Last year, Deborah Coddington was crucified for an article she wrote in North & South magazine entitled Asian Angst: Is it time to send some back?, in which she examined Asian (well, Chinese really) immigration and involvement in crime.
The article caused an outcry and resulted in several complaints to the Press Council, which were upheld. One of the complaints concerned inflammatory language (such as “a flick through the crime files show the Asian menace has been steadily creeping up on us”), but the main complaint turned on Coddington’s use of statistics.
Several complainants argued that in calculating the Asian crime rate, Coddington had ignored or overlooked the fact that the Asian population had increased overall. They said, and the council agreed, that her flawed figures undermined the whole thrust of the article and rendered it unbalanced.
In her defence, Coddington said the purpose of the article was “to expose readers to the downside of Asian immigration, which I clearly stated has been overwhelmingly good for New Zealand”. She also pointed out that her article drew on information from experts such as the head of the Auckland drug squad. The reason she hadn’t measured the increase in Asian crime against the increase in the Asian population overall was that she didn’t want to insult her readers’ intelligence.
The Press Council accepted North & South’s right to investigate immigration policy and crime rates relating to a specific ethnic community – I don’t see how it could have done otherwise – but held that “the key issue was the absence of correlation between the Asian population and the crime rate”. It did not accept Coddington’s argument that she had mentioned the increase in the Asian population and that it would have insulted readers’ intelligence to link that with the crime figures. “The linkage was vital and should have been made explicit,” the council said. To talk of a gathering crime wave was wrong.
The council noted that there was an explicit statement in the third paragraph of Coddington’s article that the vast majority of Asians in New Zealand were hard-working and focused on getting their children educated and avoiding dependency on the state. But it held that this was negated by the subsequent use of phrases such as “The Asian menace has steadily been creeping up on us”. The failure to place Asian crime in context “could not but stigmatise a whole group”.
I was uncomfortable with the council’s finding in this case, though it appears to have been unanimous. I thought the council failed to strike a proper balance between freedom of expression, as set out in the Bill of Rights Act, and the prohibition on discrimination in the Human Rights Act, both of which it cited in its decision.
The Human Rights Act prohibition on discrimination is reflected in the council’s own principle that publications should not place “gratuitous emphasis” on minority groups, race, colour etc. But the Bill of Rights Act provides, crucially, that whenever a statute can be given a meaning consistent with the Bill of Rights Act, “that meaning shall be preferred to any other meaning”.
I’m no lawyer, but that suggests to me that where the right to freedom of expression comes into conflict with anti-discrimination provisions, or the right to feel offended, the law holds that freedom of expression should take precedence.
Besides, if Coddington's piece stigmatised all Chinese in New Zealand, does that mean the media should stop reporting the criminal activities of Black Power and the Mongrel Mob for fear it will stigmatise all Maori?
Perhaps the most distasteful aspect of the “Asian angst” controversy, however, was the way in which the left – including many journalists – savaged Coddington and pinned that obnoxious and simplistic epithet “racist” on her. I suspect this had a lot to do with the fact that she was a former ACT MP.
Coddington’s article examined a legitimate issue. No one reading newspapers over the past 10 years could fail to be aware of increased Chinese crime (let’s be specific here, and discard that vague euphemism “Asian”). Coddington’s critics seized on one central weakness in her story and argued that this negated the whole piece. I don’t agree that it did. We are still left with the fact that we have a Chinese crime problem – mostly manifested in drug dealing and kidnapping – that we didn’t have 20 years ago. The danger is that the uproar over Coddington’s story may have created the impression that the subject is now a no-go area, and any journalist foolhardy enough to venture there can expect to be pilloried as she was.
Why do I mention all this now? Because both The Dominion Post and The New Zealand Herald report today that five-year-old Cina Ma, aka Xin Xin, may have been kidnapped by a fellow Chinese. The Dom Post quoted a Chinese friend of Cina Ma’s family as saying it’s a common practice in China for children to be kidnapped and used as leverage when business deals go wrong. Cina’s grandparents and aunt were reported as believing that could explain her abduction. The Herald, meanwhile, said the fact that Cina Ma shouted at her masked kidnapper in Chinese suggested that she thought he would understand the language (Cina Ma evidently also speaks good English).
The Dom Post also ran a helpful side panel listing other high-profile crimes in recent years involving Chinese. Most are kidnappings, a crime virtually unheard of in New Zealand until relatively recently. The paper reports that in 2002, police recorded 22 cases of kidnapping or extortion involving “Asians”. But the Dom Post’s list is far from exhaustive; reports of Chinese involvement in high-level drug-smuggling and other crime are commonplace.
Does this reflect on the Chinese community generally? Of course not, any more than stories about Black Power and the Mongrel Mob reflect on all Maori. Most Chinese (as Coddington’s article acknowledged) are hard-working, honest citizens who make a welcome addition to New Zealand’s demographic mix. But no amount of politically correct sensitivity can disguise the fact that there is a hard-core criminal element in the Chinese community, which is what Coddington’s article tried to explain.
As Chris Trotter pointed out in his Dom Post column last week, Chinese community activist Peter Low has confirmed the existence of triad gangs in Auckland. Trotter suggested, rightly, that Coddington would be justified in standing up and demanding an apology from her tormentors.
Trotter went on to write that triads dominate the traffic in Class A drugs and are responsible for most human trafficking, money-laundering, loan-sharking, counterfeiting and prostitution. Who, I wonder, is going to take him to the Press Council? Or the Dom Post, for having the audacity to list Chinese involvement in kidnappings and extortion?
[Disclaimer: To forestall the inevitable accusation of mates defending mates, I am not a personal friend of Deborah Coddington. I have met her two or three times at functions and spoken to her on the phone maybe four or five times over a period of many years. But I believe she was unfairly targeted over her Asian angst story, and I suspect some of her critics were out to destroy her credibility and end her career as a journalist.]
