Sorry, but this blog is no longer ad-free

Readers of this blog will notice that they may now have to navigate around pop-up ads. Having run this site for more than 10 years with no revenue I've decided, reluctantly, to see whether I can generate a very modest income from it. Maintaining the blog is time-consuming and no longer subsidised by other income sources. If the ads become a nuisance to readers, I'm sure you'll let me know. Thanks.

Why I'm no longer compiling the Five-Minute Quiz

For the past sixteen and a half years I’ve contributed a daily quiz to Stuff. It’s called the Five-Minute Quiz and although it wasn’t originally my creation, I was asked to take it over in May 2005. Since then I’ve written roughly 50,000 questions.

I originally contributed the Five-Minute Quiz solely to the Dominion Post (I was given the gig by the then editor Tim Pankhurst, who has long since gone from the scene) but it was later picked up by other papers in the Stuff group, from Hamilton to Invercargill. (It shouldn’t be confused with Stuff’s online quiz, which has nothing to do with me. The Five-Minute Quiz appears only in print publications.)

It would be fair to say the quiz has acquired a very substantial following, though I’ve never quite understood why. It’s a daily ritual in thousands of homes and workplaces. Devotees include judges, professors, cops, farmers, public servants and trades people (who I’ve heard will often ring each other at smoko time to compare scores and brag when they’ve done well).

The quiz was sponsored for some time by Massey University, whose name appeared at the top each day. But Massey had nothing to do with the content; I guess they just saw it was popular and wanted to take some of the credit.

The authorship of the quiz, while hardly a state secret, has never been publicly disclosed. I preferred to remain anonymous because for much of the time that I compiled the quiz I also wrote opinion columns for papers in the Stuff group. Not all readers agreed with my opinions and I didn’t want the quiz to suffer because of any opprobrium I might have incurred as a result of my writing. I was always careful to ensure the quiz remained strictly non-political.

Anyway, the reason I’m outing myself now is that my last quizzes will appear next week. I’ve told Stuff that I no longer want to be associated with a company whose editorial values and policies are at odds with mine. Whether or not the quiz will continue is up to them.

For me, it’s the end of an association with the Dominion Post that dates back to 1962, when I became a Dominion delivery boy in Waipukurau. That association continued through several stints as a journalist and editorial executive for both the Evening Post (the “Post” in Dominion Post) and The Dominion, of which I was editor from 1989 till 1992.  

The better part of my career as a journalist was spent on those two papers. I look back fondly on much of that time, but I’m severing the connection with no regrets. The Dominion Post as it exists now bears little resemblance to the titles it evolved from, and which I was proud to work for.

I should finish by saying there’s a possibility that the quiz will reappear elsewhere – most likely online – under a new name.

New Zealand: where being "anti-government" results in police surveillance

Things are worse than we thought. 

Blogger Cameron Slater recently learned from an OIA request that the blog he’s associated with, The BFD, was under police surveillance. An unnamed police intelligence analyst was concerned Slater would “continue to publish uncorroborated information to denigrate labour [sic] party policies and individuals linked to them”.

Yes, you read that correctly. There are people in the police hierarchy who apparently think that anyone who criticises the government should be watched. This was also the mentality of East Germany’s Stasi, South Africa’s BOSS (the Bureau of State Security) and Haitian dictator Papa Doc Duvalier’s murderous Tonton Macoute.

(Vladimir Ilyich Lenin didn’t care for dissenters either, as he made clear in a 1920 speech: “Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticised? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinion calculated to embarrass the government?” Lenin subsequently set up the OGPU, which eventually morphed into the KGB, to ensure he wasn’t bothered by such irritations. Someone like Slater would have gone straight to the Gulag.)

The documents released to Slater also included a request from an unnamed officer, couched in military-style jargon, describing him as racist and “anti-government” and asking for a “rundown” on him. The documents note that Slater’s reporting on Siouxsie Wiles, whom he labelled a hypocrite for appearing to flout lockdown restrictions that she had urged the public to comply with, was “consistent with past behaviours” such as defamation, breaching name suppression and “publishing erroneous reports on political opponents” – all of which are matters for civil, not criminal law, and therefore not the business of the police.

