Oh, and, we had a feature that we put in the centre spread between those two issues which is pretty hard to read in those pdfs so here it is for y’all:

The ethics of being a mistress

“There is a good deal of debate about the importance of [Lady] Walston in Greene’s life. She clearly is the inspiration for The End of the Affair” – The Telegraph‘s review of The End Of The Affair by Graham Greene.

How Lady Walston would feel about such a remark is never broached in this review, nor is the importance of Greene in her life. She, like many men and women around the world and throughout history, does not fit comfortably into narrative of their lover’s life. She is just a mistress.

This is because the mistress is not seen as an important figure in the life of their ‘taken’ lover. Thoughts such as ‘surely if they were truly important they would be legitimised at some point by being made the sole benefactor of their lover’s love’ are common when discussing the other woman or man. But is this fair considering that most conventional relationships don’t work out either? What sin has this person committed other than to break the ‘Golden Rule’ of “One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself”? Should an adage be enough to stop someone from searching for happiness?

Desire vs. Reality

The ethics of being complicit in an affair may be questionable, but within this subjectivity is wiggle room which casts it out from other types of ‘bad’ behaviour—to cheat is wrong, but to cheat for a noble purpose might not be—and places being a mistress in an ethical grey area. They are generally understood as being sub-optimal for the long term future of a formal couple, but the mistresses emotions are as important as those of either member of the couple, and their presence merely highlights cracks already within the relationship. More often then not the mistress is a scapegoat and a pariah, while the cheater has suffered a lapse of judgement and is excoriated, but forgiven – see Bill Clinton, Kobe Bryant… not so much Tiger Woods. While it is simple to hurl blame on the mistress, if one is actually interested in discovering the flaws in a relationship and not just excreting bile, then it is fruitless.

Mistresses are opportunists—sometimes in love, sometimes just in lust—and while being an opportunist is no virtue, being desired is no vice, and is this what all mistresses have in common. Mistresses come in all shapes, sizes, and types… but Salient can only be so long, so here are the two most polar types of mistress.

What kind of mistress are you?

Earnest

The earnest ‘I can convince them to leave their partner’ type of mistress is by far the most dangerous of the two due to being the one with the highest hopes, and therefore greatest potential to become embittered and seek revenge. They can be the most honourable form of mistress, after all they are the ones who believe love can conquer all, but they are often unwilling to accept the place of part-time lover and have historically been known to take their revenge in the most public of fashions if their plan for formal partnership do not come to fruition.

Historical example: Lady Caroline Lamb—lover, and eventual stalker of Lord Byron.

While technically not a mistress—she was married, he was not—when the lover who has scorned you is compelled to widely publish poetry asking you to leave them alone, you classify in this category. Byron’s advice never got through to Lady Lamb, who published her own, increasingly public, increasingly troubling poetry demanding her former lover’s attention. She eventually died alone of drug abuse related organ failure without fulfilling her potential as a great poet in her own right.

Realist

The realist long term mistress is a common staple in history and literature. Far beyond the yearnings of the earnest type, they are understanding of their position in the life of their lover. They are loyal partners in crime, who embrace the part they play—or at least pretend to. However they can also be the most fatalistic; their freedom limited by the relationship, and their power within the relationship hindered by mistresses being more expendable than their legitimised counterparts.

Historical example: Madame de Pompadour—The Chief Mistress of Louis VX and Diplomat.

Though blamed for several of France’s mis-steps in the Seven Years War, which cost her nation its claim to Canada, Madame de Pompadour’s achievements were numerous. She won the undying affection of influential friends, her devoted lover, and even enjoyed a cordial relationship with her lovers wife. She embrced her formal role as the “Mistress above all others”, and with this role she was given power only second to that of the queen, with far more ability to make back room deals—she held a greatly envied level of power in the diplomacy of her nation. But her life was not her own, and her role as Chief Mistress barred her from moving beyond the confines of her lover’s shadow. She too died young and wanting.

Is it worth it? An interview with a mistress.

In light of the moral uncertainty (though not immorality) and practical concerns, Salient speaks with a mistress about the challenges and meaning behind his role and their relationship.

What leads someone to become a mistress?
It began in the same way any relationship begins—we met through a mutual friend, there was chemistry, and we decided to play it out.

When did you find out she was married?
When she told me about her three children—Yes she has children, but they are not ours and they have no reason to know of me, all they need to see is that their mother is happy—which was early enough that I could have run for the hills without any issue. Clearly I didn’t.

Why didn’t you?
Love cannot be planned, but I think that it can be attained if you are open to it, even if the timing or circumstances aren’t right, and I grew tired of waiting for the perfect situation; while this may not be optimal, but it’s preferable to the single life of quiet desperation. And besides, my feelings for her are more important than being polite to a man I have never met so I agreed to continue seeing her.

What are the requirements of, and expectations on, a mistress?
Discretion, support, and affection. A good mistress isn’t looking for ownership of their partner, but rather a sense of sharing happiness. The [formal partner] may be able to offer financial support, but the mistress can offer honest support; I’m not going to profit from anything outside of the relationship so my caring comes from an honest, non-self interested place.

What is the mistresses expectations of the other person?
To be treated as they expect the other person to treat them. It can be easy for either side of the relationship to slip into taking the other for granted, as it is in any relationship, but this leads to animosity and distrust, which could lead to a revelation of the secret affair.

So these relationships require internal honesty, but not external? How is that sustainable?
All relationships have secrets, sure this is a bigger secret, but just so long as those within the affair are honest with each other, the outside world doesn’t matter. My friends don’t judge my life, and I’d leave them out of it if they did.

Have you ever been cheated on?
Not that I know of, but probably. What I have learnt from friends that I have discussed this with is that cheating is very common, though people do not like to admit it. Over analysing the [ethical dilemmas] isn’t interesting to me.

Do you not empathise with the man who wife you are having an affair with?
Because I’m an enabler to immoral behaviour? . No, I think I probably would like him if we were ever to meet, but I will not apologise for making her happy.

What happens if this person leaves her husband and begins a relationship with you?
I am under no illusions that this will happen in my situation, but if it did then I wouldn’t have ruined a happy relationship, but rather ended a failing one. However, the odds aren’t great for relationships which begin like that—you might be that one in a thousand, or you’ll silently freak out once you realise what you have done.

Like the end of The Graduate?
Yes! when you see the two of them look into each others eyes with [bewilderment], and you can tell they realise what a monumentous decision they have made somewhat on the fly. That can be a hard feeling to move on from, and normally at least one person does not.

What would your perfect relationship be like then?
They don’t exist, I wouldn’t be talking to you if they did. People are fickle and what seems great today may seem cold and uncomfortable tomorrow. The world isn’t that convenient.

Do you see the life of a mistress as a viable choice for others?
It’s not something you choose, and not something I would recommend unless you are comfortable with the lack of ownership and amount of time spent alone. It takes a certain kind of person to deal with that as this is where affairs exist and blossom, and where their downfall all too often begins.

***

DISCLAIMER: The term mistress is technically feminine, but due to the lack of a non-gendered word for this situation, it will be used throughout as an all encompassing phrase meant to classify a person who engages in a prolonged romantic engagement with someone who is already in a relationship. We didn’t create the English language, we just attempt to use it.

Following euphoric scenes in America with tears, mass engagements and public declarations of love, countries across the world are reassessing their recognition of same-sex partnerships. Is conferring the legal rights of marriage on civil unions the best way to achieve justice? Or is the only path to equality down the marriage aisle with lace, church, priest and cultural baggage in tow? With these dilemmas gaining publicity in an election year, Salient feature writer, Selina Powell, talks to your democratic representatives about the issue.

Civil Unions—the Same Legal Rights?

New Zealand law does not allow gay and lesbian couples to marry, but provides for same-sex couples to enter civil unions. Those against further extending recognition of same-sex relationships have argued that the current rights couples have under civil unions are sufficient, and that married couples are treated in the same way by the law.
Bill Atkin, Relationship Property and Family Law lecturer at Victoria, notes that there are two differences in the way that the law treats a civil union when compared to a marriage. The most significant difference is that a married couple can adopt, while a civil union couple cannot. While not solely discriminating against same-sex couples (heterosexual de facto and civil union couples cannot adopt children), the brunt of this provision impacts on the gay community.

Grant Robertson, Labour MP for Wellington Central, explains that over 100 pieces of legislation were amended to provide equal rights for civil union couples when the Civil Union Act was introduced. However, the Adoption Act was seen to be so outdated that a comprehensive overhaul was needed, not just the inclusion of civil unions.
While successive Governments have failed to implement these changes, Charles Chauvel, Labour Spokesperson for Justice, says that the Labour party is focused on eliminating the inequalities between civil unions and marriages. Chauvel has drafted a private member’s bill to update adoption laws for Labour MP, Jacinda Ardern, which he says is widely supported by the Labour caucus. Kevin Hague, Greens MP is also advocating for comprehensive adoption reform which would enable same-sex couples to adopt.

A Long Engagement

Despite inequalities in the rights of married couples when compared with civil union couples, advocating for same-sex marriage is not the highest priority for Greens or Labour. National continues its deafening silence on the issue.
Although Chauvel believes that, “every lawful relationship deserves the full protection of the law”, the current priority for Labour is to confer the rights of marriage on civil unions, rather than initiating a separate campaign for same-sex marriages.
This policy has been developed in consultation with rainbow communities according to Chauvel. He notes that if further talks revealed a preference for a marriage equality campaign, “we would review our approach, and I would personally be supportive, but that has not been the view expressed to us to date.”
Hague supports gay marriage but has chosen to focus on other campaigns while the composition of Parliament makes successful marriage reform unlikely.
“Eventually I believe that New Zealand will legalise gay marriage (or alternatively repeal the Marriage Act, making marriage itself a religious-only institution) but I don’t think it’s going to happen any time soon. I’d say at least five years away and more likely ten or more.”
Hague says that his highest priority at the moment is to create a more supportive environment for young people coming out. Several Rainbow Greens initiatives are based around this aim.
Perhaps the largest hurdle to the introduction of gay marriage in New Zealand is the high level of Government apathy on the issue. Most National MPs, including John Key, voted against the Civil Union Act when it was enacted in 2004. Chris Tremain, National MP for Napier, says that National has “no policy” on same-sex marriage and that each MP is free to make their own decision on the issue if a bill comes before Parliament.

Public Views on Same Sex Marriage

An independent public poll on same sex marriage conducted by Research New Zealand in the wake of events in New York found that 60 per cent of New Zealanders over 18 believe that same-sex marriages should be permitted in New Zealand. The poll found that females and younger age groups were more likely to favour gay marriage. Research New Zealand Director, Emanuel Kalafatelis,observed in a media release that the findings show “attitudes in this area are in advance of legislation”.
However, Family First NZ disputes this view on the basis of a study which it commissioned through another independent research organisation, Curia Market Research. The Curia Poll found that only 42 per cent disagreed with continuing to restrict the definition of marriage to a union between a man and woman.
Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First, says that these results are, “in direct contrast to the 60 per cent support for gay marriage argued by Research NZ”. McCoskrie notes that, “politicians would do well to progress slowly on this issue rather than capitulate to strong lobbying to change the definition.”
A possible explanation for the difference between the polls, is that while the Research NZ poll is proportionate to the New Zealand population, only 25 per cent of those polled by Curia were between the ages of 18 and 45. According to Statistics New Zealand figures, around 45 per cent of the New Zealand adult population falls into this age bracket.
David Farrar, from Curia Market Research, concedes that young New Zealanders, who are more likely to support same-sex marriage, are under represented in the poll. However, Farrar notes that as fewer young New Zealanders vote, this poll is more representative of the New Zealand voting population. He also observes that women were over represented in the survey (at 57 per cent), and generally women are more likely to support same-sex marriage.

Redefining Marriage?

Family First has frequently expressed opposition to same-sex marriage. McCoskrie argues that including couples of the same sex within marriage would infringe on traditional definitions of marriage. He contends that, “Equality does not mean we must redefine marriage for everyone.”
McCoskrie does not think that prohibiting same-sex marriage discriminates against the gay community. He also questions whether the ‘all love is equal’ campaign is a sound one in support of same-sex marriage.
“Same-sex people cannot now legally marry. But neither can a whole lot of people. A five-year old boy cannot marry. Three people cannot get married to each other. A married man cannot marry another person. A child cannot marry her pet goldfish.”
Hague emphatically rejects the view that allowing same-sex couples to marry would undermine marriage.
“On the contrary, I maintain that any state sanctioning of relationships that exclude some couples who love each other is cheapened by its embedded prejudice. Marriage is worth more and is more meaningful if all couples who love each other can marry.”
The symbolism of denying same-sex couples the right to marry is important, according to Hague.
“Making the ultimate form of state approval of a loving relationship unavailable to same sex couples signals very powerfully that we remain second class citizens, with our relationships not as valuable as those of our heterosexual fellow citizens.”

Gay Marriage v Equal Rights for Civil Unions

Some argue that if a couple can receive the same rights within a civil union as within a marriage, there is no harm to society in restricting the right to marry to heterosexual couples. If same-sex marriage was allowed, it is likely that many gay and lesbian couples would continue to enter civil unions because of their secular nature, just as many heterosexual couples currently choose civil unions over marriage.
Peter Tatchell, Australian-born gay rights advocate, has argued for the right to marry in the Sydney Star Observer, despite the fact that Tatchell does not personally wish to marry.
“Personally, I don’t like marriage. I share the feminist critique of its history of sexism and patriarchy. I would not want to get married. But as a democrat and human rights defender, I support the right of others to marry, if they wish. Everyone should have a choice.”
The American Psychological Association has recently called for both state and federal officials to legalise same-sex marriage. The recommendations of the Association are based in research which found that prohibiting gay marriage causes increased rates of stress amongst gay and lesbian communities which expose individuals to a higher risk of physical and mental illness.
The APA has rejected civil unions as sufficient state recognition of same-sex unions. Clinton Anderson, a Spokesperson for the APA, told CNN at the beginning of this month that, “Anything other than marriage is, in essence, a stigmatisation of same-sex couples. Stigma does have negative impacts on people.”

Living The Dream

A question that remains is how long same-sex couples will have to wait before they receive full legal acceptance from their state, whether in the form of a civil union or marriage. In New Zealand it appears that marriage equality is at least a change of Government away. With equal rights through civil unions on the agenda for both Labour and Greens, this is more likely to be the form of state recognition for same-sex unions.
While civil unions might be the pragmatic route to equality, for many marriage conveys a universal, historic affirmation of love which cannot be replaced by a state construct.
As Thatchell notes, “Marriage is the internationally recognised system of relationship recognition. It is the global language of love. When we were young, most of us dreamed of one day getting married. We didn’t dream about having a civil partnership.”

Dr Sketchy Wellington is monthly and hosted by Mighty Mighty. For $12/$14, anyone can come in and experience a wealth of colour, models and atmosphere with a sketch book in hand. The talented Wellington scene brings a variety to the table, with costumers and dancers doing their thing to avoid mere traditional poses, and some pictures are simply breathtaking. Rachel Rouge began Dr Sketchy Wellington in 2009, and will be retiring in October of this year.

Venus Starr will be taking the reins of Dr Sketchy, with big boots to fill. Starr has over six years of circus performance under her belt from the Circus Trust in Miramar, in addition to lengthy stints teaching and performing worldwide on the burlesque and circus scene. Among her talents, she can do aerial silks, hula, and swinging trapeze, which she enjoys bringing to Burlesque in Wellington. She aims to bring a more circus-style feel to performances in Wellington, avoiding mere ‘striptease’ style shows for full, high calibre burlesque shows, often combining talents such as aerial silks, pole, or hula. In addition to this, in a moment of boredom when pregnant, the high energy Starr formed the monthly event Carousel Cabaret to remain active when unable to perform in the Wellington burlesque scene.

One of the best things about the Wellington burlesque scene, and Venus in particular, is that she knows most performers well enough to push the boundaries. Venus knows her performers’ limits and can tailor each session to each performer, and vice versa. Wellington Dr Sketchy artists are becoming well known for drawing more detailed, beautiful pictures owing to each performer’s ability to hold poses for five to seven minutes, as opposed to one or two. Combining this with a passion for extending the common view of burlesque as simply striptease, shows at Mighty Mighty combine a range of concepts appealing to increasing numbers of Wellingtonians. Rachel Rouge has organised her final Dr Sketchy to be Zombie themed, ending with the symbolic killing of Rouge by Starr, as she takes the spotlight.

Venus’ monthly Burlesque show, Carousel Cabaret, is a work of art combining traditional Burlesque with more circus-style entertainment, with a healthy dose of comedy. It is next held at Garden Bar at 7pm, August 26.

The next Dr Sketchy will be held at Mighty Mighty, from 4-7pm on Friday 12 August 2011.

It makes perfect sense to understand revenge as beginning in the early days of mankind, when we were threatened by competition. For a caveman, not fighting back when a rival tribe has stolen his food and woman would have meant a lonely death—and an evolutionary dead end. In that situation it goes against human survival instincts to simply give up. It’s hardly surprising that such a fundamental response, born of anger, survival instinct and pride, has stuck around all these years and is still making waves today.

Those waves continue to make headlines worldwide. When Osama bin Laden was uncovered as the “mastermind” of the September 11 attacks on the USA, a nation swore a collective oath of vengeance. That oath was fulfilled on May 2, when bin Laden was killed by a team of US Navy SEALs. This was an act of revenge, and elicited extreme reactions one way or another all over the world. Some were overjoyed and ecstatic, while others fumed at the vengeful actions that, in their view, overstepped boundaries of law and morality. Still more people were made uneasy by the excitement and happiness arising from death, and questioned the celebration of a man’s demise. Clearly, revenge is a divisive action. However, it is also exceptionally popular, and to say we don’t all enjoy a good story of some villain getting their comeuppance would be a lie.

Some of the greatest stories from human history are based primarily around revenge, or setting the score straight—I’m talking of course about The Iliad, Hamlet, Moby Dick, The Count of Monte Cristo, and of course, the greatest story ever told: The Princess Bride. Try playing a role-playing video game without finding a quest based around revenge, go on, try. Or open up the Old Testament and see how far you get before coming across some vengeance. Revenge is clearly a fairly integral part of our literary tradition. More than that: it is a part of the history of all mankind. The concept of utu is an important aspect of Maori culture—a simple way of putting it would be a formalised, restorative form of revenge and balance. However, for all its prevalence, the idea of paying Evil unto Evil rarely seems to turn out well for our fictional characters. Hamlet famously dies at the end, along with practically the entire cast, the Revenge of the Sith lasts less than a single generation, and even the successful ones such as Inigo Montoya is left to ponder his stomach wound and ponder the employment—let alone dating—prospects of a man who has spent twenty years of his life doing nothing but practice his swordfighting.

These literary examples are extremes, however, and it would be a bit of a mistake to draw too many parallels between Hamlet and spitting on your flatmate’s toothbrush for eating your last chocolate-chip muffin. Surely, if we don’t take it too far, it makes sense that revenge is a good way of doing away with all that toxic anger. However, don’t rush in just yet. Before you strike while the iron is hot—or make it hot by striking—take a moment to think about what you are doing.

A recent study has shown that after receiving negative assessments, participants who had spent two minutes going toe-to-toe with a punching bag were actually more aggressive than those who had simply taken a minute to have a cup of tea and a lie down. Psychologist Dr Art Markman suggests the hardly unexpected notion that aggressive behaviours such as violent revenge make us more violent in nature, by associating memories of the events that have made us angry with our own acts of aggression. Important to consider, however, is the equally evident factor of catharsis. It feels good to express our feelings instead of bottling them up inside, and we all know from experience that giving as good as you get can be damn satisfying. When someone shuts you down with some outrageous sass, there’s nothing better in the world than coming back with a sizzling zinger (or “sizzlinger,” if you will) to knock them down a couple of pegs.

Without restraint, though, those things that make us feel good will often result in some fairly dire consequences. This is not hard to grasp: if Steve is so offended by Alice’s behaviour that he feels he must take revenge, then it makes sense for a reciprocal act to provoke just as much unhappiness in Alice. Much like a pendulum, revenge can swing back and forth in this way until everyone runs out of energy and gives up, or the whole thing builds up out of control and somebody loses an eye. There can be some pretty big consequences if you don’t take care. One high school student tried to take revenge on a bully by letting down the bully’s tyres, and narrowly avoided being run over when the bully happened to be in the car waiting for him. And it’s not like extreme physical injury is the worst thing that can happen from a revenge plot gone too far. You could lose friends, love, your home—or even get in trouble with the law. Revenge as a defence isn’t exactly going to stand up in court, as one American woman found out the hard way. After her husband told her to lose weight and get plastic surgery so he wouldn’t cheat on her with his receptionist any more, she ran him over with his car, twice. At trial, members of the jury openly wept as they delivered a guilty verdict, and begged that the judge give her the most lenient sentence possible. Whether that is a just result is up to you.

Clearly there are some treacherous pitfalls along the way, but don’t despair. It may not be the nicest way to go about your business, but in some cases revenge is a damn attractive choice. Even fantasising about trashing your philandering lover’s car—or in the case of one study, stabbing a voodoo doll—can vent those angry feelings. Revenge is a way for us to feel less like a powerless victim, and more like someone who still has their pride and dignity. Even if that restoration of dignity involves dialling a sex-line on someone’s phone and leaving it off the hook for nine hours.

If you want to plan the perfect act of revenge, not only should you avoid the potentially disastrous consequences outlined above, but according to Mario Gollwitzer you should also tailor your revenge to suit what has been done to you. The most curative revenge is that which makes you feel as though you have taught your enemy a lesson, and really made them feel as though they know exactly what they did wrong.

Feeling vengeful is nothing to be afraid of, but bear in mind that payback is a powerful tool. Done right, it can be entertaining, fulfilling and cathartic. Done badly, it can lead to pain, sadness and nothing but trouble. Clearly, revenge is indeed a dish best served cold. So please, I beg of you, tread carefully out there on your quest for vengeance.

***

The Rules for Revenge

1: Don’t Break the Law
This is fairly obvious. It’s hard to have the last laugh from a cell in the Rimutakas.

2: Keep it in Perspective
There’s really no need for disproportionate retribution. You probably don’t need to ruin someone’s entire life for borrowing your shampoo without asking. That’s just going to lead to further conflict.

3: Think about the Consequences
This is a big one. Don’t jump into anything without thinking about who or what will be affected by your own personal brand of Justice. Revenge plots can backfire spectacularly.

4: Don’t get stuck with the Bill
If you cause someone financial damage, you don’t want them to be able to hand you an invoice. This overlaps with Rule #1 and Rule #6.

5: Make Sure they Learn Their Lesson
The most important factor in making yourself feel better is teaching the other party what they did wrong. A generic punishment won’t always do this.

6: Cover Your Tracks
If you’ve had to do something you aren’t proud of, then maybe it’s better you don’t let anyone know it was you. Especially keep it off the internet, and stay the hell away from Facebook.

7: Be Creative
This is important. Not only will it make for a better, more entertaining story, but it will also help you in not looking like the bad guy. It also helps with Rule #8.

8: Have Fun
Taking revenge too seriously is not ideal. Being funny about it will avoid turning you into an aggression machine. You’re probably not trying to actually tear down somebody’s world, and someday they too will see the funny side.

9: Move On
The whole point of taking revenge is to get it out of your system. When it’s over, it’s over. Don’t let it consume you, and remember that the best revenge is living well.

Halls of residence, it seems, are great as they give you a safety net so you can’t stray too far, and there are (albeit minor) consequences for your actions. The concept of ‘party free’ floors was laughed at, as well as the idea of studying with the people who lived with you. Maybe halls aren’t the real world just yet, but all in one year many people are leaving home, learning how to feed, clothe and budget for themselves, study relatively unassisted, and act like an adult, so halls overall seem like a good way to test the water. Complaints ranged from terrible food to not fully meshing with the other people, but all times were a hazy warm memory—so it doesn’t seem like anyone really regretted living there.

“Halfway through the year, when things started to get boring, Rory invented this awesome drinking game where we all sat in the dark, not talking, and drinking beer. Once you’d drunk all six beers, you got up and quietly left the room.”

Flatting, especially with people you don’t already know, seems to be a mixed bag. Staying on the same wavelength as one’s flatmates, especially if they aren’t also first year, can be hard during exam time. Also, living with a load of first years that come from relatively privileged backgrounds can be a recipe for disaster.

Also, taking responsibility for bills and bond can be hard—one person compared it to herding cats. In this sense, flatting in first-year and coming out alive seems to be a good achievement, which is likely to lend itself to a better second year.

“I moved into a flat with randoms—living in a flat itself was a positive experience (apart from being broke, but that was fun itself in a way). However, I also failed everything at uni and only went to one of my exams… so maybe I’d change the part where I went “FREEDOM! BOOZING!! FUCK STUDY!!!”… but then again, maybe I wouldn’t.”

The priorities we all set ourselves when pushed out into the big wide world are a bit laughable now. How about the 19-year-old who wanted to live alone, and slept under his jacket in a powerless house to do so? One poor fool choose to buy town shoes instead of furniture, and had not one, but two girls leave his bedroom laughing hysterically at the sleeping bag on the floor.

The first thing I heard about was all the causes my parents had never filled me in on. The worst was the meat industry, and how they treat their animals. So I became a vegetarian, trying to be a vegan, but because I had no idea which foods contained animal products, and which didn’t, I ended up eating kebabs and hot chips for months
Some people never left home at all, and all they needed to do was work out how to lie to StudyLink to ensure they received money to waste. The combination of more free time, clean clothes and hot dinners often meant more free time for depravity. Many who took this option were glad of the ability to actually focus on study, and ease into the adult world, while some felt pushed into the option by parents who may have even moved city to keep them in the family home!

The opposite seemed more common, however, when both StudyLink and parents left some students out in the cold.

“I’m not going to go into details here but suffice to say that taking abandoned, half-eaten burgers that you didn’t buy from BK and giving them to Blanket Man would be offering him more support than I saw from my father for a good long while. But StudyLink, in their ineffable wisdom, felt that I was unworthy of support. I had at this point lost 11 kg because I was eating only free ice cream twice a day.”

The balance between cheering for freedom and accepting an 18-year-old is still a bit immature to be on their own seemed like a hard line for parents to fathom, especially when basic life skills were never fully taught. Budgeting seemed to be something that was done until one reached their last $5, and the choice between alcohol and food on the weekend was a relatively common one.

“If I had tomato sauce and rice, I had a meal. Sometimes I’d even have cheese. If I was too hungry, I’d go to bed early.”

Overall, the best thing we all took from first-year was that no matter how bad it got, it was such an experience that changing it isn’t something we’d want to do. The combination of learning about so many things at once in such a socially different year means that everyone follows such a steep learning curve that the year is inevitably worth it.

“I once went to a party and ended up resting my head on size G boobs while making out with my best friend and watching a bearded man in a dress recite Dr Seuss. It caused a lot of repercussions but that night will forever be in my brain and I will never want it out of there.”

Inter-hostel rivalry, finding that your roommate has stolen all of your green tea, and learning what mould is are nothing compared to being bored and stable in a clean flat when no-one is home.

Ngā Mahi Whakatere Waka a Ngā Tipuna
Ko ngā waka ēnei i hoea mai rā i te nuku o te whenua i Hawaiki-pāmamao
Whakawhiti mai rā te Moana-nui-ā-Kiwa ki Aotearoa
Hiki nuku, hiki rangi!

I ngā rā o mua, ko ngā ia wai o te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa ngā ara haere a o tātou mātua tīpuna, ā, i riro mā ngā āhuatanga o te moana, o ngā hau e whā, o te rangi hoki e aratakina i a rātou ki ngā moutere, ki Aotearoa hoki. Nā te eke o ngā ngaru, te pupuhi o ngā hau, te ara o ngā whetū, me te hurihanga o Tama-nui-te-rā rātou i arataki. I aua rā ko te reo o te taiao, o te moana e rite pēnei ki te reo Māori. He reo i mōhio whānuitia.

I ēnei rā kua memeha haere te mātauranga o tēnei mahi whakatere waka, ā, nā tērā i puta te huatau ki te whai whakaaro anō ki ēnei tūmomo mahi. Ko tētahi whakatinanatanga o ēnei whakaaro ko te haerenga tuatahi o te waka Hokule’a i te tau 1976. Na Mau Piailug i whakatere te waka hourua, Hokule’a, na runga anō i te mātauranga i heke iho mai i ona matua tipuna. I riro atu ngā mīhini Pākehā ki rahaki, a, nana anō i whai atu i ngā tohutohu a Tāwhirimātea, a Tangaroa, a Ranginui hoki, tae atu ki Tahiti.
Nō ngā moutere o Micronesia a Mau, engari i tona kitenga atu i ngā āhuatanga o tauiwi e uru ana ki ngā tikanga o tona iwi, ka tīmata ia ki te whakaako i ngā mahi whakatere waka ki ngā iwi whānui o te Moana nui a Kiwa. Ko tētahi o ana tino tauira ko Nainoa Thompson, nō Hawaii, a, tatu mai ki ēnei ra, kua whakaora ēnei tokorua i ngā mahi whakatere waka.
Mō Aotearoa, ko te tuatahi o ngā waka hourua i whakatere atu ko Te Aurere. Na Hekenukumai Busby tēnei kaupapa i whakahaere, a, i ea tēnei kaupapa i te tau 1992 i te ūtanga atu o te waka o Te Aurere ki Rai’atea.
Heke mai ki ēnei rangi, he mātauranga ‘hou’ tēnei ki ētahi. Ahakoa ngā rautau kua hipa, he pihipihinga tonu tēnei kaupapa ki ngā iwi whānui. Heoi, kei te haere tonu ngā mahi pērā ki te haerenga o Te Mana o te Moana.

Te Mana o te Moana
Ko Te Mana o Te Moana he haerenga o ngā waka hourua e whitu mai i Aotearoa ki ngā moutere o te Moana nui a Kiwa, tae noa ki Hawaii, ki Amerika hoki. E ai ki te paetukutuku, he haerenga tēnei hei whakanui i ngā take taiao e pā ana ki te moana kia puta ki ngā tini tangata o waho. He haerenga hei whakaora, hei whakatauira hoki i te mātauranga a o tātou tīpuna mō te mahi whakatere waka, ka mutu, hei poipoi i te hononga o ngā iwi taketake o ngā moutere ki Tangaroa.
Ko Faafaite (Tahiti), ko Gaualofa (Samoa), ko Haunui (Pan-Pacific), ko Hine Moana (Pan-Pacific), ko Marumaru Atua (Cook Islands), ko Te Matau a Maui (Aotearoa), ko Uto Ni Yalo (Fiji) ngā waka e whitu. I wehe ēnei waka mai Aotearoa i te timatanga o te marama o Paenga-whāwhā. Kua toru marama neke atu rātou ki te moana, a, i ngā wiki e rua kua pahure i tae atu rātou ki Hawaii.

Anei tētahi o ngā tuhinga mai i tō rātou paetukutuku:
Rangi 60 – Rāpare 16th Pipiri 2011/ Taenga ki Hawai’i

Ko te po i mua i to matou taenga atu ki te moutere o Hawai’i. Kua puta mai ko Rakaunui, ka puta hoki te ihiihi, te wehiwehi me te wanawana i te kitenga o te kōpere o te po. Ko tona piko e tohu ana i Hawaiki nui, i Hawaiki roa, i Hawaiki pāmamao. Mīharo katoa matou i tēnei kōpere.
Ka ao ka ao ka awatea.
Whiti ana ko Tama-nui ko tana he tohu i te ara ki Kainga ki Whakararo, ki Tokerau. Horahia ko kura-hau-awatea i te rangi. He tohu o te marangai me te hau pupuhi. Heke ana te ua hei tohu atu kua tata to matou taenga atu ki Hawai’i, whai mai ka tāwhana mai te rangi Āniwaniwa. Ko tana he wero i te maumaharatanga o rātou ma kua wehe ki tua, a, he tohu pai kia whakarite mō te taenga ki to matou pae tawhiti.
I te ata tonu tātou i tae atu ki Hawai’i. Ko matou ko Marumaru Atua, ko Haunui tera te hāpai o ki muri e arahina i ngā teina whakatere waka ki roto i te whanga o Hilo. I reira wā tātou kaumātua a Hekenukumai Busby e waerea wā matou huarahi ki Hawai’i.

(http://www.pacificvoyagers.org/voyaging-societies/te-matau-maui/news-5/day-60-thursday-16th-june-2011.html)

He kitenga tuatahi tēnei mō te nuinga o ngā kaiwhakatere o ēnei waka, engari, arā ngā momo mahi whakangungu hei whakariterite i a rātou anō. Nā ngā mahi whakangungu a ngā kaiako pera ki ērā o te waka Hokule’a, i whakaako ēnei o ngā tauira ki tēnei mahi onamata. Hei kīnaki hoki ko ngā mātauranga pūtaiao e whakawhirinaki ana i a rātou mā hei whakakī i o rātou kete mātauranga. Ara, ko ngā take taiao o te moana ērā, ngā āhuatanga kino o ngā momo ngē (noise pollution), ngā wahanga o te moana e kore ai te hau te aha ranei e ora (dead zone), me te ngau o te waikawa ki te moana (ocean acidification).
Mai i ngā tōpito katoa o te Moana nui a Kiwa ēnei kaiwhakatere. Nō ngā moutere o Tahiti ētahi, nō Hāmoa ētahi atu, nō Aotearoa hoki ētahi atu. Ko tētahi o ngā kaiwhakatere waka o Te Matau a Maui ko Taawhana Chadwick. He tauira tawhito ia o tēnei whare wananga, ka mutu, i tū ia hei māngai mō Ngai Tauira i ngā tau i a ia e whai tohu ana ki konei.
Ko ia tētahi o ngā kaituhi mō tēnei haerenga a Te Mana o te Moana, a, ka taea koe te haere ki te paetukutuku ki te kite atu i a rātou nekehanga mai moutere ki moutere ki whenua kē. I tēnei wā tonu kua wehe ēnei waka mai Hawaii, a, kua tāpirihia atu ko tētahi waka hourua anō, ko Ohana Waa (Hawaii).
Anei ngā mihi maioha ki ēnei waka e waru e tere haere ana i ngā wai pukepuke o te Moana nui a Kiwa. Ko ngā kaupapa e pīkau ana rātou mō te taiao, he kaupapa e taea ai tātou katoa te hiki. Ko ngā mahi whakaora i te mātauranga o ngā iwi taketake o te Moana nui a Kiwa, he oranga tikanga, he oranga tangata.

Tēnā, tau atu ki tō rātou paetukutuku: http//:www.pacificvoyagers.org.

The road trip is a rite of passage for many young Kiwis. But after 15 weeks spent traversing through as many regions of New Zealand, Lani Evans and Jill Hayhurst perhaps know the ever-elusive ‘real New Zealand’ better than most. Crew members of the 2011 ReGeneration Road Trip, the pair arrived in Wellington last week for the final leg of a journey that has seen them connect with over 10,000 community and environmental leaders in places as far-flung as Invercargill and Cape Reinga.

ReGeneration was established in early 2009 as a network for leaders in social and environmental leaders who may feel cut-off from like-minded New Zealanders. “What we’ve noticed is that there are heaps of young people out doing community action, but that they’re isolated,” Lani noted. In order to collaborate at an holistic level, the network provides support for pro-active citizens in the realms of sustainability, social equity, and cultural development—the ‘fundamental issues’,” Lani explained.

Consequently, ReGeneration works to build up a culture of support for New Zealanders from a wide range of backgrounds and projects. “Many of the young people who get involved with ReGeneration come from an Enviroschools background,” Lani said. “But we also collaborate with older people who work on social and community issues.” Lani suggests that this level of diversity helps to explain the success that the association has seen. “ReGeneration is intergenerational – there is a tuakana/teina relationship, a reciprocal nature of teaching. It’s also intra-generational: we see 15-year-olds helping 17-year-olds, and vice versa.”

Usually focussing its energy on high-participation youth conventions in locations such as the Tauhara Centre near Lake Taupo and Living Springs Conference Retreat in Christchurch, ReGeneration decided flip this idea around by sending ten of the network’s core members off to visit people who might otherwise not have attended the conferences. Each region received one week of school visits, mini-conventions, and presentations from the group; and community action projects were also worked on. “Not all communities are in positive places, but in all those communities there are people working toward positive change,” ReGeneration New Zealand co-convener Lani reflected. Perhaps the most memorable few days for Lani were some spent at Parihaka, where the crew were able to partake in a forum discuss issues such as proposals for oil exploration in the area. “There is a real sense of community engagement,” Lani said. “Everyone was aware of the history, the present, and the threats to the future.”

Grasping who was doing what in New Zealand was of especial importance to crew member Jill Hayhurst, who is a PhD candidate researching generosity, resilience, community engagement, social capital, and capacity building at the University of Otago. In keeping with ReGeneration’s theme of encouraging holistic thinking and the associations of a diverse group of people, Jill is the only university student on the road trip. Other members include Rick Zwaan, who at 17 has represented New Zealand at Climate Change negotiations in Copenhagen and Cancun; the New Zealand Country Director for the Global Poverty Project Will Watterson; and manager for the YMCA Youth Development Programme Saskia Nieuwlands. This diversity was beneficial for Jill, who stated that though she enjoyed seeing the country from her angle, “I also had nine other people showing me the country through their lenses.”

Jill and Lani cite co-founder of Splashroom Media Iain Frengley as a central element of the road trip. A prize-winning international filmmaker at the age of 27, Iain has created 90-second mini-documentaries of some of the outstanding community leaders the group has come into contact with. These portraits are then posted online as part of a group effort to raise awareness about the achievements of individual New Zealanders.

Closely associated to this is the ‘Inspiring Stories’ project created by crew member Guy Ryan. Throughout the road trip, Guy has supported 150 young New Zealanders to produce short films and stories about people in their regions. “Film is a powerful medium for making change, and to showcase changes in an accessible way,” Lani explained.

The road trip’s system of utilising individual strengths, combined with a team focus and the obvious effects of spending fifteen weeks in close quarters with a small group of people, has been beneficial for Jill. “I love doing this research but I feel bad not being able to do everything,” she said. “This way I feel as though I am a part of a range of different projects.” After spending time researching the outcomes of a range of community actions, Jill thinks she can tell us a thing or two about the positive effects of projects like the road trip. While only in the first stages of her research, initial analysis has shown that people who participated in the workshops experienced increases in resilience, self-efficacy, happiness, self-esteem, political efficacy, life satisfaction, and a sense of social justice. These positive effects are not lost on Lani, who says frankly: “It is incredible to spend time with rad people doing rad stuff—and feeling like I can contribute to that. Who wouldn’t want to do this?”

The Wellington leg of the ReGeneration Road Trip finishes today. To view the 90-second profiles, find out more about the road trip, and to sign up to be a part of ReGeneration NZ, visit regeneration.org.nz

In 1938, Germany invaded Austria, American leaders condemned Nazi persecutions and Winston Churchill spoke of the tragic necessity of war. Evel Knievel was born and the first Superman comic was released. Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds aired for the first time, leading to mass panic for those who treated the fictional radio broadcast as an actual announcement of an extraterrestrial invasion. In Australia, 300 people were rescued at Bondi Beach after being swept out to sea by a series of freak waves.

Across the Tasman, in the same year that the ballpoint pen was released, the first issue of Salient was published. Increasing international tension and the prospect of war had led the Students’ Association to envision a publication which would “link university life more closely with that of the outside world on the assumption that if war ever did begin, which seemed likely to occur, it would at least be an advantage to have a few clues of what it was about.”

1930s

While Salient aimed to keep students informed, entertainment was also an important part of its function. Student events, such as the Freshers’ Welcome described in this April 1938 edition, provided relief from the stress of war time: “There was sound of revelry by night. It was Freshers’ Welcome. Wellington’s capital had gathered then, her beauty and her chivalry, and bright lamps shone o’er fair men and brave women.”

Later in the same month, following the 1930s version of Uni Games, a plea for the return of a “curious anglo-saxon drinking horn” was issued, with speculation that the item was “in the possession of Auckland University College”.

1940s

In June 1940, the same month that Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Italy declared war on France and Britain, and France surrendered to Germany, the sole image on Salient’s front cover were the stencilled letters, ‘I Object’.

Salient reflected in a philosophic moment in 1943: “Many students to-day find University life in war time has problems of an exceedingly difficult nature. Accordingly, Salient has decided to devote these columns to the solution of some of those problems which do so much to darken those years which should be the happiest of our lives.”

The same issue of Salient volunteered to publish extracts from letters of former Victoria students who were currently enlisted in the armed forces in an effort to keep concerned friends and classmates informed.

Salient’s enduring love of puns can be seen in a 1943 article entitled ‘Flighty!’, which described the revelations of a public lecture entitled Flight in Birds and Man.

“Dr. Richardson pointed out that as long as men tried to imitate birds they would not succeed in flying. Only when an American engineer sold himself the idea of constructing machines like bridges were the first successes achieved.”

In 1947, Salient discussed the Philosophy of Doubt, explaining “why more doubt must be the slogan of a University… time and time again, unanimous opinions of the ablest men have been shattered by new evidence”. This sentiment seems to foreshadow Victoria’s long-running ‘It Makes You Think’ campaign, which focused on learning as a skill rather than the acquisition of accepted facts.

