On 2 September the Supreme Court announced their decision in Hamed v R. Appearing before the Court were members of the Tuhoe ‘terrorist’ cells that had been training in the Ureweras. They had been arrested and charged with firearms offences after earlier charges of terrorist activity under the Terrorism Suppression Act had been dropped.
At issue was whether secretly filmed evidence by the police was admissible. It is a fundamental rule of our criminal justice system that the evidence used to convict someone has to be properly obtained. The police cannot obtain evidence contrary to law. For the public to have any confidence in the performance of the police, evidence must be gathered properly.

In Hamed the appellants claimed that the video evidence used against them was obtained by the police illegally as their search warrants did not give them the power to covertly film the group’s actions. The Supreme Court’s decision is lengthy, and true to form every Judge had their own drum to beat. However the result was that at least in relation to the more minor offences, the police had acted unlawfully. As a consequence the evidence could not be admitted at trial.

Up to this point the Rule of Law was clearly being followed. The Police, as agents of the Crown, had acted outside of the legal authority that Parliament had given them, and the Courts had rightly slapped them down. This was the Rule of Law in action, performing as a check on the unfettered power of the State.

However, it was what the Government did next that raised the hackles of many. The result of the case threw doubt on similar video evidence being used in other trials. Embarrassingly, even though the police knew what they were doing was illegal, they had done it anyway. Many cases (most probably serious drugs trials) relied on illegal evidence. The Crown needed a solution, and fast.

On 27 September the Government introduced the Video Camera Surveillance (Temporary Measures) Bill and announced that it would be passed under urgency. It’s often said that “haste is the enemy of good law making “, and this time it was certainly true. The bill was a constitutional travesty. There were many problems—as academics Dean Knight from Victoria and Andrew Geddis from Otago quickly pointed out—but the biggest outrage was the bill’s attempt to retrospectively validate the actions of the police.
It is a fundamental feature of the Rule of Law that the Government should never reach back in time and punish us for things that were not originally illegal. What the bill was attempting to do was a variant of this. By reaching back in time and approving of police conduct that was not originally lawful, the Government was acting contrary to the Rule of Law. They were also handing the police a free pass, trampling on the rights of defendants in the process.

However, the Government was not expecting what was to happen over the next three days. Every political party (except National) panned the bill, demanding that it go to Select Committee. Realising they didn’t have the numbers, National relented. In the space of 24 hours, the Select Committee received over 438 submissions on the bill. All of them, bar one, were opposed. Interestingly, many submissions came from law students, aghast at the Government’s attempt to change the law so arrogantly. As a consequence of these submissions and changes suggested by the Labour Party, the bill was significantly watered down and no longer breaches the Rule of Law as egregiously.

The controversy over the Video Camera Surveillance (Temporary Measures) Bill tells us something interesting. On the one hand it demonstrates the danger of government when it does not abide by our fundamental constitutional principles. But on the other it also demonstrates the strength of our political constitution. New Zealand’s constitution is unwritten; this means it is flexible but it is also more delicate. Checks on the power of government rely on the constant activism of impassioned individuals.

This is my last week at law school after nearly six years of study. In all honesty I leave with a heavy heart. But I go buoyed by the fact that as this Bill demonstrates, law school is a place that creates citizens who care deeply about their constitution, their government and their country. And in a society where the Rule of Law is so fragile, I can’t think of anything more valuable.

My concern is not directed at what political parties say or what they do, instead it’s directed at the political space in which they talk. Something is missing from our generation’s politics. Something important, and it’s been lost.

Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, said the that most important thing in politics was the power of ideas. What he meant by this was not that political parties were going to win hearts and minds by proposing new, populist policies. Instead, he meant that in order for politics to work properly, in order for it to matter, it needs to be based on a vision.

Visions, principles, values—these are amorphous things but they matter. Trying to pin them down and make them real is always a challenge, but its important. But in contemporary politics the power of ideas is conspicuously absent. And it has been since the late 1980s.

Thats not to say that ideas are not acknowledged. They are. But they have transmogrified into something more vulgar. Major political leaders now only pay lip service to values. Evocations of freedom, equality, personal responsibility, environmentalism or reason are bound up in the discourse of brand and image, not ideology or vision.

This represents something that is increasingly disturbing about the role and importance of politics in peoples lives. The Harry Potter generation no longer see politics as something that is empowering, or as something that can make our collective lives better. Our parents did, as did theirs before them. Earlier this year in the Dominion Post, Professor Jon Johansson said that if you truly want to meet a cynical person, talk to someone aged under 25. I think he has a point. The oft quoted reason for this is because our generation is blasé and apathetic. That probably plays a part—but as an explanation it is entirely insufficient. It is simply describing a sociological symptom, not a cause.
The reason for this disconnect is more fundamental. It goes to the heart of how our generation views the sociological role of politics. Since the mid 1980s, the power of political change and of political thought has become increasingly undermined by politicians, perhaps inadvertently. The rise of the individual has inherently shunned the importance of politics (of any ideological persuasion) as a force for good. Apparently, politics is now no longer needed to regulate society, it has been rendered defunct, superfluous to requirements. Instead, individuals acting according to their own interests will eventually lead to order and stability. Because we are rational, obviously.

The result of this was that politicians or political activists are no longer seen as visionaries—but instead as managers. Democratic elections have become an exercise in consensus over who we can trust to “run” the country. They are a competition for who we can trust to ensure that the apparatus of the State, along with the services we need to oil the wheels of individualism, are looked after and protected. Government, and the politicians who manage it are engineers within a system. There to keep us safe from unseen threats—the most obvious being international terrorism.

Ironically, it was Tony Blair and his third way Labour Government that contributed in the most obvious way to the removal of the political from politics. In the early years of his administration the British State was transformed from a vehicle that promoted patrician values to a public choice machine that simply provided people with whatever they wanted.
New Zealand’s own experiences of State reform during the 1990s and 2000s was similar. Even within a leftist-social democratic framework major policies were directed at the individual or the family—not at the nation, as part of a progressive vision.

The current National-led government personifies this insipid “govern by the numbers” approach to political life. This is reflected in the legacy of the last generation of student politicians—of which I would consider myself a part. Inadvertently or not the approach has been to manage the competency, sustainability and viability of our student institutions. It has not been to promote a vision about what it could be or what it should be for. This is nobody’s fault—a fact that frustratingly reflects a political culture which subconsciously shuns the political.

In order to break this cycle there needs to be resurgence in the power of ideas. There needs to be a re-appreciation of the importance of ideology. Not of only one, but of all ideologies—from the Libertarian right to the Communist left. Scarily, it is only the fringes of political society, the tea-partiers or the anarchists, who still cling to Utopian dreams. But they are only heard loudly because they are the only ones talking. We must have a conversation that drowns them out.

The purpose of politics is not just to figure out who gets what, where, why and how. It is to try to imagine how to create someone different. Without re-injecting the political back into politics we, both as individuals and as a collection of individuals, will never figure out how to change the world for the better.

It’s been a long time coming—first bid for by the fifth Labour Government in 2005 and finally implemented by the current National-led Government, it was intended to showcase New Zealand to the world.

To an extent it has done that. While opinions on the opening ceremony have been divided, most New Zealanders have warmly embraced this sporting phenomena.
But some of them have not. Particularly in the urban enclaves of Wellington, much vitriol has been heaped on the Rugby World Cup. Some of it is clearly justified, and some of it is not.

There are two major problems that eventuate when major sporting events such as the Rugby World Cup, or the Olympics take place. The first is the monumental challenge that government faces in order to get things ready in time, and ready to work effectively. The law, and how it is dealt with has an important role to play in this. For example, the restrictive limitations of the Resource Management Act 1991 made things difficult for government when upgrading our stadiums. The Minister for the Rugby World Cup, Murray McCully, even contemplated passing legislation to temporarily over ride the RMA. Thankfully he didn’t need to—but it does demonstrate the pressure that the government was under.

The Local Government Act 2002, and the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002 also have an impact. They provides the authority for City Councils to levy rates. Aucklanders alone have contributed over $100 million to the Rugby World Cup. Here’s hoping there is a decent return on their investment.

The second problem is more visceral. Along with the revelry, tournaments have a darker side. Public drunkenness, assaults and sexual violence are the unwanted underbelly of major sporting events. Here too, the law has a role to play in ensuring people are protected, managed or have somewhere to turn when its time to right a wrong. Regrettably, over the next six weeks judges can expect to see the criminal law getting a good run-around.

I’ve been following how my friends and peers have reacted to the Rugby World Cup, and their differing responses have intrigued me. On the one hand there is a clear appreciation for the opportunities that the RWC can bring. It is after all, an international festival. One where different peoples from around the world come together to celebrate a shared passion. You don’t need to be a rabid fan of rugby to appreciate the commonweal that major events like this bring. The vast majority of cup goers are well-meaning, tee-totaling families who just want to enjoy a fun, collective experience.

But on the other hand there has been an outpouring of pre-emptive vitriol against the Cup. One well read blog, and commenters on the Facebook page of the Wellington Young Feminist’s collective, immediately attacked the World Cup as being a vehicle for sexual violence, gender discrimination and patriarchy. There is undoubtably a serious point here. Sexual violence against women, homosexuals and gender minorities is an abhorrent and unacceptable consequence of many major sporting events. After the opening ceremony in Auckland on 8 September a gay bar owner was assaulted in K Road. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are likely to have been more incidents, and many will go unreported.
It’s hard to reconcile these two points of view, both have valid arguments. Major events should be safe environments where everyone, irrespective of gender, can participate in peace. My ideal Cup would be one where the coercive power of the law is unnecessary. Squaring the two points of view is difficult. My disquiet comes from way the Rugby World Cup has become instantly polarised. One can be opposed to sexual violence and gender discrimination, and even make the argument that major sporting events contribute to the problem in significant ways. But one can also enjoy a game or two of rugby and still call themselves a feminist. If certain feminist discourses become uniformly entrenched they can become in and of themselves, disempowering.

By instantly framing the Rugby World Cup as a battle between the primeval forces of male babarism and the enlightened Amazons of feminism we don’t really get anywhere. This is a problem, because its absolutely vital that we do. Nuanced discussions of gender, violence and rugby are invaluable to a more complete understanding of privilege and partriachy. How we utilise, apply and reform our law is ultimately predicated on the result of that conservation.

On the one hand, they provide a place where students can learn new things, gain new knowledge and equip themselves not just with skills, but with a career. On the other, they are the locus of an intellectual community, one that contributes to what we think, feel and care about.

Those two objectives are often in competition, but both are a priority. As a consequence Government has always had an odd relationship with its universities.
Universities used to be set up by their own Act of Parliament, but now they are Crown Entities. To an extent governments can control what they can or can not do. But they are also functionally independent. While the government pays (most) of the bills, universities still have the power, and some would say the responsibility, to call any government out on its bullshit.

Tertiary organisations are set up by the Education Act 1989. Its an incredibly powerful and wide-ranging piece of law. It establishes the rules around universities, NZQA, the Tertiary Education Commission, and even the membership of student associations such as VUWSA. That list is just a snapshot. The Education Act covers a lot, it does a lot, and it’s complicated.

The Education Act acts a gatekeeper on when a new university can be created. Section 162(4)(a) outlines the things a university must have in order to be a proper university. The requirements are conceptually powerful. They include: a focus on intellectual independence, the interdependence of research and teaching according to international standards, acting as a repository of knowledge and expertise—and crucially, acting as a critic and conscience of society. Its very difficult to fulfill all these requirements, and as the case of Attorney-General v Unitec Institute of Technology demonstrated, some governments are firmly against the idea of there being any new universities at all.

It the requirement that universities act as a critic and conscience of society that has proven to be the most contentious. By law, universities are expected to question controversial things. That, and the enshrinement of academic freedom in section 161 of Act, puts universities in a powerful position to get all up in other people’s business.

Take for example the recent case of Margaret Mutu, head of the University of Auckland’s Maori Studies Department. Last Monday she came out in support of a Department of Labour report, which asserted that Maori are more likely to be anti-immigration than any other racial group.

Much of the media reaction to her comments has focused on what she said—and for good reason, her comments were pretty inflammatory. But there has been little attention given to why she could say what she said. Unlike the racist rantings of Kyle Chapman, former head of the New Zealand National Front, Mutu was using her position of academic authority to challenge New Zealand’s view of race relations.

Personally I don’t agree with her, but I was intrigued by what her comments achieved. In a way she was doing exactly what the Education Act required of her. She was acting as a critic and conscience, and was using her academic freedom to put forward a fairly challenging point of view. The senior management of the University of Auckland couldn’t do much to quiet her and in fact have publicly backed her up.

What this demonstrates is that the law actually puts academics in a far more powerful position than students realise, and also perhaps more than some academics realise themselves.

Universities have always been the places where radical ideas have been fermented. It was the protests and then massacre of students and academics at the University of Tehran that sparked the Iranian revolution of 1979. The ideas developed at the University of Chicago in the 1980s changed the face of global economics and politics. Closer to home, organisation against the Springbok tours was located in and around our universities. Margaret Mutu’s contribution pales in comparison, but is part of the same concept; universities are here to do more than simply churn out the next generation of lawyers, accountants, and Briscoes Managers.

But the legal framework that universities operate under creates difficult tensions. Although they are functionally independent from government, the vast majority of a university’s bottom line comes from the taxpayer purse (either through direct funding or student fees). This means that Vice Chancellors must always be walking a tightrope. Part of their mission is to push the boundaries, but push it too much and they may find themselves wanting in the next budget round.

However, a university community should never shy away from vocal expression. Margaret Mutu’s statements were brash, but they were also comparatively rare. Self-censorship in any large organisation is perilous, even career-damaging. But academics have a responsibility to air harsh truths. Perhaps they need to take a page from Mutu’s book and remember that according to the law they are expected to speak their minds.

Throughout New Zealand’s history homosexuals have felt the harsh sting of injustice. Here, consenting homosexual acts were illegal until 1986. In the United States, it wasn’t until the Supreme Court decision of Lawrence v Texas in 2003 that homosexual acts were federally legalised. Only a few US states have recognised a homosexual couple’s right to marry—which is something New Zealand has yet to achieve.
But it’s not all been bad news. The Civil Union Act 2004 was welcomed, as was the inclusion of homophobia as an aggravating factor in sentencing. In 2009 Parliament abolished the discriminatory partial defence of provocation, which let homophobic killers get away with murder. And while our adoption laws still discriminate unfairly, the recent decision of Re AMM & KJO, and Labour MP Jacinda Ardern’s private members bill to reform adoption laws, all indicate that change is coming.

Those that protest against the realisation of full equality for human begins are on the wrong side of history. But that still does not stop me from feeling nervous about the backlash that the queer movement inexorably faces.

An example comes from São Paulo in Brazil. Last week, the city’s Council voted to establish a “heterosexual pride day”. The event, supported by evangelical Christians, was to celebrate the rights of heterosexuals. The organisers were quick to claim that it was not a homophobic attack, but instead was a way to “end the excesses and privileges of gay rights”. This is not just a Brazilian view. Arguments against Auckland’s now defunct Hero parade faced the same kind of thinly veiled homophobia.

I was deeply concerned by the developments in São Paulo. Part of me was simply confused—the day didn’t seem necessary, isn’t every day heterosexual pride day? Stuff.co.nz’s “week of weddings” seemed to imply it is. Why is a special day required? And part of me was slightly angry. As a gay man myself I am naturally alarmed by any attempts to downplay and marginalise who I am, and who others are.

But my real concern was more fundamental. The attempt to celebrate the ‘normalcy’ of heterosexuality—in order to end the excesses and privileges of homosexuals—displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of human rights and minority protection.

To characterise pride marches as exhibitions of queer opulence seriously misses the point. That’s not what they are for. Granted, they are often flamboyant affairs. But so what? So is Mardi Gras. So is the Sevens Parade.

But unlike those things, pride events serve a deeper social purpose. They act as a community statement to heterosexuals and to homosexuals. One that says “we are here and we are normal. We are like you. Please accept us. And please accept yourself.”

In a democracy, where the majority vote rules at the expense of the minority the queer community needs to do this. It’s imperative to our survival, and to the recognition of our basic equality. The purpose of public statements of one’s difference is not to marginalise or to create division, it’s precisely the opposite. It’s to remind heterosexuals of the difference that exists, and to celebrate inclusion and tolerance. But it only works in that way because queers are a social minority. It is not a two way street—and it won’t be until every single legal, social and cultural prejudice has been eradicated.

The law has an important role in play in that. Its job is to protect the weak from the strong; to protect the few from the many; to promote equality and fairness. As Justice Albie Sachs said in Fourie v Home Affairs “equality means equal concern and respect across difference. It does not presuppose the elimination of difference. Respect for human rights requires the affirmation of self, not the denial of self. Difference should not be the basis for exclusion or stigma. Equality celebrates the vitality that difference brings to any society.”
And that’s why loud voices, legal activism and street parades are so important.

And that thing is justice.

Throughout our legal educations we tip-toe around the concept, and we blithely accept that it’s important. But I can’t recall a single instance where the term was rigorously assessed. This is an interesting omission, given that the application, interpretation, and enactment of justice are embedded at the heart of the law. But we are still left with the question: what does justice actually mean?

Perhaps it’s not surprising that this question is roundly ignored by legal courses. Such lofty enquiries are beyond the scope of legal education. Law school’s ‘core business’ is the training and education of lawyers-to-be. It doesn’t set out to create philosophical warrior monks (although for public law students sometimes that’s an unintended consequence). But even in light of that it still seems odd that justice receives such scant attention.

One possible reason is that the term defies definition. Any assessment of justice will invariably be a contextual one; it is not something that you can easily put your finger on. What is just will be interpreted differently, by different people, at different times. Take for example the case of Cornelius Arie Smith-Voorkamp—the man with Asperger’s Syndrome who compulsively collects light fixtures and who stole one from an abandoned house after the February earthquake.

For many, Cornelius is nothing but a looter. He broke the law, and as a consequence any criminal sanction put on him will be a just one. In this way justice can be calculated; if you break the rules, then justice demands that you pay for your crimes whoever you are. And why not? Justice is blind.

But many of us would find this too harsh. Cornelius had an unassailable mental compulsion to do what he did; his actions cannot be easily explained away. Because of this, our view of justice can also change. A mathematical calculation no longer seems appropriate. Context demands a difference in justice.
It is this tension that has plagued our attempts at a finite conception of the term. Context matters and our view on what’s required to right a social wrong has fluctuated in response to social pressure—and will continue to do so. An eye for an eye may once have been socially acceptable, but embrace it too much
and the result is only blindness.