Ominously, a police intelligence briefing disclosed concern that Slater “will continue to public voice opinions on topical matters which may add to conspiracy theorist engagement across social media”. And an unnamed senior sergeant wondered whether the cops should pay Slater a visit because he posted “possibility [sic] controversial racist comments” about the September terrorist incident at LynnMall.

It’s hard to take this alarmist nonsense seriously, but we must. The documents reveal there are people in the police who think it’s their function to protect us against the free exchange of ideas and opinion – a right guaranteed to New Zealanders under the Bill of Rights Act. To put it more bluntly, these commissars-in-waiting apparently regard democracy as dangerous.

So being anti-government is now seen as a potential threat to public safety? This is the type of state paranoia that ultimately leads to monitoring of phone calls and knocks on the door at midnight. Slater was right to describe it as sinister.

As recently as two years ago I wouldn’t have imagined this sort of thing happening in one of the world’s most open democracies, but it’s surprising how quickly freedoms can be eroded. It starts with the marginalisation of unapproved views (the mainstream media are complicit in this) and advances rapidly to the point where dissent is denounced, suppressed and even made illegal. All it takes is a passive and apathetic populace – oh, and politicians too timid and too unsure of their own values to make a stand for individual freedoms.

Couldn’t happen in a liberal democracy like New Zealand? Don’t be so sure. During the 1951 waterfront dispute a National government invoked extreme powers under the Public Safety Conservation Act. These gave the police power to censor all publications, broadcasts and even private letters; seize printing presses and typewriters; arrest people who provided food, money or other support to striking workers and their families; ban public meetings; arrest people without warrant; and enter and search properties without a court order.

All of these powers were exercised by the police on the pretext that it was for the public good – and what’s most disturbing is that a compliant public and press went along. Who can say that under an equally determined government of the left, supported by a similarly sympathetic media, police won’t again be empowered to interfere with basic democratic freedoms? The appetite appears to be there, at least among some officers with dangerously inflated (and deluded) ideas about their function. 

What next, I wonder. Will we hear people like Slater described as “enemies of the state” or “enemies of the people” – phrases used by brutal totalitarian regimes of both the extreme right (Nazi Germany) and extreme left (the Soviet Union) to justify the incarceration of troublesome individuals on the pretext that it’s for the good of society?

In this case, thank God, the unnamed police busybodies were over-ruled by wiser and more grounded senior officers. But the realisation that this type of censorious zealotry exists within the police should strike a cold chill in the heart of anyone  who values open democracy – and all the more so when it remains possible that under so-called “hate speech” laws, the police will be given power to determine what we can and cannot say.

Disclosure: I haven’t met Cameron Slater, but I have written guest posts for The BFD and it has republished some posts from my blog by agreement. I have publicly disagreed with some of Slater’s tactics in the past. But freedom of speech is not a right that depends on the acceptability of the opinions expressed. Orwell (as so often) put it best: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

That accountability thing that Susie Ferguson doesn't seem to get

Now here’s a surprise (or on second thoughts, perhaps not): one of the two presenters on Radio New Zealand’s flagship news and current show appears not to understand why a functioning democracy depends on accountability mechanisms.

Interviewing Manawatu District mayor Helen Worboys, one of 23 mayors who have formed an action group to resist the Three Waters project, Morning Report co-host Susie Ferguson wanted to know what was the point of their opposition.

Worboys’ answer (and here I’m paraphrasing): The councils the mayors represent want to retain control of the water infrastructure that their communities have built and paid for. They believe they can come up with smarter and more acceptable ways of reforming water management and want the government to hit the “pause” button until they can put forward alternative proposals. Having paid for the assets, their communities want a say in how they’re run, but under Nanaia Mahuta’s master plan there will be no line of accountability back to them. (If I could interject here, that’s surely the key objection to the Three Waters project. It’s not so much about whether there’s a need to impose uniform standards and bring inadequate infrastructure up to standard; what’s at issue is the process by which this would be achieved, which involves transferring control to opaque, unelected and remote “entities” with no lines of accountability to, or even direct connection with, the communities whose water assets they’ll be appropriating.)

Ferguson didn’t quite seem to get any of this. As long as water assets remained in public ownership, she asked, what did it matter who controlled them? To which Worboys explained that the issue of ownership was actually quite a big deal. “The government says we will still own them, but they won’t sit on councils’ balance sheets.” (You might call it a Clayton’s type of ownership, then.)