A concerned correspondent in 1948 highlighted a perceived thorn in the side of Salient readers: “Sir, when I came to Varsity as a Fresher this year, I thought I was coming to an Institution of higher learning and culture, but what do I find? Quantity of beer, quality of beer, reminiscences of beer and prospects of beer pervade every student activity.”

In the same year that Mao Zedong declared China a People’s Republic and the Soviet Union first tested an atomic bomb, a letter to Salient questioned the fear that surrounded communism:

“Dear Sir, is it useful, in these red-baiting days, to ask ourselves what constitutes a Red?… And if it is Red to fight for a better life for young people, then to be called Red is an honour second to none.”

1950s

In the 1950s, men returned from war and women were expected to go back to their kitchens wearing A-line dresses, gloves and high heels. Salient described Vic’s hosting Tea Dances, where students were provided with a venue for dancing and “a generous, appetising and substantial meal guaranteed to keep the wolf from the door”. Readers were encouraged to attend in order to “get to know members of the opposite sex in an informal and friendly atmosphere (as recommended by the Ladies’ Home Journal).”

Back then, Salient announced engagements, reporting that “love blooms in test tubes in accordance with mathematical formulae” after a match between two science graduates.

In New Zealand, the 1950s was also an era of concern about growing immorality among young people. A series of teenage sex scandals led the Government to instigate an inquiry into ‘Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents’. Johnny Devlin, a popular rock-and-roll artist of the time, was labelled by critics as the ‘Satin Satan’.

Salient was not too peachy clean either. The publication was described as “a farrago of filth, facts and falsity” by Justice Owen. This quotation was used to advertise the magazine in 1954, along with the motto ‘The People’s Vice’.

Complaints were voiced in 1955 about the protracted length of campus development. In a similar vein to current criticism of the Campus Hub project, one student observed, “the much talked of Student Union Building is obviously a thing of the far distant future.”

Talented young writer James K Baxter published a short story and a poem in the 1955 literary edition of Salient. In Salient’s 1957 tribute to New Zealand literary great, A.R.D Fairburn, Baxter described Fairburn as “a liberating force, a writer from whom one learns courage”.

Salient reported that a 1956 debate on the morality of birth control drew the largest crowd of the year. However, it was clear that revolution was not quite upon the University with the leading speaker for the negating team arguing that if women were not busy having children, they would become childish themselves.

In the 1950s New Zealanders feared communists as one might fear the sudden appearance of handpuppets. An article published in Salient in 1957, ‘Communism in the College, suggested that lecture theatres were not immune to the Cold War climate: “Legend has it that one of our revered professors is leaning so far to the left that he has taken to wearing two left shoes while playing tennis”.

Writing in 1957, a Salient reader channelled Mark Twain’s observation that there is nothing sadder than a young pessimist: “Why don’t you get a few of the starry-eyed variety of students to review films and plays? The cynical adolescent pose rubs a bit thin.”

1960s

The 1960s were characterised by a growth in protest movements, both in New Zealand and overseas. In 1960, a total of 150,000 New Zealanders signed a petition to prevent an all-white All Blacks team from touring apartheid South Africa. This decade also saw protests against New Zealand’s involvement in the Vietnam War and the beginning of French nuclear testing in the Pacific.

However, Salient and the student population were not immune from occasional apathy. In April of 1960, a reader complained: “Salient is not doing its job. Why don´t you attack something?… Look at the daily newspapers; follow their example. See how courageously they attack things—jitterbugs, dogs, Russia, the weather, Russia. No Sir, no Pulitzer prize for you. Your magazine doesn’t expose anything.”

In its report of the 1961 debate ‘Should Castro be Castrated?’, Salient observed: “Most students did not seem to care. Mr Max Riske, the adjudicator for the Debating Society’s last debate, summed the evening up as ¨the worst debate I have ever heard”. ”

Editor of Salient 1963, Geoffrey Palmer, who went on to become Prime Minister and known as ‘Sir Geoffrey’, introduced a ‘Girl of the Week’ page to the magazine and criticised the ‘new woman’ of Victoria University.

An anonymous contribution to Salient in 1968 entitled ‘Junk is a Way of Life’, described the emerging drug culture as “a scene of light and colour, a scene of beauty and contentment, a scene of horror and danger”. Amid the ’60s drug jargon of the article lies the central conviction that “this newfound land, no less than America 400 years ago, is going to change things, is going to alter the attitudes of many people and is going to become the symbol as well as the means for a new outlook.”

1970s

The second edition of Salient in 1971 proudly notes its approval by the Anarchist Conspiracy. It contains tips on getting stoned with annotated diagrams, and contends that “the only way to change a law is for a large proportion of the population to break it. Remember there was a time when you could get hung for a loaf of bread, that law evolves to meet the needs of society, and that grass is not only a moral issue but a political one.”

In 1975 Salient reviewed Poets to the People, a collection of South African freedom poems. Excerpts from poems are seen to illustrate the need for an assertive stance against oppression as well as the desire for gentle human contact and peace:

Let’s have poems
blood-red in colour
ringing like damn bells

- Oswals R Mtshali

I don’t want fists and paws
I want
To be touched
again
and to touch,

- Hugh Lewin

An interview with Israel Shanak, the chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, published in a 1975 edition of Salient is accompanied by a photo of two protestors standing beside each other. The placard of one protestor reads “I am a Palestinian Arab, I was born in Jerusalem Palestine is my homeland, but I cannot return there”. The other: “I am an American Jew. I was born in the USA. Israel is not my homeland, but I can ‘return’ there”.

1980s

A voice other than that of the middle-class white male grew stronger in Salient during the 1980s and 1990s. Feminist and Maori editions of Salient were published for the first time, and column space was devoted to issues affecting the gay and lesbian community. Salient published an article in 1980 condemning sexist language, accompanied by a useful list of terms classified as unacceptable (mankind, the best man for the job, cameraman) and acceptable (humanity or people, the best person for the job, camera operator).

A 1987 Salient article published favourite bathroom graffiti, including such gems as “My IUD picks up Radio Active/My IUD is Radio Active”, “Just relax: in 60 years it will all be over” and “the Vice-Chancellor is probably not really God”.

1990s

With the introduction of the Tertiary Students’ Association Voluntary Membership Bill in 1994, Salient ran an article entitled ‘Freedom’s Just Another Word for Everything Left to Lose’ that adamantly opposed the legislation. In 1996 the bill was thrown out of Parliament, with Michael Laws, in Hone-esque fashion, failing to appear for the second reading of legislation that he had introduced to the House.

In 1996, Salient investigated the phenomena of students marrying to become eligible for the student allowance. The article claimed that Michael Gibbs, then-VUWSA President and student representative matchmaker, helped to connect students without qualms about marrying for money. Advertisements for financial rather than soul-affirming nuptials were placed on community boards and published in the Notices section of Salient: “Poor student needs wife (confidentiality assured).”

Salient Today

This retrospective began with an account of global events not to elevate the status of Salient, but to place it in its context. The fledgling ambition of Salient’s founders was to publish a magazine that would provide a source of information and opinion that transcended University walls and instilled an awareness of forces greater than the both the individual and the student body as a whole.

From such noble beginnings, Salient has had a long and eventful journey through the 20th century. Salient is now significantly older but no wiser. The opinions and content of this magazine will undoubtedly become as cringeworthy and quaint as those released in past issues. But perhaps it is not what is said or how it is said that matters. Perhaps it is the voice that Salient provides, as an ‘organ of student opinion’, that is its most important function.

While online activism is often associated with the inane and the pointless (like changing your profile picture to a cartoon to raise child abuse ‘‘awareness”) it’s actually a bit of an umbrella term. It’s a big umbrella too: online petitions, blogs, PayPal donations, Facebook groups and twitter hashtag protests are all kinds of e-activism, as well as stuff like targeted political hacking, which should not be portmanteaued to ‘packing’. Academics with bad hair are often banging on about the technological revolution we are living in, a revolution that leaves the printing press eating dust, and if anyone has harnessed the power of the internet it is online petition organisations. One of the biggest of these is Avaaz, with 571,811 members in 193 countries.  Since 2007 Avaaz members have taken over twenty five million signatures, raised $15m dollars and organised almost 10,000 events, which is impressive considering that my biggest achievement since 2007 is probably paying off my credit card. Online activism success stories are also happening closer to home, a local example being the ‘Wellington Public Transport Tertiary Student Price Petition’ Facebook group, surprisingly, a group campaigning for student half fares on Wellington public transport. At the time of writing the group had gained 4,515 members in just over two weeks and the group has garnered substantial media attention—as well as interviews in print media the group has also featured in a piece on your grandparents’ favourite show Fair Go. Group spokesperson and Victoria University first year Kane Laing believes that Facebook has been an important organisational tool for the group, telling me “the thing that Facebook can do that nothing else can is networking”. Laing believes that Facebook has been a pivotal tool in reaching out to students in the greater Wellington region, saying “We wouldn’t be getting to those other universities without the internet.”

Not everybody is quite so complimentary of the relationship between the internet and political movements, with opponents critiquing the validity of a ‘like it and you’re done’ culture of clicktivism. I’m guilty of this, much like every other bleeding heart with an internet connection, and looking back through Facebook groups I’ve joined is embarrassing. This list is testament to the fact that once, for five seconds, I cared enough about Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani and being sentenced to death for adultery by stoning that I joined a Facebook group… that I promptly forgot about. Other critics are more concerned with the corporate aspect of online activism—activism has traditionally occurred outside of the mainstream, and it’s hard to imagine anything less mainstream than a world where Mark Zuckerberg is making megabucks off applications like Facebook Causes. Another glaring flaw with internet-based activism is that it is a system which further cements the digital divide, as the people with the power to create Facebook groups and send petitions are those with access to computers, cell phones, internet and electricity. Other critics, including famous activist Ralph Nader, have pointed out other flaws in social movement without any social contact, with Nader claiming that corporations and Governments aren’t afraid of civic use of social media and suggesting that the internet “doesn’t do a very good job of motivating action”.While the reach of the ‘Wellington Public Transport Tertiary Student Price Petition’ Facebook group—and the speed at which this has been achieved—is exciting, would the movement be more influential if it were happening on the streets, as opposed to behind a computer screen? Would a march to Parliament with over 4,000 members be more effective than a Facebook group?

Possibly, but also possibly not. Often, and perhaps unfortunately, the success of resistance movements is measured on their media coverage and the mainstream media is not traditionally known for its fair and balanced representation of protest. As shown in research on Waitangi Day by Victoria University Politics Professor Kate McMillan, the New Zealand media often reports on protests only to detail poor turn outs or focuses on arrests and brawls. There is a lot to be said for online activism in combating the image of violent resistance, and it’s hard to incorrectly guestimate (there’s another one!) numbers in attendance when supporters are calculated by an internet machine. Strangely, it’s often the lack of arrests and brawls that lump online resistance with the ‘slacktivism’ title—sitting behind a computer tends to be a lot less dangerous than participating in a sit-in. While talking to activists I found that being part of political action online does come with personal risk, and with risk comes consequences. Youth educator and blogger Rachel Hansen was one of four bloggers involved in setting up and moderating a Facebook group in protest of the Rock’s controversial – read: misogynist – ‘Win a Wife’ radio competition. Although the group achieved considerable success, with mainstream media coverage and many advertisers pulling their advertising with the Rock, the group had to be shut down to because of persistent online attacks, with adversaries – read: Neanderthals – posting pornography on the page in an attempt to intimidate participants and get the group removed. Hansen describes the stress she experienced while moderating the page as “horrible”, she made the decision to leave the group, saying “I’d be working late at night and I’d be distracted by my paid work by getting rid of pornography”. She isn’t alone: American blogger Sady Doyle experienced death threats during her work on the Moore and Me Twitter hashtag protest, and even University Transport Group spokesman Laing says the group has come up against vitriolic criticism online from “keyboard warriors”. While Hansen, Doyle and Laing might not be locked up in jail, their experiences demonstrate that being involved in online activism requires a significant commitment, and some level of risk to your mental health.

Online activism and traditional protest are not mutually exclusive. Research from the University of California even shows that involvement in online communities promotes positive engagement with society. Technology is improving everything, from medicine to sex toys to those fridges with a drawer that has a pantry setting, and it’s up to activists to make the most of the technology available to them. Activists are using the internet to recruit, to organise and to delegate. Recently, when the Egyptian dictatorship wanted to quash a revolution, and fast, they simply shut down the internet and mobile phone networks so protesters could not communicate. While not quite as ‘life and death’ as the situation in Egypt, the work of the ‘Wellington Public Transport Tertiary Student Price Petition’ Facebook Group have used the Facebook group as a platform to encourage members to sign online petitions which are then sent to MPs and the Council. Group spokesperson Laing thinks “there is no doubt that slacktivism exists but the huge thing the internet can do is organisation”. I think I agree with him. If I were to use any portmanteau to describe the relationship between traditional protest and online activism it wouldn’t be slacktivism. It’d be bromance.

Live Below The Line, an initiative of The Global Poverty Project, aims to show people what it really means to have to live on the bare necessities—something which 1.4 billion people around the world have to experience every day.

The Global Poverty Project (GPP) is an organisation that “seeks to invigorate the global movement to take effective concerted action on poverty”. The organisation aims to educate people through the 90-minute presentation 1.4 Billion Reasons, which looks at extreme poverty and how we can help to alleviate these circumstances. One of GPP’s most popular initiatives is Live Below The Line, which challenges people in developed countries to live on $2.25 of food per day, which is the threshold for extreme poverty, for five days. Live Below the Line is a chance for people to experience how 1.4 billion people around the world have to live for most, if not all, of their lives. The initiative also allows for participants to fundraise, with the proceeds going towards helping those living in extreme poverty. This year, during the week of August 22-26, Live Below the Line will take place in New Zealand for the first time ever.

Having only $2.25 a day for food sounds extremely daunting, especially when it can cost 80 cents for an apple at the supermarket. But, with a positive attitude and some prior research, it is possible. d’Arcy Lunn, a presenter for GPP in Australia, is taking on the challenge for a month this year. “I’ve spent a lot of time in developing countries and appreciated the experience so much! Last year I could only do it for five days, but my compromise for only doing it for five days was to live on $1 AUD a day—as opposed to $2.25 a day.”

d’Arcy believes that the longer you do Live Below the Line, the more you understand what those in developing countries have to go through. “It’s a fantastic tool that [you] can use in advocating and trying to get a perspective on people who live in extreme poverty.”

Like d’Arcy, the Australian Operations Manager Albert Benjamin is also participating in Live Below the Line for a month. He decided that doing it for a month would allow for a greater understanding of the challenges faced by 1.4 billion people around the world.

Live Below the Line also has a personal significance on Albert: “I’m half German, half Filipino. German side aside, the Philippines for me is a really great place to visit, but it’s also a place with a lot of poverty. It’s never been something that I’ve been able to connect with even though I’ve visited the Philippines. So for me this is a really good chance to try to connect with the situation, for me it’s much closer to home.”

While Live Below the Line is a challenge, both men recommend careful planning before actually participating. Albert believes that mental and physical preparation is the key to a smooth run. “I had to make sure I felt really comfortable taking the challenge, that I wasn’t coerced into it … [Last year] I didn’t prepare myself physically, but I probably should have stopped eating as much 3 or 4 days prior.”

d’Arcy made sure he did a big shop beforehand: “ I managed to shop very well at the markets, I bought up big and cooked up a massive pot … I try to have the same meals as much as possible though, because that is the way that people eat in developing countries.”

An issue that comes up often in regards to Live Below the Line is the effect it can have on one’s health. “If anything, it puts me on a better diet than my usual one because I eat a lot of leftover bakery products … it has provided me with a bit of a cleanse,” says d’Arcy. “I will have to do less riding and running though because I will lose weight.”

Albert also lost some weight, but both men assert that Live Below the Line is an experience and a challenge, not a diet! “I lost 8kg in that month, which is to be expected, if you’re still being as active as usual,” says Albert. “Because of the conditions, I wasn’t eating enough to maintain my weight. I wouldn’t recommend it as a weight loss technique; I lost a lot of muscle mass. I wasn’t healing up as well, I’d get small cuts and they weren’t healing. I could tell that there is a health impact while you’re doing the challenge, especially when you do it for a month. But nothing that stuck with me afterwards.”

Besides a little bit of weight loss, neither d’Arcy nor Albert faced any ‘problems’ while participating in Live Below the Line. They agree that when participating, one has to try to not let the challenge impact on his/ her lifestyle too much. Doing the challenge with friends or family makes it less daunting, according to Albert. “Form a team of friends or family. As an individual it can be quite isolating being in a social setting and not having someone beside you who’s also doing it.”

It is also best to do a bulk shop before taking on the challenge in order to be able to purchase a variety of ingredients; “I wouldn’t recommend taking the challenge day by day—$2.25 a day is not much, you could buy maybe two or three ingredients. You won’t have much variety; if you buy for the week you can at least plan it out and buy more, and sort out nutrition.”

Having said that, it can make for a more interesting challenge if you do rough out day by day. d’Arcy is looking forward to challenging himself further this year by literally living on $2.25 a day. “I’ll be on the road while I’m participating and I can’t take food with me over the border so I will have to walk into a supermarket and just see what I can scrounge with my coins.”

Live Below the Line is a way to challenge yourself and experience how 1.4 billion people around the world have to live every day. It is not only a fundraiser, it is also a way to raise awareness and inspire others to do the same. Both d’Arcy and Albert found that when they told others about the challenge people would want to help out, either with donations or by taking on the challenge themselves. “For anyone who is to undertake this, it will not only help to change their perspective on life, but they will be a catalyst for everyone around them.”

Maybe it’s because of the introduction of NCEA. Maybe it’s because a degree is no longer a job ticket. Maybe it’s because the lag between teaching and professional practice in most fields continues to grow and grow. There’s no doubt that there are many reasons to be dissatisfied with the school system as it currently stands, and it’s difficult to decide what is the best thing to be done to change it. Mostly this is because there are big disagreements about the purpose of education. There are a number of different views, and how the system might be changed depends heavily on which of the views you agree with. The fact that technologies and ways of life are changing more rapidly than ever before in history is also a big contributor—even if you devise and implement the ‘perfect’ education system, it’ll start showing cracks in a matter of just a few years.

With all this turmoil in the education system, one might reasonably ask if science education is delivering value for money. After all, who besides scientists really needs science education? Well, the answer is You do. Whoever you are, whatever your interests and occupations, You need to learn about science. And so do all of your friends, your children, and the rest of your family. Let me explain what I mean by that. I’m not insisting that you learn Maxwell’s laws of electromagnetic fields or the intricacies of the theory of evolution. I’m not asking you to learn how to be a rocket scientist, or a synthetic chemist. But you are a citizen, an active member of society in a world in which more and more often, we need to turn to science to help us make decisions. Decisions such as: Should we take action against climate change? If so, what is the best way to do that? How can our country position itself in markets in order to do well? What is the best way to reduce crime in our country? These are tough questions, and we can’t just choose a path and hope for the best. You have a democratic right to vote, and to make your voice heard on these big issues facing society. And with that right comes a responsibility to exercise it carefully.

Science cannot tell us what we desire, or the outcomes that we want to achieve from any decision making process. But science is the only thing which can inform us about what the results of our actions might be in complex situations. It used to be easy enough. If you wanted to build a national rail network, you could tell more or less what the implications would be without exhaustive study. But now we ask more complicated questions and we ask them in more complicated environments. We are strongly connected to economies and societies all around the globe. When the government flaps its wings, one cannot guess where the storm will end up. Do you know what the result of increasing tax on building depreciation will be? Or what the effect of tidal electricity generators in Kaipara harbour will be? I don’t. And I’m willing to bet you don’t either. Study and modelling are needed to tell us what the results of our actions are likely be, and only then can we make an informed decision as a country about whether or not it is worth it to go ahead.

This raises an interesting question. I don’t know much about environmental modelling. If a marine biologist tells me that the ecological impact of tidal electricity generators is expected to be minimal, do I believe him/her? Trust can take someone only so far in matters which could affect huge numbers of people. Do I have any way of independently checking the biologist’s facts? Well, it turns out that I do have a way of checking, and it’s not even that difficult to do—if you have the relevant experience.

Research, in order to be accepted as credible, is always published in peer-reviewed journals. You can access those journals, and they should completely describe the experimental methods, resulting data, assumptions made, and conclusions drawn*. Using all these factors, you can make up your own mind about whether or not the conclusions are reasonable, and if there are other unanswered questions that are important. However, to do this requires a certain amount of literacy in scientific method and in critical thinking. It is this literacy that I am talking about. This is the science I’m saying that You need to learn, and your children will need to learn in order to fully participate in the democracy we live in. And this literacy, currently, is not taught until university level.

Winston Churchill once famously said that Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried. Perhaps one of the greatest weaknesses that has been recognised in democracy is that it makes decisions based on the desires of the ensemble of the voting population—a population who for the most part does not understand the situations it is making choices about. Not only this, but individuals do not have a lot of motivation to find out more about contentious issues. I only have one vote in about three million. If I go to the effort of researching issues to make a more informed vote, that will probably not change the outcome of the election. So why bother putting in all that effort? And yet in a truly healthy democracy this is what voters would do.

Consider now though what the picture would be if changes were made to the education system, and the population have all learned in high school the scientific literacy that I describe above. The job of fact checking what politicians say will change from a huge amount of work to which non-specialists don’t have a road map into maybe half an hour’s work with a clear way forward. Now that the task has become so much easier and much less time consuming, it is probably worth a voter’s time to carry out that analysis. Moreover, once one person has done this and posted their analysis on the internet with links to references—behaviour which general science education will encourage—it will make the task even easier for others following along after. Before too long, people will start demanding of politicians that they provide citations themselves on contested issues, again simplifying the process for voters.

I’m not alone in the thought that science education needs to change in New Zealand. Several documents have been recently published which support this view. Authored by the Prime Minister’s science advisor, the Royal Society of New Zealand and the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, they suggest that science for non-professionals should be an integral part of curriculum in the future**. Perhaps I’m being fanciful in this vision, but I don’t think that it is unreasonable to achieve a population who can use more scientific tools in their lives, and I do think that the democracy in this country would be greatly strengthened as a result.

And finally, I must add a disclaimer. I have not carried out research on what the results of changing the education system in the way I have suggested are likely to be. The documents** to which I have referred are a good place to start in terms of checking my facts, but they certainly don’t constitute an exhaustive study***. I must encourage you to research further before you form a strong opinion on the education of all New Zealanders in the language of science*.

*If they don’t do these things, then that’s your first signal that something might not be kosher.

** reference: pmcsa.org.nz/science-education/

*** this is not to say that the documents are not good studies, but their topics are different to mine. The result of their study is the topic of this article.

Sure, most would think twice about submitting their CV in graffiti script, but the subtleties of font can prove more difficult. Perhaps you have contacted an employer in the typeface equivalent of jandals, submitted a seminar paper that reads like an Hawaiian shirt or accepted the default font option as naturally as you would wear slippers out of the house. These are not major social blunders considering that the general ambivalence of typeface selectors is matched by that of their readers

Not so for typeface devotees. There are those who have never seen a poem as lovely as Helvetica, and who believe that typeface is to text what accent is to speech. To find out more about typeface from those involved in its design, Salient spoke with Jack Yan of JY&A Fonts and Elaina Hamilton and Duncan Forbes of The International Office.

Jack Yan

Jack Yan is a man of many trades. He established his own typography business in the mid 1980s when he was 15, designing a Christmas menu while all of the other design firms were closed for the festive season. Yan’s typeface endeavours helped him pay his way through a double degree in Commerce and Law at Victoria University.

His business, Jack Yan & Associates now includes consultancy and media initiatives as well as typeface design. Last year, an already busy Yan lost further allocated sleeping time (he often works from 9am until 2.30am) with his campaign to become Mayor of Wellington.

The Lucky Book Club at St Mark’s Primary in Wellington offered Yan an early exposure to typography, publishing a lettering book for schools which Yan describes as “the book to get in 1979”.  Not wanting to burden his parents with the princely sum of $4.95, Yan could only watch enviously as his classmates copied and traced the letters from the book. Without the book for guidance, Yan began to imagine his own typeface styles.

“I remember it being this great book I would have loved to have had it, but I think actually not having had it was better.”

Yan believes that typography is comparable to fashion in the way that trends change. For this reason Yan does not have a ‘favourite’ typeface but believes that typefaces will be effective for certain purposes in certain periods of time. He uses the example of someone who has a favourite wide-lapelled shirt, “if you love that, then I’m sorry but you’re going to be stuck in 1973 for the rest of your life. It has to evolve”.

Although Yan is hesitant about choosing a font that he admires most, he has little difficulty selecting his least favourite typeface.

“Arial is by far my least favourite typeface family and I don’t think anyone should ever use it. If they do, I think the font police should come by and arrest you.”

Yan explains the story behind the depth of his dislike for Arial. The type-face company, Monotype, effectively put their own design in Helvetica’s silhouette and named it Arial. Yan says that this method of stretching designs is flawed because the hybrids are a strange mix of different design heritages. The Grotesque typeface was of English design heritage while Helvetica comes from a background of Swiss modernism.

“You can’t say, ‘Oh, I like the look of a Mini but actually what I want is something the size of a Commodore’. You can’t go, ‘Right, let’s just take the Mini design and scale it up to Commodore size’, because that would just look absolutely stupid.”

The strong stance that Yan takes on typeface issues seems to indicate his genuine concern for the design form.

When asked how he became interested in type, Yan replies, “It must be something inside you. There wasn’t one incident that brought me to love type, I’ve always loved it. I think these things you are born with.”

The International Office

Elaina Hamilton and Duncan Forbes established the International Office in 2007 after perceiving a lack of good, bold typography in Wellington graphic design. Duncan explains, “We used to walk down Cuba Street, and all the posters on the bollards were a mess—we thought, “We need to clean this up”.”

Elaina and Duncan, design graduates from Canterbury and Auckland Universities respectively, set about pioneering a more typographically pleasing city. Their initial strategy was to redesign material and then send it back to the offending institutions (including yours truly, Salient). Understandably, there was a mixed reaction, with some viewing it as unsolicited criticism, but the initiative also had the effect of recruiting The International Office its first clients.

The International Office is now an established design firm with a variety of small- and medium-sized local clients including the Adam Art Gallery, the Goethe-Institut, The New Zealand Film Archive and fashion designer Lela Jacobs.

When asked if there is a story behind the company’s name, Duncan points to the irony of describing their studio (which employs three designers in total) as an International Office. Elaina also notes how the name is relevant to the style that the company works in, which is the Swiss Modernist style—also known as The International Style.

The International Office produces typographic work that is inspired by modernism, but Duncan does not think it can be characterised as purely modernist.

“Modernists were trying to not have any meaning in the design piece itself, and we do put more meaning into the design—it has more warmth.”

Central to the company’s work is the idea that a small range of high quality typefaces should be favoured over the use of superfluous and poorly designed work. Duncan and Elaina believe this does not impose any restrictions on what can be communicated.

“There’s a lot of expression within just one typeface,” says Elaina. “Just within Helvetica—there are so many layouts to express different things.”
Duncan believes using too many typefaces is a trap that many New Zealand design students fall into.

“They’re [design students] going through university using a billion typefaces and they just need to get good at working with just a couple—because then they’re focussing more on the concept.”

Ruben Doornweerd, a Dutch intern working at The International Office who recently graduated from ArtEZ Art & Design in Arnhem, points out that a designer’s role is broader and in some ways separate to the typeface they use. The final quality of a typeface design will be determined by the skill of the designer, not the selection of typeface.

“A typeface does not make a design good, I think. It is the job of the designer to make it look good, to communicate it well, and it doesn’t matter what the typeface is.”

What Type are You?

With a recent rise in the number of initiatives that put font in the limelight, it appears that typeface design has accrued an increasing crowd of followers. A local example is the Fringe play earlier this year aptly named Typeface, about an office worker who categorises her colleagues into fonts according to their personalities. Then there’s Simon Garfield’s book Not My Type, which explores the evolution of typography through a series of stories that are more fireside in tone rather than that of a lecturing historian. For those with a few moments to spare on the Internet who would like to find their typeface twin, there is Pentagram’s ‘What type are you?’ webpage.

However, you don’t need to read a book, attend a play or complete a quiz to become involved in typography. Typography is everywhere—it is on the street signs you walk past, on the menu you browse and the bus timetable you scan. You cannot hide from typography. A familiar typeface is waiting to greet you in every country.

The early ’60s were a time of new possibilities: people were beginning to throw off the restraints of the ’40s and ’50s and breathe deep the air of change. Racism, war, discrimination, and nuclear warfare sparked the fire of student activism and fueled it for 30 years to come. Students the world over were united by the belief that they could truly make a difference in the world.

The students of Aotearoa were no different. When America tried to tell us that nuclear weaponry was OK, students said no. The New Zealand Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) held its first protest, a student-led march from Featherston Street to Parliament, in Easter of 1961. Over the next 20 years, under the umbrella of the CND, students were part of protests held in Dunedin, Christchurch, Nelson, Wellington, Auckland and Cape Reinga. In 1984, hundreds of students lay down outside the US Consulate in Auckland in protest against the visit of the USS Queenfish nuclear submarine. By the time New Zealand was made a nuclear-free zone in 1987, our country had an anti-nuclear legacy that belonged not only to then-Prime Minister David Lange but to the students who had fought so hard for their beliefs.

When America sent soldiers to Vietnam, students said no. In 1967, they marched up Molesworth Street to Parliament, carrying an empty black coffin and a wreath with the inscription “To the dead and dying on both sides of Vietnam. Why must their blood pay the price of our mistakes?” In 1971, a group of a Victoria University students marched to the US Embassy with a banner showing 28 stick figures, each one representing a New Zealander who had died in the Vietnam War. There, they held a 28-hour vigil, marking off one of these figures each hour.

When a country under the apartheid system tried to send a rugby team to our shores, students again said no. Around 350 protesters stormed the pitch in Hamilton before the 25 July game, forcing the cancellation of the match. This was the first major sporting event to have been televised back to South Africa, and what they saw was a group of people who had the courage to risk injury and arrest to show the world their beliefs. Over 150,000 people participated in the Springbok tour protests which, although they didn’t stop the tour, sent a powerful message across the globe and to the South African government. We had become—in our own minds, at least—the little nation that could. But is this attitude still present in our generation?

In comparison to the tsunami of student protest in the 1960s, you could be forgiven for thinking that the student activism tide has ebbed in recent years, but there are still protestors that remind us of an earlier time in New Zealand’s history. In 2009, 50 Otago University students protested against the $30 million cut to education spending under the slogan “Where are your priorities Mr Key?” In March last year, anti-whaling protesters set up outside John Key’s electorate office in Auckland with a banner depicting the PM harpooning a whale. And throughout 2010, students on both side of the VSM debate protested for their cause on Parliament grounds and at universities around the country.
So, student activism in the form of protest continues, but certainly not on the same scale as has been seen in the past. What does this lack of interest say about us? Are we an apathetic generation that would rather sit on the couch eating Doritos than try and make a difference in the world?

The fact is that the ways we can make this difference has changed. Email, Facebook, Google, Twitter, text messages, and online media in general are tools available to us that weren’t around during the student activism period of the ’70s and ’80s. We only have to look at what these technologies have done in the last year to understand the significance of this change. The uprising in Egypt was sparked on Facebook and Twitter; WikiLeaks is standing up for freedom of the press; and the instant transmission of footage of the Libyan conflict infiltrates our lives in a way that we can’t ignore. Faced with such clear evidence that technology is one of our best weapons in the fight for our beliefs, it’s easy to see why we’ve taken to the web to show the world that we still care.

Those who doubt that students today care at all have only to look to people like Amnesty @ Vic co-president Zac Sun. Overcome by what he calls “a surge of liberal guilt”, Zac felt that “being comparatively free and privileged”, he couldn’t just stand back and watch human rights abuse continue.

“You can read about stuff and feel impotent and angry and then just move on, or you can choose to ignore it altogether and go buy your iPhone, but it doesn’t actually cost you that much to sit down and sign a petition, or write a letter to a foreign leader.”

Each year, Amnesty @ Vic holds a gig to raise money and awareness for causes not usually discussed in the mainstream media. They run other events throughout the year, such as Freedom Week, which they use to “kick people in the arse and get them to agitate”. Like many others in organisations such as Amnesty International, Students For Palestine and Gecko, Zac has the same courage of convictions as his parents’ generation. However, he has realised that to avoid being all smoke and no fire, he must be smart about the way he goes about making a change in his world.

So, is student activism a thing of the past that belongs to another generation? No, it’s about knowing what you believe in and doing something about it. Our generation may not leave the same tracks as those of the ’70s and ’80s student activism bandwagon, but we are making tracks all the same.

Just imagine all those tiny staircases which inhabit every atom in every organ and extremity of every human. Perhaps it is these simple double helix structures, carried through history by our ghostly carbon-based line, which can provide insight into that common conundrum—who will we become?

Genes have been seen as a magic code to development. A place where we can turn and, if an interpreter is available, learn about both our history and our future. They have been placed in one corner of the Nature versus Nurture debate, where two vague concepts oppose each other despite common acceptance of the idea that most characteristics have both genetic and environmental components. Genes provide likelihoods not certainties. A specific genetic sequence can give an increased probability that a characteristic will develop, but a wealth of factors influence whether the medical condition or personality trait does develop and to what extent.

Factors in Development

Developmental influences begin early, according to Victoria psychology lecturer Dr Deirdre Brown. She notes that environmental influences are present from the time of conception, with pre-natal factors such as maternal nutrition and exposure to drugs, medication and alcohol having a strong correlation with later outcomes for children.
Once a child is born, there are many factors that can alter the path development takes. Brown discusses the importance of opportunity in terms of stimulation and development for children. Books, colours, shapes, and play can create opportunities for stimulation, as well as the resource-free activity of having a chat. Research has shown that talking with young children has positive effects for their memory and conversational ability. Parents who use an elaborative style of discussion enhance these qualities in their children more than parents who use more of a question/answer approach.

In describing an elaborative approach, Brown uses the example of a child who has just visited the zoo, and “the parent is then prompting the child to tell Dad what they did that day—the child says ‘We saw bear’ and the mother says, ‘That’s right, we did see bear. And what colour was bear? He was very growly wasn’t he?’ and so they’re encouraging the child to go beyond the one statement.”

While opportunity is often seen as something that is easier for more wealthy parents to provide, this form can be provided on any bank balance. A lack of opportunity can create difficulties for children later on, although Brown notes that this can be compensated for in other areas such as pre-school, primary school and organisations like Plunket that provide useful information and resources.

Relationships and culture are influential in shaping childhood development. While the child-parent relationship is a significant one, a loss or deterioration of this relationship can be made up for by other people in the child’s life such as a grandparent, aunt, uncle, family friend or teacher. Brown believes that culture provides a sense of support for children and can be a “huge strength” in development. However, there can be difficulties when this cultural support base is threatened or removed—for example, when an aspect of a person’s identity conflicts with their culture, or upon immigration to another country.

Family history plays a large role and can alter how parents decide to raise their children, as well as providing a child’s genetic background. Whether positively or negatively, a person’s parenting style is often influenced by the way they were brought up. Conversely, Brown highlights the situation where parents decide that they will take a different approach to what they knew growing up—“Many people say ‘I’m not going to do it the way my Mum and Dad did it’, so they’re rejecting something they’ve experienced in favour of something else”.

While Brown does not think there is a single factor which is most crucial in shaping the adults children become, she observes that learning is the most significant mechanism by which children develop. This is learning, not in the sense of a formal school environment, but “what we take on board walking around in every day life… The things children are observing, the messages they take from that and how they then use that to shape their own behaviour”.

Stages of Development

The basic stages of development include the sensorimotor stage from birth to age two, where children experience the world primarily through movement and senses. The preoperational stage is from ages two to seven. Children acquire motor skills during this period but generally do not begin to think logically until after the age of seven. Abstract reasoning develops after the age of 12. Given the difference in the way children perceive the world, Brown says that it is important for parents to “get away from the notion that children are mini adults and they think, act and interpret in the same way that we do”. She notes that there is a “real quality difference” in how children view simple interactions and the messages they take from them.

It is generally accepted that there are stages to development, but the boundaries between these stages are not rigidly defined. Children of the same age group may be in different stages of development or some may have progressed in one aspect of development but not another. Brown says that this is one of the aspects which is looked at if a child is having social difficulties—for example, if they are bullying or being bullied. A mismatch in social maturation between the child and their peers might be a factor in the problem.

Although change is a normal and necessary part of social maturation, developmental stages can cause parents concern when their child begins to act differently toward them. Part of social development is a shift in focus from family to peers. Brown says that when children are young they look up to their parents who they see as all-knowing but around the ages of eight to ten children alter their “benchmark” from their parents to their friends. This can be difficult for parents, who can see this as rejection rather than a normal stage of development—“this child is something you’ve invested your world in and all of a sudden, it feels like you’re less important to them than they are to you”.

Further tension in the relationship between children and their parents can occur when teenagers begin to push boundaries. This is a normal part of growing up and has been illustrated by Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi’s findings in the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Study (a study of 1000 children born in the early ’70s). Moffitt and Caspi’s research was looking for reasons why there is a peak in criminal behaviour between the ages of 17 and 25 which is dramatically reduced after this period.

The study found that two groups were accounting for offenders in this age group—a small portion of the group (around 5 per cent) were ‘life course persistent’ offenders while the bulk of the surge in criminality was accounted for by the ‘adolescent limited’ group which, in Brown’s words, “was your regular Joe Bloggs adolescent who engaged in an extreme period of acting out between the ages of about 15 to 22”. Moffitt and Caspi were able to show that anti-social behaviour is the norm for this period of development.

A theory that was developed for this trend is that young people are reaching physical maturity before this is recognised with the rights and responsibilities of societal maturation. Brown says that “back in the day, the log cabin kind of day, a 15-year-old would have been considered an adult, and at that point would have moved out of the family log cabin and built their own log cabin next door.”

These days, although there is evidence to show that people are reaching puberty and physical maturity earlier, full independence is not societally accepted until much later down the track. Pushing boundaries can be seen as a way of establishing autonomy. Young people are making their own decisions, even if these are not great decisions due to a lag between physical maturity and the ability to rationalise.

The frontal lobe of the brain, which is responsible for decision making, planning, goal-directed behaviour and cost benefit analysis is not fully developed until a person’s early 20s. It has been proposed that this delayed maturation might be a factor in what Brown calls “a lot of the undergraduate madness in terms of the drinking behaviour, the crazy stunts and the disproportionate level of things like drink driving in that group”.

Brown says that one of the questions raised by Caspi and Moffitt from these findings is whether it is sensible for young people to be making significant life decisions about what they will study and if they will study at age 18 when they “don’t necessarily have all their capacities operating at full speed yet.” A possible solution could be for young people to study more generally at first as in America where students generally complete an undergraduate degree before deciding which more specific, professionally orientated course to pursue.

Putting Theory into Practice

Despite, as Brown puts it, “waxing and waning perspectives on environment versus genetics”, there is now a general consensus on the influence of both although the contribution of each may vary. The challenge is translating developmental theory, which acknowledges a range of different influences on development, in to workable advice for parents and effective treatment options for patients.

It would seem logical to provide patients with treatment which recognises all aggravating and alleviating developmental factors. However, there are difficulties when it is not clear exactly how a condition is being caused. For example, there is research showing that autism has a strong genetic component but because the mechanism has not yet been established, autism is treated behaviourally. Even if the factors which influence a condition are clearly established, the cost and resource intensive nature of treating all contributory factors might dissuade policy makers from implementing it into public health system practice.

For parents it can be hard to merge “pockets of findings” into one consistent best practice parenting style. As a clinical psychologist, Brown aims to bring academic research together to provide a method that “reassures parents about how to be a good enough parent, rather than striving for the perfect parent because that then adds to stress and complications”.

Influences in development are often only examined when something is going wrong. Considering the complexities of the process, it is perhaps incredible that for most people development occurs without difficulty. Brown describes maturation as a “quite miraculous process that needs a combination of things to all happen in the right sort of way at the right sort of time”. Development is “unthinking”—it is something children do while they ride their bikes, are read to by their parents or collect insects from the garden.

One of the most striking things hearing people discover when they first learn about the Deaf world is the close sense of community and belonging that Deaf people have with other Deaf people.

If this is surprising to you, consider what is the meaning of a “community”? A group of people who share the same language? The same life experiences? The same interests, attitudes, behaviours and power status? The Deaf as a community are the natural result of a shared language and experience in a majority-hearing world. The capitalisation of Deaf acknowledges the personal identity Deaf people have to their “Deaf world”, just as someone might identify as English, Maori, Christian, Muslim, Chinese, Eskimo, etc. Deaf have their own community and culture complete with their own norms, traditions, folktales and pride. They are a minority community living a majority hearing world. Note that “hearing” is not considered a community as it is not a cultural identity. Likewise, someone may be considered medically deaf yet not necessarily identify as Deaf.

Victoria University has a strong presence of Deaf culture, supported by the opportunity for students to take Deaf Studies. Deaf Studies offers the opportunity for students to learn New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL), yet it also has a strong cultural focus, teaching the history of Deaf culture in New Zealand as well as norms for interacting in the Deaf world. Elliot Yates, a Deaf student who attended Victoria University in 2009 and 2010, says Deaf Studies is a “worthy subject”, and expresses the wish that more people would learn it, saying NZSL tends to be “neglected”. To support students learning Deaf Studies, Deaf students and those taking Deaf Studies meet up once a week for coffee at the Hunter Lounge to chat, practice signing, and celebrate Deaf culture at Victoria. Yates says he loved the atmosphere of Deaf Coffee: “It was a place where I could let rip.”