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Think about it, Winston
Dear Winston
So you’re in Fiji for a few days then.
Nice place, eh? Balmy temperatures. Shimmering blue sea. Golden sand. Gently rustling palms. Colourful shirts and gleaming smiles. Hardly a journalist in sight. A bloke could be pretty happy living in a tropical paradise like this.
Look, I’d hate you to take this the wrong way, but really … think about it.
You’ve lost Tauranga and don’t seem to stand much show of winning it back. Your most fervent supporters are – how can I put this delicately? – dying.
You’ve had a whale of a time as Minister of Foreign Affairs – heck, you spent nearly a million bucks on travel in three years, but as long as you were out of the country no one seemed to mind too much. You might call it a win-win situation, Win. (Sorry, but I will have my feeble little joke.) But face it: the chances of scoring the Foreign Affairs gig again, even in the unlikely event that you’re still in Parliament after November, don’t look too flash.
I know this has been said before, but the tide really does seem to be running out. Your scraps with the media are getting tedious. Dammit, Winston, you’ve become a caricature. Nothing you say or do surprises us any more. Some of the smarter guys in your party – there are one or two – might start wondering whether you’re more of a liability than a meal ticket.
You can see where this is heading, can’t you?
Take a look around while you’re away. Fiji’s a cruisy, laid-back sort of place. You can light up a smoke pretty much anywhere you please, the duty-free whisky’s cheap, and you don’t have to put up with hassling from pests like Audrey Young and Barry Soper. And just think how much you’d save on all those tailored pinstripe suits.
As for Frank Bainimarama … well, I know you’ve gone over there to put the hard word on him about the elections, but when you think about it, you and he have a lot in common. There’s no reason why the two of you couldn’t get along. He doesn’t like the media either, but unlike you he’s got the buggers sorted. He just gets his heavies to put them on the next plane to Australia. Boy, that Frank! Isn’t he the man?
Come on, you’ve got to admit it’s tempting. You’ve had a good innings: 26 years in Parliament, including spells as deputy prime minister, Minister of Finance and now Minister of Hobnobbing and Big-Noting. All those flights in First Class, all those leather-seated limos. You’ve been a crafty old dog, all right; but has it made you happy? Not judging by the way you keep snarling at reporters. So maybe it’s time to let go. Quit while you’re ahead. It will never be this good again.
Your parliamentary super would buy you a nice bar on the Suva waterfront. One with bamboo curtains, cane furniture and languid ceiling fans. A visit to Winnie’s Bar and Grill could be the highlight of cut-price pilgrimage tours organised by Grey Power. Your mate Tommy Gear could look after the drinks while you charmed the punters. And if anyone got too inebriated to be served, you could hold up a large white card saying “NO”. You’d be a hit.
If none of this persuades you, just think of the sullen looks on the faces of all those media vermin waiting for you at Auckland Airport when they realise they won’t have Winston Peters to goad any more. Surely that must clinch it.
So you’re in Fiji for a few days then.
Nice place, eh? Balmy temperatures. Shimmering blue sea. Golden sand. Gently rustling palms. Colourful shirts and gleaming smiles. Hardly a journalist in sight. A bloke could be pretty happy living in a tropical paradise like this.
Look, I’d hate you to take this the wrong way, but really … think about it.
You’ve lost Tauranga and don’t seem to stand much show of winning it back. Your most fervent supporters are – how can I put this delicately? – dying.
You’ve had a whale of a time as Minister of Foreign Affairs – heck, you spent nearly a million bucks on travel in three years, but as long as you were out of the country no one seemed to mind too much. You might call it a win-win situation, Win. (Sorry, but I will have my feeble little joke.) But face it: the chances of scoring the Foreign Affairs gig again, even in the unlikely event that you’re still in Parliament after November, don’t look too flash.
I know this has been said before, but the tide really does seem to be running out. Your scraps with the media are getting tedious. Dammit, Winston, you’ve become a caricature. Nothing you say or do surprises us any more. Some of the smarter guys in your party – there are one or two – might start wondering whether you’re more of a liability than a meal ticket.
You can see where this is heading, can’t you?
Take a look around while you’re away. Fiji’s a cruisy, laid-back sort of place. You can light up a smoke pretty much anywhere you please, the duty-free whisky’s cheap, and you don’t have to put up with hassling from pests like Audrey Young and Barry Soper. And just think how much you’d save on all those tailored pinstripe suits.
As for Frank Bainimarama … well, I know you’ve gone over there to put the hard word on him about the elections, but when you think about it, you and he have a lot in common. There’s no reason why the two of you couldn’t get along. He doesn’t like the media either, but unlike you he’s got the buggers sorted. He just gets his heavies to put them on the next plane to Australia. Boy, that Frank! Isn’t he the man?
Come on, you’ve got to admit it’s tempting. You’ve had a good innings: 26 years in Parliament, including spells as deputy prime minister, Minister of Finance and now Minister of Hobnobbing and Big-Noting. All those flights in First Class, all those leather-seated limos. You’ve been a crafty old dog, all right; but has it made you happy? Not judging by the way you keep snarling at reporters. So maybe it’s time to let go. Quit while you’re ahead. It will never be this good again.
Your parliamentary super would buy you a nice bar on the Suva waterfront. One with bamboo curtains, cane furniture and languid ceiling fans. A visit to Winnie’s Bar and Grill could be the highlight of cut-price pilgrimage tours organised by Grey Power. Your mate Tommy Gear could look after the drinks while you charmed the punters. And if anyone got too inebriated to be served, you could hold up a large white card saying “NO”. You’d be a hit.
