Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Doom | Feb 27, 2004 11:18

Last week's opening Super 12 round seemed to confirm everyone's worst fears about New Zealand rugby: poorly drilled and ineffectual forwards, slack defence and a general air of scattiness. What next?

I was not, I hasten to add, one of the doom-mongers after last year's World Cup failure. After all, the Blues and the Crusaders were a cut above the rest of the 2003 Super 12, and didn't the All Blacks win every forward statistic against England in Wellington, albeit while losing the game?

But last weekend? Ugly. The Crusaders were so lame that it was impossible to really tell how good the Warratahs were. The Brumbies were just like the Brumbies always are - strong, formulaic, predictable - but that was enough to earn a victory over the Blues. Sure, the Highlanders whupped the Queensland Reds, but you'd damn well hope they would, playing in Invercargill. The Chiefs looked quite organised against the 'Canes, but probably no more than that.

So the Blues and the Crusaders replay last year's final at Jade Stadium tonight, and I think the Blues ought to be good enough to take it, but who knows?

One thing you can count on is a sharp technical assessment from Tracey Nelson, our favourite insect pathologist, who, thanks to her work last year on Haka! and the publicity from this blog, has been hired to provide rolling game analysis to the Newstalk ZB radio commentary team. Cool! I'm picking her biggest challenge will be suppressing the urge to exclaim loudly and offer useful advice to the referee.

Jonathan Marshall and his new pals have been shopping around their new private detective service, Teen Tracker, to community organisations. They say you might need their help if you suspect your own teenager might be "mixing with the wrong crowd".

Um, one doesn't like to be picky, but is this the same Jonathan Marshall who has recently been having teenagers over to rowdy, boozy parties featuring "sexy strippers" - at a warehouse owned by one of his partners in Teen Tracker? Parties which appear to have something to do with the breaking of stained-glass windows at the church next door? Crikey! Are they trying to drum up business or something?

Hey! Don Brash has a blog! Apparently.

Iraq continues to poison Tony Blair's government, no matter how hard he tries to move on. Experienced readers of spin will note that he did not actually deny Clare Short's claim that British spooks bugged UN secretary general Kofi Annan. He just declared her "irresponsible" (a bit rich, one would think) and indicated that it would be equally irresponsible of him to deny this foul allegation. Pardon? Precisely what element of national security would be damaged by the statement "No. It never happened."?

Actually, they can hardly claim they wouldn't do that sort of thing, because thanks to GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gunn, we know that they very clearly do do that sort of thing, at the bidding of the White House.

Gunn and her lawyers called the British government's bluff on this one - making it clear that if she was prosecuted over leaking the information that Britain helped the US spy on foreign diplomats in the run-up to the UN security council vote on Iraq, they would seek discovery of government advice on the legality of the war. Oddly enough, the prosecution was sensationally abandoned this week.

Meanwhile, more unintended consequences in the War on Terror. Remember how the good people of Iran were supposed to respond to the invasion of Iraq by rising up, overthrowing the mullahs and demanding their own liberal, west-facing democracy? Y'know, the grand neocon plan for the Middle East?

It appears that there must have been some mistake. The Iranian public has swung in behind the mullahs, leaving reformist MPs profoundly isolated. Bugger!

There may have been some response to reformists' calls to boycott a clearly skewed election - the turnout of 50.57% was a record low for elections in Iran. But President Bush (who declared himself "very disappointed" by the result) can hardly play on that. The turnout in the 2000 election that put him in office was 51%, and for the 2002 mid-terms (which, like the Iranian election, took political conservatives to a dominant position in the national assembly) it was only 39.9% of eligible voters and 36.4% of the voting age population. Bugger again!

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Shore thing | Feb 26, 2004 11:54

So the foreshore proposal looks set to go from "people's title managed by the Crown" to "people's title vested in the Crown" - does it make much of a difference? Fundamentally, no. In the court of public opinion, quite possibly.