Mark Berry, a current Deaf student at the University, says that sometimes cultural ignorance can be life’s biggest barrier. “People patronise me, think I’m stupid. I don’t need that.” Deaf Studies has helped to foster a stronger cultural awareness at Victoria, which can then permeate into wider society through educating friends and family.

Outside of Victoria, the Wellington Deaf community is strong and alive at the local Wellington Deaf Club (or the Wellington Deaf Society), founded in 1938. Deaf people and learners of sign language meet at the club every Friday night. Part lounge, part bar, part dance club, the Deaf Club is a place for Deaf people to chat in their native language, share the week’s gossip, arrange events such as sporting competitions, and relax in an environment custom-made for them. Yates loved the “cool retro vibe” of the Club, the “engaging” people, and the cheap drinks! There are eleven regional Deaf Clubs nationwide, each with the same aim of fostering the Deaf Community. Deaf Clubs link to Deaf Aotearoa New Zealand (formerly the New Zealand Association of the Deaf), which is a national organisation with the goal to “raise awareness, access and advancement” of Deaf people. It also organises NZSL week (2-8 May 2011). NZSL Week aims to “promote awareness of NZSL and the Deaf community, including the barriers which stop its members from taking part in society”.

Deafness is considered grounds for discrimination under the Human Rights Act 1993, and in the past the Deaf community has faced severe oppression (see Hear This Now over the page). Yet most Deaf people do not consider themselves as disabled. For example, the Deaf community does not participate in the Paralympics, preferring to hold its own Deaflympics instead (the next Deaflympics will be held in Greece in 2013). The New Zealand Disability Strategy (2001) defines disability as “the process which happens when one group of people create barriers by designing a world only for their way of living”. In this way, people are only disabled to the extent that other people make them disabled. Victoria University’s Disability Services is founded on a philosophy of inclusion, and as such Deaf students at Victoria University are entitled to interpreters and note-takers in lectures. However, there is a shortage of interpreters across the country, so electronic note-takers are used when interpreters are not available. Berry says he prefers interpreters whenever possible because “it’s really hard to understand the jargon in a language that I’m not accustomed to “. Yates agrees, adding that he likes to see NZSL at a more advanced level as it helps improve his own signing.

The doors of the Accommodation Services are also open to help Deaf students wanting to live in a Hall of Residence. Accommodation Services Manager Nick Merrett says that “Weir House has a bedroom with a flashing alarm, and other Halls utilise other systems for evacuation”, adding the needs of each student are “determined on a case-by-case basis with the individual”. Merrett adds that Deaf residents “make a positive contribution to the life of the halls, and in one hall, a student has established an NZSL club for residents”.

While other delegates offered an oval ball and some fields, the kiwis proudly nudged forward the services and attention of the entire New Zealand population. Here are the women, men and their baches, the NZRU might have said in elaboration. Here are their Tip Tops and beach towels, their barbeques and hangi, their jandals and pavlova. Here are New Zealanders, with their endearing habit of making every observation a question, as though the weather is nice only upon agreement in this part of the world. Here is your Stadium of Four Million—come over and play some footie, and we might even make you a cuppa after the match.

Seven years and one successful Cup bid later, the Wellington City Council (WCC) is busy in preparations for their role in laying down the welcome mat for the influx of international visitors who will fill our streets in September and October. Wellington is to host five RWC pool matches as well as two quarter finals. The economic gain for the region is expected to reach $45m, with visitor numbers over the period likely to exceed 40,000. Taking into account the RWC’s significance for both Wellington and New Zealand, it is unsurprising that the Council has undergone a significant amount of preparation to ensure that the capital city is a “worthy guardian of Rugby’s jewel in the Crown”,
as was one of New Zealand’s promises to the IRB
in 2005.

Something for Everyone

Although non-rugby fans may lack enthusiasm for the RWC, local Councillors are quick to highlight how the Rugby World Cup will benefit diverse sections of the community. Celia Wade-Brown, Mayor of Wellington, says that the Council aims to provide ‘something for everyone’ and ‘ensure that all Wellingtonians have the chance to get involved’ in the RWC. A broad range of events are scheduled for the RWC time which will cater for both post-match philosophising and those who appreciate the RWC as an opportunity for an extended community shindig. As Andy Foster, Wellington City Councillor and Transport Portfolio leader observes, the RWC can be characterised as ‘a big party for about six weeks’.

John Morrison is a Wellington City Councillor and leads the Sports and Events portfolio as well as the RWC portfolio established in the lead-up to the event. Morrison believes that “sometimes people can get a little bit narrow in the sense that ‘oh, well I’m not that interested in rugby’ or ‘I’m not really a rugby person’. Well, it’s not really about the rugby in terms of looking at it from a city point of view; it’s about hosting the biggest event we’ve had.”

Morrison says that many people may travel to Wellington to experience the RWC atmosphere without attending rugby games. He uses the example of the 2005 Lions rugby tour where “we had about 25,000 English in town for that week of the test match, and 10,000 of them didn’t have a ticket to the game”. For those who do attend the game, Morrison points out that “when you boil it down, the rugby match goes for about 80 minutes and there’s an awful lot of the rest of the week still to fill in.”

The RWC festivities will feature a major carnivale-styled event which will “showcase the best of Wellington’s art and culture communities” according to Wade-Brown. Council preparations for the RWC involve providing funding for artistic projects such as the Wharewaka on the waterfront and Weta Workshop statue at the centre of the Rugby World Cup village. There are also the less quantifiable benefits of international exposure for Wellington artists and musicians during the RWC period, which may encourage future investment and development. The World of Wearable arts is on during the RWC and Foster notes that “no doubt there will be Rugby World Cup-type themes” in this event also.

For Wellingtonians who do enjoy playing rugby, or sideline analysis of the sport, there are RWC public training sessions as well as the opportunity to volunteer during the Cup. This means that Porirua Park locals can observe the best rugby players that Wales, Fiji and Canada have to offer playing at their home ground. Those close to Newtown Park can watch the USA and France train while Hutt Recreation ground will host Tonga. Players from South Africa, Australia and New Zealand will train at Rugby League Park.
Wade-Brown says that the volunteer response for the RWC has been ‘overwhelming’ with volunteer positions already oversubscribed. Foster says that there has been enthusiasm for helping out at the event from a ‘cross-section of the community’, estimating volunteer numbers at around 7000.

The wide level of community participation and interest in the Rugby World Cup may be seen to reflect a changing and diversifying rugby audience in New Zealand. Morrison observes that “sometimes rugby can be tagged as a male macho sport, but we’re not pitching it that way at all”. He believes events like the Sevens and the impact of the Westpac Stadium have “really bred a whole new type of audience” contrasting the rugby regulars of 20 years ago (“men in grey garbadine raincoats smoking roll your own Captains”) with the Sevens where “if you’re not in fancy dress, you’re viewed as somewhat peculiar”. Morrison thinks that the rugby-watching demographic has become younger and more female. While there are still devoted fans in the rugby crowd who watch each line-out with a chess player’s seriousness, there are also those who come along to have fun.

New Zealanders are also playing a wider range of sports than previously, meaning that to stay watchable rugby can no longer rely soley on an audience of rugby players and ex-rugby players. This description would have included most of the male adult population in the 1950s and 1960s when, as Morrison observes, it “was almost seen as automatic that you all went to the rugby and you played rugby”. Morrison uses his time at New Plymouth Boys’ High as an example, where it was compulsory to play rugby “unless you could come up with some marvellous medical reason, and it had to be a bloody good one.”

Welcoming the World to Whanganui-a-Tara

Wellington City Council preparations for the Cup have been extensive. One of the biggest logistical challenges in hosting the RWC has been making sure that there is sufficient accommodation to house the tens of thousands of tourists who will be visiting. Jo Coughlan, Wellington City Councillor and Economic Portfolio leader says that accommodation “has been a major part of our planning since we bid for hosting rights”. Coughlan says campervans are among the “creative solutions” to the accommodation issue that have been developed by collaboration between Council, Positively Wellington Tourism and accommodation providers. During the RWC campervans will be able to park not only at holiday park sites but at rugby club grounds, marae, the Trentham Racecourse and a designated area on the waterfront. A number of cruise ships are to be berthed in Wellington Harbour, providing another less conventional form of lodging for visitors to the capital during the RWC.

Foster says that while there are currently projects underway which will be beneficial for the smooth management of the Cup, these projects will also provide ongoing advantages to the Wellington community and were mostly planned and budgeted separate to the RWC. He uses initiatives such as the upgrade of Waterloo Quay providing cycling and walking access and the Cuba St/Manners Mall development as examples. Although there is not much development which is specifically orientated towards the RWC, projects are “looked at through an RWC filter” as Wade-Brown puts it, bringing forward or delaying construction to ensure that public works will be at minimum levels during the Cup period.

Foster notes that the “legacy [of the RWC] is not just the infrastructure, the legacy is also that people say ‘the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand was great’”. Coughlan also highlights the importance of the RWC in terms of tourism and the lift it will bring for local business. Wellington has already been named the ‘coolest little capital in the world’ by Lonely Planet Best in Travel and Coughlan believes that a successfully hosted RWC would further enhance the city’s international reputation, increasing Wellington’s chances of hosting future events.
Coughlan says that many businesses will run special events and generally go “the extra mile” during the RWC. She uses the Capital Host Charter, established by the Wellington hospitality industry, as an example. This peer-reviewed initiative rates hospitality venues on a range of factors with the overarching goal of cultivating venues with good hosts and safe environments. According to Coughlan “bar owners are already talking to their staff about learning extra useful information such as Te Papa’s opening hours”.

Of all the teams to stay in Wellington, the South African team will be here for the longest at 19 days – “Wellington is really their home”, notes Morrison, for most of the RWC. He says that many venues will recognise this in the way they are presented, giving their premises a “very South African flavour” to encourage visitors to feel like they have a “home pub”. The Council is also looking at having a range of outdoor activities on offer suchs as kayaking, fishing and hunting which Morrsion hopes will be appreciated by Wellington’s South African visitors.

May the Best Team Win

Although Wade-Brown says that she is not a “die-hard fan” of rugby she does enjoy catching the occasional game. Wade-Brown predicts that Wales, NZ, Tonga and France will be in the top four of the competition. Of teams other than New Zealand, Wade-Brown hopes to see Tonga’s “very talented players from a small nation” progress in the Cup. Foster says although the “round ball game” is probably his preferred sport he watches rugby. He hopes “teams that play the best rugby will be the ones that progress” although he would support England as his birth nation, second to New Zealand. Morrison played senior club rugby but switched his focus to cricket in his early twenties, representing New Zealand between 1973 and 1983.
As well as offering some great rugby viewing, the RWC has the potential to bring lasting benefits to Wellington with the boost it will provide for tourism and our local economy. Regardless of how results fall when rugby fans converge on the windy city later this year, the RWC provides a unique opportunity for Wellingtonians to step forward and, like a player under floodlights, cast an image that extends further than ourselves.

A rebel in a suit and bowtie, Thoreau turned his back on the industrialising society around him and recorded his musings in a text that would later become an influential reference point in American culture—a fact acknowledged in academic discourse, as well as on The Simpsons.

Although Wellington is a city at the edge of the world in a different culture and century, community gardens provide a method of experiencing simple living that is reminiscent of Thoreau’s ideal lifestyle. A collective of community gardens in the Wellington area called Operation Green Thumb (OGT) aims to aid people without land of their own to grow their own low-cost food. This simple idea has been running in an official capacity since 1994, and has resulted in an impressive number of gardens in the Wellington area. There are currently close to 200 plots that have been established through the group, with a significant portion of the gardens in Council housing areas. There are also two public community gardens in the Upper Hutt and three in the central Wellington area.

Development of Operation Green Thumb

OGT co-ordinator Sue Boyle comes from a long line of gardeners, stretching back to her great-great-grandparents. She has been working for the group for close to 14 years, helping to set up and maintain gardens as well as providing knowledge and assistance to gardeners.
Boyle says the initial idea for OGT developed in economically scarce times.“Rumour has it, that when they cut the benefits when the National government was in, [then Prime Minister] Jenny Shipley said that people on benefits should be growing their own vegetables,” says Boyle. “So, the council here in Wellington [along] with other relevant community groups got together and had a big pow-wow, and one of the things that came out of it was community gardens.”

“Mokai Kainga, a Maori organisation, suggested that their people needed land, so they ended up in Brooklyn. Then the Council put a garden in at Strathmore Park community base, so there’s two little pilot gardens, and it just went berserk after that, it just took off.”
After the initial period of fast development, the interest in community gardens tapered off slightly and “there was a lull—it was like we were the voice in the wilderness for about five years”.

In recent times, the Wellington City Council has become increasingly supportive of community gardens, with the Prendergast Council recognising community gardens in their planning documents. The Wellington City Council Guidelines for Community Gardens (September 2009) provide a mechanism for community gardens to apply for council funding, as well as the provision of council land. Over the last two years, the number of OGT plots has approximately doubled, thanks to funding from charitable organisations such as the Tindall Foundation and the Community Trust of Wellington.

When asked why communities would be resistant to the OGT project, Boyle describes people who are unable to visualise the gardens and how they would operate, as well as those who are concerned about the impact of gardens on their view. One proposed garden in Karori was unable to go ahead because of concern over “people hanging around in the park area”. Boyle says that much opposition to community gardens is “fear-based”.

How Community Gardens Help

Despite occasional opposition to community gardens, individuals profit from OGT in ways that extend past the tangible gain of producing low-cost, spray-free food.
Boyle believes that the initial motivation for taking out an OGT plot is often financial: “Needs will drive people to gardening… when it hits them in the pocket”. But she says that once people start gardening, other less obvious benefits come into play, such as its therapeutic and social value. Boyle says that community gardeners often form friendships through gardening, and points out that gardening is a way for recent migrants to form connections in their new homeland: “It’s such a ‘universal right’ type of activity. There is a rightness about it… it breaks down the barriers—the commonality of growing food and veges”.

Boyle notes that there is a diverse range of people who participate in community gardens: retired gardeners, low income gardeners, young gardeners, gardeners in high-density housing, students and families. An OGT gardener might be “in an area with no land and they miss [gardening], but there are also those people who are onto it in another way, in having a source of organic food for themselves”.

Boyle says some of the people who are involved in Operation Green Thumb “are quite aware, really, of what they’re doing… they’re into recycling and all that sort of thing, into growing food and being environmentally sustainable”.

Boyle believes this group of gardeners are motivated by beliefs that run deeper than political conviction.
“I don’t think politics should claim that—I think we’ve claimed it as a way preserving what we can see is going down the gurgler,” says Boyle. “I suppose it’s people power, isn’t it?”
As well as having significant benefits for the individuals involved, Boyle believes that community gardens have a positive impact on their surrounding community. Operation Green Thumb acts as an important source of knowledge, where gardening, recycling and environmental knowledge can be transferred to people outside of the community gardening network. The gardens are also an enhancement to the scenery, with Boyle describing the public garden in Brooklyn as ‘really quite beautiful—people come by and they can admire the flowers and then they can talk to the gardeners… there is no negative impact that I can see”.

The gardens include a seed bank where gardeners save their own seeds and swap with others, thereby preserving the diversity of the seed gene base. Boyle sees the seed-saving programme as an important element of the gardens, particularly in light of the limited range of seeds available on the international market, monopolised by companies such as Monsanto and Shell. “You’ve got to watch that lot,” says Boyle, noting that it is “community-based agriculture that really feeds the world”.

Plans for the Future

Boyle says that with the increase in funding over the last couple of years, the Operation Green Thumb gardens have now developed into managed areas “which the community can take ownership of, so when I get taken out of the picture, they’re independent”. When funding stops at the end of the year, OGT will have to source more money for basic gardening resources. Boyle does not seem fazed by the uncertainty of this financial ebb and flow: “We’ve just got to keep on keeping on—that’s us”.
Boyle’s enthusiasm is such that it’s not hard to see why so many people gravitate towards having their own OGT plot. Gardeners care for their food from seed to tomato sandwich, from sapling to fruit bowl. And the community element of gardening, such as the friendships that gardeners make and the skills that they learn, is just as important. Gardeners “make beautiful things out of stuff just lying around”, says Boyle—an idea that Thoreau may have sombrely tipped his top hat to.

Let’s face it: teachers’ training is often negligible. The standard training for a teacher in New Zealand is a Bachelor’s degree, and a one-year Graduate Diploma on top of that. The New Zealand Graduate School of Education, for example, requires a BA minimum for entry, and provides a ‘nominal’ study length of 12 months, with around two-thirds of that time spent teaching in a classroom.

So, little Jimmy graduates in 2014 and begins his first teaching job in 2015, provisionally registered as a teacher until 2018. Jimmy is qualified to teach any subject he received 12 points for at University. So, Jimmy’s BA/BSci major is likely to be the subject he can teach at high school level, while he would still teach every subject at primary school. Teachers are re-registered every three years, with any other monitoring conducted by the school, usually on an annual basis.

Were Jimmy aiming to become a doctor, beginning study in 2011, his study would end six years later in 2016, and he’d spend 2017 working under full supervision before he became a registered doctor. For doctors, roughly 50 per cent of each is spent shadowing qualified professionals in hospitals and clinics. Once he becomes a fully qualified doctor, Jimmy would be allowed to work as a general practitioner (GP). It would take him a further four or five years of on-the-job training to specialise in a field such as oncology, plastic surgery, pediatrics. If Jimmy has a clear idea of where he wants to go in medicine, he will probably be qualified to work in that area in 2022—11 years after beginning his study. Doctors are also required to hold an Annual Practice Certificate, which is only granted if the doctor continues training and updating their skills.

Both doctors and teachers are considered to hold a vital role in society. So how is it that one is given more weight than the other?

Studies show that a teacher’s attitude directly and heavily affects their student’s performance in all subjects. Louise, a teacher of Year 3 (seven-year-old) students, notes that “you have to have so many resources on hand, and so many activities on a daily basis, [that] there’s no chance to change it up. I teach the same things in the same order every year. You’d think new students would keep it interesting [but] the same personalities [do the] same things every year.”

Inversely, doctors have a minor educational capacity: they are expected to fix bodies that are generally the product of mistreatment and ill-education, and are invariably not held to be responsible for results they did not directly provide. A study in America showed that 25 per cent of obese people were never told by their GP—the doctor they pay to help them maintain a good standard of health—that they were overweight.

Closer to home, in September 2007, a well-known Wellington orthopedic surgeon performed a double hip transplant which did not provide ideal results, and the patient contracted a superbug. The patient sued; the surgeon dropped his personal fees; and, although the superbug infected the patient at Wakefield Hospital, as it was not as a result of the surgery, the patient was left to foot a hefty post-operation bill and ongoing medical problems. That’s right: neither the hospital, nor the surgeon were held liable for the post-operative environment, and the continuing hip problems of the patient were largely put down to the patient wanting both hips operated on at once.

While an extreme case, it illustrates the split in perception of liability in the public’s eyes. The expert surgeon acted on the wishes of the patient, knowing the likely result, but did not accept responsibility for his own surgery. What, then, is a doctor responsible for? If they remove every trace of a cancerous mole but the cancer has already spread, is it their fault?

Paradoxically, a teacher is responsible for holistic results. Teachers are measured on how they interact in the classroom, because their manner directly affects student’s willingness to learn, happiness in the classroom, and future success in learning. Teachers are measured on a student’s direct results—that is, how well their students grasp the subject they have been taught. Directly and annually, another teacher from the same school sits in on classes and analyses a teacher’s personality, so school politics play a part in the reported skill of a teacher.

Possibly the most emotionally torturous judgement, however, comes from the beady eyes of 30 children’s parents. Notes Louise, as a private school teacher, “Just once I would like to go to the supermarket without being pinned down by a parent in an aisle asking why so-and-so didn’t get 10 out of 10 for spelling. It’s always my fault!”

And, should any results be called into question, the Ministry of Education teaching guidelines require that lessons help with diverse aspects of life in New Zealand, including culture, Te Reo, technological advances, future learning and equality—in every class. Yes, even in 6th form maths.

This same concept of hauora—one’s entire wellbeing—is also spilling over into medicine. While doctors are obviously expected to respect other aspects of their patient’s lives, cases where patients sue doctors for not helping them maintain an adequate level of health are on the rise. A case study was presented where an overweight diabetic smoker died of sudden cardiac arrest. The jury found for the plaintiff because the doctor wrote in the chart that he intended to refer the patient to a cardiologist, but then failed to do so—never mind that the doctor also told the patient repeatedly, over the course of four years, to stop smoking and to lose weight. The judgment was for $3.5 million (Prof. John Banzaf III, George Washington University).

Unfortunately, at the same time, attemptng to advise or educate patients on anything beyond their specific training is likely to land doctors with a formal complaint. The requirement still stands, without exception, that doctors know at least the ‘basics’ of physiology before specialising. All doctors—even heart surgeons—should be able to tell you the names of the bones in your knee, for example, and how your nervous system works. They are only expected to refer patients to a specialist if symptoms are beyond a basic quick fix.

It’s interesting, then, that the only requirement for teachers, beyond their chosen subject, is basic numeracy and literacy. A teacher is required by law to cater to every aspect of a student’s learning, including Treaty of Waitangi components, although they are only given a crash course in everything except the subject they teach. They are expected to respect cultural boundaries, although they are never taught where those boundaries may be. For example, in Early Childhood Education, many preschools cope with cultural requirements with overarching rules, such as banning all pork products, so teachers do not have to learn the ins and outs of Muslim/Jewish dietary restrictions (note: both are much more detailed than ‘do not eat pork’). It seems that doctors are required to learn much more than they practice, but teachers teach more than they are required to learn.

Teachers’ ability in the classroom does affect their reputation, and may affect their future employment if they change jobs, but firing a teacher is notoriously hard in New Zealand. Further, with staffing shortages, teaching is seen as an easy profession to get into for employment. So, while teachers are monitored relatively heavily by a range of people, these results affect their perception and perhaps future employment, but not their actual jobs. Perhaps this is why doctors are kept on a short leash in terms of accountability and regulation. Their patient numbers reduce immediately and possibly irreparably when they make mistakes with patient care, and many are consultants, who are paid by the number of patients they see per day.

Teachers’ salaries and wages are set by the government (with the exception of the private sector, although private schools’ salaries are comparable), and their pay increases with their time in the profession. Estimates of the length of teaching careers vary widely worldwide, but teaching graduates can be put into three camps: roughly 30 per cent of teaching graduates do not become primary or secondary teachers, while the remainder either leave teaching after five years, or 20+ (i.e., most leave early or continue until retirement). Evidence suggests that after around five years, a teacher has tired of their low pay rate remaining stable as their living expenses (for example, mortgages to pay off) increase.

Almost 60% of all teachers start on about $45,000 a year, with the maximum base salary going up to $68,980, which around 3% of teachers reach in the first five years of their career. In fact, only 8% of teachers in public schools have a base salary above $45,653 (while additional responsibilities generally bring more pay). Overtime is unpaid, with teachers clocking in an average 10 hours overtime a week, with some working up to 36 hours extra a week. On average, one-fifth of teachers working hours are unpaid but required to complete the job.

Most doctors, on the other hand, continue in the profession until at least retirement age, so assuming one begins training straight after high school at 18, they have 40 years of a salary beginning at a minimum of $60,000 and topping out at $230,000 (all before overtime, of course, which can increase income by $30k annually). The average salary of a doctor in New Zealand is between $128,000-$195,000. Once a doctor is registered (unregistered doctors receieve a wage as low as $30,000) a doctor’s average wage is around double that of the highest paid teachers, and triple that of the average teacher.

One may justify a large amount of this difference to training. We really are paying our doctors for the countless hours of study that brought them to the five minutes they take to glance and say, “that’s eczema,” while the policy on teachers wages is unrelated to their actual quality level of work.

Sometimes it feels as if all we hear from the teaching sector is how underpaid and under-appreciated teachers feel. Sometimes we forget that almost any other industry has a pay scale that increases meaningfully over one’s career, and offers reimbursement for going above and beyond the role. While the life of a doctor isn’t as sexy and exciting as House would have us believe, and it does involve years of hard work, any adequate comparison of the two professions must still end with two considerations. Firstly, how did you treat your teachers when you were at school? And secondly, how do you treat your doctor?

So are you in a relationship right now?

Not what I would define as a relationship, no.

What would you define as a relationship?

Something with boundaries and defined. Not necessarily monogamous but with agreed rules of engagement, we’ll meet each other this often and a “this is what we are to each other.” That kind of thing.

And in a relationship you’ll obviously have some kind of romantic…?

Yeah, like watching TV and eating chocolate. If I was in trouble I would phone someone up who I was in a relationship with; whereas with someone I wasn’t in a relationship with, I would not call them, even about normal everyday life stuff.

If you’re not in a relationship, you’re seeing somebody?

Yes.

How do you define these kind of non-relationships?

Seeing somebody is meeting with them on more than one occasion. So it’s more than a basic… one night stand. You meet out of convenience to both of you—rather than making time to meet up. If I was in a relationship with someone I would make time to see them, whereas in a non-relationship I say, I’m free these days, are you free any of those days?

So if someone knocked on your door at 3am, you would be well within your rights to tell them to go away?

I am perfectly within my rights to say nah.

Probably wouldn’t be offended by that?

No, not at all.

How many people are you seeing?

Six. There are two older married guys, late thirties to early fifties, and one unmarried. They’re the type of guys I’d see casually on a semi-regular basis. There are two guys I see who are younger—younger being late thirties. I don’t go for younger than me. Pretty much people who—either they’re married and looking for something out of the relationship, they’re not going to cheat the other person and say they’re going to leave their wives, they want to be honest.

Then there are the younger guys who out of circumstance or choice are single and want a bit of fun. One lady.

Let’s say one of the people you are seeing is, say, a merchant banker, and in your day something hilarious happens specifically relating to merchant banking. Would you call them and say, “oh, this happened today…”?

In a non-relationship, no, I wouldn’t. But the next time I saw them I might say, “oh, this happened”, and if it’s something they know then you’d talk to them about it.

Would you not call them because you didn’t want to?

It just wouldn’t occur to me.

Have you moved to a relationship with someone you were casually seeing?

Yes.

What happened?

I realised I’m not a relationship person [laughs]. I don’t have the time or the inclination to spend on a relationship. There are going to be people out there saying that you aren’t naturally like that, that because of something in your past you act like this. There is an aspect of it in my past… However, it’s more the fact that I’m too independent, and currently don’t want to compromise on things in my life. During that two months that I was in a relationship it was very tiring, and I didn’t have the time to invest in the relationship.

If you met the right person would you have qualms about saying, “right, now I’m in a monogamous relationship”?

Yeah, I’m in a relationship and depending on the relationship whether it’s monogamous or not.

How do you meet men?

Mostly on internet sites that are designed for hookups, not relationships. So I won’t go anywhere near something like NZ Dating, because people on there are looking for a relationship, but I will go on other sites such as AdultFriendfinder, as the people on there are much more open and honest. For example, on NZ Dating, there are people who won’t tell you that they’re married, whereas on Friendfinder, there are people who will straight up tell you that they’re married. My condition is that if I don’t get a screaming wife turn up on my doorstep, I don’t mind. I’m not the one cheating, it’s up to them. I do have a rule that if they have kids under 18 I won’t go there, purely because I feel more guilty for the kids rather than the wife. So if they have young kids then I won’t get involved, but if they’re grown up then it’s fine. I always tell them straight up before that I won’t sleep with them on the first meeting, just so there’s no expectations involved. Then if we get along we’ll meet again at a different location. Certainly it’s a good couple of weeks of emailing and texting before I’ll meet up with them.

Is this common?

I think it is. It does seem to be. But just based on the sheer number of emails I get saying, “hey babe, I’m in town, wanna meet up?”, they obviously get some luck from it, so there must be girls out there who do. Generally no-one is surprised about the emails or the first meeting, so it’s pretty common.

Has your lifestyle affected how you feel about other relationships and love in general?

It makes me sad that some people can’t be honest with each other in their relationships. I’m not surprised at the amount of men who cheat, I already knew about that. I did learn that there’s a huge grey area in relationships. It’s not just single and monogamous—there are polygamists, polyamorous even—there’s a lot more out there than you realise. It can work on a long term basis, very well.

There are probably a bunch of 18-year-old guys who are reading this, thinking, yeah, I’m going to get on that train! have any thoughts for them?

It tends not to be younger people and younger people tend not to be very good at it as they don’t know their own boundaries and what they want from life yet—I’m generalising now. I just realised a lot of people know their own lives, but it tends to be late 20s up. They know what they want from it, and have the confidence to say what their boundaries are and what they want from it.

So, more of a lifestyle choice than a sexual choice?

“Hey babe, wanna meet up” tends to be younger people. The messages, “I’m interested in having a casual relationship where we meet on several occasions” tend to be from older people. The younger people tend to be one night stands, and they tend to think it’s better than just going to a bar. They have a ‘never see you again’ point of view. Personally I wouldn’t go anywhere near them. They’re more likely to be unsafe in their practices. I do recognise that the more you get to know someone the better things can be—rather than meet 20 people once, I’d rather meet five people 10 times!

You have to be really upfront and honest about everything, and not scared of asking questions or of talking about things you wouldn’t normally talk about with other people, whether you’re into safe sex or not, into drugs or not—a lot of people have been burned from it. I’m very open and honest with my lifestyle—that’s who I am, and the only place I’m not honest about it is at work where people just don’t need to know. Work is an absolute boundary for me. I’m friends mostly with people with the same lifestyle choice now—they’re easier and just less shockable. Sometimes I mention more than one guy’s name in conversation, and it freaks people out. It’s easier to form friendships with people who don’t get freaked out by it.

Of course these portrayals are fiction. Most love songs are lies, most lovers aren’t ‘the one’: we know this, we do. But how much of our idea of what love is, and what it should be, is based around the fiction we consume? Even when going through a relationship, we can’t help but be reminded of those we have seen on screen, or read about in books, even in the tiniest of ways. We imagine what the film of our life would be like. Is yours a tale of forbidden love, like Romeo and Juliet? Or is it a pathetic story of two self destructive personalities, breaking the hearts of their families and generally acting like damn fools, like Romeo + Juliet?

Comparing your life to that of characters designed solely to have exciting lives is tantamount to self-flagellation—or self-flagellation by proxy, if you are really creative—but people do it to themselves and others. Everything down to the soundtrack.

The formula of ‘Love’: Baz Luhrmann style

It is one of the most basic and oldest plots: boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again. Maybe, if they’re being really transgressive, they’ll change the genders—but it’s essentially the same catch, and the same chase, every time. The only problem with this is… all of it. As Salient’s own Constance Cravings once said, “Chase and catch is not the only way to make a relationship happen”. In fact, beyond being not the only way, it’s probably the worst. It creates an unhealthy power dynamic, in which one side is the perfect prize on a pedestal made entirely out of diamonds and whales’ smiles, while the other is the subservient chaser, defiling themselves to prove their love. Neither of these are good things to be, or good ways to look at another human being. People are not objects to be won, there is no honour in being Tom Hansen, and making someone jump through hoops does not prove that they are worthy of you—it shows that you are a terrible person.

Nonetheless, these emotionally stunted characters generally live happily ever after. Sure they’ve gone through a ‘boy loses girl’ phase, but they’re ignoring that, pushing that deep down inside themselves until they vent it once the movie is over—probably by punching the comedic sidekick.

Fighting your Lover’s Exes: What we should (and shouldn’t) learn from Scott Pilgrim

Everyone takes their own emotional baggage into a relationship, it may not be helpful, but it’s natural. This baggage is something you must overcome to get to an actual relationship (e.g. one not based on your, or their, past). So yes, you do have to fight their exes, though not literally. However, some battles you will not win, and others aren’t worth fighting. Rob from High Fidelity may seem charming as he dwells on his lost loves, but in the real world, someone that hung up over their exes would be undateable even if you could—if he has a playlist of music that reminds him of his exes, that’s a big red flag.

These Woody Allen-style, charmingly neurotic, always looking-backwards types must be stopped. It’s not fair to the new person to be constantly compared to the rose-tinted memory of someone else.

Youth without youth: How youthful love on screen has created the emotionally stunted person you are about to sleep with.

No-one stays in their relationship from High School forever. This is a fact: we wouldn’t lie to you. Yet fictional high schoolers are falling in ‘love’ with each other all the time, according to teen dramas. The suspension of disbelief is all well and good, but this is going too far.

The melodramatic times of Dawson and Pacey, Marissa and Ryan, Blair and Chuck: these happened to them before the age of eighteen. Their constant evocations of love seem wildly childish for people who still listen to Top 40. Love is the second most complicated and unexplainable of all human emotions, after swag, and many people have gone their entire lives without experiencing true love. ‘Love’ is subjective, and people do find it at different ages, but the hormonal expressions of kids who want to be in love, aren’t. It is foolish to think this will fall into your lap at such an early age—let alone beat yourself up about dying alone with close to nothing of your life left. It’ll be alright, just play the field a little more.

Are we neurotic because of pop culture, or is pop culture neurotic because of us?

Probably both. These relationship stereotypes do have a grain o’ the truth to them, but how much of that is self-fulfilling prophecy, as opposed to being bound to happen, is unknowable. What is knowable is that coming into a relationship with faulty preconceptions of how everything should pan out, because you read it in some excruciating Jane Austen novel, is a recipe for having bad relationships and misunderstanding love—both of which are things we should take less seriously.

In conclusion: there is no such thing as perfection. Movies aren’t real. And love is probably detrimental to your health and should be avoided at all cost. As Nina Simone once sang:

“Marriage is for old folks
Cold folks,
And it’s not for me!”

Enjoy your day.

De La Soul, the hip-hop group who have been around for almost 25 years and inspired generations of rappers, are in town for Orientation on the 20th anniversary tour of their second album, De La Soul is Dead. Salient caught up with Vincent Mason (a.k.a. P.A., Pasemaster Mase, Maseo, Plug Three).

You’d think that after touring “for the last 25 years, for six to eight months of the year”, De La Soul would begin to tire of performing much the same material—their previous tour marked the 20th anniversary tour of their debut, 3 Feet High and Rising. But the exact opposite seems to have happened, with Mason feeling that “to come around and actually celebrate the birthday of De La Soul is Dead [is] very admirable on our part, the fans’ parts, the promoters, everybody involved who felt that this was an important record in their lives…

“What’s even really highly interesting, and a great feeling, is to see the new faces out there—people who’ve never maybe even heard of De La Soul, or who probably heard of De La Soul when they were really young, but are now old enough to come out and see us… they feel like they didn’t miss anything. They got exactly what they used to hear, if not better.”

Hip-hop as a genre is still quite fresh—you can clearly chart it from its origins in New York in the mid-1970s. Having formed around 1986, the members of De La Soul have seen hip-hop “go from an infant to a grown-up”, and have been riding the crest of the wave, so to speak, right from their formation. 3 Feet High and Rising is rarely missed from ‘greatest album’ lists, and even embraced by NME magazine, who rarely focus on hip-hop at all. Both 3 Feet and De La Soul is Dead are wholly original within hip-hop, not so much reflective of the musical sound of the time, as its inventiveness and originality. Both albums have skits and spoken word throughout, following a theme throughout the album. The skits and conversations of De La Soul is Dead follow a group of bullies who are criticising a De La Soul album, with many of the songs responding to their attacks. Mason refers to his skits as their “homework”—the result of too much time in the studio, that addressed interpretations of their music in a creative way.

In this way, Mason channels his frustrations into his music.

“In the music business, when they can’t identify with something, they like to give it their own category and new name—but who gave them the right to call what I’m doing ‘alternative hip-hop’? Who gave them the right to call me a hippie of hip-hop, when I don’t know anything about being a hippie, or Woodstock, or anything of that matter. Who gave them that right? How about turning around and asking me what it is? That’s something I had to constantly combat with the record label, and the media, because it helps sell records and magazines.”

From the beginning, De La Soul have been revolutionary in their music, and their image suffered as the industry tried to pigeonhole them. Instead of trying to actively combat the view that they were hippies, or the attitude of the record industry, De La Soul addressed it in their music lightheartedly.

“De La Soul is Dead was really clowning the success of 3 Feet High and Rising… We were just kids acting silly, really… we’re just being creative, and I think a big part of being creative is blocking out everything as an adult, and trying to capture your innocence.”

One could argue, then, that they responded to their critics by refusing to take them seriously. Mason was just 18 when he was catapulted to fame with De La Soul’s first album, and 21 when De La Soul is Dead was released. The band were pegged as hippies just as the hippy movement was ending, prompting them to try to “end this trend before the music business ends it”.

And it worked. De La Soul is Dead blew everyone out of the water and, today, their sound—even their delivery—constantly changes with the blessing of the industry and their fans. For example, De La Soul had a large part in the Gorillaz project (Mason is the booming laugh on the track ‘Feel Good Inc.’), and continue to keep up with technology and the world changing around them. In 2009, De La Soul created the Nike Mixtape, Are You In: over 40 minutes of constant music designed for people to work out to. The project was founded by Nike and iTunes, with the album only available on iTunes; the content and sound for such a commercially driven enterprise would surely be heavily controlled?

Mason admits, “If you want to make a living and have a career, you have to make some sacrifices and do business and compromise at some point, but not where you sacrifice your integrity. I’ve always had creative freedom when I made my music. That was something that will never be compromised.

“When Nike came to us with the idea of doing this workout album, we were actually trying to make a workout album and that’s not what they wanted. They actually said, ‘Yo, we want De La to… be De La. How we got the idea of you being the group to do this project with us is because of what we’ve been listening to already throughout your career. So don’t come in here trying to do a Jane Fonda workout album. Do your thing, De La.’ … The Nike project being something organic, different, unusual, outside the box… that’s what De La is all about.

“So here it is, I’m going in, thinking that I’m getting my opportunity to do my own kind of Billy Blake record, or Jane Fonda record, you know what I mean? And no, they don’t want me to do Billy Blake or Jane Fonda, they don’t want me to do Jane Fonda, and I have to appreciate that. I have to appreciate that because, you know—what can you say when somebody is actually telling you, ‘I want you to be you’? That never came out of this music business,” he says with a laugh.

Despite being an old hand in the music business—someone who openly criticises the way the industry batters its stars to be “all packed up and ready with an image… a sales pitch and everything”—Mason still seems genuinely surprised to receive compliments and support from the industry that has paid his bills for his entire adult life. However, he insists on sticking to his old formula of “seeing where it goes”, instead of “trying to release an album by a certain time so they can be at the Grammys or an American Music Award” (De La Soul has been nominated for two Grammys and one American Music Award).

It is perhaps this love of innovation that cemented both De La Soul and the hip-hop movement at the beginning.

“Everybody had something different to offer to hip-hop, and that was what it was all about—we all came from different walks of life, and it was all about being honest, about who you were, about what you did, and where you come from in your music.

“Nowadays, everybody does the same thing. Everybody’s chart driven… Not even about, ‘oh, let’s try this single, and see where it goes, then try this second single and see where it goes, and then do an album, then let’s put out the album and see what they’re feeling, see what our next single is going to be…’—no. [They] have to have three songs ready to be a single, three videos in the can, dropping them about a month-and-a-half to two months apart based on the success. It’s all contrived by the music business; it’s all corporately controlled, everybody doing the same thing.

“The golden era [of hip-hop] not everybody did the same thing, even the ones who were successful—I didn’t do what LL [Cool J] did, LL didn’t do what I did, and we were on the same stage together. Anybody that did what we did, didn’t have the success.”

Still releasing new material, still filling stadiums with shows from albums released decades ago, De La Soul is still at the forefront of hip hop. Travelling far and wide on this tour cements this for Mason: “The music business for hip-hop culture has grown tremendously. This culture has obviously become a force to be reckoned with.”

De La Soul are playing The Hunter Lounge with support from Alphabethead, Homebrew, Team Dynamite and The Arc on Thursday 24 February. Presales for students of Victoria University $40, door sales $45.

Lyrics such as ‘While you’re going around trying to keep people out of hell, I’m going around trying to keep the hell out of people’, suitably reflects the biting critique on religion, that is the central theme in hip-hop provocateur Sage Francis’s latest album Li(f)e. As the self-described indie-rap artist comments, “The driving force behind creating the album was to explore the lies of our lives. I find that a lot of that originates with religion, so it made me think about religion, about where it comes from and the reasoning behind it. I wouldn’t say it is a super-obvious, it’s more of an underlying them but it’s there and it is part of everything else that I talk about.”

He continues, adding that the lyrics “could be considered political, but it isn’t politics. It’s the stuff in our lives. It’s what I think about because it is around me at all time, so it finds its way into my art, it finds its way into my lyrics, and I address it. It’s just me exploring my condition, my situation and my circumstance, and communicating the human condition. That’s really what I feel I do best with my music.”

From a sonic perspective, the eclectic nature of the musical accompaniment on Li(f)e, makes for an incredibly compelling listen, sometimes complementing, and sometime juxtaposed against the emotion of the lyrics. Collaborations with the likes of ex-Grandaddy front man Jason Lytle, Chris Walla of Death Cab For Cutie, and members of Sparklehorse have resulted in a truly eclectic and perhaps slightly unexpected masterpiece. Francis explains, “When we went into making this record, the concept behind the album was me working with all sorts of musicians because we basically wanted to have a totally fresh and new sound. I wanted to do something that could initially be seen as bizarre, but to actually do it well enough that people would adapt to it, and be like ‘Oh wow, I see that this works and it’s cool’. I didn’t really have any particular sound or style of music I was looking for though.”

