Post-Weinstein, we're navigating new territory

(First published in The Dominion Post, December 29.)

In 2014 the then leader of the Labour Party, David Cunliffe, controversially apologised for being a man.

Some commentators ridiculed him for wallowing in liberal male middle-class guilt. To others, it just looked like an attempt to ingratiate himself with women voters.

But you could see what Cunliffe was getting at. He was speaking at a Women’s Refuge symposium and the subject was male violence. He made the point that most sexual abuse and domestic violence was perpetrated by men, and who could dispute that?

Cunliffe’s mistake was to assume personal responsibility for what some other men did. But following the worldwide outpouring of women’s fury at sexual harassment, I imagine many more men are now wondering whether they should feel ashamed to be male.

A couple of things are clear. One is that sexual harassment by rich and powerful men has been going on for a very long time. The other is that the perpetrators have been protected and encouraged up till now by the silence of their victims – a silence that almost amounted to complicity.

I’m not sure what’s changed, but women who previously kept quiet have now come out into the open. Perhaps there’s an element of opportunism in some of the accusations being made, but what’s not in doubt is that far too many men behave abominably toward women.

And while we’ve heard a lot about celebrities who have gone to the media with their accounts of harassment and molestation, there remains an infinitely greater number of powerless, anonymous women suffering silently in factories, restaurants, offices and other workplaces.

Sexual harassment mystifies me. What pleasure could a man get from sex with a woman who doesn’t want it? Groping, Donald Trump-style, is equally hard to explain. It can only be about humiliating and demeaning the victim.

In those circumstances sex isn’t about mutual pleasure. It becomes a means of asserting power. The feminists are right about this.

I have known men who used their positions to obtain sexual favours. They didn’t boast about it, so perhaps there was some part of their conscience that told them it wasn’t something to be proud of.

It was usually the victims who revealed it, and I was shocked by their apparent acceptance of it, as if having sex with the boss was something they had to do to get ahead.

Some of these women were young and attractive while the men they slept with were decades older and slobs – Harvey Weinstein types. Even if one accepts that power is an aphrodisiac, and that some women are attracted to men in positions of influence, there are surely limits.

Anyway, back to David Cunliffe. In the light of what has now been revealed about rampant sexual harassment at the highest levels of politics and the entertainment business, should all men feel guilty?

There is an extreme school of feminism, after all, which holds that all men are rapists. It’s not unusual to hear the entire male sex disparaged as if all men can’t help behaving like dogs around a bitch on heat.

But I would guess that only a relatively small proportion of men are sexual predators, and those who are not in that category don’t need to do a Cunliffe in atonement for the sins of others.

What we will have to do, however, is learn some new rules, because one consequence of the “me too” harassment saga is that it will redefine relations between the sexes, and not necessarily for the better. 

Men will find it harder to discern where the boundary lies between mere flirtation, which many women welcome and enjoy, and harassment.

Physical contact, in particular, has become a minefield. It brought down Garrison Keillor, the revered former host of the American radio show A Prairie Home Companion.

What Keillor characterises as a misdirected pat on a female colleague’s bare back years ago, which he says he apologised for at the time and thought had been forgotten because the woman seemed to remain friendly with him, came back to bite him last month when he got a phone call from her lawyer. 

Now he’s in disgrace and his former employer has taken such fright that it’s changed the name of his old show.

At what point, I wonder, does a touch or a kiss become harassment?

Blatant groping or an uninvited hand up a skirt can’t be mistaken for anything other than molestation, but there’s now an undefined grey area between what’s acceptable and what’s not.

Like the kindergarten teacher who no longer feels it's safe to cuddle an upset child, we're all having to navigate new territory.

Men behaving badly

(First published in the Dominion Post, September 16.)

I’ve never cared much for David Cunliffe, but I felt some sympathy for him back in 2014 when, as Labour Party leader, he made his apology for being a man.

Cunliffe copped a lot of stick for that. According to some commentators, the howls of condemnation were a factor in Labour’s decision to dump him as leader.