NoRightTurn, who has been consistently perceptive on this issue, agrees (he also points to an excellent post from Anti-Podean Journal, which looks at how the government might have handled the issue differently in the first place - by letting it go to court).

Even Tariana Turia has admitted that the new formulation, which she doesn't like any more than the old one, will actually "give my people more certainty". The government will be hoping that the wider public feels the same way. Hardly anybody grasped the public domain proposal, but New Zealanders do feel, and always have felt, comfortable about Crown ownership.

Turia's vote was already lost, but I suspect Labour will, if at all possible, want to maintain the buy-in of its other Maori MPs. New Zealand First's offer of support for the Crown-ownership proposal means it doesn't necessarily need their votes, but I think the value of that is less in the votes than in making Labour look less awfully lonely. Winston, of course, has his own interest in hauling back the Brash phenomenon.

What must stay in any new proposal - assuming the government doesn't want to create an endless grievance - is some concept of customary title existing alongside Crown ownership in those limited places where continuous customary use can be shown. And then the government will have to sell the veto power in the concept to the public, properly. Might I suggest banning Michael Cullen from using phrases like "Procrustean bed" and adopting something a little more like NoRightTurn's shared driveway comparison?

And the rest of the rethink? It's unfortunate that the handful of government Maori scholarships seems likely to take a hit, but I suppose if you raise a petty grievance, you get a petty response. The proposal to define what reference to "the principles of the Treaty" actually means in legislation is probably overdue. It makes a lot more sense than simply tearing the reference out of every law.

Overall, Don Brash might be right in declaring that the reorientation on Maori affairs and the Treaty will be "cosmetic", but as I've previously explained, I wouldn't expect National's practical response in government to be much more than cosmetic anyway. Labour is trying to do two things: reclaim the initiative, especially in terms of leadership (hence Clark's chest-beating in the last couple of days) and assure the public that it's listening. We'll see if it succeeds.

Assuming the new proposal emerges as expected, National's foreshore policy remains easily the most extreme of the Parliamentary parties'. According to Don Brash's Orewa speech, it would legislate to negate the Court of Appeal decision, take all of the foreshore (apart from that currently held by mostly Pakeha private owners) into Crown ownership, and revoke any customary title. No compensation would be considered.

The Act party, which has long seen the Treaty debate in terms of classical property rights, does not deny a customary property right in principle, but would, according to a speech late last year by Ken Shirley, hold that "where any established property right is appropriated by the Government in the public interest then compensation must be paid." And "to the extent that some limited customary use rights may still exist then those claiming such rights must, as necessary, be able to test those rights in Court and resolve disputes." Unlike National's absolutist stance, it appears to pay some heed to justice.

Anyway, it seems to me that if the phrase "u-turn" is to be brandished, it would be more properly applied to the backdown on the unpopular school network review process, which appears to have been ordered from the top. Martin Paolo of the Save our Schools Blog wrote to say he was "very disappointed" by my "shallow take" on the review process in saying the policy was "probably well-founded".

"There well may be a case for closing schools, but the approach chosen by Trevor Mallard created division, friction and opportunism amongst communities," Martin says in his response.

I can't comment on that, but the blog's masthead assertion that "most of the research would seem to indicate that small schools are far better for pupils!" deserves a look. Further down there's another reference to American research endorsing the virtues of small schools.

This is true, but we need to be clear on what a "small school" means in the American context: some studies put the benchmark at a roll of 300, others at 400. Even by the lower measure, three quarters of New Zealand schools qualify as "small". More than a third of our schools have rolls under 100, which could be seen as the benchmark for "small" here.

This isn't a bad thing entirely: an ERO report in 1999, on National's watch, found that "small schools tended to perform well on indicators concerning school climate and relationships". Unfortunately, on most other measures, including the ability to deliver the curriculum, it found our small schools performed badly.