“I feel like what I wanted to do was challenge myself as a writer, because I knew that I would be able to work my lyrics over different soundscapes, whether it was a boom-bap beat, or anything vaguely hip-hop loop related. I would be able to make it work and I felt like it would also push my song writing if I were given that opportunity. So, we reached out to various musicians and bands to see if they would provide me with music that was natural to them. We didn’t want them to give me stuff that they thought was good for hip-hop, because once people do that it becomes more contrived, and sounds false.”

Francis mentions that working with ANTI-, a label who have been responsible for releasing albums from the likes of Tom Waits, Bettye LaVette and Grinderman among many others, essentially allowed him access to a huge range of musicians. “Andy Kaulkin who runs Anti has a lot of contacts in the music world, so he was able to reach out to all different types of musicians, from all different genres, and he basically championed me to them. He actually explained the kind of hip-hop that I do, and explained to them the path we were travelling down, and asked them if they wanted to join us. That’s how we got people to come along for the ride.”

As one might expect, the process was by no means a simple one. As Francis points out, “We received hundreds of demos – it was a lot to go through. It was a lot of music and a lot of the stuff I admittedly couldn’t do anything with, so I kind of pushed those to the side and focused on the ones I could do stuff with.”

“It was a two-year process, because it was a lot to go through, and it was very expensive. But in the long run, we definitely came out with a record that sounded totally unique and different from anything that came before it, so that was the goal and I’m happy about that.”

While the feedback has largely been positive, Francis does concede, “some people in the more traditional hip-hop world immediately rejected it”, but that is something he expected from the very beginning of the creative process. “I’ve heard the naysayers, and I’ve heard the yaysayers, but I would have been surprised if it had been one and not the other.”

“For me personally, to do something that I felt I was challenged by, and rewarded by – that was my goal. I’m just happy people didn’t collectively think that it sucked.”

OUT NOW: SAGE FRANCIS – LI(F)E

The role of Vice-Chancellor is an important one, they are the university’s academic and administrative head; the chief executive, if you will. The Vice-Chancellor is the guy responsible for ensuring the university carries its statutory and contractual functions in teaching, research and community service. At Vic, Pat Walsh is the big cheese, the one who fronts the media when admissions are closed, or when fees are increased. Perhaps because the media limelight is only shone on the Vice-Chancellor when decisions are made that appear to adversely affect students, there is an impression of aloofness, or that university management doesn’t really care about the most important stakeholders in the tertiary education sector—students.

Walsh has been at Vic since 1981. Before being made the head of what is now the Victoria Management School in the mid-1990s, Walsh was your average academic. He headed the management school for six years before being made Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Commerce. Walsh was appointed Vice Chancellor in 2005, replacing Stuart McCutcheon, now the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Auckland.

Heading into 2011, Walsh says the three crucial issues facing the tertiary sector, and Victoria more specifically, are “the issues that have challenged us for some time”. These issues, he says, stem from the question of funding.

“[Firstly] the real value of government funding continues to decline. Secondly, I think responding to the quite reasonable expectations of accountability in terms of performance, and that’s in research and in learning and teaching, and in the quality of the student experience. Thirdly, I think the relationships, both internal of course, but external relationships with stakeholders—I think that it’s absolutely vital that a university has really strong relationships, partnerships, collaborations, whether it’s research or with the City Council or with international agencies, because without that you’re an island and I think we’ve done well in that regard.”

Stemming the flow

Next year will see the implementation of a system of managed enrolment, whereby students must not only attain University Entrance, but also meet the guaranteed entry score for admittance. Walsh says that managed enrolment is a consequence of the funding situation.

“It came upon us of course because of the capped funding and therefore the capped number of students. So we are funded for a certain number of students and if we take more than that, then those students are unfunded,” he explains.

Walsh says there are two crucial factors involved in the issue.

“One is universities have been saying for years, for as long as I can remember, that as the real value of government funding declines, there’s a threat to the quality of education. And if we enrol hundreds or thousands, as we could probably, of unfunded students, then I think we’re saying well, actually we don’t care about quality, the quality of what we are providing to students who are enrolled. So it’s driven by quality, it’s driven by the funding situation, but the response is a concern about quality and that’s really the driver for managed enrolment.”

In May, the University Council decided to close admissions for the second trimester. Walsh says that a
number of options were looked into, before a final decision was made. Ultimately, an obligation to current
students won out.

“We looked at all those options. We could have simply shut down the third trimester, we could have done various creative things with the students that are currently enrolled. But we felt we, for a start, we felt we had an obligation to students who are currently enrolled and many of them had enrolled for the first trimester uncertain about what they wanted to take in the second trimester and we didn’t feel that we should not close off that option, because we have an obligation to them. The summer trimester is an important trimester, we’ve cut back on it, but we found it was still important that it go ahead, many students use it to catch up, some academic staff sometimes use it to run an experimental course to see how it goes. So we felt that on balance, the shutting down of enrolments in the second trimester was, however unpalatable, the cleanest way of doing it.”

Victoria isn’t the only university to implement these sorts of measures. Walsh agrees that this inevitably limits access to tertiary education across the board.

“And I think that’s undesirable,” he says.

“I’ve always favoured a system whereby those who meet the entry standard are able to be admitted, and we no longer have that and I think in terms of social and economic opportunities, social mobility, I’m disappointed with that. So it will limit access to universities. I know that perhaps one of the positive consequences will be that the average ability of students, the average quality will rise, and that’s a positive
consequence, but in doing that we do run the risk of not admitting students who do have the potential to succeed. I find that unfortunate.”

Juggling teaching and research

Walsh says there are always pressures on academic staff to juggle teaching and research, “but I do believe the two can be balanced”.

“I think that we’ve got evidence of that with the many staff, the great majority of staff, who do successfully
combine research and teaching. And the two are not always in opposition—the research activity of staff contributes to what they teach as well. It can be a challenge in terms of time pressures, but I think that it can be managed.”

The introduction of the performance based research fund (PBRF) has been a point of contention since its
implementation, and concerns have been raised about whether it has lead to a more competitive staff environment. Walsh however takes a more positive view.

“Well I think everyone can point to aspects of the PBRF that they disagree with, but I do think that the PBRF has had a positive impact on universities, it has focused universities—and by that I mean both management and staff and certainly councils—on the quality of research, it has lead to an improvement
in the quality of research and although there are some undesirable features, we could all list some of those, on balance I think it’s had a positive impact.”

Walsh asserts that Victoria has been maximising research opportunities in recent years.

“We have, over the last five or six years, made a number of important steps to improve research,” he says.

“We have greatly increased the budget for postgraduate scholarships—it’s gone up by a couple of hundred per cent, so we have many more Masters and PhD scholarships and I regard that as one of the most important contributors to an active research culture. The more postgraduate thesis students you have,
the livelier the research culture,” he says.

“We have greatly increased our internal research budget, so the university research fund is larger than
it has been. We have established the office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research, which didn’t previously exist, to provide strategic direction to research and we have established a Faculty of Graduate Research, we have what we call the portfolio advisers at the Faculties helping people with external research
grants. So our research infrastructure is much stronger, the amount of funding that we’ve allocated to research is much larger. I should also mention the increases in the library budget which have been driven by teaching and research and have benefited both, and of course we have had an internal PBRF exercise, end of 2008, beginning of 2009, and now we’re following up on that in terms of addressing research
performance issues around the university.”

In this year’s budget, National announced the introduction of a component of funding for universities based on student performance. Walsh says that this move is one universities have seen coming, though “it might put more pressure on students”.

“The educational performance funding, as the government calls it, is something we’ve seen coming for some
time and I think it’s entirely reasonable… for there to be accountability for performance, given the amount of public funding we receive,” he says.

“The particular form it has taken is something that we now have to understand, and at least understand the
data, so why have we got X per cent of students completing their courses, and Y per cent completing their qualifications and why are we higher or lower than other universities on some of these. And we just need to understand the things that contribute to those outcomes and we need to do the things that we can to improve. Some of them might be as straightforward as simplifying degree structures, for example. It might
be one of the reasons we have some students find it difficult to complete their qualification, is that the degrees are so complicated. So there’s a number of things that we can do which might not necessarily put more pressure on people at all.”

Supporting students or institutions?

Universities New Zealand, the collective voice of the country’s eight universities, put forward the proposition earlier this year that the reinstatement of interest on student loans should be investigated by the government. This is a proposition Walsh agrees with.

“I do because I think in a capped funding—the argument for interest-free student loans was developed at a time when there was not capped funding for universities. So every student who enrolled attracted funding—that’s not the case anymore. So we’re in a situation now where we’re having to turn away students and the reason we’re having to turn away students is because of limited funding. Some of that funding that we could be receiving is going to interest-free loans. So I think there’s a choice to make about whether we think
it’s a better use of public funds, public money, to provide interest-free loans to enrolled students, or to provide more places at universities for students who would otherwise be turned away.”

Some of the reason for the focus on student support is a “perception of electoral advantage,” Walsh says.

“The Labour government introduced it in the 2005 election because they thought it would be popular and it
was, and in fact Michael Cullen said it won the election for them, and the National party decided to run with that in 2008 because it feared the electoral consequences of changing it. So it’s now embedded in the system and it’s going to be very difficult to change it.”

Compounding the funding pressures has been the fee maxima policy, where universities have been limited by how much they can raise the fees students are charged. Walsh says this policy has had a particularly significant effect on Victoria.

“If you go back ten years, the government of the day introduced a freeze on fees. At that time, Victoria was caught with the policy that was implemented with fees that were low relative to other universities. Then the fee maxima regime was introduced, which said you could increase it by up to a certain amount, but because we were starting from a lower base, we never caught up, so we suffer a significant funding disadvantage, particularly in humanities and education, and we calculate that we’re about two and a half
million dollars worse off than some of the other universities, so it does place us at a disadvantage.”

The University Council recently increased fees for 2011 by four per cent, the maximum allowed under the government’s annual maximum fee movement, announced in this year’s budget. Walsh thinks that having
some limits on fee increases is not unreasonable.

“I think that it’s reasonable to have a policy framework that does put some limits on fees, and I don’t have a problem with that. I think it is unreasonable to have a policy framework that entrenches disadvantage for a couple of universities, we’re not the only one, a couple of universities compared with others. To use the Treasury’s favourite phrase, I think there should be a level playing field and at the moment it’s not.”

VSM: not just VUWSA’s Problem?

The prospect of voluntary student membership (VSM) is a concern for the university.

“We’re opposed to it, and that’s what we said in our submission. In summary, we think that students’ associations play a really important role, I know that they get things wrong and there’s criticism of them at times—sometimes entirely justified—just as there’s justified criticism of what universities do from time to time. But on balance, students’ associations play an important and constructive role, they provide significant and valuable services, many of them not visible to people from the outside, look at academic grievances for example, the representation function which is really important, and the role that clubs and societies play in helping to foster a sense of community,” Walsh says.

“We believe that students’ associations play an important role and particularly here over the last four or
five years, we have really worked to try and develop a partnership approach with the students’ association—we disagree on the obvious things—but around the running of the Student Union Building, the Hub project, the development of the Boyd Wilson Field and in other areas as well, we’ve got a really positive partnership that we think makes Victoria a better place. Voluntary student membership will reduce the revenue that the students’ association receives, no question about that, will therefore reduce the services they can provide, will limit their capacity to play an active and constructive role in the university and so we’re opposed to it.”

Walsh asserts that the university is beginning to look into contingency plans in the event the Education Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill is passed into law.

“[We’re] just trying to think well, if the students’ association can’t do this, whatever it is, should we do it?
Recognising that we’re not going to get any more money… so if we decide to do something that VUWSA… currently does, then we’re going to have to stop doing something else, and that’s going to be some tough choices there.”

Walsh doesn’t think that VSM will entirely destroy the student culture or experience at Victoria.

“I think that it’s going to pose some real challenges and there may be some ways of addressing it, but we need to think those through. We look at the student experience in Auckland, where student membership is voluntary, so we can learn from what they have done, that there are things that we can do to address those problems. I’m not saying that it’s going to be doom and gloom in terms of the quality of the student
experience, but it’s going to be harder.”

It’s fairly clear that Victoria University is going to be facing some challenges heading into the future. Despite his, Walsh remains positive.

“Although the environment is really challenging,Victoria University I think is in pretty good heart, in pretty good shape,” he says.

“We’re feeling pretty optimistic about the future, not blindly optimistic, not complacently optimistic, but I think we’re travelling fairly well.”

From that point onwards, travel will likely either be a strategic move (you get paid more in Australia, I hear), or much further down the track.

At this point in our lives, we’re more flexible and foolhardy than we’ll ever be. When we end up in nine-to-fives, will we regret choosing that MacBook Pro over two weeks spent backpacking in Thailand? Maybe. When we’re climbing the career ladder, will we be able to take a month out to travel on a shoestring around Asia, around South America, around Europe—or all three—and back again?

Probably not. So, why don’t we make the most of the world’s opportunities, while we have the chance?

Going it alone

“I guess it’s just about opposing the conventional path of the young adult in New Zealand,” says Tammie Blundell, a 19-year-old first-year student of Religious Studies, Environmental Science and Theatre, who spent ten months travelling solo around Europe upon finishing high school.

Blundell talks quickly; her conversation is littered with place names, time frames, and allusions to anecdotes.

“In March, I flew to Hong Kong—stayed there for a week, couch-surfing with some randoms. Then I flew to Germany, and worked on vineyards for almost two months with some crazy old German men, who were kind of fun,” she says. “I hitchhiked all around Germany, went down to France—spent a couple of months there, went tramping, went festivalling… just had good times.

“Then I decided I was going to go to Spain, so I went to Spain, then I travelled around Morocco by myself, then back up to Spain, then to Portugal, then flew back to Germany, then to San Francisco—and then home! That’s the basic outline of ten months.”

At first, Blundell intended to spend the duration of her OE in Germany, learning the language and working in the film industry, in which she had contacts. Her plan “evolved” as she made new friends who had different travelling agendas.

“I kept on meeting people, and they’d pull me further south, and further south, and further south, and I just got to this point where I was like—screw it, I’m going to keep travelling. I’m here, so I might as well.”

Blundell says she purposely went to places where she didn’t speak the language, and put herself in situations that were completely alien.

“You’d just meet people and you’d instantly be on the same level,” she says. “You’d connect somehow.

“I WWOOFed [Willing Workers On Organic Farms] for a while in the middle of Spain for a couple of weeks, and I couldn’t speak Spanish at all, so we communicated through music,” she says.

“We played guitars, ate lots of paella, got really pissed… it was great.”

Blundell recommends travelling alone (“yeah, shit yeah”), as it forces you out of your comfort zone.

“When you meet new people, they don’t judge you by the person you’re with,” she says. “They just see you, directly for who you are…

“Or who they think you are, or who you want to be,” she adds. “Also, all the decisions you make are completely up to you; it’s more of a personal journey than a team mission.”

Blundell dismisses suggestions that travelling alone is more dangerous than with others. She hitchhiked everywhere, and estimates that of the ten months she spent overseas, she paid for accommodation for a total of just 12 nights. The vast majority of time, she couch-surfed, using the website http://www.couchsurfing.org.

“Everybody says ‘oh, that’s brave of you’, but you just need to be street smart, and have your head screwed on in the right direction. It’s something you learn as you go, really—you find the courage while you’re doing it.

“I mean, I had the odd scary experience… But I have this theory that 99 per cent of the time, it’s going to work out—like with hitchhiking. That one per cent of the time that happens to some people, that you hear about in the media—well, it’s not worth thinking about. If you go through life freaking about that one per cent, you’re not going to get anywhere.”

Blundell carried a Swiss army knife on her for her entire trip, but she only needed to draw it once: while wandering the suburbs of Barcelona at 4am, she realised she was being followed.

“That was the first time where I actually felt I needed to have my knife in my hand, and that was the only time,” she says. “But it was actually fine.”

Blundell notes that her experiences have added to her studies.

“Travelling like that takes you out of the system completely; you’re not institutionalised anymore,” she says.

“So coming back to that—where you can’t just go down to the road, stick your thumb out, and say, ‘I’ll go where you’re going’, which is something I like to do—was pretty hard, actually. But it also gave me a range of opinions and ideas that I’m actually able to apply to my studies, now that I’ve been there and done that.

“You also learn to really appreciate showers, internet—a mattress, if you’re lucky… and if not, then, you don’t care anyway, because you’re a cool person.”

A role in the community

Meg Howie, a student of design at Massey University, echoes Blundell’s sentiment that travel—and total immersion in another culture in particular—prompts people to reassess their priorities. Last year, she and other 13 school leavers spent six months in Vanuatu, teaching classes of Year 4 students maths, English, social studies, general science, PE and art, through Lattitude Global Volunteering.

“They came to our school, and did the little blurb,” remembers Howie. “Most people go to work in boarding schools in England and Scotland, that kind of thing, but they also do six months’ teaching in Vanuatu.

“When I first heard about it, I thought it would be a really cool thing to do, if I was the kind of person that did crazy things like that. Then I realised: if I did it, that would automatically make me that kind of person.”

Howie notes that the 13 other volunteers—all Australians, bar for one other New Zealander—got involved in the programme because they were Christian, or because they wanted to be teachers.

“I didn’t really want to do either of those things, and, in six months, I wasn’t too focused on making a big difference in the world or anything,” she says. “Just knowing that I’d have a role in the community was really cool. Also just to see other cultures, get that experience…”

Upon arriving in Vanuatu, the 14 volunteers were split into pairs and based on different islands around Vanuatu.

“I lived with another girl from Wellington—we lived in a little bamboo hut in the village,” says Howie. “We had a week of orientation with the volunteers that were there before us, and one day of teaching workshops. The rest was kind of culture stuff.”

Howie found teaching “physically exhausting”.

“I don’t think I ever realised this at school, but it’s a lot of work—especially primary school,” she says, wide-eyed. “The whole day, you don’t stop for a moment: you’re constantly trying to juggle all the kids who want attention, you have to be onto it all the time. It definitely helped my work ethic a lot—and I definitely don’t want to be a teacher.”

In the school holidays, Howie and the other volunteers decided to travel to a neighbouring island for two weeks of respite.

“It was kind of hard to organise because we’d have cellphone reception sometimes, while the other people in other villages would have cellphone reception sometimes. Everyone only had a vague idea of what everyone else was doing.”

Eventually, the 14 of them arranged to catch a cargo ship from Vila to Santo.

“We left two days early, because everything happens really, really slowly over there… which is lovely when you get used to it, but frustrating if you need to get somewhere.

“The cargo ship didn’t come. We weren’t too surprised by that—it’s Vanuatu,” says Howie. “The next day, it came at about 3am, and we were just waiting on the beach ‘til then.

“It was so cool, because our other friends from the villages further down the coast were already on the boat, and we hadn’t seen them for about four months. We all got onboard, and found a little space about the size of a picnic table for the six of us; someone gave us a straw mat, and everyone slept on piles of rice and timber.”

The experience has made Howie “feel like there’s kind of a lot more to [her]”.

“You have more of a sense of what you’re capable of,” she says. “You think: I can get myself to this place; I can really do this stuff. Everything you see and experience adds to who you are. I feel like the more I see and do, the more of a person I am.”

Her six months in Vanuatu also taught her the value of money.

“For uni, I have to buy a lot of art supplies, and living in Wellington, you tend to just go out and buy stuff, whereas [in Vanuatu] we got paid $30 a month between us for living expenses—and we didn’t spend it,” she laughs. “There was one shop, and it had, like, crackers and oil and tomato sauce for sale, and that was it. On average, I bought one thing every two weeks; it’s just cool knowing I could do that.”

A fortnight after returning to New Zealand, Howie headed off again: this time, to South East Asia with one of her fellow volunteers and his friend.

“It was very much ‘I’ve just been working for six months, and I’m just going to just—have fun’,” says Howie. “One of the best things about both trips was meeting people, but the people I was meeting in Asia were other travellers. Immediately, you have something in common with them: you’re backpacking, we’re backpacking… but I didn’t really engage with the culture, or get the same kind of understanding of it, as I did in Vanuatu.”

Howie is returning to the village for a month in January next year.

“It’s really amazing—lovely, lovely people; gorgeous kids,” she says. “Living in a village is so incredibly different; I’ll keep going back for the rest of my life.”

Howie agrees that taking a working holiday in another English-speaking country is not really ‘travel’.

“It doesn’t really count,” she says. “I’m sure you still have really good times, but… yeah.”

Travel broadens the mind, they say; well, it also makes the shit you study seem more relevant. Understanding and knowledge of cultures other than your own gives you new perspective; as hackneyed as the term is, it turns you into a ‘global citizen’. And in a country as isolated from the rest of the world as New Zealand is, that’s no bad thing.

Above all, though, what Blundell and Howie’s stories both illustrate is the allure of travel: catching a ride with whichever car that stops; sleeping on a new couch every night; waiting for the cargo ship, even when it doesn’t show up. These are the experiences you’ll remember for the rest of your life—not the time you got your first iPod. Make the most of the flexible lifestyle you enjoy as a student: take some time off university, and get out of New Zealand.

In May this year the door was shut: the University Council announced that Victoria University would accept no new domestic undergraduate admissions for the rest of 2010. The decision was unexpected—as VUWSA President Max Hardy told Salient at the time, it disadvantaged students who had been acting on the “entirely reasonable assumption that admissions would remain open”.

However, Vice Chancellor Pat Walsh put forward the case that the University had no other option if it was to meet its “legal obligations” to the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC). If left unchecked, student numbers were forecast to reach 110 per cent of the ‘cap’—the number of equivalent full-time students (EFTS) that the TEC is prepared to fund, as negotiated in an institution’s individual investment plan. Victoria was therefore compelled to restrict enrolments, or stretch staff workloads and teaching resources.

Closing enrolments, then, was an effective stopgap for 2010—but patently not workable as a long-term solution to the issue of increasing demand versus financial restrictions. The Council has been aware that it would have to implement more enduring measures since as early as mid-2009: minutes of a meeting held on June 29 concede that “in the near future, the University would be forced into a position of managing enrolments, and the Council would need time to consider this in the context of quality and equity issues”.

A Managed Enrolment Working Party was convened, and tasked with devising a process and methodology for a fully managed enrolment system, to be implemented for the 2011 enrolment period.

“The recommendation from the Working Party to manage enrolment by controlling first-year admission numbers was the result of considerable review, analysis and debate,” says Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), Professor Penny Boumelha. “Managing enrolments was necessary to ensure the quality of our teaching, and [that] learning outcomes for enrolled students was not compromised by taking on too many unfunded students.

“The University has been actively managing numbers since 2008 through a variety of mechanisms, but from 2011, there will potentially be funding consequences if the University exceeds targets—so careful consideration was given to what changes needed to be put in place,” she says.

“The way we have chosen to manage our enrolments for 2011 onwards is based on academic merit. This will have positive flow-on effects as students work towards gaining their qualification.”

Removing the guesswork from the GES

Professor Boumelha is referring to the most significant of the changes made to undergraduate enrolments: a ranking system known as the Guaranteed Entry Score (GES). Secondary school students seeking admittance to Victoria from 2011 will now have to achieve the GES as well as University Entrance (UE) in their final year of NCEA, Cambridge or Baccalaureate assessment. The GES for all undergraduate degrees is 120 points; achieving this (and UE) guarantees a student admission to university.

The GES enables Victoria to order prospective students based on their Level 3 results and qualification type. A student’s rank score is calculated from their 80 ‘best’ credits (which are weighted by level of achievement) in UE-approved subjects at Level 3 or higher. As a maximum of 24 credits in each subject are counted, it’s more difficult to achieve than UE—which requires at least 14 Level 3 credits in just two approved subjects, as well as a further 14 Level 3 credits in two domains or approved subjects.

Professor Boumelha does not expect the GES to cut off many secondary students’ access to University.

“We expect that most of our school-leaver applicants will be accepted into a programme,” she says. “The system just means that if we are oversubscribed, we are able to place some limits on the numbers accepted.”

VUWSA President Max Hardy believes the GES will have a greater impact.

“I expect there to be a lot of students who want to go into university that will not be able to, which will be very sad, as we’ll essentially be taking away their opportunity to education,” he says. “Not very many countries would do that to students.

“The other thing is, it may very well be that more students than the University expects will achieve the GES, and get into university, and the whole thing is a farce because student numbers exceed that 105 per cent [cap] anyway. It’s possible.”

Hardy notes that the introduction of the GES will primarily affect secondary school students’ subject choices. He points out that this will result in a “transition issue” for Level 3 students who chose to study subjects that are not UE-approved at the start of this year.

“Basically, it’s possible that the course choices you made at the beginning of the year just to get UE would have been different, had you known that you actually needed [to achieve the GES] from those courses,” says Hardy. “I thought that was particularly unfair on some high school students.”

Hardy also opposed the speed at which the decisions were made.

“When we knew in 2009 that we were going to do this, or something similar, we should have at least told people, or given a year for high school students to actually know the rules that they were going to be facing.”

Rachael Worsley is a Year 13 student at Waimea College in Richmond. She is one such prospective undergraduate that could have been cut off from university by the introduction of the GES, as she intends to start studying towards a conjoint BA/BCA in Psychology and Marketing at Victoria next year.

Worsley says that “unless something goes drastically wrong”, she is “pretty confident” that she will gain both UE and the GES, as all of her subjects are UE-approved.

“I’m really glad this turned out to be the case,” she says. “I have friends at school will struggle to get the [GES] on top of UE, as they’re taking unit standard subjects like Tourism and Psychology.”

The repercussions of rankings

Secondary school students that achieve UE but not the GES will be waitlisted, and accepted if places become available. Maori and Pacific students in this position will be prioritised above others in the same situation, so as to enable the University to meet its equity targets. Applications from students with disabilities who have failed to achieve the GES will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

“Like all universities, Victoria is very concerned to address any equity implications which could arise from managed enrolment,” says Professor Boumelha. “Victoria is committed to providing sound pathways to university for under-represented groups.

“Maori and Pacific applicants who achieve University Entrance but do not achieve the Guaranteed Entry Score will be admitted, but asked to meet conditions that support their transition into the University and their programme of study.”

While Hardy allows that the University has an obligation to these students under the Government’s Tertiary Education Strategy, he considers this move “contentious in some ways”.
“There are three equity groups considered by the University: Maori and Pacific students, and students from lower socio-economic backgrounds—and [the latter] have not been prioritised, because it was difficult to do so,” Hardy says.

“The only way we could think about doing it was through deciles of schools—but then you’ve got rich kids that go to decile one schools, and poor kids that go to decile 10 schools.”

Victoria’s GES is not the first of its kind to be implemented in New Zealand institutions; in fact, it is more or less identical to the ‘rank score’ that was introduced by the University of Auckland for the 2008 enrolment period.

“Auckland was ahead of other universities,” Hardy says.

“They probably showed more foresight, really.”

The University of Auckland recently increased the requirements of its rank score: enrolment in a Bachelor of Arts now requirements a rank score of 140 points—20 more than are required to study towards the same qualification at Victoria.

“We said we’re going to do the GES like Auckland [University] does, to keep it consistent—which is eminently sensible—and a month later, they said that they were going to increase the score,” Hardy says. “Really, that’s just a bid from Auckland to establish itself as the best university in New Zealand…

“It does get worrying for the sector when universities are trying to differentiate themselves like that. I don’t think you should be playing those games. Victoria, Otago, Canterbury and Auckland—and maybe Massey—want to be the best university in New Zealand, and if Auckland starts [increasing admission criteria], those universities will follow suit, because they don’t want to look like they’re letting in more students.”

Other measures and changes

Although the GES is the most significant addition to the University’s admission requirements for first-year students in 2011, other moves to manage enrolments have also been introduced.

Professor Boumelha says two other “key strategies” will be put in place: firstly, the strict enforcement of enrolment deadlines, and secondly, introducing one primary enrolment period for the whole year. This will mean students must apply for the whole year, before 10 December 2010 for limited entry and distance courses, and 10 January 2011 for all other courses.

The University has also changed how it processes ‘special admission’ applications, from prospective undergraduates who are at least 20-years-old and lacking UE or a relevant Level 4 qualification. These applicants will now be assessed on their ‘university readiness’ by the Admissions Office, and will be ranked into one of four groups—A, B, C and D—based on their results.

Group A applicants, deemed “capable and degree-ready”, will be placed at the top of the waitlist, and will therefore be the first group to be approved into their chosen programmes of study—once all students with guaranteed entry have been admitted. Applicants from Group B will be prioritised lower, while those from Group C will be advised on possible foundation programmes or short courses by the University Preparation Team. Group D applicants will be denied altogether.

“What [the University] used to say is that [special admission applicants] were guaranteed entry, because they had the equivalent to the GES,” Hardy says. “That was the initial plan. Then they realised that they were going to have quite a lot more students than they had thought, and they decided Group A students were actually going to be shortlisted.

“It’s quite concerning, because [prospective students] over the age of 20 went from being guaranteed entry to not being guaranteed entry at all,” he points out. “If a lot of high school students pass well, you’ve got no chance of getting in.”

‘Personal interest’ and ‘discretionary entrance’ applications will continue to be considered. Students who complete the Certificate of University Preparation at another institution with an average grade of ‘B’ will be admitted, as will students who hold a Certificate of Foundation Studies.

However, Hardy notes, the government is attempting to discourage universities from offering foundation programmes such as the CUP (“they want polytechs to do that”), and this could impact peoples’ access to study in future.

“That would really significantly damage peoples’ ability to get into uni, because you’re not only saying we’re not admitting you, but we’re also not going to give you the opportunity to prove that you can upskill yourselves,” he says. “We want [the University] to keep offering those sorts of opportunities.”

The implications of managed enrolments

David Do, Co-President of the New Zealand Union of Students’ Association, believes universities are being forced to manage enrolments because “the government has chosen not to properly invest in higher education.

“This is another symptom of the government failing to properly support increased demand for higher education, and failing to support access to those who need education and upskilling at this time,” he says. “Capped funding is leading to institutions shutting their doors to new enrolments.”

Do points out that managed enrolment will increase competition between secondary school students for entry into universities. This, he says, will widen the gap between “the haves and have-nots—those who went to well-off schools and those who [didn’t]”. He also notes that “academic performance at a university is not necessarily correlated with high school performance”, but ranking systems such as the GES “will shut out potential high achievers”.

“The moves away from open-entry—a system that gave all suitably qualified New Zealanders a fair go—mean that thousands of potential students nationwide have been affected. Maori and Pasifika students… and workers looking to upskill are among those who may miss out.”

While Matt Huntington of Universities New Zealand allows that “the demand for places in our universities is much greater than the number of EFTS the government will fund”, he points out that universities set their own criteria for selection into programmes.

“Note that not all universities are going this route [of managed enrolment].”

For this reason, Hardy wants Victoria to justify its management of enrolments more fully.

“The University’s argument is that each individual student costs money, and if they don’t get more money from the government as they enrol more students, the quality of education will decline,” he says. “We want the University to substantiate that—to actually explain to us how much extra students will cost, rather than just saying, ‘We can’t enrol extra students because it costs too much’, which we don’t accept as a full justification.”

Figures suggest, however, managed enrolments are inevitable, for at least the next few years. A Ministry of Education study, entitled Future demand for tertiary education in New Zealand: 2009 to 2025 and beyond, anticipated in June 2009 that demand was likely to increase in future—not only due to the recession (and associated unemployment and reduced labour market opportunities), but also because of population growth.

“I think demand is projected to increase over the next two years, but it may well drop after that—it fluctuates,” Hardy says. “The recession is used a lot as the reason why, but the two biggest indicators are how many 18- and 19-year-olds there are, and how many people finish seventh form the year before.”

Hardy is right: the study predicts a decline in the number of 18- and 19-year-olds after 2012, which will affect numbers of students enrolling into bachelors-level study. It also explored the potential of managed enrolments:

“If demand for places in tertiary providers increase and this demand is not met… competition will increase for those places that are available… Alternatively, higher standards may be used to reduce student numbers progressing to the next year of study. If this does occur, there are implications for equity of access to tertiary education and the longer-term prospects of increasing New Zealand’s human capital.”

This last point aligns with Hardy’s concerns.

“We think that a university education is a public good—it’s a right. Education is a right for every New Zealander, and tertiary education is one of the ways that we grow as a country, and we bring people out of poverty,” he says.

“Some people would prefer to go towards a more elite system, which doesn’t treat education as a right for everybody. Particularly as tertiary education is paid out of everybody’s taxes—we should all have a right to access it. So I think the big problem is that you’re taking away people’s opportunities to aspire to tertiary education, and that’s a really sad thing.”

The government’s refusal to fund increasing demand for places has put universities in an awkward situation: increase admission requirements and be thought elitist, or allow all comers and foot the bill. It’s clear that the management of enrolments, as contentious as it might be, is an inescapable reality for most tertiary education providers in New Zealand—and until the sector receives considerably more financial support, it’s likely to remain as such for some time.

Graffiti and street art has many forms. We’ve all seen the ‘unsightly’ marks—’FTP’ and others—tagged across public walls and buildings, as well as the colourful, multilayered pieces that are hard not to admire for their skill, if not inaccessibility. The layperson often likes to draw distinctions between this ‘artistic’ graffiti, and tagging. But is this distinction shared amongst graffiti and street artists themselves?

Dr Fiona Hutton is a senior lecturer in criminology at Victoria University. Recently she and colleagues Joanne Cox and Mike Rowe undertook a study analysing New Zealand attitudes towards tagging and graffiti for the Ministry of Justice. She contends that tagging is seen as distinct from other markings and images.

“Very broadly, tagging is seen as a nuisance by other graffiti artists as it often ruins their work. Tagging is associated with little artistic skill or merit. Graffiti art on the other hand is appreciated by those involved in graffiti (and others) for its artistic skill and the effort made to place it, for example, in high, inaccessible places.”

Mr X—as we will call him—claims a number of friends involved in Wellington’s street art scene. He agrees with Hutton’s analysis.

“People have what is called a tag. Like maybe [my friend] ‘BMD’—that’s his [street] name. But BMD doesn’t go around to put BMD up. He puts up a graphic, really artistic piece, and then puts BMD next to it so that he can gain notoriety and recognition. But it’s not his tag that is the sole thing he goes out to put up on a wall—it’s his art. These guys do street art… whereas the other tagging is just shitty, territorial marks.”

Dr April Henderson works in Victoria University’s Pacific Studies department. Her research includes extensive ethnographic work among local “writers”—practicioners of graffiti forms that developed as part of New York and Philadelphia street culture in the 1970s and 1980s that were subsequently exported globally. While limiting her comments within this tradition, she sees things less simplistically.

“People [outside the graffiti community] will say ‘tagging is bad, but those really colourful, artistic-looking things over on Hanson Street—those are OK.’ I’m inclined to reject the ‘art/not art’ binary that this classification presumes. Anyone who’s ever seen a tagger’s notebooks will realise the incredible amount of time and energy that usually goes in to developing how their tag will look. Tags can be just as governed by aesthetic principles as large-scale pieces, even if those principles are less obvious to someone who’s not literate in them,” she explains.

“That said, among writers themselves—people who are literate in these forms—distinctions are made all the time between ‘style-ly’ tags and ‘crap tags,’ between ‘dope pieces’ and ‘wack’ ones! That’s another aspect that people in wider society often fail to realise: that is, within the specific graffiti traditions I’m talking about, there exists fierce internal critique and certain codes amongst writers. For example, writers should only go over another writer’s work if what they’re doing is better than what was there, or if the previous piece has already had a long run. Thus, putting a simpler tag over a more intricate piece will cause frustration and anger, but the creator of the piece may not be categorically opposed to a well-executed tag elsewhere.”

Mr X agrees that there are various styles of graffiti and intense rivalry and scrutiny amongst proponents of these forms.

“There are different groups, you know, cliques that roll together. Guys that have a particular style that they appreciate—but they don’t appreciate other styles—and they will find people with a similar view or outlook on street art. They will work together, and maybe cross out another group’s stuff. They will become an expressly formed crew.
“They’ll say [another group’s work is] shit, make some yarn that it’s objectively worse than their stuff. But realistically, they subjectively view their style as superior to the other one… but if you get crossed out it is a huge sign of disrespect and people get real barred up.”

The stereotypes and the truth

According to Henderson, people who write graffiti come from all backgrounds and the stereotype that graffiti artists are poor, brown, and likely to become criminals is misconstrued.

“I’ve conducted interviews with a wide variety of people who variously describe themselves as writers, aerosol artists, and taggers, and they are very diverse in terms of class background, race and ethnicity, and gender,” she says.

“I’ve recorded stories from pakeha writers who recount how police treat them leniently, and presume that they must have permission to be painting the wall, but the same police officers harass Maori and Pacific writers even when they do have permission… so the threat that people may feel when they encounter graffiti probably has some kind of relationship—whether people are conscious of it or not—to a set of racialised and class-based anxieties.”

And while writers come from a range of backgrounds, their reasons for marking the urban landscape are equally diverse. Graffiti is not necessarily a spontaneous outcry from the disenchanted, downtrodden and dispossessed.

“While it’s popular to think of taggers as youth who’ve gone off the rails and strayed from parental control, I know a tagger here in Wellington who is the child of an anarchist and clearly and articulately explains his tagging within a narrative of generational continuity, where he and his parent share a view that is anti-establishment. So for him, it is about a political stance (or a rejection of politics). But for others, it can purely be about falling in love with letters; the way they slope and curve and dance and lean.”

Mr X believes that the common canvas of the street provides the opportunity for an artist to expose their work more widely.

“I think it’s just another medium. You know, it’s quite difficult to get a large number of people to see your art.”

Linked to this is sometimes the desire for fame and notoriety. However street art produces a unique kind of celebrity, says Henderson.

“What I think is so interesting about tagging and graffiti writers, is that it is a very different type of fame than what is sought by all these aspiring pop stars on idol shows, because it largely remains an anonymous fame. The writer’s marks acquire fame—or infamy. Their artistic nom de plume acquires a reputation, but they could walk down the street and no one would recognise them.”

Mr X notes that this anonymity means that even acquaintances are sometimes unaware of each other’s aliases.

“There is an underground street art community and it’s a mixture of people who have mutual respect and dislike for each other. So there are a lot of guys who appreciate other people’s work. For example my mate whose street name is ‘Whiskey’—I introduced him to my other friend who was BMD. They knew of each other, but they didn’t know that each other was ‘Whiskey’ and ‘BMD.’ When they found out it was like man-love collected right there, and out of nowhere, ‘Oh my god?—Yeah, yeah!’ and then they were boys. They started going out and doing missions together, climbing into really hard to access places and helping each other put up their work.”

The dangers and the boundaries

One night in late January 2008, Bruce Emery—a middle-aged, overweight, and deeply religious father of three—caught 15-year old Pihema Cameron and another youth spray-painting his garage. Enraged, he grabbed a 13 cm knife, and chased the youths 350 metres down the road. When Emery reached the youths, a verbal altercation ensued. Emery responded by stabbing the stoned and drunk Cameron through the right side of his chest, and then left him in the street to die. He went home, washed and secreted his knife, and said nothing to his wife and children.

Mr Emery’s trial captivated New Zealand and aroused debate about graffiti and tagging like nothing seen before. Despite the severity of the offence, many people supported Emery’s right to protect his property and labelled Cameron a ‘criminal’ deserving of this punishment. Others expressed shock that a superficial marking could provoke someone to kill another person.

Emery received four years and three months jail for manslaughter. In the trial, the judge encouraged the jury to consider the partial defence of provocation—the same defence abolished since its controversial use in the trial of Clayton Weatherston, and regularly used in cases of heterosexual men ‘snapping’ after sexual advances from other men. The defence was rejected, suggesting—implausibly—that Emery lacked the ‘intent’ to murder Cameron. After less than a year in jail, Emery received home detention and now lives only blocks away from the family whose son he killed for spray-painting his garage.

Why does graffiti, and tagging in particular, generate such emotion among New Zealanders? The visually confronting and personal nature of tagging, its relationship with private property, and its association with societal decline may all contribute to strong feelings of intrusion, Henderson says.

“Clearly, visibility is the point of graffiti, but the visibility of the mark combined with the invisibility of the person who left it can contribute to powerful senses of anxiety and threat for some people. Graffiti indicates that private property cannot be completely protected; thus, in a capitalist society where the protection of private property is paramount, it becomes for some people a lexical sign of disorder and social decay.”

This is linked to a disruption of the presumed ‘natural’ framework of accepted urban practice.

“Anthropologist Mary Douglas introduced a concept, “matter out of place”, to conceptualise the way we classify things according to whether they are in proper relationship to other things. So, for example, tomato sauce in its container is not dirty, but your shirt is dirty if it’s got tomato sauce spilled on it: in this case, tomato sauce on your shirt is ‘matter out of place’,” Henderson says.

“Why is it so offensive to see a big tag at the bus stop, but nobody thinks twice about a big advertisement? We seem to have little choice about that, because the advertisers have paid somebody to put their sign up: their matter is ‘in place’ because it fits within the relational framework of capitalistic logic. Tagging, or a big well-executed throw-up, on the other hand, is ‘writing out of place’ because the writer did not pay somebody to put it there.”