But really, what was so wrong about what he said? Cunliffe was talking about sexual abuse and family violence, which he correctly described as being overwhelmingly perpetrated by men. He talked about the “deep-seated sexism” still prevalent in New Zealand.

Okay, he may have been trying to ingratiate himself with the feminist lobby. But if he was saying that he sometimes felt ashamed when he saw how other men behaved … well, I do, too.

Example one: Bill Cosby. He could have occupied a place of honour in American entertainment history as the first black male to play a leading role in a prime-time TV series (I Spy). Instead he will be remembered for accusations that he was a serial sexual assaulter of attractive young women.

The evidence against Cosby is compelling. He thought those women were fair game and relied on his star appeal to draw them into his web.

Example two: Roger Ailes.  Ailes, the former boss of Fox News, is a fat old man. It’s hard to imagine any woman finding him sexually attractive. But he’s a powerful fat old man, and he used his power to try to get women into bed with him.

Ailes pressed news anchor Gretchen Carlson to have sex with him and when she refused, he sabotaged her career. He called her a man-hater who needed to learn how to “get on with the boys”.  But the former Miss America bit back and Ailes ended up being fired by Fox News, which paid Carlson $US20 million (a preposterous sum, but that’s America for you) in compensation.

Example three: The Chiefs. The Hamilton-based Super Rugby team would surely recognise the phrase “getting on with the boys”. Being one of the boys is a familiar phenomenon in male sport. It’s an excuse for never having to grow up and for boorish behaviour under the guise of a primitive ritual known as male bonding.

The Chiefs were being boys when they had their “Mad Monday” at Okoroire Springs Hotel and invited a stripper whom they allegedly pawed and sexually propositioned.

You probably thought, as I did, that rugby players acting like dogs on heat were something from the 1970s. Apparently not.

Mind you, Scarlette the stripper isn’t blameless. In fact she’s part of the problem. By buying into that leering, blokey male culture, she encourages men to regard women as playthings for their pleasure. 

You have to wonder where the past few decades have gone. Feminism was supposed to make men aware of women’s right to be treated with respect, but somewhere along the line things went badly askew.

Which brings me to example four: The infamous Roast Busters. Bad behaviour by older men might be explained as the result of lingering attitudes from an era when people knew no better, but here were male teenagers from middle-class Auckland suburbs playing out the same ugly old pattern.

Oh, I almost forgot Colin Craig. If evidence in recent defamation proceedings is to be believed, even gawky, supposedly pious family men can’t help pressing their attentions on women when the adrenalin of politics gives them delusions of sexual irresistibility.

The sense of male sexual entitlement is endemic. Many of us know of women who have been raped and remained silent. They may not have been bashed into submission, but they were raped nonetheless.

In a newspaper column earlier this year, the singer Lizzie Marvelly graphically described the sexual harassment she had endured from men in the music business. She said it was like a cancer in the industry.

I admit I don’t understand this. What possible pleasure can a man get from having sex with a woman who makes it plain she doesn’t want it and isn’t enjoying it?

If sex is supposed to be about the mutual giving of pleasure between consenting partners, then sex as a result of coercion isn’t sex at all. The feminists are right on this point: it’s really about men enjoying power over women.

So yes, when I read about sexual predators, I’m ashamed too. I may not be responsible for what these men did, but that doesn’t stop me feeling tarnished by association.

Deceived and demoralised

(First published in The Dominion Post, October 3.)

I WONDER, was this the most demoralising election result ever for the New Zealand left?

There was an excited buzz in the left-wing blogosphere and in social media in the weeks leading up to the election. There seemed to be a sense that victory was in their grasp, even when the polls suggested otherwise. But they were cruelly deceived.

Their optimism is easily explained. In the early stages of the campaign, they saw the fallout from Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics dominating the news bulletins night after night.

After that firestorm had abated, the media turned its attention to Kim Dotcom’s Moment of Truth, with its dazzling line-up of high-profile journalists and leakers from overseas, all eager to tell us how morally bankrupt our government was.

