leading a supposedly conservative party), but at least he stirred people up.

* * *

NONETHELESS, election campaigns have a way of bringing certain things out into the open.

Asked on TV3 News which major party the Maori Party would support, co-leader Tariana Turia replied: “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

Here, in stark relief, is one of the fatal shortcomings of MMP. We have no control over what happens after we cast our votes. We don’t know who will get into bed together, what compromises will be made and what policies will be traded off.

The politicians, having gone through the three-yearly ritual of prostrating themselves at our feet in order to win our support, will be back in the driver’s seat and the voter will be merely an impotent onlooker.

Opponents of FPP say that things were no better under that system; that once in power, governments were free to do whatever they liked regardless of any promises made beforehand. But the difference is that under MMP, post-election horse-trading behind closed doors is more than just a risk; it’s an integral feature of the system.

Under FPP, governments that broke promises or introduced policies without consulting the electorate knew they risked being punished at the next election. Now parties can justify almost any breach of faith with their supporters by saying it’s the price we pay for a system that depends on compromise and negotiation.

I won’t be voting for a return to FPP, which was a demonstrably unfair system, but neither will I vote to retain MMP. We have replaced one seriously flawed setup with another.

* * *

MR SHARPLES illustrated another unattractive aspect of the new political environment when he attacked the rival Mana Party on the basis that it has Pakeha candidates, namely John Minto and Sue Bradford.

How can people with white skin, Mr Sharples asked, pretend to represent Maori?

This was a naked appeal to identity politics, whereby people define themselves according to whatever minority group they belong to – be it Maori, gay, fundamentalist Christian, disabled or whatever – and frame their political goals accordingly.

Identity politics runs counter to the idea of communities acting in concert for the common good. It also promotes the divisive idea that to represent someone with brown skin, a politician must be of the same colour.

Mr Sharples’ party depends heavily on identity politics for its appeal. So does Hone Harawira’s Mana Party, though it seeks to mop up disaffected ragtag Pakeha as well as Maori.

In a useful report on the forthcoming voting referendum, the centre-right Maxim Institute highlights the choice voters will be given between systems that elect MPs to represent the community as a whole and ones that emphasise representation for narrow interest groups.

The report describes identity politics as “murky ground” but also acknowledges the unfairness of electoral systems that don’t give minority parties any chance at all.

Maxim doesn’t come out in favour of any one system, but on the basis of its analysis STV and SM, while far from perfect, look to be the best compromises between the two unpalatable extremes.

Call me sceptical, but I suspect that whatever electoral system we come up with, the politicians will find a way to turn it to their own advantage.

The avoidable death of Sukhraj Singh

2011-11-07T16:28:00.000+13:00

WHEN A CHILD dies an avoidable death, it’s not entirely surprising that the grieving family looks for someone to blame.

In the case of toddler Sukhraj Singh, who drowned in the Taruheru River at Gisborne last week, blame has fallen on Gisborne District Council for not fencing off the river.

Only the flint-hearted could not feel sorry for the family. I can't think of any event more heartbreaking than the death of a child. But the primary cause of this terrible accident, if news reports are accurate, is that the mothers of Sukhraj and his cousin Achilles Kaui – who also nearly drowned – didn’t notice that they had wandered off.

According to the Dominion Post’s account, 10 or 15 minutes passed before the two women realised the little boys were gone – more than enough time for a child to get into fatal trouble.

It’s now almost a kneejerk reaction to blame some imagined bureaucratic failing whenever awful accidents happen. A similar thing happened in 2009 when Aisling Symes fell into a manhole in Henderson.

But the primary responsibility for children’s safety will always rest with parents. Far more children die because their parents were distracted at a crucial moment than because councils didn’t put up fences or follow up reports of manhole covers coming loose.

Public authorities can never identify, still less eliminate, every potential hazard, and it’s not their function to do so. Active, inquisitive children will always find ways to put themselves at risk; that’s why their parents need to watch them at all times.

When there’s water nearby, the need for vigilance multiplies.

In the same week that Sukhraj died, an inquest was held into the drowning of a two-year-old girl at Waiwera Thermal Pools north of Auckland. The coroner was told that Nylah Vau wandered away from the kiddies’ pool while her parents were otherwise occupied.

The Vau family will now have a lifetime in which to mourn the tragic consequences of inadequate supervision. Such incidents are far too common.

If events follow the usual course in Gisborne, the district council will feel compelled to conduct an inquiry into the death of Sukhraj Singh and will very likely announce some time later that action has been taken to prevent a recurrence.

The trouble with such outcomes is that they perpetuate the dishonest pretence that public officials can eliminate risk – and even more lethally, they encourage the mindset that it is the responsibility of public officials, rather than parents, to ensure that tragedies don’t happen.

Oz Spectator honours Kerr

2011-11-04T10:12:00.003+13:00

The latest edition of The Spectator Australia, out today (well, in Australia, anyway; New Zealand gets it next week) devotes an editorial to the late Roger Kerr, crediting him with helping to kick-start a dramatic reform agenda – “cutting income and business tax, privatising state-run industry, floating the exchange rate, slashing agricultural subsidies and protective tariffs, changing the rules of welfare, deregulating the labour market (and eroding the source of union power)” – that made Paul Keating, the champion of economic reform in Bob Hawke’s government, blush.

The editorial tribute, written by Spectator Australia editor Tom Switzer, describes the long-serving Business Roundtable head, whose funeral service yesterday packed Old St Paul's in Wellington, as a public intellectual in the best sense of the term. “His wit, civility and intellectual honesty contributed hugely to the respectability of the cause of free markets and small government in a nation with deep socialist roots.”

Rolling across America

2011-11-01T10:06:00.000+13:00

(This article was published in the travel section of The Dominion Post, October 26.)

THERE can be few better ways to travel than in the observation car of an American train on a golden autumn afternoon with a cold beer in hand.

I’m on the California Zephyr, speeding westward through the gently undulating farmland of Illinois. We’re about four metres above the ground, on the upper of two levels, and the train is quiet and smooth.

To my surprise, the observation car is half-empty. Either my fellow passengers have all done this trip before and become blasé about the sights, or they are unmoved by the beauty of the landscape.

The view through the floor-to-ceiling windows gives new meaning to the line from America the Beautiful about amber waves of grain. Cornfields stretch to the horizon in all directions, interrupted here and there by dark clumps of trees indicating the presence of a lonely farmhouse. Some of these habitations look like exquisite little doll’s houses.

We are at the start of the great Midwestern prairie and it will take us the rest of the day and all of the night to cross it. The landscape changes little but it’s easy on the eye and I’m never bored.

As evening approaches, we cross the Mississippi into rural Iowa. The sunset is like molten copper. Much later, in the darkness, we rumble across the inky-black waters of another mighty river which a fellow passenger confirms is the Missouri, the border between Iowa and Nebraska.

My wife and I boarded the California Zephyr in Chicago at two in the afternoon. If we were to stay on the train all the way to Emeryville, near San Francisco, it would be a 52-hour trip. But because we couldn’t get a sleeper compartment and didn’t fancy sitting for all that time, we’ve decided to break the journey for a day and a night in Denver, Colorado, before resuming.

We could have saved time and money by flying, but it goes without saying that you see a lot more from a train than you do from 30,000 feet. Rail remains one of the most rewarding forms of travel – and sociable too, since you naturally fall into conversation with your fellow passengers. As on a ship, a camaraderie soon develops among the people temporarily brought together in this confined space.

In the dining car on our first night we sit opposite a genial young man from Perth, Australia, and a shy female student on her way back to Stanford University after the summer vacation. Because space is limited in the dining car, people are required to share their table with strangers; but rather than being an imposition, it adds to the enjoyment of the journey.

Our companions at dinner on the second night are a charming elderly couple, retired teachers from Wisconsin, who are on their way to visit relatives in Oakland, California. They have a sleeping compartment but complain that it’s claustrophobic – that once they’re in there with the door closed they feel shut in.

It’s a comment we hear from other passengers too, and we’re pleased that we’re travelling coach class. We even sleep reasonably well, since the train is barely half-full and each of us is able to stretch out over two seats. The only problem on the first night is that it’s cold – a malfunctioning thermostat, apparently.

The food in the dining car could be described only as basic – at best, on a par with airline meals. It’s not cheap, either, but you either eat it or starve, since there’s no opportunity to buy food along the way. But the dining car serves wine and beer, which makes the meals seem more palatable; and in any case, no one ever travelled on an Amtrak train for the innovative cuisine.

It’s the scenery that makes this journey unforgettable. The prairies, pretty as they are, are merely an appetiser; the main course, in visual terms, is served once the train starts climbing into the Rockies west of Denver.

Here the California Zephyr passes through terrain that makes the usual superlatives seem feeble: spectacular rocky bluffs, deep canyons, rushing mountain creeks and idyllic alpine meadows. Though it’s only early autumn, the forest foliage at this altitude (the railway climbs to nearly 3000 metres) seems to show off every colour in nature’s palette, from pale yellow to brilliant scarlet.

We’re soon following the upper reaches of the Colorado River, where we pass parties of white-water kayakers, the occasional fly fisherman and even a prospector panning for gold. Here the railway passes through Upper Gore Canyon, whose walls rise nearly 500 metres and seem to reach out menacingly over the train.

But wait: there’s more. After the Rockies come the vast deserts of Utah and Nevada – a lunar landscape where wind and rain have sculpted the rock into all manner of improbable shapes. In the distance I see massive buttes, similar to those of the famous Monument Valley, rising from the desert floor.

The train rolls through the desert all night, occasionally passing desolate little towns almost hidden in the sagebrush. At 3 am we stop briefly in a place called Elko, Nevada, where there’s not even a station – just a shelter with room for two or three people. Obviously someone got off, or on, the train at Elko and I can’t help thinking the latter would have been the better option.

We also pass the town of Winnemucca, where the conductor, a man with a voice that reminds me of Fozzie Bear in The Muppet Show, tells us Butch Cassidy robbed the bank in 1900.

But there are more mountains to come yet – namely, the majestic range known as the Sierra Nevada. Here we cross the Donner Pass, scene of one of the darkest episodes in the history of American settlement. Trapped by thick snow in the terrible winter of 1846-47, 39 members of a party of 87 settlers died of malnutrition and exposure. Some members of the party famously resorted to cannibalism.

It’s hard to reconcile this grim story with the scene presented by Donner Lake on a gloriously sunny day, shimmering under a powder-blue sky criss-crossed by vapour trails.

Once out of the mountains, the train makes a last dash across California’s broad Central Valley and skirts the shores of San Francisco Bay before reaching its ultimate destination. From Emeryville, we catch an Amtrak bus across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco, where we say our goodbyes.

We’ve spent 33 hours on the California Zephyr since Denver but it doesn’t feel like it. In fact we get off the train feeling infinitely fresher than at the end of a 12-hour flight cooped up like battery hens on a Boeing 747. Even as lowly coach-class passengers we have experienced travel as a pleasure in itself, rather than merely as a means of getting somewhere.

EXTRA STUFF YOU MIGHT WANT TO KNOW ...

State-owned Amtrak operates the California Zephyr service daily each way between Chicago and Emeryville, in the San Francisco Bay area of California – a distance of nearly 4000km. The train leaves Chicago at 2pm and arrives at 4.10pm two days later. In the reverse direction the train leaves Emeryville at 9.10am and arrives in Chicago two days later at 2.50pm. Cities it passes through include Burlington, Iowa; Omaha, Nebraska; Denver, Colorado; Salt Lake City, Utah; Reno, Nevada; and Sacramento, California. “Superliner” sleeping accommodation is available and the dining car provides a full meal service, including wine and beer. Smoking on the train is prohibited. Prices range from $US152 for a coach-class seat (not including meals) to $US1396 for a superliner bedroom for two (meals included). Superliner bedrooms are self-contained with their own hand basin, toilet and shower. Note: fares may vary depending on the time of year.

A tribute to Roger Kerr

2011-10-29T15:43:00.001+13:00

News of the death of Roger Kerr, executive director of the Business Roundtable, comes as a shock even though we were primed to expect it. He died last night of metastatic melanoma, a particularly evil form of skin cancer that was diagnosed last year.

I wouldn’t describe Roger as a close personal friend, but I had known him for more than 20 years. He had led the Business Roundtable since its inception in 1985, having come to it from a distinguished career with Treasury and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

I admired Roger for his formidable intellect and grasp of the big issues confronting New Zealand, but even more for his dogged perseverance and optimism in pursuing what he believed in. He was an articulate and persuasive champion of an open economy, free markets, smaller government, deregulation and individual freedom – causes that he pushed tirelessly despite vicious attacks from the Left and apathy from politicians for whom bold economic reform was just too hard.

He always seemed polite, upbeat and good-humoured. To his great credit, he never descended to personal abuse, although at times he must have been sorely tempted to respond in kind to the verbal assaults on his character. Perhaps he just developed a thick skin.

Roger persisted in giving politicians the message even when it was clear they didn’t want to listen. He gave them credit when they did the right thing but was always urging them to do more.

He kept up the pressure right till the end. His latest statement, stressing the need for more decisive action on the economy and government accounts, landed in my inbox on Wednesday, following Treasury’s issue of the pre-election economic and fiscal update.

Roger was often wilfully misrepresented by his opponents. He was characterised as a sinister, behind-the-scenes manipulator who sought favours for “big business”, but I don’t believe special treatment for business was part of his agenda. What he wanted was an economic and regulatory environment that would enable New Zealand to perform to its full potential, to the ultimate benefit of everyone. Above all else, he was a patriotic New Zealander.

My sympathy goes to his wife, Catherine Isaac, and to his family.

My cousin Brendan

2011-10-27T13:05:00.000+13:00

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, October 26.)]

I was privileged last week to attend an unusual funeral in Nelson.

It was the funeral of a first cousin whom I barely knew. Brendan was born intellectually disabled and placed in care while still in in infancy. He was to remain in the care of the state all his life.

As was often the way then (this was 1953), his parents were advised that institutionalisation was the best course, both for him and for them.

Brendan was sent to the Braemar Home in Nelson. We can barely imagine the heartache this caused his parents, a warm and loving couple with one other child, an older daughter.

Letters that Brendan’s mother wrote to Braemar inquiring about his health and wellbeing give a small insight into the pain and grief she must have felt at giving up her baby son. Reading them today (they were kept on his file) is painful. But parents in those days were more inclined than they are now to defer to “expert” opinion. Doctors knew what was best.

In the wider family, Brendan was barely mentioned. It was normal in those days to draw a veil over such matters – not out of shame or fear of stigma, but more as a way of coping.

Attitudes were different two generations ago and it’s pointless, and I think unfair, to judge what happened then by today’s standards. People put heartbreaking events behind them and got on with life as best they could.

As it turned out, Brendan’s mental disability wasn’t severe compared with some, and, in hindsight, less limiting than his parents (who died many years ago) were led to believe. Today a child with his impairment would probably be raised at home and possibly even sent to a mainstream school.

Brendan grew up at Braemar and from the very start, it seems, was showered with love and affection by those caring for him. Although his communication skills were limited, people were drawn to him by his engaging, outgoing personality and obvious enjoyment of life.

In the 1980s the government adopted a controversial policy of de-institutionalisation which resulted in Brendan being moved from Braemar into the community. This meant living with other intellectually disabled people and caregivers in an ordinary suburban house.

The benefits of de-institutionalisation are still being vigorously debated today. It’s fair to say that the policy worked well for some but not for everyone.

In the case of mentally ill people, as opposed to the intellectually disabled, it often had adverse consequences. But Brendan seems to have thrived in the new environment.

The many photos displayed at his funeral were evidence of a full and active life. He enjoyed trips to the North Island, accompanied by a caregiver, to visit his sister and a much-loved aunty who took a close interest in him and encouraged his love of music.

When the plane touched down on these trips, a delighted Brendan would thrust his arms aloft in the thumbs-up signal and loudly call out “Good one!”, much to the amusement of his fellow passengers.

He was taken on a two-day kayaking trip in the Abel Tasman National Park. He took a flight in a light plane and drove a go-kart and dodgem cars (his caregivers drew the line, though, at bungee-jumping).

He loved Maori culture and the haka, which he pronounced “ha-ha”. One photo showed him proudly posing with a grass-skirted Maori entertainer in Rotorua. Brendan’s principal caregiver for more than 20 years, a cheerful, no-nonsense nurse named Lyn, joked that he had such an affinity for Maoridom that people wondered whether there was Maori blood somewhere in the family (er, not to the best of my knowledge).

Brendan’s physical state deteriorated in recent months and he was moved from the home where he had lived for several years to another that provided a higher level of care. He developed pneumonia and died peacefully on a Sunday morning, not in a frightening and unfamiliar hospital ward but in his own room, surrounded by people and things he knew. He was 58.

As I said at the start of this column, I barely knew Brendan. I now wish I’d known him better.

I went to the funeral with my sister not knowing quite what to expect, but it was a joyous occasion. Rain was forecast but never eventuated, so we gathered in the bright Nelson sunshine on the deck of the spacious, modern home in Richmond where he spent his last weeks.

Brendan’s caregivers, present and former, turned out in numbers, as did his fellow residents (or clients, as they’re called these days). There was a lot of laughter – they’re a jovial bunch, these caregivers – and a few tears.

The stories told about Brendan portrayed a man who, for all his disadvantages, led a full and happy life. He certainly deserved to be more than a dark family secret, as was once the fate of such people.

For me, it was something of a revelation to learn of the warmth and devotion that surrounded Brendan in death and in life.

Most of us think that looking after the intellectually disabled must be a particularly thankless field of health care, but there was no mistaking the love and dedication of the staff who gathered to farewell my cousin, or the reward they got in return. I was told that Lyn had postponed retirement several times so she could continue caring for him.

Another nurse told me Brendan would rush up and cuddle her when she turned up at work each day. “What other job is there,” she asked me, “where you’re greeted with a hug every morning?”

Some of Brendan’s fellow residents are immobile and incapable of communicating or doing anything for themselves. It takes a particular type of person to do this work: someone possessed of infinite patience and able to see that inside the helpless body and contorted face, there’s a human being who deserves love, attention and affection.

Very few of us are equal to this challenge, yet society’s ability to care for those totally dependent on others is a fundamental measure of our humanity. We are collectively in the debt of these largely unsung heroines and heroes.

A field day for kibitzers

2011-10-25T09:48:00.001+13:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, October 25.)

KIBITZER is a wonderful Yiddish word for which there’s no precise equivalent in English. It means someone who stands around giving unwanted advice.

Kibitzers, usually men of a certain age, have had the time of their lives since the container ship Rena hit the rocks. Tune into any talkback show and you’ll hear them expounding on all the things the authorities have done wrong and how, with a pair of tin snips, a garden hose and a roll of duct tape, they could have had the containers offloaded, the oil pumped out and the ship safely refloated within 24 hours. If only someone had asked them.

Listening to talkback radio, I am agog at the depth of engineering knowledge – salvage expertise too, it seems – acquired by Kiwi blokes who have spent a lifetime changing the oil in Mark II Cortinas, sharpening the blades on the Masport and clearing blockages under the kitchen sink. I mean, who would have thought?

Speaking of the Rena, I worry for Britain because it seems we’ve pinched all their experts on maritime safety and salvage operations. As was also noticeable in the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquakes, a striking number of the officials who appear on the TV news each night to update us on developments speak with British accents.

There was a time in New Zealand when virtually every union spokesman had an accent that identified them as English or Scottish. Nothing puzzling about that; they were simply carrying on the class war. But can anyone explain why so many British immigrants end up working for regulatory authorities?

* * *

I WAS SHOCKED last week by the cost of a return air fare between Wellington and Nelson, particularly when compared with a recent international flight. So I did some sums.

Wellington-Los Angeles return via Auckland is a round trip of roughly 22,000 kilometres. Cost flying Air New Zealand: about $2400.

Wellington-Nelson return is a round trip of about 264 kilometres. Cost flying Air New Zealand: $361.

I’m no Einstein, but I calculate that flying to LA (with meals and drinks provided) costs slightly more than 10 cents per kilometre while the cost of flying to Nelson (with a complimentary drink of water) is $1.36 cents per km, or nearly 14 times as much.

You can’t help but feel the national carrier is taking advantage of its virtual monopoly on some provincial routes, particularly when a friend tells me he booked a return flight on Air New Zealand from Wellington to Queenstown for less than $160. The difference? Competition.

Oh, and I paid $27 for nine hours’ parking at Wellington Airport when you can get all-day parking for $12 in the CBD. But no one ever pretended that capitalism is perfect.

* * *

IN A RECENT column I complained that making a one-off donation to a charity invites a barrage of unwanted mail for years thereafter. The assumption is that having given once, you’re fair game.

More recently I’ve been reminded of another fundraising technique that’s even more intrusive. This happens when you respond to a telephone charity appeal and then get phoned annually by someone asking if you’ll be repeating your donation.

The expectation seems to be that you’ll comply. I object to this because it puts people on the spot in a way that a letter doesn’t. Many New Zealanders are too meek and polite to say “no” to someone soliciting donations on the phone.

Old-fashioned door-to-door salesmen knew that the key to making a sale was to get inside the house. Most householders – usually women at home alone – were then psychologically vulnerable because they thought the only way to get rid of the intruder without any unpleasantness was by making a purchase.

Telephone appeals use essentially the same technique. Once they’ve got you on the phone there’s nowhere to run.

Worse still, some charities follow up the phone call with what they call an “invoice”, which implies a legal obligation to pay. I accept that raising funds is a challenge in a market crowded with hundreds of deserving charities, but this is getting perilously close to a hard sell.

* * *

A MOMENT’S silence, please, while we mourn the loss of another good word.

“Passion” was once used mainly to describe a particularly ardent form of love. But like so many other words, its piquancy has been eroded by misuse.

“Passion” these days is something sports writers ascribe to sports teams. In future, no writer will be able to use the word without conjuring up images of Brad Thorn.

It’s just one of a grab-bag of New Age, psychobabble cliches that are now applied to sport. We constantly hear about teams possessing self-belief, having their character tested, being on a journey, wanting to express themselves and - perhaps worst of all - “living the dream”.

Good grief. I bet Colin Meads never talked like that.

Take a deep breath, Pinky, and read it again

2011-10-16T11:46:00.000+13:00

In more than 40 years of column writing (not continuously, but in every decade back to the 1960s), I’ve learned a couple of things.