But blaming the problems of justice purely on context seems a little too easy. It makes everything a little too abstract. Context is obviously important, but it must not be forgotten that the application and enforcement of justice has been shaped by the advancement (or regression) of the law.

Any serious attempt to unpick the plexus of justice requires us to ask ourselves the question, “whose justice?” This again, is a subject that law students are not often presented with. We often forget how privileged we are—not in some kind of self-aggrandising way—but in a structural way. The values we infuse justice with are influenced by the books, precedents and cases we’ve read and the Lord Justices who wrote them. This is a privileged justice, it is a justice that reflects a legally predominant view, and it is a justice that may differ from what we expect others to accept.

Despite the medieval proclamations of those banging the drums of crime, justice is not a fixed concept. Perhaps in order to give the concept any real meaning, we have to constantly deny it one.

But it wasn’t the traditional domino theory of the cold-war era I was concerned with; instead I was researching a new way of thinking about how systems work—and what happens when systems fail.

There is a new line of thought emerging about why large institutions collapse, and why, when they do, they crash so badly. Just think of the financial disaster caused by Lehman Brothers, or of the environmental destruction wrought in Florida by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

This new domino idea is based on the premise that human beings have an innate and frustrating desire to complicate things. We like it when things are complex; it shows that they are sophisticated. In many respects, we can’t help but create complicated rules and structures around what we do. Our world is hard to understand, and any systemisation invariably reflects the environment it’s emulating.

But complexity is problematic. The more interconnected we become the closer our dominoes get stacked—and the more dangerous it is when they fall. The result of this is what safety engineers call ‘tightly coupled systems’. The more dependent the various parts of our system become, the easier it is for things to fall apart and the harder it is for us to shut it all down when things go horribly wrong.

But what does this all have to do with lawyering? At first glance, not a lot. Lawyers are not engineers; they don’t install safety devices in mines; and they aren’t financial wizards creating complex derivative markets. But if we look at the principles behind dealing with complex systems, we can see that it has just as much to teach lawyering as it does engineering.

Because although they don’t often create them, lawyers are interfacing with complex systems all the time. Tax law in financial markets is complicated. Evidence law is complicated. Commercial mergers are complicated. Working with the machinery of government is complicated. All of these things are hard to navigate and are often so interdependent that when one part fails, another will too. Just look at the Government’s inability to regulate financial investors before the 2008 credit crunch. It was a perfect example of a tightly coupled system creating disastrous results.

The benefit of lawyering is that it can act as a circuit breaker within a socio-legal system. Lawyers spread risk, and it’s part of their job to figure out how institutional relationships work. In this way, they can be a helpful and effective tool in the private citizen’s toolbox. By providing advice on key milestones in a system (be it a company restructuring or the drafting of a new regulatory framework) lawyers can act as a check on ‘tight coupling’. And that’s a good thing.
But this structural approach to lawyering will only work if lawyers themselves take a step back and have a look at the big picture. Most people become lawyers to fight for justice—but it’s often an individualised fight, one institutionally emphasised by the lawyer-client relationship.

Accidents will always happen, and in tightly coupled systems, accidents are even more dangerous. But we need to extend this obvious realisation beyond structural engineering. Because by thinking of the profession as one of systems regulator, not solely as one of individual advocate, lawyers may end up positively influencing their world around them in ways they have not yet imagined.

Thankfully, the mental exertion paid off, and I was lucky enough to further discover the mysteries of law school. But the entire experience was a fairly traumatic one.

In fact, it’s one of the most stressful things you can at university. Medical students at Otago grumble and groan about late nights and sleepless study sessions – but at least they get to try morphine (seriously, a friend of mine spaced out during her residency). And Architecture Students have legitimate complaints about their demanding workload.

But Law school stress is more readily known about, and more obvious. In fact, it’s a subject that has attracted a considerable amount of academic comment. For example, a study published in the Willamette Law Review found that within months of entering law school, some students had begun to display symptoms of extreme stress, such as sleep deprivation, self-harm, depression, anxiety, obsessive self-doubt, and feelings about losses of personal and emotional control. It must be noted that the study was primarily concerned with overseas law schools – but the style of legal education practiced there does not markedly differ from our own. And that’s worrying.

Let’s be clear, this column is not a bitch fest about how hard law students have to work, or how environmentally unfriendly the average reading list is. We did, after all, sign up for this. Instead it’s a discussion about why law is so stressful. There is a serious question that law students should be asking: what is about legal education that causes so many aspiring lawyers to work hard and stress harder?

Perhaps an answer can be found in the way law is taught. Rumours abound about the humiliation and suffering wrought by lecturers on students using the Socratic Method. In reality the technique is more awkward than it is agonising. I’m generally a supporter of the Socratic Method, but it’s by a view formed more out of custom than by any serious reflection on how appropriate the approach is for the teaching of complicated ideas. Communication is vital to legal learning, but the best classes I’ve ever taken were the ones where debate and discussion was spontaneous, not forced. While the method is sure to make some students do their readings and offer opinions, it’s also been known to make people not turn up to class, or even hide under their desks. It’s an approach that undoubtedly contributes to student’s stress and is anecdotally one of the largest determinants of anxiety in many of the academic articles that comment on this issue.

That by itself is a good enough reason to inquire as to whether or not the Socratic Method is a good approach to take to the teaching of law school subjects. Graduating law school with an LLB and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder isn’t going to make employment interviews any easier. Furthermore, continued cohorts of legal professionals who have been forced to run the stress inducing gauntlet of law school will not be particularly useful in modernising the industry or pushing it forward in creative, innovative directions.

Maybe it’s time for law faculties around the country to ponder this issue themselves. The Socratic Method is not set in stone. In fact some famous Law Schools shy away from it. Other approaches, such as the Gutenberg Method, offer alternatives that are deserving of consideration. But as well as the question of form, the broader issue of how law school institutionally deals with (or inadvertently promotes) stressful learning experiences is a topic worthy of more investigation by those who provide it to us.

It should not be forgotten that Law is a trade. It’s a professional disciple. Lawyers in practice need to rely as much on the strength of their relationships as they do on the strength of their knowledge. Perhaps it’s time for legal education to be more aware of that fact.

The Act allows copyright owners to enforce their rights more effectively against internet downloaders. Those of you who have lived (or are living) in a University hall of residence, or have looked over the shoulder of someone streaming “Never Say Never” on University computers, will know that students are partial to a little bit of ‘try before you buy’. So this new law is concerning, especially for our new-age techno-citizen generation, who Tweet and Tumblr our first-world problems incessantly around the globe.

But there seems to be a little hysteria in the air, whipped up at least in part by politicians who see the Act as an opportunity to point-score. Perhaps it’s time to clear the air and take students through the new law and its effects, step by step.

The legislation gives new enforcement powers for copyright holders. In particularly, the rules relating to infringement notices have been tidied up, and new processes regarding the Copyright Tribunal have been added.

Section 122B allows copyright holders to force Internet Service Providers to issue three kinds of infringement notices: a detection notice (noting that you’ve been illegally infringing copyright); a warning notice (a notice telling you to stop); and an enforcement notice (a notice telling you that the copyright holder is pretty pissed off and is exercising enforcement of their rights). Once these notices have all been issued, the copyright holder may then apply to the Copyright Tribunal for a damages order for a maximum of $15,000, or to the District Court for the suspension of your Internet account.
It is that second option which is most contentious. Access to the net is a pretty big deal, and termination is a big call for any court to make.

The procedure for suspension is outlined in Section 122O. A copyright holder can apply to have an account holder’s Internet connection cut off for a maximum of six months if the District Court is satisfied that: at least one enforcement notice has been issued to you (and that its issuing complies with the process outlined in the Act); that the account holder has, through file sharing, infringed the copyright of the person seeking the order; and finally, that suspension of the account would be justified, when balanced against the circumstances and the seriousness of the infringing.

This process is pretty rigorous, and clearly outlines significant hurdles that need to be cleared before the Motion Picture Association of America can kick you off the net. And if you’ve just finished downloading American Pie 7 in the Murphy Cybercommons, you can breathe an additional sigh of relief: Section 122PA of the Act stops copyright holders from even using suspension orders until a date is set by an Order in Council. What this means is effectively the power to ask for the termination of Internet accounts has been ‘frozen’ until the Government decides to ‘unlock’ it. However, it is not Parliament that gets to make that decision. An Order in Council is made by Cabinet and the Governor General, and will not get debated or voted on by the House of Representatives.

But even with these restrictions, the legislation has attracted significant criticism. The first concern is that the law is unworkable. The process outlined is complicated, and may not give copyright holders the opportunity to exercise their rights. Applications to tribunals are time consuming and expensive. As a consequence, only large corporates are going to be able to utilise the law’s powers effectively. This is bad news for small start-ups and emergent developers—particularly Kiwi ones—who may not be able to rely on the Act to protect their ideas.

Secondly, the Act is focused on the account holder, rather than the downloader of illegal material. This poses problems for large institutions such as Universities and even for flats where there are a large number of users under one account. The Act also places a strong procedural onus on Internet Service Providers to provide information about their users when copyright holders request this information. This power is something ISP customers are going to be furious about, and ISPs are begrudgingly going to have to put in place systems for managing these requests properly.

Access to the Internet is not considered a human right in New Zealand, but it has been recognised as such in Finland, and to lesser extent in France. However, the bill may breach your right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, found in section 25(c) of the Bill of Rights. Section 122MA states that infringement notices are conclusive evidence of copyright breaches. This is only a presumption, and users can bring evidence to the contrary, but prima facie it is in breach of the presumption of innocence. Additionally, what standard of proof is required to rebut the presumption is unclear. This is important, as a higher burden will make it more difficult for users seeking to defend themselves before the Tribunal.

Behind these concerns and the Acts new powers is a deeper issue. It’s the question about how New Zealanders want to treat the regulation of intellectual property and the corporatisation of ideas. That debate is complicated and vexing. But it’s one that we as a polity will need to have if we are ever going to see legislation that is both democratic in a new world of megabytes and access, and responsive to the tension between economic realities and creativity.

Although our intense dislike for each other was palpable and ever-present, we were alike on quite a few levels: we were both argumentative, geeky and precocious. If we’d bothered to ask, we’d have probably found that we shared a great deal of things in common. But we never did, because differing views on one deep-seated philosophical issue kept us at each other’s throats for five long years.

You see, my nemesis was a fundamentalist Christian. And not one of those contemporary nice ones—this guy was an acolyte of the fire and brimstone variety, no easy feat for a student at a Catholic boys’ school, but he sure could pull it off. When it came to religion he refused to give any ground, not even to the few mild-mannered priests who taught us. With him being perpetually irate at doctrinal disputes, me hiding deep in my homosexual chrysalis, and neither of us being Catholics, I’m still not quite sure who was having the worse time.

Our shared disquiet stemmed from opposite ends of the theistic spectrum. I’ve never been religious, not even at an early age, as no-one in my family really is: with a scientist for a father, religion was a subject that just didn’t feature. To be fair, though, neither did Newtonian maths (although I was forced by the threat of disinheritance into taking seventh form calculus). My upbringing was as secular as a civil union. God’s existence, or lack of, was outside the ambit of my childish brain. Such a question simply did not need to be asked.

High school changed all that. After spending five years fighting off what I thought was the personification of all that was illogical, I had developed a fundamentalism of my own. To counter my arch-enemy in all things religious, I had grabbed what I thought was the sword and shield of reason, and had safely positioned myself on the battlements of atheism’s angrier sibling: anti-theism.

My conviction that religious belief was not only incorrect but actively harmful was only entrenched by my early University years—those heady times in first- and second- year where the wine is flowing, you’re always right and everyone else is wrong. I read the classics voraciously. I churned through Dawkins like he was going out of fashion. I consumed Hitchens and his ferociously eloquent defenestrations. For light relief I skimmed through Russell, Epicurus and Nietzsche. I was convinced all of them were right, and that without fail they provided surgical arguments for my one-man war on religion. I would literally throw books at the ill-informed, demanding that they too enjoy the rational delights of a life well-reasoned.

But you do a lot of growing up between 18 and 23. As time evolved, my views did too. Over time, I realised that in exercising my own fundamentalism, I was exhibiting the doctrinal arrogance that I so vocally denigrated. Additionally, I had developed a greater appreciation and respect for pluralism and rights, for everyone—not just the ‘enlightened’. So, as the years went on, I relaxed my views. I’m still an atheist—the philosophical arguments for the paucity of God’s existence I still find personally overwhelming (this short piece is not the place to expand on the philosophy of disbelief, but if you’re interested, just Google “the problem of evil”), but I no longer consider myself a crusader for the voice of reason. I am what the British director Jonathan Miller has called a “reluctant atheist”. My reluctance is attributed not to a subscription of non-belief, but a reluctance to call my non-belief “atheism”.

The reason for this is by using the term atheist or anti-theist or heathen, non-believer, heretic or whatever, there is an implicit surrender of the exercise of belief to form and presentation. And that is inherently problematic. Polarised politics clearly tells us that fundamentalist derision of your polar opposite does nothing to advance rational debate—if it did, I would be able to state that the Tea Party has contributed to democracy while keeping a straight face.

It is this problem that creates an aversion to the rabidity of atheists like Dawkins. And it is this problem that drowns out the reasonable theological and philosophical inquires of the questioning centre. Atheists do not need to identify as atheists to be powerful proponents of rational world views. Is it not simpler, and more elegant to hold a laconic indifference? Perhaps an analogy can be drawn with racism: one is not a non-racist, they are simply… not racist.

In fact, the position of indifference may pose a more troubling conundrum for the fundamentalist theist. Atheists (or non-believers) may have more traction by simply denying the premise of the question in its entirety. A debate about the existence of God presupposes that there is an entity like God capable of existing. Subsequently, the questions being asked are bound up within a dialogical paradigm whereby the parties to the debate are asking, as Marx famously said, “only such questions as can be answered”. Indifference avoids this.

But being indifferent instead of opposed is important for two more reasons. The first is that atheism is no longer required as a force for philosophical good in the way it once was. What I mean by this is that there was a time—a time when religious institutions wielded a considered amount of control and force—that radical forms of atheism played an important role in changing societies for the better. Now, I do recognise that religious institutionalism still exists, and can be the site for legitimate criticism. The Pope’s refusal to advocate for condom use in Africa and American churches’ active support of Uganda’s violent oppression of homosexuals are both examples of the abhorrence of institutionalism run amok. But these issues can now be combated using a far wider range of political and social forces, some of which (like human rights) have far superseded what simple atheism could have achieved. This is not to suggest that atheism is no longer relevant—but it is now just one mechanism by which hearts and minds can be mended.

The second reason goes to the core of the theological question that belief addresses. Even atheists and anti-theists must, as the Cambridge theologian Denys Turner argues, address the question “why is there anything at all?”. Atheists must work very hard to deal with the constant re-emergence of this question, while indifference has more room
to accept the unknown more elegantly. Now, again, this is not to suggest that the answer to this question supposes a deity one way or the other. For the record, I think the theist response necessarily results in an infinite regression of deities and therefore is wholly unconvincing, but that’s beside the point. My argument is instead that by advocating a fundamentalist atheism, proponents like Dawkins or Hitchens place themselves into a self imposed, and unnecessarily constrained philosophical box. Indifference neatly side-steps this, not out of philosophical cowardice, but out of honesty. It also gracefully pirouettes around the overbearing limits placed one places on their imagination if they are convinced that everything hangs on the question of whether God exists, or does not.

The flow on benefits of my slightly more relaxed approach to non-belief are numerous. For one, it’s a more consistent way of recognising religious pluralism. If people want to believe in the supreme power of concepts and constructs then, as long as they do no harm, we as a society should be accommodating of their wishes.

It’s hard to conclusively draw a difference between a strong conviction that there is a man in the sky, and a deep seated confidence that humans are innately altruistic. The point is
that until all the available evidence is in (assuming that’s even possible) they are judgement calls. And part of being human is being wrong.

Another is that by subscribing to a position of indifference, individuals who are secure in their own non-belief inherently de-escalate the culture war that harmfully surrounds the issue. This is important firstly because violent clashes of belief have often led to physical and emotional harm, and reducing this is a laudable goal. But secondly, because it gives added strength and power to non-belief protestations against aggressive fundamentalism. By demonstrating that aggressive fundamentalism is an infringement of the norm, rather than an opposition to one, indifferent non-believers instantly come from a more defendable position when they choose to speak out. Simply put, it is far easier for a quiet person to point out that another is shouting, than it is for two people to shout each other silent.

For an issue with as much emotional baggage as the one above, I’d be aghast if you felt like I was telling you what to do. Belief is a personal thing, but the personal is the political. I personally think non-belief is the most ‘correct’ answer to this theological question. But part of non-believing is continually questioning the manner of one’s own position. For me, this very idea encapsulates the fundamental beauty of rational thought.

It took me a while to get here, but now I feel much more secure in my lack of religious belief and in the strange comfort that brings. It’s comforting because it’s cogent, defensible and beneficial. Because now, if my high school nemesis was to ask me if I believed in God, I would not attempt to scream him down. Instead I would tilt my head ever so slightly, softly smile and say with all sincerity: I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question.

Bailey Kurariki remains one of the youngest convicted killers in New Zealand legal history. In September 2002, he was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for manslaughter (not murder, as the slothful media have often wrongly reported).

His age and that of his accomplices stunned New Zealand. Many were aghast at the brutality and senselessness of a crime committed by people so young, but this masked a more disturbing realisation: violence and crime is perpetrated by youth in New Zealand, and in rare circumstances, it can be very violent indeed.

But that realisation comes with baggage. Simplifying the issue down to the scaremongering rhetoric of ‘killer kids run amok’ is not only unhelpful, it’s dangerous. Youth Justice is a concern for New Zealand and its elected representatives, but it’s an issue often dealt to without the requisite knowledge and complexity it loudly demands. Forcefully cracking down on miscreants is often a vote-winner—perhaps because of the fact that kids can’t vote.

Most of the law that deals with youth offending is found in Part 4 of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act 1989. The legislation was something of a revolution. It represented a new direction in dealing with youth offenders, bringing in the highly successful family group conference mechanism and the principles of community, redress and protection.

The Act puts children’s interests first. Kids should be dealt with outside the courts as much as possible; links with häpu, families and communities should be strengthened; age plays a major factor in mitigating any sanctions; and if any sanctions are imposed, they should take the form most likely to foster and promote the development of the child.
This all sounds extremely lovely. New Zealanders should be proud of the ostensibly liberal approach we have taken to Youth Justice. But perhaps our pride is misplaced. There is a sharp sting in the tail of our approach to youth offenders.