Those on the left observed the adulation heaped on Hager, who was lionised at speaking engagements. They thrilled at the big turnouts attracted by Dotcom and his incongruous handmaiden, Laila Harré. And they deduced from all this that an unstoppable momentum was building, the inevitable result of which would be the unceremonious dispatch of the Key government.

They were wrong. It was a massive indulgence in wishful thinking, and it must have made the left’s defeat even more crushing psychologically.

How could they have been so misled? That’s easy to explain too.

Consider the enthusiastic capacity crowd at Dotcom’s Moment of Truth event and the full halls he addressed on his barnstorming campaign through the country. The left interpreted this as evidence of an irresistible groundswell of discontent, when it was nothing of the sort.

Someone as novel and entertaining as Dotcom was bound to attract crowds, especially in provincial centres where not much happens. In any case, there are always enough true believers to fill halls and give the impression something big is afoot.

Alas, it was all an illusion. The great mass of New Zealanders, the Joe Average types who determine election results, were unmoved.  They watched the overheated news coverage on television, read the headlines and marvelled at the unpleasantness of it all. Then, on September 20, they went into the ballot booths and voted National.

Now the left is in disarray, as is obvious from the painful recriminations within the Labour Party. David Cunliffe inevitably became the scapegoat for Labour’s humiliation even though he ran a tolerably good campaign.

Ironically, the controversy over Dirty Politics and allegations of illegal state surveillance, all of which should have been helpful to Labour, deprived Cunliffe of the opportunity to articulate the party’s policies on issues closer to the concerns of ordinary people.  

The question now is whether Labour can recover from its self-evisceration in time to mount a credible challenge in 2017. When a veteran loyalist like Sir Bob Harvey is questioning whether the party should do away with its traditional red and even consider changing its name, there’s clearly a deep identity crisis to be resolved.

Labour still hasn’t determined whether it’s a party of the blue-collar working class (think South Auckland) or of the university-educated, inner city-dwelling liberal left (think Mt Victoria).

The Greens are licking their wounds too. They worked hard to make themselves more palatable to the wider electorate. They mounted an effective campaign and seemed supremely confident that this would be their moment, but the voters had other ideas. The Greens’ message didn’t seem to resonate beyond their core supporters.

They too must now withdraw to figure out how it all went so wrong. Small wonder that we’ve heard barely a peep from them since election night.

Internet-Mana is deservedly history. Never has a new party made so much noise for so little reward.

Will Harré and John Minto get the message and ride off into the sunset? Somehow I doubt it. Zealots don’t give up easily; they are sustained by an overwhelming sense of righteousness and rationalise defeat by convincing themselves that their fellow citizens are either suckers or knaves.

The net effect of the election result is that the New Zealand left must contemplate the unpalatable possibility that it is now irrelevant. The noisy activists and ideologues who used up much of the oxygen during the election campaign have been exposed as hopelessly out of touch with the reality of most New Zealanders’ lives.

They will of course continue shouting in their own echo chamber. That’s what they do. But after the drubbing of September 20, it will be a long time before they convince anyone that they have a message worth listening to.

This was not in the Left's script

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, September 24.)]

What an extraordinary election campaign. And what an extraordinary result.

I am writing this column on the morning after. By the time it’s published, most of the dust will have settled. But even at the time of writing, I think some firm conclusions can be drawn

Obviously the result can be seen as an endorsement of the National-led government. But for me the really significant point was that voters overwhelmingly repudiated concerted efforts by outsiders to sway the outcome.

New Zealanders were emphatically saying this was their election and they weren’t going to have it hijacked by agenda-driven activists, some of them with no stake in the country.

By outsiders I don’t just mean literal outsiders such as Kim Dotcom, the journalist Glenn Greenwald and the security leaker Edward Snowden. I include anyone trying to exert influence from the sidelines.