One is that you can never be sure what’s going to provoke a reaction, so it’s pointless writing something with the sole intention of stirring people up. Columns that you think will bring the sky down on your head go unremarked, while some that you think innocuous unleash a barrage of condemnation. (There was a time when I would have said that religion was the exception to this general rule; that anything touching on religion was bound to rattle people’s cages, believers and non-believers alike. But we are now such a secular society I don’t think even that’s true.)

Another thing that I’ve learned is that no matter how carefully you try to express yourself clearly and unambiguously, you cannot control the meaning that people will take from what you write. People will see what they think they see, or in some cases, whatever their prejudices lead them to see.

This was confirmed again last Friday when I happened to hear comedian Pinky Agnew on The Week That Was, the weekly slot on Kathryn Ryan’s radio programme in which guests comment in a supposedly humorous way on the events of the week. Pinky lined me up for a bit of stick over something I’d written in my Curmudgeon column in the Dominion Post a few days before (see below on this blog).

Fair enough – but perhaps she should have taken a deep breath and read my column a second time before launching forth.

According to Pinky, I’d been “yammering on” about New Zealanders’ propensity for wearing black. Yammering on? My dictionary defines “yammer” as to complain loudly and at length, but my reference to New Zealanders’ fashion sense consisted of just one paragraph in an 820-word column.

Well, okay – we all indulge in hyperbole. But then Pinky accused me of specifically targeting women - "he's criticising women of course" - and Wellington women at that. In fact my column didn’t single out women. I used the all-inclusive pronoun “we” (as in, “how drab and sombre we all look”), which I thought made it pretty clear that I wasn’t making any distinction between men and women. (As it happens, I’ve written several times in the past about the dull conformity of the clothing worn by the corporate male.)

And where on earth did she get the Wellington angle? My column was prompted by my observations in Auckland Airport. How could someone read the word Auckland and see Wellington? Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps Pinky can explain.

An Auckland friend of mine who heard her was as nonplussed as I was. She emailed me later in the day: “I have just read your blog and for the life of me can’t understand what that woman was going on about. I gathered from her comments that you had been talking about women in Wgtn. The only mention you made was of people – not women – at Auckland Airport.” She had wondered whether Pinky was talking about another column not yet posted on my blog.

You could perhaps excuse Pinky if my comments had been made on radio or television. Something said on the airwaves is gone a moment later and there’s often no way to confirm you heard what you thought you heard. But a newspaper column? It’s not hard to check. It’s there in black and white, and these days on the Net for good measure.

I can only conclude that Pinky took the meaning she did from my column because she had me typecast as a sexist male. The human mind indeed works in peculiar ways. As a columnist, there's no way to counter this.

Incidentally, that Curmudgeon column also confirmed anew the other lesson referred to in the opening paragraph of this blog post. I would have thought that if any subject covered in the column would provoke a response, it would be the reference to tragic tech geeks and their hunger for new devices to play with. But no; it was my mention of our fondness for sombre clothing that wound people up, generating two stories with pictures in the following day’s paper – one on page 1 and another on page 3 – and 75 comments on the Stuff website, ranging from incoherent and sub-literate to sharp and insightful (all the latter, of course, being from those who agreed with me).

A Rugby World Cup of two halves

2011-10-13T19:30:00.000+13:00

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, October 12.)

I am in two minds, almost literally, about the Rugby World Cup, and I suspect I’m not the only one.

On the one hand, you can look at the event as purely a sporting contest in which teams from around the world compete, in theory, to find out who’s best. (I say “in theory” because the RWC really only determines which team performs best “on the day”. There are probably half a dozen teams capable of winning if the ball bounces their way.)

On this level – as a showcase of skill, athleticism, tactics, brute force and dogged determination – the Cup so far has been a great success. Rugby fans have been treated to some sensational contests and, in the very best sporting tradition, a couple of monumental upsets.

Who would have thought, for example, that Ireland would beat Australia? Certainly not the Australians. Or that Tonga, having gone down to Canada in the early stages of the tournament, would turn around two weeks later and humiliate France, one of rugby’s great powers?

Then there was the breathtakingly close result in the Scotland-England game, when England clinched a narrow victory in the dying minutes. How the New Zealand fans – no friends of the English – would have savoured an upset win by the underdogs in that fixture.

On such occasions, sport becomes a compelling drama that can stir even sceptical non-fans. A friend told me that he heard broadcaster Brian Edwards – not exactly your stereotypical rugby follower – admitting on the radio that, to his surprise, he found himself not only watching but getting emotionally involved.

It’s been rewarding, too, to see the so-called “minnows” of the game – teams such as Georgia, Romania, Russia and Namibia – enjoying their moment of glory, or at least international exposure, on the world stage.

A sports writer in the illustrious New York Times made the mistake of writing an article in which he rubbished the RWC format and suggested it was absurd that such weak rugby countries were pitted against mighty teams like South Africa and Australia.

He was howled down by readers, including many knowledgeable American rugby enthusiasts, who pointed out that the “minnows” relished this opportunity to compete against their heroes, even if the scores were crazily lopsided, and that it was only by exposure to such international competition that such sides could hope to lift their game and promote rugby in their home countries.

That’s another respect in which the Cup seems to have been a success: it’s great PR for rugby, raising international awareness and appreciation of the game and boosting its profile in countries where it’s only a minor code.

There’s no doubt New Zealanders have helped achieve this by getting behind the event, turning it into a nationwide party and making sure that no team lacked vocal support.

The Wairarapa, where I live, officially adopted the Georgian XV and swung in behind the team with gusto. Masterton turned on a welcome parade in the main street and Georgian flags were still fluttering around town a week after the team bowed out of the contest.

Again, people who thought themselves well and truly inoculated against rugby fever have told me they were surprised at the way they were swept along by the contagious enthusiasm for the event.

For all that, however, the RWC has been tarnished. Because you can also look at the tournament as an example of sport being subverted – you could almost say corrupted – by money, greed and corporatism.

The International Rugby Board cynically took advantage of New Zealanders’ love of the game by charging them far more to see their own team play than any other – and this after taxpayers and ratepayers had forked out tens of millions of dollars (one estimate put it at $1 billion-plus) to subsidise the event and to ensure facilities conformed with the nitpicking requirements of the IRB, the broadcasters and the sponsors.

In fact admission prices for all but the minor games were set at a level most people couldn’t afford, and it was no surprise that that there were empty seats at the quarterfinal matches.

Providers of accommodation and other services got in on the act by hiking their prices, and why wouldn’t they? They were only taking their cue from the organisers.

Meanwhile Parliament, to its shame, demeaned itself by kowtowing to the IRB and passing draconian legislation – the Major Events Management Act – to protect the precious interests of sponsors.

The creation of advertising-free “clean zones”, patrolled by government enforcers, went far beyond what was reasonably justified to ward off so-called ambush marketers.

It was a distasteful display of bullying that also set a disturbing precedent for the regulation of free speech, since a government that can be persuaded to outlaw certain types of advertising at the behest of rugby sponsors might also be tempted to crack down on other forms of expression that it decides are inconvenient.

The extreme reach of the new laws, which will remain on the statute books after the RWC has finished, became apparent when it was revealed that even the St John’s ambulance service had to cover sponsors’ logos on ambulances and uniforms for fear of incurring a massive fine.

As the RWC progressed, the oppressive heavy-handedness of the IRB became progressively more absurd. A helicopter firm was warned not to fly over Eden Park because its company name was visible (it seems the IRB’s rights now extend to airspace) and two Samoan players were fined $10,000 each for wearing unapproved mouthguards – mouthguards, for heaven’s sake!

The ridicule and contempt heaped on the IRB over that episode was richly deserved, especially when the same pompous, arrogant, Northern Hemisphere rugby establishment had turned a blind eye to illegal ball-switching by the English team. Cheating you can get away with, apparently, but don’t dare upset the precious sponsors.

Did the IRB get the message? Clearly not, because only days later we learned it had issued rules about what players could write on the strapping around their wrists, where some players inscribe biblical references or allow family members to put messages.

This obsessive micro-control discredits rugby and has soured an otherwise wonderful event, but that’s what happens when sport is captured by men in suits.

For the fans and for most, if not all of, the players, rugby is still about sport. But for the game’s administrators and the broadcasters and sponsors who bankroll it, it’s all about money – and the two are not always compatible bedmates.

A crushing letdown for the Apple faithful

2011-10-12T10:23:00.000+13:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, October 11.)

A COUPLE of years ago I was taken aback at the sight of a lunchtime queue stretching along Lambton Quay. It turned out they were standing in line to buy the latest Apple product, which was being released that day.

It must have occurred to them that they could return the following day, by which time the rush would have subsided, and buy the item without having to wait.

They must also have known that if they waited a few months they’d get it 50 per cent cheaper, which is always the way with cutting-edge technology. But the compulsion to get their hands on it right there and then was obviously too powerful to resist.

Last week we saw another outburst of Applemania with the release of a new Apple phone called the iPhone 4S. The event was anticipated with much the same eagerness as a fervent Jehovah’s Witness might await the Second Coming. But oh, dear – the new model wasn’t quite what the Apple faithful were hoping for.

They were expecting an iPhone 5 and all they got was a “refresh” of the iPhone 4, said one. Another complained that it wasn’t as sleek and curvy as he’d hoped, and wouldn’t let people make credit card purchases by waving phones in front of sensors. (I ask you – how primitive is that?)

The sense of disappointment – betrayal, almost – was palpable.

The parallels with religion are striking. There has been much comment in recent weeks about rugby being elevated to the level of religion, but here’s a segment of the population for which technology is the new God.

On the other hand, it’s tempting to make comparisons with drug addiction. The tech-heads constantly crave a bigger fix. The iPhone 4 doesn’t do it for them anymore (though it was released only last year) and the 4S, which they were counting on to recreate that exhilarating rush, has let them down. They demand a more potent hit.

But what happens if and when the information technology industry can no longer satisfy the appetite for ever-faster, more powerful devices? The desolation of the Apple devotees in that event can only be imagined. Life will cease to hold any meaning.

* * *

RETURNING home after spending time overseas, you often see New Zealand in a new light.

Coming back from a trip to Japan years ago, I was struck by how big and ungainly we dairy-fed New Zealanders seemed. Compared with the grace and delicacy of the Japanese, even our women had the appearance of front-row forwards.

What struck me on my latest return, this time after six weeks in America, was how drab and sombre we all look. Killing time in Auckland Airport while waiting for my flight to Wellington, I watched a constant procession of people scurrying past clad in what appeared to be funereal garb – all blacks and dark greys.

And it wasn’t only the clothes; it was their demeanour too. They looked a thoroughly joyless and anxious lot – brows furrowed and no one talking, still less smiling or laughing. I’ve seen happier faces in waiting rooms at VD clinics (just fibbing, but you get my drift).

What is it about us? We seem perversely proud of our gloominess. How else to explain the dark, bleak tradition in much of our art (what other country could celebrate the despairing works of Colin McCahon?), our films and our literature?

Even the much-acclaimed movie Boy was deeply depressing, and it was touted as a comedy.

America’s economy is stagnant and its normally irrepressible self-confidence is wavering, yet Americans still seem to enjoy life. In the streets, shopping malls and restaurants, the mood is buoyant and people are smiling. But we New Zealanders seem to need a Rugby World Cup - a once-in-24-years-event - to induce any joie-de-vivre.

* * *

IMMIGRATION officials aren’t employed for their conviviality, so I wasn’t surprised by the stony-faced look from the officer checking my passport at Auckland Airport when I commented brightly on the speed with which the passengers on my flight from San Francisco had been processed.

I was, however, slightly taken aback when he wanted to know how long I had lived in my home town. Now why would he need to know that? It almost sounded like an attempt to catch me out on some irregularity.

His manner reminded me of the coldly officious American border security officer who had pulled our car over near the US-Mexico border, examined our passports and interrogated us about our recent movements. But at least the US border official had the excuse that we were foreign nationals in an area notorious for people smuggling.

Perhaps the Auckland immigration officer was trying to be sociable, but he didn’t seem the sociable type and the question wasn’t asked in a sociable way.

Then again, perhaps I’ve just seen too many films where Gestapo officers stop people in the street and demand to see their papers.

All that was missing was a gunrack

2011-09-29T10:39:00.000+13:00

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, September 28.)

I am writing this column on a train. This is something I have never done before and probably will never have occasion to do again.

To be precise, I am on a train called the California Zephyr. We pulled out of Union Station, Chicago, at 2pm on a Wednesday and arrived at Denver, Colorado, at 8.45 the following morning, having covered 1670 kilometres.

Now we’re underway again, climbing west through the foothills of the Rockies. Our train ride will end in another 33 hours - assuming we keep to schedule - at Emeryville Station, near San Francisco, from where my wife and I will fly home to New Zealand.

By then we will have travelled nearly 4000 km on the California Zephyr. We originally intended to undertake the entire train tip in one hit, but couldn’t get a sleeping compartment and didn’t fancy sitting for 52 hours. So we broke the journey for a day and night in Denver before reboarding.

It’s now 9am on Friday and we won’t reach Emeryville till 4pm tomorrow. I have travelled in America before, and flown across it, but this train trip has given me a new appreciation of the country’s vastness.

Before boarding the California Zephyr in Chicago, we spent several weeks travelling in rental cars, covering about 5500 km through Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Michigan.

Americans we spoke to were appalled when we told them of the cities we intended to visit - places like El Paso, Texas (unfairly reputed to be one the most dangerous cities in the US, due to its proximity to the ultra-violent Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez), and Detroit, which has become a byword for crime, unemployment, drugs and urban decay (again, not entirely fairly; we enjoyed downtown Detroit and never felt unsafe).

“You’ll be seeing the armpit of America,” exclaimed the woman sitting next to us on our flight to Houston, our first destination. Certainly some of the towns on our itinerary are no tourist meccas, but I had my own reasons for wanting to see them - reasons which will become apparent if and when I finally get around to writing the book that has been gestating in my head for several years.

Along the way we have had some great experiences. Before flying to Texas we attended a memorable performance of the long-running radio show A Prairie Home Companion, recorded before an enthusiastic audience at a spectacular venue high in the hills above San Jose, California.

Just getting there was a quintessentially American experience. The rental car agency in the small town where we were staying couldn’t supply us with a car, so gave us a V8-powered Ford F-150 - the classic good ol' boys pickup truck - instead. All that was missing was a gun rack in the cab.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, we spent a Saturday night at Cain’s Ballroom, founded in 1934. Cain’s Ballroom was the home of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, the originators of a musical genre known as western swing, and the tradition has been kept alive by the current band at Cain’s, the Tulsa Playboys.

In Detroit I made a musical pilgrimage of a different sort - to the two modest houses at 2648 West Grand Boulevard where the great Motown soul hits of the 1960s were recorded. I stood in the recording studio, which has been preserved much as it was then, and marvelled at the prodigious outpouring of music that flowed from this claustrophobic basement before Motown boss Berry Gordy Jr ended the magic by relocating to Los Angeles.

In El Paso, we drank Dos Equis beer and ate burritos at Rosa’s Cantina, an unprepossessing bar on the outskirts of town that supposedly inspired the Marty Robbins cowboy song familiar to any New Zealander who ever listened to a 1960s radio request show.

At the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, we watched a succession of confident young men heroically tackle a 72-ounce steak. If they managed to finish it, their meal was free. None did. Gross? Yep, but very Texan.

There was lots more, of course, but it will have to wait for the book.

Now, after six weeks away, my wife and I are ready to go home. Travelling is a great adventure but it can also be tiring and stressful. Driving and navigating in a foreign country - especially one whose freeway system is as unforgiving as America’s - is a challenge, even when you think you’ve become accustomed to it.

On this trip, the latest of several we have made to the US, we used a GPS system for the first time. It certainly made navigating easier at times, to the point where I found myself wondering how we ever managed to find our way around without one.

But even the GPS was overwhelmed when we struck manically busy freeway interchanges in some of the bigger cities, where dense traffic moves at 110 kmh and multiple exits peel off in all directions. In cities like Houston and Kansas, we encountered interchanges that made Auckland’s famed Spaghetti Junction look positively Lilliputian.

At such times Mandy, as we christened our GPS (I confess we got into the habit of talking about her as if she were a third person in the car), would go into meltdown and I would have to make a split-second decision about which exit was the correct one. Sometimes I got it right, sometimes I didn’t.

At times like these, when we're floundering around an alien city looking for the accommodation we booked online (always hoping we’ve made the right choice out of the bewildering plethora of hotels and motels offering), I can see the appeal of taking a guided group tour rather than travelling independently.

Having someone else take care of all your arrangements and make the decisions about where to stay, where to eat and what attractions to see must alleviate a great part of the stress and uncertainty of travelling. But I have a nagging suspicion that it takes away a lot of the fun and adventure too.

America versus NZ: a scorecard

2011-09-28T14:52:00.000+13:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, September 27.)

I have been travelling with my wife for the past few weeks in the United States. And along the way, in idle moments, I have been compiling a list.

Well, two lists really. One consists of things the Americans do well; the other of things I think we do better in New Zealand. And as we approach the end of our journey, the scoresheet seems pretty evenly balanced.

No 1 on my list of things the Americans do well is service.
Even in no-frills places like McDonald's and the budget-priced Motel 6 chain, where we have stayed occasionally, there is a consistent commitment to good service. Customers are almost invariably greeted with a welcoming smile and treated with respect.

Waiters and waitresses seem to take genuine pride in doing their job well. You never get the feeling (alas, all too common in New Zealand) that serving other people is below their dignity or too much trouble, or that they're doing the job only because they need the money to pay their university fees or whatever.

Cynics might say this is because staff in American hotels, restaurants and bars depend on tips, but it goes beyond that. It's ingrained in the culture.

Allied to this is the American concern for good manners and civility. In their everyday behaviour Americans display an old-fashioned courtesy that puts most New Zealanders to shame. Even the panhandlers (beggars), who seem to occupy almost every street corner in the larger places, are polite; sometimes extravagantly so.

Americans are great initiators of conversation too. New Zealanders tend to be crippled by their British reserve but Americans don't hesitate to strike up a conversation with a total stranger, or to offer assistance if they sense that you need it. This holds true whether you're in a big, brash city like Chicago - where I'm writing this - or one of those small rural towns that look as if they've just materialised out of a Norman Rockwell illustration.

Public toilets are also high on my list of things America does much better than New Zealand. Whether they're in parks, bars, gas stations, public buildings or roadside rest areas, they are almost always impeccably clean and well-maintained - although I'm not sure I approve of the lack of privacy in some men's dunnies, where the almost non-existent partitions between cubicles are presumably intended to deter anti- social activity.

Speaking of bars reminds me of beer, which also warrants a mention here. American beer was once nigh undrinkable, but in the past decade there has been a proliferation of regional boutique or "craft" breweries that offer excellent alternatives to ghastly mainstream labels such as Budweiser and Miller.

Better than the craft beers made in New Zealand? Certainly as good as, and probably more varied.

Now, some of the things that, in my view, we do better in New Zealand. Top of my list are coffee and food. The Americans may have caught up where beer is concerned but it's almost impossible to get a half-decent cup of coffee anywhere in the US, which is odd when you consider coffee is in some respects the quintessential American beverage. As for tea, don't even think about it.

Food? Dear me. The Americans do a few things superbly (even a run-of-the-mill US steak house could teach our most illustrious chefs a few things about cooking a fillet of angus beef) but they are arguably the world's least adventurous eaters.

American restaurants and cafes offer endless variations of the same limited and tiresome culinary repertoire: burgers, chicken, fries, hot dogs, steak and pizza. It's stodgy, fatty, flavourless and served in such grossly excessive amounts that the "to-go box" (or doggy bag, as we would call it) is an almost mandatory requirement at the end of every meal.

There's only so much you can do with a bun and a ground beef patty, yet massive freeway billboards advertise this or that restaurant chain's burgers as if they were the last word in gastronomic accomplishment. In my notion of hell, this is what the damned would be forced to eat day after day.

And as it is for food, so it is with motor vehicles. The Americans still haven't ended their love affair with the noisy, primitive, thirsty Detroit V8 - the automotive equivalent of the double cheeseburger with fries. In the south and west in particular, V8 pickup trucks almost outnumber cars.

What else? American plumbing fixtures are downright perverse, the sales taxes are diabolical (oh, for the simplicity and transparency of GST) and the depressing number of social casualties on the streets is proof that the American dream has a nightmarish flipside.

And how I long to get back home and tune into a radio network that offers something other than 24/7 political rants, incomprehensible sports chatter, fundamentalist evangelism and all-night sessions on the paranormal - including an interview with a Kiwi who claimed to have been abducted by aliens. Now how did the New Zealand media miss that story?

The English language is under attack

2011-09-17T09:09:00.000+12:00

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, September 14).

The English language is one of the most precious gifts of our culture. Used properly, it is a precision instrument. There are virtually no ideas or situations for which apposite, accurate words or phrases cannot be found.

On the few occasions when such words are not available in English, we’re free to raid other languages for terms such as “schadenfreude” or “coup de grace”, for which no exact English equivalent exists.

But this fantastic gift, refined and enriched over hundreds of years as the English lexicon has expanded, is under constant attack by people who seek to debase and degrade it – people who use words to obscure rather than clarify; to disguise rather than reveal.

It goes without saying that politicians are among the worst offenders. Certain words and expressions are now so debased by misuse that they are bound to arouse suspicion.

Consider how the word “inappropriate” has been distorted out of all recognition. Once a term of mild rebuke for socially gauche behaviour, such as turning up at a formal dinner wearing jeans, it now serves as a euphemism for all manner of disgraceful and improper conduct, from sexual indiscretions through to fraud and bribery.

Words that describe such behaviour honestly and unambiguously – such as immoral, crooked, corrupt or just plain bad – have fallen into disuse. It’s only a matter of time before the perpetrators of war crimes stand accused of inappropriate behaviour.

Other words have been robbed of their force through overuse. Derogatory terms such as sexist, racist and fascist – words that might once have shamed or intimidated the people at whom they were directed – are now bandied about so promiscuously that they have become meaningless.