Worboys again made the point that communities would have no voice and there would be no accountability. To which Ferguson, by now sounding slightly impatient and querulous, demanded to know: “Why does that matter?” Good grief.

After Worboys had patiently explained – again – that it indeed mattered to communities which had invested in good infrastructure that met the required standards, as in Manawatu (which Ferguson had wrongly suggested was one of the poor-performing councils that Mahuta is using as an excuse for her radical master plan), Ferguson – now sounding positively obtuse – insisted: “But you still haven’t explained why the ownership matters.”

At this point you could have forgiven Worboys for getting impatient herself, but she tried again. “Because we want a local voice in what happens to our infrastructure ...” Ferguson then imperiously talked over the top of her, again demanding to know: “Why?” Worboys' answer (and I’m again taking the liberty of paraphrasing her) was that every council’s situation is different and they want the right to make their own decisions, specific to their own needs and circumstances – a right that will be denied to them once they’re absorbed into an amorphous entity with 21 other councils, as would happen in Manawatu’s case.

It’s the accountability thing that Ferguson seemed either unwilling or unable to grasp, and it’s worrying – to put it mildly – that someone in her position professes not to see the massive accountability deficit that arises when control over billions of dollars’ worth of assets is transferred from councils, which are directly answerable to local voters, to remote bureaucracies appointed by a political and tribal elite accountable to … well, who, exactly? We don’t really know. (Coincidentally, Three Waters is based on a model from Scotland, which is where Ferguson came from. Former Far North mayor Wayne Brown explained here why the government would have learned more from Madagascar.)

Ferguson gave the impression she saw no harm in a bullying government using its power to push through radical changes, unmandated by voters. Her line of questioning could be summarised thus: "What's the problem? Why are you getting in the way?" But accountability lies at the heart of a functioning democracy. Take it away and we might as well also dispense with Parliament, councils and all the other institutions that are supposed to be ultimately answerable to the public. Come to that, there’d be no place for programmes like Morning Report either, because they depend for their existence on acceptance of the notion that in a democracy, people in power must be held accountable.

But then, democracy is notoriously untidy and inconvenient. How much cleaner and more efficient it would be if we delegated all power to an unelected central authority that knows what’s best for us. There’s even a ready-made name for it: the Politburo.

New Zealand's march toward condominium-style co-governance

(The following is a guest post by my long-ago colleague Peter Isaac, who regularly posts at www.mscnewswire.co.nz). I think it's a succinct and insightful summary of the ideologically driven madness gripping New Zealand.)

Unbeknownst to most of its inhabitants an Oceania nation is transforming itself into the world’s newest condominium, a rare form of governance in which sovereignty is shared by two legally defined categories.

In New Zealand’s case the two categories are Maori and non-Maori.

This transition is incremental and the change is imperceptible to all but the political activists driving the split governance scheme.

This imminence of it was reinforced by the New Zealand government serving notice that it intended to nationalise municipal water.

This followed the announcement of a centralising of public health currently run by 20 elected boards centred on district local hospitals.

In both these shakeups there is scheduled to be a substantial if not dominant role for those claiming Maori heritage.

Maori electoral districts known as wards are being shunted through for local government authorities.

State broadcasting channels are ramrodding through the Maori language at every and any opportunity.

In this whole evolving framework the government taps into a deep-seated craving for New Zealand to achieve recognition on the world stage wherever progressive values command the agenda.

This is variously described as “holding our head high,” or more colloquially and more famously “punching above our weight.”

The Labour government is acutely conscious of this yearning to be seen to be leading any social advance. It now sees what amounts to condominium government as its instrument for attaining its international “best in class” status, as it sees it.

It knows it has the power to implement a condominium bipartite or two-system form of governance because its polls continue to tell it that it has the allegiance of the commanding blocs of the electorate.

These voting blocs include the entire education system and anything to do with the media-arts, along with most other public institutions.

In contrast this leaves its National Party opposition holding only the property and real estate sector and clinging with an increasingly tenuous grip to its traditional agribusiness base.

As a condominium looms for the nation it is salutary to examine the last one in Oceania. This was the New Hebrides before it achieved independence in 1980 and became Vanuatu.