Media Studies lecturer Dr Geoff Stahl has written in-depth on urban semiotics. He agrees that subversiveness of graffiti depends on its relationship with urban space and the accepted boundaries of that space.

Stahl says Wellington is a “profoundly middle-class city” that permits a certain kind of creativity, in certain places.

“Street art is tolerated—you can go to down to Leftbank, various laneways, and you can find street art, though it may not last very long… people see these kinds of places like privileged nooks and crannies where these kinds of statements are tolerated. Whereas if tagging finds its way out into the public eye in other words, it’s not accepted.

“Think about places like Cuba Mall, or Courtenay Place, or places in Newtown or elsewhere… they have a particular kind of function. Cuba Mall is a commercial strip that tolerates a certain set of sub-cultural practices… What tagging does is call into question what the limits of acceptable practice on Cuba Mall are. Among the other things like not walking your dog, tagging is one of those things that kind of disrupts the accepted [practice].”

What ‘accepted practice’ is can vary from city to city and may be informed by the history, politics and socio-economic atmosphere of a given setting.

“I think the context is [everything],” Stahl says. “There are certain cities that have set up places where you can put graffiti, tags, street art. Melbourne is a good example in terms of the kind of laneway culture that exists there that tolerates street art, and in many ways kind of celebrates street art. You go to a city like Berlin, where every single building is tagged—you can’t escape the tagging. It’s part of its charm—it’s kind of decrepit in a way. Whereas Wellington… it doesn’t do decrepit very well.”

Recently, the Wellington City Council painted over a graffiti memorial to dead Joy Division singer Ian Curtis. It had stood as a feature in Mt Cook for 28 years. Instead of being welcomed, the whitewash was met with outrage among some residents. Stahl notes that what was once subversive can become part of the texture of the city.

“History plays a role in naturalising and neutralising graffiti in a sense. It gains the patina of age, which in a way kind of makes it part of the urban fabric; it recedes into the background. And people felt quite offended by the Ian Curtis statement sort of being erased. So it does become part of the visual landscape in a way in the sense that it just recedes into the larger streetscape.”

The voices

Despite their impact on the urban space, street artists are rarely given a voice to influence the management of such space or dictate the accepted practice, says Stahl.

“Look at the way particular views are presented in the media. It’s not necessarily the point of view of the taggers or graffiti artists. They’re not going to be interviewed—most people don’t know who they are; they’re not known quantities. Whereas it is the property owners—the shop owners and everything else—who have the privilege of speaking about these sorts of things. So this becomes the dominant view in a way,” he says.

“[Street artists] either can’t, or are unable to, or are not allowed to [present their views]. It’s very rare that they enter into discussions about how we should be conducting ourselves in public space and how we should be making use of public space.”

Henderson points to the development of Waitangi Park as a lost opportunity to incorporate—in a more substantial way—the views of graffiti artists. Its predecessor, Chaffers Park, had been treated as a legal graffiti spot by both the Council and artists. She observes that it “was… [a] place where young people could go, safely, and work on their art form so that they were capable of doing more than just tags.”

Despite attempts to influence the development of the new park, graffiti artists were largely ignored.

“Some of the people that painted at Chaffers, particularly Triple S Crew, actively petitioned the City Council to incorporate legal walls in the redesigned Waitangi Park. Again, this is an example that defies the common presumptions about graffiti writers as anti-civic menaces: this particular crew was actively engaged in the civic process, making submissions, speaking eloquently in community fora. Despite all this, when the model for the redesigned park was finally displayed, there were no legal walls in it,” Henderson explains.

“Whether by accident or design, they’d been dropped from the model. At this point, that same crew, and some others, went to the media in a last ditch effort to draw attention to their cause. What resulted was the two small legal walls you see at Waitangi Park now—a tiny fraction of the old wall space.”

However, some forms of street art are being encouraged within an accepted framework dictated by the community. In Nelson, the annual Arts Festival is incorporating an “Oi You” urban art competition into its 2010 programme. Participants can enter one of two categories—school-aged children or open entry—and are encouraged to draw inspiration from a style of street art synonymised with artists like Banksy and Faile. The best artwork in each category will be exhibited in a “playfully distorted street-scape” in a local Nelson park (see http://streetart.co.nz).

This form of street art—given widespread publicity over the internet and through Banksy’s recent documentary-movie Exit Through the Gift Shop—is sometimes seen in a different light. Pointing to places like Melbourne and Brooklyn, Stahl says that this art is perceived as containing a certain kind of value in that, “it seems to be contributing to, rather than detracting from,” the visual culture of the city.

By channelling the energies of artists, communities can direct street art into ‘appropriate’ avenues and negotiate the accepted practice within the urban space. From Stahl’s perspective, “it kind of inoculates the threat. [This form of] street art has now sort of been institutionalised in a way.”

Whether its forms are guided into these ‘proper’ venues within the city, or left to disrupt the ‘natural’ framework, street art in all its forms will remain a feature of the urban landscape. People will remain bound by emotion in this issue—some to ‘protect’ against feelings of intrusion and to safeguard their property, others to defend an aletrnative medium of expression. Artists will continue to articulate their views upon the cityscape.

And of course, the marks will endure.

“I want to have your adopted babies!” cries Wallace Wells, Kieran Culkin’s character in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, at a (straight) celebrity. That’s not a line you’d have heard in a mainstream action-comedy flick 20 years ago—and 60 years ago, it’s unlikely that the openly gay Wells would have been on screen at all.

60 years ago society favoured the nuclear family, consisting of a heterosexual married couple, living out in the ’burbs with their 2.5 children and a golden retriever. Modern families don’t necessarily reflect that anymore—if, indeed, they ever did. Two years ago, teachers in the United Kingdom were warned against assuming that all their pupils had a ‘mummy’ and a ‘daddy’; last month, actress Jennifer Aniston enraged FOX News host Bill O’Reilly by pointing out that women no longer “have to fiddle with a man” to have a child; recently, Gossip vocalist Beth Ditto announced her plans to start a family with her girlfriend next year. Today, family units are varied and non-uniform—and attitudes within the media and wider society are rapidly starting to reflect that fact.

Legislation has been slower to catch up. New Zealand’s adoption laws are almost 60 years old, and still largely operate under the assumption that a heterosexual married couple is the only fit unit to raise a child. Under the Adoption Act 1955, a couple can only make a joint application to adopt a child if they are ‘spouses’, which is normally interpreted to mean married. Not only does this rule out civil-unionised heterosexual couples, as well as those in de facto relationships, it also effectively means that same-sex couples are unable to adopt a child together. Individuals can adopt (although single men are not allowed to adopt girls), but de facto, civil-unionised and same-sex couples cannot both be recognised in law as their adopted child’s parents.

“The irony, of course, is that a single man or a lesbian woman is allowed to adopt, but two gay men or two lesbian women can’t,” remarks Tony Simpson, chair of Rainbow Wellington. “That seems to us to be remarkably silly.”

Dean Knight, a senior lecturer at Victoria University’s Faculty of Law and an Associate Director of the New Zealand Centre for Public Law, puts it bluntly: “The law at the moment is a dog’s breakfast. “Everyone knows that our model of a family has changed and become more diverse. The law has got to be updated.”

As Simpson points out, the question is whether the Act should be amended, or replaced altogether. While he allows that there’s “no question” that the legislation needs a complete overhaul (“and I think it’s something that the Law Commission should get its teeth into as soon as it can”), Simpson believes the Act could be extended to include same-sex couples “without too much difficulty”.

He is referring to a precedent-setting adoption case at the High Court in Wellington last month, AMM and KJO, in which Victoria University’s senior law lecturer Claudia Geiringer successfully applied the word ‘spouse’ to one half of a de facto couple. This was the first time the Act’s use of the words ‘spouse’ and ‘couple’ had been understood to refer to anything other than someone in a heterosexual marriage: a small step, but a step nonetheless, in a debate that has made little progress in over five decades.

“The judgement of the High Court makes the point very clearly that, when the Marriage Act was first put together, the meaning of ‘spouse’ had a particular social connotation, which it now no longer has,” notes Simpson. “I would suggest that without doing too much—if any—damage to the language, you could easily extend that meaning to encompass [same-sex couples].”

The issues with the Act

Andrew Geddis is an Associate Professor of Law at Otago University, and blogs on legal matters for Pundit.co.nz. He agrees that the current Adoption Act is “hopelessly outdated”.

“Everyone who has looked at it, including the Law Commission, agrees on this point,” he says. “It’s not just the gay adoption point—that’s actually a bit of a side wind—but rather, the Act’s inability to cope with the variety of changing family arrangements that are a part of modern New Zealand.”

In other words, the Act is inflexible, despite dealing with a matter that calls for a certain level of leeway—as Green MP Kevin Hague points out.

“Nowadays, people talk a lot about open adoption, and how this is a much more healthy process than how adoption used to be done, and that sort of thing,” says Hague. “All of that’s true, except open adoption—where children maintain relationships with their biological parents—actually happens by almost circumventing the law.

“[Open adoption] is not something that the law provides for; it’s entirely a construction that has been put in place because the law is inadequate.”

Geddis points out that the Act also discriminates on a basis of marital status, family status and sexual orientation.

“All of these are prohibited grounds of discrimination under section 21 of the Human Rights Act 1993,” he says. “Note that you also have a right not to be discriminated against by the State under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, which was the basis of the recent High Court decision in AMM and KJO.

“Basically, unless you are a married (hence, straight) couple—or, now, a straight de facto couple—you are not allowed to jointly adopt a child, even if you are qualified on every other criteria. That’s discrimination, pure and simple.”

Human Rights Commissioner Joy Liddicoat has 16 years’ legal experience across the public, private and community sectors. She says that the Commission believes same-sex couples should have the same rights and related responsibilities to adopt children as heterosexual couples do.

“Kevin Hague is right to say that the current Adoption Act does not reflect a modern human rights approach,” she says. “We are on public record as saying that the Adoption Act needs to be amended. So, too, is the Law Commission.”

Liddicoat points out that a growing number of jurisdictions, such as the Supreme Court of Mexico, are ruling in favour of same-sex adoption.

“It is unfortunate that [the ruling in AMM and KJO] did not take the opportunity to extend its interpretation of the law, as courts in other countries have done,” she says. “States including Iceland, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom allow same-sex couples to adopt children jointly; Denmark, Germany and Norway permit one lesbian or gay partner to adopt the other’s children.”

Making progress

In August 2009, Hague attempted to revive the private member’s bill that his colleague, Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei, had submitted to Parliament in 2006.

“What it did was specifically expand the definition of ‘spouse’ or ‘couple’ to include de facto couples and couples with a civil union,” Hague says. “That would have had the effect of opening up adoption options to include de facto heterosexual couples; heterosexual couples in civil unions; and same-sex couples—either de facto, or with civil unions.”

When Hague’s bill was not drawn in the parliamentary ballot process, he withdrew it.

“It became apparent to me that there were many, many issues with the 1955 Act, so the just thing to do was to actually address those problems comprehensively—rather than just pick off one issue,” he says. “It was also a practical approach, because the reality is, we could go through all of the processes trying to change this one aspect, and then find that… the whole Act is swept away [later on], anyway.”

Hague now heads a cross-party group of MPs that is working to address the Act’s shortcomings. “The reason for taking this approach is to really try to remove that political point-scoring from this area,” he says. “Adoption inevitably raises really deep and powerful emotional responses, and that can leave people feeling very vulnerable… So there’s huge potential, in discussing adoption, for people to be re-victimised.

“The other frustration is that sort of political point-scoring, or fear of it, is a recipe for inaction.”

Hague points out that the last Labour government, which was in power when the Law Commission filed its report on the Care of Children Act 2004, implemented most of the Commission’s recommendations, but not the one about revisiting the Adoption Act.

“I think part of the reason for that was that Labour was anxious to avoid a fight with National over the issue, and so I want to try an approach that removes that fear of a fight—so that we actually do this with goodwill towards the issue and a preparedness to work together.”

The group first aims to pinpoint the issues with the current Act, and to then explore potential options for addressing them. The best of these will inevitably end up as some form of legislation, although Hague doubts that this will happen before the next election (“it will take as long as it does”).

“It could end up being in a bill that gets adopted by the Government, or it could be a member’s bill that goes in the ballot,” says Hague. “There is also an option that it’s a member’s bill that is allowed to circumvent the ballot, by the leave of the House, so any of those could be the result of this process.”

Hague points out that the cross-party group “has MPs from most parties with an interest in it”, and so, regardless of whoever is in Government at the time he sets about presenting his findings, “they’ll have been involved in the process.

“This is the way to maximally plan for actually getting the legislation through the guards of the Government.”

A contrasting viewpoint

As much as revising the Adoption Act seems to be a commonsense decision, some are against extending adoption options to de facto, civil-unionised and same-sex couples. Bob McCoskrie, of Family First, is of the opinion that only married heterosexual couples should be allowed to adopt.

“It’s not just a gay adoption issue for us.

“At the end of the day, adoption is not about providing a child to a family—it’s about providing a family to a child. And I think the problem with this whole debate is that it’s been taken from an adult perspective [on] adult-centred policies: that it’s about the rights of adults, and we say, no, it’s actually about the rights of children, and what’s in their best interests.”

He points to a “huge quantity of research [and] studies” that shows the stability of the married couple exceeds that of other familial units.

“The research shows that it’s the best environment for a child to be raised,” he says. “We think we should be promoting best practice, and marriage is shown to be the best practice. It’s not perfect, but it’s better by far than other comparisons.”

McCoskrie is quick to point out that not all heterosexual married couples make good adoptive parents.

“Of course, you still do that test of character—no doubt about that. We’re not just saying because they’ve got a marriage licence, they’ve passed Adoption 101.”

However, he believes that to change the legislation to include de facto or same-sex couples would be to add to the “issue with fatherlessness and motherlessness”.

“Nature—which requires a man and a woman for procreation—discloses something of the purpose of nature; that a child’s best interests are served by having a mother and father.”

McCoskrie argues that it is misleading to approach the issue on grounds of discrimination.

“We already discriminate: Child, Youth and Family doesn’t allow single men to adopt girls; couples can’t adopt under the age of 25; adults in [polygamic] relationships can’t adopt; and an adult with a record of violence can’t adopt either.

“You can’t say, look, this policy is discriminating, as we already discriminate,” he says. “We’re doing it based on the best interests of the child… and unfortunately, this whole debate around gay adoption has an adult-centred focus at the moment.”

So McCoskrie believes that the 1955 Act should remain in place?

“It should be tightened up, actually,” he replies. “It’s far too loose. [AMM and KJO] suggested that it’s not just married couples; it can be de facto.

“It’s a very… interesting case,” he says, with a rueful laugh. “But no, we would say draw a line in the sand, and keep it at what was the original intention—which was a married couple.

“So there we are: there’s a bit of a contrast for you, isn’t it!”

The future of adoption in New Zealand

While the ruling in AMM and KJO reignited the issue of New Zealand’s adoption legislation, Knight doubts that the High Court will “be able to make any more tweaks to the law, even if gay couples and civil union couples come knocking on the door.

“The ball is now back in Parliament’s court.”

Justice Minister Simon Power, however, has made it clear that he does not consider reworking the 1955 Act to be on his agenda.

“If the Justice Minister isn’t interested in reform legislation, then it is likely the courts will continue to be asked to revisit the issue,” says Geddis. “As was seen in AMM and KJO, the courts can, and sometimes will, rework statutes to make them work in changing social circumstances. That’s not ideal—Parliament really should have this job—but it’s unavoidable if our MPs aren’t acting.” It looks likely, therefore, that the work of Hague’s cross-party group will be key to any potential reform of New Zealand’s adoption legislation—and that could take some time. However, Hague argues, it needs to be done.

“The Act fossilises the views of society in 1955, and those values have moved on,” he says simply. The ‘current’ Adoption Act is tailored to an understanding of family that is no longer relevant—if, indeed, it ever was, as Simpson notes.

“I grew up in the era to which [McCoskrie] tends to hark back to, and believe me, the arrangements that constituted families were myriad, in my experience,” he says. “You had everything under the sun, really.”

Even disregarding its inconsistency with society, the Act is not entirely effectual from a purely legal perspective, as Geddis points out.

“Why isn’t it in a child’s best interests to have two loving adults, wanting to parent that child, in an ongoing, stable relationship?” he asks. “After all, it isn’t a question of whether gay people should or shouldn’t be parents at all: they already can be and are.

“It’s a question of whether a gay couple should both be recognised as the legal parents of a child—or if only one of them can be recognised as such, while the other is simply a ‘guardian’ of the child, with lesser legal rights, and all the confusion, instability and uncertainty that this creates.”

In this day and age, anything goes in terms of familial units, and it seems illogical to further complicate the process of adoption with out-of-date and immovable legislation. Whether McCoskrie likes it or not, the 1955 Act no longer reflects societal values, and the consensus seems to be that that will have to change—and sooner, rather than later.

Everyone loves a success story, and in the New Zealand arts community, there’s no greater one than that of the Montana World of WearableArt™ Awards Show.

The idea for the now-iconic shows was conceived by Nelson sculptor Suzie Moncrieff. In 1987, she decided to exhibit art on human bodies as an innovative form of promotion for a rural art gallery, in which she was a co-op member. Combined with elements of theatre and dance, the result was a never-seen-before blend of art and fashion—and WOW® was born.

“In those early days, I suspect nobody had any idea of where WOW® was headed,” says Mike Ward, a Nelson-based former Green Party politician, whose hand-painted creation The Emperor’s Entourage won the competition’s prestigious Supreme Award in 2005.

Certainly, it would have been hard to predict the measure of success that WOW® would go on to find. Today—23 years after its humble debut—WOW® is a major event in design, fashion and costume calendars worldwide, attracting over 300 entries from across the globe each year. The annual award shows, now held here in Wellington, contribute a huge amount to the city’s economy and tourism industry; in fact, a study by McDermott Miller for the Wellington City Council estimated that the Montana World of WearableArt™ Awards Show in 2009 gave rise to just over $15 million of new spending.

“The biggest winners are retailers, who see close to $5 million of that,” says David Perks, chief executive of Positively Wellington Tourism.

“Accommodation-wise, Wellington is close to capacity throughout the WOW® awards season, and hoteliers and the like take in somewhere around $4 million as a result of the shows. The hospitality sector sees about $3.5 million through its tills.”

McDermott Miller’s research also indicated that 65 per cent of the Montana World of WearableArt™ Awards Shows’ audiences in 2009 travelled from outside the Wellington region exclusively to see the event. “So we’re looking at well over 20,000 [visitors],” Perks points out.

Clearly, then, it’s hard to argue with WOW®’s popularity. What is less straightforward is the show itself—a fact that its brand and strategy manager Donna Ching acknowledges.

“It’s true—it is hard to describe!” she says.

“One of our biggest strengths as a brand internationally is that we’re so unique, but it can also be our biggest weakness when you’re trying to describe it, as it really needs to be seen to be believed…”

This year’s World of WearableArt™ shows will be the eleventh that Ching has worked on. Her involvement with WOW® began in 2000, when Moncrieff and competition director Heather Palmer asked Ching to be a part of the show’s full-time management team.

“At this stage, the show was a three-night event with a total audience of 7,500, and we had no permanent home or base,” remembers Ching.

“The main appeal was the commitment, vision, and shared fun of working alongside two inspiring people. It was really a passion for me, and I never thought about it from a career or financial perspective.

“You can’t experience anything quite like WOW® anywhere else in the world,” Ching continues.

“I love the quote from Bob Haven, professor in Costume Technology at Kentucky University in the United States, who, after his first experience of entering WOW®, said, ‘athletes have the Olympics; actors have the Oscars; musicians have the Grammys; and designers and costume creators have WOW®’.”

Unlike those honours, however, WOW® isn’t exclusive. As the competition is open-entry (and judging is ‘blind’), a butcher, a baker, or even… well, a former politician has just as much chance of winning the Supreme Award as a professional costume designer does. However, the standard of entries is high: to be successful in the competition, a design has to have visual impact on a 40-metre arena stage, as well as demonstrate a high quality of workmanship—in other words, a work of art with the WOW® factor.

Room to grow

Thanks to the passion and perseverance of Moncrieff, Palmer, Ching and the rest of the team, WOW® soon outgrew Nelson. In 2005, WOW® management decided to move the awards shows to Wellington, as part of a four-year contract with the Wellington City Council.

“Certainly, we believe that Wellington was the natural and right step for the show to take in its journey to reach an international audience,” says Perks.

“Since their first year in Wellington they have increased their audience size by over 30 per cent.”

This decision was hotly contested by Nelsonians. Those who had supported WOW® since its infancy saw it as a uniquely Nelson experience—and moving it across the Cook Strait was perceived as a slight to the city in which it had flourished.

While Ward allows that the move to Wellington “opened up more possibilities” for WOW®, he points out that, as home to the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the New Zealand Ballet and Sir Peter Jackson’s movie-making, Wellington “might be expected to produce ‘spectacular’”.

“Call me parochial,” says Ward, “but I like to think WOW® presented as an even more remarkable achievement—and a more intimate experience—against the backdrop of a modest provincial city, and that it would have continued to develop had it stayed here.

“The move was a great loss to Nelson, and in fact, came as a shock to most Nelsonians. If the city thought that there was any chance of getting it back, I believe it would [endeavour to].”

Ching maintains that WOW® had to move to Wellington if the brand was to develop both commercially and creatively, as it had “outgrown the infrastructure of a smaller city”.

“Nelson had nurtured this event—and we’re so proud of our Nelson roots—but the event had to grow for it to continue to be successful, and Wellington was the natural choice…

“The full-time WOW® team are based in Nelson—we’re a bit like a travelling circus, and move to Wellington for the three-week period of the shows,” she says.

“So the show is still effectively produced out of Nelson.”

Nelson is also recognised at the competition’s home throughout the year, due to the WearableArt™ & Classic Cars Museum, in which a selection of successful entries in the competition are displayed.

“Often, the first experiences international people have of WOW® is the Museum, and they get inspired to enter or see the show,” says Ching.

“There’s a really nice cross-promotional opportunity between Nelson and Wellington—the show promotes the Museum in Nelson, and the Museum promotes the Wellington show.”

Opening doors

Of course, WOW® is more than just a spectacle for tourists and a cash-cow for councils. Entering WOW® presents designers and creative types with the chance to challenge themselves—as well as the opportunity to make contacts in a competitive industry. In the case of 24-year-old Claire Prebble, her success in WOW® led her directly to Richard Taylor’s Weta Workshop.

Having entered WOW® 14 times, Prebble—who grew up in Golden Bay—is a comparative veteran of the competition. She gave up on conventional schooling at the age of 13 in order to pursue alternative forms of education, which allowed her more time with which to pursue her passion.

“I got involved at a really young age, and I just really, really enjoyed entering each year,” she recalls.

“I got a real buzz from seeing my costumes up on stage, and meeting all the other artists.”

She did not struggle to come up with ideas for entries.

“Sometimes I’d just have a visual idea, and I’d have to figure out a way to make it happen,” she says.

“There might’ve been some years where I’d get stuck and have to think quite a lot about what I was going to make, but that wasn’t very often… Sometimes, I’ll have ideas for costumes, and they’ll be there for years and years—it’s just a matter of when is the right time to do them.”

In 2004, aged 18, Prebble became the youngest-ever recipient of the Supreme Award for her creation Eos, which was made of sterling silver wire, copper wire, beads and silk. In order to achieve a striking stage presence, she paid particular attention to extending the design’s wings, ram’s horns, and train.

“She was a real visual thing for me, and then I came up with the concept of what she meant,” says Prebble.

“I found out that Eos was the Greek goddess of the dawn, and that worked really well, because I worked on her so many nights ‘til dawn… It all just sort of—fell together.”

Prebble used her winnings to travel for six months, in order to broaden her knowledge of international approaches to design.

“I’d been itching to travel for so many years; it was something that I really wanted to do,” she says.

“Growing up in Golden Bay, it’s only, like, 5,000 people—so I’d never even really used public transport!

“It was a huge learning curve, and probably one of the best things I’ve ever done.”

Prebble met Sir Richard Taylor of Weta Workshop through WOW®.

“I just kept in touch with him, and a couple of years later—maybe in 2006 or 2007—I was up in Wellington for the Montana World of WearableArt™ Awards Show, and I asked him if there were any projects going on,” she remembers.

“I was actually interested in being involved in Halo, but he said—well, there’s this project happening, and if you want the job, you can start tomorrow. So I flew home, and packed my bags, and came back up, and that was my 21st birthday.”

That job turned out to be designing costumes and weapons for James Cameron’s blockbuster, Avatar. Prebble worked on the movie for nearly three years, basing herself both in New Zealand and the States.

As an independent contractor, Prebble is employed to work as and when she is needed: “I keep busy with my own bits and pieces,” she says.

“Jewellery, costume work, fashion, a little bit of teaching… I get up to a real mixture of things.

“I’ve got something else on at the moment, and I’m putting all my energy into that—it’s a personal project, a costume that I’ve been thinking about for the past five years, and I’ve finally got the time to make it.”

For this reason, Prebble has not entered WOW® this year, although she has nothing but praise for the competition.

“The whole impact of the show is so spectacular and over-the-top, and it just creates such a wonderful atmosphere,” she enthuses. “It gave me such a buzz [to enter]. And it was so wonderful to meet a whole bunch of creative people who were so into it as well, and so encouraging. That would be what it’s about for me, really.”

A practical application

22-year-old Emma Whiteside graduated with a Bachelor of Industrial Design with Honours in 2009. That same year, she entered Queen Adelaide, a design made of recycled automotive radiator copper, into WOW®’s Shell Sustainability Award.

“I entered that year because it was my last year at university, and I still wanted to enter as a student,” she explains.

“I was a dancer growing up, so I quite liked the idea of relating performance to my design degree—and because I can’t sew, I wanted to push myself into doing something different.

“One of the main reasons I entered WOW® was because I wanted to do something outside uni, using my design skills in the real world.”

Working on Queen Adelaide during her Honours year was “an amazing amount of work.

“I was in my second-to-last semester of my final year at uni, and I was doing three papers: two industrial design core papers, and a fifth-year research [paper] that I was silly enough to take on—again, just because I wanted to push myself.

“So by doing WOW®, I took the risk of my grades going down,” she explains.

“But they turned out all right,” she adds, with a slight smile.

Whiteside started designing her entry with a medium in mind: scraps of automotive radiator copper, which she gathered from a factory in Auckland.

“My parents used to own the factory, so I grew up playing around with this material when I was little, and I really wanted to use it,” she says.

“I’d also used the material to make a light in my second year at university, so I knew it’d work really well with stage lights going into it.”

She used aluminium hoops as a framework for a fabric dress, which the copper parts were then sewn onto. Working with fabric was a “huge challenge” for her.

“When I started putting the dress together and it wasn’t even holding itself up—that was a big problem,” she says.

“I was going to give up then. And the next time that I thought it wasn’t going to work out was at 4 o’ clock in the morning before it was supposed to be sent, and I was still sewing copper onto the dress!”

To be eligible for the Shell Sustainability award, an entry has to be made of at least 85 per cent recycled materials. Whiteside reinforced the visual spectacle of her design with a strong and relevant concept.

“The reason I called it Queen Adelaide was because Queen Adelaide was quite a resourceful queen—she didn’t like spending public money, so at her coronation, she decided to take out all the jewels of her old crown and put them into her new one. She was sort of the ‘recycling queen’.”

Whiteside’s success in WOW® opened a number of doors for her: most notably, she was commissioned to build a giant bamboo globe for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which was then exhibited at Te Papa. At the moment, however, she is focusing on developing her newly-minted furniture and lighting design business, which she has started with a fellow design graduate.

Whiteside believes WOW®’s appeal lies in its lack of elitism: “It’s not biased, there’s no hierarchy about whether you’re a professional or not… anyone can enter. That’s the thing that captures designers to enter.

“And for the spectators… it’s the fact that it’s not just a fashion show on a catwalk. It’s more like a circus, or a whole theatre production. That’s what keeps people coming back every year.”

Image: ‘Firebird’, Susan Holmes, Auckland. Winner of the 2009 Untouched World WOW Factor Award. Photo courtesy of World of WearableArt Ltd and edited by Salient.

The coalition between National and the Maori Party, which has endured now almost two years, is an odd relationship to say the least. The coalition deal by no means represented a sudden change of interests in the average Maori voter—for example, young Maori in particular continue to feature in disproportionate numbers in the most recent unemployment figures. This constituency is unlikely to be agitating for less government spending and lower taxes—cornerstones of the traditional National agenda.

Similarly, your average National-voting middle-class New Zealanders haven’t suddenly back flipped on their desire for a smaller government, and lower taxes. If anything, the surge in popularity following ex-National Party leader Don Brash’s ‘Nationhood’ speech in Orewa signifies that much of white “middle” New Zealand felt as though the Maori under the Labour Government had been empowered with too many rights through loose references to the Treaty of Waitangi.

So how then did this coalition come about? In a column from a July 2009 edition of The New Zealand Listener, political commentator Jane Clifton wraps it up by explaining “Labour became the No. 1 villain to much of Maoridom only because it devised and enacted the Foreshore and Seabed Act. National benefited from this by being the Maori Party’s enemy’s enemy, and therefore a strategic friend.”

From the National Party’s perspective it was also entirely strategic. With National’s two key coalition partners enjoying representation with five MPs each, the Maori Party effectively acts as a counterbalance to the ACT Party, ensuring the National Party can run a centrist agenda. It can look to the left when it needs to, and look right in alternate circumstances.

Holding the majority of seats in parliament, any relationship is undeniably going to work to the National Party’s advantage, but having said that, the Maori Party has enjoyed some policy achievements—most notably, the repeal of Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004, and the institution of the Whanau Ora programme, as allocated for in the 2010 Budget.

Seabed for the whanau? For sure!

The preeminent point of contention between the Maori Party and the previous Labour Government was the Foreshore and Seabed debate that arose in 2003. It was the Foreshore and Seabed Act—passed in 2004—that ultimately led to the formation of the Maori Party. The repeal of the act has remained a central policy for the party.

The Maori Party clearly stated in their 2008 election policy that they “oppose the Crown sale or lease of the foreshore and seabed or its resources, including mining”, and the party managed to convince National to sign on to “a review of the application of the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 to ascertain whether it adequately maintains and enhances mana whenua”.

In keeping with the Confidence and Supply Agreement, National has since agreed to repeal the act, which will no doubt be lauded as a huge victory for the Maori Party as it campaigns for the 2011 election. In a statement released in June this year, Maori Party co-leaders Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples announced: “We negotiated a review, we promised a repeal and to restore access to justice, and today we are proud to say we’ve achieved that. By working together with iwi leaders and the National Party we’ve been able to produce some significant advances”.

While the victory certainly is important for the Maori Party, the outcome of the revised legislation is likely to be less beneficial. In essence, is there really much difference between ‘Crown ownership’ and ‘public ownership’? Admittedly, that is an oversimplified analysis of the likely outcome of the revised agreement, but the Maori Party certainly hasn’t ‘gotten its way’ on this one. This is reflected in Hone Harawira’s comments: “Well, well, well … so it looks like we ain’t going to get what we wanted on the Foreshore and Seabed.”

Similarly, the Whanau Ora programme was only really a success in that it gained any funding at all in the 2010 Budget. Turia unsurprisingly heralded the announcement of funding for the plan as “A very significant day for Aotearoa. A day in which the government has placed its faith in families; a day in which the state invests in the potential of whanau.” Despite the brave face, Labour’s spokesperson for Maori Social Development and Employment Nanaia Mahuta was quick to point out that secretly, “Tariana Turia must feel a little short changed after the government decided to allocate a mere $33.5 million dollars a year for four years to fund Whanau Ora, $800 million dollars short of what she first expected”.

Columnist John Minto is perhaps most cynical about the whole Whanau Ora programme, predicting that in spite of its “aim to benefit struggling Maori families, National will it use to undermine state provision of social services and open the sector for the damages and ravages of privatisation. Maori will be the predominant losers”.

Does this relationship alienate Maori voters?

Maori voters have traditionally associated themselves with Labour, thus the coalition agreement has the potential to alienate them from the Maori Party. Moreover, while the Maori Party has achieved some of their policy goals, these appear to serve corporate Maori much more than the average Maori voter.

Jon Johansson, a Senior Lecturer in Victoria University’s Political Science programme, asks: “If you are a Maori voter in South Auckland in 2011, what are you going to do? Are you going to reward the Maori Party for its Foreshore and Seabed Act? How many busses does it take to get from South Auckland to a beach? Do you even go to a beach, let alone have any access to whatever benefits accrue from having customary title over that beach?”

From these questions come uncertainties over the future of the party. “Maori might give them a second chance, but the tension you see there between the Hone Harawiras, and the leadership in the party—and the trajectory they’ve taken the party—you can see that Hone reflects that core constituency that actually puts the party in there. The leadership will alienate the Maori electorate at their peril,” Johansson says.

If one looks at the history of party success in the Maori seats, after the introduction of MMP—when the Ratana-Labour deal broke up—New Zealand First claimed those seats. Labour then claimed them back, and while the advent of the Maori Party saw a few of the Maori seats won by that Party, Labour has managed to retain some, indicating that Maori voters don’t appear to have an automatic association with the Maori Party.

So, even though the Maori Party has achieved much of what they set out to do, recent unemployment figures reflect that the relationship hasn’t trickled down to benefit their core constituency. Alongside the fact that the Maori Party is already failing to secure the Maori vote entirely, life for many Maori under the National-Maori-ACT government may call into question the continued viability of the Maori Party.

Is white middle-class New Zealand similarly threatened?

“Only on a daily basis,” says Johansson.

“If you have ever been to a National Party conference, one of the things that really stands out is the absence of Tangata Whenua and other ethnic groups. It is still overwhelmingly a white middle-class party.”

Despite being riled by the media as racist, the most important effect of Brash’s ‘Nationhood’ speech at the Orewa Rotary Club was that it facilitated the spectacular rise in support for National. Brash spoke of what he saw as a “dangerous drift towards racial separatism in New Zealand… where the minority has a birthright to the upper hand”. Controversial as his opinion was, a lot of the public seemed to agree, and National’s standing was boosted significantly in the polls.

While Brash narrowly lost the 2005 election, his speech really did sow the seeds for the National Party’s reclamation of parliament in 2008. As such, Johansson points out “many National Party supporters would have been far happier if there had just been a straight out National-ACT coalition, because then they would have had a policy mix more conducive to why they voted for National”.

He does comment, however, that despite many National supporters’ clear distaste surrounding an agreement with the Maori Party, “the smarter people inside National understand that National can’t not be in that action, and for too many years it wasn’t—certainly during the Brash era”.

“Bill English understood the problem, but was in there at the wrong time to do anything about it, so Key has struck the right path for his party, and I think National Party supporters are willing to swallow a lot because they were out of power for nine years. They don’t want to return to that state anytime soon, so they realise the real politic and advantage that accrues from having that greater strategic flexibility.”

While there certainly is some support for Key’s decision to include the Maori Party in the arrangement as outlined, Johansson concedes, “There is still a certain amount of unrest about [the coalition], and you see that from time to time in the reaction to anything that Hone Harawira says.”

Harawira has recently said he would not be comfortable to see his children with Pakeha partners—such comments do little more than to widen the racial gulf in New Zealand, and simply justify the racial prejudice much of white New Zealand still so clearly holds.

One woman interviewed on TV One’s Marae programme thought it appropriate to suggest that Maori should “stay” up in Waitangi, and leave the rest of us in peace “down here”. While her ignorance borders on comical, views such as these really do illustrate that many of National’s traditional constituency clearly remains threatened by the party’s coalition partner.

Where to for the Maori Party?

Despite the problems faced by both parties, the Maori Party faces much broader issues than their coalition partners. It isn’t unrealistic to expect the Maori Party’s constituency to give the party another go in 2011, despite its relative failings. Similarly, it isn’t unlikely the party will attempt to engage in another agreement, especially with its pressing need to keep the removal of the Maori seats off the National Party’s agenda. Moreover, day after day, it becomes clearer that the Labour Party isn’t going to able to seriously contend the next election. But realistically, Labour will be revitalised, and the Maori Party will have to reevaluate its relationships, especially if it aims to keep its constituents happy.

In the 2005 election the Labour Party attempted throughout the campaign to discredit the Maori Party. They did this by associating the party with National, and to Labour’s dismay this did little more than to set into motion the cogs of partnership, which underscore the present coalition. Despite this, Johansson contends “that in many respects Pita Sharples would be happier sitting around a Labour Cabinet than a National one, and the attitudes of your average Labour politician would be more comforting to Pita Sharples than those on the National side”.

The problem lies with the Maori Party’s other leader—Tariana Turia. Turia was a member of the Labour Party before the Foreshore and Seabed legislation saw her resign in her refusal to tow the party line. Johansson believes that “the utu that she struck in 2008 surrounding the circumstances of her resignation from Labour will be ongoing, and so long as she is there, she is actually an impediment to the party.”

“You have to flip it on its head here. It suits the Maori Party at the moment to stick with National because it is getting some policy wins, but the Maori Party can only survive long-term if it can in fact go with either, and so long as Tariana is there, it is shutting off half of its equation.”

Therefore, as long as Turia remains at the helm of the Maori Party, a future Labour government will have one of two choices. They can either pander to the party’s interests in an attempt to bury the hatchet with Turia specifically, or on the other hand, and perhaps more realistically, Labour could simply do its damndest to discredit the Maori Party among its core voters, purloining all the Maori seats, consequently destroying the party.

While certain constituencies may feel threatened by the Maori Party in its relationship with National, it is the Maori Party that in the end faces the most threatening situation.

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

On 18 June, Green Co-Leader Russel Norman waved a Tibetan flag in view of the visiting Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping as he entered through the parliamentary forecourt. Norman claims that the flag was pulled from his hands by Chinese security, forcing him to move closer to Jinping in an attempt to retrieve it. The subsequent events—the alleged security threat to the Vice-President and the rough handling of Norman by Chinese security—unloaded a cannonade of opinion. The Vice-President avoided the eye of the storm—opting to bunker down at his hotel rather than brave his scheduled engagement at Victoria University.

The media fracas raised an important issue: Where do the boundaries of freedom of expression lie and what role does it play in New Zealand society?

A number of commentators expressed outrage at Norman’s actions, saying they were irresponsible and jeopardised New Zealand’s relations with China. Paul Henry described it as “economic espionage”.

Other commentators vigorously defended his right to freedom of expression.

Norman himself calls it “a mixed bag”.

“I mean some of the media did quite strongly defend freedom of expression. Whether they defined it particularly well or not, they certainly did try to defend it.

“A number of them didn’t defend it because they said, well, you’ve got freedom of expression but you can’t use it in a particular way that is offensive. Which is of course the government’s line. And so of course that means you don’t have freedom of expression if you are not allowed to say things that are offensive.”

Dean Knight is a Senior Lecturer at Victoria University’s Faculty of Law, and Associate Director of the New Zealand Centre for Public Law. An expert in constitutional issues, he agrees that the right to expression includes the ability to offend.

“Our courts have said that just annoyance isn’t enough… You can’t be too quick to dismiss protesters because they make you feel uncomfortable.

“The Chinese Government doesn’t get the right to choose how they are going to get protested against. The whole point about freedom of expression and protest is that it is, by and large, meant to cause annoyance and make people feel uncomfortable, because that stirs up ideas.”

However, Steven Young, President of the New Zealand Chinese Association, says that “people’s actions can be circumscribed by considerations other than constitutional or legal rights, such as dignity, respect, harmony, the common good—[ideas] which are, I suppose, Confucian.

“How would the public feel about an immigrant or Maori charging at the Duke of Edinburgh on the steps of parliament?”

For Norman, the protest was about representing the views of his supporters.

“I think that the key thing is that we are here to represent the people of New Zealand and those who elected us. That is our primary responsibility—not to the executive or the cabinet, nor is it to the Chinese Government. So the people that voted for the Greens feel very strongly about human rights,” he says.

“I think the New Zealand Chinese Association might want to decide whether it supports the Chinese Communist Party or whether it supports free speech.”

Context is everything
The right to expression is a broad one. Under section 14 of the Bill of Rights Act 1990, it entails the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form. However, the right is not unrestricted. The Bill of Rights only applies to bodies exercising public powers or functions. Furthermore, under section 5, rights and freedoms within the act may be subject to reasonable limits that can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

Knight says context is everything.

“I mean, freedom of expression is important—we need to be incredibly vigilant about protecting people’s rights to do it. But that’s not to say we can’t place legitimate restrictions and limits on rights for proper purposes. The big argument is whether the instances you talk about are being done for proper purposes, or just to avoid upsetting one of our major trading partners. The cynics will say that there are bad motives… I think the point is that we need to scrutinise those limits carefully to make sure they are being done for proper purposes.”

One element of Norman’s protest that drew criticism was its location on the parliamentary forecourt. The general public are excluded from protesting in the area, and Norman’s ability to get up close to the Vice-President was denounced as an abuse of his privileges as an MP. However, the issue also brought to light whether the restrictions on the area are justified.

Speaker of the House Lockwood Smith acts as parliament’s landlord and thinks that the restrictions on protest around the parliamentary forecourt are legitimate. He points to guidelines issued in 1999 to comply with the Bill of Rights, which he says “are fair and do not interfere with individual rights to demonstrate within the grounds of parliament”.

According to Smith, these“include a requirement for members of the public to seek authorisation to stage a demonstration and restrict certain activities… Members of the public staging a peaceful demonstration are also required to keep clear of the parliamentary forecourt”.