George Orwell was wise to all this. In his famous essay Politics and the English Language, written in 1946, he condemned the deliberate use of vague and misleading words.
He explained how euphemistic language could be used to make appalling things seem almost respectable (I wonder what he would have made of the phrase “collateral damage”, from the Vietnam War), and he pointed out the fondness of totalitarian regimes for language that disguised their inhuman oppressiveness.

Orwell also recognised that sloppy language and sloppy thinking go hand in hand. Dumb down the language and the intellect soon gets lazy too. After all, if you don’t have to express yourself clearly, why bother making the effort to think clearly? It’s easier to resort to a grab-bag of meaningless, empty slogans. Clear speech facilitates clear thinking and vice-versa.

If anything has changed since Orwell’s time, it’s that politicians no longer have a monopoly on the abuse of English. Several other occupational groups now compete to rob the language of its precision, nuance and beauty.

Some of the most egregious crimes against English are perpetrated by three of the most powerful forces in the modern corporate environment: human resources, marketing and IT people.

Human resources departments (the very phrase is Orwellian) are notorious serial abusers of the language. Pick up the executive recruitment section of any newspaper and you’ll sink in a morass of HR-speak. Study the ads and it soon becomes apparent that the phraseology is interchangeable, regardless of the job being offered. The same hollow jargon – key outcomes, customer-focused solutions and suchlike – is endlessly recycled and re-arranged in slightly different combinations. The common factor is a disregard for the integrity of the language.

HR departments may have to try harder, however, because their challengers in marketing are taking non-language to new extremes of flatulence. Consider the following, posted as a testimonial by a wine company marketing manager on the website of a research firm:

"[The research consultants] were a delight to work with,” it read. “Their commanding knowledge of the wine industry across geographies ensured we were able to quickly drill down to the key issues and deliver compelling consumer insights for our core target. They managed key stakeholders from different businesses effectively and collaboratively to deliver clear recommendations to move our business forward.”

This is not writing. It’s the equivalent of painting by numbers, whereby a limited stock of glib clichés is recycled in varying permutations, as in executive recruitment ads. It treats English as just another corporate tool, rather like a cellphone or calculator: simply a matter of pushing the right buttons in the correct sequence.

But blame for the most damaging and sustained assault on the language rests with the computer industry. Computer-speak has no relationship with any other form of English. In fact you could make a compelling case that it was created by aliens with no previous knowledge of the language.

On one level, it is either infantile (for example, “Twitter” and the internet term “cookies”) or plain ugly (as in “blog” – a word that no one with an ear for the euphony of the English language could have invented).

Computer-speak, or geek-speak, is also notable for the way it spurns logical terms in favour of silly neologisms. When I’m transferring CDs onto my MP3 player, for example, the software can’t bring itself to use plain-English words like “copy” or “transfer”. No, it uses nonsensical terms like “rip”, “burn” and “sync”.

The worst examples of cyber language are those that are incomprehensible to anyone other than geeks, and perhaps Daleks. Herewith, a few examples that have popped up on my computer screen:

“Your browser’s cookie functionality is disabled. Please enable Java Script and cookies in order to use Blogger.” This might mean something to a young man with greasy hair, body odour and bad skin, but not to me.

“Please do not power off or unplug your machine.” Understandable enough, perhaps, but "power off"? "Power" wasn’t a verb last time I looked. What’s wrong with “switch”?

“Changes have been made that affect the global template, normal.dot. Do you want to save those changes?” Well, I might, if I knew what it meant.

“A buffer overrun has been detected which has corrupted the program’s internal state. The program cannot safely continue execution and must now be terminated.” Gulp; sounds serious.

The geeks who perpetrated these atrocities are on a mission to re-invent the English language. If we value our heritage, we must ensure they don’t succeed.

Cafes aren't for kids

2011-09-17T08:56:00.000+12:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, September 13.)

THERE ARE some things that just don’t belong together: Coke with single malt whisky; tomato sauce with paté (though that didn’t stop my father); the Mongrel Mob and Black Power. I could go on, but you get my drift.

To that list I would add children and cafés. I like children – I’m told I was once one myself – and I usually enjoy cafés, but the two are generally not compatible.

First, being dragged to a café is cruel to kids. They'd rather be in a playground or at McDonald's. No token collection of toys in the corner can alter the fact that cafés are places for grown-ups, and I feel sorry for small children who are expected to amuse themselves for hours while their parents chatter and slurp their double-shot soy lattes.

Second, taking kids to cafés can be inconsiderate to adult patrons who go there to enjoy conversation or read quietly – experiences that are not enhanced by children noisily racing around, especially given the fashion for minimalist décor that amplifies sound.

A recent lunch with a friend in an eastern suburbs café – one we had chosen because of its reputation as a place that takes food seriously – was marred by small kids running amok. Their mothers appeared oblivious to the racket they were making.

Parents who insist on taking their children to cafes are being selfish, both to the kids and to fellow patrons. The children are either going to be bored or make nuisances of themselves.

Café-addicted parents should accept that having children requires a modification of one’s former lifestyle – and if that means having to cut out Sunday brunch or long lunches with the mothers’ group, so be it.

* * *

IT’S DISPIRITING when journalists are complicit in the debasement of their own language.

Take the word “offshore”. Until recently it was a useful term that could be applied to anything not too distant from land, as the word implies.

An offshore island was one you could sail to for the weekend. Ships anchored offshore while they waited for a berth. Offshore drilling rigs were often within sight of land.

My dictionaries are in accord on this. The first definition they give is “situated in or on the sea, not far from the coast”, or “some distance from the shore”. The coast or shore is the reference point.

If you wanted to refer to something that was much further away – beyond the horizon and perhaps taking several hours to reach by plane, you used the word “abroad” or, more commonly, “overseas”, since to get to any other country from New Zealand requires a trip across water.

Put another way, Kapiti Island is offshore but Britain is overseas. Perfectly simple and eminently logical.

But in one of those quirks of English usage that creep up on us by stealth, “offshore” is now treated as a synonym for “overseas”. In fact it’s well on its way to monstering “overseas” out of the language altogether.

So where we previously had two perfectly good words with specific meanings, we now have one that has become ambiguous and misleading, and another that is falling out of use.

As with so many linguistic abominations, we can thank the business sector. “Offshore” was originally embraced by accountants and tax lawyers – no respecters of language – as a term meaning any country beyond the reach of tax gatherers and legislators, as in “offshore tax haven”

Had its usage been confined to the business world, there would be no cause for complaint. “Offshore” could have harmlessly taken its place amid all the other flatulent jargon favoured by the suits.

But no, the word has spread into general usage. And the worst thing is that this viral contamination has largely been facilitated by journalists, who should regard it as their professional obligation to protect the integrity and accuracy of the language.

* * *

DONOR fatigue is what happens when people get so many requests for charitable donations that they switch off and put their chequebooks away.

Charities have themselves to blame for this, at least in part, and here’s why.

You make a donation and provide your name and address so that you can be sent a receipt for tax purposes. But most charities seem to take this as a commitment on your part to support them in perpetuity and, thereafter, regularly bombard you with appeals for more money.

There are only so many worthy causes people can support. Most have a few favoured charities that they give to year after year. This doesn’t stop them from making occasional donations to other causes but once they do, they can expect to be on the mailing list for years. I wonder how many soon get donation-shy as a result.

As I write this I have a pile of requests on my desk from organisations that I have given a one-off donation to but don’t wish to go on supporting year after year. Quite apart from anything else, it’s a huge waste of paper.

FOOTNOTE: When I last checked, my comments about children in cafes had attracted 187 responses on the Stuff website. Initially they were unremittingly hostile but more recently the tide seems to have turned slightly in my favour.

On the take: true confessions from a wine writer

2011-09-01T10:19:00.000+12:00

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, August 31.)

An unseemly spat broke out recently among the usually genial fraternity of New Zealand wine writers.

The unpleasantness was touched off by the establishment of an organisation called Wine Writers of New Zealand, a group with the noble aim of encouraging excellence and integrity in wine writing. Hardly an exceptionable goal, you might think. But it touched some raw nerves.

The formation of the group arose out of concern that some wine critics were being paid by wine companies to review their wines. Those joining WWNZ are required to sign a “declaration of independence” to the effect that they won’t accept payment for published reviews.

The declaration says, in part: “If reviewers are to be widely trusted and respected, there must be full, transparent independence between them and those whose products they write about.

“We believe the practice of supplying wine reviews for direct payment removes that independence, is highly undesirable, and has the potential to harm the reputation of all wine writers in New Zealand.”

You might think this hardly needed to be spelled out. After all, what credibility could a wine writer have if it were known that he or she accepted payment from the winemaker?

As someone who has contributed wine columns to several national publications and written a book about wine, I had no hesitation in signing the declaration.

Being a pathological non-joiner, and suspicious of any group that might be seen as elitist or cliquey, I was not party to the formation of WWNZ and had no desire to join it. In any case, I’ve largely withdrawn from wine writing.

But I felt I had no option but to sign the declaration (the signatories to which are listed on the WWNZ website) because if I hadn’t done so, people might have suspected I had accepted payment from winemakers myself. I would regard such payment as fatal to whatever credibility I might have as a journalist.

However it also needs to be said that the situation is not as straightforward as it might seem at first glance.

Not all the people who review wine in New Zealand are journalists. Some have made careers in the wine industry. A few of these people operate as wine consultants, in essence. They review wines for a fee and regard it as a legitimate service to the industry.

The problem arises, it seems to me, if those same people write about, or comment on, wine for the public without disclosing their relationship with the winemaker. That’s where things get ethically dodgy.

No matter how impartial, objective or professional these reviewers hold themselves out to be, people will wonder whether they are commenting favourably on a particular wine because they have accepted payment from the maker.

It’s these individuals who see the formation of WWNZ, and the publication of the so-called declaration of independence, as an attempt to get at them. The absence of their names from the list of signatories will be interpreted, fairly or unfairly, as evidence that they take a fee and are therefore compromised.

At least one of them, a friend of mine who is a respected wine judge, is concerned that there are now “good” wine critics and “bad” ones, and that he’s in the wrong category.

I have some sympathy for him. As someone who has worked in the wine business for years and depends on wine for his livelihood, his perspective is different from that of a journalist like me.

People like my friend are also resentful at what they see as the “holier than thou” tone of the wine writers who formed WWNZ. And they have a point.

When I was regularly reviewing wines, courier vans would pull into my driveway several times a week to deliver free wines. None of it was solicited by me and I don’t even know how the wineries got my address. It just kept turning up, sometimes in embarrassing quantities.

There were no strings attached and no wine company ever complained if I didn’t review a wine they had sent me, or gave it a less than glowing endorsement. They understood the rules.

In any case I often reviewed wines I had bought myself, which avoided the risk that the content of my articles would be dictated by whatever happened to turn up free on my doorstep each week (as seems to be the case with some of the wine writers I read).

Buying my own wine also meant that I generally reviewed wines that ordinary consumers could afford, since I didn’t have the bank balance to splash out on Penfold’s Grange or Chateau d’Yquem.

But the point is that virtually everyone who writes about wine in New Zealand is “on the take”, in a sense. Most don’t pay for the wines they review, some of which are very expensive, and they are happy to enjoy sumptuous dinners and free trips to exotic wine destinations.

I have accepted trips myself. Among wine writers, they are regarded as legitimate perks (just as overseas jaunts are by motoring writers, who are arguably journalism’s most practised junketeers).

Ironically, when I recently exchanged emails with a wine writer who was a key player in the formation of WWNZ, she was visiting the Margaret River wine region of Western Australia. I’d be astonished if she paid her own way.

I would stop short of saying most wine writers are “embedded” in the wine industry, as wine commentator Keith Stewart (a non-signatory to the “declaration” and a bit of a renegade) extravagantly claimed in an attack on WWNZ. But it’s certainly true that from a purist point of view, all wine writers could be seen as ethically compromised to a greater or less extent.

Even some of the most illustrious names in international wine writing – people like the Englishman Hugh Johnson and Australia’s James Halliday – have had deep commercial entanglements that I believe jeopardised their reputation for independence and impartiality.

As with many journalistic endeavours, wine writing is fraught with ethical grey areas and few, if any, practitioners can claim to be as pure as the driven snow. In fact if you listen very carefully, you may hear the sound of stones crashing through a glasshouse.

Compelling questions for troubled times

2011-08-31T00:03:00.000+12:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, August 30.)

More pressing questions for our times:

Billions have been lost in finance company collapses, but the big question remains unanswered: where did all that money actually go?

Is there a British actor still standing who hasn’t been found a role in The Hobbit, even if it meant ignoring the source book and creating one?

Further to the above, and with all due respect to the paper that kindly publishes this column, would it cause you any grief if you never read another word about Sir Peter Jackson’s latest work?

Is Titewhai Harawira mad?

When will disgruntled Jetstar travellers get the message that budget airlines are cheaper because they offer lower levels of service?

Given all this “breaking news” on TV and radio, isn’t it time someone fixed it?

When did the rugby jersey become a “strip”, and why?

Are the Greens a more likeable party for being rid of angry Sue Bradford?

When will TV3 shout its Christchurch reporter Jeff Hampton a new sportscoat?

Do you lie awake at night fretting that you might have missed out on something important because you’re not on Twitter?

Was the answer to the previous question: “Er, no”?

Had enough of Nigel Latta?

When did journalists drop the perfectly good phrase “gun battle” in favour of the dramatic-sounding but erroneous “firefight”?

Why are so many sports programmes on TV and radio introduced with pounding, thrash metal-type music when most of the listeners are of the Mantovani generation?

Ever wondered why there are no Scottish restaurants?

Why do we now pay down debt when we used to pay it off?

Should all emails that start “Hi guys!” – especially if they come from businesses seeking your custom –be deleted without a second glance?

Why does All Blacks assistant coach Steve Hansen, when talking to the media, always give the impression he has just been shaken awake from a deep sleep?

Ever wondered why so many believers in man-made global warming angrily demand that the media stifle the views of sceptics, but never the other way around?

Puzzled by Paul Holmes’ increasingly effeminate mannerisms on Q&A?

Would Remuera be such a fashionable Auckland suburb if people knew that the name means “burnt buttocks” and commemorates the eating of a Maori chieftainess?

Have Tui’s Yeah, right ads done their dash?

Why do so many women drivers tailgate?

Still waiting for a glimpse of the leadership potential that press gallery journalists keep insisting they see in Labour MP Shane Jones?

Is there now a rule in television that says no programme worth watching can start before 9.30pm?

Had enough of the Rugby World Cup yet?

Teachers planning routine school trips have to file comprehensive “risk assessment” plans, historic churches are required to install unsightly handrails outside, yet coalmines can get away without even rudimentary safety measures. Something wrong here?

Would cooking goddess Nigella Lawson have made it past first base without those breasts?

Is there anyone on earth whose appearance was enhanced by a tattoo?

Should New Zealand troops be risking their lives propping up a regime that tortures people and threatens them with execution for the crime of being Christian?

How hard can it be for TV news bulletins to put captions under talking heads so that we know who’s speaking?

Matamata, Kerikeri, Whatawhata, Katikati, Ongaonga, Pekapeka – is it possible these places were named by a rangatira with a bad stammer?

Was there ever a more pointless big boy’s toy than the jetski?

Could the American songwriter Stephen Foster have had any inkling of how the language would change when he wrote the line: “’Tis summer, the darkies are gay”?

Was anything ever more grievously misnamed than the express lane at the supermarket?

Is “going forward” the most superfluous phrase in the English language?

Had enough of rugby team promotional shots portraying players as brooding, mythic gods?

How come television and radio journalists insist on referring to “fay-talities” on the roads? Are they graduates of the Ozark Mountains Academy of Speech Training?

Considering all the synthetic fragrances at their disposal, how come aerosol companies appear unable to come up with anything that can overcome the vile dunny odours that nature produces?

Has the fatuous phrase “spot you later” finally died a deserved death?

Fed up with contrived on-screen banter between newsreaders, weather presenters and sports reporters? Can’t they just read the news and leave it at that?

Why does Phil Goff (like Helen Clark before him) wear a permanent smile, even when he’s talking about something serious?

Noise: boy racers' only chance to make an impact

2011-08-19T05:06:00.000+12:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, August 16.)

BOY RACERS are a curse where I live. It’s a flat town – no hills to soak up or deflect noise – and the air is often still. This means boy racers can be heard right across town, especially at night.

This of course is their intention. Their consuming desire is to be noticed.

Though not possessed of the sharpest intellects, they are smart enough to be dimly aware that they will never amount to anything in life.

Somewhere in the recesses of their amped-up, petrol-addled, baseball cap-clad brains, they sense that their only chance of attracting attention is by making a lot of noise in their ludicrous, pimped-up cars.

Noise is central to the boy racer culture because while you can avoid looking at them, you can’t ignore the high-decibel output of their car exhausts. They demand your attention.

That this intrusive noise interferes with people’s common-law right to quiet enjoyment of life doesn’t deter them. Quite the reverse – it’s the boy racers’ raison d’etre.

In recent months, however, I’ve been less conscious of them. Sure, there are still times when I hear them buzzing around the town in the small hours of the morning like so many demented mosquitoes, or pitifully amusing themselves by drifting and doing wheelspins. But it’s as if the noise has become more noticeable because it happens less frequently.

I don’t know whether this is because the police have cracked down on them or if it’s just another silly craze coming to a natural end. Perhaps a combination of the two.

Either way, it’s a good thing. The day the last luridly painted Subaru Impreza or Nissan Skyline disappears up its own ridiculously oversized exhaust pipe will be an occasion for rejoicing.

* * *

IT’S NEARLY nine months since Simon Mercep took over from Sean Plunket on Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report, plenty of time to allow a measured assessment. And I have to agree with Listener columnist Joanne Black that the pleasant, mild-mannered Mercep is too similar to his co-host, Geoff Robinson.

Like many Morning Report listeners, I was surprised that Radio New Zealand didn’t replace Plunket with a woman, or at least someone with a style that contrasted more sharply with that of the veteran Robinson.

Mercep is a competent interviewer but lacks Plunket’s take-no-prisoners approach. Admittedly there were times when Plunket was more aggressive than he needed to be and his hectoring style became tiresome, but it worked overall because of the contrast with Robinson. It was the old good-cop, bad-cop dynamic.

Mercep has a soft, unthreatening voice that doesn’t command the listener’s attention. It lacks cut-through. Plunket is a big man with a voice and interviewing style to match. In rugby terms, he’s the equivalent of the enforcer in the front row of the scrum. You don’t need physical bulk on your side to interrogate people – Brian Edwards proved that – but I’m sure it helps psychologically. Mercep just seems too darned nice to unsettle his interview subjects.

As for Robinson, he’s a marvel: always composed and civil, but still capable of asking the hard questions. And he’s been doing it since 1975.

His ability to bounce from one interview to another with barely enough time to catch his breath, and to conduct them all intelligently and with authority, marks him as a consummate professional. But it also points to a strong team of producers and researchers working behind the scenes and feeding him the right material.

* * *

FROM THE “so what’s new?” category: a recent news report that overseas tourists don’t find Auckland visitor-friendly. Has it ever been?

Almost every time I fly into Auckland Airport, whether on a domestic or international flight, I’m struck by the inadequate signage and paucity of information. How visitors cope, especially those who don’t speak English, is a mystery.

But the airport is a fitting introduction to a city that always seems too busy going about its business to bother being friendly to outsiders; too busy taking tourists’ money to pause and smile.

If the airport-to-city bus is the visitor’s first encounter with Auckland, it’s a miracle that most don’t immediately turn around and fly out again.

Unless things have improved lately, waiting passengers are made to stand out in the weather at a poorly marked stop, surrounded by surly-looking airport staff having a cigarette break. I once waited an eternity for a bus and when one finally came into view, it carried on straight past me despite a sign indicating it was the city shuttle.

And when a bus finally deigns to stop and pick you up, you often encounter an unsmiling, non-communicative driver with the charm of a pitbull.

Some cities exude an aura of welcome and friendliness. People often say it about Wellington. But unless Auckland has undergone a remarkable cultural transformation, Rugby World Cup visitors are likely to be unimpressed.

W P Reeves saw much to like in Murdoch

2011-08-04T17:57:00.000+12:00

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, August 3.)

The late W P (Bill) Reeves was one of the most distinguished New Zealand journalists of the 20th century. He was also a friend and admirer of Rupert Murdoch, the Australian media tycoon now demonised as a malevolent, manipulative press baron in the tradition of the infamous American William Randolph Hearst, the man who inspired the film Citizen Kane.

A refined, erudite man, Reeves was editor of Wellington’s Dominion when the then 32-year-old Murdoch acquired a controlling interest in the paper in 1964, his first foray outside Australia. The two developed a warm rapport.

Writing in the centennial history of “the Dom” in 2007, Reeves described the Murdoch of that time as “sophisticated, clever, ardent, handsome and, of course, ridiculously young”. He added that the Australian knew more about newspaper production and content, and industry politics, than anyone on the board or management of the paper he had just acquired.

Murdoch was born with printers' ink in his blood. His father, Sir Keith Murdoch, was a distinguished war correspondent in World War One – in fact the first journalist to thwart military censors and report the fiasco at Gallipoli. He went on to head the then-mighty Herald and Weekly Times empire based in Melbourne.

Murdoch Jr earned Reeves’ respect because he was a passionate newspaperman. The journalists at the Dominion loved him, Reeves wrote. “Here was an enlightened rich boss who knew all about what made newspapers succeed and was a journalist to boot.”

I have since learned that Reeves and Murdoch would spend hours sprawled on the floor of Reeves’ living room, planning the layout of the soon-to- be-launched Sunday Times (now the Sunday Star-Times). When in Wellington, Murdoch would stay with the Reeves family rather than put up in a hotel.

Reeves wrote that Murdoch never attempted to interfere with the Dominion’s editorial policy, which during Reeves’ tenure underwent a transformation from its traditional trenchant conservatism to a much more liberal stance (in line with Reeves’ own leanings). Indeed, Reeves recalled that Murdoch himself was something of a left-winger in those days.

An old journalist friend of mine who worked for Murdoch’s News Corporation for many years – indeed was a Murdoch favourite, working for him in three countries – largely echoes Reeves’ affectionate view of the Australian. Though strongly disapproving of Murdoch’s political machinations, and particularly his support for the Right, my friend remembers him as personally fair, understanding and generous.