If none of this persuades you, just think of the sullen looks on the faces of all those media vermin waiting for you at Auckland Airport when they realise they won’t have Winston Peters to goad any more. Surely that must clinch it.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
The Veitch affair: a few questions
A few questions about the Tony Veitch furore:
So he “deeply regrets” what happened. But what does he regret most – the fact that he assaulted his former partner, or the fact that the world now knows about it? Much of his statement of contrition – “I was working seven days a week … two stressful jobs … emotionally and physically exhausted” – read like a carefully pitched plea for sympathy.
Can we assume, given that none of the Dominion Post’s claims about the assault have been denied and no writs issued (and that the Dom Post would have taken great care to get its facts right in the first place), that what has been reported is substantively correct?
Which is more repugnant: the fact that Veitch assaulted his former partner (kicking her and breaking her back in four places, according to the Dom Post), or that he then apparently tried to buy her silence with a payout, estimates of which range from $100,000 to $170,000?
If the police don’t (or can’t) prosecute Veitch, doesn’t that send a message that people with lots of money can simply pay to escape the consequences of their criminal behaviour? How corrosive is that to public confidence in the justice system?
Did anyone at a senior level in Television New Zealand know about Veitch’s attack on his former partner before the Dom Post broke the story? If so, who? And how long ago?
If it’s established that senior people in TVNZ did know, and took no action against him, what does that say about the integrity of this state-owned organisation? And if it’s established that TVNZ knew but took action against Veitch only after the public furore erupted, wouldn’t that expose them as utter hypocrites, tacitly condoning his behaviour until forced by public opinion to take a moral position?
How uncomfortable did Veitch’s on-air colleagues at TVNZ feel at having to pretend it was business as usual on Monday and Tuesday nights, and how realistic would it be to expect them to keep up the chummy on-screen banter if Veitch was allowed back on air?
Media intrusion in the private lives of public figures is a grey area ethically – but was this a case where exposure of a public figure’s private behaviour was wholly justified? Veitch is a high-profile employee of a public organisation. He’s also paid a very substantial sum of money ($200,000 by TVNZ, according to the Dom Post, but that doesn’t include his substantial earnings from other activities). Can an argument be made that the tradeoff for people who are paid such lavish sums, and who enjoy the status and lifestyle that goes with their celebrity profile, is that their lives will be held up to scrutiny? When a person’s high status and income depends on public recognition and endorsement, is the public entitled to know what that person is really like? (It shouldn’t take a lot of guesswork to conclude that I think the answer is yes.)
Finally, did One News reporter Lisa Owen single-handedly do her utmost to uphold public confidence in the integrity of TVNZ, or at least the independence of its journalism, by courageously reporting that her bosses were running for cover? Owen has never been my favourite reporter, but I couldn’t fault her gutsy performance when the pressure was on.
[Footnote: For the benefit of overseas readers who may be mystified by all this, Tony Veitch is a celebrity broadcaster who presents the sports news on the state-owned One network and hosts a jockstrappy sports quiz on the same channel. The Dominion Post reported last Monday that two years ago he assaulted his ex-partner so severely that she spent months off work and for a time was confined to a wheelchair. Veitch has now been taken off the air both by TVNZ and by Radio Sport, where he presented a breakfast programme.]
So he “deeply regrets” what happened. But what does he regret most – the fact that he assaulted his former partner, or the fact that the world now knows about it? Much of his statement of contrition – “I was working seven days a week … two stressful jobs … emotionally and physically exhausted” – read like a carefully pitched plea for sympathy.
Can we assume, given that none of the Dominion Post’s claims about the assault have been denied and no writs issued (and that the Dom Post would have taken great care to get its facts right in the first place), that what has been reported is substantively correct?
Which is more repugnant: the fact that Veitch assaulted his former partner (kicking her and breaking her back in four places, according to the Dom Post), or that he then apparently tried to buy her silence with a payout, estimates of which range from $100,000 to $170,000?
If the police don’t (or can’t) prosecute Veitch, doesn’t that send a message that people with lots of money can simply pay to escape the consequences of their criminal behaviour? How corrosive is that to public confidence in the justice system?
Did anyone at a senior level in Television New Zealand know about Veitch’s attack on his former partner before the Dom Post broke the story? If so, who? And how long ago?
If it’s established that senior people in TVNZ did know, and took no action against him, what does that say about the integrity of this state-owned organisation? And if it’s established that TVNZ knew but took action against Veitch only after the public furore erupted, wouldn’t that expose them as utter hypocrites, tacitly condoning his behaviour until forced by public opinion to take a moral position?
How uncomfortable did Veitch’s on-air colleagues at TVNZ feel at having to pretend it was business as usual on Monday and Tuesday nights, and how realistic would it be to expect them to keep up the chummy on-screen banter if Veitch was allowed back on air?
Media intrusion in the private lives of public figures is a grey area ethically – but was this a case where exposure of a public figure’s private behaviour was wholly justified? Veitch is a high-profile employee of a public organisation. He’s also paid a very substantial sum of money ($200,000 by TVNZ, according to the Dom Post, but that doesn’t include his substantial earnings from other activities). Can an argument be made that the tradeoff for people who are paid such lavish sums, and who enjoy the status and lifestyle that goes with their celebrity profile, is that their lives will be held up to scrutiny? When a person’s high status and income depends on public recognition and endorsement, is the public entitled to know what that person is really like? (It shouldn’t take a lot of guesswork to conclude that I think the answer is yes.)
Finally, did One News reporter Lisa Owen single-handedly do her utmost to uphold public confidence in the integrity of TVNZ, or at least the independence of its journalism, by courageously reporting that her bosses were running for cover? Owen has never been my favourite reporter, but I couldn’t fault her gutsy performance when the pressure was on.