Governance was shared between Britain and France. Everything existed in mirrored pairs. There were for example separate British and French governments, which meant two immigration policies and two corporation laws.

There are signs that the New Hebrides condominium experience has been studied by the local condominium governance architects. This is because language in practical terms became in the New Hebrides era the most serious impediment to smooth running, since anything official at all had to be interpreted and then re-interpreted into French and English.

The condominium scheme, the new one for New Zealand, is well under way. So anticipating the same New Hebrides language operational obstacle, government agencies daily increase their double-up of Maori and English in announcements as well as in correspondence and documents.

Officials in any capacity understand that their career prospects will be much enhanced should they use every opportunity, and at the expense of effective communication, to apply Maori words and ideally whole phrases or, better still, entire sentences.

In the old New Hebrides condominium inhabitants were given the choice of which government they wanted to be ruled by: the French one or the English one. This is the evolving pattern in the New Zealand scheme.

Matiu Rata was the Minister of Maori Affairs in the nation’s third Labour government and he was renowned for bluntly yet concisely summarising any state of affairs as he saw it.

On one occasion he was asked who exactly was a Maori. “You are a Maori if you think you are a Maori,” he declared.

As New Zealand incrementally but so purposefully moves toward condominium governance Matiu Rata’s yardstick, like the New Hebrides experience, demands earnest evaluation.

Peter Isaac is a former journalist and public relations consultant. He lives in the Wairarapa.

A nice idea, but no thanks

A regular commenter on this site has suggested I institute a Daily Post open to anyone with something “intelligent, reasoned and non-vitriolic” to say about the issue(s) of the day. (I’m replying to him here because I have no other way of making contact.) I can see why the idea appeals, but it would change the character of this blog and potentially take it in a direction that I never intended. Besides, the job of moderating and editing contributions could take more time than I’m prepared to commit. So thanks, but no thanks. I'll continue to publish the  occasional guest post, as I've done today, but not on an "all comers welcome" basis.  The way is open for anyone else to start a new blog along the lines suggested.

Journalistic prejudice exposed (#149 in a continuing series)

Stuff political columnist Andrea Vance maintains the pretence of objectivity until about halfway through her latest column, in which she analyses Christopher Luxon’s performance in his first couple of weeks as National leader.

Then she loses it, totally.

Turning to Luxon’s views on abortion, she remarks: “He claims to be pro-life, a phrase American conservatives use to cloak the underlying misogyny of anti-abortion legislation.”

Ergo, anyone who opposes abortion must be misogynistic. But hang on a minute. My wife opposes abortion. My sister opposes abortion. The head of Voice for Life, New Zealand’s main anti-abortion organisation, is a woman, as are many - perhaps most - of its members. Ten of the 35 MPs who voted against last year's liberalisation of the abortion laws were women. (My mother also opposed abortion and once exposed herself to howls of denunciation at a so-called United Women’s Convention for insisting on her right to say so.)

Does that make them all women-haters? Really?? How does that work? This is a case of simplistic sloganeering in place of rational argument. Either it’s dishonest or it exposes a limited intellect.

Now let’s go back to Vance’s statement and try reconstructing it. We could just as accurately say of someone who’s pro-abortion: “He claims to be pro-choice, a phrase women’s rights activists use to cloak the fact that abortion involves the extinguishing of a human life”. These arguments can cut both ways.

Vance goes on to say: “… where National has previously dabbled with fundamentalists it has not worked out for the best … just ask Don Brash”.

At first glance she appears to be implying that Brash is a fundamentalist. I’m sure that’s how most readers would interpret it. But although Brash was the son of a high-profile (and liberal, in the classic sense) Presbyterian minister, religion has never been part of his political pitch.

What’s more, Vance perpetuates the canard, popular among left-wing journalists whose memories don’t go back very far, that National crashed and burned under Brash’s leadership. In fact the exact reverse happened: in the 2005 election, he lifted the party’s vote by nearly 20 percent and came within two seats of dislodging Helen Clark.

I’m going to be charitable here and give Vance the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she was referring to Brash’s flirtation with the Exclusive Brethren prior to that election. But the public knew about that and delivered National a 21-seat gain anyway.

If that’s what Vance was talking about, she should have made it clear. If not, then the reference is misleading. Either way, it’s not a good look from a senior political journalist – but who’s surprised?