Why do I relate this? Because it presents a very different picture of Murdoch – or perhaps I should say a picture of a very different Murdoch – from the one portrayed in recent weeks.

Murdoch has made innumerable enemies in his march to global media dominance, nowhere more so than in Britain. Those enemies are now so gleefully relishing his fall from grace that hardly anyone pauses to give him credit for the good things he has done.

These include the establishment of Australia’s first national paper, The Australian, in 1964 – a paper Murdoch patiently bankrolled for years before it began to turn a profit. It was something that only a man passionately committed to newspapers and serious journalism could have done.

As mentioned in this column previously, Murdoch also rescued the technologically moribund British newspaper industry from the grip of the greedy, bully-boy unions that controlled Fleet Street. Murdoch’s biographer, William Shawcross, has written that without his epic victory over the print unions, “there would be far fewer papers in Britain today”.

Not that he was ever thanked for it. British columnist Simon Jenkins has gone so far as to say that Murdoch was the best thing that ever happened to the British media – “and they hate it”.

In New Zealand, his influence was generally benign. Until 2003 he had a controlling interest in Independent Newspapers Ltd (INL), which evolved out of his Dominion purchase, but he was a distant figure who seemed content to leave INL in the safe hands of its New Zealand bosses. INL had become, after all, a remote and inconspicuous corner of Murdoch’s global business; he had much grander ambitions to pursue.

One journalist has written, rather fancifully, that “journos up and down New Zealand celebrated” when Murdoch sold INL to Fairfax, the current owners. This implies that the purchase by Fairfax liberated INL from the clutches of an evil empire, but I spent much of my career with INL, including two and a half years as editor of its flagship paper, and Murdoch’s influence was virtually imperceptible.

Indeed, his contribution to New Zealand newspapers was positive. He was a solid cornerstone shareholder in INL throughout its expansion from the 1960s to the 1990s, a period that saw the acquisition of many provincial papers which would very likely have foundered without the capital and resources that came with ownership by a bigger company.

We are left, then, with something of a paradox: a man who at times has demonstrated an admirable commitment to newspapers and serious journalism, but is now irrevocably tarnished by the sleazy behaviour of his ghastly tabloids and by his naked exercise of political patronage.

We can only conclude that he has been corrupted by power. He would hardly be the first; the history of the press is replete with examples of men – Northcliffe, Rothermere, Beaverbrook, Hearst, Robert Maxwell and (closer to home) Australia’s Sir Frank Packer – who somehow thought the ownership of mass-circulation newspapers gave them the right to exercise political power.

But journalism should never be about the direct exercise of power. Its purpose should be to empower ordinary people by giving them the knowledge they need to make informed choices. British prime minister Stanley Baldwin, quoting his cousin Rudyard Kipling, famously described the exercise of political power by press barons as “power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot through the ages”.

For all their failings, politicians are ultimately answerable to the voters. Media owners are accountable to no one.

One last thought, though. Before we get too sanctimonious, abuse of media power is not the exclusive preserve of the evil press baron.

The opportunity exists for any media gatekeepers to control and manipulate the flow of information and opinion for their own purposes. In fixating on obvious targets like Murdoch, we overlook the fact that even publicly owned media organisations, such as the sainted BBC and our own Radio New Zealand, are capable of abusing their power.

I'm with Winston on this

2011-08-04T11:12:00.000+12:00

I never thought I’d say this, but for once I’m on Winston Peters’ side.
The New Zealand First leader was quoted earlier this week as saying to a female journalist, “God, you dick” – this in response to a question about whether former North Shore mayor Andrew Williams, a new recruit to NZ First, would be a party spokesman.

Granted that Peters is often irascible in the presence of the media, but this didn’t sound quite right. I’ve never heard a woman called a dick, which is a term of abuse reserved for males. Besides, for all his huffing and puffing, Peters isn’t so ill-mannered as to direct such an offensive putdown at a female.

So it was no surprise to see in today’s Dominion Post that Peters denies saying any such thing. What he actually said, he insists, was “crikey dick”.

This rings true to me. “Crikey dick” seems a much more likely thing to say, particularly for someone of Peters’ age. But it’s easy to see how it could be misheard, especially if it’s an expression the reporter is not familiar with.

Is this partly a generational problem? Many of the journalists now covering politics are young women – you can see that whenever gallery journalists swarm around John Key or Phil Goff in the lobby at Parliament.

The expression “crikey dick” is used frequently by people of a certain age but might be less familiar to anyone in their 20s or 30s. It’s not inconceivable that someone of that age might mistake it for something more objectionable.

The Dom Post says Fairfax journalists played the tape to four people, all of whom heard “God, you dick” – but then conceded, when told that Peters denied using those words, that they could be wrong. I’d be curious to know what age they were.

Wallowing in death

2011-08-04T10:41:00.000+12:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, August 3.)

YOU CAN SEE what Maori Party MP Te Ururoa Flavell was getting at when he said teenagers who kill themselves shouldn’t be rewarded by having their lives “celebrated” on the marae.

It was a statement that caused pain to the families of young people who have taken their own lives. But desperate situations call for blunt speaking, and Mr Flavell was no doubt moved by despair at the high rate of youth suicide, particularly in his own Waiariki electorate.

He was also right to highlight the temptation for the young to glamorise death, whether it’s by suicide or other means such as car crashes. It’s not hard to imagine troubled teenagers regarding an emotional tangi as a suitably glorious end to an unhappy life.

But romanticising premature death is not a problem confined to Maoridom, or to those who kill themselves intentionally. Earlier this year I drove past a young Pakeha woman grieving at the foot of a power pole where her friend had been killed in a car crash a few days before. Flowers, balloons and scrawled messages – artefacts that are now de rigueur wherever young people have died tragically – had been left at the scene.

This has become a familiar pattern. On most weekends, somewhere in New Zealand, young people kill themselves in high-speed smashes. They are often drunk and not wearing seatbelts.

Invariably these tragedies trigger an extravagant public outpouring of grief. Friends gather at the scene, weeping volubly and clutching each other for support.

Tributes are posted on Facebook pages, usually written in the primitive sub-language favoured by texters and tweeters. “Luv u 4 eva,” they say – an emotion of no use to the departed, so presumably expressed purely for the cathartic benefit of the griever.

Public displays are part of the grieving ritual. The sorrow of the young woman I saw sobbing beside the road would have been no less real had she wept at home, but the death cult demands that people mourn conspicuously.

There is something unsettling about this death cult. While grieving for those who have died, the mourners are also celebrating the lifestyle that killed them – a lifestyle characterised by behaviour that invites disaster, such as drinking too much, driving too fast and not thinking very much.

Those who grieve for their friends wallow emotionally in death yet seem incapable of learning anything from it. You get the feeling that this week’s mourners could be next week’s victims.

* * *

I ASK YOU – who are the real deniers when it comes to global warming?

Climate change alarmists are fond of dismissing sceptics as denialists – a potent word, because people associate it with the lunatic fringe that insists the Holocaust never happened.

But who’s really running away from the climate change debate? Why, it’s the alarmists.

They don’t want to confront leading British climate change sceptic Lord Monckton on his visit to New Zealand because to do so might be seen as conceding that the other side has a case. That would never do.

The alarmists peddle the line that the scientific debate is closed – that all the facts are in, and to continue arguing the toss only gives credibility to the sceptics.

This is the basis on which the Greens and National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) principal scientist James Renwick have said there’s no point in engaging with Lord Monckton. In Dr Renwick’s words, “there’s nothing to debate”.

This overlooks the inconvenient truth that there remains a large body of reputable opinion that challenges the science behind global warming hysteria. Perhaps the alarmists think that if they ignore it, it will go away.

This to me is real head-in-the-sand denialism. If they are so convinced of their correctness, what do they have to fear from people like Lord Monckton?

The alarmists should be reminded of the poet Milton’s resounding call: “Let truth and falsehood grapple; whoever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?”

* * *

ONE OF THE least surprising pieces of news in recent weeks was that ticket sales for the Rugby World Cup are running well below expectations.

The explanation is simple. New Zealanders love their rugby but are repelled by the greed and rampant corporatism surrounding this event.

They resent having to pay extortionate prices to see their own team play, especially when they are already generously subsidising the event as taxpayers and ratepayers.

They resent the state-sanctioned corporate bullying which sees the creation of Orwellian-sounding “clean zones”, patrolled by government enforcers, to ensure that the tournament’s big sponsors aren’t upset by competitors.

Their resentment deepens when they learn that even the cash-strapped St John’s ambulance service, which for generations has provided first aid for amateur sport, has to cover its own sponsors’ logos on ambulances and uniforms so as not to fall foul of “ambush marketing” laws.

They also see the game being corrupted by the intrusion of commercial agendas – such as the promotion of fluoro-coloured boots – that show no respect for the traditions of the national team.

They know the Rugby World Cup has precious little to do with the true spirit of the game and they are showing their disapproval in the most logical and forceful way – by staying at home.

What hope for balanced coverage?

2011-08-03T11:17:00.002+12:00

On Radio New Zealand’s Nine to Noon yesterday, Kathryn Ryan provided a graphic lesson in why the Alasdair Thompson affair became so overheated.

Interviewing Bruce Goldsworthy, who took over the running of the Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern) after Thompson was sacked for his comments about women’s productivity, Ryan left listeners in no doubt about where she stood on the issue.

Normally a scrupulously fair and even-handed interviewer, she adopted an uncharacteristic hectoring tone – unnecessarily, I thought, since Goldsworthy seemed almost indecently keen to join her in rubbishing his former boss.

It would be fair to assume, on the basis of this interview, that Ryan is one of the many women who regard Thompson as a sexist dinosaur for whom burning at the stake would be too charitable a fate.

I thought that if any woman journalist could approach this issue coolly and dispassionately, it would be Ryan. But no: the hounding of Thompson continues even after his career was destroyed as punishment for what was, at worst, an infelicitous choice of words.

This was disappointing, but revealing. It exposed the extent to which the media debate about Thompson has been framed in a context in which most women insist on seeing themselves as victims of a male conspiracy.

Female journalists, rather than exercising the professional detachment that their job demands, seem to have taken Thompson’s comments as a personal attack and responded accordingly. On this issue, they are women first and journalists second. When even someone of Ryan’s reputation can’t maintain a semblance of impartiality, what hope is there for balanced coverage?

It’s Thompson’s unfortunate fate to have been made the scapegoat for women’s anger and resentment at being disadvantaged in the workplace (if indeed they are). In effect he has been punished because the world is not quite as they would like it to be.

But we are left with the fact that “pay equity”, along with equally fuzzy associated terms such as “flexibility” and “family-friendly workplaces”, is easier to talk about than to implement. As eager as he was to portray himself as a sensitive New Age kind of guy, and thus to distance himself from Thompson, even Goldsworthy stumbled when Ryan challenged him on why employers weren’t leading the march to a glorious Utopia where women can effortlessly juggle work and parenthood without penalty.

Women’s Affairs Minister Hekia Parata took a more realistic line when she acknowledged the complexities of the pay equity issue in the New Zealand Herald yesterday. Asked for comment on an opinion poll that found 65 per cent of women thought they were paid less than men simply because they were women, she rightly criticised the “simplistic” poll question.

She reminded us that “women are still the only child bearers, women tend to work part time more, women tend to be in lower paid industries, women seek more flexible working hours, so there are some parts of that pay gap that you would have to exclude for those reasons”. Oddly enough, these are pretty much the points that Thompson tried to make.

The most striking lesson to emerge from the furore over Thompson is that 41 years after Germaine Greer wrote The Female Eunuch, the gender war is still raging. I admit this comes as a surprise to me, but I’m probably a sexist dinosaur too.

Footnote: Asked about the appointment of a new EMA chief executive, Goldsworthy told Ryan that the organisation wouldn’t be appointing a woman just to appease the Thompson-haters. But given the way the EMA threw Thompson to the wolves, and its apparent eagerness to ingratiate itself with the tut-tutters, it wouldn’t surprise me if they did.

The obligations of the rich

2011-07-31T16:48:00.000+12:00

According to the Dominion Post this week, John Todd, the head of New Zealand’s wealthiest family, thinks the rich have a moral responsibility to help others.

It’s an admirable notion, but I think he’s wrong.

Provided the rich have acquired their wealth by honest, lawful means, I don’t see that they have any moral obligation to anyone. People who build up successful businesses are already performing a public service by providing useful goods and services, creating jobs and generating prosperity. They shouldn’t feel compelled to do any more than that.

Neither should they be taxed at a higher rate than others. The justification for the progressive taxation system has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with pragmatism. The wealthy are taxed at a higher rate not because they deserve to be, but because they can afford it and are therefore considered fair game.

If the rich choose to spread their wealth around, as members of the Todd family have done (possibly influenced by their Catholicism), that’s another matter entirely.

We could do with a stronger philanthropic tradition in New Zealand. There are many benevolent wealthy people operating below the public radar, but the welfare state tends to suppress philanthropic instincts because everyone assumes the government will take care of everything.

A plague on all their houses

2011-07-21T09:25:00.000+12:00

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, July 20.)

I know it’s not right to gloat, but I couldn’t help feeling a frisson of pleasure at the discomfort experienced in high places as a result of the News of the World cellphone hacking scandal.

I detest the British tabloids. They are an abomination.

They have the ethics of sewer rats, using sleazy, underhand and even illegal means to get stories. This is not a recent phenomenon and neither is it confined to the News of the World. It has been going on for years, and no London tabloid can claim its nose is clean.

Indeed, as the Guardian journalist Nick Davies revealed in his 2008 book Flat Earth News, even some supposedly reputable British broadsheet papers have broken ethical boundaries in pursuit of exclusive stories. (Davies, incidentally, was one of the reporters who broke the story that the News of the World had hacked into people’s phone messages.)

I believe the well-documented misbehaviour of the British tabloids is one reason why journalists throughout the English-speaking world are regarded as sleazeballs, bereft of ethics and prepared to do anything for a scoop. We are all smeared by association.

The “redtops”, as the Fleet Street tabloids are called (because of the bright red ink used in their mastheads), have their defenders. It’s often pointed out, for example, that it was their relentless scrutiny that exposed the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana as a sham.

In the light of what we now know about that marital train wreck, the tabloids can claim to be vindicated. They can justify their hounding of the royal couple by arguing that the British public was entitled to know what was really going on behind the public relations smokescreen.

It’s hard to disagree. Yet I would find the argument a lot more convincing if I believed the tabloid press was driven by a high moral calling to search out and report the truth, rather than by an insatiable appetite for scandal and sensation (which the disintegrating royal marriage provided by the truckload).

And while it’s easy to cite the Charles and Diana story as an example of the press performing its noblest function – namely, exposing something that those in power would have preferred to hush up – it’s rather harder to justify everyday sleaze like trawling through the cellphone messages of private citizens in the hope of finding something juicy to splash on page one.

As long as you can produce a legitimate outcome, such as uncovering corruption – or even, at a stretch, a two-timing football star – it may be possible to construct a retrospective justification for unethical behaviour such as phone hacking. But where the victims are blameless people such as the families of slain soldiers and a murder victim, the News of the World doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

But it’s not just unethical journalists who have been rattled by the events of the past fortnight. What’s equally satisfying is that the nature of the relationship between British politicians and the media has come into sharp focus.

I take the purist view that politicians and journalists should keep each other at arm’s length, but in Britain the two groups have a long history of cosying up to each other.

Generations of wealthy newspaper proprietors from Lord Northcliffe to Rupert Murdoch have taken the view that ownership of a paper brings with it the right to exercise political power and patronage. Murdoch has done this more blatantly than most, switching the support of papers like The Sun (daily readership: 7 million-plus) between the two main parties as it suited him.

Politicians respond by ingratiating themselves with proprietors and editors to win their favour. It’s a political phenomenon that’s mercifully alien to New Zealand, where the British-style media tycoon is unheard of and the press has generally shunned political alignment.

In the past 20 years the relationship between British politicians and the media has entered very murky ethical territory as party leaders sought either to recruit the support of newspaper barons or to manipulate the press for their own ends – none more so than Tony Blair, under whose prime ministership media strategy seemed to command as much attention as economic or foreign policy. Now we learn that current British prime minister David Cameron, as well as employing former News of the World editor Andy Coulson (now in disgrace) as his communications supremo, was in the habit of hobnobbing socially with the Murdoch family.

Both Cameron and Blair went out of their way to court Murdoch. To me this degree of closeness has always seemed deeply unhealthy and ripe with the potential to compromise either side. And so it has turned out, with Cameron suddenly finding it expedient to distance himself from the powerful media friends that he was only too eager to cultivate until the News of the World scandal erupted. If it weren’t so hypocritical, there would be something almost comical about the speed with which he has abandoned the people he so recently wooed.

As the saying goes, those who sup with the devil should use a long spoon. But will the lesson be learned? We shall see.

For the rest of the British media there is a lot of what the Germans call schadenfreude - pleasure in other people's misfortunes - going on here. Many in the British media still deeply resent Murdoch as the impertinent colonial – he was branded the “Dirty Digger” – who marched in and took over some of their oldest and proudest media institutions (and successfully took on the notoriously obstructive Fleet Street unions, something the British proprietors lacked the courage to do). His detractors have taken great pleasure from this reversal in his fortunes.

But there are very few in the British media who haven’t been guilty of doing what Murdoch is accused of doing: allowing political considerations to influence editorial agendas and apparently turning a blind eye to dodgy journalism practices.

The collapse of the once-mighty News of the World holds lessons for them too. But you have to wonder whether the rotten tabloid journalism culture, with its tolerance of unethical journalism and creepily symbiotic relationship with politicians, is too deeply rooted to change.

How much trust can we place in the 'most trusted' list?

2011-07-20T09:08:00.000+12:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, July 19.)

Reader’s Digest recently released a bizarre list purporting to name New Zealand’s most trusted people.

Bizarre, because there was no discernible logic or consistency in the names listed. The top 10 included three scientists, a fashion designer, a celebrity chef, a judge, a playwright and two comedians.

How some names ended up on the list is a mystery. I mean, Chief High Court Judge Helen Winkelmann? How many New Zealanders have even heard of her? Even as judges go, she has kept a relatively low profile. But there she was at No 4.

I’m sure Justice Winkelmann is a person of the utmost probity (I would certainly hope so, given her office), but the sceptic in me finds it highly unlikely that her name would spring forth spontaneously in the mind of the average Kiwi.

No 12 on the list was a radio host I’d never heard of, with the improbable name of Jay-Jay (reason enough, I would have thought, to have automatically excluded her).

What’s going on here? Well, there’s a clue at the bottom of the Reader’s Digest press release. It reveals that the “most trusted” New Zealanders were chosen by 532 adults who were given 100 names and asked to rank them in order of supposed trustworthiness.

In other words there was a high degree of pre-selection. That immediately undermines the “most trusted” description, because survey participants might have come up with completely different names had they been left to do so unprompted. But it does help explain why so many of those chosen are not household names.

The top three – Sir Ray Avery, Sir Peter Gluckman and Sir Paul Callaghan – are all scientists. My guess is that they were chosen not so much because each has demonstrated his trustworthiness, but because people like to think of scientists as incorruptible seekers after the truth.

In other words, it’s possible they achieved their rankings because of what they do rather than who they are. The same might be said of Justice Winkelmann, whose inclusion is otherwise so puzzling.

But playwright Roger Hall (No 5), comedian Bret McKenzie (No 6), fashion designer Denise l’Estrange-Corbet (No 7) and celebrity chef Simon Gault (No 9)? How do we explain those?

This is where it gets truly bizarre, because the public has little, if any, basis on which to judge whether these people really are to be trusted.

Before their lawyers reach for the phone, let me say I am sure they are all individuals of irreproachable integrity. But their high ranking suggests that many survey respondents simply voted for people they admire for their looks, talent, wit or whatever.

Perhaps in future the research firm should present survey participants with a list of names and ask whether they would trust these people with their life savings, or to look after their children for a week.

That might deliver a more meaningful result. As it is, the survey is barely more credible than a Nigerian email.

Now if Reader’s Digest really wants to know what New Zealanders think, how about compiling a list of the country’s most despised people? That would be something.

Let me suggest a couple of names to get the ball rolling: Rod Petricevic and Macsyna King.

* * *

IT’S HARD to recall a time when the tone of public discourse was more vicious and abusive.

The ill-fated employers’ spokesman Alasdair Thompson and ACT leader Don Brash have both been on the receiving end of attacks that made little attempt to address the substance of the issues they raised. Far easier to shout them down with offensive epithets.

Of course both are considered fair game because they are Pakeha men of a certain age. “Dinosaur” is the insult-du-jour. Throw in a few other simplistic insults – “sexist” and “racist” are much in vogue – and it’s game, set and match. Who needs rational discussion?

The level of rancour in public debate has been cranked up tenfold by the internet, which allows people to spray invective around with impunity. In comment threads on blogs and media websites, puerile abuse trumps civilised discourse every time.

This is partly due to the sheer ease with which Internet users can lob their toxic bombs. It’s immediate and effortless. But a much more important factor is that the net confers anonymity, and anonymity gives courage to cowards.

Newspapers learned decades ago that they attracted a higher standard of letter by insisting that people sign with their own names rather than hiding behind pseudonyms. The net has yet to attain that level of maturity.

* * *

SPARE A THOUGHT for the hapless Germans. In the 1990s, prosperous West Germany had to shoulder the deadweight of the moribund communist East. Now these same industrious, thrifty people are being called on to bail out corrupt, feckless, ill-governed Greece. It seems a very high price to pay for the Germans’ determination to be good international citizens.

Flat-footed on the CGT

2011-07-17T11:03:00.000+12:00

My take on Labour’s proposed capital gains tax, for what it’s worth, is that the Nats didn’t see it coming.

Hang on, let me clarify that. Of course the government knew, along with everyone else, that Labour was about to unveil a new tax policy. But I wonder if they under-estimated its impact.

National’s response to the CGT proposal has been surprisingly unconvincing, as if they didn’t bother to rehearse their lines beforehand or even agree on a script. As a result they have looked flat-footed.

Could they be victims of their own success – so accustomed to Labour floundering in the polls that they convinced themselves they had nothing to worry about? Arrogance and smugness have always been among the National Party’s less endearing qualities.