[Footnote: For the benefit of overseas readers who may be mystified by all this, Tony Veitch is a celebrity broadcaster who presents the sports news on the state-owned One network and hosts a jockstrappy sports quiz on the same channel. The Dominion Post reported last Monday that two years ago he assaulted his ex-partner so severely that she spent months off work and for a time was confined to a wheelchair. Veitch has now been taken off the air both by TVNZ and by Radio Sport, where he presented a breakfast programme.]
Labour's new aristocracy
CURMUDGEON COLUMN - FIRST PUBLISHED DOMINION POST AND PRESS, JULY 8
I HAVE a friend who works part-time in the emergency department of a hospital. She is literally at the front line of the health sector, dealing with patients who stumble in at all hours of the day and night with all manner of injuries and illnesses. She gets them to fill out the necessary paperwork – of which there is never any shortage, this being the health sector – and then refers them to the appropriate clinical staff.
It can be stressful work and the hours are often anti-social. For this her hourly rate is $13.95. Her teenage son gets paid nearly the same amount for his after-school job.
Contrast this with the fat cats of Sparc, the government sports funding agency. National Party leader John Key revealed last week that 47 of Sparc’s 86 fulltime staff were paid (I refuse to say “earned”) more than $100,000 last year. Of those, 14 got more than $150,000. Fourteen!
They must surely be doing work of the utmost importance; work that requires the very highest and rarest of skills. It must also be work of a highly secretive nature, because no one has explained exactly what enormous contribution Sparc’s highly paid employees must be making to the wellbeing of the nation in order to justify such generous emoluments. In the interests of transparent government, I think we should be told.
The gross discrepancy between the extravagant salaries paid to pampered Wellington bureaucrats and the pittances earned by people like my friend, who perform vital but under-valued functions, illustrates how skewed our system of rewards has become. The result is a growing and corrosive cynicism about what the state truly values.
It is ironic that much of this has happened under a Labour-led government supposedly committed to looking after the battlers on Struggle St. The people who have prospered most from eight years of Labour rule are, in fact, the new aristocracy of the public sector, whose numbers have multiplied at the same time as their salaries – which are subject to no market discipline, since it all comes out of the pockets of the obliging taxpayer – have moved inexorably upwards.
***
I’M PLEASED to see that nice young man John Campbell on TV3 is wearing a tie again. For a while he fell victim to the peculiar fashion of going tieless despite still wearing a suit and business shirt.
Apparently he hoped that by looking less formal he would boost his ratings outside the big cities, but plainly the experiment has been abandoned – and rightly so.
The thing about a business shirt is that it makes sense only when it’s worn with a tie. In turn, the only purpose of a tie is to make a business shirt look good. The tie and the business shirt exist in a state of co-dependency, a sartorial symbiosis.
The prevailing corporate fashion for wearing one without the other, in a misguided attempt to look casually cool, is nonsensical. The collar of the business shirt collapses under the lapel of the jacket and just looks unsightly.
I’m not sure who pioneered this trend, or why. Presumably it was initiated by some rebellious accountant aching to stand out from the crowd. But imitative behaviour is nowhere more rampant than in the corporate world, and soon everyone was doing it. So what may have begun as a subversive gesture of defiance rapidly became a fashion cliché.
Anyway, why stop at throwing away ties? Once the tie is discarded, the rest of the corporate uniform looks even more pointless than it did before. Why not jettison the whole outfit?
***
COULD there be anything more tedious than going to a dance where the band played the same tune all night?
I get that feeling every time that suave crooner John Key steps up to the microphone in his tuxedo and announces that Johnny and the Keynotes are going to launch into the Tax Cuts Samba – again. You can hear a groan run around the dance floor as the opening chords ring out for the umpteenth time.
Aren’t there any other songs in their repertoire? When are we going to hear the Benefit Cuts Boogie, the Employment Relations Shuffle (well okay, a few bars of that leaked out last Sunday when someone left the rehearsal room door open), the Resource Management Reform Rag, the Privatisation Polka and all those other catchy tunes they’ve supposedly been working on in secret all these months?
And what about Johnny Key’s rumoured signature tune, the U-Turn Blues, with its complicated dance steps (two steps to the left, three to the right, then back again – or is it the other way around?). The crowd is starting to get restive.
Heck, even the tax cuts number isn’t original. It’s a cover version of a song originally recorded by Rodney and the Prebbletones, whose much grungier rendition never cracked the charts. It’s bland Pat Boone ripping off raunchy Little Richard all over again.
I HAVE a friend who works part-time in the emergency department of a hospital. She is literally at the front line of the health sector, dealing with patients who stumble in at all hours of the day and night with all manner of injuries and illnesses. She gets them to fill out the necessary paperwork – of which there is never any shortage, this being the health sector – and then refers them to the appropriate clinical staff.
It can be stressful work and the hours are often anti-social. For this her hourly rate is $13.95. Her teenage son gets paid nearly the same amount for his after-school job.
Contrast this with the fat cats of Sparc, the government sports funding agency. National Party leader John Key revealed last week that 47 of Sparc’s 86 fulltime staff were paid (I refuse to say “earned”) more than $100,000 last year. Of those, 14 got more than $150,000. Fourteen!
They must surely be doing work of the utmost importance; work that requires the very highest and rarest of skills. It must also be work of a highly secretive nature, because no one has explained exactly what enormous contribution Sparc’s highly paid employees must be making to the wellbeing of the nation in order to justify such generous emoluments. In the interests of transparent government, I think we should be told.
The gross discrepancy between the extravagant salaries paid to pampered Wellington bureaucrats and the pittances earned by people like my friend, who perform vital but under-valued functions, illustrates how skewed our system of rewards has become. The result is a growing and corrosive cynicism about what the state truly values.
