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Party Time, Excellent | Nov 26, 2009 11:45

We've always liked a party hereabouts, and I've always appreciated Gemma Gracewood's description of Public's Address's Great Blend events as a kind of "conscious party". So I'm stoked to announce the Orcon Great Blend Christmas Party, next Friday December 4.

The venue is the old Birdcage Tavern, through the wall from Shanghai Lil's – 133 Franklin Road, nestled beneath the Victoria Park overpass.

The doors open at 6pm, and from about 6.30 there will be another round of Nat Torkington's very popular Ignite series of lightning presentations, as follows:

• Vaughan Rowsell (The Big Ride)
• J Karen Waldie (Dyslexia)
• Melanie Pohl (Mars: Myths and Misdirections)
• Ian Kirk (Brains!)
• (TBC)
• Ben Gracewood (Spooky Action at a Distance)
• Russell Briggs (How Do You Make 1.3M People Fall In Love With A
Building?)
• Jayson Bryant, @thewinevault (Turps)
• Ana Samways (Enchanting Children's Books)
• Peter Griffin (Dangers of Faith-Based Decision Making)
• Courtney Johnston (Sex and New Zealand Art)

Then there'll be some tunes courtesy of Peter "Dubdotdash" McLennan, before the live band for the evening.

Which is …

2009 Silver Scroll Winner Lawrence Arabia!

And if you're all suitably appreciative, James Milne's Reduction Agents pals might just join him on stage for a few of those wonderful tunes too.

There are a couple of wrinkles: we're limited to a capacity of about 150 for the Ignite talks, so the RSVP form will have that as a separate option. I expect it will fill up very quickly – but we have tons more room for the rest of the evening's festivities.

Which will also include more funky stuff from Peter M, and I will be troubling the decks (or, more accurately, fiddling with my laptop) during the evening as well.

If you'd just prefer to hang out meeting other Public Address people, the venue allows for that too – we will have the venue's conservatory, a lovely, quirky space that we'll look to fill with a few treats.

So, to reiterate: Up till 7.30, capacity is limited to about 150. Thereafter: party on! If you think you might come down after the Fly My Pretties or Jarvis Cocker shows that evening, that's fine – just do the RSVP and let us know.

I'm hoping you can all plan to stay late and party with us. The last few Great Blends have been on a school night, so it's nice to be able to throw a party with the weekend to recover. Come on down.

It's all free, from Orcon, Matawhero Wines, Epic beer and us, to you. You'll just need to complete the RSVP form:

Click here to RSVP

See you there ...

PS: No, we can't come to Wellington, but Wellington readers, don't forget you can join us tomorrow for the launch of Haywood's and Emma Hart's books, at the Grant Hall of Parliament and upstairs at the Thistle Inn respectively. We'll be convening at the Backbencher from 5pm before proceeding to Parliament about 6pm, and I'd expect we'd be setting off for the Thistle on foot about 7.30, for an evening's merriment, where the drink prices will be most friendly courtesy of Monteith's and Matawhero Wines. The invites with RSVP details are here.

PPS: Don't forget that we're also launching the two books in Auckland at Sale Street's Velvet Room, from 6pm (I'll race down the hill from our Media7 recording at 7pm) on Wednesday December 2. The RSVP details are also at the above link. As in Wellington the Public Address books, which would make excellent Christmas presents, will be available at the venue.

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Apple-pie Embedding | Nov 25, 2009 13:37

Something exciting has happened at NZ On Screen. One very useful feature missing from the site since its launch last year has been the ability to embed the video clips it showcases in blogs and other websites. You and I might think it should be done as a matter of course, but rights holders and non-geeks can be, understandably wary about what might look like a rights extension.

Well, that's changed. Where Brenda and her team have been able to secure permission for embedding, it's enabled, via the site's own external player. This makes those works available to both other public sectors websites and, if you like, your wee personal blog.

Here's our first embedded clip from NZ On Screen, the first part of Alister Barry's In A Land of Plenty

There's no ability to embed them in comments here yet, but I'll see what I can do.

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A bigger breach? | Nov 25, 2009 11:41

This morning's Twitter buzz around the troubling theft of credit card information received by Auckland City Council carpark pay machines seems to have turned up quite a bit of anecdata around mysteriously cancelled credit cards.

I'm one of the people who's had a longstanding GE Credit card (with a zero balance) suspended recently (this obviously, isn't the Business Mastecard I've often used to pay for council parking over the past few years). There's quite probably a rational explanation around credit control in a recession for that, but a few other people have had bank credit cards unexpectedly cancelled.