That means Nicky Hager, whose book Dirty Politics was obviously timed to derail National’s election campaign. It’s not that Hager was wrong to expose the unsavoury goings-on detailed in his book. National deserved to be shamed and Hager was entitled to the scalp of cabinet minister Judith Collins.

But questions remain about his motive, his method and most of all his timing. It’s reasonable to ask whether he was just as guilty of trying to influence an election as the furtive National Party funders he exposed in his 2005 book The Hollow Men.

The media firestorm over Dirty Politics dominated the first weeks of the campaign. When that subsided, it was Dotcom’s turn. But the momentum of the campaign shifted noticeably after the German’s much-touted “Moment of Truth” event in the Auckland Town Hall.

Again, it was a carefully orchestrated attempt to sabotage National. All those high-profile speakers, parachuted in or beamed in by video link from their various boltholes; it all looked a bit too obvious.

It didn’t help that Dotcom failed to deliver on his promise to expose John Key as a liar, and even less that he then angrily turned on journalists when they challenged him. Suddenly the public saw the less benign side of the fun-loving German.

No one can say with absolute certainty why people vote the way they do, but as the campaign went into its final days I sensed a stiffening public resistance to all these finger-wagging interlopers telling us how rotten our government was.

If I’m right, it’s highly ironic that it was the Left, not the Right, that was damaged.  Labour’s support collapsed and the Greens fell far short of the ambitious goal they had set themselves.

This was the law of unintended consequences kicking in big-time. It was not the outcome that the Left had scripted for itself.

Interviewed on Sunday morning, Labour leader David Cunliffe said the firestorms over Dirty Politics and state surveillance had sucked up all the oxygen in the campaign, leaving little opportunity for voters to consider policy issues.

I’m sure he’s right. The issues that the Left had been pushing, such as child poverty and the inequality gap, hardly got a look in.

The biggest irony of all, of course, is that Dotcom’s own party was humiliatingly wiped out, taking with it three-term MP Hone Harawira.

Both men will have learned a lesson. Dotcom will have learned that New Zealanders resent big-spending outsiders throwing their weight and money around (he acknowledged, to his credit, that his influence had poisoned the Mana Party), and Harawira will have learned about the dangers of Faustian pacts.

He was seen as compromising his principles, and his people punished him for it.

I felt a bit sorry for Colin Craig, who was thwarted by the vagaries of a flawed electoral system. The cheerleaders for MMP frequently remind us of the failings of the old first-past-the-post system, but they can’t ignore the shortcomings of one that denies a seat to a party that commanded more than four percent of votes while giving two to parties with less than one per cent support.

You have to wonder, too, whether distrust of MMP explains the marked falloff in voter participation since it was introduced. Voters are cynical about MMP because they realise that the system puts more power, not less, in the hands of the politicians. That was not the promise when it was introduced.

I almost felt sorry for Cunliffe too. He was more convincing by the end of the campaign than he was at the beginning – but given the history of leaders who lose elections, it’s unlikely he’ll get another shot.

What Labour must do now, urgently, is rejuvenate. Too many of its list MPs in the last term looked as if they were merely keeping their seats warm.

The need for a vigorous opposition is never greater than when a government has convincingly won a third term and risks becoming arrogant and complacent. Democracy prevailed on Saturday, but the concern now is whether it will be up to the job of holding the government to account over the next three years.

Leave it to Maori and hope for the best

(First published in The Dominion Post, October 4.)

THE RECENT conviction of a Hawke’s Bay kaitiaki, or “guardian” of customary fisheries, makes a mockery of the word.

Napier District Court heard that authorisations issued by Rangi Spooner under customary fishing regulations covered multiple dates instead of the allowed 48-hour period. A man named Jason Brown obtained 11 such authorisations and was later convicted of illegally selling crayfish for $10 each.

A separate hearing was told that Brown caught 1730 crays, supposedly for events at his house. That’s a helluva lot of crayfish.

Spooner was convicted of failing to meet fisheries officer Kelly Pouwhare despite repeated requests arising from concern about the permits he had issued.