It is ironic that much of this has happened under a Labour-led government supposedly committed to looking after the battlers on Struggle St. The people who have prospered most from eight years of Labour rule are, in fact, the new aristocracy of the public sector, whose numbers have multiplied at the same time as their salaries – which are subject to no market discipline, since it all comes out of the pockets of the obliging taxpayer – have moved inexorably upwards.
***
I’M PLEASED to see that nice young man John Campbell on TV3 is wearing a tie again. For a while he fell victim to the peculiar fashion of going tieless despite still wearing a suit and business shirt.
Apparently he hoped that by looking less formal he would boost his ratings outside the big cities, but plainly the experiment has been abandoned – and rightly so.
The thing about a business shirt is that it makes sense only when it’s worn with a tie. In turn, the only purpose of a tie is to make a business shirt look good. The tie and the business shirt exist in a state of co-dependency, a sartorial symbiosis.
The prevailing corporate fashion for wearing one without the other, in a misguided attempt to look casually cool, is nonsensical. The collar of the business shirt collapses under the lapel of the jacket and just looks unsightly.
I’m not sure who pioneered this trend, or why. Presumably it was initiated by some rebellious accountant aching to stand out from the crowd. But imitative behaviour is nowhere more rampant than in the corporate world, and soon everyone was doing it. So what may have begun as a subversive gesture of defiance rapidly became a fashion cliché.
Anyway, why stop at throwing away ties? Once the tie is discarded, the rest of the corporate uniform looks even more pointless than it did before. Why not jettison the whole outfit?
***
COULD there be anything more tedious than going to a dance where the band played the same tune all night?
I get that feeling every time that suave crooner John Key steps up to the microphone in his tuxedo and announces that Johnny and the Keynotes are going to launch into the Tax Cuts Samba – again. You can hear a groan run around the dance floor as the opening chords ring out for the umpteenth time.
Aren’t there any other songs in their repertoire? When are we going to hear the Benefit Cuts Boogie, the Employment Relations Shuffle (well okay, a few bars of that leaked out last Sunday when someone left the rehearsal room door open), the Resource Management Reform Rag, the Privatisation Polka and all those other catchy tunes they’ve supposedly been working on in secret all these months?
And what about Johnny Key’s rumoured signature tune, the U-Turn Blues, with its complicated dance steps (two steps to the left, three to the right, then back again – or is it the other way around?). The crowd is starting to get restive.
Heck, even the tax cuts number isn’t original. It’s a cover version of a song originally recorded by Rodney and the Prebbletones, whose much grungier rendition never cracked the charts. It’s bland Pat Boone ripping off raunchy Little Richard all over again.
Abortion law travesty exposed
FIRST PUBLISHED NELSON MAIL AND MANAWATU STANDARD, JULY 9
The last thing many New Zealanders wanted – politicians especially – was for the abortion debate to break out again.
The agonising conflict over the passage of the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act in 1977 left many of the combatants on both sides exhausted. The memories are still raw. But abortion is back on the political agenda, and so it should be, because it represents unfinished business.
The CS and A Act was seen as a compromise that granted protection to the unborn child while still allowing women to obtain legal abortions under certain circumstances. Women who had become pregnant as a result of rape or incest, for example, were allowed to obtain abortions, as were women whose life or mental health would have been at risk had they carried their babies to full term.
Those and other specific exceptions aside, abortion remained an offence under the Crimes Act, and still does today.
Parliamentarians and lobbyists who opposed abortion on demand were satisfied that the Act fulfilled their objectives by stipulating that full regard should be had for the rights of the unborn child. But from the very beginning the legislation was subverted by the simple stratagem of approving virtually every request for an abortion on the basis that the mother’s mental health was imperilled.
The number of abortions rose rapidly, from 2094 in the year after the Act was passed to nearly 13,000 by 1994. For the past few years the figure has been hovering around 18,000. Roughly 99 percent of those abortions are authorised on the ground of risk to the mother’s mental health. We have, in effect, a regime of abortion on request – a situation the Act was supposed to avoid.
Meanwhile the Abortion Supervisory Committee, set up to ensure the law was properly observed, looked the other way and wrung its hands impotently. The committee even acknowledged in 1988 that women were obtaining abortions on “pseudo-legal” grounds, but did nothing.
The politicians looked the other way too. Notwithstanding the fact that Parliament’s authority was being mocked, abortion was seen as a no-win issue and quietly dumped in the too-hard basket.
Whether it can remain there is now highly doubtful, since a High Court judge has exposed the administration of the abortion law for the sham and travesty that it is. Ruling on a case brought by the Christchurch-based group Right to Life, Justice Forrest Miller found that there was reason to doubt the lawfulness of many abortions. He agreed that New Zealand effectively has abortion on demand and further, he held that under the law “the unborn child has a claim on the conscience of the community”.
In coming to these findings Justice Miller was not expressing a personal view, but simply doing what judges are required to do: interpreting the laws made by Parliament.
The ensuing debate has shown that there’s a lot of heat in the issue still. On a radio talkback programme I heard a male host – one who normally takes an emphatic liberal-left position – angrily attacked for daring to suggest that Justice Miller was right. The host remained calm and courteous, which was more than could be said for his female callers. It was a reminder of the intensity of the emotion surrounding the issue, and of the refusal of closed minds to engage in reasoned discussion or even allow the legitimacy of an alternative view.
For many surviving feminists from the 1970s, the right to abortion remains a powerful symbol of women’s rights and a hard-won victory that must not be surrendered under any circumstances. They are locked into such a mindset that the supposed right of a woman to control her own body must be asserted at the expense of an unborn child’s right to life. To me this is a desperately cold, arid ideology.