Section 21 of the Crimes Act sets the criminal age of responsibility at ten-years-old. In practice, children aged between 10 and 14 are protected by the common law principle of doli incapax, which requires the Crown to prove that not only did the child intend to commit the crime, but they also knew it was wrong.

However, even with that extra legal hurdle, the age is still extremely low, and New Zealand has come under sustained fire from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child for refusing to change it. In most other respects, New Zealand has a good reputation as a country that complies with and respects human rights; It’s saddening that in this most crucial of areas we lag significantly behind.

And it’s wearisome that the current Government seems intent on ramping up the intensity of our current regime. The Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Youth Courts Jurisdiction and Orders) Amendment Act was passed by the National Government with the support of ACT and United Future in 2010. The Act extends the jurisdiction of the Act to 12- and 13-year-olds, meaning that for certain offences less than murder they will be liable for criminal penalties. The Youth Court has called this the most “fundamental change to our system since its inception in 1989.” And it’s a change likely to do more harm than good.

This is because it proposes a misguided solution to a misunderstood problem. The extension of jurisdiction was justified as a move to control our worst youth offenders. But it is these very children who are most in need of care and protection. It doesn’t take a lawyer to figure out that in 99 percent of cases child offending is caused by broken homes and families; not by adolescent criminal masterminds. When Bailey Kurariki was hauled in for questioning, his parents were not present—not because they refused to go, but because the police could not find them.

Youth Justice cannot be treated as a discrete problem. Political decisions about wider societal issues are going to have the most lasting impact on youth crime in New Zealand. The Government’s touted changes to welfare will almost certainly have an effect on the ability of the family unit to act as a barrier against youth crime.

Youth Justice is an issue that lawyers and voters should be seized with. It’s a heady mix of both the legal and the political. And it’s a system we still need to perfect, if we are ever going to come close to commanding and guiding some of our most confused, scared and vulnerable.

Some of them are blatantly obvious; Conrad Smith earned his chops at Vic law school before making it on the pitch. Other relationships are harder to discern, like whether or not NFL player swaps are a form of insider trading—or if bringing back the biff amounts to an incitement of violence.

All of those issues are complex but interesting. But they aren’t foundational stuff. What’s more interesting is the chance to take a look at a little known case outside of the legal world—a case that shows how important sporting issues can be to the very fabric of our democratic society.

The year was 1985. All was not well in New Zealand; the eighties were a time of change, be it economic, political or social. For many New Zealanders, South Africa’s ongoing apartheid regime and the rugby tours that went with it were a lightning rod for political activism. Students, academics, leftists and pluralists had taken to the streets and were demanding action.

But it was not just the streets they took to. On the 11th, 12th and 13th of July, anti-springbok protestors took their fight to the High Court of Wellington. The plaintiffs, members of the Auckland University Rugby Football Club and the Teacher’s Rugby Football club decided to apply for an interim injunction against the New Zealand Rugby Football Union. In April of that year the NZRFU had accepted an invitation from the South African Rugby Board to tour South Africa. Looking for a chance to stick it to the Boks while displaying New Zealand’s (not inconsiderable) rugby prowess at the time, they jumped at the chance.

Unfortunately they underestimated the strength of public reaction. The plaintiffs were pretty pissed off, and they had not a moment to lose—the All Blacks were set to depart for South Africa on the 17th of July. So they decided to go for the jugular, arguing that the decision by the NZRFU to accept the invitation was invalid—because acceptance would not promote, foster and develop the game of rugby in New Zealand, which the NZRFU is required to do.

In an unexpected decision the High Court fell down on the side of the angry plaintiffs. They agreed; the plaintiffs had a strong case that letting the tour go ahead would be detrimental to the good of the game and the NZFRU had willingly closed their eyes to the issue. But moreover allowing the tour would fly in the face of a unanimous resolution in Parliament against it, clear public outrage, the spirit of the Gleneagles agreement (a 1977 agreement amongst the Commonwealth to discourage sporting links with South Africa), it could incite violence against South Africans and it would be contrary to the interests of the nation. All in all, it was quite the slam-dunk. The High Court placed an interim injunction on the tour until the case could be heard in full. In effect, the plaintiffs had won.

But that’s not where the story ends. Finnigan v the New Zealand Rugby Football Union is important for a different reason. It’s important because it shows how critical the real world is to the law and to the way the law operates. Ordinarily, a private organisation would have no worries about being hauled in front of a court of law on a public matter such as this. Finnigan changed all that. It pointed out that the decisions of private organisations do have public consequences, and those consequences can be serious. In this exceptional circumstance the High Court peeked behind the veil and put democracy and public opinion to the fore. And for that, we should be eternally grateful.

We could rant for pages about the internal contradictions inherent in the Food Act 1981 (which, by the way, extends food safety protection laws to all food offered as prizes—so, Red Bull, you’d better be careful). But that’d be really boring. We also can’t rant about our love for cheese, because Ally Garrett did such an impressive job in her column in Issue 01 (it was unbrielievable). So, instead, we are going to attempt to describe to you the cuisine career path of the typical lawyer.

Your culinary base is when you start walking the hallowed halls of Old Government Buildings. We know as much as any other law student that there is a certain amount of hubris to the job. So instead of crummy sandwiches from the back of the shelf in New World, you’re probably clutching on to that overpriced stodgy lunch-thing from Wishbone. Just give it up, you’re not fooling anyone.

But as fun as Lambton cuisine can be, it won’t last very long. Before the humble student knows it, tests are rocketing up, opinions need to be done and Professor David McLauchlan is becoming more incomprehensible by the day (“Today’s law is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapper”—what? Although, it is food-related).
So begins your downward spiral.

Very quickly your kitchen becomes the desk you’ve claimed in the Law School Library. As the pressure intensifies your bank balance will reduce (so long, Wishbone), but in spite of that you’ll find yourself insatiably drawn to the pie-cart outside the train station. You’ll buy a sausage roll and chip combo and shamefully slink back to your studies. Oh dear.
But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Your academic year will come to a close, and when it does it’s usually sodden. Not because of the tears of frustration on your academic transcript, but because when things start to wind down, law students like to wind up.

Emily and I still remember our final Crimes Lecture of the year when everyone was swigging from wine bottles hidden under their seats and the lecturer did two tequila shots off her lectern; lemon and salt, the whole shebang.

This pattern of pretence, poverty, and pissed will become a comforting blanket throughout your legal education. And the rumour is that once out in the real world of statements of claim and High Court hearings, things don’t really change all that much. Although, perhaps your legal career is just a longer, stretched-out version of what you’ve already experienced. Starting off at the bottom of the food chain, you’ll just be pleased you got there, and will trade Armani suits off against baked bean dinners. As the middle of your career sets in, the long hours, mental exhaustion and constant work will kill any love of decent food.

But stick with it—because at the end of the long slog is that overflowing pot of grapes at the end of the Wairarapa rainbow.
A Pinot Noir winery. And it’s all for you.

Legislation is used to regulate almost every facet of our love life. It states the age at which you can have sex for the first time; it protects you against unwanted advances in the workplace; it protects you if you’re selling your body in the workplace; and it figures out how property is to be divided up, if your partner turns out to be a massive douche.

When it comes to love, the law’s got your back. But there are areas where things have gone and got terribly confused. Misguided attempts at protecting love have led to injustice, mystification, and a whole lot of heartache.

The law not keeping pace with social mores was demonstrated last year in the High Court of Wellington. The case of Re AMM & KJO, involved a de facto heterosexual couple who wished to adopt a child. By all accounts they were excellent candidates for parenthood. But according to the New Zealand’s draconian Adoption Act 1955, only married couples can adopt. And thanks to the existence of both the Civil Unions Act 2004 and the Marriage Act 1950 only heterosexual couples are allowed to be married.

This created a tricky legal issue. In 1955 the term “spouse” was intended by Parliament to mean a partner in marriage. But today, spouse can be used in a variety of different relationships.

But the couple had an ace up their sleeve. They argued that “spouse” should be interpreted consistently with the Bill of Rights Act 1990, which enables judges to give preference to meanings that are consistent with fundamental rights—as long as the meaning is reasonably possible on the statutory text.

It was a long shot. The text was definite, the Act was written in 1955, when relationships outside of Marriage were treated with scorn. But the judge unexpectedly accepted the couple’s argument. To restrict adoption to married couples was discriminatory. Justice won out on the day, right?

Well no, not entirely.

The judge went out of his way to limit the scope of his ruling only to heterosexual de facto couples. Gays and lesbians (who can currently not adopt) were once again denied the same basic legal rights afforded to straight society.

But it was worse than that. The ruling confused an area of law already marred by inconsistency. Now the circumstances in which a couple may adopt now bear no connection with reality. Married heterosexual couples may adopt. Civil Unioned heterosexual couples may not. Heterosexual de-facto couples can adopt, homosexual couples in a Civil Union can’t – and it’s too early to say if gay or lesbian couples in a de facto relationship can.  What a truly absurd mess.

Unfortunately the solution is not quick or simple. Amending the Act could solve things in a flash, but that would miss an opportunity for wide-ranging reform.

The Act is badly out of step with modern values. It was written during a time when the majority of adopted children were unwanted or unplanned. Legal relationships between birth mothers and adoptive parents were severed. The best interests of the child were not a consideration, and international principles regarding the care of children were conspicuously absent.

New Zealand has already led the way in reforming other laws relating to youth and children.

Now it’s time to go back to the drawing board and imagine new legislation that drags adoption kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

True reform would result in a law that puts children’s interests first, allowing for a rainbow of families to give them the love, support and care that they deserve. And thankfully, it will be those love-obsessed lawyers resolutely campaigning to make it happen.

But things have still been developing in Darfur. Actually, quite a lot has been happening. The US have had non-military advisors in there for awhile, the African Union has tried to broker a peace to quell the violence, and the UN has even got its cosmopolitan hands dirty – through its  Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court.

Things have progressed to such a point that the ICC has recently issued an arrest warrant for Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. This is pretty extraordinary. He is the first sitting head of state to be called in front of the ICC. Naturally, he doesnt want to go. When asked about the issue at a recent opening of a Dam (complete with military forces, carnival atsmophere and confetti) he quite literally told the ICC to “eat” the arrest warrant. How very Bart Simpson of him.

In some respects, this is a good thing. Omar Hassan al-Bashir has been directly culpable for the crisis that existed in the region. But the ICC’s declaration is bound to ruffle a few very large feathers. The north and south have brokered a shaky peace deal – with support from China  (a country thats had an dubious relationship with the current Sudanese leadership, and has been accused of breaching weapons embargoes) so any moves to force the hand over of Omar Hassan al-Bashir will be difficult.

Keep your eye on ‘Orrible Omar, and how this all plays out. It could unfold as one of the first truly great ICC successes, or it could become just another example of a despotic politician who just wont go. Sigh.

He has put out a second book – focusing mainly on the handling of Iraq by the now replaced General Petraeus. He has ominously named it The Gamble: General Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq.

With Iraqi election results already being announced, its no better a time to take stock of Iraq after the American “democratization” experiment. And Ricks has some pretty sobering things to say; Have a listen.

There are probably three reasons why these leaks are occuring, and im yet to decide which one is the most convincing.

Option A: Internal Party struggles

The framing of the National Party election strategy is to offer John Key as the inevitable succesor to Helen Clark’s nine year term. Therefore John Key is central to thier election platform. He’s everywhere, on Stephen Franks’ billboards, all over the National Party’s website, and on most party literature. The benefit of this is that all things National become all things John Key by extension – and vice versa. However, this can have the unintended effect of tarring Key with the National Party’s fuck ups. When the Nats take a hit, so does Key.

Why is this interesting? It’s interesting because the leaks could be the concerted campaign of a few anti Key campaigners within the National Party caucus. It must be remembered that the National front bench is a tight knit and long suffering crew. They are the same bunch that were active in the 90′s. Key wasn’t part of that crowd and there’s room for speculation that he is not yet accepted by the inner circle. So the continued leak of policies harms Key’s image. But the leaks are not so damaging as to scuttle the Party’s electoral chances. Is the pressure being put on Key already? Is Bill frothing at the bit for another bite at the apple?

Option 2: Dirty Tricks

The Nats were able to largely mitigate the fallout of the leak at the National Part conference by claiming that it was part of a dirty tricks campaign. It was the same response that they used after Nick Hager was leaked emails from Don Brash’s office. And it resonated with certain aspects of the NZ polity. Perhaps by intentionally leaking policies to Mallard the Nats are expecting to gain more legitimacy with their dirty tricks line. No one likes politicians ‘stealing’ policies from the other side, and part of that attack is the perception of Mallard being nasty and Machiavellian. Perhaps the Nats are trying to frame the issue in this light – by leaking minor policies to Mallard.

Option 3: Pure Human Error

The Nats so far have been a little “exuberant” and have “not chosen their words well”. They havent been able to maintian the slick political machine image they might have wished for. Perhaps these leaks are the result of human error. Extraordinarily three different policies my have been left lying around Wellington by accident. It’s unlikely, but we can’t rule it out entirely. But I’d be very surprised if it was the case.

There was very nearly a full bench at court this week. Everyone was present with the exception of Queer Rights Officer Rachael Wright, who is still boycotting meetings in protest, Women’s Rights Officer Georgina Dickson and Activities Officer Fiona McDonald. Such a turnout has been unprecedented in all my observations of the Exec, so I knew something important was about to go down.

I was soon to find out. Within minutes of the meeting opening, it was mooted that the VUWSA Change Proposal be placed in the agenda under urgent business. This radical document has been making waves, and the Exec was keen to talk about it. Secondly, they wanted to discuss the VUWSA elections, and needed a report on when and where they were to be held.

Before the fireworks, however, formalities needed to be attended to. The President and all three Vice-Presidents had not done any work reports.

To President Joel Cosgrove’s credit (and I don’t do this often), he has been busy kicking arse and taking names while negotiating compensation for long suffering Unicomm residents. Look out ING, Joel Cosgrove is on to you.

William Wu was awarded a summer bonus of $200 for all his good work. The exec admitted to not yet appointing a Returning Officer for the upcoming elections. They’ve assured me there will be one by Monday.

The Exec turned to the Change Proposal – and immediately went into committee due to “matters of commercial sensitivity.” I was instantly struck by paralytic boredom. I can’t report what was said – but my god, I thought my brain was going to melt and trickle out my nose. Actually, that’s a little unfair. The Change Proposal is really important moment for VUWSA.

It radically alters the way the organisation is structured, and Campaigns Officer Sonny Thomas indicated to me after the meeting that it could save thousands of dollars in costs. Copies of the proposal can be picked up from VUWSA, if you feel compelled enough to take a look. You do fund it, after all.

The Exec wrapped up with a motion that established a decision panel for the VUWSA Change Proposal, and a second motion was passed sending the proposal to the panel for consultation.

I got ready to go, but not before Melissa Barnard was co-opted onto a board that oversaw the running of the bar. Clubs Officer Katie de Roo confirmed that “[Melissa] has great experience,” and Brown questioned: “Are shots provided?”

I reanimated my tired legs, shook my head, and got out of there as fast as I could.

The Big winners are Jacinda Ardern, Dr Rajen Prasad, Phil Twyford, and Raymond Huo – getting plum spots high up the list. They are almost guaranteed a spot in the next parliament. The big losers are Lesley Soper, who got punted right to the bottom of the sitting MPs, and Martin Gallagher and Mahara Okeroa who have been put just above her.

Its an interesting move from Labour, who obviously have realized that if they want to remain relevant in this election, they need to start promoting their new blood – the National party has been steadily doing this, with Simon Bridges in Tauranga, and even John Key himself. This new injection of faces should help to combat the message that Nats are pushing of Labour as being old and tired.

The full list follows. EDIT: It seems there has been a stuff up with the release of the list, this first version was incorrect, this one is the correct one.

(Table taken from Kiwiblog)

Take a look at the interactive version of the map here, its really interesting to see how the more things change, the more stays the same – in international relations.

It seems like the students there have had enough. Not only are they fed up with the constant intrusion into their living spaces, by burly builders – but it seems that the promises given to them by management have been empty and vacuous.

There’s been no visible change in their living conditions, which according to eyewitness testimony, are pretty fucking dire. Here are some quotes from concerned students.

“I woke up to see my skylight missing and a builder staring at me through my roof, I was extremely uncomfortable so went and slept on the couch”

“they promised to have all the work done by the time we moved in.”

“my dad had to fly me home so i could study during study week it cost him almost $300. we are paying for a study environment that we arent getting.”

“exploding water tanks, exploding sewage pipes, the waterfall tourist attraction in MacKenzies”

“Leaking roofs and jackhammer wake ups.. gotta love it….. not!”

“Try fucking waking up at 6;30 in the morning to a crane outside your window when you have an early exam that morning!!! AGH”

“people are mean, living conditions are shit !!!!”

“There was also a mushroom growing out of the wall “

“Jackhammer……………cause it is a wonderful thing to wake up to in the morn!!!”

Usually, i’d tell these annoying whingy first years to suck it up. But then i realised they weren’t living in scummy Te Aro hovels, but in a commercial hospo enterprise – that really should be providing a better service. A substantially better one. I don’t know how these poor kiddos have managed so far – I cant study unless im in an isolation chamber, buried underground in a vacuum cave.

The straw has broken the proverbial camels back – as reported in last weeks eye on exec, students have taken the matter into their own hands – by getting out there to protest. Show your support, by turning up to the Student Union Building at 9.30am on Friday. It’s them vs the world (or just Unicomm). Go give em a hand.

Or, if you nosy enough to care, but too lazy to go – just check out their facebook or bebo pages.

Tonight’s meeting was in the Union Boardroom – VUWSA appears to be moving up in the world. Literally. The boardroom is a floor above the usual meeting place.

As soon as the meeting began, a matter of urgent business was mooted. The exec moved into committee for matters of personal privacy. I cant report on what was said, or what the matter was about. But I can say that when the exec moved out of committee on this issue, there was tangible tension in the air. And two empty seats at the exec table.

With so much animosity in the air, the exec took a five minute break. When the majority returned the meeting turned to more mundane things. Until Women’s Officer Georgina Dickson arrived – following by Campaigns Officer Sonny Thomas, who demanded she leave the Union boardroom or he’d call campus care.

Administration Vice President Alexander Neilson pointed out that it was unconstitutional for exec members to be coerced out of attending a meeting – so the forum was moved downstairs. Why it didn’t start there is beyond me.