Maybe the CGT is not yet the game-changer that Phil Goff claims it is. Labour remains open to the accusation that it is ultimately concerned not with creating wealth, but with redistributing it. But Goff exploits one of National’s greatest areas of vulnerability when he says Labour is prepared to tackle the big issues that the Nats won’t. It’s a line that could play well to an electorate that still doesn’t really know what National stands for.

1981 and all that

2011-07-15T11:11:00.002+12:00

Historian Matthew Wright, writing in the Dom Post today, reminds us that it’s 30 years since the Springbok tour.

I agree with Wright’s premise that the protests against the tour were about much more than apartheid and rugby. They were an eruption of frustration and resentment against years of suffocatingly authoritarian, conservative government. The Springbok tour and the polarising figure of Robert Muldoon provided a convenient touch-paper.

However I question Wright’s conclusion that anti-tour protests had little impact on the white South African government or apartheid. He writes that “the white minority government wasn’t listening to international pressure”, but in fact the evidence suggests the republic’s burning desire to play rugby against New Zealand was a critical factor in bringing about political reform. Chris Laidlaw, who was New Zealand’s first diplomatic representative in black Africa, told me in 1994: “Rugby played a far bigger part in the transition to democracy [in South Africa] than most people realise.”

The African National Congress recognised that white South Africa’s rugby fervour was a pressure point that could be exploited to the ANC’s advantage. Laidlaw hosted secret meetings in Harare between ANC officials and South African rugby bosses Louis Luyt and Danie Craven, at which the message was clear: no more international rugby until apartheid was abolished.

“Once he [Luyt] got that into his head there was no stopping him,” Laidlaw told me. “He went straight to the South African government and said: ‘Things are going to have to change.’” So Wright may be slightly off the mark when he writes that New Zealanders bashing each other in Molesworth St weren’t going to change anything.

And it’s unfortunate that his piece is marred by a couple of minor factual errors. I observed the so-called Battle of Molesworth Street at close range and I don’t recall the police Red Squad being there, as Wright says. The Red Squad’s job was to protect the Springboks and match venues. What’s more, they weren’t commanded by Ross Meurant, as Wright implies, although that was a common misconception that Meurant may have been happy to go along with. The Red Squad was actually led by Phil Keber.

Oh, and I don’t recall seeing any PR-24 police batons (the so-called Minto bars that Wright refers to) at Molesworth St either. The batons used that night, as is clear from Evening Post photographer Ian Mackley’s black-and-white picture accompanying Wright’s piece, were standard, old-fashioned truncheons.

Footnote: As Wright remarks, the bloody clash between police and protesters in Molesworth St coincided with the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. This presented The Dominion with a dilemma: which story should take precedence? In the end, the Dom went with the royal wedding on the top half of the front page and the Battle of Molesworth Street below the fold.

The changing TV landscape (sorry, media ecology)

2011-07-09T12:41:00.000+12:00

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, July 6.)

“Appointment viewing” is the fashionable television industry term for programmes that people can’t bear to miss.

Readers of a certain age will remember when the entire nation stayed home to watch shows like The Forsyte Saga or Upstairs, Downstairs. It was even said that borough councils changed their meeting nights to avoid missing an episode of The Avengers in its “Mrs Peel, we’re needed” heyday.

Back then, television was still something of a novelty and we had only one channel, meaning everyone watched the same shows and talked about them the next day. In an unexpected way, television served as a national unifier. It was as if we all shared one big living room.

So what programmes, if any, deserve to be described as “appointment viewing” these days? For reasons that elude me, Dancing with the Stars and the ghastly Master Chef New Zealand attracted huge audiences.

More recently, a certain type of viewer has been captivated by Downton Abbey on Prime. This costume drama was obviously intended to evoke fond memories of the golden age of British television, but you can almost see the keys protruding from the actors’ backs as they go through the motions as predictably as clockwork toys.

Friends of mine enjoyed it thinking it was a clever spoof, and were taken aback when they learned it was meant to be serious. (In fact Downton Abbey has itself been spoofed, wickedly and brilliantly, in a BBC production called Uptown Downstairs Abbey, viewable online at You Tube and starring such luminaries as Joanna Lumley, Jennifer Saunders and Kim Cattral.)

I can think of only three programmes that I make a point of watching, and as it happens, they're all local. One is Caravan of Life, which I stumbled on by chance a few weeks ago while waiting for the Saturday night news.

Caravan of Life is the sort of show New Zealand does very well. The presenter is journalist and former Good Morning host Haydn Jones, who trundles around the countryside in a 1960s Ford Falcon towing a vintage caravan. Yes, I know it sounds gimmicky - the sort of thing Te Radar might do. But the car and caravan are as far as the gimmickry goes.

Jones has a gift for seeking out ordinary New Zealanders - “characters”, in Kiwi parlance - who lead interesting lives. What’s more, he has the rare knack of being able to make them relax and reveal themselves on camera. His own style is engaging and whimsical without being forced or contrived.

It’s disappointing but hardly surprising that TVNZ, which relentlessly promotes appalling, exploitative British programmes about pathetic fat people, hasn’t done more to draw attention to this modest little gem.

My other appointment viewing is in the TV ghetto zone of Sunday morning, when I watch TV3’s The Nation and TV One’s Q&A back-to-back. Both are good but I’ve decided I prefer The Nation, hosted by Sean Plunket. It’s a no-nonsense, no-frills current affairs programme that typically includes a solid, thorough investigative segment on a current issue (last week it was asset sales; the week before that, farmer resistance to proposed environmental laws that over-ride property rights - both first-class reports by journalists I‘d never heard of.)

Q&A is flashier and more stagey, to the extent that I sometimes have the feeling that the format gets in the way of the content. But the interviews are searching and tough, and like The Nation, it offers us the opportunity to size up our public figures in a way that’s impossible from fleeting soundbites on the news.

It’s hard to imagine now, but programmes like these once screened in prime time. What’s more, people watched them. Current affairs interviewers - Brian Edwards, Simon Walker, Ian Fraser - were the aristocracy of New Zealand television. Gallery in its day was appointment viewing, though we didn’t call it that. Television took seriously its duty to inform as well as to entertain.

But the television landscape (or “media ecology”, as academics like to call it) has irrevocably changed. The multiplicity of channels now available means that no one broadcaster or programme can command the nation’s attention. The audience is fragmented and as channels proliferate, particularly on Sky, competition for premium programme content intensifies and acquisition costs escalate - all of which puts pressure on the free-to-air channels, which (unlike Sky) have no subscription income to cushion them.

The notion of the public service broadcaster survives in the form of Radio New Zealand, but otherwise it’s in peril. TVNZ is in the process of being released from its obligations under the public service charter introduced under Labour. Its sole objective in future will be to return a dividend to the government (not that viewers will notice much difference, since the charter was largely ineffectual).

Programmes like Q&A and The Nation are made only because they’re funded by the taxpayer through New Zealand On Air. And they are at the mercy of TVNZ programmers, who show what they think of serious current affairs by consigning them to a Sunday morning timeslot when only the truly committed will watch. Now that really is appointment viewing.

Yet the champions of public broadcasting haven’t entirely given up hope. They point out that although nearly 50 percent of New Zealand households now subscribe to Sky, on a typical weeknight 78 percent of eyeballs still watch the free-to-air channels. This suggests New Zealanders remain wedded to traditional mainstream TV even when Sky offers them a choice of 110 channels.

In any given week it’s likely that seven or more of the 10 most popular programmes will have been on TV One. In the week June 26-July 2, for instance, the four top-rating shows were Country Calendar, One News, Fair Go and The Food Truck - all on TV One. Only Shortland Street, on TV2, cracked TV One’s stranglehold on the top 5.

What’s more, six of the top 10 programmes were New Zealand-made. TVNZ chief executive Rick Ellis acknowledges that “New Zealanders love their local content”.

Figures like this give heart to a small group of academics, broadcasters and television producers who are fighting a rearguard action to protect what’s left of public television in New Zealand. But the outlook is bleak and neither the political nor the commercial environment are encouraging.

Not a good week for free speech

2011-07-06T08:05:00.000+12:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, July 5).

New Zealand has been stricken by the most serious outbreak yet of the highly contagious condition I call acute sensitivity disorder.

Not all women were blinded by fury at what Alasdair Thompson said about menstruation affecting women's productivity. Some thought the outcry was grossly disproportionate to the supposed insult. But few people of either sex were prepared to stick up for Mr Thompson - not because they thought that what he said was indefensible, but because they were intimidated into silence by the howling of the lynch mob.

A high-profile Auckland businesswoman - a solo mother - told me she wanted to support Mr Thompson because she thought he had been unfairly pilloried, but she wouldn't take the risk of saying anything publicly.

That illustrates how easily free speech and public debate can be stifled when the vengeful mob takes over. This was Hitler's technique: to frighten opponents into submission with such an overwhelming show of force that no-one dared dissent. Mr Thompson was abandoned even by his spineless board of directors.

Worse still, elements of the media were complicit in this, stoking the flames of outrage and orchestrating the vilification of a man whose worst sin seems to be that he sometimes shoots his mouth off.

Many female journalists couldn't see past their own indignation. The professional obligation to report the issue fairly and dispassionately was discarded.

TV3 in particular savaged and mocked Mr Thompson, jettisoning all pretence of neutrality and abandoning the once-sacrosanct principle of separating reportage from opinion. Not a pretty sight.

I wonder how many of Mr Thompson's attackers - including a former prime minister who apparently suffers from the delusion that she's still the Queen Bee - took the trouble to watch the unedited version of his 28-minute interview with Mihingarangi Forbes from Campbell Live, in which he attempted to clarify his views on the disparity between men's and women's pay rates. (You needed to watch the whole thing online because TV3 broadcast only four minutes that showed Mr Thompson reacting to provocation by a reporter whose interest was solely in what he had said about women's periods.)

Nothing Mr Thompson said was belittling to women. He didn't say men were better workers (quite the contrary, in fact), and there was nothing to suggest that he thought the 12 per cent pay disparity between the sexes was a desirable state of affairs.

Much of what he said simply reflected the reality of the employment market: for example, that women are more likely than men to take time off when children are sick, and that many women's careers are interrupted by motherhood, with a consequent impact on their earning potential.

The worst he can be accused of is that he made a careless generalisation in the initial radio discussion and didn't have facts to support it. But he was howled down so deafeningly that public figures in future will think very carefully before expressing a view on anything, and good people who might otherwise be tempted to enter public life may decide it's just not worth the grief.

All of which is good for the control freaks who want to dictate what we think and say, but bad for democracy.

* * *

THE irony is that by the end of the week, much of the heat had been taken off Mr Thompson and the Employers & Manufacturers Association (Northern) by another ugly display of bullying that frightened two book chains into declaring they won't stock Ian Wishart's book about Macsyna King and her part in the death of the Kahui twins.

This edges us even closer to Nazism, which was ruthlessly efficient at discouraging people from reading things that those in power didn't like.

There is some frighteningly muddled thinking going on here. Boycotting Wishart's book won't bring back the Kahui twins, and it won't remove the stain left on the soul of the country by their deaths. Neither will a boycott prevent any more abused children from dying.

But if there's even a remote chance that the book will shed a chink of light on the circumstances that led the Kahui babies to die, and therefore help us understand how these things happen, then society stands to gain from its publication.

It has been said in defence of Paper Plus and The Warehouse that booksellers make decisions every week about what books to stock and what not to stock. True - but in this case the decision not to sell the book has been made for fear of a consumer backlash, which makes it an act of moral cowardice. It can't be because the two chains disapprove of the content, because no-one has seen it yet.

This raises the interesting question of whether booksellers, as disseminators of information in a liberal democracy, have special obligations to society that don't apply to other retailers.

All things considered, not a good week for freedom of speech.

And now for something utterly inconsequential

2011-07-02T09:01:00.000+12:00

It’s a bleak, grey Saturday morning and I’m feeling picky. There are innumerable things I could feel picky about, but I’ve chosen something utterly inconsequential.

Today’s Your Weekend magazine, which comes with my Dominion Post, contains a review of Ray Columbus’ autobiography in which the claim is made that She’s A Mod, the 1964 hit by Columbus and his backing band the Invaders, was the first New Zealand record to reach the top 100 in the United States. It’s not clear whether this claim is made in the book or whether the reviewer got it somewhere else, but it didn’t ring true with me, so I checked.

Joel Whitburn’s Top Pop Singles: 1955-2002 is the bible of the Billboard chart, listing every song that made the top 100 in the US during that period. It’s a treasure trove for tragic students of pop minutiae, among whom I count myself, and it makes no reference to Ray Columbus and the Invaders. In fact there are very few New Zealanders listed. Among those I’ve stumbled across in its 1000 pages are Auckland-born Gale Garnett, whose We’ll Sing in the Sunshine went to No 4 in 1964; John Rowles (Cheryl Moana Marie, No 64 in 1971); Split Enz (I Got You, No 53 in 1980); Dragon (Rain, No 88 in 1984); Crowded House (whose Don’t Dream It’s Over went all the way to No 2 in 1987, one of five Neil Finn songs that made the Billboard chart) and the late Pauly Fuemana’s OMC (How Bizarre, No 4 in 1997). Keith Urban has four entries too, but I’m not sure whether we can claim him. In fact I’m not even sure we can claim Crowded House, strictly speaking, but Whitburn generously describes them as a New Zealand band and that’s good enough for me.

Alas, however, no Ray Columbus and the Invaders. This is not to diminish that group’s considerable achievements: they went to No 1 in Australia and in so doing, cracked open the Australian market for countless other New Zealand outfits. But we must keep the record straight.

We now know a bit more about John Key - or at least I think we do

2011-06-28T15:32:00.000+12:00

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, June 22.)

I recently watched Sean Plunket interview prime minister John Key on TV3’s The Nation.

Plunket’s pre-interview spiel gave the impression we were finally going to learn what drives Key politically – a tantalising prospect, since this is a question that has lots of people scratching their heads.

In fact the interview succeeded only partially in telling us what the nation’s most powerful politician stands for.

That’s not to say Key wasn’t honest, or that the interview wasn’t revealing. But in some ways it only served to deepen the Key enigma, and to remind us how different he is from his predecessors.

We certainly learned a few things about who inspired Key, and what he cares about.

Clearly, the dominant influence in his life was his late mother. He learned from her that you get out of life what you put into it (my apologies if I make that sound like a line from Forrest Gump). Despite her straitened circumstances as a solo mother, bringing up her children in a state house after the death of her alcoholic husband, she took control of her life. She taught her son to look forward, not to look back, and not to feel sorry for himself.

She also encouraged him to be ambitious. She had “huge” expectations of him and firmly set him straight when, at 15, he wanted to leave school and train horses.

His mother also taught him to be frugal. He remembered her putting the tips she earned as a hotel night porter into a jar to pay for occasional treats. So when his high-flying colleagues in the foreign currency dealing rooms were blowing their money on champagne, long lunches and flash cars, Key and his wife Bronagh concentrated on paying off their mortgage.

He bluntly described his high-living former workmates as stupid for not realising their stratospheric incomes wouldn’t last forever.

How, then, did these early life experiences mould John Key the politician?

We learned that although his mother was a Labour supporter (in common with many of her era who were grateful for a state house), the young Key was an admirer of National prime minister Robert Muldoon. He thought Muldoon had a vision of what New Zealand needed to be.

I found this revealing because Muldoon, while leading a party that ostensibly championed private enterprise, didn’t hesitate to exert tight economic and social controls using the apparatus of the state. (Full marks to Key for his honesty, at least. The only other contemporary politician I can think of who might cite Muldoon as a role model is Winston Peters.)

Key also revealed himself as a fan of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, an authoritarian leader who used the power of the state to suppress dissent.

Plunket noted, as I did, that both the leaders cited approvingly by Key were political strong men with little patience for opposition, but we shouldn’t assume from this that Key has a hidden authoritarian streak. He has a boyish enthusiasm and comes across as open, affable and reasonable. I can’t think of any New Zealand prime minister in my lifetime who was harder to dislike.

He explained that he admired Lee Kuan Yew because his bold, aspirational policies had transformed what was once a poor, Third World country - although he acknowledged that the same approach, which placed economic progress ahead of human rights, wouldn’t necessarily work here.

Key’s respect for Muldoon and Lee Kuan Yew is significant because neither leader seemed to care about ideology. They were pragmatists who adopted whatever policies they thought would work, regardless of any philosophical inconsistency.

The same might be said of Key’s government, which in its first term has been virtually an ideology-free zone – much to the frustration of many people who voted for it, expecting a much stronger commitment to traditional centre-right values.

Key gave some clues to what he believes. He wants everyone to have equality of opportunity and he sees education as crucial; but he also thinks people are responsible for their own success or failure. “You can make a difference in your own life.”

He clearly has little time for trade unions but appears to care deeply about the number of people trapped on welfare. As he said, something has clearly gone wrong when 13 percent of the working-age population are on a benefit compared with two percent in the 1970s.

He believes in celebrating success, which is why his government reinstated the traditional honours list. A consistent theme in the interview was that people should be encouraged to aspire to greater things. “You make your own luck.”

What was lacking, however, was a clear picture of how these beliefs translate into policies. We learned quite a lot about John Key the man, but there remains a credibility gap between what he professes to be motivated by and what his government is actually doing. He says the right things but his party remains cautious to the point of timidity.

Plunket rightly questioned whether Key’s performance in government was consistent with his maiden speech in Parliament, in which he talked about the need for politicians to be bold and to ignore public opinion when necessary.

Perversely, one of the few times Key appeared to disregard public opinion was when his party supported left-wing MP Sue Bradford’s anti-smacking bill, much to the disgust of most National voters. He also antagonised his own party’s supporters by pushing through a senseless, quixotic emissions trading scheme and pandering to divisive Maori claims on the coastline.

There may of course be a master plan behind Key’s apparent reluctance to embrace radical change. Colin James, one of our most perceptive political commentators, says National’s strategy is to make changes each term which are not earth-shattering in themselves but which the electorate can broadly go along with.

“After two or three terms of this pragmatic incrementalism the piecemeal changes add to a significant total,” he wrote recently. We shall see.

Another reason to keep our heads down and our mouths shut

2011-06-25T13:08:00.003+12:00

Once again we see how fragile free speech really is in this supposedly liberal democracy. The lesson from Alisdair Thompson’s crucifixion in the media this week couldn’t be clearer: express an opinion at your peril.

In the deafening barrage of righteous indignation that followed Thompson’s comment that some women take sick leave when they have their periods, everyone was too busy taking offence to take much notice of what he actually said or the context in which he mentioned it.

The reference to periods came in a radio interview prompted by Green MP Catherine Delahunty’s bill that would require employers to provide information about pay rates, therefore testing whether there is sex discrimination in the workplace. Thompson’s main concern was that this would burden business with more bureaucracy and compliance costs.

Toward the end of the interview, on Mike Hosking’s NewstalkZB breakfast show, Thompson asked rhetorically: “Who takes most sick leave? Women do.” Some had to look after children at home, he said; others had a “sick problem” once a month.

He went on to say it wasn’t their fault, and perhaps there were issues they needed to sort out with their partners.

Not that anything mattered after he mentioned menstruation. At that point rational debate ceased as elements of the media, abandoning all semblance of objectivity, lashed themselves into a shark-like feeding frenzy.

It seems to me that Thompson can be accused of two things. He expressed an opinion – clearly a very dangerous thing to do these days – and he appeared to base it on information from his own workplace, which may or may not be indicative of the wider situation.

Hardly hanging offences, you might think. Freedom of speech includes the right to get things wrong, if indeed Thompson was wrong (we don’t really know). Yet in the ensuing hysteria, the CEO of the Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern) was pilloried as if he were Pol Pot, Hitler and Idi Amin collectively reincarnated

Thompson subsequently tried to salvage things in a 28-minute interview with Mihingarangi Forbes from TV3’s Campbell Live. Faint chance. Once television has decided it wants your bloodied head on a spike, you’re a goner.

Among other things, Thompson tried to clarify his position by saying that women take more sick leave than men (a point that appears to be confirmed by public service figures, though the difference isn’t huge). They take time off to look after kids. Some have period problems. Some take maternity leave and may not come back to work for several years.

He mentioned all this in an attempt to explain why women’s productivity, which is central to the setting of pay rates, may be lower than men’s – which in turn might explain why women on average get paid 12 percent less. For the life of me, I can’t see why any of these comments should be considered exceptionable. He was simply saying that women employees have to deal with issues that don’t confront men, and that this can interfere with their careers and therefore prevent them from reaching the same pay levels as men. That seems to me to be a simple statement of fact.

Crucially, Thompson didn’t say he approved of this state of affairs, or that it was the fault of women. On the contrary, he emphatically declared himself to be in favour of equal pay for equal productivity, equal opportunity and flexible workplaces. He believed pay should be based on productivity, not sex, and he added that he thought the total productivity of women, taking into account their home life as well as their paid work, was higher than that of most men. He agreed it was odd that there are so many female schoolteachers yet so few female principals (a point raised by Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly on the Hosking programme, though it wasn’t directly related to the issue under discussion). He even saw merit in the objective of Delahunty’s bill, if not its remedy. These don’t strike me as the views of a sexist dinosaur, to use the two terms of abuse repeatedly hurled at Thompson in recent days.

Just as crucially, Thompson acknowledged that there was a pay gap between women and men. The real issue, he said, was whether the Delahunty bill would fix it, and British experience with similar legislation suggested it wouldn’t.

This was an attempt to bring the discussion back to where it had started, but Thompson might as well have been speaking in Swahili for all the notice Forbes took. She seemed interested only in skewering him over his comment about periods. (That, and whining repeatedly about her heroic efforts as a working mother with three children. At times you got the impression the interview was all about her.)

I’ve seen some outrageous TV interviews but this was one of the worst. Most of the time Forbes gave the impression she either wasn’t listening, didn’t understand what Thompson was saying or wasn’t interested. Perhaps all three.

It reached a point of almost comical absurdity when Forbes suggested Thompson should resign “because you cannot represent half of the population”, adding: “You certainly don’t represent me very well.” Thompson’s response – that his job was actually to represent employers – seemed lost on his dim-witted, self-absorbed interrogator, as was just about everything else he said.