There are fundamental philosophical differences here that I don’t think will ever be reconciled. Either you believe that all human life is precious, and that life logically begins at conception, or you don’t. If you don’t, then you can arbitrarily decree that life begins at any point right through to birth, in which case abortion can be justified even past the time when the foetus is capable of independent life outside the womb. At that point all distinctions between abortion and infanticide evaporate.
Of course, if you’re male you are dismissed as not being entitled to a view on the issue anyway – a preposterous proposition, given that the abortion issue goes to the heart of human morality and concerns us all (just as murder and capital punishment do).
The view that men have no right to an opinion on abortion is only one of several myths that hardline pro-abortionists have pushed quite successfully. They have also persuaded many people to think of the foetus as just a formless blob of tissue, and they have carefully played down both the reality of the abortion process – in which the foetus is violently dismembered – and the serious emotional consequences that many women suffer afterwards.
But I believe that as the passage of time takes its inevitable toll on those impassioned feminists who fought for the right to abortion 30 years ago, community attitudes toward abortion are subtly shifting. A generation has grown up that doesn’t regard women’s right to abortion as some sort of ideological touchstone and may be more receptive to moral and humanitarian arguments against it.
I don’t think I’m being fanciful when I sense growing disquiet about the abortion rate. Even newspapers that once took a strong “pro-choice” line in their editorials now find it unacceptable that the CS and A Act has been so flagrantly disregarded.
It remains to be seen whether Justice Miller – who has yet to decide where to go next with the Right to Life case – will force the politicians’ hands.
The last thing many New Zealanders wanted – politicians especially – was for the abortion debate to break out again.
The agonising conflict over the passage of the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act in 1977 left many of the combatants on both sides exhausted. The memories are still raw. But abortion is back on the political agenda, and so it should be, because it represents unfinished business.
The CS and A Act was seen as a compromise that granted protection to the unborn child while still allowing women to obtain legal abortions under certain circumstances. Women who had become pregnant as a result of rape or incest, for example, were allowed to obtain abortions, as were women whose life or mental health would have been at risk had they carried their babies to full term.
Those and other specific exceptions aside, abortion remained an offence under the Crimes Act, and still does today.
Parliamentarians and lobbyists who opposed abortion on demand were satisfied that the Act fulfilled their objectives by stipulating that full regard should be had for the rights of the unborn child. But from the very beginning the legislation was subverted by the simple stratagem of approving virtually every request for an abortion on the basis that the mother’s mental health was imperilled.
The number of abortions rose rapidly, from 2094 in the year after the Act was passed to nearly 13,000 by 1994. For the past few years the figure has been hovering around 18,000. Roughly 99 percent of those abortions are authorised on the ground of risk to the mother’s mental health. We have, in effect, a regime of abortion on request – a situation the Act was supposed to avoid.
Meanwhile the Abortion Supervisory Committee, set up to ensure the law was properly observed, looked the other way and wrung its hands impotently. The committee even acknowledged in 1988 that women were obtaining abortions on “pseudo-legal” grounds, but did nothing.
The politicians looked the other way too. Notwithstanding the fact that Parliament’s authority was being mocked, abortion was seen as a no-win issue and quietly dumped in the too-hard basket.
Whether it can remain there is now highly doubtful, since a High Court judge has exposed the administration of the abortion law for the sham and travesty that it is. Ruling on a case brought by the Christchurch-based group Right to Life, Justice Forrest Miller found that there was reason to doubt the lawfulness of many abortions. He agreed that New Zealand effectively has abortion on demand and further, he held that under the law “the unborn child has a claim on the conscience of the community”.
In coming to these findings Justice Miller was not expressing a personal view, but simply doing what judges are required to do: interpreting the laws made by Parliament.
The ensuing debate has shown that there’s a lot of heat in the issue still. On a radio talkback programme I heard a male host – one who normally takes an emphatic liberal-left position – angrily attacked for daring to suggest that Justice Miller was right. The host remained calm and courteous, which was more than could be said for his female callers. It was a reminder of the intensity of the emotion surrounding the issue, and of the refusal of closed minds to engage in reasoned discussion or even allow the legitimacy of an alternative view.
For many surviving feminists from the 1970s, the right to abortion remains a powerful symbol of women’s rights and a hard-won victory that must not be surrendered under any circumstances. They are locked into such a mindset that the supposed right of a woman to control her own body must be asserted at the expense of an unborn child’s right to life. To me this is a desperately cold, arid ideology.
There are fundamental philosophical differences here that I don’t think will ever be reconciled. Either you believe that all human life is precious, and that life logically begins at conception, or you don’t. If you don’t, then you can arbitrarily decree that life begins at any point right through to birth, in which case abortion can be justified even past the time when the foetus is capable of independent life outside the womb. At that point all distinctions between abortion and infanticide evaporate.
Of course, if you’re male you are dismissed as not being entitled to a view on the issue anyway – a preposterous proposition, given that the abortion issue goes to the heart of human morality and concerns us all (just as murder and capital punishment do).
The view that men have no right to an opinion on abortion is only one of several myths that hardline pro-abortionists have pushed quite successfully. They have also persuaded many people to think of the foetus as just a formless blob of tissue, and they have carefully played down both the reality of the abortion process – in which the foetus is violently dismembered – and the serious emotional consequences that many women suffer afterwards.
But I believe that as the passage of time takes its inevitable toll on those impassioned feminists who fought for the right to abortion 30 years ago, community attitudes toward abortion are subtly shifting. A generation has grown up that doesn’t regard women’s right to abortion as some sort of ideological touchstone and may be more receptive to moral and humanitarian arguments against it.
I don’t think I’m being fanciful when I sense growing disquiet about the abortion rate. Even newspapers that once took a strong “pro-choice” line in their editorials now find it unacceptable that the CS and A Act has been so flagrantly disregarded.