Ben Gracewood, who's no mug, has suggested that there might be a much larger breach or series of breaches that the banks aren't talking about yet.

It seems worth discussing. Has anyone else had a card unexpectedly cancelled? Or can comment usefully on the issue?

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So-called celebrity justice | Nov 24, 2009 10:40

The weighing in of John Key on the "prominent entertainer" case has certainly ramped up name suppression as an issue in the wake of the Law Commission report on the topic. But what exactly should we take from his observation that the fact he was told the man's name shows suppression orders don't work?

Mr Key said he agreed with Justice Minister Simon Power about the need to stop the emerging "special class" of high-profile people using their status to get name suppression.

"As a general rule, transparency is good," the PM said.

It was unfortunate that high-profile people got extra attention at court, but "that's what comes with it".

The man involved pleaded guilty to a charge of "performing an indecent act with intent to insult", and was discharged without conviction and granted permanent name suppression. If you haven't heard that charge before, you're not alone – either no one is ever charged with it, or, more likely, it is never regarded as newsworthy in the media.

This is not the case here, obviously – and it would not have been the case had a conviction been recorded and name suppression not granted. It would still have been all over the papers, not because of the gravity of the offence, but because celebrity sells newspapers.

Finlay Macdonald explored that theme in the Sunday Star Times:

Justice Minister Simon Power seems to be courting favour by agreeing, no doubt mindful of popular distaste for perceived "celebrity justice" and the not unrelated desire to "name and shame" – a ritual accurately dubbed "mass mediated humiliation".

Yet the media are the very ones who create such a special class in the first place, and there's something a little disingenuous about stoking society's celebrity obsession on the one hand while demanding celebrities receive no special treatment on the other. One might even call it hypocritical.

You can call it the price of fame, but surely the price should be relative to the alleged crime. As the judge in the "prominent entertainer" case noted, the offending was at the "medium to low level". The offence wasn't trivial, but in the context of the horrors the courts routinely deal with, it's hard to argue it merited more coverage than a far more serious assault by a nonentity. Unfortunately, in the economy of the newsroom, celebrity plus allegations of a sexual nature plus quotations from evidence such as "kiss my balls" equals headlines, sales and ratings.

Judge Eddie Paul was convinced by evidence that such a circus would have damaged the man's career in a way that was out of proportion to the actual offence. He presumably also took into account that the defendant had entered an early guilty plea, paid reparations and offered to attend a restorative justice meeting.

But there's obviously a sense in which the suppression has been counterproductive. The actual, momentary offence was committed in a setting where the man appears to have had cause to believe he was getting a consensual blow job from the complainant's friends, who had accompanied him into an alley at 3.30am. Clearly, it was gross and drunken, and shocking and unpleasant for the victim. Yet I've seen it described online as the commission of multiple sex offences against a 16 year-old. The Herald reporters' ongoing lurid language competition has presumably had a part to play here.

Ironically, had he actually been named, the man would have been guaranteed a sympathetic run from the same media organisations who have been pursuing him -- in exchange for an interview. The Sunday Star Times was, for example, only too happy to softball Clint Rickards in exchange for pictures with his daughter. Such is the trade of celebrity value. The moral line can easily be moved to suit.

Something similar came up in a discussion with a colleague last week about the 2005 case of the All Black granted a discharge and permanent suppression on a charge of assaulting his pregnant partner. My colleague insisted that the man had knocked his partner to the ground and dragged her back to their house by her hair.

I was surprised, because I'd written about the case at the time, and, naturally read the reports from court. There was no mention of such an assault in any report, or in the judge's summary of facts:

Judge Philip Recordon said the player had assaulted his five-months pregnant wife on the night of October 23.

It happened after "some issues" at the couple's West Auckland home. The player's wife walked off lightly dressed intending to go to her mother's house.

He went to stop her, there was a struggle and he then tried dragging her home.

Clearly, the man should have kept his damn hands off his wife, and an assault charge was appropriate. But you can still read on internet forums that the man "beat" and "pounded on" his wife. Michael Laws, even then showing his airy contempt for fact, wrote in a column that the man had "cuffed the wife". There was all manner of anger over "celebrity justice".