Media coverage of the Campbell Live interview made much of the fact that at one point, Thompson stood up, walked over to Forbes and confronted her in what could have been interpreted as a a menacing manner. Shown in isolation, this certainly looked bad. What wasn’t clear was that Thompson was acting out of sheer frustration after spending 25 minutes trying to explain himself to someone who clearly paid no attention to anything he said. Watch the unexpurgated interview (it’s available at TV3 on Demand) and you’ll see what I mean.

If anything, Thompson was admirably restrained. I would have slung Forbes and her crew out of the office long before that point.

But perhaps Forbes shouldn’t be held solely to blame for her disgraceful performance. She was, after all, taking her cue from most of her colleagues in the electronic media, who jettisoned all pretence of balance, fairness and neutrality. When there’s a choice between playing sexual politics and observing professional journalistic standards, we now know which will win.

We also know what a media gang-up looks like, and it’s not an edifying spectacle. Want to stamp out New Zealand's bullying culture? Perhaps we could start here.

Watching TV3's highly partisan news coverage of the issue last night, I got the distinct feeling they won't rest until they can brandish Thompson's scalp. Signing off at the end of her item, the reporter said: "It's fair to say this is not the end of the debate." Yeah, right; I'm sure TV3 will see to that. It's a shame that a network that does so many things right should allow its professional judgment to lapse so badly on occasions like this.

But then it’s hard to identify anyone who emerges from the furore with any credit. I wonder how many of the illustrious public figures who lined up to condemn Thompson took the trouble to listen to what he said, in its entirety. Bugger all, I'd guess. Too busy being outraged.

Shame too on the business leaders who ran for cover or stayed silent when Thompson was being hung out to dry. Will the EMA cave in and sack him in response to the vengeful cries for blood? It will be a black day for business and for freedom of speech if they do.

Helen Kelly shrewdly made the most of the situation, playing on the EMA’s embarrassment in an obvious attempt to secure political leverage. Her father Pat, a union firebrand who died in 2004 and whose anniversary fell on Friday while the row was at its height, would have approved.

For his part, Thompson handled the affair clumsily. His first mistake was to panic and make what looked like an insincere apology. He shouldn’t have to apologise for a genuinely held view. Perhaps some nervous nellie in the EMA got in his ear and urged him to back down, but it only made things worse. Apologising doesn’t deter attackers – on the contrary, it encourages them because it makes the apologiser look weak and indecisive.

His performance led comedian Raybon Kan – described on this occasion as a media commentator – to suggest on Campbell Live that the entire affair was an ad for media trainers. But no amount of media training could prepare anyone to deal with the sort of vicious onslaught Thompson faced.

In the end we are all losers, because every time someone is publicly savaged for having the temerity to speak his or her mind, the rest of us take note and make a mental resolution to button our lips in future for fear for incurring similar punishment. How gratifying that would be for the control freaks and tut-tutters who want to banish all opinions that don’t conform with their own. And how ruinous for democracy.

Saddest of all, the very institution that should be protecting freedom of speech, the media, is busily imperilling it.

In defence of duFresneism

2011-06-24T11:45:00.000+12:00

Several people have responded to my recent post about the academic takeover of journalism training, including a couple of the individuals mentioned. Herewith, in no particular order, are my responses:

1. Martin Hirst of AUT, writing under his cutely enigmatic nom-de-blog Ethical Martini, asks when I was last in a journalism school or spoke to a journalism tutor. In fact it’s several years since I was last in a journalism school (it was Wintec). I can visit a journalism school only if I’m invited, and oddly enough my post box isn’t jammed with pleas from journalism tutors for me to come and speak to the students. I suspect the reason is that they don’t want their students to hear what I might have to say; it might conflict with their theoretical models.

Hirst says I have a standing invitation to visit the AUT journalism school. I don’t recall any such invitation, and in any case a “standing invitation” is pretty much like saying “we must catch up over coffee some time” without intending ever to act on it. Besides, I’m in Masterton and AUT is in Auckland, and I don’t have a taxpayer-funded travel budget.

I certainly wouldn’t expect an invitation anytime soon from one prominent journalism school whose head, a former student told me, was in the habit of badmouthing me in front of his students. (The aforementioned head of school, it almost goes without saying, is a man with no mainstream journalism experience.)

However I have had some dealings with tutors. I attended the Jeanz (Journalism Education Association of NZ) conference in 2007 and would happily go again if given the opportunity. I don’t have a closed mind. I also have occasional social contact with some former journalists who have become tutors. In general they are people I respect.

2. Martin Hirst also claims that as part of my “long list of errors”, I wrote that Sean Phelan teaches journalism. Wrong. It worries me – and it should certainly alarm Hirst's students – that a man who is proud to use the honorific “Dr” has such poor comprehension skills that he didn’t see my very explicit acknowledgment that Phelan teaches media studies. But since Hirst raises the issue, it’s worth noting that the Massey website includes Phelan in the profiles of its journalism staff. That suggests to me that his role includes getting inside the heads of journalism students with his thoughts on “post-Marxist discourse”, whatever that may be. Hirst urges me to check the facts. It seems he could do with a good fact-checker himself.

3. Bomber Bradbury, according to Hirst, has plenty of mongrel in him. I certainly wouldn’t dispute that. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if Bomber Bradbury howls at the moon. Listening to Bradbury’s splenetic outpourings on Jim Mora’s Panel, I often imagine there’s a nice man in a white coat waiting outside the studio door to lead him (Bradbury that is, not Jim) gently back to the secure ward. But when I lament the lack of “mongrel” in academically trained journalists, I’m not suggesting – and I suspect Hirst knows this – that simply being a noisy non-conformist and exhibitionist is qualification enough for being a good journalist. You’ve got to have proven journalistic skills too, and to my knowledge Bradbury has none. He’s a polemicist and political activist who has no place as a “role model” in a journalism school paid by the state to turn out graduates for an industry he appears to despise and hold in contempt.

4. Samantha Ives challenges me to visit her journalism school (Whitireia, obviously) and praises her no-nonsense tutor Jim Tucker. Fair enough. Jim and I have had our disagreements but I respect him as someone who has “done the business” (he’s a former editor of the Auckland Star), and I’d be surprised if his teaching was contaminated by leftist ideology or flawed theoretical models.

5. I thank Sean Phelan for doing me the honour of naming something (du Fresneism) after me. If he’s so stung by my criticism that he feels impelled to write long (and I daresay impenetrable) articles in rebuttal, I’ll take it as a compliment.

6. Finally, I’d suggest that my academic critics have it all arse-about-face. They seem to be calling on me to justify myself, but I’m just a lone voice in the blogosphere wilderness. I don’t have my hand in the taxpayer’s pocket and I’m happy to stand on my journalistic record, which is far from flawless but is out in the open for anyone to see. My attackers are the people who need to be held accountable. They’re the ones who are paid by the hapless taxpayer to teach the next generation of journalists, and who use this publicly funded sinecure to promote a highly politicised model of journalism that is at odds with, and hostile to, the one followed by the industry that employs their graduates. It’s they who should be justifying themselves, not me.

No, he's not drunk; it's Alzheimer's

2011-06-24T09:10:00.001+12:00

It was sad but not altogether surprising to hear today that singer Glen Campbell has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

I saw Campbell perform in Wellington about three years ago and it occurred to me then that something wasn’t quite right. He occasionally repeated himself in his on-stage patter and though his singing and playing couldn't be faulted, he gave signs, in between songs, that his brain wasn’t 100 percent engaged. I’m no neurologist but I said to my daughter, who was with me, that he looked like a man in the very early stages of Alzheimer’s.

That impression was reinforced the next morning when I met him at his hotel for an interview kindly arranged for me by his tour promoter, Stewart Macpherson. Campbell was courteous and obliging, especially considering that Simon Sweetman’s review of his concert in that morning’s Dom Post was uncharacteristically (and I thought unfairly) savage, but he seemed a tad vague and distracted. Several times he invited me to help myself to a grape from a bowl on the table in his room, clearly not remembering that I’d turned down the offer only moments before.

Some might suggest that Campbell’s vagueness had something to do with his years of drug and alcohol abuse, but Alzheimer’s seems a more likely explanation. After all, he’s reportedly been clean for years; and in any case, countless other country and rock stars have consumed prodigious quantities of mind-altering substances without any obvious long-term consequences.

Campbell’s wife Kim told the American magazine People: “Glen is still an awesome guitar player and singer, but if he flubs a lyric or gets confused on stage, I wouldn’t want people to think, ‘What’s the matter with him? Is he drunk?’ ” She said he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s six months ago, although his short-term memory had been poor for some time.

Campbell, 75, plans to release one more album before a final tour. That will signal the end to a remarkable career that began when he joined his uncle’s Western Swing band in Alberquerque, New Mexico, and gained momentum when he moved to LA in 1958 to became part of the “Wrecking Crew” – a fabled group of session musicians that included Hal Blaine, Leon Russell, Larry Knechtel, Jim Horn and Carol Kaye. Campbell played guitar on countless 1960s hits and even joined the Beach Boys (filling in for the mentally fragile Brian Wilson) before becoming a singing star in his own right with songs such as By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Wichita Lineman and Galveston (all written by the great Jimmy Webb).

Campbell was never given his due by highbrows and purists, probably because his repertoire was aimed squarely at middle America. But even in his 70s he was outstanding both as a singer and guitar player, as anyone who saw him in concert can attest.

An uncharacteristic attack of bonhomie

2011-06-23T11:07:00.001+12:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, June 21.)

PLEASE disregard the title of this column. Just this once, it’s written in a non-curmudgeonly tone. Stop reading now if this is likely to be too much of a shock.

A recent sequence of unconnected events brought on an uncharacteristic attack of bonhomie; a sense of wellbeing and goodwill toward my human fellow human beings which, try as I may, I cannot suppress.

It started when I needed to upgrade my BNZ Visa credit card to avail myself of free travel insurance. For reasons that I won’t attempt to explain, I had to do this overnight rather than wait the customary two or three days for the new card to arrive in the mail.

Most of us dread dealing with call centres. This usually requires responding to a series of automated inquiries as to what the problem is, and almost invariably the options don’t include the issue you’re calling about. (The purpose, of course, is to make the experience so frustrating that the caller will be deterred from ever seeking help again. That’s the raison d’etre of call centres.)

But my dealings with the Visa call centre couldn’t have been smoother. I phoned three times and each time encountered an operator who was charming, helpful and lucid. My new card was activated at midnight, enabling me to use it the next morning even though I wasn’t yet physically in possession of it.

The last of the three operators noted that I was in the habit of paying off my card debt before any interest fell due, which doesn’t make me a very profitable customer for the bank, and politely suggested I might repay the BNZ for its help by not being so punctilious in future.

Fair enough, I suppose. I’ll keep it in mind.

* * *

A FEW DAYS later I was on the Interislander ferry Kaitaki, bound for the South Island.

I’ve lost count of the number of ferry crossings I’ve done but it was some time since I’d last made the journey and my first trip on the Kaitaki. It’s a very pleasant ship, spacious and comfortable – in fact the first Cook Strait ferry I’ve travelled on where passenger comfort seemed to be the primary consideration rather than an afterthought.

But the real revelation was the staff. It’s hard to imagine a more striking contrast with the take-it-or-leave-it culture of the era when surly members of the Cooks and Stewards Union did what they had to do and no more.

These days you’re served by smiling, smartly dressed young women who give the impression of enjoying their work. The food has greatly improved too, and there’s a respectable selection of wines and beers.

In the days when my family and I used the ferry often, we made sure we took our own food rather than risk scungy, overpriced pies and stale sandwiches served grudgingly by people who gave the impression they would rather be somewhere else. I’m delighted to report that such precautionary measures are no longer necessary.

* * *

THE REASON I went south was that a group of us were tackling the Heaphy Track on mountain bikes, which brings me to my next non-curmudgeonly expression of appreciation.

It was years since I’d stayed in a Conservation Department hut and I didn’t know what to expect. I packed a small cooker, assuming I would need it to prepare a hot meal.

More fool me. The DOC huts on the Heaphy are equipped with gas cooking facilities. Not only that, but they have potbelly stoves and ample supplies of coal and firewood.

I expected the usual long-drop dunny 30 metres away in the bush, but no; our hut had flush toilets – flush toilets! – right beside the front door, under the shelter of the verandah. You didn’t even need to get your feet wet. Sheer luxury, and the hut appeared to be rat-proof too.

If you happened to be stuck in one of these huts because of bad weather, as happened to a group that came in a day behind us, you’d be bored but cosy. All that was missing was someone to turn down the bed and leave a chocolate on the pillow (not there was a pillow, of course; DOC huts aren't quite that flash).

* * *

FINALLY, I can report that the best qualities of the old-style New Zealand country pub are alive and well in Karamea.

Isolated towns at the end of the road, such as Karamea (population 400), can be insular and wary of outsiders, but our ragged, mud-covered group encountered nothing but warmth and hospitality from the owners and staff at the Karamea Village Hotel. They plied us with hearty pub grub, kept the kitchen open for the late arrivals, made phone calls for those of us needing transport the following morning and turned a blind eye to the mess we made in our rooms with our filthy gear.

What’s more, they did a cooked-to-order breakfast that would shame five-star hotels with their wretched, serve-yourself buffets.

Another reason to be suspicious of journalism schools

2011-06-15T17:44:00.000+12:00

Anyone who has followed my sporadic musings about journalism will know that I have mixed feelings about the academic takeover of journalism training.

My misgivings start with the fact that I have been privileged to work with, and learn from, a long list of great journalists who had no academic training. They learned by doing.

Prior to the establishment of the first journalism school at what was then Wellington Polytechnic (now Massey University) in 1967, people drifted into journalism via a variety of routes. Many came straight from school, working their way up from menial jobs as messengers or copyholders in reading rooms. They were generally not the sort of people who had been swots or academic achievers at school but they either had, or soon acquired, the instincts and skills that made them great reporters.

To use a cliché, they had a bit of mongrel in them. They included a disproportionate number of misfits and non-conformists, drunks and womanisers. But they knew how to unearth stories and they were free to develop their own individualistic style and flair.

I’m not totally set against formal journalism courses but I suspect (and I know some other journalists of my era do too) that some of the people described above wouldn’t have entered journalism had they been compelled to complete a one-year course of study first, as is now required. And I wonder how many potentially good practitioners are deterred from entering journalism by the thought of having to jump through academic hoops. The qualities that make a good journalist aren’t necessarily those that produce conscientious students.

I also suspect that the selection process for journalism schools filters out potentially good rough-diamond candidates, instead favouring goody-two-shoes types who tick the right boxes and are unlikely to make waves. You can sense how radically the culture of journalism has changed the moment you walk into a modern newsroom and note all the earnest young faces staring intently at their computer screens. Old hands, accustomed to the shouting and swearing of a previous era, find the silence unsettling.

I’m not alone in thinking this. Warwick Roger wrote a column years ago in which he pointed out that, like me, none of the journalists he most admired had been to journalism school. More recently, Deborah Hill Cone lamented the prevalence of what she called “white bread” journalists and the disappearance of the bolshie eccentrics and lowlifes who populated newsrooms when she entered journalism.

So there’s one good reason to wonder whether the academic teaching of journalism is entirely a good thing. I’m not arguing that it should be abandoned, but I think it would be in journalism’s interests to leave the door ajar for people who don’t necessarily meet the academic test. (I should again point out here that Jane Bowron, whose dispatches from the Christchurch quake zone in the Dominion Post have won her legions of fans, slipped into journalism through the back door when she retrained as a sub-editor after the old Dom’s proofreading room was disestablished. We should all be grateful for the fact that she twice failed to get into journalism school, because I doubt that her idiosyncratic style would have survived the tut-tutting of the journalism tutors.)

That leads me to another of my concerns about journalism schools. They tend to encourage a bland orthodoxy, with the result that everyone comes out writing in much the same style. I search the papers in vain for the individualistic and sometimes slightly anarchic flair that once encouraged readers to hunt out the bylines of particular reporters. When you do find examples of such writing, it’s usually under the name of people who are not trained journalists, like Joe Bennett. I fear that the graduates of our journalism courses have any endearing quirks drilled out of them.

Then you have to look at the people doing the teaching. There are a few very good journalism tutors, usually people who have done the business themselves and teach from experience. But there’s also an awful lot of second-raters – some with minimal practical experience, others with nondescript CVs who have been drawn to teaching as a soft option. I remember years ago being on a selection panel charged with appointing a head tutor at a journalism school and despairing at the pitiful paucity of talent and experience among the candidates.

Even when good journalists become tutors, they almost invariably mutate into academics. Over time, they stop thinking and talking like journalists and lapse into the unintelligible jargon of academia. I reckon it should be a condition of all journalism tutors’ appointments that they be required every three years or so to work for at least six months in a newsroom, just to put them back in touch with reality. Some hope.

If anything, the insistence on academic credentials serves to discourage the appointment of experienced journalists. The appointment system is skewed in favour of candidates with qualifications, such as masters’ degrees and even doctorates, that virtually no working journalist possesses. This increases the risk that over time, the teaching of journalism will become ever more concerned with theory and more distanced from practice.

This suits some journalism academics very well, since it permits the intrusion of leftist ideology into the lecture room. Academics such as associate professor Dr Martin Hirst, who rejoices in the grand title of curriculum leader in journalism at Auckland’s AUT University, approach the teaching of journalism from a highly politicised standpoint. An avowed socialist, Hirst is of the school that believes journalism is all about challenging the established order. He and others like him sneer at the notion of objectivity that for decades has underpinned mainstream journalism in Western liberal democracies.

Media studies departments are even more vulnerable to political contamination. Marxism as an economic theory may be dead and buried, but what is known as cultural Marxism, which applies Marxist class theory to society and culture, is firmly entrenched in academia. Dr Sean Phelan, who teaches media studies in Massey’s Department of Communications, Journalism and Marketing, specialises in “post-Marxist discourse theory” and regards the teaching of journalism as an “instrument of the existing hegemonic order”. He thinks journalists need more instruction in critical (read Marxist) theory.

The extent to which some journalism schools have fallen under the sway of leftist ideology became startlingly evident with the appointment earlier this year of Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury as editor-in-residence at the Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec), which teaches the national diploma in journalism. In a press statement proudly trumpeting Bradbury’s appointment, the head of Wintec's School of Media Arts (a person I'd never heard of - nothing new there) said he would be a “mentor and advisor” to Wintec’s current crop of journalism and communications students.

What are Bradbury’s qualifications for “mentoring” budding journalists? You might well ask. I’d describe him not as a journalist but as a leftist polemicist, albeit a very noisy one. (Bradbury has variously been described as “the man who will not shut up” and “the most opinionated man in New Zealand”.) His home, the Listener revealed in a profile in 2005, was decorated with posters of Marx, Che Guevara and Mao, which suggests a man who never matured beyond the undergraduate phase in his political views. If Wintec wants to be known as the journalism equivalent of an Islamist madrassa, it couldn't have chosen a more perfect appointee.

Bradbury probably can’t believe his good fortune at being given a state-funded job in which he can indoctrinate impressionable students. I get the impression, from occasionally reading his blog and listening to him loudly declaiming on Jim Mora’s afternoon panel, that he’s interested in journalism only as a means of advancing a leftist, anti-capitalist agenda. This of course makes him ideally suited to academia, where antipathy toward the corporate mainstream media and all its bourgeois values – such as balance and neutrality – runs deep.

The paradox, of course, is that the same corporate mainstream media will be expected to provide Wintec graduates with jobs, assuming they survive the formidable endurance test of being ear-bashed by Bradbury for a year. Not for the first time, I marvel at the media industry’s benign tolerance of media academics who are hostile to it. Media companies don’t fund journalism courses, but they employ their graduates. This surely gives them some influence over the way courses are run and who teaches them. How much longer, I wonder, will they remain silent on the subversion of mainstream journalism values by leftist theorists?

Curran surprised? I don't think so

2011-06-13T09:30:00.000+12:00

Going back through last week’s papers before putting them in the recycling bin, I came across a story by Dom Post political reporter Kate Chapman about Labour MP Clare Curran’s banishment from the parliamentary debating chamber for wearing non-authorised apparel – to wit, a Highlanders jersey.

Chapman wrote that Curran “got more coverage than she had bargained for when Speaker Lockwood Smith took offence to her outfit and ordered her to leave the House”.

I would say that in fact Curran got exactly what she bargained for. A former journalist and union PR adviser, she would have foreseen Smith’s reaction and would have known perfectly well how the media would react. It was, in other words, a publicity stunt.

No harm in that, but it was intriguing to see how the media played up the story. Curran must have been enormously gratified. That single incident earned her more coverage than she’d previously attracted in the two and a half years since she was elected.

That’s is the way it is these days, and not just in New Zealand. Lindsay Tanner, who was Minister of Finance in the Australian Labour government led by Kevin Rudd, recently published a book, aptly titled Sideshow, in which he says, among other things: “After spending much of my life dedicated to the serious craft of politics, I have to admit that I am distressed by what it is becoming. Under siege from commercial pressures and technological innovation, the media are retreating into an entertainment frame that has little tolerance for complex social and economic issues.

“In turn, politicians and parties are adapting their behaviour to suit the new rules of the game — to such an extent that the contest of ideas is being supplanted by the contest for laughs.”

Commenting on Tanner’s book in Spectator Australia, former ALP leader Mark Latham chimed in: “Tanner makes the argument I have been making for a decade: that the trivialisation of politics in the mass media is destroying the effectiveness of parliamentary democracy.”

What Latham doesn’t say is that the politicians are complicit in this. They understand the new dynamics of political coverage and happily play along. In fact Christchurch Press editor Andrew Holden revealed on TV3’s The Nation at the weekend that John Key spoke to Fairfax editors on the day Curran wore the Highlanders jersey and correctly predicted that the story would be leading the bulletins that evening.

If Key knew exactly what the media response would be, I'm sure Curran did too.

NZ shouldn't give Mara the time of day

2011-06-12T11:55:00.001+12:00

Why did the government even consider granting entry to the shifty Lieutenant-Colonel Tevita Mara? We shouldn’t be giving him the time of day. A man previously happy to align himself closely with the repressive, illegitimate regime of Commodore Frank Bainimarama, he now expects us to believe he has had a road-to-Damascus conversion to the virtues of democracy. How convenient.

Mara, clearly the embittered loser in a power struggle with his former mate, should have been left to stew his own juice. Yet Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully confirmed on TVNZ’s Q+A this morning that the government has granted him an exemption from the travel ban that normally applies to people associated with the Fijian military.