Under the regulations, kaitiaki – who are appointed by their iwi – can authorise Maori to exceed normal catch limits and to take undersized fish, but not for commercial gain or trade.

The authorisations are issued so that Maori can provide for whanau or guests – for example, at a tangi or wedding. It’s a recognition of their traditional rights as tangata whenua. But the system depends on trust, and Spooner’s conviction is bound to reinforce suspicions that it’s wide open to abuse.

There is a delicate issue here. Given the importance among Maori of obligations to whanau, hapu and iwi, it’s easy to imagine people in positions of trust, such as kaitiaki, being put under pressure to rort the system.

In this case, fisheries officers were on to it. But you have to wonder whether other abuses go undetected – and if so, how many.

Can we be confident that the authorities are always rigorous in ensuring the regulations are respected? Probably not, because bureaucrats and their political masters fret about being labelled culturally insensitive – or even worse, racist.  Far safer to leave Maori to police themselves and hope for the best.

Like the rest of us (indeed, arguably even more so), Maori have an interest in ensuring the protection of vulnerable fish species. If they are genuinely committed to conservation, the onus is on iwi and hapu themselves to expose and condemn anyone who lets the side down by playing fast and loose with the rules.

* * *

MY WIFE and I have been enjoying an outstanding British drama series called Broadchurch, which Television New Zealand plans to screen next year (most likely, as a cynical friend commented, at 11.30pm or thereabouts).

The series, which revolves around the trauma and upheaval caused by the murder of a schoolboy in a quiet English seaside town, reaffirms my faith in British television drama. Almost everything about it – writing, acting, editing, camerawork, music – is nigh flawless.

It’s a reminder that the British seem to have a bottomless reservoir of acting talent to draw from. The only familiar face, from a large cast, is that of David Tennant, a former Doctor Who, who plays the tormented Scottish detective investigating the case.

But Broadchurch has a drawback, and it’s one that’s increasingly common. The dialogue is so mumbled and muffled in places that we found ourselves frequently rewinding the DVD to hear critical snatches of conversation again.

Perhaps my hearing isn’t what it used to be, but I have no difficulty following what’s going on in most programmes. It’s only in movies and TV dramas (and more noticeably in American than British examples) that the dialogue is muddy.

Presumably directors demand this from their actors on the misguided assumption that it sounds more authentic. Unfortunately the problem is compounded by modern flat-screen TVs that sacrifice decent speakers for elegant looks.

In the absence of subtitles, the only option is to fork out for auxiliary speakers in the hope of clearer audio. That’s progress for you.

* * *

NEW LABOUR leader David Cunliffe is getting good notices, even from those at the opposite end of the political spectrum, such as former ACT leader Rodney Hide.

But I’m withholding judgment. I decided I disliked Mr Cunliffe when, as Minister of Health in the Clark government, he sacked the democratically elected Hawke’s Bay District Health Board, describing them as “a nasty little nest of self-perpetuating provincial elites”.  He struck me then as a politician who liked to throw his weight around just because he could.

Nothing since then has changed my view of him. In fact my opinion was reinforced by an interview with Guyon Espiner in The Listener which exposed Mr Cunliffe as precious, controlling and acutely concerned – in fact almost neurotic – about his public image.

His pronouncements before and since his election as leader suggest he’s a politician who will say whatever he thinks will ingratiate him with voters. In this respect he is disconcertingly similar to former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd.

There’s a Uriah Heep-ish quality to Mr Cunliffe: rampant ambition overlaid by a phony air of humility. Those quibbles aside, I’m sure he’s a top bloke.

John Key and that gay red jersey

(First published in the Dominion Post, November 16.)

ACUTE sensitivity disorder has gripped the nation again. The latest outbreak was touched off by prime minister John Key’s comment that a radio interviewer’s red jersey looked a bit “gay”. As predictably as Pavlov’s dogs learned to salivate at the sound of a bell, the gay lobby rose up in anger.