Small schools are over-represented in the discretionary reviews triggered when schools fail to meet statutory requirements. Small schools, even though they can receive as much as twice as much funding per pupil as larger ones, suffer from consistently poorer financial performance than larger schools.

There is some evidence that in the primary sector the performance of very large schools starts to tail off, but the adverse impact of being too large does not approach that of being too small. According to a discussion paper by Martin Connelly in 2002, "larger schools systematically produce better results" in School Certificate exams.

The local research I've quoted comes from last year's background paper on school reviews, and thus might be seen as government propaganda, but it seems illogical to brandish American research conducted in a very different context and yet ignore our own.

The closure of any school will have an emotional impact, and under the review the impact was falling largely on rural communities: 43% of rural schools have rolls under 50, and 71% rolls under 100. Perhaps complaints about the execution of the review policy are warranted but the response seemed to become unduly personalised on Mallard himself, and unduly negative. (Ironically, another message on the blog, from a friend of Martin's, complains about proposals to explore the "school within a school" model which lies behind much of the demonstrated success of "small" schools in the US.)

I don't want to get into an extended argument about this, but Martin is free to respond with an explanation of how it should have been done. In the meantime, it simply seems excessive to me to depict the idea of consolidating schools as "a festering sore on the New Zealand educational system", and really hypocritical of the Act Party to be campaigning for the retention of inefficient public schools.

(BTW, I went to a primary school whose roll, from memory, reached 700. When I arrived at Burnside High, the roll was about 2200. My kids' primary school has a roll of about 350.)

Meanwhile, the local Sri Lankan community seems markedly less enthused about the campaign around the deported 16-year-old, and the media coverage of it, than some other New Zealanders are:

We, the Sri Lankan community in New Zealand have noted with a feeling of grave hurt and outrage, the unbalanced and inaccurate media coverage that has been taking place relating to the recent deportation of a Sri Lankan girl asylum seeker.

We are extremely distressed and disappointed by the wrongful and distasteful portrayal of the Sri Lankan culture and the people in these poorly researched and misleading media coverage.

Certain stories publicised by a section of New Zealand media, TV One in particular, have been neither fair nor factual. No serious attempt has been made to verify the facts from the wider Sri Lankan community living here.

We, as a small but well-regarded community of immigrants in New Zealand, wish to express our disappointment and disgust.

They're staging a protest march and holding a meeting on Saturday.

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Fresh hair | Feb 24, 2004 10:21

So anyway, onto the other issue gripping the nation - shirts off at the vege shop: acceptable conduct or not? Hard News readers have spoken, and getting it off in a retail environment is not on.

Was I within my rights to be somewhat grossed out by my all-too-close encounter with a naked-to-the-waist hairy man while I was trying to buy a salad last week? Yes, said Heather McCracken:

Yes, it's wrong. Recently I had lunch with some workmates, at an inner-city cafe with a sunny balcony.

A couple sat down at the table next to us on the balcony and the man immediately removed his shirt. Just sat down and whipped it off.

He was flabby, hairy, and white as Gerry Brownlee, but that's not even the point - it's just wrong. People were trying to eat, though, thankfully, we had finished our lunch.

When did this become OK? Women manage to keep their tops on regardless of the heat. I don't see why men can't do the same.

Janette was appalled:

So wrong. Yuk. Even without the body hair this would be wrong, but unsolicited physical contact with slightly sweaty nude body hair is close to assault in my book.

Michelle said:

The chap with the shirt off has long been a pet peeve of mine (particularly as a 5'3" lass at concerts where young men seem to think they have the right to use you as their personal strip club pole!) - I think the perpetrators should be reminded that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should and that when it comes to shirts off in public the no touching rule should always apply!

Andrew Moore was down with the ladies on this one:

I mean, how tasteless can you get? "I'm trying to buy veges dude, not look at your hairy back!"