Smith says that these guidelines were also intended to apply to MPs, and he has reiterated his preference for MPs to check with his office before any demonstrations.
While Knight concedes that restrictions around the forecourt that protect foreign dignitaries are “a legitimate thing we can regulate”, he also suggests that MPs might have greater rights of access than the general public.

“MPs, through their tradition, their role as community representatives, you might more strongly protect their right to protest around parliament because it’s more closely politically aligned to what they do in parliament—it’s their job, it’s their space. Whereas a general person going along there, you might put the barriers back further. I think it’s grappling with where to draw those distinctions and those lines, which is quite hard.”

Rights or Dollars?
The Norman incident comes swiftly behind a series of instances where New Zealand officials appear to have bowed to Chinese interests.

In 1999, police parked a bus in front of protesters at the APEC conference so that the Chinese President would be free from interference, infringing the protesters’ right to expression. Senior ministers were implicated as directly authorising the action.

More recently, both Auckland and Wellington City Councils have attempted to ban Falun Gong from their Christmas parades, with barely concealed imputations that it harms their relationship with China. Wellington City Council backed down in 2007 after it was threatened with judicial review. As a private trust, the Auckland parade faces no such challenge.

In another incident in 2007, accredited press journalist Nick Wang was removed from an advertised photo opportunity with Vice-Premier Zeng Paeiyan at the request of Chinese officials.

The question is whether these incidents involve reasonable limitations that can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. In short—whether they serve proper purposes. Norman considers that we should be concerned.

“There hasn’t been the very deep kind of discussion about human rights, democracy, freedom of speech and some of the other values that are quite important—I would say fundamental. So a lot of people involved in government subscribe to the idea that money should come first, so they are happy to suppress basic human rights like freedom of speech if they think there is a buck in it.”

Whether Norman is right, many New Zealanders are concerned about the economy. But Norman disagrees that Realpolitik entails sacrificing our rights to address this.

“You can have a commitment to values and be a realist—it’s just that Labour and National, you know, they just give up.”

Schizophrenic nation?
When it comes to rights, New Zealanders seem unsure what to think. Knight calls the inconsistent approach to freedom of expression among the public and the media “schizophrenic”.

“Sometimes we get awfully heated up when someone’s rights are limited, but other times… it doesn’t upset us when gang-members in Whanganui are made to strip away their labels. We are utterly schizophrenic.

“We do actually have a tradition of being outspoken [internationally], and try to put, and press unpopular views. But I’m not sure in our backyard we are always as careful about some of those other types of rights as well.”

For many New Zealanders it is difficult to draw the distinction between the right to expression, and the actual debate at issue.

“Protest is hard because it upsets people. It’s hard for people not to judge the thing that people are protesting about, and you can look at that with the Israeli stuff, the anti-abortion stuff, the hate speech stuff from Destiny… But you know, you’ve got to judge the right to protest, knowing that it’s going to produce views that you don’t like. It’s why we protect it.”

Undeniably, our tendency to conflate the right and the issue is exacerbated by a lack of education about freedom of expression. Few people apart from lawyers and academics study the issue in depth.

“There is a lack of understanding… There was a tipping point with the electoral finance reforms that basically beat out the idea that you had an absolute right to express yourself. And it’s a non-sense. People don’t understand that we need to adopt a nuanced approach to working out what’s protected and what’s not in our society.”

While Knight says that he is not a “chest-beater” about rights, there are instances that concern him.

“The problem is that there are powers that we should worry about—the power to arrest for disorderly behaviour, which doesn’t set out a clear standard; the power of private landowners to kick someone off their property. Someone got removed from… I think it was a Westfield Mall—for blowing a raspberry at John Key when he was there. And with impunity because it is a private land area. I mean those are the things that I worry about.”

The Caribbean nation of Haiti was rocked on Tuesday 12 January this year by a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake, centred just 25 kilometres west of the impoverished nation’s capital Port-au-Prince.

The quake has directly affected an estimated three million people. 230,000 died, 300,000 were injured, and one million were made homeless, according to reports by the Haitian Government—though some experts question the validity of these figures.

Television and newspaper reports worldwide were rife with images of the tragedy. Thousands upon thousands of bodies lined Haiti’s rubble-strewn streets, as a result of overwhelmed morgues. Injured survivors were receiving treatment outdoors in the searing heat, with inadequate medical supplies, due to the fact that all hospitals, as well as three Médicins Sans Frontièrs (Doctors Without Borders) facilities had been destroyed.

Unharmed survivors were sleeping on the pavement, in cars, or in makeshift structures—they refused to re-enter buildings out of fear that these remaining structures would collapse in an aftershock. Low construction standards in Haiti meant that buildings left standing had more than likely been structurally compromised in the earthquake.

The response to the disaster was swift, but considerable difficulties were faced due to the tattered state of Haiti’s infrastructure. A damaged control tower restricted the efficiency of flight operations, but it did not stop the Toussaint L’Ouverture International Airport from being used altogether. The capital’s seaport on the other hand was destroyed, rendering the harbour out of action for the initial relief efforts. Most significantly, the sheer amount of rubble littering the streets of Port-au-Prince hindered the delivery and distribution of vital aid. US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates initially ruled air drops too risky without the proper distribution structures implemented on the ground. Gates’ decision was subsequently overturned, and aid was parachuted in to desperate survivors in inaccessible parts of the devastated city.

On top of the immediate efforts made by both military and official personnel to send help and shipments of food and medical supplies, across the world states, multilateral banks and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were quick to commit huge sums of money for emergency aid and the long-term reconstruction of Haiti. Aid contributions included US$474 million from the European Union, US$210 million from Brazil, US$131.5 million from Canada and US$100 million from the United States, among a plethora of smaller donations amounting to a staggering US$10 billion. More than six months on, however, this commendable response has largely failed to assist in Haiti’s ongoing recovery from the earthquake.

Failing Aid

On 31 March a UN Aid Conference saw $5.3 billion pledged in relief payments. The payments would be made to a World Bank fund managed by the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (CIRH). Payments would be distributed over an 18-month period. As it currently stands, a relatively insignificant 10 per cent of those payments have actually found their way into the fund.

Further to this, only 2 per cent of the $5.3 billion has actually been spent to directly help Haiti in reconstruction. Scoop columnist Gordon Campbell points out that the problem doesn’t end with state-pledged aid either.

“Much the same thing has happened to the money donated for emergency aid by millions of people worldwide to international aid NGOs to help relieve the suffering. Reportedly, only about 25 per cent of that money has been spent.”

Dr Megan MacKenzie, a lecturer in Victoria University’s International Relations programme, speculates that there are a number of reasons for these failures in the delivery of funds. She makes particular note of the media’s role, and consequent failure, in ensuring the issues continue to remain in the public’s consciousness.

“I think the media has a role in how long people pay attention to a particular issue, and I think there was so much attention—and rightly so—when the earthquake happened. Then several weeks on, that attention shifts, in some cases justifiably, to what else is going in the world. But that attention shift also means that peoples’ attention changes, so individuals shift their attention, and governments as well. They don’t feel that urge, or don’t feel like this is the top thing to be dedicating their budget to. So I think the way certain events are portrayed in the media, and peoples’ demand for that sort of immediacy, has something to do with that.”

Dr MacKenzie continues, pointing out that in addition to the role of the media, “in some ways there is also an underestimation in how much time and resources are involved in a lot of different disasters”. She comments that this is common scenario in both post-disaster and post-conflict scenarios.

“There is often this idea that there is a year or two transition and you need an immediate reaction and then things move forward naturally, but actually, as research has shown—rebuilding institutions and rebuilding infrastructure just takes so much time and resources, so I think there is maybe a sort of incongruence between what people think is required and what actually is, in terms of resources and time required.”

Ngos and the Cirh: Acronymic Failures

It has been suggested that the CIRH and its 26 directors—13 of which are representatives of the donor nations as well as multilateral banks such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank—could be one of the key problems behind the failure in delivering funding, preventing reconstruction from beginning.

Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine is critical of institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. Klein explains in detail the lasting damage these institutions can have on countries that require urgent loans. Klein points out that these payments often come burdened with interest rates, and are conditional on the government in question following neoliberal economic policies. Such policies more often than not undermine the country’s ability to make a full recovery.

However, Dr MacKenzie says, “I think with Haiti, the western powers can’t really exploit much more out of the country.” She raises an important point, relating to the problems faced when these multilateral agencies head reconstruction efforts.

“The funding structure for disaster aid is really top-heavy. There is so much money going into these international agencies, but smaller organisations that have really simple projects, like clearing rubble, have a lot more difficult time getting that kind of funding, so I think any time you have an international organisation managing that amount of money, it is very difficult for a smaller organisation to identify their own priorities,” she says.

“It tends to be they will align their priorities with whatever the funding structure is. If there is a lot of funding, for example, for health vs. rubble clearing, even though the latter might be more important, they will pitch for whatever they can get funding for, so you have this system which is really common where local actors are really shaping their priorities according to what external priorities are.”

In a recent documentary, the Al Jazeera network showed that a lot of the Haitian public’s anger and frustration at the inefficiencies in the reconstruction effort is now being targeted at the international NGOs. While this could be a result of funding priorities, Dr MacKenzie explains that this frustration isn’t an uncommon occurrence in post-disaster and post-conflict zones.

“It’s not that people who work for NGOs don’t have good intentions, it’s not that there is any maliciousness—but it’s that budget timelines are not realistic. They are not realistic for how long crisis recovery takes, so you often have this situation in many different contexts where NGOs come in with these amazing ideas and they’ve got money for one year, and so in that year they aren’t able to get their feet off the ground, and then they are gone. So then another NGO comes in with a similar idea, and this is what locals see all the time,” she says.

“In the meantime, these people are coming in with SUVs, and are spending tonnes of money, and often aren’t actually listening to what locals have to say about what would work for them. Sometimes locals have really simple ideas; like that digging an irrigation canal would increase productivity for this farm by x amount. Really simple things, and then you have NGOs coming in with these elaborate plans, and not only might they not be useful, but they may not be realistic when you only have money for one year.”

While there are certainly some systemic failures in the actions of the multilateral banks, donor countries and international NGOs, perhaps the most significant barrier to reconstruction in Haiti—as suggested in a recent article by journalist Kim Ives, published in the Haitian weekly newspaper, The Haiti Liberté—comes from the other 13 members of the CIRH who represent the interests of Haiti’s elite.

Bekele Gelata, the secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross Societies, claims that the Haitian government has not provided the open land necessary to build large numbers of storm-resistant houses—an urgent priority as the region gears up to deal with the hurricane season whose presence looms large in displaced Haitians’ collective consciousness.

Ives says that this is due to the fact “a small handful of rich families own large tracts of land in suburban Port-au-Prince which would be ideal for resettling the displaced thousands”. The representation of these elite interests in the Haitian Government, as well as the CIRH, has stopped the necessary reallocation of this land, despite the urgency of the circumstances. “Over the past 25 years, Haiti’s bourgeoisie bought up large swaths of this (land) for pennies… Now they will look to sell it for a huge profit,” Ives wrote.

The result of all this is that just a single camp has been built to date for the displaced survivors of the earthquake, “on a forbidden strip of sun-baked desert situated between Titayen and Morne Cabrit, two desolate zones”, where the homeless reside in tents that lack the capacity to resist even the least powerful of the hurricane winds that lash Haiti every year.

Aiding Failure

The issues surrounding land ownership, and the failure to relocate the hundreds of thousands who remain homeless to relative safety, are underscored by a long history of subjugation and democratic failure in Haiti. While even the briefest of accounts of Haiti’s history is far beyond the scope of this article, it is important to consider the effect of the 2004 coup d’état, which saw the removal of the democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Aristide was ‘kidnapped’ by US security forces during the coup, and was sent to live in exile in South Africa where he remains to this day. While there are questions surrounding corruption and human rights abuses within the Aristide administration, he remains one of the most popular figures in Haitian politics, exemplified by regular and massive protests calling for his return. As Gordon Campbell points out, Aristide is “the only person who could mobilise the bulk of poor Haitians to believe that the earthquake reconstruction effort was being motivated by a concern for their welfare”.
Current Haitian President René Préval has revealed that Aristide and the Fanmi Lvalas Party he represents will not be permitted to run in the recently announced November election. This is despite the fact the current president was originally allied with Aristide, serving as Prime Minister under the exiled leader’s first term. Beyond the logistical nightmare, and ethical questions surrounding the organisation of an election while the nation is in chaos—especially when said election is estimated to cost upwards of US$30 million, and the election process will require the hundreds of thousands of homeless people to somehow register—there are more important questions of the perceived legitimacy of the election when the most popular candidate is excluded from running.

Ives points out “the most prominent elite representative on the CIRH is Reginald Boulos, who heads one of the Haiti bourgeoisie’s most powerful families, and backed both the 1991-94 and 2004-06 coups against Aristide”. Boulos’s influence is not restricted to the CIRH—it extends to the Préval Government itself, raising questions surrounding exactly whose interests the exclusion of Aristide from the upcoming election serves.

One might speculate that elite influence, and exclusive elections will simply ensure the elites represented on the CIRH the freedom and ability to continue to take advantage of their hold Haiti’s poor in the prolonged aftermath of desecration. This begs the question: in the event that the majority of the money pledged to Haiti’s reconstruction actually finds its way into the state’s coffers, are these funds simply aiding failure?

Nō ngā tau 1970, i tīmata te taki o tēnei mea te waka whakaora i te reo Māori i runga anō i te waimehatanga o ngā puna reo huri noa i te motu. Ko te pōkaikaha tērā o te minenga, ka mate te reo, ka parea tēnei taonga ki rahaki, ngaro noa. Ka putaputa mai ngā kaupapa whakaora reo mai i ngā whāruarua o te motu pēnei i te kākano o te Kōhanga Reo, te pihinga o te Kura Kaupapa Māori, te mahuri o te Wharekura, te kōhuretanga o te Whare Wānanga hoki. Āra anō ko Te Ātaarangi e whakatō ana i te kākano o te reo ki ērā o ngā mātua, ngā pahake kāore i tipu ake i te reo. Whai muri ake ko ngā kaupapa whakaora i te mita o te reo, arā, ko te Kāpunipuni Reo tērā mo ngā uri o Taranaki, ko te kaupapa Kotahi Mano Kāika tērā mō ngā uri o Ngāi Tahu, anō hoki, ko tētahi pekanga o te tino karamatamata o te reo tērā e poipoia nei e te Panekiretanga o te Reo. He mea whakaora katoa ēnei kaupapa i te reo Māori i waenganui i a tātou mā, kōhungahunga mai, pakeke mai, kaumātua mai. Otiia, he aha te pānga o te reo ki te oranga o te iwi?

Kia para i te huarahi o taku kōrero nei, tuatahi ko te whakamārama poto mō tēnei mea te ‘reo-ā-iwi’ me tōna ‘mita’.

“Tōku reo ka tuku, tōku mouri ka ora.”

He reo e mōhio whānuitia ā-motu nei te reo Māori nā te mea he reo taketake o Aotearoa, heoi, he wāhanga anō tō te reo Māori, arā, ko ngā pekanga o ngā reo-ā-iwi. Ko te rerekētanga o te ia, o te piki me te heke o te reo, o ngā kīwaha, whakataukī, whakatauāki o ia iwi hei whakaputa i ōna ake kōrero. Hei tauira, ki tā te tuhinga Ngā Reo ā-Iwi a Te Wharehuia Milroy ki te pukapuka Te Kōhure, ka mea mai ia:

Ki te haere koe ki roto o te rohe o Taranaki me ōna hapū katoa, hei konā anō koe rongo ai i ngā rerekētanga, arā, i ētahi atu rohe kua rongo koe i te kupu ‘kei’ e whakamahia ana. Ki roto o Mātaatua, o Te Arawa, o Te Tai Rāwhiti ka rongo koe e whakamahia ana ‘kai’. Kei roto i ētahi o ngā hapū o Taranaki me Whanga-nui e pērā ana anō tā rātau whakamahi i tērā kupu, i te ‘kei’. He ‘kai’ kē, he ‘hai’ rānei mō te ‘hei’ (1996:53).

He mita ake anō kei ētahi reo-ā-iwi. Hei tauira ake, ki tā te mita o te Tai Tokerau, ka makere mai te ‘w’ i te pū ‘wh’ kia noho hei ‘hakarongo’ te kupu e mōhio whānuitia e te nuinga ko te ‘whakarongo’. Anō nei, ko Ngāi Tūhoe mā, kua kore mai te ‘g’ mai i te pū ‘ng’ kia noho mai ko te ‘whakarono’. Tau atu ki Te Waipounamu, ko tā rātou he ‘k’ kē mō te pū ‘ng’ kia ‘whakaroko’ te kupu ‘whakarongo’ nei. Ā, ki tā te Tai Hauāuru ka warea ake te pū ‘h’ kia ‘wakarongo’ kē te kupu.

He tauira noa iho ēnei hei whakaatu i te rerekētanga matua o ia mita, ā, kia noho ko ēnei tauira e whakaatu ana i te rerekētanga o ia reo-ā-iwi, o ia mita, kia mārama pai ai te tangata he kokinga anō tō te reo Māori.

I runga i aua whakaaro, ka tahuri ake anō ki te reo me te mita o te Tai Hauāuru hei whakatauira te tino ngako o te kaupapa nei.

Te Kāpunipuni Reo o Taranaki

E ai ki te paetukutuku o Te Reo o Taranaki, ko te aronga matua o te Kāpunipuni Reo o Taranaki he whakaako, he wānanga i ngā āhuatanga katoa o te reo me te mita o Taranaki. Arā, ko te ōrokohanga o te kaupapa whakaora i te reo o Taranaki i puta tuatahi mai te taki o ngā kaupapa whakaora i te reo Māori o ngā rau tau 1980. Ko ngā nawe i rangona ai e te iwi te take i tū mai te rōpū kaporeihana o Te Reo o Taranaki, nā tēnei i puta te ihu o te waka whakaora reo i te tau 1986 hei kawe ake i ngā wawata o rātou mā ngā mata reherehe mo ngā uri whakaheke.

E ai ki te pūataata rorohiko mō te rautaki o Te Reo o Taranaki, nō te tau 1991 ka huakina ngā tatau o Te Kōhanga Reo o Te Kōpae Tamariki ki Ngāmotu. Ka kotahi tau, ko ngā kuaha o Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Te Pihipihinga Kākano Mai Rangiātea i tūwhera mai. Makere mai te whitu tau, ko te Wharekura i āpiti atu ki te kura. Anō hoki, ko Te Ātaarangi tonu e whakaako ana i te reo i Taranaki ki te marea, ēngari, ko te Kāpunipuni Reo i puta hei whakakīkī i te whārua mō ērā tokoiti matatau kē ana ki te reo.

Ko ngā tūmomo āhuatanga e whakaakona, e whakamahia ki ngā wānanga o te Kāpunipuni ko ngā karakia ōmua, ngā karakia hou, te whaikōrero, te karanga hoki, ngā waiata ōmua, ngā waiata hou, te kōrero paki, te pao maioha, me te taukumekume. Ko ēnei āhuatanga katoa he whai i ngā tikanga o Taranaki, o Ngā Rauru hoki. Ka tū ngā wānanga nei ki ngā marae huri noa i te rohe, ā, mā te hunga kua tangata whenua mai i aua marae e taki i ngā kōrero o ia wānanga.

Ko te mea nui o te Kāpunipuni, ko ngā kōrero katoa e hāngai tōtika ana ki ngā uri o ngā waka o Aotea, Tokomaru me Kurahaupō; ki ngā kōrero me ngā hītori o ngā iwi whānui o Taranaki. I a te tauira o te Kāpunipuni e wānanga ana i tōna mita ake, ko ia hoki e mau pūmau ana ki tōna ake tuakiri, arā, ko te reo tērā e mau kaha ana ki te tuakiri o te tangata. Ki tā te tohunga wetereo, Joshua Fishman, ko te takakino o te reo, he takakino o te tuakiri, arā, mā te oranga o tētahi te oranga o tērā atu hoki, ka mate te reo, ka whakamomori nei tātou i a tātou anō. Ki te ora te tuakiri o ia iwi, me ora anō tōna ake reo, mita hoki.

Nō reira, kei te ora tonu te reo?

Ka whānui taku titiro ki te oranga o te reo Māori. I taku tirohanga tuatahi ki tēnei urupounamu ka tere taku whakapae, āe, kei te ora tonu. I runga anō i te maha o ngā kaupapa whakaora reo e karapotia nei e te motu ināianei, i runga anō hoki i te mea e āhei ana ahau me te nui o ōku whānau ki te kōrero i te reo, te nui o ōku hoa hoki me ērā atu tāngata kei te hāpori, kei ngā pouaka whakaata, kei ngā reo irirangi, kei te ipurangi, kei hea kē mai e taea ai te kōrero, te rongo, te kite hoki i te reo e whakamahi ana – i runga anō i ērā whakatau āku, ka tika, kei te ora pai te reo. Ēngari anō, ki te tahuri ake ki ngā tatauranga ō mua, e whakaatu ana ēnei nama i tētahi āhuatanga kē.

E ai ki ngā kōrero o te pae tukutuku o Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori, i te tau 1913, āhua 92% te nui o ngā tamariki Māori e taea te kōrero i te reo Māori. Tau atu ki te 1973-78 o ngā tau, āhua 18-20% noa iho te maha o te tangata, ko te nuinga hoki he kaumātua. I te 1985 ka heke anō ki te 12%, otiia, e kore e mutu ki reira te hekenga o te tatauranga. Nō te tau 2006, ka puta mai anō ngā tatauranga mō te reo, i tēnei wā e kī ana e 4% noa iho te maha o te tangata ki Aotearoa e taea te kōrero i te reo Māori. Hei tāpiri ki tērā, mai ngā Māori katoa o Aotearoa – arā he 14% noa iho o te huinga tāngata katoa ki Aotearoa nei – 24% noa iho o aua Māori ka taea te kōrero Māori. Ki te whakataurite tērā ki te paihēneti o te maha o ngā tangata e taea te kōrero i te reo Pākehā, arā, e 95% e taea, tēnā, pehea tērā atu 5% paihēneti? Kāore e kore ko te nuinga – inā kāore i te katoa – he tangata nō whenua kē me tō rātou ake reo rerekē! Kāore kau he tangata e taea te kī e tūturu ana ko te reo Māori tōna reo noa iho. Kia whakaritea anō tātou i te rahi o te 24% o ngā tangata Māori; ko te nui o te tangata Māori e taea te kōrero i te reo Māori he pēnei te rite o te nui o te tangata noho ana ki tētahi rohe o Tamaki-makaurau i te tau 2006.

Ko ēnei momo tatauranga e whakaatu ana i te tino oranga o te reo. He reo rehurehu noa iho i te tirohanga mārō nei. Ka tata hemo te reo i te ngoikore o te nuinga me te tokoiti o te hunga matatau ki te kōrero, ngākaunui ana hoki ki te reo. Nō reira ka tika te ui atu, ‘kei te ora tonu te reo Māori?’

“He reo e kōrerotia ana, he reo ka ora.”

Otiia, ahakoa ngā tatauranga nei, kia mōhio mai koutou, ka mau tonu au ki te whakaaro, āe, kei te ora tonu te reo Māori. E kore rawa au e whakapae kua mate katoa te reo Māori tae noa ki te wā kua hemo katoa tātou e kawe i te hā, i te mura, i te ahi o te reo. Ēngari anō, he tika te whakatau, e kore te reo e ora pēnei nā i ngā rā ō mua, arā, te kaha rangona ki ngā wāhi katoa, te maringi noa mai ngā korokoro, waha, ngutu maha, te tika hoki o te reo. E kao. He ora pēnei i tētahi tangata e mau tonu ana ki tētahi tūpari, ā, ki te taka ia, ka hemo. Kei te kapokapo haere tātou i ngā kōhatu, i ngā paruparu, i te pātītī kia ora tātou i te pari rā. Kei te pēnā te ora o te reo ināianei, ko te whiu noa iho o ngā kupu hangahanga, ko te kaha mikirapu o ngā rerenga kōrero, o ngā kupu, te whakatū kaupapa whakaora reo maha, aha atu, aha atu mo te tūpono ka ora mai te reo i te muia o te reo, i te pārara o te hora ki te whenua. Ko te whakaaro nei kei te kōrerohia te reo, kei te kite atu, ko te tūpono kei te ora. Heoi, ko te reo Māori tērā e rere ana? Anei te tino ngako o ēnei kōrero. Ka mate tātou i te hurihanga o tēnei ao me ōna pānga maha ki a tātou, ki ngā iwi Māori o te motu, ki te reo hoki.

Maringanui he kaupapa whakaora reo pēnei i Te Kāpunipuni Reo. I runga i te whakaaro ko te ako, ko te whakaako hoki o te reo Māori he mahi paratī i te puna reo, he mea tīmatatanga noa iho hei eke ki te taumata kōrero. Ki te kōkirihia tonutia te kaupapa whakaora reo, hei māunu ake te oranga o te iwi hoki, me ruku hōhonu nei i ngā hōpuapua o te mita o te reo hei wānanga, hei wetewete i ngā kōrero a rātou mā. Kei reira kē te pūmautanga o te reo me ōna tikanga. Kia muramura mai te ahi kā ki roto ki tēnā, ki tēnā, pērā ki ngā pou o te reo Māori, te hunga kua roa nei e ‘tutungia te hātete’ o te reo, arā, kia Tīmoti Karetu mā, kia Te Wharehuia Milroy, kia Huirangi Waikerepuru, kia Tipene O’Reagan hoki. Kua riro mā rātou e mau i te ahi kā roa mo tātou kua mauheretia ki te reo paraoa o tēnei ao hurihuri, ā, ko te mura o te hā kei tēnā, kei tēnā o tātou e kawe tonu i te kaupapa. Ka tika kia para tonu tātou i tēnei ara o te reo kia tutungia tēnei mura hei ahi-kā-roa mo ērā e takahi ana i tēnei ara tāpokopoko.

Photo credit: Remon Rijper

The New York Times reported that more than 20,000 people and 1400 vessels were involved in containment and cleanup efforts, recovering around 13.1 million gallons of oil-water mix—and 745-odd dead animals. Approximately 60,683 square miles of ocean—equating to 25 per cent of federal waters in the Gulf—were closed to fishing, while the government and BP worked fruitlessly to stem the ruptured well.

On 1 June, here in New Zealand, Energy and Resources Minister Gerry Brownlee announced that the government had awarded a five-year exploration permit to the world’s fourth-largest energy company, the Brazilian giant Petrobras International Braspetro BV, granting them the right to drill a 12,330-square kilometre area off the east coast of the North Island.

To make such plans in the middle of the biggest environmental disaster in the United States’ history sounded like a “bad joke”, to quote Greenpeace. Petrobras’ credentials failed to impress the Green Party and East Coast iwi Ngati Porou, but Brownlee made it clear that he did not intend to back down.

Those in the industry are quick to point out that Petrobras has only been awarded a permit to explore, not to mine, and so the potential for damage is currently limited. The Green Party and Greenpeace refute this, describing it as irresponsible to drill at all while the cause of the Deepwater Horizon blowout is unknown. It’s fair to say that although it’s too early to predict what Petrobras’ investigation may lead to, there is already plenty of debate.

The bidding process

On 10 December 2008, the Ministry of Economic Development (MED) released the Raukumara Blocks Offer to international tender until 28 January 2010. The proposal covered two permit areas over the Raukumara Basin, a 25,000 square-kilometre area north of East Cape, at the northern end of the East Coast Basin.

The term ‘bid’ is misleading, as the companies involved (which the government refuses to identify, thus ensuring “the integrity of the blocks offer process”) did not offer a monetary amount. Instead, they specified a work programme that, if they were successful, they would execute in the area. Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand (PEPANZ) executive officer John Pfahlert explains:

“Money is one aspect—i.e., they do actually have to have the money to do the work they say that they are going to do, but they bid to do a certain programme of work, which generally ends with the drilling of an exploration well.”

The government evaluated the programmes that they received in order to ensure that they were feasible and “supported by the financial and technical capability needed to give effect”. Although this seems somewhat ambiguous, Pfahlert insists that the factors taken into account by the government were not “opaque”: rather, “a bunch of criteria” was recognised.

“The reputation of the company, their track record overseas, the amount of money they’ve got behind them, the likelihood that they will deliver on the work programme, the expertise they may bring to New Zealand,” he lists. “Those sorts of things.”

Petrobras—the largest company in Latin America, present in 28 countries—successfully secured the rights to explore Raukumura Basin. Its oil and gas reserves in 2008 alone equated to 15.1 billion barrels, while according to the company’s website, its 2009-2013 business plan predicts “investments in the order of $174.4 billion real”—approximately NZ$137.2 billion.

Pfahlert doubts that the government was concerned by whether a particular company’s practices were considered environmentally friendly or not, as there are other processes in place to monitor this.

“Generally, I wouldn’t expect it to have a high weighting [in the decision making process], no,” he says. “Simply because any subsequent consents [a company] might need to obtain to undertake operations would have to be obtained in the normal manner under the Resource Management Act (RMA), or with Maritime New Zealand.

“You wouldn’t normally expect the government to be second-guessing companies’ environmental track records when there’s a regime in place that will deal with that anyway.”

Pfahlert reiterates that, at this early stage in the venture, Petrobras’ operations are limited, as “they don’t actually have permission to mine at all”.

“There’s a two-phase process that the government goes through—once you’ve made a commercial discovery, you have the right to exchange the exploration permit for a mining permit, but it’s a separate process.”

The MED outlines the minimum requirements for Petrobras’ proposed staged work programme as completing a regional 2D seismic survey, followed by a 3D survey; drilling one well, with at least 12 months’ notice of drilling given to the MED beforehand; and reporting and presenting a full review of the Basin’s potential post-drilling. At least one of the projects must be carried out within the first 18 months of Petrobras’ permit—and at this stage, the company expects to be drilling for gas, rather than oil.

Pfahlert believes that the drilling of a well probably won’t occur until year four or year five.

“At the end of year five, they have to make a decision about whether they’re going to carry on or not—though that will actually be determined by whether they’ve found anything,” he says. “If they find nothing, there’s every realistic chance they’ll drop the permit, and hand back any information they obtained to the MED, which can then try and attract someone else to show an interest in the area.”

What New Zealand stands to gain

Pfahlert describes drilling for “financial and commercial discovery” as a hit-and-miss affair.

“Internationally, the odds are that for every oil hole you drill, you drill nine or ten that are duds,” he says. “I think in New Zealand, the odds are a bit longer than that—maybe one in ten to one in 20. So, there’s a 90 per cent chance that every hole that’s drilled, around the world, is going to fail. That’s just the odds of the exploration business.”

However, if drilling does uncover minerals, “there are very significant rewards,” agrees Pfahlert.

“If there is a commercial discovery, these projects pay themselves off very quickly and get a lot of return to the Crown.”

Aside from Brownlee’s promise of increased “long-term regional development”, as well as more jobs for New Zealanders, the MED is hopeful that Petrobras’ investment will further the economic relationship between New Zealand and Brazil—the world’s eighth largest economy.

Pfahlert points to the success of the five wells of the Kupe project in Taranaki, drilled about 32 kilometres off the coast.

“I think the company there spent about $1.3 billion on capital costs, and around half of that went into New Zealand’s economy; it had around 800 people involved in its construction phase, and there are probably 100 people employed full-time on an ongoing basis.”

It seems hard to overestimate the monetary value of a commercially viable petroleum find. Last week, almost $700 million dollars’ worth of additional oil and gas reserves were confirmed to have been discovered at the Kupe field. New Zealand Oil & Gas’ chief executive David Salisbury told The New Zealand Herald that the company’s 15 per cent stake in the project could, at current prices, equate to close to a $100 million share in the increased reserve.

It’s no wonder that the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute recently named New Zealand as the second most attractive country to invest in for petroleum exploration—especially, as Pfahlert points out, “[companies] have drilled for and exploited the oil in all the easy places.

“The reason that companies have started coming to New Zealand is that the global demand for oil keeps growing, and the places where you find it keep becoming perhaps less popular to go to. Increasingly, companies will look to invest in places they perhaps wouldn’t have looked at 15 or 20 years ago.”

The MED says that education and health are among the sectors that benefit from petroleum and gas production, as the Crown collects royalties from extraction of minerals. Pfahlert also notes that the companies involved pay tax, which will benefit the economy.

“That’s where it’s no different to any other commercial enterprise, I guess.”

Gambling with the environment

Where the energy industry does differ significantly is the high amount of risk involved, as exemplified by the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The poor timing of Brownlee’s announcement provoked immediate concern that Petrobras’ mining could result in such a catastrophe. Others have pointed out that if both the United States Government and BP have struggled to manage the spill, New Zealand stands no hope of managing such a disaster. There is a suggestion, in fact, that New Zealand is in over its head.

Dr Rosalind Archer, a senior lecturer in Engineering Science at Auckland University, points to data released by America’s Society of Petroleum Engineers to show that “While there can never be an absolute guarantee that any offshore operation is perfectly safe… if international best practices are followed, the risk of an oil spill due to a blowout is extremely low.”

Indeed, Petrobras’ health and safety record has improved immensely over the past decade, since the explosion of its 36 Oil Platform on 15 March 2001. Then the largest floating, semi-submersible platform in the world, it exploded off the coast of Brazil, killing 11 workers, and sank five days later with an estimated 1500 tonnes of crude oil remaining onboard. An investigation found a number of causal factors (including human error), which were worsened by the lack of an adequate contingency plan.

To its credit, Petrobras was quick to learn from its mistakes. The Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) recently named the company as one of the most sustainable outfits in the world today, and especially praised it for its “benchmark” score for ‘Management System and Environmental Policy’. Management & Excellence (M&E) reported that Petrobras was the world’s most sustainable oil company, with a rating of 92.25 per cent.

Certainly, Petrobras’ “pedigree”, to quote Brownlee, is impressive—but can any positive report or glowing safety record excuse the potential risk?

“It’s a difficult issue: the chance of a major environmental disaster is extremely small. However, the consequences of such a disaster could be huge,” says Dr Archer. “If Petrobras’ exploration activities are monitored and managed appropriately, I am not uncomfortable with the balance between the economic gains that could be achieved, and the inherent risk.”

Green Party co-leader Dr Russel Norman is not so magnanimous. In a statement dated 31 May, he described the government’s planned offshore drilling as “environmentally reckless”, and challenged them to suspend any programme until “[oil companies] knew exactly what went wrong with Deepwater Horizon, they can ensure that it won’t happen again, and that if it ever does happen again, they have the ability to plug the well”.

Dr Cath Wallace, a senior lecturer within the School of Government’s Environmental Studies department at Victoria University, says that the Environment and Conservation Organisations (ECO) of New Zealand—where she specialises in public policy—agrees with Norman’s proposal.

“And we are not alone. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has also called for a pause while these issues are sorted out.”

Dr Wallace asserts that the potential economic gains of Petrobras’ exploration, no matter how vast, cannot adequately justify the risk of an environmental disaster—even if a commercial discovery is as unlikely as Pfahlert claims.

“In any of these issues, you need to consider not only the probability, but also the severity of harm,” she says. “The reality is that New Zealand does not have the capability of dealing with any major blowout or disaster.”

To some extent, this has been admitted by the agencies involved. In an article published on Scoop.co.nz, Maritime New Zealand’s media advisor Sophie Hazelhurst said that a spill exceeding 3500 tonnes of oil would surpass the planning, equipment and training that the organisation has in place. New Zealand would therefore be forced to seek help from overseas countries such as Singapore, Australia and the United Kingdom.

Furthermore, Dr Wallace believes that mining will damage New Zealand’s ‘clean and green’ image overseas—just as the government’s proposal to mine conservation land did. In April, Bob Lancaster, founder of Nelson- and Sheffield-based hiking company High Places, was quoted on Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report as stating that international press had described New Zealand’s potential mining of protected areas as “state vandalism”.

“We are losing our international reputation for environmental responsibility, and that will rebound on us in markets all over the world,” argues Dr Wallace, who maintains that the government is pursuing “a very old-fashioned resource extractive economic strategy”.

“We need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, for the sake of the atmosphere,” she continues. “A much sounder and more effective approach would be to pursue economic benefit from an intact environment—that way, we maintain our environment and economy into the future.”

What safety nets are in place?

Despite suggestion to the contrary, Pfahlert feels that New Zealand is prepared to handle Petrobras’ proposal.

“I’ll put a caveat on it, though: there is certainly room for improvement, and in fact, most of the agencies are looking to improve the regulatory environment to make sure that it really is world-best practice.”

The MED has commissioned an independent study, due this year, on New Zealand’s health, safety and environmental provisions around minerals activities, such as deep-sea drilling. For this reason, Pfahlert dismisses suggestion that a standalone agency be erected solely to monitor Petrobras’ practice as “a complete waste of money”.

What is needed, Pfahlert maintains, is “one regulatory system” relating to practices taking part in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) 12 miles offshore, “irrespective of who’s doing them”.

“We’re expecting the government to introduce a piece of legislation to deal with the same sorts of things that the RMA considers,” he says. “You wouldn’t want to set up a system just for the Raukumara Basin with one company. That’d be foolish in my view.”

Pfahlert says that the proposed Environmental Protection Authority, which Environment Minister Nick Smith hopes to be functional by 1 July 2011, will also play some role in processing legislation and consent applications.

Dr Archer reiterates that Petrobras’ permit to explore the Raukumara Basin does not mean that deepwater drilling is imminent; in fact, she predicts it won’t occur before 2013 at the earliest. Consequently, it’s tempting to disregard the developments in New Zealand’s minerals extractions until minerals are indeed extracted.

Although Petrobras’ exploration seems inevitable, as further details of Deepwater Horizon come to light, we should be primed to react to them—especially if we are to prevent any deepwater catastrophes occurring on New Zealand horizons.

The contraceptive pill was first approved in the United States in early May of 1960, and reached the United Kingdom and New Zealand the following year. It was the reliable and safe method that women had been waiting for, and was readily adopted by those who could access it. Now, it’s widely available and heavily subsidised—but by no means has it resolved all of New Zealand’s issues with contraceptive health. In fact, many within the public health sector consider that these are still not being adequately addressed.

Prior to its introduction in New Zealand, women had been doing whatever possible to plan and space the births of their children. The methods used, which included the use of a diaphragm, which was often poorly-fitted; the ‘rhythm’ method; condoms; and withdrawal, were often ineffective, and as a result, the rate of self-abortions was high. The McMillan Inquiry of 1937 found that at least one pregnancy in five ended in abortion, and that the majority of women dying were married with four or more children.

“People have always used whatever’s been available,” says Dame Margaret Sparrow. Sparrow, now President of the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand, has had an active role in promoting safe sexual practices, as well as the use of contraception. She was one of the first women in New Zealand to use the pill, and said in Helen Smyth’s book, Rocking The Cradle: Contraception, Sex and Politics in New Zealand, that it changed her life: “That was the first time that I ever really experienced good fertility control.”

Certainly, it’s hard to exaggerate the impact that the pill had on women’s lives. “They truly saw it as liberating,” says feminist and women’s health campaigner Sandra Coney. “And they enjoyed the chance to be sexual and to choose sexual partners, not guarding their virginity while lining men up for marriage… and the fear of pregnancy, which had been such a great constraint, was removed.”

In Rocking The Cradle, Smyth wrote that within just five years of its introduction to New Zealand, 40 per cent of married, fertile women were on the pill, equating to some 100,000 packets a month. Today, the pill is taken by more than 100 million women worldwide, and a wide range of contraception is easily attainable in most developed countries. It’s inconceivable—if you’ll excuse the pun—that women once had to struggle to obtain access to the pill, even after it had been made legal.

All the single ladies, put a ring on it

New Zealand—the first country to grant women the vote–was among the first to introduce the pill, but it did so unwillingly. For the decade following its introduction, the pill was largely prescribed only to married women, and while this had an immediate impact on the rate of self-abortion among that group, there was no mind giving to the huge number of unmarried women who were struggling to avoid falling pregnant.

“[The introduction of the pill] had a huge impact, except it took a while to catch on, because doctors were very reluctant to prescribe it,” remembers Sparrow. “There was even a statement from the New Zealand Medical Association, saying that doctors shouldn’t prescribe the pill to unmarried women because of moral objection.”

This didn’t deter Sparrow, who worked at Victoria University’s Student Health Services between 1969 and 1981—over which period, attitudes towards sexual health changed a great deal. She modestly allows that she was “instrumental” in ensuring access to contraception for students.

“I saw that as one of my roles, and that was why I became involved at Family Planning, so that I could give students a better service,” she remembers. “I think when you’re sitting in a consultation room and students come to you, it does push you to think—well, why shouldn’t I prescribe it?”

Sparrow also wrote articles for Salient on services such as pregnancy testing and emergency contraception, “just to let students know that they could come to Student Health for contraceptive advice”.

Sympathetic doctors such as Sparrow were godsends for unmarried women seeking access to the pill and, as Smyth writes, many women were prepared to go to great lengths to do so. Many women bought themselves engagement and wedding rings in order to coax their doctors into writing them a prescription. Family Planning found what Chief Executive Jackie Edmond describes as “a more pragmatic way” of resolving the issue.

“We used to give them things to put on their finger when they came to see us,” Edmond says with a wry smile.