Protesters labelled it a slur against gays and took to the streets wearing red tops as a gesture of solidarity with the oppressed. Sir Ian McKellen, perhaps mistakenly thinking his on-screen aura of Gandalfian wisdom has somehow carried over into real life, went online to register his dismay.

I suspect most New Zealanders would have viewed the fuss with an air of worldly resignation. They have become well-accustomed to minority groups rearing up on their hind legs at every imagined slight.

If the gay rights lobby is to be believed, Mr Key’s statement was likely to excite prejudice against gay men. But what’s more likely to generate a backlash is the fuss gay activists make every time someone says anything that might be construed, however tenuously, as an attack on them.  

In many people’s eyes, it reinforces the impression – am I allowed to say this? – that they are a bit precious.

We live in a robust, liberal democracy. People say things every day that could cause upset if the maligned parties were of a mind to take offence. Most of us manage to ignore it and get on with life.

In Mr Key’s case, he was merely making an attempt to sound blokey in order to connect with that radio programme’s predominantly male, rural audience.

Politicians do this all the time, possibly without even realising it. I remember years ago hearing Helen Clark being interviewed on a youth-oriented radio station in Auckland. It was a different Helen Clark than I’d ever heard before: both her manner of speaking and the language she used were obviously calculated to communicate with that particular audience.

No one can seriously accuse Mr Key of being anti-gay. How quickly his critics forget that he has ingratiated himself with gay men too – for example, by speaking at the Big Gay Out rally in Auckland last February and posing for photographs with transvestites and bare-chested gay men.

That’s what politicians do: pander to whichever group they happen to be addressing at the time. But surely there are far worse things a prime minister could be accused of than trying to be one of the boys.

* * *

DEAR ME. The Labour Party’s problems are graver than I thought.

At the party’s annual conference on Sunday, leader David Shearer will deliver a speech that is being treated as a make-or-break moment. Many in the party are unhappy with his performance and will look to his address for a sign one way or another: either he can galvanise Labour with an inspirational, visionary speech or he becomes a footnote in the party’s history.

Trying to shore up his credentials in an article published in this paper last week, Mr Shearer was reported as saying: “I believe I have very strong views. I am very value-driven as a politician.” He went on to say he had lived the values of “opportunity, fairness and giving people a fair go”.

Really? Is that the best he can do? He “believes” he has strong views? Is he waiting for confirmation from someone else? Such equivocal language is likely to reinforce rather than counteract suspicions about his lack of fire.

And how strikingly unoriginal to say he believes in “fairness” and a “fair go”. Show me a politician who doesn’t profess to believe in a fair go. It’s probably the most shop-soiled cliché in the politician’s lexicon.

Mr Shearer’s comments ahead of his speech hardly seem likely to create a sense of feverish anticipation. But then, are his prospective rivals any more promising?

The Listener recently published a profile of another Labour Party David, the ambitious David Cunliffe, and it seems he too has trouble breaking out of the cliché trap. In his own words, he has certain ideals and values “and they are about fairness, about equity, about opportunity and it’s good old Kiwi stuff, you know”.

Wow. There’s fresh thinking for you. Isn’t there anyone in the Labour hierarchy capable of elevating the political dialogue above the level of a 1960s bumper-sticker?

* * *

I WAS ASTONISHED recently to see a BBC correspondent named Jeremy Bowen reporting from the Middle East on One News.

How did this bloke ever get on television? He’s male, for a start, and he’s more than 50 years old – a veritable fossil. He’s got thinning grey hair and an unfashionable moustache. Doesn’t the BBC have any respect for its viewers?

Then there’s Orla Guerin, another BBC reporter who keeps popping up in world trouble spots. At least she’s female, but come on – she’s 46 years old!

What’s more, she doesn’t seem to care too much about her appearance. She doesn’t even wear makeup. Can’t they find her a backroom job somewhere?

How much nicer to see the pretty young things TVNZ and TV3 employ. Thank God our own broadcasters still strive to maintain some sort of basic standard, even if the Beeb doesn’t.