It remains to be seen whether Justice Miller – who has yet to decide where to go next with the Right to Life case – will force the politicians’ hands.
Monday, July 7, 2008
In defence of lycra and other unspeakable cycling clobber
Commenting on my 25 Rules for a Righteous and Contented Life (see earlier post), in which I poked fun at men who dress up in peculiar clothing, someone said to me recently that I should have included a reference to cycling gear.
Being a cyclist myself, I naturally bridled at this. But it’s not the first time I’ve heard a non-cyclist ridicule the strange outfits bike riders wear, so I’ve taken it upon myself to offer some sort of explanation.
What distinguishes cycling gear from the preposterous get-ups worn by freemasons, Ku Klux Klansmen, military brass and religious clerics is that it’s essentially utilitarian, not purely decorative. Try going for a long bike ride wearing ordinary clobber and you’ll soon find out what I mean.
First, let’s take the lycra bike shorts that seem to attract most ridicule. These are light, flexible and body-hugging, meaning they allow freedom of movement while also minimising wind resistance. This latter factor may seem unimportant until you’ve discovered how crucial wind resistance is when you’re riding at a reasonable pace, even in relatively calm conditions. The last thing you want is loose clothing flapping in the breeze – it not only slows you down, but it’s irritating too.
Lycra is surprisingly resilient too, and can withstand repeated violent contact with the ground, whether it’s a rock-strewn track or a bitumen road surface.
But the most important thing about cycling shorts is the imitation chamois padding sewn into the crutch. We won’t go into gratuitous anatomical detail here, but suffice it to say that the bum and the crutch take a hammering on a long bike ride, and comfort in these nether regions, for sheilas as well as blokes, is crucial. I once made the mistake of riding for several hours on a hot day in a pair of track pants – not something I’m anxious to repeat.
The other thing non-cyclists tend to scoff at is the gaudy, attention-grabbing colours of most bike shirts. Well yes, they are designed to attract your attention. That’s to ensure cyclists are seen by motorists. Personally, I recoil at a lot of the garish, multi-coloured tops worn by road cyclists and sometimes wonder myself if they’re not a tad exhibitionist. But on the other hand, I wouldn’t want my last thought to be, as I disappeared under the wheels of a truck, that perhaps I should have worn something more colourful.
Finally, there are the shoes. Yes, you can ride a bike wearing ordinary footwear such as sneakers, secured in a crude fashion by cumbersome toe clips with adjustable straps. But one of the great evolutionary leaps in cycling was the advent of the clipless pedal, for which you require special bike shoes with cleats that lock in to the pedal. Few if any cyclists who have made the progression from conventional to clipless pedals ever wonder for even a nanosecond whether they did the right thing.
For a start, clipless pedals increase your pedalling efficiency. Because you’re locked in to the pedal you can apply power on the upstroke as well as the downstroke. But perhaps more important, and this applies even more to mountain biking than road cycling, clipping in to your pedals make you feel as one with the bike. Your feet stay securely in position – there’s no slipping around – and control of the bike is enormously enhanced.
And again, it’s much safer. Before I acquired clipless pedals I would often be distracted by the effort of trying to get my foot into the toeclips, but with clipless pedals it becomes instinctive and effortless; you do it by feel. That reassuring metallic snick as the cleat on your shoe locks into the pedal is a signal that you and the bike are functioning as one unit.
And miraculously, when you’re about to crash, you usually manage to unclip to avoid going down with the bike. Usually, but not always. I recently had the undignified experience of coming to a dead halt in deep soft sand on my mountain bike and not being able to free my feet from the pedals. I fell sideways in slow motion, letting loose a string of expletives as I went down.
This happened in a very remote spot on the Wairarapa coast and normally would have been observed only by seagulls and sheep. But as luck would have it, a couple of stoned surfers were sitting only metres away and must have found this a gratifyingly surreal experience. It’s not every day you get a floorshow in the middle of nowhere while you wait for the waves to come up.
Being a cyclist myself, I naturally bridled at this. But it’s not the first time I’ve heard a non-cyclist ridicule the strange outfits bike riders wear, so I’ve taken it upon myself to offer some sort of explanation.
What distinguishes cycling gear from the preposterous get-ups worn by freemasons, Ku Klux Klansmen, military brass and religious clerics is that it’s essentially utilitarian, not purely decorative. Try going for a long bike ride wearing ordinary clobber and you’ll soon find out what I mean.
First, let’s take the lycra bike shorts that seem to attract most ridicule. These are light, flexible and body-hugging, meaning they allow freedom of movement while also minimising wind resistance. This latter factor may seem unimportant until you’ve discovered how crucial wind resistance is when you’re riding at a reasonable pace, even in relatively calm conditions. The last thing you want is loose clothing flapping in the breeze – it not only slows you down, but it’s irritating too.
Lycra is surprisingly resilient too, and can withstand repeated violent contact with the ground, whether it’s a rock-strewn track or a bitumen road surface.
But the most important thing about cycling shorts is the imitation chamois padding sewn into the crutch. We won’t go into gratuitous anatomical detail here, but suffice it to say that the bum and the crutch take a hammering on a long bike ride, and comfort in these nether regions, for sheilas as well as blokes, is crucial. I once made the mistake of riding for several hours on a hot day in a pair of track pants – not something I’m anxious to repeat.
The other thing non-cyclists tend to scoff at is the gaudy, attention-grabbing colours of most bike shirts. Well yes, they are designed to attract your attention. That’s to ensure cyclists are seen by motorists. Personally, I recoil at a lot of the garish, multi-coloured tops worn by road cyclists and sometimes wonder myself if they’re not a tad exhibitionist. But on the other hand, I wouldn’t want my last thought to be, as I disappeared under the wheels of a truck, that perhaps I should have worn something more colourful.