The momentum of the women’s movement

Thanks to the efforts of individual doctors who understood that contraception was indeed “a basic healthcare necessity”, the pill became more accepted and accessible in the 1970s. Lynda Williams, coordinator of the Auckland Women’s Health Council, says that that decade’s women’s liberation movement was an important milestone.

“During the 1970s, there was more pressure to make the pill more widely available to young women, because this was when the feminist movement finally reached New Zealand,” she says. “We had consciousness-raising groups getting involved with menstrual extraction techniques; looking at their cervices; reclaiming knowledge of their own bodies…

“The expectation that the pill would be made more readily available started to impact on the medical profession, and I think they were slowly forced to become a lot more liberal, instead of trying to impose their own beliefs—religious or otherwise—on women.”

Certainly, Coney says, “It didn’t take much to change women’s ideas.” She asserts that the women’s liberation movement began as a “reaction against the homebound role of our mothers, and the expectation that we would simply leave school and marry.

“Contraception was embraced as a tool to allow this freedom to make life choices that were not dictated by biology and social expectations.”

Feminist groups began to promote the formerly taboo topic of sexual education. As part of Knowhow, Coney gave out leaflets on safe sex practices at the gates of schools, and ran a telephone advice group.

“It wasn’t just women’s lib, though these ideas were promoted and explored through writing, discussions, abortion law reform, workshops and so on,” she remembers. “There was a workshop on how to masturbate at the 1979 United Women’s Convention.”

The difference 50 years makes

Sparrow agrees that today, contraception must constitute a significant percentage of the work of Victoria’s Student Health Services. “Times have changed!” she says.

Edmond suggests that modern women—and even those of her generation (“I’m 47, and all my sexual reproductive years, I’ve had access to services and contraception. I’ve never even had to consider that I wouldn’t… and same for you, though I’m slightly older than you.”)—tend to take these services for granted. Contraception is available from most chemists, general practitioners and public health services, and in most cases, it is subsidised for people under 22 years old. While most acquiesce that it is preferable that teenagers use contraception than have unplanned pregnancies, there are small but vocal (“Very vocal!” interjects Edmond) groups that think otherwise.

“We’re constantly being accused by groups such as Family First and Right to Life, and [New Zealand Herald columnist] Garth George,” sighs Edmond. “All we’re doing is offering the same services as any GP offers—we just talk about it a bit more.

“They’re trying to take things back to how they were, but in fact it wasn’t that good. All this stuff was happening in the background: people were getting pregnant when they didn’t want to be, then. I think it’s all a bit idealistic really.”

Despite the efforts of groups such as Family Planning, New Zealand has the third highest rate of teenage pregnancy of the 31 developed countries recognised by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The result is reminiscent of a report recently prepared for the Ministry of Health by the Public Health Advisory Committee, which showed that among the most deprived neighbourhoods, New Zealand’s rate of infant mortality is worse than that of all developed countries bar Mexico and Turkey. Evidently, the discrepancy between New Zealand’s richest and its poorest is immense.

Williams points out that the OECD figure of teenage pregnancies is misleading because “there are specific ethnicities that are overrepresented in these figures”—as, she says, both the Maori and Public Health Advisory Committee have attested to.

“At a board meeting I was at two weeks ago, we were told that a certain age group—up to, I think, 25-years-old—something like one in five Maori women were getting pregnant,” she says. “The figure was so staggering that the board asked that it be checked.

“There are a lot of factors involved,” continues Williams. “There’s alcohol, there are heavy religious and cultural norms about not talking about contraception and sexuality. And Pacific women, even those that are married, tend not to have much control over their own fertility.”

Edmond says that Faming Planning has “still got a lot of work to do” before the issue of unplanned teenage pregnancies is addressed.

“I think young women continue to struggle to negotiate condom use—and that’s a challenge even when you’re my age, let alone when you’re 16 or 17,” she says. “Alcohol, too, has had a huge impact on decision making and doing things at haste, then repenting at leisure. We haven’t been really very good at getting the message out that young women should be using contraception as well as condoms.”

In a bid to tackle the problem, the Auckland District Health Board enabled women aged under 25 years old to access the emergency contraceptive pill (ECP) for free, as part of a five-month trial that started at the end of 2009. A preliminary evaluation of the scheme last year found a 13% reduction in the number of abortions at the Epsom Day Unit, the region’s principal abortion clinic, while last month The Manawatu Standard reported an increased demand in the ECP. However, the Auckland DHB decided that these figures were not able to be considered “statistically significant”.

“I have argued vociferously that [the ECP be made free permanently], as it would save money, but the Board is financially strapped,” says Williams. “They’ve put it on their list of priorities, but there is no talk of it coming in for the next wee while.

“We still have very conservative people around. There are one or two [men] on the Board who would vote against it.”

Women’s Health Action Trust’s policy advisor Christy Parker considers it a “shame” that the DHB has decided not to continue with the scheme.

“We strongly support increasing the accessibility of emergency contraception, and see accessing it as a fundamental sexual and reproductive right,” she says. “Our argument would be that a five month trial was too short a time period to demonstrate the success of such an intention.”

Areas for improvement

Although it seems that it will be some time before the ECP is made free of charge, there has been some development in the range of contraception available. 3 News reported in early June that the government’s drug-buying agency Pharmac intends to fund the long-acting reversible contraceptive Jadelle. Once implanted, Jadelle offers contraceptive coverage for five years, although it can be easily removed from a woman if she decides to change contraceptive, or try to conceive. Usually $300, it will be available free, bar the cost of a doctor’s visit and a dispensing fee, and Pharmac expects that some 35,000 women will take it.

“It’s one of our claims to fame,” says Edmond, visibly excited. “We’ve been advocating [for it] for two years, so we’re thrilled—we don’t get many wins.
“The pill relies on a human factor, and we’re all human, we forget… which is why we’re so keen on Jadelle. It’s really going to offer another option for young women.”

Although it is a long-term contraceptive, it remains to be seen just how effective the Jadelle will be in reducing the rate of teenage pregnancies, although Williams says she’s unsure of the number of Maori and Pacific teenagers that use services such as Family Planning. In order to ensure that sexual education and services are more wide-reaching, Williams would like to see Family Planning have direct access to schools.

“If I could wave a magic wand, I would insist upon government funding for Family Planning to offer comprehensive education on sex and contraceptive options in high schools,” she says. “The government needs to put a whole programme in place that looks at dealing with all of these issues, rather than [taking] a piecemeal approach.”

Parker cites a “damning” report from the Education Review Office into sexual education in schools, released June 2007. She describes it as a “really horrifying read”.

“Although we have quite a good sexuality education curriculum, it really wasn’t being implemented in practice in schools, and I’m not convinced we’ve seen any effective response to that yet,” she says. “I guess we feel that we’re really failing our young people in terms of sexual education.”

Parker says that sexual health education is not being approached in a “nationally coordinated and consistent fashion”, and that it’s a huge problem.

“It’s not about the birds and the bees, or pointing to an anatomy diagram. We see the need for quite a holistic framework around sexual education that integrates sexuality as part of the whole person.”

Sparrow also believes that sexual education is an area that needs immediate improvement. She hotly agrees that the government was shirking its responsibilities when it comes to issues of sexual education and contraception.

“My impression is that it’s quite patchy, and although some schools do take responsibility, it’s probably a little bit too little and too late—and often not relevant to the big questions that young people really want to know.”

What does Family Planning want to see implemented over the next five to ten years?

“We want comprehensive sexual education in schools, and we’d love to see more programmes for parents to learn more about talking about sexuality and sex,” says Edmond immediately, ticking them off one by one. “We would like to see a range of services for young people to access their sexual health, while keeping up-to-date with any new contraception out there.

“Public health programmes that push the use of condoms and contraception. More discussion around drinking and its impact on decision making. And programmes on gender-based violence and coercion.

“So we don’t want much!” she jokes.

“The other thing we’re saying is not universally liked, but you should be enjoying having sex; it should be a pleasurable activity,” says Edmond. “If you don’t want to have it, don’t have it. Don’t do it because you think you should do it: do it because you want to…

“People don’t like it, but I think it’s a good message. It’s pragmatic.”

Controversy aside, contraception is about choice. Being well-informed and aware of the options available enables a woman to make a decision that suits her and her individual needs. With the assortment available, it’s strange to consider that not so long ago, there wasn’t much of a selection to choose from. Who knows what changes to contraception and sexual health services the next half-century will bring about, but what can be counted upon is this: groups such as Family Planning will work to bring about the best and most convenient service possible.

It is the end of the trimester. Assignments are due. Exams are coming up. You probably have an immense dislike for university right about now. Stress. Pimples. Eye twitches. Sleepness nights. A lot of this probably due to the fact you’ve exceeded the recommended number of energy drinks to consume in a 24-hour period.

Nevertheless, it is at times like these that it is comforting to remember why you’re at an establishment like Victoria University—you’re here to get a tertiary education, an education that will one day hopefully improve your employment prospects and see you contribute positively to New Zealand society. Or, at least that’s the lofty, idealistic reason why you’re at uni that you may not have thought of.

The relatively open access to tertiary education that New Zealanders have enjoyed seems to be under threat. In recent weeks both Victoria and the University of Otago have implemented measures to manage enrolment numbers for the rest of 2010. Vic has closed all new domestic admissions for 2010, while Otago has capped enrolment numbers across a number of programs. Other universities are looking to introduce similar measures to deal with increasing numbers of students in the current limited funding environment.

But why has it come to this? Why has Vic been forced to shut the door on new domestic students, a decision that the University Council itself said it was reluctant to make? A number of factors, including the economic recession, increased demand and limited funding from the government and other sources, have prompted universities to consider new measures to cope with the challenges facing the tertiary sector.

And the door was shut

As has been reported in Salient, the University Council decided not to accept any new domestic undergraduate admissions for the rest of the year at a recent public meeting. The decision came in the wake of predictions that student numbers were going to reach 110 per cent of the cap funded by the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) under Vic’s investment plan.

Following the council meeting, Chancellor Ian McKinnon explained: “The university has no further capacity for new undergraduate applicants this year. In simple terms, if they [student numbers] go above 100 per cent, the university forgoes funding and incurs costs, and this has an immediate impact on the quality of the university.”

Vice-Chancellor Pat Walsh told Salient after the meeting that “There is no enthusiasm for this decision, it was made to meet our legal obligations and to protect the interests of current students and staff.”

Salient reported that Vic enrolments are 20 per cent higher than they were at the same time last year. Increased student numbers has been a common trend across all tertiary education organisations (TEOs)—not just Vic. To an extent, this increase in student numbers could have been forseen: not only are the products of a baby boom in the early 1990s hitting uni age, job losses caused by the recession have led to many people heading back to tertiary study to upskill. Unfortunately, it appears that the current government has not provided universities with adequate additional support to cater for this influx of students.

Chair of the New Zealand Vice-Chancellors’ Committee (NZVCC) and Auckland University of Technology Vice-Chancellor Derek McCormack understands why Vic made the decision.

“New Zealand universities are committed to maintaining the international quality of their teaching and research,” says McCormack. “That is why they have, unfortunately, had to restrict student numbers—in order to maintain quality.”

Co-President of the New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations (NZUSA) David Do says Vic’s decision is unfortunate, given its impact on prospective students.

“We feel that on a practical level they shouldn’t have done it this way, because students had not been given proper notice that the entry requirements were changing, and that’s going to affect their plans for moving into education.”

VUWSA President Max Hardy, student representative Conrad Reyners and former VUWSA President Fleur Fitzsimons voted against the motion to close admissions. Hardy was reported in Salient as saying that “such an unattractive decision should not have been made without first having all the appropriate information”, while Fitzsimons said the decision “felt very panicked and lacking detail”.

The fact that New Zealand universities are feeling forced into making such decisions has raised concerns about current levels of tertiary education funding. How does the government fund our universities in the first place?

So where does Vic get its funding?

The majority of the university’s funding comes from government grants, with the next greatest proportion coming from domestic tutition fees—then international tuition fees. Figures in the 2009 Annual Report show that Vic received about $137 million in government grants last year. Domestic tutition fees made up almost $65 million of the university’s revenue, while international tuition fees accounted for about $25 million. The university’s total revenue for 2009 amounted to approximately $281 million. The figures show clearly, government funding makes up a significant portion of the univerity’s total revenue.It is the role of the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) to oversee the allocation of government funding to universities, in accordance with the policies implemented by the government of the day.

The role of the TEC

Established under the Education Act of 1989, the TEC operates the tertiary funding system generally, while also overseeing the planning process and the performance of tertiary education organisations. According to its Statement of Intent, published online, the primary aim of the TEC is “to give effect to the government’s Tertiary Education Strategy (TES)”. The government is required to publish the TES under the Education Act. The TES provides a basis for all the government’s decisions relating to tertiary education. The TEC is bound to ensure that these are implemented across New Zealand’s eight universities, 20 institutes of technology and polytechnics, and hundreds of other tertiary education providers, such as training organisations, wananga, and schools.

The TEC’s board of commissioners provides guidance to the Minister of Tertiary Education about how best to allocate the $3 billion that the government commits each year to funding the tertiary education system.

In order to receive funding, a tertiary education organisation must have an Investment Plan, which it devises in collaboration with the TEC. The plan must outline the following four details: how a TEO will work towards achieving the government’s priorities as outlined in the TES; the TEO’s mission and role in the tertiary sector; the programmes and activities it runs or undertakes; and its proposed outcomes, including performance indicators.

Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce says that in terms of allocating funding for places for students at universities, “The TEC will work with universities (and institutes of technology and polytechnics) to determine the areas of high demand. In doing so, the TEC will seek to allocate according to the priorities of the Tertiary Education Strategy.”

In the event a TEO is found to be shirking its responsibilities, outlined in its investment plan, or it is behaving in a manner contrary to agreements made in the plan, the government is within its rights to restrict funding.

The impact of Investment Plans

The limitations placed on Vic by the investment plan with the TEC were one of the reasons behind the decision to close new domestic admissions for the rest of 2010. Vic was rapidly approaching the enrolments cap it was allowed for 2010.

Walsh explains that all universities have an investment plan, which outlines enrolment targets on “not only how many students [can be enrolled], but also how many of those students the government will fund”.

“In our Investment Plan, we give an undertaking to manage domestic student enrolment numbers between 97 per cent and 103 per cent. We will not receive government funding for any domestic students we enrol in excess of 100 per cent.”

Basically, if the university exceeds its cap, it carries the burden of funding those students itself—without extra funding from the government. Walsh reiterates that universities have a legal obligation to implement their individual investment plans.

Through the implementation of individual investment plans with universities and other TEOs, the government effectively manages how many New Zealanders can access tertiary education each year. In the past this appears not to have posed significant problems. However, it seems the government has not adequately prepared for the recent influx of students entering into tertiary education.

Walsh says that universities will have to seek funding from elsewhere in order to deal with the greater numbers.

“Because we are working in a capped funding environment, revenue from the government will be relatively fixed, and this means universities will need to look for additional revenue sources to meet any increase in expenditure.”

Walsh does say that New Zealand has “one of the most generous student support funding arrangements in the world.”

“The government spends a lot of money on tertiary education but it’s about finding the balance between money spent on students and funding for the institutions,” he says.

“Policy frameworks need adjusting to get that mix of funding right. Interest-free student loans, open access and capped funding don’t mix in a recession. In addition, universities work within a maximum fee system which limits how much they increase fees.”

McCormack says “the current system is far from ideal”. He points out that most tertiary programmes take more than one year to complete, “but funding is only secure for one year at a time”.

“The investment plans that universities agree to with the government [via the TEC] are three-year plans,” he says.

“Any decision by a university to accept additional students must take into account the pipeline consequences into subsequent years, in a situation of funding uncertainty over those subsequent years, with no guarantee of funding beyond one year at a time.”

President of the Tertiary Education Union (TEU) Dr Tom Ryan says that the TEU believes that the investment plan cap should be lifted, to allow greater numbers of enrolment into universities and other TEOs during the recession.

“We note that across the ditch in Australia, the government has said clearly that it wants more people getting degrees,” says Ryan. “It’s one of the policies they’ve introduced during the recession as part of their $1 billion extra spending on tertiary education. So it’s a pity that the [New Zealand] government has maintained the cap.”

The Budget: an exercise in treading water

Joyce points out that the changes announced at the recent Budget have allowed for the creation of more places for students at universities.

“We have refocused tertiary education funding to create approximately 4900 EFTS [equivalent full-time students] above previous baselines from 2011—a record number of core tertiary places,” he says.

“For universities, this means 1,735 additional full-time places compared to what was previously budgeted. As a result, the number of places in universities will be 765 greater in 2011 than this year’s record number.”

Joyce adds that the government has also increased spending on tuition subsidies—the Student Achievement Component (SAC)—which is the government’s contribution to the direct costs of teaching, learning, and other costs driven by student numbers.

“Around $40 million per year will be invested to increase tuition subsidies by 2.2 per cent, with approximately $23 million of this funding going to the university sector. The increase will support quality tertiary education.”

Also announced in the Budget was the end of the fee maxima policy, which allowed course fees to increase by a maximum of 5 per cent a year. The policy has been been replaced with the Annual Maximum Fee Movement (AMFM), which will allow TEOs to increase course fees by up to 4 per cent—but it only applies to fees for 2011.

Joyce says the change should give students more certainty about future study costs. He says AMFM removes the “distortive effects of the previous policy, which meant that providers with higher cost courses (with fees at or above the maxima) were unable to make increases in fees to offset the increases in the cost of provision”.

Do points out that AMFM gives no indication of what system will be in place for 2012.

“The minister has only set a fee limit for next year, and I think a lot of students are worried about how high their fees could go if there are no limits.”

Despite Joyce’s reassurances that the government is prepared for the influx of future enrolments, some remain unconvinced.

The 2009 Budget saw a number of cuts made to the tertiary education sector. Finance Minister Bill English backpeddled on prior commitments to increase funding made under the previous Labour government, and various scholarships and other funds were cut to save money.

The cuts have continued in this year’s budget, says Ryan.

“To a large degree, what was announced specifically in this year’s budget continued what the government introduced last year,” he says. “So it’s more the general government’s direction [that] has reduced the spending in tertiary education.”

McCormack agrees. “The 2010 Budget has primarily been an exercise in re-allocating existing money to achieve a limited number … of additional places at our universities.

“At the same time, per student funding is declining in comparison with university cost increases, and money for initiatives to make up for this shortfall, such as the tripartite salary funding, has been withdrawn—as announced in Budget 2009,” he says.

“The cumulative impact is that funding has been decreasing in real terms over time, and this most recent budget does not turn this trend around. Holding the line—or indeed going backwards—makes it harder for universities to prepare their students to be able to make the valuable contributions to New Zealand that are needed to ensure future growth.”

Do says New Zealand is beginning to fall behind Australia when it comes to tertiary education funding.

“The Australian government has put a significant boost of investment into universities and also student support,” he says.

“In contrast, last year’s budget in New Zealand saw cuts to several funds in tertiary education. So we feel the government should be actually increasing investment, and not keeping it stable or reducing it.

“We would have hoped that the government would do further work on addressing underfunding and student debt, but, unfortunately, this budget treads water,” Do says with a sigh. “It’s fairly lacklustre.”

‘Less’ can only go so far

Many in tertiary education have called for increased government investment in the tertiary sector, particularly given the recent emphasis placed on increased funding to be invested in research, science and technology.

McCormack comments, “As New Zealand’s universities constitute the most important part of the research sector, this funding may lead to new opportunities for university research. But is does beg the question, why hasn’t the government also matched this investment with direct funding for university research and teaching capability?

“If knowledge leads to prosperity then surely universities, as creators of knowledge, should be key drivers in the government’s plan. [Instead], the government has been talking about financial constraints, doing more with less, driving efficiency, holding the line, etc. with respect to the budget for our universities.”

NZUSA agrees with the NZVCC about the need for increased public investment.

“Even though the government wants ‘more from less’, there’s only so much you can do with the same amount of money,” Do remarks.

If government funding is not increased to match the demand for places at universities, access to tertiary education could ultimately be restricted, with universities unable to fund places for more students themselves.

NZUSA believes that this denies New Zealanders a basic ‘right’ to access tertiary education. Over time, this will result in fewer skilled graduates emerging from the tertiary education system. Do also points out that limited enrolments will likely affect minority students, or those from lower decile schools or lower socio-economic backgrounds.

“We need to think about the people who might be put at risk,” he says bluntly. “We think that the government is making the wrong choice when it comes to what way it is spending its money.

“It should have increased overall funding so that more New Zealanders can access education.”

The search for a sustainable solution

Joyce defends the actions that have been taken by the government in the tertiary education sector.

“All universities have informed the TEC that they will continue to manage their enrolments according to their current funding levels throughout 2010,” he says. “There is no extra funding available in 2010 and TEOs are all committed to managing within their means.

“In Budget 2010, the government provided a price increase to tuition subsidies. This will mean that universities will receive $23 million more in government funding in 2011 than in 2010.”

Regardless of the Budget’s immediate impact on tertiary education, it’s clear the government still needs to find a viable long-term solution to the continued calls for greater direct investment in TEOs. Universities are already turning to alternative sources of funding to try to cope with the demands of increased student numbers, while maintaining a high level of quality.

If more funding is not forthcoming, will universities be forced to consider more drastic measures to ensure they live within the means outlined in their investment plans? The fact that Vic and Otago have already taken reluctant steps should be a clear signal to the government that action needs to be taken to ensure that New Zealand’s universities are adequately funded—so that those who want to take up tertiary study can do so without worry of restriction.

Not only does this tell of the way in which technology has assimilated itself irretrievably into our daily lives, it is also testament to the convergence of that technology. Media is no longer restricted to its original platform. Instead, we watch television on our laptops; use our cellphones to connect to social networking sites, and make international calls over the internet. Every major newspaper—and many of the minor ones—uploads its content to a location online, from where it flows through to websites such as Twitter and Tumblr. Convergence has combined our once-separate roles of readers, spectators and internet users: consumers are now able to both produce, and participate in the media.

Well, that’s the simplified definition of the concept.

“There are two images of convergence,” says Dr Angi Buettner, lecturer of Media Studies at Victoria University and co-editor of the New Zealand Journal of Media Studies. “One is that a lot of things overlap, but they’re all there. The other is that a lot of things converge together to be filtered, and what you have coming out is one thin line of a lot of things.”

Dr Buettner thinks that the former premise is “our wishful thinking about convergence”, and that the second is the more realistic model. I ask Dr Buettner whether she anticipates that this “thin line” will decrease the number of sources of information or viewpoints on a particular issue that are available to the consumer.

“Potentially, it might increase the number of voices,” she says, “but which item is going to be picked up and pushed through the different platforms of publishing? Pragmatically, it will be the best, nicest-looking little story. Someone has to re-circulate it and what’s going to be picked up is something that’s already successful with audiences.”

However, Fairfax Digital’s Social Media Editor and Stuff.co.nz blogger Greer McDonald believes that above all, convergence increases access to different opinions and information.

“Fairfax has more than 780 journalists spread out across the country, and convergence means that readers don’t have to be living in Southland or Taranaki to access that region’s news,” she says. “Readers are getting their news in new ways—and from a larger number of sources—rather than becoming limited.”

Social Media is Big Business

That Fairfax Digital—part of Fairfax Media Group, which owns a significant proportion of New Zealand’s newspapers, magazines, and community newspapers—deemed it beneficial to appoint a Social Media Editor is testament to the importance and influence of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites.

“All those platforms are just opportunities to have an outpost, really,” says Tarver Graham, of Auckland-based web design company Gladeye, which produces interactive work and digital strategy “for companies that want to make their brand come across super-cool online”.

With an official website, staff blogs, and Twitter, Facebook, and Vimeo accounts, Gladeye has considerable online presence.

“We try to keep our main website reasonably profesh, but with Twitter and Facebook, we can show a bit more of who we are, and be a bit more relaxed,” says Graham, who maintains that social media allows companies to take care of their supporters.

“If your brand or company shows some love for their supporters, that loyalty is often returned, and loyalty and genuine passion for a brand is not something that you can fake or buy,” he says. “With social media, it’s really important to be genuine, because people will see through it otherwise.”

Luke Appleby, a multimedia journalist who writes Stuff.co.nz’s ‘Connector’ blog, lists the benefits of Facebook and Twitter as “building and maintaining contacts, generating instant feedback, and crowd-sourcing.

“Twitter has also proven its worth in our newsroom for monitoring breaking news, especially internationally, through a number of feeds.”

McDonald testified to this on Radio New Zealand’s Media Watch programme, broadcast on 25 April 2010. Earlier this year, the New Zealand Press Association reported that the fires at Titahi Bay were under control, but McDonald’s Twitter told a different story.

“Basically, through Twitter, I was able to provide a blow-by-blow account of what was happening, which was contrary to what the Fire Service was informing other news agencies,” she told the show’s host, Colin Peacock.

An energetic Tweeter herself, McDonald is drawn to the service’s immediacy. She describes it as “the virtual pulse of communities around New Zealand, and the world”.

“People discuss personal issues and business ideas, all in the one space,” she says. “Where once you would head to the local pub to find out what everyone was talking about, you can now jump online and connect with that same information—and on an even greater scale.”

A More Interactive Experience

Of course, this exchange of information is just that—an exchange, as both Appleby and McDonald have experienced first-hand. Readers can comment on Stuff.co.nz blogs, which, in Appleby’s words, “can allow the reader to become a part of the post themselves”.

“Having comments on everything you write can make you more cautious, and more accountable,” says Appleby. “If you get something wrong, you’ll be told about it, and I have done a few times.”

McDonald’s blog, ‘Lady in the Red’, documents her bid to take control of her personal finances. One post, in which she admitted buying a pair of boots instead of replacing her car’s worn tyres, attracted 147 comments, in any of which, readers admonished her for her “frivolous, un-thought-out purchase” (K, #44).

This would suggest that media’s newfound interactive element can position readers a little too close to journalists—although McDonald is unfazed. In fact, she says she writes “in a way that encourages the reader to respond to me and my ideas”.

“In terms of what and how I write, blogs allow me to write more creatively than what most print media models are set up for,” she adds, citing the sometimes-controversial, often opinion-based nature of the medium.

This increased participation also applies to news. Stuff.co.nz, which receives 115 million page impressions a month from 3.9 million unique browsers, engages its readers with interactive quizzes, games and video. The site’s current opinion poll asks readers to determine “who would win in a fight” between Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Susan Boyle. (At time of writing, it’s 388 – 371 to Kiri.)

“Many journalists are now waking up to the fact that most audiences love—and expect—more than one form of media from some news outlets,” explains Appleby. “You can effectively combine print, audio, video, data and audience input into one, rapidly updating article, available from anywhere with internet access.”

Just as businesses have added Facebook and Twitter to their arsenal of marketing tools, several are turning to online outfits such as Gladeye to provide them with interactive advertising applications. Gladeye created the House of Travel mixandmatcher Facebook competition, which attracted 44,000 players in the fortnight it was active.

“I think our trademark attention to detail helped make the game satisfying to play for a long period of time,” reflects Graham. “We worked on the physics of the [spinning wheels], and the look of the dials. Also, the soundtrack added a layer of mood, and that helped with the generally satisfying character of the game.

“I really believe that if something seems real, you can trick the brain into thinking that it is real, even though you know it’s not.”

Form and Function

Dr Buettner points out that according to Sherry Turkle, Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an increasing willingness to take technology at face value is one of the features of convergence culture.

“So what we see here,” explains Dr Buettner, gesturing to her desktop Apple Mac computer, “does not show us in any way how a computer works, how visual programming works… and the news doesn’t show you anything about the news production, news gathering, the editing process, or how it’s visually pulled together.

“You don’t get that, because everything is absolutely smooth in its flow.”

Dr Buettner believes that the Apple iPad, once it becomes more widely used, will change the character of computing and social media.

“News will be converted into a very smooth application that looks good, and basically gives the audience what they want,” she predicts.

McDonald says that the iPad will have an especial appeal for New Zealanders.

“Kiwis have that fantastic quality of being affected by ‘new and shiny-itis’—we love to be included in the latest technology that the world is using, and we enthusiastically promote products that improve the way we do things.”

Appleby is more cautious.

“It’s easy for us in the developed world to proclaim that the iPad will eventually help us to consume all forms of media, but what of those who can’t afford, or simply don’t want one?”.

A Place for Print

Buettner points out that not long ago, it was predicted that the book was going to disappear—“but it hasn’t”.

“People have an enjoyment of reading something on paper which cannot be substituted by any electronic device,” explains Appleby. “Everyone likes to consume different forms of media in different ways. We still have people using HAM radios and Morse code, speaking Latin, and creating traditional art with paper.”

Graham agrees—but to a certain extent.

“There’ll always be a place for print, just like there’s a place for painting even though we’ve had photography for a century and a half already,” he allows. “But these brands, and the companies behind them, will evolve in a digital landscape. They need to think of themselves as selling content, not paper. Paper is a mugs’ game. Paper is a commodity, whereas words (stories, ideas, opinions, or whatever) have a unique value.”

Dr Buettner predicts that books, newspapers and magazines will turn into a “niche market, geared towards people who like having the paper on their coffee tables–people who want that medium.

“It will not be [media’s] main platform. Print won’t be the form that will make the money. I don’t think news will be on the internet, I think it will be on even more mobile media, and I think it will get more of a print-type character.”

“What is the new beast going to be?”

Of course, the nature of journalism—both as an occupation and an industry—will have to change accordingly, and Dr Buettner maintains that in the future, the job will be very different.

“A lot of journalists will have to take on more things that the editor would have used to have done, and that they’ll have to become even quicker—so it will be a question of time management more than anything,” she says, recalling McDonald’s flat statement that the speed of online media means that “deadlines don’t exist”.

Appleby, who was trained in multimedia journalism (“I can confirm that it has proven useful so far”), believes that journalists will need to be multi-skilled in areas of print, online and television journalism in order to increase their chances of gaining employment, and McDonald agrees.

“I think reporters will be expected to be more open-minded in what the future of their role may require them to do,” she says. “New journalists who can adapt quickly will be the ones that find the most success.”

Dr Buettner maintains that the industry is currently in a state of change: “There’s a question of ‘what is the new beast going to be?’.

“I think it can really go in two directions,” she elaborates. “News industries are quite aware that now is the time when decisions are going to be made that affect how the industry is going to look like, so I think it’ll be a really interesting time to watch. And if you go into that business or field of the media over the next five years, you can probably participate in what it’s going to look like.”

“You’ve done too much, much too young,
You’re married with a kid when you could be having fun with me,
You done too much, much too young,
Now you’re married with a son when you should be having fun with me.”

—The Specials, ‘Too Much Too Young’, 1979.

They sung it in ’79, and we’re singing it even louder today.

It’s 2010 and we live in a secular, progressive society. We are Generation Y, with a passion for individualism and ourselves. We have contraception, not to mention a healthy cynicism for love. The average age for marriage in New Zealand is 28 years plus, and rising.

And yet we all seem to have those mates who have been dating since—it seems—forever. Now they’re deciding to get married. Many of us would react with a “what the fuck?” or at least an “oh my god”, but for some marriage is still the natural next step to take.

What is causing some young people to buck the current trend and decide to marry young? Is it just a small town phenomenon: religion, boredom, something in the water? Are small town folk still adhering to old-fashioned values? Just why, for God’s sake, are people doing it?

Is it weird now?

Information from Statistics New Zealand released just this month confirms that Kiwis are choosing to get hitched later. The median age for first marriage is 29.8 and 28.1 years for men and women, respectively.

In 1971 it was a different story—the majority of New Zealanders marrying for the first time were aged between 20 and 24. Today, based on recent statistics, only 16 per cent of men and 23 per cent of women decide to tie the knot that young.

And why would you? These days there isn’t much you can do in a marriage that you can’t do in a romantic relationship—unless you’re a devout Christian. As a result, we have seen the marriage rate decline to a mere third of what it was at its peak in 1971.

Statistics New Zealand suggests many factors have contributed to the decrease, such as a rise in de facto unions, a general trend towards delayed marriage, and an increasing number of Kiwis remaining single.

Sandra Johnson got married at age 21, and has been married almost 30 years. She agrees that times have changed—in the late 70s a lot of people did marry young in her hometown of Invercargill, and in other small towns all over New Zealand.

“I had just finished my nursing training when we got married, and in my class of nurses probably half of us got married soon after graduating,” she says.

“In small towns then we still held on to family values that had been instilled in by our parents. If you wanted to live with someone you got married, and had a family—just got on with it.”

These days, things are different. There is no norm to say that we should get married at any specific time, if ever. In fact, we are encouraged to pursue travel and careers before settling down. The women’s liberation movement was a contributing factor in the change in society’s attitudes to marriage.

Pill poppin’

Despite the fact the contraceptive pill became available 50 years ago, it was not readily available to single women from that time. Elaine Tyler May, Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Minnesota, says that of the 6.5 million women who were using the pill by 1964, the vast majority of them were married.

Johnson agrees that a lack of opportunities for women, both contraceptive and career-wise, led to more young marriages.

“Contraception was not so available as it is today, nor was abortion, so if someone got pregnant they got married. Smaller towns were more traditional in their values, travel was not as accessible and it was expensive, and job opportunities for girls were still a bit limited.”

Politics and gender roles also play a huge role in public attitudes towards marriage. For example, Susan Williams met the father of her children in the 1960s, when she was just 21. In the midst of the sexual revolution and women’s liberation movement, she made the conscientious decision not to get married, just to play her own part in the movement.

Now that women can choose to have a career, have sex without getting knocked up, and travel to almost anywhere in the world, marriage seems less and less relevant.

Melanie the escapee

It is hard to imagine Melanie Williams, 21, as a married farmer’s wife in Murchison—population 555 at the last census count. The tall, slender, red-head looks as though she has just stepped, gazelle-like, off the stage of a glamorous cabaret in New York. She studies architecture in Wellington, and plans to travel—but her life could have been very different if she had not broken up with her fiancée in Murchison at age 19.

“We had been going out a year and a half. I wasn’t planning on getting married young, I wanted to live together first and travel. He would have preferred that maybe I didn’t go to uni, and become a farm wife—which I didn’t want to do.”

When asked how she thinks her life would be different if she had ended up tying the knot, her reply resonates more with the sense of ‘dodged bullet’ rather than ‘lost love’.

“I would feel a little bit ripped off. Because I was still studying, I hadn’t achieved my various life goals that I wanted to pursue. Getting married, there is the expectation that you settle down and have children. It would have come too quickly.”

Melanie describes Murchison as a small farming community with very traditional values. A place with routine and ritual where it was fairly common for people to marry young. A place where you would go to a tea room and have a custard square.

“A lot of people were stuck in a previous time. Even the sayings they use… and the industries are less cutting edge. Even the way they dress, I really stood out. There was a strong sense of community and more traditional values, which translated in to marrying young.”

Small towns are like Greeks

Studies show that rural communities, like Murchison, do have more of a tradition of marrying young. The small town culture is similar to those cultures with a collective focus, such as Greeks or Indians, where there is an expectation to continue the family traditions or business and look after your elders.

City slickers can be compared to individualistic societies, of which most Anglo cultures are an example. These families encourage individual uniqueness and self-determination. Kids are cheered on to leave home, go flatting, and make a career for themselves. Marriage is postponed until you’ve done everything you want to do.

In collective societies marriage is an important marker in the life cycle, especially where there is a family business to continue. It signifies adulthood, and the succession of authority. If you’re not married by a certain stage in a collective culture, you become something else—a spinster, or that old guy who is always in the pub by himself.

Melanie noticed the difference between attitudes of those in Murchison to those in larger cities who are looking for love in the Hollywood sense. In Murchison, marriage is as much a model of practicality as it is of love, especially in a town where many girls leave because the main industry is farming.

“You’re going out with someone and, hey, there’s no one else, and you’re not gonna leave so you may as well marry them—to put it bluntly. Most of the people are paired up, and if they aren’t then you’ll just end up alone. There are a lot less girls in a community like that, so once they get a girl they stick with them.”

The Religious Model

Another reason people might marry young is religion. It is a common belief that the rule stipulating “no bonking before an eternal oath” has driven many a young Christian down the aisle.

In some countries sex before marriage is an offence punishable not just by eternal damnation, but also by a cane to the backside. Vice Magazine reports that “fornicators (people who fornicate but aren’t married) are flogged all over Asia”, with the number of lashes corresponding to how much of a fornicator you are. This is also the case in countries like Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, Nigeria and Pakistan.

Thankfully we live in a society where we can “fornicate” as much as we like without fear of not being able to sit for a week—depending on what you’re doing. But are some young Christians still getting married just so they can get in the sack?

Mike and his wife Laura are Christians from Feilding and Gisborne, respectively, who decided to tie the knot young. Mike was only 21 when they got married last year, but he insists that sex had hardly anything to do with their decision to get married.

“Because of our faith, Laura and I didn’t go for the ‘try before you buy’ option, you know, live together first,” he says.

“It’s difficult, but that’s how much we believe in our faith… It’s so much more to us than just following some ancient rule… Sex is just one—awesome—part of marriage, and so when we decided to get married, sex was just one part of our decision.”

So Christians like sex too, but they also like God—fair enough. But with an increasing trend for citizens of Western nations to marry later in life, it’s fair to ask what exactly the benefit is of marrying young, if it’s not to bonk.

The “We found each other young” Model

For Mike and Laura, marriage was just the logical next step in their relationship, he says, as well as a commitment in the eyes of God to be together forever.

“We felt we had reached a point in our relationship where we were ready to make a serious commitment to each other. It kinda felt like things had ‘plateau-ed’ and marriage was the next step for us.”
Catherine Sparks and her partner are both 21, non-religious and from Tauranga. They decided to get engaged a year ago. Cat says that from age 17, they were both pretty sure that they were going to get married.

“The idea of being married and sharing everything and making a family with him is so exciting. It is a lifelong commitment… but not in the eyes of God for me, as I am not religious,” she says.

“I have had the best role models in terms of a happy marriage, my parents have been together for almost 30 years and still madly in love.”

Nicola, 23, married her partner both as a “celebration of love”, but also as a legal recognition of their relationship. As the couple want to live overseas at some point, this aspect of marriage was also important to them. Being a non-religious couple, this was the deciding factor between getting a civil union, and getting married.

“Civil unions are not as widely recognised overseas, so that was something we weighed up before we decided between marriage and civil union. I know people who have had to get civilly united and then get married later on because of visa requirements.”

The reasons for young marriage are more plentiful than we might think. But whether because of religion, because you have good role models, or because you want to be legally united, the decision to get married boils down to one thing: love. These couples really like each other, and plan to do so for a really long time.

A really really really long time

Getting married young means that you have promised to spend the rest of your life together, which—if you are smoke-free, eat healthy, and exercise—is a really long time.

The life expectancy for New Zealanders is around 82 years for women and 78 years for men. If you marry at age 21, you can probably expect to be with that one person for over 50 years. Which is a bloody long time—a long enough time to set off a siren of cynicism in most young people. It’s so long that it makes me feel like lying in bed with a ciggie burning in one hand and the grease from a chicken drumstick dripping down the other.

Yet some people have gone the distance, and still believe in the institution of marriage whole-heartedly. Barbara Johnston, an Invercargill girl, was 20 when she met Gus, a central Southland farmer.

“We had only known each other a year when we married and now we are coming up 30 years of wedded bliss,” she says. “When it’s all boiled down, what we want out of marriage is love, commitment, security—and it doesn’t just happen, you have to keep working on it.”

Today, with divorce rates being what they are, some couples are choosing to go in to marriage with more ‘realistic’ vows. Instead of “till death do us part”, one might say “as long as I love you”.
Take our celebrity friend Peaches Geldof, British socialite and daughter of rock royalty Bob, as an example. She was married in Vegas at age 19 to 23-year-old musician Max. After six months the couple separated, with Peaches revealing that she was always realistic about her marriage.

“You can’t ignore divorce rates. Every friend of mine has parents who are divorced. I didn’t go into it with Max thinking, ‘This is going to last forever,’ but I did go into it thinking, ‘I love him right now and I know that I’ll continue to love him for a long while.”

Just a few months after her 23rd birthday, Britney Spears married her childhood friend at The Little White Chapel in Vegas, ironically the same chapel where Peaches was married. The marriage lasted 55 hours.

Perhaps marriage is not the infinite vow of love that it once was. Perhaps there is now room for young people to toy with the idea of marriage for as long as it suits them—much to the Pope’s delight, I’m sure.

The Verdict

Despite the changing attitudes to marriage, all of the young couples I spoke to absolutely believed they would be together forever. All admitted that married life is not going to be easy, but that they were committed to it.

It might be true that people from small towns get married younger, but small-town values have well equipped these young people for the long haul—AKA wedded bliss.

Though young marriage may not be for everyone, a background of community, parents who have been together forever, a small, strong support network and an optional dash of faith can’t hurt when one finally decides to take the leap. Just don’t expect to see me walking down the aisle any time soon.

So, for the wellbeing of your children, and your children’s children, we examine and rank Disney’s most famous female protagonists based on their ability to promote gender equality and feminist ideals.* Hold on to your nostalgia folks, you’re in for a bumpy ride.

8. Wendy Darling—Peter Pan (1953)

Coming in dead last we have Wendy. I hated Wendy when I was little. I thought it might have been because she had cooties, but now I know the truth. Wendy is so docile and submissive to Peter’s white male privilege it’s sickening. Peter’s only recognition of her worth is domestic, after she sews his shadow back onto him when he crash-lands into the loft of the Darlings’ bourgeois London townhouse. His view of her changes little as the story progresses.