Once we’d all settled in downstairs Dickson let out a stream of expletives calling Thomas a “prick” and an “arsehole” for removing her from the Union bar, after she had accused Thomas of spiking a drink – a joke she had said in an effort to “decrease the tension”.

While this entire hubbub was going on, environment officer Mark Newton had made himself a cup of tea. Upon realising he’d put milk into Green tea he threw it all out the window. But he kept the teabag. What a tidy kiwi.

This comic relief allowed everyone to focus on more boring VUWSA business. Some crazy had written to the university condemning its carbon neutrality as “shameless PR”. President Joel Cosgrove pointed out that carbon neutrality was SRC policy – and offered to inform the complainant.

It had also been brought to the execs attention that UniComm students had gone into mediation with management, with the support of VUWSA. They were demanding $1000 compensation, per student, for the insufferable conditions they are being forced to live in. According to Cosgrove, if they don’t get their way, they are going to protest on the Hall’s open day with banners reading “UniComm this year has been the worst year of my life”. I had a chortle. That’s pretty funny.

Tea throwing environmentalist Newton, also asked VUWSA’s support for a new Gecko Vege garden proposal – supposedly it would be used to grow organic veges for the foodbank. It passed unanimously.

Finally the exec dealt with the issue of the foodbank itself. It’s running out of money big time – and has already given out 487 parcels. Education Officer B, Seamus Brady, showing his ire at milk from the foodbank recently being stolen uttered angrily “it’s like stealing money from World Vision”. Thievery aside, things are looking dire for the foodbank – Gecko better start getting on to growing those potatoes.

And on that earthly note, the meeting ended.

Here the dastardly fiend is.

Seriously… could the National Party’s obvious deflection of the leak at their conference be any worse handled? The public arent buying these conspiracy theories anymore. If they ever did at all. Perhaps its time for the Nats to fess up, and face the music.

The whole scandal over the recording from the labour Party conference is very interesting. Everyone can see that the National Party have handled the whole affair very badly.

I don’t understand why the Nats would be running the lines they have been. Political partisanship aside, they are just completely contradictory. Firstly, John Key stated that recording was doctored. But then he stands next to Bill English, while Bill glumly apologises for using ‘loose language’. So its implicit that English recognises that those words were accurate. Or else he would not have apologised for saying them.

Secondly the Nats have started crying woe over a ‘dirty tricks campaign’. Firstly, they have no proof that a Young Labour candidate did enter the National Party conference. The entry fee was $170 alone. That’s beyond most students’ reach. Secondly, the National Party President, Judy Kirk has stated that they thought the recording came from a Young Nat member, who also was a member of ACT. So which story is it? Key’s “paranoid conspiracy theory” (To quote Michael Cullen in the house today) or is it an internal leak – as suggested by the National Party’s own president? Such an assertion would make sense. ACT party members were protesting outside the National Party Conference, as well as were others from various parties.

Furthermore, New Zealanders, as well as liking the truth – also have good political memories. Its frightfully bad media management to play the dirty tricks card, when National made such a big furore over the secret recording of Mike Williams made at the Labour Party conference. Not to mention employing the help of the Exclusive Brethren at the last election.

This has been an incredibly bad week for National – they’d just come out of what was supposed to be a very good weekend. Now they are tying themselves up in knots. Their handling of this issue is short-sighted, contradictory, and in some regards, misleading. Helen Clark couldn’t have asked for anything better.

started rolling I sat in my chair in the Embassy theatre in a stunned silence. I’d just watched an amazing film, but that question nagged at me – just how amazing was it?

Gomorra details five individual plot lines, all revolving around the organized criminal Commora gang in Italy. This is not your typical Hollywood Sopranos-style romp. This is the fucking real deal.

To reveal the paths taken by each plot line would spoil the intensity and gravitas that Gomorra provides. But in saying that, knowing where characters are going and what they are doing would serve this film well. Or so I thought as I walked out of the cinema. But on the drive home I realized the brilliance of this film. It’s a true Cannes classic. Its brilliance comes not from what is said or done, but what is conspicuously absent. There’s no thematic spoon-feeding here; if you’re looking for your messages to be rammed down your throat – go watch The Dark Knight. Gomorra rises above all of that, and it doesn’t even need to try.

It’s a film that makes you think. And it makes you think hard. Characters do not explain themselves, and most plot development involves violence and murder. This is not a film for the squeamish. There’s no Tarantino gunplay afoot, it’s just plain, vicious, bullet to the head, impersonal barbarism.

Garrone has been able to portray the brutality so accurately that it becomes part of the scenery. And that’s fascinatingly horrible to watch.

But I was concerned. My annoyance came from the fact that the film is inherently fragmented. While this may have worked stylistically, it didn’t work thematically. You were not given a chance to engage properly with any characters – not as individuals, but as representations of ideas. You were only allowed to spectate. Perhaps that’s exactly what Garrone intended. But with a film that’s over two and a half hours long, your brain gets strained. And there’s so much to tire it. Concepts of machismo, boyhood bravado, naivety, poverty, comedy, beauty, skill, and chaos are all intertwined in an Italian whirlpool of violence. It therefore comes as no surprise that the title reflects this. Allusions to the destroyed biblical city of Gomorrah were not lost on me.

Gomorra is, at its heart, an intellectual film festival offering. It you think that makes it a wank-fest, then fine. But if you want to watch a piece of cinema that will keep you thinking hours after you walk out of the theatre – for good and bad reasons, then make sure you catch Gomorra.

In 2004 Robert Hunt, a quiet man and stamp collector, was savagely murdered. He was killed by 18 year old Dick Faisauvale, who held him by the throat and stabbed him. Hunt died on the floor of his home. He had collapsed after unsuccessfully trying to phone 111 for an hour. At trial Faisauvale, who had previously had a sexual relationship with Hunt, claimed that he was provoked. He argued that he thought he was going to be raped by Hunt and was lashing out in gay panic. Faisauvale was running the defence of provocation.

The partial defence of provocation still exists on the state’s law books. It sits nestled between the advanced definition of murder, and illegal arrest. Section 169 of the crimes act states, in all its legalistic glory:

169 Provocation (1) Culpable homicide that would otherwise be murder may be reduced to manslaughter if the person who caused the death did so under provocation. (2) Anything done or said may be provocation if— (a) In the circumstances of the case it was sufficient to deprive a person having the power of self-control of an ordinary person, but otherwise having the characteristics of the offender, of the power of self-control; and (b) It did in fact deprive the offender of the power of self-control and thereby induced him to commit the act of homicide.

The section is confusing and misleading. Yet the defence of provocation is still applicable in New Zealand. Traditionally provocation was used in cases of adultery. Enraged husbands coming home to find their wives in bed with the plumber led them to ‘snap’ and lose the ordinary power of self control. In abhorrent displays of masculine barbarism they murdered their wife, the plumber, or both.

To call provocation a defence is not entirely correct. It operates as a partial defence. Where it is successful it will reduce the offender’s conviction from murder to manslaughter. The reason for this is twofold; firstly manslaughter is seen as a lesser charge in the eyes of society. It does not carry as much culpable weight as a conviction for murder would. The social stigma surrounding manslaughter is greatly reduced, and in the mind of a layperson conjures up images of accidents, a lack of intent, or even a lack of any grievous violence.

Secondly manslaughter has the widest range of sentences available for any crime. They can be as harsh as life imprisonment, or it is possible that no imprisonment order is made. In the case of a violent death this is unlikely, but it’s important to remember the large degree of freedom that manslaughter places in the hands of the sentencing judge.

Provocation operates as an excusatory defence. It excuses the higher degree of culpability that a murderer faces. It does not justify the actions, but it does say, given the circumstances the offender found themselves in, society can understand what they did.

Faisauvale’s use of provocation as a partial defence was unsuccessful – due in part to his previous sexual relationship with Hunt, and the fact that he took a knife to the house with the intent to commit robbery. However, Faisauvale’s case is not the only one.

On the evening of 20 July 2003 Phillip Edwards (aged 24) was walking down K Road in central Auckland. A convertible driven by David McNee (aged 55) approached Edwards. After a discussion Edwards agreed to masturbate in front of McNee for $120 – Edwards had just been released from prison and was in need of cash. Edwards then agreed to return with McNee to McNee’s home for a shower. While there Edwards displayed himself to McNee and both engaged in petting, and what the case describes as ‘puppetry of the penis’ – despite Edwards informing McNee that he was heterosexual. McNee then fondled Edwards’ buttocks and inserted his finger into Edwards’ anus. Edwards reacted violently and began beating McNee around the head and face. He stated at trial that he became “very angry” and that after the initial assault began everything “became a blur”. Edwards then covered McNee’s body with a blanket, robbed his home, taking money, alcohol and his convertible.

The pathologists report to the court indicated that McNee was struck between thirty and forty times. The assault was so severe McNee could have only survived for fifteen minutes after Edwards had stopped.

The case does not make for polite reading. On the facts presented to the Court it does appear that McNee may have overstepped the boundaries of what Edwards thought acceptable. There was obviously a failure of communication, and probably a misunderstanding of what Edwards was comfortable with. Such confusion is an inherent factor of these types of cases. But the question arises: is it just and fair for Edwards to plead provocation? Is it justified and right that by relying on farcical ‘fear’ Edwards was able to successfully reduce his charge from murder to manslaughter?

The McNee case sent shockwaves throughout the homosexual community, and it featured heavily in the media. The decision seemed to suggest that the hard work done to change social attitudes since the landmark passage of the Homosexual Law Reform Act in 1986 had been in vain. Peter Wells writing in The Listener in 2004 wrote “I couldn’t comprehend how [McNee’s] behaviour could be a justified reason for such a revolting and violent killing – or a rationale for such a killing to be down classed from murder to manslaughter. It evoked in me a sense that homosexuals living in New Zealand were still second class citizens – ‘almost’ humans, who would never get full human rights.”

The decision in R v Edwards showed how the partial defence of provocation was entrenching this abhorrent viewpoint. In the right circumstances, and with the right facts, the defence was capable of being a justification for homophobic violence and institutionalised bigotry.

Such a claim is bold. But it’s one that Elisabeth McDonald, Associate Professor at the Victoria University Faculty of Law, stridently argues in “No Straight Answer: Homophobia as both an aggravating and mitigating factor in New Zealand Homicide Cases”. She bluntly argues that where provocation in gay panic cases is successful “gay male citizens are not afforded equal protection under the criminal law”. The legal arguments she posits form much of the basis of this article. McDonald also argues that where provocation is not successful, judges should give greater weight to section 9(1)(h) of the Sentencing Act 2002, which allows homophobia to be considered an aggravating factor in sentencing. The fact that some offenders try to rely on a ‘gay panic’ argument provides ample reason to suggest their actions were motivated by homophobic revulsion of some kind. Where this can be shown judges should include that into the severity of their sentence, just like any other aggravating factor.

Sex and Sexuality

Provocation is inherently hetero-normative. Its very existence reaffirms the status quo position of heterosexual males occupying the top of the social pyramid. The act of homosexual contact, at a subconscious level, threatens the prevailing dominance of heterosexual sexuality. McDonald argues:

By its very nature, a homosexual advance is accepted to be an attack upon the sanctified and impenetrable male body. Therefore there is no such thing as a homosexual advance.

In the case of R v Edwards, this conceptual attack on the impenetrable male body was taken quite literally, resulting in a violent murder.

Provocation’s links to masculine violence do not only affect gay men. Violence against women, domestic abuse, marital abuse and perceived sexual infidelity all come under the ambit of the defence. The opposite is not true. Women in subjugated, battered relationships who murder their husbands cannot successfully make out the defence. The element of pre-mediation often found in battered woman cases (which is a direct result of the environment they often exist in) negates the requirement that the offender lose the ‘ordinary power of self control’.

As long as such attitudes still exist, homosexual panic will still be argued in murder cases. However the tension around provocation raises issues deeper than the mere availability of the defence to criminal law barristers.

Epsom versus Eketehuna

Provocation is a hard defence to prove. It requires that the offender, having the power of self control that the ordinary person possesses, but with the characteristics of the particular offender, loses the ordinary power of self control. What a mess of legalese. Who is the ordinary person? What is the ordinary power of self-control? What are the characteristics of the offender?

Such questions are contextual, and are gradually developed upon in case law. There are no parliamentary guidelines to work with. This creates a serious problem. The aim of the criminal law is to provide consistent, equal justice across the country that reflects the prevailing social attitudes of the whole nation. But the ordinary bloke or lass in Eketehuna has a different set of societal considerations than the socialite in Epsom. Let’s face reality. It’s harder being out in Gore than it would be in Karangahape Road.

New Zealand’s jury system strives for plurality. This is to ensure that when determining an offender’s guilt a broad range of viewpoints are considered. The argument goes, the better the plurality, the more just the decision. Jurors are screened for race, age, socio-economic class, and profession – but not sexual orientation, resulting in gay victims not receiving the same standards of justice that straight victims are. In fact, due to the hetero-normative attitudes that still permeate most juries, homosexuals may be subconsciously discriminated against in provocation cases. Again, this is a bold claim to make. But its undeniable that homophobia still has an insidious effect in New Zealand. Some wish to merely turn a blind eye, quietly telling themselves it someone else’s problem. Others still have to work hard to bring themselves to talk to airline stewards. It’s not unthinkable that in cases as murky and as obfuscated as R v Edwards heterosexual jurors may intentionally or unintentionally ignore issues of fact. And its not just juries that are affected, Justice Ingram uttered this homophobic comment while sentencing an offender in July this year. “Two or three of these [convictions] and you will be Waikeria [prison] bound. Just think about lining up in the shower with all the boys, your bar of soap in your hand.”

The Power of Hate

But there’s more to this tragedy of justice than poorly composed juries. The continued existence of provocation as a defence for gay panic prevents the New Zealand judiciary from treating gay panic for what it really is – an excuse for hate crime. In R v Ali & Nadan the Judge indicated that: “Any potential homosexual assault might be sufficient and that revulsion might lead to a loss of self control.” McDonald addresses this argument in her paper, she claims

Revulsion is not, however, the relevant emotional basis of the defence, which has traditionally been viewed as excusing anger, not fear or disgust. Revulsion is more closely related to hatred than anger.

Such hate crimes have one purpose and one purpose only; to denigrate and oppress homosexual individuals and communities, and more importantly, to attack the very existence of homosexuality as a legitimate sexual identity. Latent or blatant homophobia instils fear into a minority group, it reinforces the perception that where gay men are the victims of violent assaults or murder it was because they were gay. And somehow that’s acceptable. This is an absolute tragedy. The power of hate can ruin lives, and destroy hopes and dreams. Nowhere was this more evident than in a letter that was sent to the Evening Post in 2002.

A schoolmate I’ve known for 44 years has only just recently confided to me that he is gay: the homophobic hate-murder of Charles Aberhart in Hagley Park in 1964 has kept him in the closet from that day to this – as it was intended to do. Hate Crimes have many victims other than the people physically hurt by them – whole communities. That is why they deserve special attention.

Provocation lies as an unmovable legal barrier to social progress. Its very existence hampers lawyers and the courts from giving special attention to homophobia. Young’s letter really drives home what’s at stake here. It describes a tale of unimaginable oppression that homosexuals of our generation will never truly know. But the stagnant remnants of the past still linger. By allowing a legal blanket to envelop the heinous acts of hate filled individuals, social progress will never be realised. Thankfully the law does recognise homophobia as an aggravating factor. Section 9(1)(h) of the Sentencing Act 2002 allows judges to increase sentences where hostility towards a sexual orientation was apparent. But that’s not enough. Allowing homophobia as a defence as well as an aggravation solves nothing. Its only balances a discrimination which still exists on the books.

The Hope for the Future

So far this article has been quite depressing. But there is hope. In 2007 the Law Commission released a report calling for Section 169 of the Crimes Act to be unconditionally repealed. Former Salient Editor, former Prime Minister and current Law Commission president Sir Geoffrey Palmer voiced his support for the change. He was joined by Labour MP Charles Chauvel, and the GayNZ lobby group. It’s important to remember that a law change will not just benefit gay men. Although this article has been focused on provocation in regards to male homosexuality, the removal of the defence will allow greater legal freedom to all genders and sexual orientations. Unfortunately progress is slow, and a bill has not yet been introduced to Parliament.

But one thing is certain. With or without Parliament legislating against provocation, the defence is currently sustaining heavy academic and legal criticism. Its confusing application and legal requirements, its promulgation of hetero-normative attitudes, and its inherent homophobia, indicate strongly a need for change. It’s about time the memories of Robert Hunt, Charles Aberhart, David McNee, Stephen Byrne, Ronald Anderson, Barry Hart, and John Sorrenson received the justice they deserved both as homosexuals, but more importantly, as human beings.

Special thanks to Professor Elisabeth McDonald, and her paper No Straight Answer: Homophobia as both an aggravating and mitigating factor in New Zealand homocide cases. From which most of this article was based. And the title was blatantly stolen.

References
R v Ali & Nadan (21 July 2004) HC AK CRI-2003-292-1224 Williams J
R v Edwards (16 September 2004) HC AK T2003-004-025591 Frater J.
Peter Wells “A lonely death” (18 September 2004) The Listener New Zealand.
Young to the Editor, The Evening Post (28th February 2002) Letter.

Homosexuals have not been treated kindly by the silver screen. This is probably due to the social mores of American society over the past hundred years, but also due to the fact that many Americans turn to Hollywood to style their own lives. Homosexuality was not deemed to be an endearing trait. During Hollywood’s formative years positive depictions of gays were actively discouraged.

At face value that’s where the story would end. It’s all action films and buff heroes and shit, right? Not so. Not so at all. The Celluloid Closet closely examines the progression of Hollywood films and manages to bring to light the way homosexuality has played an important role. Perhaps not in bright lights, but it’s always been there, simmering in between the scenes.

From the early sissy – the camp transvestite who was purely there for laughs – to the evil villain, who was out to violate not only your wallet but your morals as well, homosexuals have been present. Only in recent times has the homosexual male or female become an interesting and worthwhile topic for Hollywood. Films such as Philadelphia and Cabaret began to attack the negative light in which homosexuality was held. But it’s been a long and sorrowful road. The Celluloid Closet travels this road, and it carefully documents the hate, the oppression, the injustice – as well as the subversion, the humour and the joy, of depicting homosexuality on the biggest screen.

Why did you decide to stand for election again, after so long?

I think the primary reason, and there are others, is that National is likely to win the election. I think that without a strong ACT coalition partner, not a lot is likely to change. That’s the basic reason.

So does that also explain why you have returned to the ACT party?