The Sensible Sentencing Trust's Peter Jenkins later weighed in with this:

Some people never learn... name suppression was recently imposed by Judge Philip Recordon in the case of an All Black player who had assaulted his then pregnant wife. This of course has created widespread interest in the case. And, as was pretty much inevitable... the offender's name turned up on an internet site based in the UK, demonstrating once more the utter futility of name suppression except where instigated by the victim.

Can you spot the mistake there? The suppression order in that case was instigated by the victim. Even that should not automatically be an end to the story – women can easily be forced by their abusers to protect them, and I discussed what I'd written at the time with a couple of people before becoming part of the "It's Not OK" campaign. But at some point, we have to trust a judge – an experienced, respected Family Court judge not known as a soft touch – to listen to submissions and make a decision on that.

Jenkins' next paragraph is this:

The name suppression order has in this case been rather counter-productive for the person concerned, as apparently the actual assault was of an extremely trivial nature. Had he simply let the full truth come out nobody would have been particularly interested, and the whole matter would have been dismissed and forgotten about within days. As it is, the name suppression has generated controversy and much discussion - along with speculation about which All Black did it. As a result the reputation of all the other current All Blacks - who are innocent of any wrongdoing - has also been besmirched, as people not only do not know who did it, but also have not been told the true gravity or otherwise of the offence. Here indeed is a situation where much less harm would have been done had the truth been revealed.

Perhaps he's right. After all, Sitiveni Sivivatu was convicted of a more serious assault on his wife two years ago – he did actually hit her – and, although he too received a discharge, we've largely forgotten that. But it's the name suppression, granted at the strong request of the victim, that keeps the earlier case in the news.

Nonetheless, I wonder if I'm alone in feeling uneasy at removing one element of judicial discretion and placing it in the hands of people who need to sell papers. As I wrote in The Listener:

The Herald on Sunday also devoted a stinging editorial to the decision, and was after no less than a confessional. It cited Australian cricket captain Ricky Ponting's action after a drunken incident six years ago in which he "publicly confessed to an alcohol problem and took personal responsibility", noting, in what made it sound oddly like a career move, that "Ricky Ponting now leads one of the best sports teams in the world".

And, truly, this is the other option: the professional, PR-driven confessional, with a tearful press conference (the victim, obviously, to be in attendance) and perhaps an exclusive interview with one or two media organisations. One does not have to be unduly cynical to see a degree of self-interest in promoting this as the proper course of events, rather than allowing the couple to privately repair their relationship with the aid of counselling and get on with raising their new baby. There has been no indication that the victim desired the public route. Who would?

But that would be to assume it was about the victim in the first place.

---

Which is all a very long way of getting to the fact that we're discussing name suppression, and the Law Commission's recent report on Media7 this week, With Jock Anderson, and Gary Gotleib.

We'll also be looking at the wonderful world of video gaming, with Gerard Campbell of The Press, and Real Groove new reveiewer, David Dallas.

If you'd like to come along we'd need you in the building between 5pm and 5.30 and have you away by 7. Hit "Reply" and let me know.

---

And, finally: A DISCUSSION ABOUT NAME SUPPRESSION IS NOT AN INVITATION OR EXCUSE TO BREACH SUCH SUPPRESSION. IF YOU VALUE THIS WEBSITE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE DO NOT BREACH AN ORDER OR TRY AND BE CLEVER IN A WAY THAT MIGHT LEAD TO A NAME BEING DISCOVERED.

Thank you.

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The March for Democracy | Nov 22, 2009 18:32

As David Farrar notes, when you end up spending $100 a head to get people along to your March for Democracy – pulling 4000 marchers when you've publicly envisaged 50,000 -- it "can only be called a very disappointing turnout for the organisers".

As a number of reports noted, the grievances people brought with them to the march were manifold and sometimes contradictory. I'm damned if I know what those folks at the front with the United Tribes of Aotearoa flag were marching about, but it added to the general atmosphere of unfocused grievance.

The harnessing of grievance for its own sake is not exclusive to the political Right (if, indeed, that's how this march can be characterised): it was the keynote to the (much bigger and getter organised) anti-capitalist marches in the late 90s – which saw third-world activists and North American unionists march shoulder-to-shoulder with their profoundly incompatible demands on trade policy.

A broad-church approach to grievance and the vilification of elected leaders are also, of course, hallmarks of the "tea party" movement in the US. That group has repeatedly crossed the boundaries of human decency with comparisons of an elected US president with Hitler, and even demeaned the images of Dachau.