On the same programme, political scientist Jon Johansson suggested this was because the government wants to find out what’s inside Mara’s head. I would suggest that whatever’s inside his head, it’s probably so ugly it should be left there.

TVNZ’s Guyon Espiner subjected Mara to his first real grilling, at least that I’ve seen, in the course of which Espiner extracted the admission that Mara had been present when Bainimarama assaulted female pro-democracy activists. He is up to his eyeballs in allegations of torture, illegal detention and assault, admitting that soldiers under his command took part in beatings. He lamely acknowledged, in response to Espiner’s probing, that those responsible for human rights abuses – including senior officers – must answer for their actions.

That must include him, as former army chief of staff. Perhaps we should let him in to New Zealand and then arrest him. That would represent some sort of poetic justice, but sadly I don’t think that’s what McCully has in mind.

Mara has no status and no credibility. He was happy to be part of a bullying, anti-democratic regime but now that he has fallen out with Bainimarama, he’s desperately trying to re-invent himself as some sort of freedom fighter. No one’s going to buy it, least of all when you observe Mara's telltale body language during interviews – constant blinking, eyes darting everywhere except at the person asking the questions. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I can spit.

It's often the case with Fijian politics that outsiders struggle to discern exactly what’s going on. Even experienced Pacific-watchers scratch their heads trying to make sense of the political tensions and under-currents there. But certain things can be taken as given – namely, that the upheavals that have wracked the country since the Rabuka coup in 1987 have largely been about the protection and preservation of privilege by one or another faction or interest group, and have very little to do with the will or wellbeing of the people at large. From Rabuka through George Speight to Bainimarama, we have witnessed a parade of untrustworthy and/or megalomaniac, self-appointed leaders pursuing murky agendas.

Another constant is that the chiefly caste of which Mara is a member is usually pulling strings behind the scenes. His father, the late prime minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, was regarded in the West as a great Pacific statesman, but observers had reason to wonder, in all the covert manoeuvrings that followed the 1987 coup, how deeply committed he was to democracy. When Mara Jr fled after being charged with sedition last month, it seemed wholly fitting that he should seek refuge with relatives of the same chiefly caste in Tonga – another country where an elite rules at the expense of the people.

And now he invites us to welcome him as a champion of democracy. Well, pull the other tit, as we used to say when we were kids.

On judging the newspaper awards

2011-06-09T13:57:00.001+12:00

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, June 8.)

I’m in two minds about competitions and awards. I’ve been involved as a judge in restaurant awards, journalism awards and even cheese competitions (a peculiar combination, admittedly), but I've grown ambivalent about them. I feel the same about wine competitions, which I’ve never judged but have had the opportunity to observe.

On one hand it seems that every professional or craft group, whether it’s the pompously named Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences or the Takaka women’s needlework circle, feels the need to recognise meritorious performance and provide some sort of benchmark to aspire to.

That seems a valid objective. Competitions and awards are an incentive to people to perform at their best and a means of celebrating outstanding achievement. They are also a useful way of bringing promising newcomers – whether they’re actors, writers, chefs or winemakers – to wider attention.

Yet I can’t help having misgivings, to the extent that I’m reluctant to accept any further invitations to be a judge. There is a randomness and subjectivity about most judging processes that often makes me sceptical about the outcomes.

Take wine competitions. It’s accepted in the wine industry that clever winemakers can craft a wine that stands out among dozens of others. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best, but it gets noticed.

Besides, wine judges are sometimes expected to taste and assess a couple of hundred wines in a day. Even disregarding the inevitable element of subjectivity (because even expert opinions differ sharply), how can that deliver a dependable result?

This partly explains why many wineries, including some of the best, simply don’t bother entering. They prefer to concentrate on pleasing the people who really matter – the people who buy their wines. Yet there is pressure to enter wine shows, because wines that win high-profile awards almost invariably become big sellers. The commercial spinoff is hard to ignore.

But enough about wine. What prompted this soul-searching is that I recently helped judge the Canon Newspaper of the Year awards.

I should state here that the judging process was probably the fairest, and least likely to throw up a dodgy result, of any competition I’ve been involved in. Three judges independently and separately read the same papers and came to their conclusions without consulting each other.

We each awarded points to every paper covering several different criteria – the quality of the journalism, the design, the extent to which the paper connected with its community, and so on. The results were returned to the Newspaper Publishers’ Association and the points we had awarded each entrant were totted up and averaged out.

So although we might have each come up with different winners in each category, the overall result was likely to reflect a consensus. That seemed to me an admirable way to minimise any possible bias, conscious or otherwise, and to avoid any anomalies. An odd decision by one judge, for instance, would be offset by the verdicts of the other two.

Moreover, the fact that we never discussed our scores meant there was no chance for one persuasive judge to talk the others around to his or her point of view. I have seen this dynamic at work in other competitions and it can skew the result.

So if I was happy with this aspect of the judging process, what were my reservations?

I suppose my main concern is that ultimately, a judge in Christchurch, Dunedin or (in my case) Masterton isn’t the best person to assess how well a newspaper in Invercargill, Nelson or Rotorua is meeting the needs of its readers. The judge can award a score based on how it measures up to strict journalistic criteria, but only the people who read the paper every day in those communities can know whether it meets their expectations.

In this respect I sympathise with wineries that refuse to enter competitions on the basis that it’s not the opinion of illustrious wine judges that matters; it’s whether their wine pleases the consumer.

That raises another point. For practicality’s sake, newspapers are invited to submit four editions from throughout the year. They are free to choose any four they like, and inevitably select those that show them in the best light.

But just as a clever winemaker can make a wine that catches the judges’ attention, so a newspaper can choose four editions that show the paper at its best but may not necessarily reflect the paper’s performance day-in, day-out. Again, that’s something only the paper’s readers can judge.

Ultimately the judges’ decision says that this or that paper performed outstandingly well, or at least better than the others, on four days. This is not necessarily a definitive measure of a paper’s quality but it’s probably the best we can do.

Clearly, no judge can be expected to wade through a year’s papers. Even after carefully reading four entries from each paper (a job that takes days if it’s done thoroughly), you tend to get cross-eyed and wonder whether your critical faculties are getting blurry, just as a wine judge’s nose and palate inevitably become jaded after sniffing, tasting and spitting all day.

Interestingly enough, several papers submitted editions that covered the same big news events – namely the September 4 Christchurch earthquake and the Pike River tragedy. I had to wonder about the wisdom of this, because dramatic events are not hard to cover well. Journalists invariably rise to the occasion when they have a major story on their hands.

When parts of a large city are reduced to rubble or 29 miners are trapped underground, it’s almost difficult not to produce an impressive paper. Obviously it’s vital that newspapers tell such stories well, but what really sets a good paper apart is the ability to sniff out and report things that no one previously knew about. That shows a newspaper is burrowing under the surface and asking awkward questions.

If all this sounds rather downbeat, I should add that judging the awards left me feeling generally positive about the state of New Zealand journalism. Yes, there are some papers that look good but are weak in terms of content – all sizzle and not enough steak, as they say. But there are many others that are determinedly keeping the alive the best journalistic traditions: reporting what needs to be reported, engaging with their communities and holding politicians, bureaucrats and scoundrels to account. New Zealand would be unimaginable poorer and more ignorant without them.

Twitter: an exercise in pointlessness

2011-06-08T10:17:00.000+12:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, June 7.)

RARELY was anything more appropriately named than the social networking site Twitter, a word that brings to mind a flock of sparrows noisily chattering over a crust of bread.

It’s the perfect moniker for a mode of communication whose defining characteristic is its sheer pointlessness.

Even the creator of Twitter, Californian Jack Dorsey, admits the name sums it all up. “We came across the word ‘twitter’, and it was just perfect,” Dorsey is quoted as saying. “The definition was ‘a short burst of inconsequential information’ and ‘chirps from birds’. And that’s exactly what the product was.”

There. I rest my case.

The “tweets” that Twitter users send to each other are limited to 140 characters, which seems admirably suited to people with the attention span of goldfish. Small wonder that tweets are rarely concerned with anything more profound than what the tweeter has just had for dinner at KFC. The fact that National MP Tau Henare is Parliament’s most active tweeter – in fact is best known for his tweeting – speaks volumes.

What’s mystifying is that some branches of the news media have embraced Twitter with almost evangelical enthusiasm. Tweets from politicians, obscure celebrities and rugby players are excitedly reported, no matter how puerile or banal the content.

Journalists who would never dream of listening to talkback radio, considering it the domain of the ignorant and bigoted, nonetheless delude themselves that they are taking the pulse of the nation by monitoring the aptly named twittersphere.

When TVNZ’s Guyon Espiner on the current affairs show Q+A tells Labour leader Phil Goff that Twitter users are demanding that he spell out policy, you can’t help feeling that the Twitter phenomenon – or at least the media fascination with it – is getting out of hand.

Some Twitter users are mesmerised by its speed. I have read one journalist boasting that he heard about the February 22 Christchurch quake from Twitter while it was still happening. Another marvelled that Twitter had news of the ditching of an airliner in New York’s Hudson River in 2009 30 minutes before news sites were posting it as “breaking news”.

Well, wow. I suppose that counts for something if you’re the sort of person who loves to be one step ahead of the pack, just for the sake of it. But it’s about as silly as a motoring writer arguing that one car is better than another because it takes 0.5 of second less to get to the speed limit.

I mean, so what?

* * *

ECSTATIC reviews for the British television series Downton Abbey merely reveal how starved New Zealand viewers are of half-decent entertainment.

By the standards of the 1970s, the golden era of British TV drama, it’s rather ordinary. The characters are stereotyped and one-dimensional. The script is clichéd and formulaic. The actors are competent, but do little more than go through the motions – no one more so than Maggie Smith, who has played similar roles a dozen times before and could do it in her sleep.

The programme tends to lead viewers by the nose, giving them heavy-handed cues as to how they should respond to the characters and storyline. I suspect this is because the producers realise TV audiences have forgotten how to react to seriously good drama and need to be retrained.

Despite all this, the critical response has been little short of gushing – demonstrating that after years of cheap, banal “reality” shows and sordid American crime programmes, we’ll eagerly embrace anything remotely reminiscent of the quality drama we once took for granted.

* * *

ONE OF THE pitfalls of being self-employed is that I have to deal with ACC.

I recently sent them an email asking why I received not one but two invoices every year. The reply appeared to be written by someone with English as a second language. It clearly hadn’t been proofread and was nigh incomprehensible.

To give you an example, ACC’s email began (and I reproduce it exactly as it was sent): “We you select coverplus extra you receive two invoices.” (CoverPlus Extra is the policy I’m covered under.) Further on, it referred to levies that are “not aloud [sic] to be charged on a nominated amount”.

What’s especially galling is that I have no option but to deal with ACC. I am not allowed to find an alternative provider that ensures its communications make sense and might even arrange things so that everything is covered by one invoice.

Fortunately this will change next year, assuming National is re-elected and proceeds with its plan to open accident compensation to competition. As ACC Minister Nick Smith says, ACC needs the constant pressure of choice to keep it on its toes – an argument applicable to all monopolies.

National could hardly be described as fearless champions of free enterprise but in this instance, at least, it’s moving in the right direction.

It's all about intimacy - or more precisely, the denial of it

2011-05-26T16:33:00.000+12:00

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, May 25.)

A recent report on sexual abuse by priests in the United States conveniently lets the Catholic Church off the hook in crucial respects.

Researchers appointed by Catholic bishops concluded that homosexuality, the vow of celibacy and the all-male priesthood were not factors in the epidemic of clerical abuse uncovered in recent decades.

Rather, the researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Research in New York seemed to pin much of the blame on the fact that many offenders were trained for the priesthood during the 1940s and 1950s, a period when Catholic seminaries did not adequately prepare them for a life of celibacy.

They concluded that priests were not equipped to withstand the social upheaval of the 1960s, when traditional standards of morality were overturned.

I’m sure their findings are at least partly right, but I wonder whether their report is a bit of a copout.

Consciously or otherwise, researchers tend to produce findings that satisfy whoever is paying them – in this case, the Catholic Church.

Church authorities would be naturally reluctant to acknowledge that celibacy – the rule that priests cannot marry – might be a factor in the sexual abuse that has scandalised the church since the 1980s. They are probably even more reluctant to concede that having an all-male priesthood might be part of the problem.

Any such findings would challenge traditional Catholic teaching, which is firmly set against allowing priests to marry and even more resistant to the ordination of women. So it seems convenient that the John Jay report ruled out celibacy and the all-male priesthood as causes of clerical abuse.

Phew; no need for the Catholic hierarchy to re-assess its position on celibacy and female priests then. That must have come as a relief.

The conclusion that abusive priests weren’t necessarily homosexuals, as suspected by church conservatives seeking easy explanations, would have been reassuring too, but it’s hardly new. A courageous retired Australian bishop named Geoffrey Robinson, who was ostracised after arguing that forced celibacy was a cause of abuse within the Church, maintains that the reason boys were the victims in the overwhelming majority of abuse cases was simply that priests had greater access to boys than to girls.

In Catholic schools, for example, boys were generally looked after by priests and girls by nuns. Priests also had contact with altar boys, so boys presented more opportunities. (The one case of sexual abuse by a priest that I personally know of involved an altar boy.)

Another factor, according to Robinson, who worked with victims of clerical abuse, was that many abusive priests didn’t consider offending with boys to be a breach of their celibacy vow. They reasoned that they were only in violation of their vow if they had sex with adult women – an interesting rationalisation, to say the least.

One thing seems screamingly obvious, although I’ve never seen the Catholic Church acknowledge it. From a layman’s point of view, what emerges from the research into clerical abuse in the Catholic Church is that it’s all about the basic human need for intimacy.

By being denied the right to marry or form close relationships, priests are deprived of the warmth and intimacy that human beings naturally crave. In theory, they have no need of intimate physical relationships because they devote themselves wholly to God. But priests are still human; ordination doesn’t magically obliterate all their human needs and desires.

I believe that much sexual abuse by priests can be explained as a warped response to the absence of intimacy in their lives. This is consistent with findings that abusive priests who prey on boys are not necessarily homosexual or paedophile.

Anyone with knowledge of the Catholic Church knows that many priests lead lonely lives. Father McKenzie in the bleak Beatles’ song Eleanor Rigby, “darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there”, is all too believable. (Paul McCartney's mother was Catholic, so the Beatle may have had some insight into life in the presbytery.)

Most priests seem to cope, but it’s hardly surprising that some find an outlet for their sexual desire and longing for intimacy by forming what are euphemistically known as “inappropriate relationships”. Some do it with adult female parishioners; others with minors.

In other times and other places, priests dealt with the challenge of celibacy in a variety of ways. In countries such as France, Spain and Italy, it was not uncommon for the parish priest to have a mistress. Perhaps they took their cue from the popes in bygone times who maintained illicit relationships and even fathered children.

In countries such as ours, previous generations of priests probably coped better with celibacy because society in general was far more disciplined and respectful of authority.

Individual freedom and choice were not the catch-cries they are today. Improper behaviour of any sort was liable to incur severe sanctions. Besides, temptation and opportunity were limited in a buttoned-up, conservative society where people were careful not to step out of line.

Even when people transgressed, it was much easier then than now to keep scandal out of the public eye. People were less inclined to complain about abuse or ill-treatment. “Making a fuss” was discouraged.

Hierarchical institutions such as the Catholic Church were rarely challenged and the generally passive news media were reluctant to stir up trouble. The aggressive style of journalism now familiar to us, which delights in exposing bad behaviour and arousing controversy, was unheard of.

All that changed, of course, with the social revolution of the 1960s, which emphasised personal and sexual freedom and the right to “do your own thing”, in the parlance of that era. Temptation flourished and old disciplinarian codes broke down.

Small wonder that for priests, maintaining the vow of celibacy became much more of a challenge, as the John Jay College findings concluded. In more recent times, the Catholic Church has also found itself in the unfamiliar situation of being subjected to intense outside scrutiny and pressure as previously hidden abuse was brought to the surface.

If the Church hoped that the John Jay report would provide it with some means of identifying and filtering out potential abusers within its ranks, it’s likely to have been disappointed. The researchers found no “psychological characteristics” or “developmental histories” that distinguished guilty priests from non-offenders.

All of which seems to support the contention that sexual abuse by priests is a distorted reaction to an unnatural denial of the basic human need for intimacy. A growing number of Catholics recognise this, but hell would have to freeze over before the ageing male hierarchy that controls the Church accepts the need for reform.

DSK: a fine standard-bearer for socialism

2011-05-24T17:49:00.000+12:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, May 24.)

THE GREAT paradox of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s downfall is that this man, whom some accounts portray as a serial and even violent harasser of women, professes to be a socialist. He was the French Left’s great hope for the presidency.

Socialism is supposedly about championing the cause of the poor and downtrodden, which makes it highly ironic that Strauss-Kahn should be accused of forcing himself on a hotel chambermaid; an African widow and solo mother struggling, no doubt, to improve her station in life – in other words, the very sort of person socialists profess to be concerned about.

A true friend of the proletariat would regard such a person as someone deserving to be empowered and treated with dignity. But if the allegations against Strauss-Kahn are correct, it seems he simply saw her as easy meat - someone he possibly assumed would be unlikely to resist his advances, still less complain about the actions of one so great and powerful.

This would confirm that for all its supposed concern about social justice, socialism is rife with hypocrisy and double standards. There are probably as many alpha-male bullies and sexual predators within its ranks as in any other “ism”.

It’s notable too that DSK, as he is known, enjoyed the high life. He and his wife lived in a US$4 million Washington home with five bedrooms, six bathrooms and a swimming pool.

Nothing unusual here. The scandal enveloping Strauss-Kahn simply shows how far contemporary “socialism” has strayed from its cloth-cap origins.

The representatives of the working class are very good at rewarding themselves by gorging on the trappings of wealth and power. A wise old friend of mine, who made a career out of observing the foibles of our own politicians, once said to me that no one took more delight from settling into the soft leather seat of a VIP limo than a minister in a newly elected Labour government.

Once they join the political elite, people’s egalitarianism has a remarkable way of evaporating.

* * *

THE TV NEWS recently showed us a defendant in the dock in Waitakere District Court on charges of escaping from police custody in Auckland Hospital.

Throughout his appearance, he was gesticulating and waving. At one point he made a defiant gesture to the TV camera. The reporter told us the man appeared to be conducting a conversation, using signs and gestures, with someone in the body of the court.

There was a time when such behaviour wouldn’t have been tolerated. At the first raise of his hand the defendant would have been firmly told by any policeman in the vicinity to behave himself. If that didn’t work, he would have been fixed with an icy glower from the Bench and ordered to be taken back down to the cells until he learned to show some respect.

If the defendant had the misfortune to strike a crusty old magistrate like the irascible Ben Scully, a legend in his day, he might well have been convicted of contempt without further ado.

Yet the policemen accompanying the defendant in the Waitakere court didn’t raise an eyebrow and evidently the judge said nothing about his behaviour. We can assume from this that such antics are commonplace.

When criminals are routinely allowed to get away with minor infractions, it’s hardly surprising that they feel emboldened to proceed to more serious offences. This is the theory behind the “broken windows” model of policing that has been effective overseas. Arrest the vandals who smash windows, the theory goes, and they might be discouraged from committing worse crimes.

Applying the same rationale, our lamentable crime rate might start to improve if the courts showed less tolerance toward arrogant young punks like the Waitakere show-off.

* * *

ONE UNSATISFYING aspect of Osama bin Laden’s death is that we don’t know whether he experienced the same terror that he and his followers inflicted on thousands of innocent people.

It’s possible, of course, that he felt no fear. He may have faced death with the disciplined composure of the true fanatic, convinced he would be glorified as an Islamic martyr.

On the other hand, he may have had a few minutes in which to experience something of the same terrible premonition of doom that the victims of 9/11 and other Al Qaeda atrocities must have felt in the last moments of their lives.

Was he gripped by panic at the sound of shooting and the clatter of boots coming up the stairs to his hideout? Did he have time to grasp the finality of his imminent fate? We can only hope so.

If he did, it would have been mercifully brief, unlike the agony and torment suffered by passengers in the doomed airliners over New York and Pennsylvania, or those trapped on the upper levels of the Twin Towers.

Whichever way you look at it, bin Laden got off lightly. A more appropriate fate would have been a long period of imprisonment in which he could have pondered the prospect of an ignoble death by execution.

And again ...

2011-05-18T09:39:00.001+12:00

Today it was the turn of the Dominion Post to use the loaded adjective "infamous" in connection with the Iwi/Kiwi billboard of the 2005 election campaign. Is there a competition within the press gallery to see how often the word can be used to smear anything connected with Don Brash?

That word again

2011-05-17T10:47:00.000+12:00

There’s that word “infamous” again – this time in a New Zealand Herald story by political reporter Adam Bennett. And once again, it pops up in a story about Don Brash. Funny, that.

Last time (see blog post dated May 5) it was Brash’s Orewa speech in 2004 that was deemed infamous (“evil, vile, disgraceful”). This time it’s advertising man John Ansell, who created the “Iwi/Kiwi” billboards for the National Party billboards in 2005.

The Orewa speech and Iwi/Kiwi billboards may have been considered evil, vile and disgraceful by political journalists, but they were clearly in tune with public thinking. In the subsequent election, National recovered from its worst-ever thrashing at the polls to win 39 percent of the vote – just two percentage points shy of Labour.

Given that it’s obvious the public didn’t regard the Orewa speech or the billboards as evil, vile or disgraceful, what are press gallery journalists trying to say when they use the word “infamous”? Is the parliamentary press gallery really so out of step with the people who consume the news? Do political journalists know better than the voters? Or is this just another loose use of language by reporters with only a rudimentary grasp of English?

Devastation on the Hawke's Bay coast

2011-05-12T16:34:00.000+12:00

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, May 11.)

The coastal strip of Central Hawke’s Bay that was devastated by a freak storm recently is very familiar to me. In my childhood and teenage years, the line of sandy beaches that stretches from Kairakau in the north to Porangahau in the south was something of a summer playground.

One of my earliest memories is of a summer holiday in the shearers’ quarters on the sheep station at Kairakau, which were made available to my family out of gratitude for my father’s work in supervising the building of the electricity transmission line that connected the area to the national grid. Most remote properties on that coast had previously depended on generators.