Well, I never really left it. I’ve always been a member, it’s just that I wasn’t as active after 2000 when I stepped down from the presidency, and I haven’t been as active since the presidency.

In the past you have decried populism within the ACT party. Rodney Hide was not your choice for leader, after Prebble – do you feel comfortable working under him?

Look I’m comfortable working under Rodney, late last year, early this year he asked me to get more involved. I went to a retreat with quite a lot of the older ACT supporters as well as the newer members, we got on well and, well you know one thing led to another I guess.

So there’s no underlying tensions…

No, No!

You’re fine working under him?

Absolutely, I mean we are working well together, we have reasonably well defined roles, and Rodney is getting on with the job of leader which includes being parliamentary leader, and I’ve been largely involved in putting together a candidate team, we’ve got well over 60 candidates now. We are in fairly good shape to fight the election, and we are about to go into the next phase, and I worked comfortably with Rodney in putting together the 20 point plan. So, no problem there.

Are you expecting a high list position?

I would anticipate that I’m going to be placed relatively high yes. I’m not sure I was seeking that initially, but once you make the commitment you get carried along with it a bit so, you know I’m happy with wherever they are going to place me but, I would anticipate its going to be in the top six, just where about I don’t know.

Do you think the ACT party’s commitment to social liberalism is as strong as it should be?

Look I think the answer to that is have a look at our 20 point plan. The 20 point plan is a practical document which could move this country ahead in all areas.

But can we trust the ACT party to vote ‘yes’ on social liberalisation issues? For example it split 5 to 4 in favour of civil unions, and opposed the prostitution law reform 5 to 4. Hide and Roy also both supported the Marriage Act (Gender Clarification) Amendment Bill.

I’ve always felt that in those areas it should always be a free vote. Parliament is always going to made up of a wide range of people with ride views, some of my best friends voted in different ways to what I did – the homosexual law reform for example. You know, it’s a conscience issue and I’m happy with that. In fact, this is a passing comment about the Labour Party; one of the things is that it has moved from being an open church as it largely was in my day, to a situation where unless you conform to Helen Clark’s view of the world then you are out. So you’ve seen people who are maybe not particularly liberal on social issues pushed down the list. And I just think that’s wrong.

Why has John Ansell left the ACT team?

Well, I still talk to John. I think John probably from his point of view found there were frustrations, he wanted to control from woe to go. The problem in politics is you’ve always got that fine balance about aiming for perfection and when possibly 95% will do, and sometimes 95% is enough, you have a trade off there between speed to market and perfection. In order to get perfection you might need to wait another month. But that month might be critical, and you have to ask yourself would people notice perfection? Did they notice? Most people are like me. They don’t notice. I’d see something and say it’s great, but in John’s eyes it could be perfected by doing this or that. I’m sorry to lose him, he’s a genius. And I’m hoping – I spoke to him yesterday – that he can do things for us. But, the other factor, and I don’t know if John really recognised, is the issue of the best use of his time. When you have a creative genius – which he is, you want him to work on projects that matter. Little projects aren’t as critical. You’re better to keep him away from them really. He’s an expensive man, you want him working on the top level stuff not the run of the mill stuff. It was a pity, and I think he still believes in what we are about. I think he also found the working environment not absolutely to his liking, he wasn’t reporting to any one person. That’s a bit of a problem with our organisation. We are looking for a campaign manager, which would have made things a lot easier if we had a full time campaign manager which we didn’t have.

See the rest of the Interview on the blog www.salient.org.nz/blog Questions include Douglas’ flat tax package, why he never staged a coup against Lange, the difference between ACT and National and more!

In the face of political pressure, and financial threats from Auckland University (which substantially funds AUSA due to it being a voluntary student union) AUSA has retracted its offer. Much to sadness of all left liberals who needed a bit of cash. But some people are happy, our yank friends across the pacific have reacted with anger to David’s suggestion. He forwaded me this email he received from an irate american:
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Teakwood <teakw00d@yahoo.com>
Date: 2008/7/25
Subject: hey there smartass faggot david do
To: DAVID DO
So you think you’re pretty tough huh  Mr. do???
Offering $5000 to arrest our Secretary of State when she arrives in New Zealand.

Well I am offering $10,000 to anyone who shoots you dead if you ever
come to the USA

How do you like that you little smartass faggot.
Only a cock sucking faggot would have a last name like “DO”
Sounds real stupid to me?  And only an idiot would say what you did!!!!

And I am sure you wouldn’t know a war criminal if one came up and kicked you in
your stupid ass.

Fuck you and your ALL BLACKS rugby team too. just a bunch screaming
tattood faggot savages.

There aint nothin’ in new zealand but beers and QUEERS anyway.

That’s why God put new zealand in the middle of “NO WHERE.”

And made it a Less than nothing country.
P.S.   I guess  General MacArthur’s rescuing of new zealand’s
worthless ass from the Japanese
in World War 2  makes him a war criminal too.
If it were not for the USA……All you new zealand QUEERS would be
speaking JAPANESE right now.

But Leftist Liberal Loser assholes like you would probably like that.

Fuck you, you stupid little college boy..

—

Ah, what a world. Things just wouldn’t be interesting if we didnt have ignorant, racist, homophobic, geographically challenged troglodytes to re-affirm ourselves as worthwhile human beings. Thanks Teakwood, New Zealand will take your comments under advisement.

EDIT: Teakwood has replied to David Do

Date: 2008/7/26
Subject: Dear idiot
To: ausa.president@auckland.ac.nz

Dear Mr. Idiot  David Do

I hear you posted my email on the net.

Wow…..what a brave guy!

Here….Post this too.

Remind  yourself and all of your leftist liberal ilk in new zealand,

when  you all want to accuse the United States Secretary of State of being a war criminal,

that it was America and the blood of thousands of her sons that gave you that FREEDOM.

Oh and by the way….My father was one of those American Sons who shed his blood for your

freedom in new zealand in World War 2.

Your freedom to spew vile lies about our Country.

Too bad you and all those like you are incapable of appreciating it.

But before you post this…

All you little Liberal college babies better get potty trained and grow up first, and get away from

all those biased political science professors who can’t get a job anywhere else….hehehe

So go post this too now Mr Big Brave Know Nothing  college smartass!

—-

Sigh.

Why did you decide to stand for election again, after so long?

I think the primary reason and there are others, is that, National is likely to win the election. I think that without a strong ACT coalition partner, not a lot is likely to change. That’s the basic reason.

So does that also explain why you have returned to the ACT party?

Well, I never really left it. I’ve always been a member, its just that I wasn’t as active after 2000 when I stepped down from the presidency, and I haven’t been as active since the presidency.

But it is true you stood down as the ‘patron’ in 2004?

Aw, I think both Derek and I felt that the title of patron didn’t mean much, and in a funny way it was a token thing and it got in the road. I don’t think patrons really have any place in political parties, maybe in other organisations but not in political parties.

In the past you have decried populism within the ACT party, and also politics itself. Rodney Hide was not your choice for leader, after Prebble – do you feel comfortable working under him?  

Look I’m comfortable working under Rodney, late last year, early this year he asked me to get more involved. I went to a retreat with quite a lot of the older ACT supporters as well as the newer members, we got on well and, well you know one thing led to another I guess.

So there’s no underlying tensions…

No, No!

Your fine working under him?

Absolutely, I mean we are working well together, we have reasonably well defined roles, and Rodney is getting on with the job of leader which includes being parliamentary leader, and I’ve been largely involved in putting together a candidate team, we’ve got well over sixty candidates now. We are in fairly good shape to fight the election, and we are about to go into the next phase, and I worked comfortably with Rodney in putting together the twenty point plan. So, no problem there.

Are you expecting a high list position?

I would anticipate that I’m going to be placed relatively high yes. I’m not sure I was seeking that initially, but once you make the commitment you get carried along with it a bit so,  you know I’m happy with wherever they are going to place me but, I would anticipate its going to be in the top six, just where about I don’t know.

It is undeniable that in New Zealand’s political history you are a polarising figure, particularly in the eighties. If you are elected, how do you see yourself operating in an MMP environment?

I don’t think theres any problem, I think ive only been a polarising figure because ive actually done things people who doing things draw both criticism and significant support, and I’m not backing off from any of that. So if I was back there in parliament, I would be putting policy and ideas on the table. If they are polarising I guess so be it. But I don’t think putting ideas on the table should in fact be polarising.

Politics should be about the competition of ideas, and the tragedy at the moment is that no political party has a plan for New Zealand on the table. The truth is I’m ambitious for New Zealand I want new Zealand to do well. This present labour government have not been ambitious for new Zealand, they have looked at the politics first and the substance ninth or tenth and that’s led us down the drain. The problem has been that in order to win National has largely said “me too”. We need Political parties who are actually going to put policy on the table.

Does that mean the ACT party will be heavily ideological if elected?

No, I would say. I wouldn’t call it that. Practical – take a look at our twenty point plan. It’s a practical plan to take new Zealand from where it is now – about 30^th in the world up into the top ten over a period of ten to fifteen years, you aren’t going to do it immediately, but without the right policy framework you aren’t going nowhere.

Are you not concerned at all about any bad blood in the house?

(Laughs) What kind of bad blood is there?

Tensions between various other politicians…

Like who?

Well for starters Helen Clark and Michael Cullen…

Oh look, im not worried about Helen Clark or Michael Cullen, we are not going to agree anyway. How can I agree with them anyway! They are tearing the country apart! They have reduced our labour productivity to a third of what it was, multifaceted productivity is down to one seven of where it was. I’m not going to worry about what Michael Cullen or Clark think. They think as highly of me as I think of them.

What is the single biggest issue facing New Zealand at the moment and how would you remedy it?

The level of government expenditure. This government has increased government expenditure over and above inflation. That’s about 17 billion a year. But in more practical terms, that’s $200 a week per family in New Zealand. The lives of families in new Zealand would be dramatically changed if the government had not taken that money from them and flushed it down the toilet because that’s essentially what they did. They wasted it.

There’s a whole lot of families out there that I used to represent, in Otara, who would feel a lot better about their lives today if they could keep that $200. This is supposed to be a government that cares about those kinds of people. They don’t care. They are chardonnay socialists. And in some ways I have nothing but contempt for them. Because they have usurped the people they claim to represent. They don’t even mix with those people. I’d mix with those people a lot more than they would.

The Labour Candidate in Hunua, Jordan Carter – I interviewed him a few weeks ago for this series – stated that you were back from the metaphorical grave – do you have any response to Jordan Carter on that?

No Comment.

No Comment at all?

No.

Do you think the ACT party’s commitment to social liberalism is as strong as it should be?

Look I think the answer to that is have a look at our twenty point plan. The twenty point plan is a practical document which could move this country ahead in all areas.

But can we trust the ACT party to vote ‘yes’ on social liberalisation issues? For example it split 5 to 4 in favour of civil unions, and opposed prostitution law reform 5 to 4. Hide and Roy also both supported the Marriage Act (gender clarification) Amendment Bill.

I’ve always felt that in those areas it should always be a free vote. Parliament is always going to made up of a wide range of people with wide views, some of my best friends voted in different ways to what I did – the homosexual law reform for example. You know, it’s a conscience issue and I’m happy with that. In fact, this is a passing comment about the Labour party; one of the things is that it has moved from being an open church as it largely was in my day, to a situation where unless you conform to Helen Clark’s view of the world then you are out. So you’ve seen people who are maybe not particularly liberal on social issues pushed down the list. And I just think that’s wrong.

Do you think Rogernomics was entirely successful?

Absolutely.

Is there not anything at all you would have done differently?

We could have gone a bit faster.

And a bit further?

Aw, if I could have. And I guess where I fell out ultimately with Lange – and there were other reasons -  was that, we needed to do more in the social policy area, we needed to do more with health and education and welfare. It was really in those areas along with the flat tax that Lange took fright. And I think that its significant to reflect that if you look at New Zealand today and you ask what doesn’t work, its two or three things. The first one and the most significant is what the government runs.

What ever doesn’t work in New Zealand the government runs. The second is that a lot of what does not work is in those social policy areas. Our hospitals are crumbling all around us. In some ways it’s been recognised elsewhere. I mean the UK, the Labour party in the UK is now looking at leasing public hospitals to the private sector. So, things that we left undone are still the problem areas.

How important was the nuclear free legislation as an issue to counter-weighting the economic reforms of the eighties?

I know a lot of people have paid attention to this, but for me, it didn’t really play a part on what I would have proposed anyway. So it’s hard for me to make a judgement. Did it make it easier? Possibly. But did it change what I proposed? No.

Do you think that it made it easier for the public to accept the reforms?

Ill leave that to the historians. I’m not a historian. And the answer is that I don’t honestly know. Maybe it helped within the labour party more than anywhere else, I’m not sure that it necessarily helped with the wider public. Maybe it helped the group in the labour party who didn’t like what I was doing, it made it easier for them to swallow. I’m not even sure about that. I didn’t see them stop opposing me because of it. Ill leave all that to the historians.

How different would New Zealand be if the flat tax rate that Cabinet signed off in 1987 had been implemented?

Significantly it would have meant that New Zealand’s tax rate would have been half of Australia. You would have seen a lot of Australians who probably would have liked to be earning their incomes in New Zealand dollars. I think in terms of investment and probably as a result of that, in terms of output productivity it would have made a big difference.

Were you very upset at the way that policy panned out?

Oh absolutely. That’s really when the party split asunder. We went from five to six points ahead in the polls, and we’d just had the sharemarket crash, to twelve or fifteen percent behind, and the only reason we went from behind ahead to behind was that Lange decided we weren’t going ahead with the flat rate of tax. He decided that without reference to cabinet. He decided that despite promising to me that we would discuss it at a Cabinet priorities committee. He did that despite the fact that he said to both Palmer, Prebble and myself that he would support the package. Because I’d told him that if he wasn’t happy about it we shouldn’t go ahead with it in December. So, he didn’t really upset me, he just… wrecked the government.

So you would consider that the beginning of the end?

I think it was yes. I think the truth was that everyone, in the caucus, well not everyone, but a majority of the caucus tried to patch it up. It was not popular to do that, and it took them to until December. But the reality was that after that it was impossible for Lange and I to work together. And whilst I generally had the majority he had enough sway to stop things happening in the way they should have.

That segues nicely into my next question. How important do you think your re-election to cabinet was to Lange’s resignation?

I think that’s what finally convinced Lange to go. It had to be didn’t it. I was elected on the Thursday and he announced he was going to step down from the prime ministership on the Sunday, so two or three days after. I don’t think that when caucus voted they saw that as a consequence or they were hoping for some magic to re-appear. Obviously from his point of view it was incredibly significant. He obviously didn’t want me around the table. He told me once before that my continuation as finance minister would be the death of one of us. And well (pause) you know… maybe he really believed that. I can never tell what’s going on in other peoples minds.

Do you think you had the strong support of the majority of Caucus?

I think I definitely had, in terms of going back in cabinet? I had a majority or I wouldn’t have been elected. It depends on how you define strong. There were about twenty people who were opposed to it. Which is a significant number.

So why did you never stage a coup?

Aw, just because people wanted me going back into cabinet, doesn’t mean they wanted me to be prime minister. And the truth is I never really wanted to be prime minister. I never really said I’m going to stand, im going to go round and lobby to be prime minister, you can go back and ask all of them. I didn’t see myself in that position.

Did it ever cross your mind at all?

Well obviously I stood against Lange and Palmer and Lange put the vote forward in 1988 in December, the vote should have been in January 1989, and Id definitely decided I would have stood against them. Whether I would have gone around and lobbied, is another question. I’d never seen myself in that period as prime minister. But it was necessary for me in a symbolic way to hold my hand up. If I had looked back now, with a bit of hindsight, possibly I might have done it in a serious way. The only way I possibly could have had a chance of winning, because I had around twenty supporters, and there were about twenty supporters who were opposed – key Lange supporters, would have been to put up a strategy. I would have had to say you’re fifteen points behind; here is a new strategy that we could use to win. I was capable of doing that but it just didn’t dawn on me at the time. I wasn’t really seeking it.

Why has John Ansell left the ACT team?

Well, I still talk to John. I think John probably from his point of view found there were frustrations, he wanted to control from woe to go. The problem in politics is you’ve always got that fine balance about aiming for perfection and when possibly 95% will do, and sometimes 95% is enough, you have a trade off there between speed to market and perfection. In order to get perfection you might need to wait another month. But that month might be critical, and you have to ask yourself would people notice perfection? Did they notice? Most people are like me. They don’t notice.

Id see something and say its great, but in John’s eyes it could be perfected by doing this or that. I’m sorry to lose him, hes a genius. And im hoping – I spoke to him yesterday – that he can do things for us. But, the other factor, and I don’t know if John really recognised, is the issue of the best use of his time. When you have a creative genius – which he is, you want him to work on projects that matter. Little projects aren’t as critical. Your better to keep him away from them really. He’s an expensive man, you want him working on the top level stuff not the run of the mill stuff. It was a pity, and I think he still believes in what we are about. I think he also found the working environment not absolutely to his liking, he wasn’t reporting to any one person. That’s a bit of a problem with our organisation. We are looking for a campaign manager, which would have made things a lot easier if we had a full time campaign manager which we didn’t have.

Why does New Zealand need an ACT party? Why is ACT any different to the neo-liberal agenda of the National party?

Because ACT is the only party in New Zealand that has a plan. No other patry has a plan that will move New Zealand forward significantly. To answer that question I’d need to look back a little bit. Fifty years ago I was at university like you are. Fifty years ago, none of us had contemplated working anywhere other than New Zealand. And why was that? Because New Zealand had the third highest living standard in the world. We would earn more here by remaining in New Zealand than going to Australia. We thought that Tasmania was that funny little place down the bottom and we felt sorry for them. Today its entirely different. At least fifty percent of university students contemplate working offshore once they graduate. You need to ask yourself why has this happened. Why over the last fifty years have we drifted from third to thirtieth.  The other day Greece slipped past us, and South Korea is at our doorstep.

Apart from the Government between 1984 and 1993 the whole of that fifty years you’ve had government who haven’t had the guts to do what’s right. And hence our slogan. The 1984 – 1993 which covered my period was the only period in those fifty years where you’ve had government that actually tackled the problem first and foremost and then looked at the politics. The rest of the time you’ve had governments that only wanted to manage and let things dangle; The lost years of Holyoake; Kirk wanted to do things but had no idea about economics. Muldoon who understood a bit of it, but who was a control freak and only did a couple of years ok, and then, well, I’ll be kind… he went totally off the boil. Then you had those nine years of significant change. And then you had Bolger for six years who just drifted like Holyoake had. Then you had Clark and Cullen with their peculiar agenda, their total lack of understanding, even though Cullen arrogantly thinks he understands the economy. He probably technically does, but in terms of application he’s a disaster. He’s allowed public expenditure to get out of all proportion, and the waste is just endemic.