Ray Sumpter was concerned that Bear Guy's sexuality was the real issue, but honestly, it wasn't, although there was certainly a degree of showboating going on. Nonetheless, he thought that:

Shirts off in the vege shop is probably okay when the temperature falls. I suspect it is the sweatiness that offends. If he were blue and shivering you'd probably feel some degree of sympathy, but still secretly think he was a bit of an ijit.

Possibly. But it was more the inappropriateness of the environment …

I was planning to leave the race issue alone for a few days, but three things warrant a brief comment. (1) The government's u-turn. I guess if you're going to panic, you might as well panic decisively. I expect the promised review will turn up a few sacrificial policies, but will demonstrate that most of what aggrieves people is simply practical. The funny thing about the back-off on school closures is that that policy was probably well-founded too. It just pissed people off at a time when the government found it was pissing off altogether too many people.

(2) Andrew Smith was concerned about aspersions cast on Glenfield ("Hey, I live in Glenfield and I'm funky (in my own mind).") But I'm sorry, Birkenhead's definitely cooler.

And (3) is interesting: Jonathan Horsman went looking for the Maori youth-only skateboard competition in Gisborne that Murray McCully keeps claiming was paid for by a $1400 Te Puni Kokiri grant. (Yeah, I know, who cares, but stay with us …) Jonathan found this page, from the website of a local community group:

If you scroll all the way down to the 10 December 2001 (McCully must have gone way back in the archives for his example) it mentions the opening of the new skate bowl with a skate competition. So the grant (from the Lotteries Commission) actually went to pay for the skate bowl, which only by chance held an opening competition for it. Where does Te Puni Kokiri fit into this? I cannot find a link!

The community organisation Te Ora Hou "gave administrative and financial support to the redevelopment of the Kaiti skatebowl in 2001." Perhaps he got confused with all these similar-sounding productive voluntary Maori organisations helping themselves in their communities. Interestingly, Te Ora Hou claims to be a group of mostly Maori people, yet of all the projects listed on their site not one mentions racial exclusivity.

Yeah, yeah, I know. The drift towards separatism is a greater issue than all these pesky little facts that keep coming up. But if somebody's going to use my tax dollars to fan public resentment, I would expect them to do a bit better than this.

I see the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards is appealing against the R16 rating given to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. The film is brutally violent, but apparently it's okay for kids to see that because "these are historical facts".

As Christopher Hitchens points out in a great column in the new Vanity Fair, there is "clear Biblical evidence" that Christ was naked on the cross (rather than thoughtfully covered with a loincloth), but presumably showing Christ's historically accurate genitalia would be wrong and disturbing for children. What is it with these people and their faith that has to be so closely associated with explicit pain and torture?

It seems that Evan Dando's second night in Auckland last week was as good as the show I saw, but that the gig in Wellington was a bit of a shambles, according to my friend Simon:

To be frank it was very poor, amusing at times (especially the end -- its been a long time since I've been to a gig were the artist has charged off the stage to punch out a member of the audience ...), but musically very, very poor. Guy was just too out of it, especially at the beginning.

He did seem to find a rhythm there towards the end but it was not impressive. Seemed to be having a lot of trouble working out that if you don't stand in front of the mike nobody can hear you …

It appears that this might just be a risk you take when you buy a ticket to go to Evan. Dave Brem noted this report of a frankly bizarre gig, with the band, in Melbourne.

Over in America, Talking Points has a nice little story on the Bush campaign's response to wobbles over Bush's draft-dodging enlistment in the National Guard: just flat-out lie about it. Worth reading for an example of what you can say in public and get away with.

And if a secret report for the Pentagon says climate change is a matter for utmost alarm, does that change anything?

Hey, the debut Soane album, Tongan Chic (I promise I'll stop pointing out that your click-to-purchase there helps buy Public Address a drink or two in the future), just arrived in the mail. I haven't had a chance to play it through yet, but if 'All I Need' (featuring Boh Runga and Feelstyle) ain't a big hit then the country's in worse shape than I thought.

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