I wonder if we saw hints of that on Saturday: petitioning an elected Prime Minister with signs reading "JFK, John Fuhrer Key" is offensive – doubly so when the Prime Minister is of Jewish heritage. It's easy enough to raise public ire through hyperbolic equation of our representatives with the most revolting dictators; rather hard to control it once you've started.

And in this, some of last year's campaigners against the Electoral Finance Act might want to pause for thought. Perhaps those Mugabe and Kim Jong-Il billboards weren't such a great idea, huh?

The marchers very largely aren't bad people. But in the extended 3 News video (also worth viewing for the part with Ben Lummis, Yulia and the national anthem near the end – the crowd doesn't know the words to the Maori part, and Yulia doesn't even appear to know it in English) nice ladies are repeatedly asked what they want, and repeatedly say "Democracy!"

Well, no they don't. By any sane measure, they have democracy, and by world standards a pretty good flavour of it. What they want is a change to the law that brought about CIRs in the first place, to make CIRs binding, or at least to force Parliament to more explicitly address their results, perhaps by requiring them to be subject to a select committee investigation. But no one said that.

It comes from the top. This exchange between One News reporter Jack Tame and march organiser and funder Colin Craig captured the tone quite well:

"What is your main agenda here? What do you want to see changed?"

"What I want to see changed is I want to see the government of New Zealand listen to large votes from the people of this country."

"Does that mean you want to see citizens initiated referendums become binding?"

"I don't have that agenda."

Craig's explanation is actually rather like one of the referendum questions he espouses: he jolly well wants to see something done, but seems curiously disinclined to actually propose an action that would meet his needs.

Deep down, Craig may know that the problem with specific legislative goals is that they become subject to scrutiny. Governments can entertain calls for a cut to only 99 MPs or a pro-smacking law change, but the majority of considered, expert advice they receive will counsel against either.

Government must also deal with clear propositions that can be codified as either or policy – a test that 1999's "Norm Withers" referendum plainly failed. We elect people to, within the bounds of their advertised ideological positions, consider the evidence and do the right thing.

Evidence, of course, can only do so much. Another man in the 3 News video is carrying a cross decorated with a picture of the late Michael Choy. He wants tougher penalties for violent crime. It's unclear whether he realises that, with the exception of the single youngest and least culpable, a child at the time, all those responsible for Choy's 2001 murder are still in prison, two of them on life sentences. When Bailey Kurariki's seven-year sentence was handed down, it was hailed as appropriately harsh even by Choy's mother. But that man in the march has been sold Michael Choy like a t-shirt by Garth McVicar – who, naturally, was prominent at the march himself.

When Bob McCoskrie took a swipe at the Children's Commissioner in front of the crowd at Aotea Square, he wasn't attacking Cindy Kiro – she's gone – but her interim successor John Angus. Craig himself was even more blunt last week:

But Mr Craig said parents knew better than Dr Angus what was best for their children.

"What worries me is that this tax-paid bureaucrat is trying to dictate once again to good parents what is best for their children.

"He needs to wake up and realise that 87.4 percent of New Zealander voters have enough common sense to know he is wrong, and have already decided this matter in the recent referendum."

Angus is a straight white male from Dunedin, a father of children. His professional life has largely been devoted to the welfare of children, and he is a "safe pair of hands" according to the minister who appointed him. There could hardly have been a less provocative candidate for the job. But he can expect much more flak from McCoskrie and his chums. I suspect that's why Paula Bennett failed to find a Commissioner willing to take on a five-year term and had to appoint Angus for 18 months. Who wants the job of representing children in that climate?

And that's where, I think, some risk to civil society lies. It's right and good to protest, but when public servants know they will cop it simply for taking seriously their responsibilities, and the Prime Minister is compared to Hitler, the wrong signals are being sent.

So what happens next for the movement represented in the march? The teabaggers are already imploding in the US, unable to organise or compromise beyond their shared anger. The anti-GE movement (which in 2003 managed marches thrice bigger than Saturday's) was undermined by the active presence of the likes of Jonathan Eisen, whose paranoid style is essentially incompatible with civil progress. The grand promise of the global anti-capitalist craze wound up in some of the weird, scary stuff you can find on Indymedia these days.

It's possible that Colin Craig will remain a player. But it's more likely that, with the failure of the march and the draining of Craig's budget, the pro-punishment movement will move on without him --- and McVicar, McCroskie and John Boscawen will find some new way of sustaining themselves and their ideas.

PS: The March for Democracy had so much money they even wanted to advertise with us. It would have been worth about $800, but I don't think there would have been much sense in it.

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