So the consequence of that, apart from the years of 1992 – 2000 our productivity has been relative to other countries abysmal. We had higher productivity than Australia in 1992 – 2000 largely due to the changes Ruth and I made. During those years we were catching up. But apart from that we are going backwards. One of the other significant reasons is that you’ve had a public who have rewarded politicians who have lied to them. And the students are a typical group. They might be bribed again. I dunno. I hope not. I hope they’ve learnt their lesson. And the public have responded to politicians who’ve scratched every itch. So Winston Peters goes up in the polls when he becomes a racist. And I hate that.

End of Interview.

Conrad Reyners

Merrill Lynch have already strongly indicated that they are waiting in the wings for a privatization opportunity, and look set to take 200 million from the health coverage of ordinary New Zealander’s, and instead funnel it off into corporate Australia. My bugbear is not really with the fact that the Nats are offering this as a policy, as a center right party with a noticeable neo-liberal twinge this election, its not surprising that something like this is on the table. What does irk me however is when they try to pass it off as a policy that will empower the everyday man, and everyday employer. It will not, and National are yet to provide any substantive analysis of why it would.

Up till now the everyday man has been protected by the safe warm blanket of comprehensive ACC coverage for accidents and injuries. While the legal community and DHBs may have their gripes, its generally been regarded as a system that is working for, and in the best interests of citizens. So much in fact that it has become a model emulated and studied around the world. Theres a reason why in 2005 National kept their ACC policy (which they formulated with the insurance industry) under wraps for as long as a possible – Its a deal breaking issue. And I’ve already come across disenfranchised centrists, who were going to vote Blue, and who are now back-pedaling as fast as possible due to this policy. The ideological merits or foibles of choice and freedom aside, National needs to back up its rhetoric, and it needs to engage voters on this issue, flipping them off, as the video below illustrates, aint winning anyone over.

Have a watch, some choice quotes are:

“Lets have some accountability here”

“You people are starting on a rats bum story”

“The Granny Herald!”

 ”Slothful, gutter Journalism”

“Audrey Young is a lier, she can sue me”

Oh, its just such glorious stuff. On the issue at hand though, do you – fine readers, think Winston is on to something with his creative interpretation of Glen’s double question mark in the email excerpts? Could Glen be asking a sardonic question? Not admitting a donation? Or is old Winnie telling porkies. You decide.

Check out that old cad’s skillful mastery right over here yo’

Both Victoria One (Chris Bishop, Stephen Whittington and Polly Higbee) and Victoria Two (Kathy Scott-Dowell, Kathy Errington and Richard D’Ath) broke to the final eight teams, and then to the quarter finals. Both teams won their octo-final match ups, but suffered defeats in their respective quarter-finals with Victoria One losing to Ateneo One, and Victoria Two bowing out to Sydney One, placing in the top eight overall.

Victoria Three, made up of Emily Bruce, Jenna Raeburn and Seb Templeton, narrowly missed out on reaching the octo-finals, coming within nine speaker points of the break.

At the time of print, Adjudicator Nigel Smith had advanced to judging the ESL Semi-final, an impressive achievement. Salient wishes to congratulate all members of the squad on their fine efforts.

One of your opposition candidates in the Hunua electorate, Roger Douglas (ACT), probably has a divergent view of economics to yours. Care to comment?

Yes, he probably does have differing views of economics to mine. I’m a social democrat, he’s a liberal…

But why do those two labels have anything to do with economics? Could you not be a social democrat but also seek certain neo-liberal or liberal solutions to problems?

Well, (pause), I do think that the two have quite differing understandings of the linkages between economy and society, because they prioritize two different types of society. That has implications for the type of economic system you’d like to see. So a social democrat holds as an assumption that people are morally equal and that has a substantive impact on their human rights, and their social rights, their cultural rights and their economic rights. They are going to want an economic system that focuses on full employment, and on a reasonably egalitarian distribution of income and wealth, and a liberal – whose focus is on individual freedom as the underpinning of their belief system, is going to want an economic system that is free to pursue their own interests, and to succeed or fail in their endeavors, so that has implications through all forms of economic policy, whether that is fiscal policy, with the structure of the tax system, or what you spend on the state sector versus the private sector. The whole regime of economic policy in the long run is different if there are different values and functions motivating it. But in New Zealand we have social democrats who run reasonably neo-liberal economic policy, and I think that’s a historical oddity. And all around the world economies are more liberal then they were fifty years ago. I don’t think that being a social democrat implies that you have to be a protectionist for example. Or that you have to support very high income taxes.

But you are going up against Roger Douglas (ACT) and Dr. Paul Hutchinson (National), both quite well established politicians.

Indeed.

Any comment on that? Are you perhaps a little bit nervous, is there any trepidation going into that fight?

I think anyone would be a fool if they were not a little bit nervous about getting into the ring with two people who have been in politics for a very long while, one of them who for a very long time – Roger Douglas – was a minister years before I was born. He has done a lot of things in his political career. Everyone thought it was over, probably including him, and he’d decided to jump back into the ring from the metaphorical grave, and I say good on him. Dr. Hutchinson is a low profile MP, in a very safe National seat, part of which is the old Maramarua seat which Bill Birch held for years and years. It has very well organized National party organization. I’ve seen them both speak – Roger Douglas is the master of the soundbite – a very good speaker. Dr. Hutchinson isn’t, I’m an ok speaker. The point about it is that you’re up there to put out and campaign for Labour party values, and I think I can do that. You’ve got to start somewhere. If you don’t try it, you are never going to improve.

I’d like to talk about homosexual politics, you are of course an open homosexual.

Yup

Do you think that the struggle for gay rights has largely finished in New Zealand, do you think that the battle has been won?

No, no, I think the battle for gay rights, quote unquote, will be won when there isn’t a battle for gay rights anymore. When the idea of someone being gay is no more particular or significant than them having red hair, or them being short…

Do you think that’s a practical reality?

Where we are today?

No, that kind of utopian idea of equality
Well is it utopian? People always, you know, make jokes about people who are say, short, people always choose characteristics about others as a way to denigrate them… Like racism exists, sexism exists, homophobia exists, but if you want to have a society where people are accepted for who they are, and what they think and what they do, and what they say, and not just by the characteristics that they have by accident of birth, then you’ve got to build a society where that isn’t the issue, so the struggle for equality is never going to be over because people are entitled to their views and some think that keeping gay and lesbian people in a subordinate, subjugated position in society is a good idea. I don’t think it’s a good idea. Is it finished? No it’s not. I think a lot of the legal work, in terms of building formal legal equality between gay and lesbian New Zealanders and other New Zealanders is nearly there. There are several outstanding issues such as marriage and gay and lesbian adoption and so on, but law is just one thing, policy is another, culture is another. Homophobic bullying is still an issue in schools, and more so I think, I think, than racial bullying. Certainly at my school, when I went to school in Manurewa, it was such a mixed school, and occasionally there were tensions between various ethnic groups, but there were not many out gay or lesbians.

You run a political blog, JustLeft. How important do you think blogging has become in the New Zealand political environment? For example Kiwiblog is quite popular, the Standard is quite popular…

I think that blogging has an influence in politics, in the sense that it’s a bit of a thing that destroys, there are some political journalists who spend an unhealthy amount of time interviewing their favourites menu, by consulting the political blogs and getting leads for stories and stuff. And the blogs can provide a way to turn party talking points into news stories. The thing that I wish was great about political blogging, and isn’t, is the dialogue. The discourse, because if you read any comments section on any political blog in the blogosphere, you’ll see exactly what I mean. It’s trash. There is the odd gem of wisdom among a whole bunch of people who have already made up their minds, and it’s an echo chamber. You know, it’s hard to take it seriously. I certainly don’t take it seriously. I only have comments on my blog because it drives traffic. More people come to your blog if they can comment. I tend not to read them. And there are all sorts of people in the blogging world who want to get their hate on towards other people in the blogging world. It’s silly. So blogging could in a political sense be more important if it was not political blogging. People write family blogs, or blogs like the public address system, kind of, like some of it is political and some of it isn’t. And the stuff that isn’t has a much higher quality of debate and discussion around it. I think it’s a shame, it’s a lost opportunity.

Some commentators are quite disparaging of the blogosphere; they think it is some kind of place where the politicos go and hang out, and it has no real relevance to ordinary new Zealanders…

Well you could say that about the whole political system couldn’t you?

That’s a slightly disparaging view of New Zealanders don’t you think?

Umm, no, I think, no, I’m not meaning to be disparaging at all, in any political system there are groups of people who are more engaged, and a group of people who are less engaged. Do I think the blogs represent New Zealand? No I don’t. Do I think they are well connected to mainstream views? No I don’t. I think their influence lies in feeding information and stories to the mainstream media that then filter out. They are not a reflection of how society is, they are not a reflection of the values, or thank God, the kind of conversations that most people have about politics. Some people think the blogs are more important than they are. You’d never win an election with a blog. It’s just a piece of the puzzle.

Week on the Blogs

www.salient.org.nz/blog

Conrad went up the NZUSA conference in Auckland and did some live updates, before being banned from attending. He blogged about that too anyway. Topics in his posts ranged from media censorship, men’s conferences, institutionalised homophobia and why he doesn’t like Jimmy Cowan.

Jackson was obviously procrastinating over his honours paper, as he posted three things. A record for him. He reminded us of the nasty Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the racism of provincial media, and he counter spammed a Nigerian. What fun!

Comment of the Month

Adam Smith
July 7th, 2008 at 6:15 pm AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS by Adam Smith 1776 INTRODUCTION AND PLAN OF THE WORK THE annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations. [Comment abridged by Jackson Pols. Ed. due to length (it was fucking long): if you would like to read the rest of Adam’s comment please visit this link]

Adam Smith
July 7th, 2008 at 6:26 pm My milk shake brings all the boys to the yard, and they’re like, its better than yours, damn right its better than yours, I can teach you, but I have to charge [Comment abridged by Jackson Pols. Ed. due to length (it was fucking long): if you would like to read the rest of Adam’s comment please visit this link]

Jackson Wood
July 7th, 2008 at 6:29 pm The obvious answer to Adam’s comment is Stiglitz: “the reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there.” And if it is there it is probably holding a milk shake.

Adam Smith
July 7th, 2008 at 6:34 pm Are you attempting to apply Stiglitz to my first or second comment this evening? I believe both applications would be flawed, but am prepared to engage you on only one.

What qualifications did you attain during your academic life?

Academic? I’ve got a BA in politics and geography, and a Bcom in economics from the University of Auckland, and I have a first class BA honours in politics and international relations from Victoria. And im currently enrolled, although I’ve suspended it this year, in an MA thesis at Victoria.

Why Geography?

Umm, at high school when I finished in ’96, my two best subjects were economics and geography, so I started a BA in geography, and a Bcom in economics at Auckland, its that tragic, and went from there to politics and added it on. So it was the two things I was good at, and interested in. And they go together quite well actually, because one of the flaws of economic thinking is that people ignore space. They ignore the fact that economic activity occurs in places and people live in places. The Economic conception of the market is not attached to place. It’s not attached to geography. That’s why; some of the more extreme economic theories don’t work in practice, because they ignore that basic factor of distance. And so that has been helpful both in economics and in geography, they interact quite well.

And in politics?

Well they both tend to be quite important in politics as well yes. When I started off I didn’t really realise the similarities of it, I didn’t really understand how well those two would go together, but its proved to be quite a unique and interesting couple of things to know about.

So do you have an academic interest in say, the tragedy of the commons?

Umm, no, no, it wasn’t that kind of economics but the weird thing about economics in Auckland is that they seem to at that time – I finished in 2001 – they were quite focussed on providing analysts, so a lot of focus on calculations, a lot of focus on micro over macro economics, so that basically means a very neo-classical school of economics, that has a very analytic focus, whereas I was more interested in policy questions and stuff. The tragedy of the commons was something we did read about in stage three economics, but yea, its just one of the many tragedies in economics, and not enough people even know what that means – the tragedy of the commons.

Are there any particular economists that have influenced you? Are there any you particularly like the thinking of?

I find the discipline fascinating; John Maynard Keynes came along and said the general equilibrium model of classical economic thinking isn’t a general model. It’s a specific kind of model for a specific market – a perfectly competitive one.  And we need a better theory because in reality the market isn’t always competitive, and that became his general theory – Keynesian economics. So now sixty years later we’ve still got a debate about whether Keynes’ theory was a specific case, and the old general equilibrium model is trying to reassert itself. So…

With the writings of Milton [Friedman] and Hayek?

Ahh, well Hayek is a different kettle of fish, but yeah. So that kind of divide between Robert Barrow and the sort of neo-classical  macro theorists on the one hand, and Keynes on the other. I think Keynes himself would be the biggest influence, if you could claim an economist as an influence on me, I don’t have any economist heroes I don’t think.

No?

Well I don’t think so, im not into hero worship in any of my life. Keynes is interesting because he could write, he was a truly ground breaking thinker. And Marx was interesting, and Adam Smith was interesting, and Ricardo, and some of those older texts. A lot of current economics is a bit, well, you read it and you think ‘ok’ you don’t feel as if you are reading something that’s really insightful, and the terrible propensity of economics is turn itself into page after page of economic equations and that means that a lot of economics is hard to read, and boring to read.

One of your opposition candidates in the Hunua electorate, Roger Douglas (ACT), probably has a divergent view of economics to yours, care to comment?

Yes he probably does have differing views of economics to mine. Im a social democrat, hes a liberal…

But why do those two labels have anything to do with economics? Could you not be a social democrat but also seek certain neo-liberal or liberal solutions to problems?

Well, (pause), I do think that the two have quite differing understandings of the linkages between economy and society, because they prioritize two different types of society. That has implications for the type of economic system you’d like to see. So a social democrat holds as an assumption that people are morally equal and that has a substantive impact on their human rights, and their social rights, their cultural rights and their economic rights. They are going to want an economic system that focuses on full employment, and on a reasonably egalitarian distribution of income and wealth, and a liberal – whose focus is on individual freedom as the underpinning of their belief system, is going to want an economic system that is free to pursue their own interests, and to succeed or fail in their endeavors, so that has implications through all forms of economic policy, whether that is, fiscal policy, with the structure of the tax system, or what you spend on the state sector versus the private sector, the whole regime of economic policy in the long run is different, if there are different values and functions are motivating it. But in New Zealand we have social democrats who run reasonably neo-liberal economic policy, and I think that’s a historical oddity. And all around the world economies are more liberal then they were fifty years ago, I don’t think that being a social democrat implies that you have to be a protectionist for example. Or that you have to support very high income taxes.

Then would you like to see economic rights enshrined in the human rights act?

I don’t think we need to go that far, I think that the structure of Human rights, the rights of the person in relation to others in the state, about their freedoms and integrity as a human being is one thing. I think that trying to put economic rights in law is quite difficult. Because that’s a major field of political debate, we would hope that things like Habeas Corpus, and the right to free speech, were things that were not changing every couple of years, but as electoral cycles change, economic policy does and should change, based on the different values of the different parties that are represented in government.

I’d like to talk about homosexual politics, you are of course an open homosexual,

Yup

Do you think that the struggle for gay rights has largely finished in New Zealand, do you think that the battle has been won?

No, no, I think the battle for gay rights quote, unquote, will be won when there isn’t a battle for gay rights anymore. When the idea of someone being gay is no more particular or significant than them having red hair, or them being short…

Do you think that’s a practical reality?

Where we are today?

No, that kind of utopian idea of equality

Well is it utopian? people always, you know, make jokes about people who are say, short, people always chose characteristic about others as a way to denigrate them, like racism exists, sexism exists, homophobia exists, but if you want to have a society where people are accepted for who they are, and what they think and what they do, and what they say, and not just by the characteristics that they have by accident of birth, then you’ve got to build a society where that isn’t the issue, so the struggle for equality is never going to be over, because people are entitled to their views and some think that keeping gay and lesbian people in a subordinate, subjugated position in society is a good idea. I don’t think it’s a good idea. Is it finished? No its not. I think a lot of the legal work, in term of building formal legal equality between gay and lesbian New Zealanders and other New Zealanders is nearly there. There are several outstanding issues such as marriage and gay and lesbian adoption and so on, but law is just one thing, policy is another, culture is another. Homophobic bullying is still an issue in schools, and more so I think, I think, than racial bullying. Certainly at my school, when I went to school in Manurewa, it was such a mixed school, and occasionally there were tensions between various ethnic groups, but there were not many out gay or lesbians.

So if you were to champion one GBLT issue what would it be? What the most pressing concern, what’s the next step forward?

I almost think that its more down to, an understanding of education and cultural issues and public services. New Zealand is a very different place to what it was twenty years ago. Twenty years ago, when homosexual law reform came along, there was that petition with 800,000 signatures, marches of crowds in the streets. In 2004, I was in the counter-protest on parliament grounds when the civil union bill was being debated, and there were five and six thousand Destiny black shirts there, and a few colourful rainbow people holding up signs, and the anger and intolerance there was just so much less, so that’s a really good illustration of how much progress has been made, but there is still a long way to go, among specific communities, and various age groups. When you’ve a lot of progress towards legal equality, I think the focus begins to shift, in terms of specific legal issues, well we all know there is a concerted campaign to characterize equal rights to all people who are homosexual as ‘special rights’.

What do you mean by that?

I mean, in the politically correct or nanny state rhetoric of the centre right or ‘far right’ politics of New Zealand, there was a lot of flak during the civil union law passage of there being a granting of ‘special rights’ to same sex couples. But of course it wasn’t, it was granting the same rights to same sex couples that different sex couples had. And fair enough. If you accept that all people are morally equal, which I do, and I think most kiwi’s do, which is why a substantial majority of people supported that [the civil unions bill]. But there is a minority who don’t, and I think that the National party and its friends in parliament, have very carefully tried to build a perception of the Labour Party as being out of touch with ordinary new Zealanders, and Don Brash said as much during the last election campaign. He said that Labour isn’t the party of mainstream New Zealand, but of course it bloody well is. It always has been, that’s why it exists. But you know, you still get, that project, which to the credit to the right they have done quite effectively. Some of the appetite for law reform within the Labour Party has quietened a little bit due to the fact that it could create political risks, and I think that’s terrible. But it’s also realistic. It’s a democracy, you can only move as fast as people will let you.

You have worked with David Farrar, how do you feel about working with people from the right?