Constantly the damsel-in-distress, Wendy’s only purpose appears to be as the surrogate mother to Peter’s Lost Boys, a rag-tag group of children forced to wear animal skins for clothes, clearly suffering the consequences of a neglectful single dad. Wendy, you fail at life—and at feminism. The second-wave revolution was just around the corner, and by God I hope you were the first against the wall.

7. Jessica Rabbit—Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)

Yes, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is a Disney movie. Look it up. Jessica Rabbit is characterised as a huge-chested, tiny-waisted femme fatale. Only she’s married… to Roger Rabbit. This is weird for several reasons. First, I don’t consider femmes fatales the epitome of empowerment. The modern femme fatale is a character model popularised by Raymond Chandler novels and films noirs adapted from Raymond Chandler novels. Unlike the femmes fatales of times passed (Lilith from Jewish folklore, for example), these incarnations suggest that women who have full control of externally enhanced sexuality aren’t to be trusted. It doesn’t matter how transgressive these troubled broads appear, they’re still objects of desire and are still defined entirely by the whims of the male protagonist. Case in point: Jessica Rabbit.

Now that I think about it, she’s not even a true femme fatale. She’s happily married; the protagonist’s desire for her does not lead him into mortal peril; and her unattainable desirability drives no one insane, nor does it lead to her own tragic death. She just talks huskily and is ogled by all male characters (and audience members). Her most famous line is fitting: “She’s not bad, she’s just drawn that way”.

6. Megara—Hercules (1997)

Any female lead destined to hook up with a demigod is bound to be relegated to stereotypes and clichés. This is a shame, because they almost scored a home run. Hercules characterises Megara as a witty, curiously detached femme fatale-wannabe with romantic musings and strangely Yiddish mannerisms. That’s cool, but no amount of witty banter will distract from her damsel-in-distress-ness. She does make a deal with Hades to save Hercules though—like how she made a deal with Hades to save her ex-boyfriend before the film began—except she dies and has to have her soul rescued from the underworld. If I’d made Hercules I would’ve had Megara be the demigod with super strength and had her spend the whole 93 minutes engaging in verbal ructions with James Woods’ Hades. Then I could call it HERcules. Genius. Ancient mythology be damned.

5. Princess Jasmine—Aladdin (1992)

Jazz rocks. Despite being royalty, she is grounded, level-headed, and falls in love with Aladdin for who he is, not what he is (which is, technically, Scott Weigner, who played DJ Tanner’s boyfriend in Full House). While a damsel-in-distress for a teensy part of the movie, the extenuating circumstances are both elaborate and awesome. I will excuse mildly stereotypical gender role situations if giant fucking hourglasses are involved.

The failing of Aladdin (and others) is what I like to call Idiot Single Dad Syndrome. That is, any narrative where the main conflict arises solely due to the patriarch’s stubbornness or pride, a situation that can only logically precipitate because there is no mother figure around to tell said patriarch to shut the fuck up and stop being such a proud self-righteous douchebag. This is the case in Aladdin where the Sultan adheres stringently to the law that Jasmine must marry a prince, only to have a change of heart and abolish this law at the film’s dénouement. Well la-dee-fucking-da, why didn’t you decide that earlier on? Oh that’s right, then there wouldn’t be a movie. Fail.

4. Pocahontas—Pocahontas (1994)

Pocahontas is a bastion of independence and Native American spirituality and values in the pale face of white European colonialism. Idiot Single Dad Syndrome plays a subtle role, but on the whole things are grand, if a tad historically inaccurate. Pocahontas is the noblest of savages, following both tangible objects (her heart) and the intangible (the wind), while talking to old willow trees and perching on high places as feathers and dandruff swirl around her, an effect that James Cameron would eventually steal (along with the basic story) for Avatar.

I should write more about her but I feel uncompelled to do so. Maybe it’s because Mel Gibson was the voice of John Smith, or because the only comic relief came from a raccoon and a hummingbird, but the movie as a whole just isn’t very memorable. Still, Pocahontas is a well-rendered character, and the story ticks all the right boxes required to attempt to retroactively assuage white male guilt. Thus, I place it commendably, a feat that retroactively assuages my own white male guilt.  

3. Mulan—Mulan (1998)

Mulan is the most overtly feminist tale Disney put to celluloid in the 90s. So why doesn’t it place higher? Sure, she rejects the rites of domesticity reserved for females in her society, and poses as a male in order to have her skills and attributes appreciated on an equal level. However, by fable’s end, the status quo doesn’t appear to have significantly changed. After running rings around 90 per cent of the idiot males in the story, she returns home as a hero, yet the society that forced her to change her appearance in the first place shows little signs of reform. The audience doesn’t notice this—they’re too busy wondering if she’ll get together with the hunky Li Shang. Mulan becomes the exception, not the rule, and this rousing tale leaves a bitter aftertaste.

2. Jane—Tarzan (1999)

I love Jane. She’s one of Disney’s most fleshed-out and realised heroines, helped in no small part by Minnie Driver’s wonderful voice acting. Jane earns the silver for several reasons, chief among them being her relationship with her dad, who is totally gay. Don’t believe me? The signs are there: Jane’s father is voiced by the late great Nigel Hawthorne, most famous for his role as Sir Humphrey Appleby in the sitcom Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. In 1995, Hawthorne was outed in the lead-up to the Academy Awards. Though sexuality of an actor does not dictate sexuality of the role, Jane’s mother is absent, yet there is no Idiot Single Dad Syndrome here. Jane’s father is loving, sensitive, and easy-going. Traits which lead me to believe he isn’t heterosexual. Unless of course the story is just, you know, well-written.

Jane is independent and inquisitive, constantly seeking the natural beauty in her surroundings. She also becomes Tarzan’s teacher, educating him about all aspects of his origins. Tarzan becomes enamoured with her, fully appreciating her qualities without a hint of the sexual inequality present in his gorilla family. Finally rejecting the patriarchy of Victorian England, Jane gives in to her love for Tarzan, becoming the new member of the Gorillaz. Her father comes too, yet is not subject to the Hollywood Law of Cliché Coupling (where all sympathetic characters pair up and find love or companionship before the end of the story), furthering the gay rumours. Unless he shacks up with Tarzan’s gorilla mother, which, let’s face it, would be totally hot.

1. Belle—Beauty and the Beast (1990)

Belle wins. To date, Beauty and the Beast is Disney’s greatest achievement, and one they will never better. I’m not going to explain the plot, or how Belle is beautiful both inside and out—you all know it. Any movie with dialogue like “It’s not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts getting ideas, and thinking…” is a winner.

What I do want to talk about is the feminist debates surrounding the film. Critics point out that Beast abuses Belle by roaring at her when she enters the West Wing, as well as throwing objects around in her presence, equating to an abusive relationship that serves to marginalise Belle when she decides to conveniently ignore these incorrigible actions and fall in love with Beast anyway. (Beast saving her life is not an adequate reason for forgiving these actions, apparently.) This is a fair point to make, but I must point out a curious nature of the Beast that sometimes goes unnoticed: he’s a beast.

As Belle begins to fall for Beast, he becomes more human, standing upright and wearing progressively more and more clothing and no longer losing his temper. While I am hesitant to justify anthropomorphised creatures when they act in an animalistic manner, how else was the Beast supposed to appear beastly? Be voiced by Colin Firth and say “I say, I do object to you being here, you must leave with utmost expediency, please”? Nonsense. It must also be pointed out that after breaking the spell, they don’t get married. Suck it, institution.

Disqualified: Princess Ariel—The Little Mermaid (1989)

Princess Ariel fails to achieve a ranking on account of her being both feminist and anti-feminist in equal measure. Permit me to explain: Ariel sacrifices her voice so she can walk like a human and seduce Prince Eric, betraying two integral aspects of her identity for a man. She later leaves her Merpeople completely by permanently transforming into a human and marrying Eric. Not very feminist.

Ariel is also the only female Disney character (as far as I’m aware) to be portrayed naked, her nudity alluded to by shadows and well-placed long red hair. The villain, Ursula, is portrayed as an old woman with a provocative, sexual nature (assisted by the fact that she’s a cecaelia—half-human half-octopus), hinting that if you’re old and ugly but sexually aware, you are a disgusting witch. Not very feminist.

It’s worth nothing that The Little Mermaid kick-started the Disney ‘renaissance’ of the 90s, and was, to a new generation of children, a film where the titular character was female—showing young girls that yes, they could be the star of their own story, unlike Aladdin, Hercules, The Lion King and Tarzan. They would only repeat this with Mulan nine years later. For these reasons, I feel like I cannot rank The Little Mermaid, and must leave it as a separate entity unto itself. (Also note the heavy Idiot Single Dad Syndrome in this movie, and don’t get me started on the Haitian characterisation of Sebastian the lobster.)

This rank is not necessarily to say what you should or shouldn’t watch. Rather, it’s for the sake of awareness, role-models, posterity and a better tomorrow. It’s my hope that, in time, a deep understanding of Disney will bring humanity into a whole new world, with a new fantastic point of view. No one to tell us no, or where to go, or say we’re only dreaming.

*Please note that only human characters are ranked. I don’t care how feminist Nala from The Lion King or Bianca from The Rescuers or Lady from Lady and the Tramp are; they are fucking animals.

This feature was also published in the Auckland University Students’ Association’s women’s magazine Kate.

For most of those who study at Victoria University, the Te Aro campus on upper Cuba Street might as well belong to a separate institution. Those trendy design students dressed in black; the wannabe architects spending sleepless nights with their scale models: they’re a different breed. Hell, they don’t even use Blackboard down there.

For all its eccentricities, Victoria’s centre of architecture and design is home to some remarkable work, which is being recognised at both a national and an international level. Just a few weeks ago, for example, a team of postgraduate architecture students were chosen to compete in a Solar Decathlon competition organised by the United States’ Department of Energy: the first successful entry from the Southern Hemisphere, ever. Needless to say, this is kind of a big deal.

What’s more, despite the degrees’ competitive nature and the arduous hours of work required to succeed, design and architecture students seem to relish their study. Of all of Victoria University, it is plausible that Te Aro alone is home to the fabled ‘campus culture’, where students make lasting friendships in lectures and tutorials; and where uni is both a social hub, and a hothouse of creative ambition. With its sprawling structure, geographical detachment, and dismal communal areas, Kelburn can only dream of such solidarity.

Leading the Southern Hemisphere

The Solar Decathlon team is comprised of Anna Farrow, Nick Officer, Ben Jagersma and Eli Nuttall. Their response to the competition’s brief of designing, building, and operating an energy-efficient, attractive and affordable house was a reinterpretation of the humble Kiwi bach. Their proposed timber structure impressed judges, who selected them to compete against 19 other collegiate teams from around the world.

“I researched the bach typology, and thought that it was a good starting point for a remote structure that could be solar-powered,” says Farrow.

“We thought it categorised New Zealand’s unique identity,” adds Nuttall. “There are some things in the bach that we thought represented our way of life and culture—the outdoor living, the open-plan social hub…”

“Simplicity,” puts in Jagersma. “Nothing too fancy!”

All four are pursuing their Master’s Degree in Architecture.

“It’s the worst time of your life, and the best time of your life,” says Officer of studying architecture. “You spend five years with the same 80 people; it’s like high school all over again.”

“You spend heaps of time at school, but there are cool things about that,” says Farrow, who has noticed the lack of engagement at Vic’s other campuses.

“I did a couple of papers up there [at Kelburn]—you turn up to class, you don’t talk to anyone, and you leave again.”

Jagersma believes that Te Aro’s cooperative spirit could be a result of the “nature of design”.

“We do a lot of work together, and we chat about our designs,” he says. “Because you spend so much time thinking about what you’re doing, you just naturally get to know each other a lot more. An essay’s more of an individual thing—you don’t really go and discuss it so much.”

Nuttall hopes that the number of students involved in their Decathlon submission will help them to bring Vic together. The team are working with students of media, communications, law and commerce, among others, in order to ensure that their bach excels in the competition’s ten contests—only one of these exclusively pertains to architecture. Some of the other factors that their construction will be judged on are its market appeal, its affordability, and how comfortable it is to live in.

Farrow, Officer, Jagersma and Nuttall will travel to Washington in October 2011 to build the bach to scale on the National Mall. It will be exhibited alongside the 19 other teams’ houses for a period of ten days, during which around 150,000 people are expected to visit this temporary ‘solar village’.

There’s so much work in store for them between then and now, it’s understandable that the team hasn’t thought much of their plans for the future, post-Decathlon.

“I guess it’s going to open a lot of doors for us at some stage,” says Officer. “I think I’ll stay in New York and never come home. That’s the dream.”

A Competitive Advantage

I ask Thomas Ibbotson, a Master’s student, whether architecture is as difficult, and as competitive, as Kelburn and Pipitea students consider it to be.

“Unfortunately, it’s exactly that,” he says, ruefully. “There’s usually a love-hate relationship with architecture.”

He attributes students’ high standards of work to the open nature of assessment at Te Aro.

“From day one, projects are presented by critique—meaning you present your projects to your classmates, tutors, and guest critiques, which forces students to take responsibility for their design decisions,” he explains.

“Having to stand up and present your projects means you have to be happy with your effort or attempt,” he continues, “which ultimately means doing the best you can, by putting in the maximum effort and time.”

With their work subjected to such scrutiny, it’s no wonder that design and architecture students spend so much time perfecting their submissions.

“Competition has been drilled into us,” says Ibbotson, though he allows that this has its advantages. It encourages the exchange and discussion of ideas, and even brings students together. “We’re always keen to critique, question or help out friends, as this is the best way for us to learn. Our friends have the most contemporary perspective and ideas available.”

Ibbotson agrees that Te Aro seems to “differ greatly” from Vic’s other campuses. He says this is due to the long hours students spend working alongside each other.

“We become pretty tight, and there are always a few laughs in the studio.”

Te Aro students are also encouraged to enter competitions, in order to further their practical skills. Ibbotson won second place in the Monument to a Memorable Event competition, organised by the Commonwealth Association of Architects, with a structure that commemorated the Wahine disaster.

Of his entry, Ibbotson says that it was “interesting to research, and offered a lot to work with”.

“Over the development of my submission, I learnt a lot about my own design process: where I start, and how I tackle certain challenges. It made clear my strengths and weaknesses.”

Ibbotson believes the study of architecture “could be applied to a variety of careers”, but at this stage, he has “no idea” as to his plans for the future.

“I have to finish this year first.”

A Change of Focus

Certainly, Karie Higgins and Megan Oliver used their Bachelor degree in Architecture, specialising in Interior Architecture, for something other than its obvious purpose. Shortly after graduating in 2004, they began to dabble in jewellery design—“for no particular reason, other than a bit of fun,” says Higgins.

Their brand, d_luxe, has gone from strength to strength. Higgins reels off a list of their successes to date, which includes collaborating with fashion designers twenty-seven names at Fashion Week; finding stockists for their designs in Australia; and establishing an online boutique.

Higgins describes studying at Te Aro “a completely different experience to Kelburn campus”.

“There, it’s more of a ‘get to the lecture and then get out of there’ type of deal. I assume perhaps at the other Vic campuses, you’re usually in far larger groups, and you don’t communicate with your peers so much… Te Aro students hang out on campus even when they aren’t working!”

And it’s true—it’s hard to imagine that happening at Kelburn (“Hey, wanna go smoke and ogle construction workers?”).

“There’s a real community that develops at Te Aro, mainly because of the studio teaching and work,” says Higgins. “You’re always collaborating with the people in your year, and sometimes with those from other years and disciplines—so it’s a great way to meet and get to know other people.

“By the end of your degree, most faces in the building are familiar, and because of the hours you need to actually be on campus, it does begin to feel a bit like a second home.”

Again, this seems nothing like the Kelburn experience—though perhaps if we didn’t have to leg it up a hill to get there, we’d spend more time at uni. And this could have been a reality.

In 1902, when the Victoria Council was yet to settle on a location for the university, the preferred spot was a 13-acre plot of Crown real estate in Mount Cook. However, then-Prime Minister Richard Seddon refused to part with it.

Had he been more amenable, the rest of Victoria University could have shared in Te Aro’s central and creative location, which has a lot to answer for in drawing the masses to study on the weekend. Certainly, Higgins appreciated “all that Cuba Street has to offer in terms of culture and convenience”.

“It is true though that, as a result, design students probably spend a disproportionate amount of money on coffee!”

Midnight Espresso must do a roaring trade on the night before hand-in.

Both Higgins and Oliver credit their time at Te Aro for their dedicated work ethic, their conceptual thinking skills, and their responsiveness to innovation, while their knowledge of interior architecture is apparent in their work. As d_luxe’s website states, “The move to jewellery design was simply a shift in scale.”

“People often say that you can tell that we’re trained in ‘interiors’, as we love composing our images and objects in a way that utilises our background in spatial design,” says Higgins. “We consider the whole environment as integral in our imagery.”

Sleepless in Te Aro

Patrick Thompson is an award-winning student of architecture, having won awards in the Habitat 3E Housing Competition, the New Zealand Institute of Architects’ Graphisoft Student Design Awards, and the Team Architecture Scholarships.

He believes that architecture and design is such hard work because it’s not a cut-and-dried process. “I think one of the main factors is that it’s very hard to ‘finish’ design,” he says. “It can always be improved upon, or looked at differently, no matter what stage you’re at.”

It’s fortunate, therefore, that the Te Aro academic staff are so accommodating.

“If you have any questions, they’ll always give you time to have a chat,” says Thompson. “Also, there’s lots of tutorial time, which, over five years, can create some great relationships with staff.”

Ibbotson agrees.

“I imagine students at Te Aro campus have a very different relationship with staff. They’re often not just lecturers, but also tutors, who spend one-on-one time with students.”

A recurring theme in interviews with Te Aro students is the late nights spent at uni.

“I’ve lived with students from other campuses every year,” says Thompson, “and the only difference is a lot less sleep.”

Workplace Romance

Jordon Wisniewski, however, sees some benefits in wiling away the midnight hour (well, almost—it shuts at 11.30pm) at Te Aro.

“During project time, the campus becomes your life,” he says. “The faces you see the most of are your classmates, burning the night away rendering, sketching or sanding, so you form pretty strong bonds with these people. I’d say out of all the campuses, we definitely have the highest rate of couples getting together at school.”

Wisniewski has a Bachelor of Design, majoring in Industrial Design. Along with fellow graduate Matt Fraser and senior lecturer Jeni Mihova, he has helped build ten models depicting detailed sections of the Parthenon and Acropolis. The models were on display at Te Aro last week, and will soon be exhibited at the Acropolis Museum in Athens.

Wisniewski’s role was to interpret drawings and sketches of the site, and to create two of the larger scale models of the Parthenon.

“I’m not an architecture student, so the opportunity to be involved in an architecture project has been really interesting—especially one that looks at one of the most important buildings in the world.

“The challenge of building a classical structure using modern construction techniques was one of the most frustrating and enjoyable projects I’ve done.”

Wisniewski believes that a Bachelor of Design or Architecture incorporates skills that are applicable to any field, “depending on what spin you put on your degree”.

“The campus is constantly in flux; already, the degree I’ve completed has changed, so it will be really interesting to see what graduates in the next five years will be doing.”

He credits the campus’ continual evolution with the assortment of students that study there: he maintains that there is no such thing as a ‘typical’ Te Aro student.

“Our faculty is made up of the practical, the academic, the fashionable, the deros, those who are logical and those who daydream,” says Wisniewski. “Having all the different flavours in close-knit creative quarters is what produces innovative work. This also makes the atmosphere really interesting to work and socialise in.

“Seeing other people doing well really pushes you to produce something great, and although you’ll eventually be competing with your classmates in the big bad world, they’re your most useful resource, and become some of your best friends. Or your potential husband or wife!”

Having said that, Wisniewski is quick to point out the limitations of his argument: he estimates that he’s spent a total of 12 hours at the other Victoria campuses over a four-year period.

“Despite that, I’d have really liked to have split my studies between campuses, and would definitely recommend anyone interested in taking a paper at Te Aro to give it a go.”

Indeed, several of the courses offered at Te Aro are open-entry, so go on: listen to Wisniewski’s advice. Discover that artistic inclination. Soak up the atmosphere. Make some friends. And take some of that community spirit back to Kelburn with you.

In case you haven’t heard, Avatar is awesome. An alien moon circling a distant planet, an exotic swathe of extraterrestrial flora and fauna—oh, and let’s not forget the ten-foot tall sentient beings who dart across the landscape like giant blue ninjas. What makes James Cameron’s masterpiece different, however, is the role of humanity in the interstellar first contact. No longer the hapless victims of an alien invasion, Avatar’s humans are themselves the invaders—the “sky people” from a far-off world. In Cameron’s digitally-created world, we are the aliens.

Strange as it may seem, the idea that humans might one day be extraterrestrial emissaries to an alien world is not entirely far-fetched. Yet almost everywhere we look, the task of finding life seems to be a daunting one. Interstellar distances and that pesky light-speed barrier make our chances of actually meeting alien life beyond our solar system rather slim. Closer to home, scientists speak excitedly about the possibility that microbial life may have existed on Mars millions of years ago.

But there is another candidate for life beyond our world. It is close to home, it contains a body of water larger than all of Earth’s oceans combined, and it has its own internal energy source. It has all the components believed to be necessary for life—and, what’s more, it has them today. Right now. Enter, stage left, Europa.

No, it’s not the band that wrote ‘The Final Countdown’. Europa is one of about sixty satellites of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. It was discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610 along with the three other ‘Galilean moons’—Io, Callisto and Ganymede. Very little was known about it until the 1970s when NASA’s Voyager missions were able to photograph it up close. What emerged would puzzle scientists. Europa appeared to have an icy outer crust crisscrossed with an ever-shifting landscape of cracks, fissures and craters. Through some unknown process, the surface of Europa seemed to be continually reinventing itself like a bad home renovation show.

The subsequent Galileo mission concluded that Europa’s bi-polar topography is most likely due to an ocean of liquid water beneath the shifting crust of ice. This ocean, heated by Jupiter’s immense tidal pull, is estimated to be as much as 50 kilometres deep. This same tidal pull is the cause of the fiery volcanic activity of Europa’s cousin, Io, and it is highly probable that the same volcanic activity occurs on Europa in the form of volcanic vents on the ocean floor. What’s more, it is theorised that the impact of cosmic rays on Europa’s exterior could convert the ice into oxidizers, providing a supply of oxygen into the subsurface ocean.

Europa contains all of the ingredients necessary for the development of a food chain—liquid water, oxygen, and an energy source. Put them all together, and that’s life, baby.

The grand scheme of things

So why is Europa so important?
“[Europa is] one of the very few places, along with Earth, where all the ingredients for life potentially exist,” says Dr Curt Niebur, NASA Program Scientist for the Europa Jupiter System Mission. “And what we’ve found on Earth is that wherever you have those ingredients for life, life somehow manages to make things work.”

“At the moment we know of just one planet which supports life,” adds Dr Claire Bretherton, Education and Public Programmes Manager at Carter Observatory Wellington. “But if we could find life on one of our own near neighbours this opens up the possibility of many, many more locations in our universe where life may be able to exist.”

For many, this puts Europa at the top of the list in the search for life. “Some scientists rate it higher than Mars as a likely abode of life and more worthy of a major initiative,” explains David Maclennan, President of the New Zealand Spaceflight Association.

“Wherever there is water, there is usually life, even if only of a microscopic nature.”

Niebur stresses that Europa presents a case study of what might be a common phenomenon throughout the universe. “As we’ve explored the universe … we’ve found that these giant gaseous planets like Jupiter are very, very common.

“And while we would not necessarily expect life to arise on these gas ball planets, what we’ve found unexpectedly in our solar system is that the moons orbiting them can actually be quite hospitable places.

“It could be that Earth-like planets are very rare in the universe, but habitable moons around gas giants might be quite commonplace.”

This means that the ‘goldilocks zone’—the narrow strip of space around any given star where the temperature is ‘just right’ for life to arise—may not be as significant as it was originally thought. Europa is well beyond this hypothesised temperate zone, yet it seems to harbour all of the necessary preconditions for life. “We’ve completely turned that [idea] on its ear in the past five to ten years,” says Niebur.

Fly me to the Moon… of Jupiter

If you’re anywhere near as geeky as me, you’re probably wondering the same thing I am—when are we going already?! As it so happens, NASA is currently working on a joint mission with the European Space Agency (ESA) to do just that. The Europa Jupiter System Mission, scheduled to be launched in 2020, is comprised of several spacecraft designed specifically to explore the moons of Jupiter, with a focus on—you guessed it—Europa.

“The goal of the overall mission is to investigate what we call the emergence of habitable worlds around giant planets,” explains Niebur.

“We’re going to study these unexpected oases in the outer solar system—learn how they formed, learn what sustains them, and learn exactly how hospitable they are. And once we understand these things, we can then perhaps learn how unique our solar system is, or if these kind of conditions might be commonplace in the universe.”

NASA has announced that the mission will not include a lander, citing both the complexity of a landing and a lack of knowledge of the Europan terrain. “Simply put, we just don’t understand enough about Europa yet to land there,” says Niebur.

“There are some basic, global science questions that we are asking that can only be answered from orbit. And once we learn enough, we’ll be able to both ask more focused questions that require a lander and, just as importantly, be able to design a vehicle that can survive landing—which is not an easy thing to do.”

Money is also an issue, with the ESA’s contribution facing competition from two other proposed European space missions. President Obama’s recent proposition that NASA focus its energy on a manned mission to Mars may also distract vital funds and expertise from Europa. “At the end of the day, it all comes down to money,” explains Maclennan.

“No bucks, no Buck Rogers.”

Can you dig it?

Like the kid on the first day of school who comes prepared with a full pencil case, NASA is already thinking ahead. In 2009, a team of scientists braved the cold and the threat of rampaging penguins to test out a small submersible vehicle named ENDURANCE in the frozen waters of Lake Bonney, Antarctica. Their key objective was to determine whether it was possible for an automated craft to melt through several kilometres of ice and explore the subterranean ocean underneath it—without any input from human operators.

The mission was a resounding success. “It was very much like being on a space mission at times,” explains Associate Professor Peter Doran, the mission’s lead investigator. “We’d be in the tent in the middle of the lake watching the live feed.

“Part of the excitement was the discovery of new things, part was the fear of getting it stuck … It is now a $5 million plus vehicle and we had little interest in losing it!”

Apart from exploring and taking scientific measurements, ENDURANCE can also render a three-dimensional map of its underwater world. “It was exciting … when we were exploring the terra incognita of the underwater glacier face,” says Doran.

The craft, affectionately nicknamed “The Bot”, is now “on R&R back in Austin Texas”. But will it ever go into outer space? “ENDURANCE itself is too big to ever go to Europa,” states Doran.

“It has just been teaching us how to do autonomous science in an extreme aquatic environment. For the Europa science, the next stage is to scale down.”

Niebur asserts that an ENDURANCE-based mission is the next logical step in the exploration of Europa after the 2020 mission. “I would bet that a lander mission is going to be sitting right near the top of the list for future exploration.”

We could be the “Sky People”!

What exactly might we find beneath Europa’s icy surface? “We really don’t know,” explains Niebur. “You would assume that it would be simple life—single-celled organisms—but we have no way of telling.

“Even in what we would consider drastic and unwelcoming environments on Earth, like around hot springs or volcanic vents, you can see a very complex eco-system arise.”

And how might the discovery of life beyond our planet affect us here on Earth? “How would it NOT affect us?” Niebur asks. “The implications of finding life beyond Earth would be profound in all walks of life.

“It’s impossible to imagine what you could learn scientifically or philosophically or spiritually if life—if ANY kind of life—were discovered beyond Earth.”

Maclennan is somewhat sceptical of the effect it would have on the everyday person. “I really can’t see the average Joe/Jane Bloggs getting too worked up about it.

“I think most people would just shrug their shoulders and go back to watching the real alien life forms on reality TV shows like Survivor or Big Brother.”

At the very least, the prospect that extraterrestrial life might exist within our backyard is an exciting one. And whether or not Europan life is complex in nature or merely the alien equivalent of herpes, it would solve once and for all the riddle of whether we are alone in the universe. If life can evolve independently twice in the same solar system, the chances are that it is prevalent throughout the universe.

And as for me? I’m holding out for alien sea monkeys.

It was a balmy, still, Saturday evening in March. As the clock ticked past eight-thirty, a few environmentally conscious Wellingtonians went to their light switches and thrust them into the off position. Earth Hour had begun. Around the city, one by one, lights flickered out and darkness clung a little more strongly to the Wellington hills.

To the six hundred guests descending on the Old Museum Building for the finals of the 42BELOW Cocktail World Cup, however, the environment was the last thing on their minds. The only future that they were concerned about involved the next few hours. And the next few hours promised vodka, cocktails and rock ‘n’ roll.

Suddenly, as if in retaliation to the invading darkness, a beam of light pierced the night sky. Hundreds of necks strained upwards to make out what was now illuminated on the carillon tower of the National War Memorial.

Was it a bird? Was it a plane? Was it some misguided SOS to Batman?

No.

It was vodka company 42BELOW’s logo, gracing New Zealand’s national memorial to its fallen war dead.

The public outcry that emerged in the following days should not have come as a surprise. According to Jacob Briars, 42BELOW Vodka Professor, the company was bombarded.

“We received numerous phone calls, emails and messages. Some were from people who were deeply offended. Some claimed they were apoplectic with rage. Most, however, were along the lines of ‘If this was a stunt, it wasn’t very clever’.”

For the record, it wasn’t a stunt.

“‘Stunt’ is the wrong word. The event was dressed as an awards night with a rock ‘n’ roll theme, and the giant 42 logo was designed to add to that sense of occasion. This was a case of overly vigorous dressing rather than an attempt to use a national monument for advertising.”

For a few New Zealanders, the explanation and subsequent apology issued by 42BELOW was drowned out by ferocious expressions of outrage. Message boards lit up, with accusations of ignorance, disrespect and bad taste levelled at the company. It was likened to placing a condom advertisement over the grave of your father’s headstone. Yup. People were mad.

At the end of this week, many of us will make our annual pilgrimage to the closest war memorial. In front of it we will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our fellow New Zealanders and bow our heads in remembrance of the thousands who made the supreme sacrifice.

Why do we do it? Why do we feel compelled to drag ourselves out of bed each Anzac Day and gather before these monuments? What meaning has Anzac Day become invested with? And how the hell did a simple spotlight, shone onto a pile of bricks and mortar, become likened to a condom advertisement on a grave?

THE HISTORY OF ANZAC DAY

Most of us know the bare facts surrounding the history of Anzac Day. It is a chorus of statistics. On 25 April 1915, some 3100 New Zealand men stormed the Gallipoli peninsula. By the end of the day, it is estimated that between 600 and 700 of these men were either killed or wounded.

For eight months the New Zealand Expeditionary Force clung to their Turkish foothold, advancing, withdrawing and advancing again. When the final evacuation was ordered on 20 December, New Zealand had lost a total of 2721 men—31.8 per cent of the total number of New Zealanders who saw action on Gallipoli. As one veteran later wrote, “So many of my friends and comrades were killed round me every day that death became merely an incident, something not much more important than the issue of rations or change of station from one trench to another.”

Another wrote simply that he “seemed to live on the smell of dead men”.

To the shattered New Zealand community, the campaign was portrayed as the nation’s ‘baptism of fire’. Although the number of casualties sustained by New Zealand forces on the Western Front would eventually far outstrip the carnage of Gallipoli, 25 April maintained an important place in the country’s psyche. It was New Zealand’s opening act in the theatre of war. As the twentieth century progressed and the country was compelled to perform again and again, Anzac Day began to symbolise the supreme sacrifice that was made by thousands of New Zealand soldiers.

Given that the bodies of men killed overseas were not repatriated in either the First or Second World War, memorials played a significant role in remembrance. Instead of directing their grief towards gravesites, the nation mourned in front of what historians Jock Phillips and Chris Maclean have called the ‘surrogate tomb’—the war memorial.

However, Dr Kate Hunter, a senior lecturer in history at Victoria University, says that despite having good reasons to do so, the New Zealand public did not pay the memorials much attention in the aftermath of both world wars.

“In the aftermath of the landing at Gallipoli, in many areas Anzac Day was a day for ex-servicemen. In the 1920s it wasn’t uncommon for veterans only to march to the local memorial for wreath laying. In the immediate post World War II decades, Anzac Day was almost ignored by those who had not served. It wasn’t until the late 1980s, early 1990s that the shift occurred.”

President of the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services’ Association (NZRSA) Robin Klitscher agrees that Anzac Day has traditionally had more meaning for veterans. He says that in the past it was the RSA—and not the nation—that was the “principal guardian over matters of memoriam for those who have died in battle”.

Yet he acknowledges that there has been growing interest about how New Zealand soldiers are remembered.

“The nature of public response in recent years on and around Anzac Day,” says Klitscher, “particularly the response of the young, suggests that others besides the RSA are concerned to ensure that the memorial duty is properly conducted, and with honour, dignity and respect.”

Considering the uproar over Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association’s (VUWSA) decision not to lay a wreath at the 2009 Anzac Day commemorations, it would appear that many of these concerned citizens attend Victoria University. After it was reported by Salient that VUWSA had declined an invitation from the Wellington City Council to lay a wreath on the basis that it may inadvertently support warfare, the response was instantaneous.

In an eerie precursor to the outrage caused by 42BELOW’s actions, VUWSA was accused of ignorance, arrogance, immaturity, disrespect and (among other things) of “pissing on the grave of every VUW graduate who lost their lives in military service”.

“You misguided, arrogant bunch of tossers,” wrote ‘MJT’ on the Salient website. “It’s not about condoning war, it’s about remembering and honouring those who had enough of a backbone to ensure you could ponce about making petulant political gestures at their expense.”

You guessed it—people were mad again.

To the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Chris Finlayson, such actions and subsequent responses are part of belonging to a democratic nation.

“Freedom of speech is a very important principle, and it’s one of the values that we associate with,” he says.

Yet he notes that it does not mean that we have to support such statements.

“Accepting and allowing free speech as a country is not the same as approving of what’s being said… On a personal and group level, there is nothing to stop organisations … from expressing their disapproval of what is often insensitive behaviour.”

SO WHEN DID EVERYONE START GETTING SO TOUCHY?

The revitalisation of Anzac Day began in the 1980s. With the ANZUS Crisis and international recognition of New Zealand’s nuclear-free stance, Kiwis felt compelled to express their patriotism and national pride.

With “our still contentious treaty history”, says Jon Johansson, a lecturer in political science at Victoria University, Anzac Day became New Zealand’s “default national day”.

“In the absence of unifying symbols New Zealanders, especially younger Kiwis, have flocked to dawn parades because they want to share in expressing their nationhood and patriotism. New Zealanders have cast around to find a compelling force for shared celebration and respect and Anzac Day has to this extent filled a vacuum for those of us who want to express our pride in our country.”

The increasing emphasis on nationalism is something that many veterans have resisted, claiming that it undermines the sanctity of Anzac Day. When Prime Minister Jim Bolger suggested in 1996 that Anzac Day represents both commemoration and nationhood, the Dominion Executive Committee of the NZRSA formally stated their opposition to “any action by the New Zealand Government that would in any way change the status and emphasis of Anzac Day”.

As Finlayson notes, though, very few of New Zealand’s public holidays have a sole meaning.

“It’s hard to think of many national days where the meaning is uncontested, or is the same for every person—Waitangi Day is another obvious example, but so are days such as Easter, which for many are sacred religious days but for others are more a time for family.”

Indeed, Klitscher recognises that any decision over the meaning of Anzac Day ultimately rests with the public.

“This is a matter for the nation to decide upon, not just the RSA. One could say, I suppose, that Anzac Day means to New Zealanders what they want it to mean.”

It could be that the nation has already decided.

Says Johansson, “It has become one very important way we define our nationalism. It has, I think, grown organically, from within the people in small towns, provincial cities, and urban areas dotted around these isles.”

REALLY? ORGANICALLY?

In recent years, there have been conscious attempts by the government to link Anzac Day with national identity.

Increasing publicity has been given to a government-sponsored essay writing competition concerning New Zealand’s involvement in twentieth-century conflicts. In 2000, five students were chosen to accompany the official delegation to commemorations marking the 85th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings, based on their essays which addressed the significance of Gallipoli on the development of New Zealand’s national identity. The winning work was subsequently compiled in a commemorative book and distributed to all New Zealand secondary schools and RSAs.

This was repeated in 2001 for the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Crete; in 2002 for the 60th anniversary of the Second Battle of El Alamein; in 2003 for the 50th anniversary of the Armistice in Korea; in 2004—well, you get the idea.

“This year Prime Minister Hon. John Key will lead an official contingent to Gallipoli to take part in formal ANZAC Day commemorations,” Finlayson says.

“The 2010 contingent will include 22 veterans who have served New Zealand in past wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations, and 21 students from across the country.”

However, one of the winners of the 2002 competition, Adam Allington, disputes that the government has overtly promoted nationalism through this medium. He says that, in his experience, the official commemorations in Italy “seemed to balance between remembering those lost, which was done with great emotional intensity and sincere reverence, as well as celebrating the achievement of the veterans in fighting for their country and advancing their war aims”.

Instead, he found that it was the media that attempted to link nationalism with New Zealand’s participation in the Battle of El Alamein.

“Print, television and radio media attended, and their lines of questioning were more concerned with national identity. I was interviewed on the Holmes show and discussed with Mr Holmes prior to the show what questions he would ask me on air and he wanted me to draw analogies with Gallipoli. I told him I’d rather keep the questions just to the Battle of El Alamein.”

Hunter admits to being more cynical than Allington about some of the government’s attempts to commemorate fallen soldiers.

In November 2004, the government exhumed the remains of a New Zealand soldier from the Somme in France and reburied him at the National War Memorial. Prior to burial, he was honoured with the campaign medals of two World Wars, the Operational Service Medal, and the Badge in Gold.

Such actions, claims Hunter, were “driven by political and nationalistic reasons rather than any other motivations”.

“A soldier who is ‘known only unto god’ has lost everything that personalises him except the time, place and reason for his death. To exhume that soldier, repatriate the remains, and then claim—as the New Zealand government did—that he represents all New Zealanders who have lost their lives in conflict, seems to me to strip that soldier of the last remaining vestiges of his identity and his dignity as an individual with a history and a family. I can’t think of any other reason why a government would do that other than to nationalise the cult of the soldier for political gain.”

If other New Zealanders recognised the motives behind these moves, they didn’t seem to mind. An estimated 10,000 people paid their respects to the Unknown Warrior as he lay in state at parliament prior to his internment. A further 100,000 lined the streets as he was taken to the National War Memorial.

He would have had a front row seat to the light show 42BELOW provided in March.

JUST BLOKES

So why do we get up early every 25 April? And does it matter?

“A colleague of mine once remarked that New Zealanders seem to have a habit of digging up healthy plants to examine the roots,” Klitscher says.

“We have seen a significant uplift in public interest in what Anzac Day represents. I for one think it is probably healthier to accept and welcome it rather than to question it, or to try to analyse it in depth.”

However, Hunter asserts that in doing so, we can’t over-idealise the men whose names grace war memorials.

“They were just blokes—they were fearful, irreverent, drunk, promiscuous, dutiful, loving, tolerant, racist. They were just men, with all the failings and nobility that that entails. I think we owe it to them not to hold them up as paragons of virtue or heroes.”

She could be right.

“Alternative to what?” asks Ellen Page’s character in the 2009 film Whip It, when a friend asks her if she’s gone all, like, alternative now that she’s into roller derby. And it’s true: the definition of alternative sport isn’t an obvious one. You know, though, when there’s no chance of a sport working in a college P.E. programme that it’s a little left-of-centre—and all the more, when it involves fishnet tights and theatrical alter-egos.

This is the charm of roller derby. Part visual spectacle, part fast-paced athleticism, derbyists would describe it as more of a way of life than a recreational activity, so completely does it absorb its participants.

Roller derby is a contact sport, played on roller skates between two teams of five—comprised of four ‘blockers’ and one ‘jammer’—who race each other on one track. The role of the blockers is to assist their team’s jammer through the pack, while blocking that of the opposition. A point is scored each time the jammer passes a blocker from the opposing team. It’s a simple game in theory, fierce and aggressive in practice—and for many of the women involved, that’s part of the appeal.

The creation of roller derby is credited to a Chicago businessman Leo Seltzer, who, in 1935, conceived an endurance race that integrated rollerskating and dance-a-thons. It quickly became known as a performance as well as a sport, because of its combination of physical skill and exhibitionism: roller derby is equally entertaining for its spectactors as for those on the track.

Since its invention, roller derby has gone in and out of bursts of popularity—most recently in Texas in 2001, when a group of women formed the Texas Roller Derby, and gave the sport a real rough-and-tumble edge. Others followed suit by establishing their own leagues, and it spread like wildfire across the United States. Thanks to the media coverage of the sport in films such as Whip It, as well as in music videos and TV series, players feel that this time the sport’s popularity is anything but fleeting: that finally, roller derby is here for good.

Imported from the States

The fact that the sport has spread to New Zealand indicates its enduring popularity.

Black Dahlia (Dale Rio) of the Los Angeles Derby Dolls introduced roller derby to New Zealand in 2006, and helped establish the country’s first league: the Pirate City Rollers (PCR), based in Auckland. Piec