In the 1970s, when I had children of my own, we enjoyed summer holidays in Dad’s home-built caravan at Kairakau. It’s still one of my favourite beaches.

As a teenager I tended to favour Pourerere, further south. Not only was it livelier (it had a younger demographic, in today’s parlance) but I had a friend whose family owned a bach there - although in Hawke’s Bay, the farming families that own seaside properties have always preferred the posher term “cottages”.

In those days the main cluster of baches at Pourerere, known to all as “the settlement”, was accessible only via the beach at low tide. Its relative inaccessibility lent the place a certain romantic aura and I had mixed feelings when a road was finally built along the foreshore in the 1970s.

Further south again, you come to Aramoana. It was off the coastal reef between Pourerere and Aramoana that my oldest brother drowned in a scuba diving accident in 1958, aged only 21. It was a long time before my parents could bring themselves to revisit that stretch of grief-laden coastline.

Like other beaches on that coast, Aramoana had a basic camping ground, but 10 years or so ago it was transformed into an up-market subdivision called Shoal Bay. I can only presume that the unimaginative name Shoal Bay was preferred over the poetic-sounding Aramoana to avoid negative associations with another Aramoana near Dunedin.

From Aramoana, at low tide and with the right sort of vehicle, you could carry on south to Blackhead. Then you had to cut inland to reach Porangahau, which I recall visiting as a boy with a friend and his father, who was our family GP in Waipukurau. He had patients in the small, predominantly Maori community at Porangahau and we would occasionally accompany him on his calls, driving at breakneck speed on winding metal roads in a 1953 DeSoto. (All country doctors had a reputation in those days for being wild drivers).

There are isolated sheep stations all along this stretch of coast, many of them farmed continuously by the same families since the 19th century. It’s not easy country: the coastal hills are steep and notoriously prone to slips. In the early days, they had no road access. The only way to get wool to market was to load it onto horse-drawn wagons and haul them out into the surf, where the wool bales would be transferred to lighters and then taken to a waiting ship further out.

There were easier ways to make a living, but those 19th century farming families were resourceful and resilient. Some became very wealthy and built magnificent homesteads (many of which, sadly, burned down, a common fate in the days before sprinklers and smoke alarms).

The descendants of those pioneers will need to call on that same resourcefulness and resilience in the months and years ahead, because the storm that struck in the week after Easter caused damage on a scale never seen before.

Some farmers lost up to 50 percent of their land. Entire hillsides have been stripped back to greasy papa bedrock and will never be farmed again. At Mangakuri Station, between Kairakau and Pourerere, 400 lambs were washed out to sea.

It was an especially cruel blow because things were looking up for sheep and beef farmers after several hard years. Meat and wool prices are at their highest levels for years and farmers have enjoyed a benevolent summer and autumn. To be dealt such a savage blow just when they were relishing a long-awaited recovery must have made the pain even harder to bear.

It takes a special sort of character to be a farmer. I can think of no other occupational group that is at the mercy of so many factors beyond their control: the weather, prices, the fickleness of the consumer and the exchange rate, to name some of the more obvious ones.

For some, the stress becomes intolerable. The chief coroner, Neil MacLean, sounded the alarm recently over the high suicide rate among farmers – 25 a year. He spoke of the mental and emotional toll caused by isolation, long hours, lack of sleep, erratic financial returns, pressure from banks and ever-increasing demands for compliance with new rules and regulations.

Matters are made worse because farmers by tradition are supposed to be staunch and stoical, so are usually reluctant to seek help. Traditional rural support networks such as sports clubs and churches are in decline and to make things worse still, Mum and Dad are often alone on the farm because their children see no future in farming and have migrated to towns and cities where life is more comfortable. The average age of the New Zealand farmer is 58.

Should we care? You bet we should.

During the 1980s and 90s it became fashionable to dismiss farming as a sunset industry. Politicians and pinstripe-suited policy makers had visions of New Zealand becoming a Switzerland of the South Pacific; an international centre for financial services. An economic activity as unglamorous as farming had no place in their grandiose aspirations. Even economists lost sight of the importance of the rural sector.

We now know better. Farming remains essential to this country’s prosperity, just as it always been. Those Central Hawke’s Bay farmers gazing in despair at their dead livestock, their wrecked fences, their denuded hillsides and their mud-smothered paddocks deserve our sympathy and support, for pragmatic as well as humanitarian reasons.

That "infamous" Orewa speech

2011-05-11T10:28:00.001+12:00

Sometimes it’s the apparently offhand remark, the casual throwaway line, that gives the game away. A journalist can convey almost as much with a single loaded word as with a full-on rant.

In an item about National MP Georgina te Heuheu’s impending retirement last night, TV3 political editor Duncan Garner referred to her falling-out with former National leader Don Brash following Brash’s “now infamous Orewa speech” – Garner’s words – in 2004.

Let’s get this straight. “Infamous” means evil, vile or disgraceful. Brash’s Orewa speech, in which he attacked race-based privilege and advanced the perfectly laudable principle of one law for all, was infamous only in the eyes of Maori radicals, the Left and much of the parliamentary press gallery.

The media attacks on Brash that followed his speech were some of the most savage I can recall, but his message resonated with the wider public and took a previously down-and-out National Party within a whisker of victory in 2005. That election gave Labour such a fright that it threw its previous fiscal prudence to the wind and embarked on a desperate three-year vote-buying campaign that substantially contributed to the mess we’re in now.

Garner’s use of the word “infamous” suggests that elements of the media are still determined to portray Brash as racist. But if Garner really considers the speech to have been infamous, he’s hopelessly out of touch with what most New Zealanders apparently think.

Nothing new there, of course. Political journalists may be up with the play in Wellington, but they’re ill-equipped to know what people are thinking in places like Dannevirke, Hamilton and Timaru – and don’t believe them when they try to convince you otherwise.

I have noticed in the past that Australian political journalists, who lean overwhelmingly to the Left, are never more vicious in their attacks on centre-Right politicians than when they sense conservative ideas are gaining traction. Perhaps we’re seeing the same trend here.

On the other hand, maybe we should give Garner the benefit of the doubt. It’s entirely possible that a political editor who can’t pronounce Tuwharetoa (he insisted on inserting an extra syllable into it last night, not once but twice) doesn’t bother to check a dictionary to find out what “infamous” actually means.

Tradition, pride, camaraderie ... but most of all, money

2011-05-11T10:15:00.000+12:00

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, May 10.)

REMEMBER the euphoria that greeted the announcement that New Zealand would host the Rugby World Cup 2011? Well, it’s rapidly evaporating.

The realisation has dawned that this event is being staged not so much for the benefit of heartland rugby lovers – the so-called “stadium of four million”, to quote the seductive PR line New Zealand rugby bosses used in their successful Cup bid – as for the interests of World Rugby Inc and its big-business partners, the satellite TV broadcasters and corporate sponsors.

Oh, and we shouldn’t forget the politicians, who will doubtless be granted access to the plushest hospitality boxes in return for their tireless cheerleading efforts.

I detect a mood of growing public scepticism and disenchantment, even among rugby fans. You know something has gone seriously wrong when a high-profile sports writer, the New Zealand Herald’s Chris Rattue, declares we were sold a pup.

Economists are pooh-poohing the projected economic returns from the RWC as wildly optimistic Even the potential global TV audience is said to have been greatly overstated.

The RWC website tells us the event is all about tradition, pride, intensity and camaraderie. Strangely, it neglects to mention the real driving force, which is money.

It’s all about money. We spend it, and the International Rugby Board pockets it.

We spend it in the form of massive public investment – one estimate puts it at $1 billion-plus – in stadiums and infrastructure, to ensure everything is up to the ultra-fussy standards of the IRB and the broadcasters. Never mind that the country is already awash in debt and floundering economically.

We also spend it in the form of admission prices, which are far higher for All Black matches than for any other games. Tickets to watch the ABs range from $61 for a child in the least desirable seating areas to $460 for a “Category A” adult, plus a $15 “handling fee” for every ticket. We may be generously underwriting the event, but clearly there are no concessions to New Zealand rugby fans.

Visitors from overseas are being ripped off too, as greedy accommodation providers hike room rates by as much as 500 percent. It’s hardly surprising that interest from Australia is reported to be sluggish, with one travel agent quoted as saying rugby fans are balking at paying $5000 to cross the Tasman for just one game.

Greed may turn out to be the undoing of the RWC, and it starts with the organisers.

In the meantime, countless operators of legitimate businesses are fretting that they will fall foul of the ridiculous and repressive Major Events Management Act by mentioning forbidden words such as “world” and “rugby” in their advertising.

If I may use a sleazy metaphor, New Zealand is like a helpless maiden being ravaged while the politicians, the very people who should be protecting her, hold her down and insist she’s enjoying it.

* * *

OF COURSE, none of the above stops me from hoping New Zealand will win the Webb-Ellis trophy. We might as well salvage whatever pride we can from this costly extravaganza.

But as Sydney rugby guru Spiro Zavos warns, nothing can be taken for granted. Promoting his book How To Watch The Rugby World Cup 2011, Zavos says there are half a dozen teams that are capable of winning “on the day”.

The All Blacks may be rated the best in the world, but when it comes down to the RWC final, assuming they make it that far, the result may turn on something as fickle as the bounce of the ball or a referee’s call.

I like Zavos’s laconic response when people ask him who’s going to win. “We’re having a rugby match to find that out,” he tells them.

* * *

I BET I wasn’t the only person who bristled at the electronic signboards on all the highways over Easter weekend sternly reminding us that the police were out on the roads in numbers.

There’s something irritating about this finger-wagging approach to policing. It’s not only intrusive, in a slightly unsettling Big Brother fashion, but patronising too.

The underlying assumption seems to be that all motorists are rampant hoons in the making, kept in check only by the knowledge that the police are watching us and ready to pounce.

This head-prefect approach goes hand-in-hand with the increasing propensity for senior police officers to lecture us on our supposed behavioural failings – for example, tut-tutting over liquor consumption.

Fear of the cops is no bad thing. In fact I think it should be encouraged. But public respect for the police isn’t enhanced by their fondness for nannying us. Most people, I’m sure, would prefer them to concentrate on collaring villains rather than instructing us to sit up straight and eat our greens.

Incidentally, the electronic signboards at Easter were a giant fib. In several hundred kilometres of driving, I saw hardly a single police car.

What's going on here?

2011-05-05T08:17:00.000+12:00

I'm puzzled by the reported fuss over whether or not to release photos of the dead Osama bin Laden. TV3 News had a photo of his bloodied, grotesque face in its 6pm News on Monday night, preceded by a warning that the picture was graphic (which it was) and that viewers might find it disturbing. Intriguingly, the same channel last night reported the White House's indecision over the release of the photo without mentioning that it had already appeared on their main evening bulletin two nights before. What's going on here? Did TV3 get heavied for broadcasting the image without authorisation? Was the photo shown on Monday night a fake? I think we should be told.

Spiro and Orry have a lot to answer for

2011-05-04T12:34:00.003+12:00

Something unusual happened to me last night. I found myself talking with two men who, it suddenly occurred to me, had both been instrumental – quite unintentionally – in propelling me into a career in journalism.

One was the former Wellingtonian Spiro Zavos, long domiciled in Sydney, where he writes about rugby for the Sydney Morning Herald and the sports website The Roar. The occasion was the launch of Spiro’s book, How to Watch the Rugby World Cup 2011 – his eighth rugby book, and the latest in a series of “How to” titles released by the innovative niche Wellington publisher Awa Press.

Also in attendance was Wellington lawyer Paul O’Regan, whose wife Mary Varnham founded and runs Awa Press.

Back in 1966, when I was in the lower sixth form (as it was then known) at St Patrick’s College, Silverstream, Spiro was my history teacher and Paul, who was a year ahead of me, edited a school newspaper called the Silverstreamer.

I was a newcomer to Silverstream, having been dispatched there because of my undistinguished academic record at Central Hawke’s Bay College. “Orry”, as Paul was known (there were three O'Regan brothers at Silverstream, all known as Orry), promptly signed me up as pop music columnist for the Silverstreamer for no better reason, I suspect, than that my brother Justin hosted the nightly Sunset Show on 2ZB, which all the Silverstream boarders listened to on their transistor radios. As it happened, I loved music and needed no encouragement. So Paul gave me my first taste of journalism, and my first byline.

Spiro’s contribution came several months later. The heroic instigators of Radio Hauraki were trying to break the state’s monopoly on broadcasting and the Holyoake government was doing everything it could to stop them. I was appalled at the lengths ministers and bureaucrats were prepared to go in their efforts to prevent the pirate ship Tiri putting to sea and broadcasting from beyond the territorial limit.

Spiro was always good for a discussion on the issues of the day – like many good teachers, he was easily distracted – and he readily responded when I asked what he thought about the Radio Hauraki furore. He said the government had adopted the Nazi tactic of using a law out of context to suit its own purposes.

I liked the sound of that and promptly wrote a letter to the editor of The Dominion, shamelessly repeating Spiro’s line as if it were my own. It was published as the lead letter – my first appearance in print (and, I hope, the last time I used someone else’s words without due attribution).

Up until that time I’d had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but it may have been the experience of writing that pop column, and seeing my letter in print in the Dom, that encouraged me a few months later to make the appointment with the editor of the Evening Post that resulted in my first job. If so, then Orry and Spiro have a lot to answer for.

Big-boots journalism

2011-05-01T08:29:00.000+12:00

One of the most striking aspects of the drama surrounding the Act leadership has been the venomous nature of much of the media coverage.

I can’t think of any political party that has aroused more naked hostility from journalists. Even when the press gallery was gunning for Winston Peters, there was a tendency to cut him some slack because … well, because he was Winston Peters, and everyone expected him to be shifty, evasive and generally behave disgracefully.

No such tolerance is exercised when it comes to Act. The media malice is undisguised and unrelenting.

Admittedly, Rodney Hide and Don Brash have at times invited ridicule. I like Hide, but I struggled to take him seriously from the time he demeaned himself by taking part in Dancing With the Stars (in my book, an even more lamentable lapse of judgment than globe-trotting with his girlfriend at the taxpayers’ expense). And I wonder whether Brash still lies awake at night rueing the fact that he was talked into a series of silly photo opportunities during the 2005 election campaign.

But do these follies justify endless recycling of news footage showing Hide dropping his dancing partner, or of Brash clumsily trying to insert himself into the cramped driver’s compartment of a stock car? There is a point at which constant repetition of those scenes – and we saw them several times during the TV news last week – becomes more than simply gratuitous. The unmistakeable message it conveys is that these men are clowns, and we’d be mugs to think that either of them should be worthy of anyone’s support.

This, in the same week as we were expected to swallow mad John Minto’s straight-faced assertion on the national news that the new party formed by Hone Harawira for a tiny minority of the bitter, the angry and the vengeful represents “mainstream” New Zealand. I note that this flat-earth pronouncement passed without so much as an involuntary gasp of disbelief on the part of the reporter.

Interesting, that. Radical parties on the Left are treated with kid gloves; radical parties on the Right, on the other hand, are fair game for vilification.

We are, of course, now well accustomed to being told what to think by political journalists, especially on television, but TV3’s Patrick Gower takes things to a new level. Gower revels in his role as TV3’s hatchet man and seems to regard political journalism as some sort of gladiatorial spectator sport in which the spoils go to whichever reporter can perfect the most contemptuous sneer. I can’t watch him without being reminded of Stanley Baldwin’s famous description of the British press: “power without responsibility … the prerogative of the harlot through the ages”. (The line actually came from his cousin Rudyard Kipling, but Baldwin made it his own.)

Recalling a time when people who got beyond themselves were said to be too big for their boots, I call this big-boots journalism. It’s a deeply unattractive phenomenon in which journalists make the mistake of thinking they deserve to be more than mere reporters or observers. They consider themselves key players, positioned at the centre of the action and with the power – and, what’s more, the right – to influence events. The tragedy is that many politicians, fearful of the power of television, encourage them in this belief.

This is a distortion not just of the journalist’s traditional role, but of democracy itself. It shows a telling lack of respect for the ability of ordinary people to decide for themselves which politicians might be worthy of their support.

Journalists overstep the mark when they tell us what to think. As long as they do their basic job properly, which is simply to tell us what’s going on, their viewers and readers are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves what to make of it all. They don’t need smug, preening journalists making lofty pronouncements about who might be fit or unfit for office.

And here’s something else that journalists too often overlook. They like to think of themselves as somehow morally superior to devious, venal politicians. I suspect many of them genuinely believe the American journalist Frank H Simonds’ famous line that there’s only one way for a journalist to look at a politician, and that’s down. But in fact politicians in a democracy will always have one huge moral advantage over the journalists who pass judgment on them. That is that ultimately, they must subject themselves to the public’s judgment. I can think of more than a few journalists whose overweening self-confidence would rapidly evaporate if they had to submit to a similar test.

An intolerable distortion of democracy

2011-04-28T16:49:00.000+12:00

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, April 27.)

Right now I’m glad I don’t live in Auckland. This, however, has nothing to do with the usual anti-Auckland prejudice exhibited by people living south of the Bombay Hill.

No, the reason I’m pleased not to be a resident of Auckland is that I would be seething with resentment at the way democracy has been hijacked under the city’s new governance arrangements.

The new “super city” was created in the name of efficiency. The rationale was that Auckland could never fulfil its true potential while it consisted of several municipal entities (Auckland, North Shore, Manukau and Waitakere, to name the main ones), each marching to the beat of its own drum.

Public misgivings about the forced merger of the old councils mostly centred on whether the mechanisms for democratic participation, such as community boards, would be adequate. But as the new council gets up to speed, Aucklanders are becoming acutely aware of other shortcomings.

For one thing, both the New Zealand Herald and Radio New Zealand have reported mounting concerns about secrecy. The new agencies responsible for services such as water and transport are not obliged to admit the public or the media to their meetings, or even to reveal their agendas.

Decisions on matters of such obvious public importance as passenger transport fare increases have been made behind closed doors. According to Radio New Zealand, fare increases weren’t even mentioned on the sketchy agenda issued to the media ahead of last month’s Auckland Transport meeting.

According to an Automobile Association spokesman, most of Auckland’s transport governance is being undertaken in “complete secrecy”. Even deputy mayor Penny Hulse criticises the agency’s propensity for making key decisions in private. So much for Mayor Len Brown’s promises of transparency.

Radio New Zealand also reported that Watercare, the agency responsible for Auckland’s water supply, has its head office in central Auckland but chooses to hold its meetings at a hard-to-reach venue in suburban Mangere, the clear implication being that the agency wants to discourage pesky members of the public from turning up and asking to know what’s going on.

Mayor Brown lamely explains all this by saying that many appointees to the new agencies come from commercial rather than public sector backgrounds and aren’t accustomed to demands for public scrutiny. We heard the same excuse when government departments became state-owned enterprises back in the 1980s and enthusiastically adopted a private-sector culture, seizing on commercial sensitivity as an excuse for avoiding public accountability.

For all his talk of openness, it was Mr Brown himself who opposed a call from nine councillors for public debate on a funding package for the new Auckland Council’s Maori Statutory Board.

You can understand Mr Brown’s sensitivity, because this is where things get really scandalous.

Back in February, the council’s strategy and finance committee approved (in a closed meeting, of course) a budget of $3.4 million for the non-elected Maori board. Predictably, there was a public uproar. But when the full council cut back the allocation to $1.9 million – still several times more than the $400,000 ratepayers had been told the board would cost – the nine-member board had the chutzpah (I don’t know the appropriate Maori word, so the Yiddish one will have to do) to take legal action against the council. At the public’s expense, of course.

To its shame, the council capitulated. And when the matter came back before councillors this month, Mr Brown ensured that it was dealt with out of public view, no doubt to minimise political embarrassment.

The council’s PR spin doctors sold the outcome of that meeting as a compromise under which the council would split the difference between what the Maori board was demanding and what the council had offered. But as Herald columnist Brian Rudman pointed out, once all the extras were added up – support services, office accommodation and so forth – the final budget was only $300,000 short of the outrageous original demand.

The ratepayers, in short, were comprehensively shafted.

That much of this happened in secret is only the lesser part of the scandal. Far more outrageous is that a non-elected board of Maori advisors – chosen by an unaccountable “iwi selection body” and meekly rubber-stamped by a National government anxious to stay onside with the Maori Party – has been able to bully an elected council into doing things its way, and to hell with the cost to ratepayers.

But hang on; it gets even worse. Two representatives of that non-elected Maori Statutory Body will have full voting rights on council committees – in other words, equal power with elected councillors.

This is a travesty that even the Left finds offensive. MP Phil Twyford, the Labour Party’s Auckland issues spokesman, said it went against a fundamental principle of democracy. And the Left-leaning Rudman wrote that he couldn’t think of any model of democracy in which government appointees, not elected by the people they purported to represent, shared voting rights with elected representatives.

I agree. Mind you, Labour wanted dedicated Maori seats on the council, similar to those in Parliament – and that would be an intolerable distortion of democracy too.

Should we non-Aucklanders be concerned? Yes, because once special rights for Maori are entrenched in Auckland they will set a precedent that will be applied elsewhere.

Maoridom, citing special status as tangata whenua, has already succeeded in uncoupling itself from normal democratic principles. The creation of dedicated Maori seats on the Bay of Plenty Regional Council in 2004 – modelled on the anachronistic Maori seats in Parliament, whose existence has become even less defensible since the advent of MMP – effectively created a parallel electoral system that specially favours Maori.

Local Government Minister Rodney Hide ruled out a similar arrangement in Auckland, but Maori have ended up wielding disproportionate power anyway. Maori opinion carries more weight than non-Maori in Auckland’s new governance arrangements, yet there is less accountability; in fact none. A fundamental and long-standing democratic nexus has been severed.

Where this will lead, in an increasingly multicultural society, remains to be seen. At some point the burgeoning Maori sense of entitlement may collide head-on with the rising expectations of other ethnic groups such as Asians, who will soon outnumber them.

As Rudman pointedly asked last week, what will John Key and Mayor Brown say when the Chinese knock on their doors and ask for guaranteed council seats like those awarded to Maori? Through their willingness to accede to Maori demands, today’s politicians risk piling up potentially ugly problems for future generations to untangle.