I think that there is a danger in politics, in that it can take over all of your life. Politics is not all of my life, I spend a lot of time on it because I enjoy it, and I think its important. My relationship with David Farrar goes way back to when we used to spar on a thing called UseNet, the old newsgroups back in the mid 1990s. And I was part of a team with David, which took control of the Internet Society, where I now work, in an AGM in 2000, and I’ve always found David, on the issues we work with on InternetNZ, to be a bright, engaged, interesting and credible competent person, who is great to work with. He knows what he’s thinking and he says it. He has a lot of information at his fingertips, and he has a very good memory, and we are working for a common agenda. David was involved in the campaign for civil unions, and was involved in the campaign to keep the drinking age at 18. He’s a social liberal, we work very well on the issues we agree on, we have very different perceptions of what the word “freedom” means, so in politics, we will never be on the same side. And that’s fine. I’m not a member of the National party, and David’s not a member of the Labour party. You’ve just got to get over these things. In my professional life, I’ve had dealings with MPs from all over parliament, and I have no problem with that. Some people in politics do get really tribal, and that’s fine and I can see why. These people have been involved for quite some time, I’m not that old, I haven’t been involved in some of the really heated first past the post battles between the two tribes, if you like. I just don’t buy it, politically I’ll savage David, and David will savage me. That’s just part of our interaction.

So who is the politician from across the floor who you’d be most willing to work with?

I don’t know. I don’t know many of the centre right MPs very well. I don’t have a lot to do with them, except on some specific issues, so I may, if I do end up in parliament, there will be a process of getting to know them. There is no one I don’t particularly dislike, I think some of them are a little bit silly sometimes, and some of the rhetoric – I thought Don Brash was a deeply dangerous and divisive figure in new Zealand politics, and I would have had a great deal of trouble in having anything civil to say to him. If that had come to pass, but it didn’t, he’s out of there which is good.

You mentioned before that you haven’t had much experience in politics, you are standing for Labour in a new electorate, the Hunua electorate, which encompasses part of the old Clevedon and Port Waikato electorates, are you ready?

Well, I didn’t say I didn’t have much experience in politics, I said I was relatively young, I’ve been a member of the Labour party since 1997, so eleven years, and I’ve sat in various organizations in the party, and I’ve done governing and management roles in the IT industry. One of the key things about my job is that you need to be an advocate, explain ideas to people, persuade people, and you need to have a vision of how things could be done better. I think that’s what parliament needs, it also needs people with different age groups and stuff. After thinking about it reasonably carefully, over the last year or so, I decided I was ready to go, have an apprenticeship run if you will at this election, and to see if actually, the idea of being a candidate and an MP, translated into something I was any good at, and whether it would be enjoyable actually doing it.

But you are going up against Roger Douglas (ACT) and Dr. Paul Hutchinson (National) both quite well established politicians,

Indeed.

Any comment on that? Are you perhaps a little bit nervous, is there any trepidation going into that fight?

I think anyone would be a fool if they were not a little bit nervous about getting into the ring with two people who have been in political for a very long while, one of them who for a very long time – Roger Douglas – was a minister years before I was born, he has done a lot of things in his political career. Everyone thought it was over, probably including him, and he’d decided to jump back into the ring from the metaphorical grave, and I say good on him. Dr. Hutchinson is a low profile MP, in a very safe National seat, part of which is the old Maramarua seat which Bill Birch held for years and years. It has very well organized National party organization. I’ve seen them both speak, Roger Douglas is the master of the soundbite – a very good speaker, Dr. Hutchinson isn’t, I’m an ok speaker. The point about it is that you’re up there to put out and campaign for Labour party values, and I think I can do that. You’ve got to start somewhere. If you don’t try it, you are never going to improve.

You’re working for InternetNZ at the moment, is that one of your main key areas of interest in politics? Are you interested in better internet infrastructure for example?

I think that’s part of the mix. My main interest in politics is economic policy and labour market issues. How we can build good resources for a better public service. How we run the economy so that there is full employment, and so wages go up faster then they are. And IT, and broadband, telecommunications is an area that I’ve gotten to know quite well, through my job here [InternetNZ]. I’m interested in it, I think it’s important, and I would want to be involved in those kind of policies, if I was in parliament working in select committees or so on. But I wouldn’t describe it as my main interest, or my only interest. One of my problems is that I’m kind of interested in most things. I wouldn’t ever want to have a micro focus on a narrow policy area.

You run a political blog, JustLeft, how important do you think blogging has become in the New Zealand political environment. For example Kiwiblog is quite popular, the Standard is quite popular…

I think that blogging has an influence in politics, in the sense that it’s a bit of a thing that destroys, there are some political journalists who spend an unhealthy amount of time interviewing their favourites menu, by consulting the political blogs and getting leads for stories and stuff. And the blogs can provide a way to turn party talking points into news stories. The thing that I wish was great about political blogging, and isn’t, is the dialogue. The discourse, because if you read any comments section on any political blog in the blogosphere, you’ll see exactly what I mean. It’s trash. There is the odd gem of wisdom, among a whole bunch of people who have already made of their minds, and it’s an echo chamber. You know, it’s hard to take it seriously. I certainly don’t take it seriously. I only have comments on my blog because it drives traffic. More people come to your blog if they can comment. I tend not to read them. And there are all sorts of people in the blogging world who want to get their hate on towards other people in the blogging world. It’s silly. So blogging could in a political sense be more important if it was not political blogging. People write family blogs, or blogs like the public address system, kind of, like some of it is political and some of it isn’t. And the stuff that isn’t has a much higher quality of debate and discussion around it. I think it’s a shame, it’s a lost opportunity.

Some commentators are quite disparaging of the blogosphere, they think it is some kind of place where the politicos go and hang out, and it has no real relevance to ordinary new Zealanders…

Well you could say that about the whole political system couldn’t you?

That’s a slightly disparaging view of the New Zealander’s don’t you think?

Umm, no, I think, no, I’m not meaning to be disparaging at all, in any political system there are groups of people who are more engaged, and a group of people who are less engaged. Do I think the blogs represent New Zealand? No I don’t. Do I think they are well connected to mainstream views? No I don’t. I think their influence lies in feeding information and stories to the mainstream media that then filter out. They are not a reflection of how society is, they are not a reflection of the values, or thank God, the kind of conversations that most people have about politics. Some people think the blogs are more important then they are, you’d never win an election with a blog. It’s just a piece of the puzzle.

But if you made some comparisons with Obama’s campaign in the United States, political blogging and internet organization has been incredibly successful, do you think that has a role in new Zealand?

I think that it has a growing role, those campaigns really showed that people like organizing themselves online. And that’s what Obama’s campaign did, much better than Clinton’s campaign. The Republicans haven’t come close to it so far. It’s about giving people tools that they need to organize in the way that suits them. So you enter in your post code and your address and you get returned the basic demographic data, that comes back and says “there are six other doctors on your street, why don’t you ring them up and canvass them, ask them who they are going to vote for, and enter it into this website.” But that’s a whole different ball game from blogging. And also the political culture in America helps that because in presidential campaigns it’s all about personality. They are built around personality and vision. And New Zealand politics, for better or worse, tends to be about policy and issues. Personality is very important as well, but it’s not as overwhelming. So in New Zealand politics, Helen Clark, and John Key, are less relatively important in the firmament in the media, than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Or as it were, Barack Obama and John McCain. Over time that will be more important, as ways of organizing political parties and campaigns, you’ve got to move where people are and more people are moving online.

One of the largest and most frequent crimes in new Zealand is probably intellectual copyright infringement, if theoretically a substantial amount of people are committing a crime, and its justified socially because everyone is doing it, why is it still a crime?

Are you talking about file sharing?

Illegal downloading of music, even until recently format shifting, that was a crime…

It was illegal, ill give you that, it’s not in the crimes act,

Yes, but lots of things are illegal that aren’t in the crimes act.

Yes, hah. A law that no one follows, or respects is a problem. And copyright is hard, because people have this tool that they can use for legitimate purposes or illegitimate purposes, and through the nature of the medium, and the fact that CDs have always been distributed without any prohibitions on copying actually encoded into them, people began copying them into mp3s, and applications arose which enabled them to do soPeople do have a right to protect their intellectual property, so I don’t support something like making it a free for all. But, the music industry and others need to realize that technology has changed the game. They aren’t going to be able to keep operating the same way, the, sort of, defend our big industrial age labels at all costs.

So there’s an adjustment process the content industries need to go through so they can work in a world where people can make their own content, and take bits of commercial content, mashups, playlists, whatever. But that has to happen within an evolving copyright framework, not just by saying it’s too hard and we’ll just repeal it.

Original photo that was circulated around all the world’s leading newspapers:

Photo showing similar segments.

Suspected new Iranian super weapon in development;

Those sneaky Iranians, what will they think of next!

(hat tip : FP blog)

VUWSA decided to propose a motion allowing me sit in on the closing plenary. I just wanted to have a little listen, and to be able to report back to students about the good (or bad) work that VUWSA does at a national level representing students. This meeting is setting the direction for student advocacy in an election year after all (and VUWSA members contribute approximately $7.50 each to the NZUSA affiliation). To their credit, they decided to bury the long standing acrimonious hatchet with Salient, and propose the motion.

The motion was met with hostility by other executives around the country. Ryan Ward, president of OPSA (Otago Polytechnic Students Association) was against the motion, claiming that what is said in closing plenary had to be said in a ‘safe’ area, and he “didn’t want reporters breathing down his neck. Especially not Salient.” I have no idea why he has such a big chip on his shoulder regarding this fine publication. I didn’t even know OPSA existed until this weekend.

The Otago University students association were more measured in their opposition. They supported the idea of student media reporting on student events. However, they felt that the motion had not had sufficient time to be debated. I see his point, but I think its a bit of a cop out. Waikato, and MAWSA (Massey) also voted against, siding with OPSA’s baseless criticism of there being a need for a ‘safe’ area. If this argument had any real weight, the parliamentary press gallery wouldn’t exist. But low and behold, it does. The measure of any argument in a democratic forum should be judged on the strength of its persuasive power and its merits. Bad arguments desire valid criticism. And students need to be informed if their elected representatives are making bad arguments.

ASA (Massey Albany Students Association), and VUWSA all supported the motion. Preferring to believe in transparency and responsible government, over cronyism and the undemocratic stifling of student media.

So here I am, sitting in an empty workroom away from where all the action is taking place, wondering what the fuck is going on. Waiting, like everyone else, for the minutes (minus the debate and discussion) to be collated, authorized, typed up, and sent out. Which by then, no one will remember, or care about. Fucking brilliant.

—

Full list of votes for and against

FOR

VUWSA, ASA,

AGAINST

OPSA, UCSA, MAWSA, WSU, OUSA

UPDATE for those who still care;

The NZUSA constitution seems to be at odds with the actions of NZUSA in this post. It reads:

Attendance and Speaking, Moving and Seconding Rights

(14) Any Honorary Life Member and any member of a Constituent Member may attend a
general meeting.

As a paid up member of VUWSA (I am a student) I am therefore, a member of a constituent member, and should be let in. tsk tsk NZUSA, you really should be on top of your own consitution.

However, more scandal has erupted. Yesterday a workshop was held that brought together the result of the womens and mens confrence. According to VUWSA Queer rep Racheal Wright the meeting was hijacked by the patriachy. A mens network was suggested to promote and identify ‘men’s issues’. The network is being supported by Joel Cosgrove (VUWSA) and Ryan Ward (OPSA). According to Wright, the network subverts the initiatives already in place that promote gender equality and also increases the intimidation and oppression of queer and women. When she raised this issue at the VUWSA caucus meeting this morning, she was told by Joel Cosgrove to ‘fuck off’.

In response she has threatened to resign from office. That’s the last thing VUWSA needs right now, a fucking by-election.

UPDATE:

I have had a chance to talk with Joel and hear his side of the story. His support for the new ‘reactionary’ (as it has been termed by its detractors) men’s network was that; although he recognised that sexist, and homophobic attitudes may still be prevalent in student representation, it was important for that to be discussed openly in a national forum. This argument holds some weight, men’s issues should not be buried away and forgotten about. However, by allowing a forum in a national union (of which ordinary students all over New Zealand financially buttress) to legitimise sexism, and homophobia then NZUSA runs the risk of subverting the issues it is trying to solve.

Poor old Hutchison got a bollocksing. Students were obviously not very happy with National. The rest provided fairly banal and standard party rhetoric and positions that were verbatim of thier party websites. I’ll go deeper into those positions in print.

However, Hutchison dropped the ball a little bit. After being asked “What did Crosby/Textor tell you to tell us” by VUWSA exec member Sonny Thomas, he was put into a bit of a fluster. This meant that the ’till now impenetrable National policy silence suffered a chink in its armour. After being asked his perspective of Voluntary Student Membership, he voiced his support. But then backtracked, stating definitley that no National government would support a change to Compulsory Student Membership legislation as it currently stands. This means that National will not be supporting the current bill in the ballot from the Act party, calling for a change.

Hutchison was quite adamant that National would not be supporting any such law, now or in the future. Its probably fair to imply that he means in National’s first (and in the event of subsequent) terms, VSM will not be a legislated issue.

 So in summation, The National party does not support Voluntary Student Membership. At last, some policy relating to students from a party which on current polling could govern alone.

 Thank god.

Unknown to many students is the fact that our students association is itself a member of the New Zealand Union of Student Associations. Its one of VUWSA’s largest expenses (i dont have the precise details at this stage) and the Union is funded primarily by contributions from its member associations. Present are delegates from all the top dogs (Auckland, Otago, Canturbury, Victoria) and also present are reps from polytechnics and other tertiary organisations.

So far on the agenda there have been workshops and summits regarding Alcohol and students, new media and student campaigning, an insight into the disastrous plight of student unions in Australia, after the Howard government instituted voluntary student unionism, and there have been a plethora of equity, and representative group discussions.

 I must stop this overview here, as the political panel on tertiary education, is about to start.

 And oh, if anyone was wondering if there have been any crazy executive antics, urine licked off streets, signs being stolen etc, then sadly I would have to dissapoint you. The executive have been quite boring so far. The only minor scandal is the motel they are staying in has been treating them with undue suspicion, due to the poor rep Vic students have after this years uni games. What a bore.

Allowing Jimmy Cowan to remain in the squad was the last straw for me. This is supposed to be our highest level of sporting service to the country. We should expect damn better standards from our players then what we are currently getting. Cowan, has been charged with two drunk and disorderly offences, and a third is pending. What kind of message does this send to our youth? With a team that focuses heavily on its ‘inspirational’ branding, this is a disgrace. And its not just Cowan Jerome Kaino has also been charged with a drink driving offence. Not to mention the off field antics of Tana Umanga, Ma’a Nonu,  and an unnamed All Black who may be responsible for this assualt.

I’ve had enough in all honesty. Kick these people out straight away, to complicity condone this behavior by allowing players to continue in the team sends a very dangerous message to the All Black’s target audience. An audience, which in part, is no stranger to poverty, domestic abuse and assault.  Now im not claiming that all rugby watchers are vicious louts, but behavior like Cowan’s certainly doesn’t help the good image of the game.  There is a fundamental problem here, when you have respected players like Murray Mexted, going on camera and laughing off Cowan’s three alcohol fueled binges as just part of ‘growing up’ for a young man, and tells us that we should just laugh it off, we know there is a differing perception of what acceptable standards of conduct are. New Zealand society should not be celebrating moronic barabarism, and loutish thuggery, all in the name of ‘sport’. The correlations between sport and violence is already too high. We don’t need more Cowan’s to reinforce the problem.

The latest bank note issue from the Zimbabwean reserve bank. With inflation currently at over at 100,580.2 percent its no wonder Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out of the election. That, and the fact that Mugabe’s revolutionary guard were probably trying to kill him…

But I put it to our dear readers, if there was ever a time for a justified case concerning the invasion of a country and replacing its despotic leader, would it be Zimbabwe?

Present were Sonny Thomas, Seamus Brady, Joel Cosgrove, Alex Neilson, Stefan Tyler, William Wu. Fiona McDonald trudged in late. After exchanging pleasantries the meeting got underway, Joel led an officious charge through the agenda. Thomas tried to pass a motion thanking Tyler for diligently doing the minutes, no one listened. Thomas tried a second time, and was ignored by the executive. Neilson thought the fact that his birthday was coming up, and he was turning 21 was ‘auspicious’. Cosgrove and Thomas denied this assertion. I put my head in my hands.

Contrary to popular belief important matters are discussed at executive meetings. The VUWSA van policy was canvassed but wasn’t voted on because only the draft report was included in the executive’s papers. Members obviously hadn’t read it yet, and Thomas refused to because “he can’t read things when they are underlined”. Joel raised a motion concerning formulating policy for a membership list of all VUWSA members (i.e everyone at university) which included all of their contact details and university information. I wasn’t listening very hard so I didn’t know why VUWSA needed and or wanted this information. Neilson and Joel started talking about the privacy act, so it must have been something important. In other news, it was brought to the executive’s attention that VUWSA receptionist Carey, has decreed that if you have your restricted licence you can not take anything in the car with you, as it would contravene your licence conditions. This was news to Neilson, as it would mean that all the free bread he picks up would be considered illegal passengers. Everyone had a chortle at poor Carey’s expense. Nielson laughed so hard he went all red, and I thought he was going to explode on me.

Following on from that epic and comical tale, Cosgrove informed the executive that the van only took diesel, and to not put petrol in it. Tyler sardonically quipped that maybe Joel should put sugar in it instead. I giggled, it was pretty funny at the time.Just when things couldn’t have gotten any more riveting Melissa Barnard exploded into the meeting. Originally I thought Barnard was drunk, turns out she wasn’t. That was disappointing. She exclaimed “I’ve had a lot of sugar this afternoon” and then explained that “I got offered $1 to lick commercial grade salt they put in swimming pools. I’m regretting turning it down.” Before then postulating “This is why the Berlin Wall got knocked down and David Hassellhoff was on top of it going ‘I want a cheeseburger’ arrgghnomnomnom (replete with exaggerated eating actions).” Too much sugar indeed.

After Barnard had settled down, Thomas’ application for a $850 ($200 for the second half of the summer trimester and $650 for this trimester) bonus was approved by the executive. I’m not allowed to tell you why because the bloody executive went into committee. Finally the executive passed a strongly worded motion to Auckland’s vice chancellor Stuart McCutcheon, over it took them bloody ages to formulate the damn thing, as Thomas, Barnard and Cosgrove kept adding clauses such as “historical, privilege” “honour” and “distinction”. Tyler got frustrated and asked for the executive to just “fucking email it to him”.