Finally, there are the shoes. Yes, you can ride a bike wearing ordinary footwear such as sneakers, secured in a crude fashion by cumbersome toe clips with adjustable straps. But one of the great evolutionary leaps in cycling was the advent of the clipless pedal, for which you require special bike shoes with cleats that lock in to the pedal. Few if any cyclists who have made the progression from conventional to clipless pedals ever wonder for even a nanosecond whether they did the right thing.
For a start, clipless pedals increase your pedalling efficiency. Because you’re locked in to the pedal you can apply power on the upstroke as well as the downstroke. But perhaps more important, and this applies even more to mountain biking than road cycling, clipping in to your pedals make you feel as one with the bike. Your feet stay securely in position – there’s no slipping around – and control of the bike is enormously enhanced.
And again, it’s much safer. Before I acquired clipless pedals I would often be distracted by the effort of trying to get my foot into the toeclips, but with clipless pedals it becomes instinctive and effortless; you do it by feel. That reassuring metallic snick as the cleat on your shoe locks into the pedal is a signal that you and the bike are functioning as one unit.
And miraculously, when you’re about to crash, you usually manage to unclip to avoid going down with the bike. Usually, but not always. I recently had the undignified experience of coming to a dead halt in deep soft sand on my mountain bike and not being able to free my feet from the pedals. I fell sideways in slow motion, letting loose a string of expletives as I went down.
This happened in a very remote spot on the Wairarapa coast and normally would have been observed only by seagulls and sheep. But as luck would have it, a couple of stoned surfers were sitting only metres away and must have found this a gratifyingly surreal experience. It’s not every day you get a floorshow in the middle of nowhere while you wait for the waves to come up.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Lines to avoid at all costs
There are two lines that politicians should be coached to avoid at all costs.
One is: “Don’t you know who I am?” Australian Labor Party MP Belinda Neal uttered these words, or an approximation thereof, to staff at Iguana Joe’s nightclub in the New South Wales city of Gosford. Now Neal’s political career is in tatters – and her husband, NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca, is on a slippery slope too – as controversy rages over claims that the couple behaved in an intimidating and abusive manner, demanding that nightclub staff be sacked and threatening to have the club’s liquor licence cancelled. It’s never a good look when a bullying, egotistical politician tries to pull rank and status on lesser beings, least of all when that politician happens to be from the party of the workers.
The other line that press secretaries should advise their bosses against using under any circumstances is this: “Print one thing wrong, sunshine, and I will sue you”.
This, the Dominion Post reports, is how the Right Honourable Winston Peters, Minister of Foreign Affairs in Her Majesty’s Government, responded when reporter Phil Kitchin sought comment from him about the enigmatic Tommy Gear’s involvement with the New Zealand First Party. Gear, the Dom Post reports, is a close friend of the New Zealand First leader and has been paid for many years out of the Parliamentary Service budget, but no one seems to know exactly what he does.
There’s something almost endearing about Peters’ snarling response – part Humphrey Bogart, part Detective Inspector Regan of The Sweeney – to Kitchin’s inquiry. It’s so true to character that if you close your eyes you can hear him saying it.
Peters’ evolution from shrewd, populist politician to self-parody is now virtually complete. He risks being the only person in Wellington who takes Winston Peters seriously.
The other interesting thing about his comic attempt to scare Kitchin off is that it seems to suggest Kitchin is on to something, which is probably not what Peters intended. When a politician says “Print one thing wrong, sunshine, and I will sue you”, it could easily be decoded as confirmation that there is indeed a good story there, but if the reporter gets so much as one small detail wrong, Peters’ lawyers – Messrs Huff, Puff and Bluster – will come after him.
This can be an effective way of frightening off a timid reporter, but I don’t think it will work on Kitchin. He’s been monstered by experts.
One is: “Don’t you know who I am?” Australian Labor Party MP Belinda Neal uttered these words, or an approximation thereof, to staff at Iguana Joe’s nightclub in the New South Wales city of Gosford. Now Neal’s political career is in tatters – and her husband, NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca, is on a slippery slope too – as controversy rages over claims that the couple behaved in an intimidating and abusive manner, demanding that nightclub staff be sacked and threatening to have the club’s liquor licence cancelled. It’s never a good look when a bullying, egotistical politician tries to pull rank and status on lesser beings, least of all when that politician happens to be from the party of the workers.
The other line that press secretaries should advise their bosses against using under any circumstances is this: “Print one thing wrong, sunshine, and I will sue you”.
This, the Dominion Post reports, is how the Right Honourable Winston Peters, Minister of Foreign Affairs in Her Majesty’s Government, responded when reporter Phil Kitchin sought comment from him about the enigmatic Tommy Gear’s involvement with the New Zealand First Party. Gear, the Dom Post reports, is a close friend of the New Zealand First leader and has been paid for many years out of the Parliamentary Service budget, but no one seems to know exactly what he does.
There’s something almost endearing about Peters’ snarling response – part Humphrey Bogart, part Detective Inspector Regan of The Sweeney – to Kitchin’s inquiry. It’s so true to character that if you close your eyes you can hear him saying it.
Peters’ evolution from shrewd, populist politician to self-parody is now virtually complete. He risks being the only person in Wellington who takes Winston Peters seriously.
The other interesting thing about his comic attempt to scare Kitchin off is that it seems to suggest Kitchin is on to something, which is probably not what Peters intended. When a politician says “Print one thing wrong, sunshine, and I will sue you”, it could easily be decoded as confirmation that there is indeed a good story there, but if the reporter gets so much as one small detail wrong, Peters’ lawyers – Messrs Huff, Puff and Bluster – will come after him.
This can be an effective way of frightening off a timid reporter, but I don’t think it will work on Kitchin. He’s been monstered by experts.
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