On that tense note, the meeting was adjourned.

Campbell: I’ve just noticed the Greens got more party votes in your Ohariu electorate last election than United Future – how did that happen ?

Dunne : Two reasons. One was the general meltdown in our vote. Second we have never, for obvious reasons, run a two-tick campaign in Ohariu-Belmont. We’ve always run an electorate vote campaign. So, we want the party vote everywhere else, but in that electorate we clearly want the electorate vote.

That seems particularly odd, why would Dunne not want to campaign for party votes in his own electorate. It doesn’t make much sense to want a party vote elsewhere, but not in the electorate which holds its strongest, and highest profile candidate. Sorry Peter, your reasons aren’t obvious.

Campbell: This time, even if National got enough votes to govern alone, do you expect they will choose to have partners, even if only to foster a sense of inclusiveness?

Dunne : I can’t speak for them, obviously. But I would have thought it would be wise to do so. The prospect of them getting enough to govern alone arte extremely unlikely – but even if they achieve that, in New Zealand’s political culture, it’s a one-term phenomenon. So I would have thought, from both the perspective of presenting a broad-based government, and from the sense of sending out the signals that you aim to be around for more than three years , you would want to do that. But that’s their call, not mine.

This is a very interesting question, and its one that should be posed to the Maori Party and New Zealand First. If John Key is clever (and if National does form the next government) then including parties who dont need to be included into formal alliances, coalitions, or confidence and supply agreements may be beneficial. Dunne is right in noting that its a future looking strategy, an important consideration in MMP. National can not expect to govern alone if they succeed a second or third term. Labour’s third termitis is enough to refute this. Also worth considering is the convention of collective cabinet responsobility. By including leaders of other parties into an agreement, the governing party can exact a modicum of control over the ability of other party’s to speak out on government issues.

Campbell: Do you think any of the Christian-based parties will cross the 5 % threshold this year?

Dunne : No. United Future is not in that camp, not any more.

Campbell: You’ve been through your prayer meeting phase ?

Dunne : Well, we were never really in it. I certainly wasn’t. But we had some people who imagined that United Future could become New Zealand’s version of the Taliban.

Campbell: Right.

Dunne : And they’ve now thankfully left to pursue their course to oblivion.

This is good news, Dunne is right to distance itself as much as he can from the maverick antics of political buffoons like Gordon Copeland et al. However, we all cant forget that Dunne was willing to work with these people, perhaps it was an error of judgment, or just badly placed political opportunism. But Dunne’s voting record on social legislation speaks for itself.

Campbell: But is it fair to your middle class constituency, let alone to the poor, that the vast bulk of your tax cuts should go to those already relatively affluent?

Dunne : You want a system that’s simple, that removes a lot of the dis-incentives, or incentives for people to avoid it. And that’s what we’ve tried to deliver. In that sense, the alignment of the top personal, trust and company is quite significant. Because that will deal to the huge, burgeoning increase in family trust and other arrangements in recent years for tax avoidance purposes.

What? No it wont, separate legislation to deal with dodgy tax accounting and family trusts would solve the issue of tax avoidance among the richest. The top tax bracket will still have dodgy accounting practices, and will be getting tax cuts. So Campbell’s original accusation still stands, Tax cuts under Dunne will be very top heavy. The current media focus this year is on Winston Peter’s last gasp in the Tauranga electorate. But the same applies to Dunne as well. United Future is heavily dependent on his electorate seat, and like Winston, his party was formed around his position as an established parliamentarian. Labour in Ohariu-Belmont may try to do what National are doing in Tauranga, deal a death blow to a small party which is dwindling and on current polling no longer exerts much strategic influence on government formation. The question is, like Winston, will Dunne go down fighting?

Police raids on several houses in South Auckland resulted in bewilderment by the occupants, including children. One teenager reported being hit by a police rifle in the head. Comparisons between such actions and the Dawn raids of the 80′s could be tenuously drawn.

But at the end of the day, the police should be given the benefit of the doubt in such situations. If the house they had been raiding HAD had the shooters inside, things could have gotten messy quickly. The Police have a duty to protect each other, as well as members of the public. Furthermore it appears this authoratative crackdown has had the desired effects. Two men are charged with murder and firearms offenses (party liability at work), and a third has been charged with being an accessory.

The police have been criticized with being too soft in thier investigations — in particular the Kahui affair, and too harsh — during the raid of Ruatoki. It appears they struck a good balance here. In situations like this, its important to recognize the good work the police can do in this country.

Especially when the other story to break this morning is this one…

Well I thought it was pretty funny. (Click on the post title to see the pic, this fucking outdated wordpress wont let me show them on the front page.)

—-

Thank you very, very much. Well, this isn’t exactly the party I’d planned, but I sure like the company.

(APPLAUSE) And I want to start today by saying how grateful I am to all of you, to everyone who poured your hearts and your hopes into this campaign, who drove for miles and lined the streets waving homemade signs, who scrimped and saved to raise money, who knocked on doors and made calls, who talked, sometimes argued with your friends and neighbors…

(APPLAUSE)

… who e-mailed and contributed online, who invested so much in our common enterprise, to the moms and dads who came to our events, who lifted their little girls and little boys on their shoulders and whispered in their ears, “See, you can be anything you want to be.”

(APPLAUSE)

To the young people…

(APPLAUSE)

… like 13-year-old Anne Riddell (ph) from Mayfield, Ohio, who had been saving for two years to go to Disney World and decided to use her savings instead to travel to Pennsylvania with her mom and volunteer there, as well.

To the veterans, to the childhood friends, to New Yorkers and Arkansans…

(APPLAUSE)

… who traveled across the country, telling anyone who would listen why you supported me. And to all of those women in their 80s and their 90s…

(APPLAUSE)

… born before women could vote, who cast their votes for our campaign. I’ve told you before about Florence Stein (ph) of South Dakota who was 88 years old and insisted that her daughter bring an absentee ballot to her hospice bedside. Her daughter and a friend put an American flag behind her bed and helped her fill out the ballot.

She passed away soon after and, under state law, her ballot didn’t count, but her daughter later told a reporter, “My dad’s an ornery, old cowboy, and he didn’t like it when he heard Mom’s vote wouldn’t be counted. I don’t think he had voted in 20 years, but he voted in place of my mom.”

(APPLAUSE)

So to all those who voted for me and to whom I pledged my utmost, my commitment to you and to the progress we seek is unyielding.

You have inspired and touched me with the stories of the joys and sorrows that make up the fabric of our lives. And you have humbled me with your commitment to our country. Eighteen million of you, from all walks of life…

(APPLAUSE)

… women and men, young and old, Latino and Asian, African- American and Caucasian…

(APPLAUSE)

… rich, poor, and middle-class, gay and straight, you have stood with me.

(APPLAUSE)

And I will continue to stand strong with you every time, every place, in every way that I can. The dreams we share are worth fighting for.

Remember, we fought for the single mom with the young daughter, juggling work and school, who told me, “I’m doing it all to better myself for her.”

We fought for the woman who grabbed my hand and asked me, “What are you going to do to make sure I have health care?” and began to cry, because even though she works three jobs, she can’t afford insurance.

We fought for the young man in the Marine Corps t-shirt who waited months for medical care and said, “Take care of my buddies over there, and then will you please take care of me?”

(APPLAUSE)

We fought for all those who’ve lost jobs and health care, who can’t afford gas or groceries or college, who have felt invisible to their president these last seven years.

I entered this race because I have an old-fashioned conviction that public service is about helping people solve their problems and live their dreams. I’ve had every opportunity and blessing in my own life, and I want the same for all Americans.

And until that day comes, you’ll always find me on the front lines of democracy, fighting for the future.

(APPLAUSE)

The way to continue our fight now, to accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy, our passion, our strength, and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama, the next president of the United States.

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Today, as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him.

(APPLAUSE)

And I ask all of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me.

(APPLAUSE)

I have served in the Senate with him for four years. I have been in this campaign with him for 16 months. I have stood on the stage and gone toe-to-toe with him in 22 debates. I’ve had a front-row seat to his candidacy, and I have seen his strength and determination, his grace and his grit.

In his own life, Barack Obama has lived the American dream, as a community organizer, in the State Senate, as a United States senator. He has dedicated himself to ensuring the dream is realized. And in this campaign, he has inspired so many to become involved in the democratic process and invested in our common future.

Now, when I started this race, I intended to win back the White House and make sure we have a president who puts our country back on the path to peace, prosperity and progress. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do, by ensuring that Barack Obama walks through the doors of the Oval Office on January 20, 2009.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, I understand — I understand that we all know this has been a tough fight, but the Democratic Party is a family. And now it’s time to restore the ties that bind us together and to come together around the ideals we share, the values we cherish, and the country we love.

We may have started on separate journeys, but today our paths have merged. And we’re all heading toward the same destination, united and more ready than ever to win in November and to turn our country around, because so much is at stake.

We all want an economy that sustains the American dream, the opportunity to work hard and have that work rewarded, to save for college, a home and retirement, to afford that gas and those groceries, and still have a little left over at the end of the month, an economy that lifts all of our people and ensures that our prosperity is broadly distributed and shared.

We all want a health care system that is universal, high-quality and affordable…

(APPLAUSE)

… so that parents don’t have to choose between care for themselves or their children or be stuck in dead-end jobs simply to keep their insurance.

This isn’t just an issue for me. It is a passion and a cause, and it is a fight I will continue until every single American is insured, no exceptions and no excuses.

(APPLAUSE)

We all want an America defined by deep and meaningful equality, from civil rights to labor rights, from women’s rights to gay rights…

(APPLAUSE)

… from ending discrimination to promoting unionization, to providing help for the most important job there is: caring for our families.

And we all want to restore America’s standing in the world, to end the war in Iraq, and once again lead by the power of our values…

(APPLAUSE)

… and to join with our allies to confront our shared challenges, from poverty and genocide to terrorism and global warming.

You know, I’ve been involved in politics and public life in one way or another for four decades. And during those…

(APPLAUSE)

During those 40 years, our country has voted 10 times for president. Democrats won only three of those times, and the man who won two of those elections is with us today.

(APPLAUSE)

We made tremendous progress during the ’90s under a Democratic president, with a flourishing economy and our leadership for peace and security respected around the world.

Just think how much more progress we could have made over the past 40 years if we’d had a Democratic president. Think about the lost opportunities of these past seven years on the environment and the economy, on health care and civil rights, on education, foreign policy and the Supreme Court.

Imagine how far…

(APPLAUSE)

… we could have come, how much we could have achieved if we had just had a Democrat in the White House.

(APPLAUSE)

We cannot let this moment slip away. We have come too far and accomplished too much.

Now, the journey ahead will not be easy. Some will say we can’t do it, that it’s too hard, we’re just not up to the task. But for as long as America has existed, it has been the American way to reject can’t-do claims and to choose instead to stretch the boundaries of the possible through hard work, determination, and a pioneering spirit.

It is this belief, this optimism that Senator Obama and I share and that has inspired so many millions of our supporters to make their voices heard. So today I am standing with Senator Obama to say: Yes, we can!

(APPLAUSE)

And that together we will work — we’ll have to work hard to achieve universal health care. But on the day we live in an America where no child, no man, and no woman is without health insurance, we will live in a stronger America. That’s why we need to help elect Barack Obama our president.

(APPLAUSE)

We’ll have to work hard to get back to fiscal responsibility and a strong middle class. But on the day we live in an America whose middle class is thriving and growing again, where all Americans, no matter where they live or where their ancestors came from, can earn a decent living, we will live in a stronger America. And that is why we must help elect Barack Obama our president.

(APPLAUSE)

We’ll have to work hard to foster the innovation that will make us energy independent and lift the threat of global warming from our children’s future. But on the day we live in an America fueled by renewable energy, we will live in a stronger America. And that is why we have to help elect Barack Obama our president.

(APPLAUSE)

We’ll have to work hard to bring our troops home from Iraq and get them the support they’ve earned by their service. But on the day we live in an America that’s as loyal to our troops as they have been to us, we will live in a stronger America. And that is why we must help elect Barack Obama our president.

(APPLAUSE)

This election is a turning-point election. And it is critical that we all understand what our choice really is. Will we go forward together, or will we stall and slip backwards?

Now, think how much progress we’ve already made. When we first started, people everywhere asked the same questions. Could a woman really serve as commander-in-chief? Well, I think we answered that one.

(APPLAUSE)

Could an African-American really be our president? And Senator Obama has answered that one. (APPLAUSE)

Together, Senator Obama and I achieved milestones essential to our progress as a nation, part of our perpetual duty to form a more perfect union.

Now, on a personal note, when I was asked what it means to be a woman running for president, I always gave the same answer, that I was proud to be running as a woman, but I was running because I thought I’d be the best president. But…

(APPLAUSE)

But I am a woman and, like millions of women, I know there are still barriers and biases out there, often unconscious, and I want to build an America that respects and embraces the potential of every last one of us.

(APPLAUSE)

I ran as a daughter who benefited from opportunities my mother never dreamed of. I ran as a mother who worries about my daughter’s future and a mother who wants to leave all children brighter tomorrows.

To build that future I see, we must make sure that women and men alike understand the struggles of their grandmothers and their mothers, and that women enjoy equal opportunities, equal pay, and equal respect.

(APPLAUSE)

Let us…

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Let us resolve and work toward achieving very simple propositions: There are no acceptable limits, and there are no acceptable prejudices in the 21st century in our country.

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You can be so proud that, from now on, it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories…

(APPLAUSE)

… unremarkable to have a woman in a close race to be our nominee, unremarkable to think that a woman can be the president of the United States. And that is truly remarkable, my friends.

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To those who are disappointed that we couldn’t go all of the way, especially the young people who put so much into this campaign, it would break my heart if, in falling short of my goal, I in any way discouraged any of you from pursuing yours.

Always aim high, work hard, and care deeply about what you believe in. And, when you stumble, keep faith. And, when you’re knocked down, get right back up and never listen to anyone who says you can’t or shouldn’t go on.

(APPLAUSE)

As we gather here today in this historic, magnificent building, the 50th woman to leave this Earth is orbiting overhead. If we can blast 50 women into space, we will someday launch a woman into the White House.

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Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it…

(APPLAUSE)

… and the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time.

That has always been the history of progress in America. Think of the suffragists who gathered at Seneca Falls in 1848 and those who kept fighting until women could cast their votes.

Think of the abolitionists who struggled and died to see the end of slavery. Think of the civil rights heroes and foot soldiers who marched, protested, and risked their lives to bring about the end of segregation and Jim Crow.

(APPLAUSE)

Because of them, I grew up taking for granted that women could vote and, because of them, my daughter grew up taking for granted that children of all colors could go to school together.

Because of them, Barack Obama and I could wage a hard-fought campaign for the Democratic nomination. Because of them and because of you, children today will grow up taking for granted that an African-American or a woman can, yes, become the president of the United States. And so…

(APPLAUSE)

… when that day arrives, and a woman takes the oath of office as our president, we will all stand taller, proud of the values of our nation, proud that every little girl can dream big and that her dreams can come true in America.

And all of you will know that, because of your passion and hard work, you helped pave the way for that day. So I want to say to my supporters: When you hear people saying or think to yourself, “If only, or, “What if,” I say, please, don’t go there. Every moment wasted looking back keeps us from moving forward.

(APPLAUSE)

Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. We have to work together for what still can be. And that is why I will work my heart out to make sure that Senator Obama is our next president.

(APPLAUSE)

And I hope and pray that all of you will join me in that effort.

(APPLAUSE)

To my supporters and colleagues in Congress, to the governors and mayors, elected officials who stood with me in good times and bad, thank you for your strength and leadership.

To my friends in our labor unions who stood strong every step of the way, I thank you and pledge my support to you.

To my friends from every stage of my life, your love and ongoing commitment sustained me every single day.

To my family, especially Bill and Chelsea and my mother, you mean the world to me, and I thank you for all you have done.

(APPLAUSE)

And to my extraordinary staff, volunteers and supporters…

(APPLAUSE)

… thank you for working those long, hard hours. Thank you for dropping everything, leaving work or school, traveling to places that you’ve never been, sometimes for months on end. And thanks to your families, as well, because your sacrifice was theirs, too. All of you were there for me every step of the way.

Now, being human, we are imperfect. That’s why we need each other, to catch each other when we falter, to encourage each other when we lose heart. Some may lead, some may follow, but none of us can go it alone.

The changes we’re working for are changes that we can only accomplish together. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are rights that belong to us as individuals. But our lives, our freedom, our happiness are best enjoyed, best protected, and best advanced when we do work together.

That is what we will do now, as we join forces with Senator Obama and his campaign. We will make history together, as we write the next chapter in America’s story. We will stand united for the values we hold dear, for the vision of progress we share, and for the country we love.

There is nothing more American than that.

And looking out at you today, I have never felt so blessed. The challenges that I have faced in this campaign…

(APPLAUSE)

… are nothing compared to those that millions of Americans face every day in their own lives.

So today I’m going to count my blessings and keep on going. I’m going to keep doing what I was doing long before the cameras ever showed up and what I’ll be doing long after they’re gone: working to give every American the same opportunities I had and working to ensure that every child has the chance to grow up and achieve his or her God- given potential.

I will do it with a heart filled with gratitude, with a deep and abiding love for our country, and with nothing but optimism and confidence for the days ahead.

This is now our time to do all that we can to make sure that, in this election, we add another Democratic president to that very small list of the last 40 years and that we take back our country and once again move with progress and commitment to the future.

Thank you all. And God bless you, and God bless America.

—-

Take this news with a grain of salt though, it has been broken by ABC, and does not cite any credible sources. But the writing is on the wall…

Its widely expected that Clinton will concede defeat to Obama sometime today (our time) or very close to it. The question now becomes: What do the Democrats do with the huge rift that has been torn open by Clinton’s elongated campaign. I blogged earlier about how dissastisfied I was with her clinging on to the very end, due to her own pride and hubris. Well, now, millions of dollars lighter and without anything to show for it — she better have a solution.

To be fair, not everything rests on Clinton’s ability to patch up the acrimonious relationship between the two. There are rumblings from the democrats about turning the other cheek and allowing Clinton back into the fold as a running mate. For that to be successful Clinton needs to tow the line, its going to be quite a step down for her.

However, without Clinton’s endorsement at least, white lower class Americans may vote by not voting at all. Edwards’ endorsement is not enough to win over key states like Michigan and Iowa in a national election. Her and Obama need to sit down and strategically manage the next few days. Because if there ever was a time where the Democrats would lose the unloseble election, it’d be now.