Public Address - Hard News (Home)

The New Black | Aug 24, 2004 10:20

An attractive Maori woman in her thirties leaps out of a taxi and heads up the street with her son, who is about eight. They're both wearing 'Enough is Enough' t-shirts. She runs as fast as her shoes will permit and he's running as fast as he can to keep up.

Some coins fall and ring on footpath. She doesn't stop, but he does. "Mum! The money!" he calls. She's 20 metres on and hasn't looked back by the time he starts trying to catch her up. The unnerving impression is that her destination - the assembly point for the Destiny Church march on Parliament at Wellington's Civic Square - is presently more important than her son.

The city-side entrance to the square is already plugged with the kapa haka group that will lead the march: 200 men and boys in the same black t-shirts, headed by a handful of muscular warriors with taiaha. A scattering of Wellingtonians waits across the road, expectant and curious.

Suddenly, a jeer erupts from the front of the crowd. The kapa haka group has spied the counter-march 200 metres away on Willis Street. It's deep and raucous. They sound like an army of orcs.

A couple of men in sharp haircuts and expensive coats turn and wave to the opposition marchers, flashing ironic smiles. Destiny, it appears, has an officer class, whose members are posted along the route, well dressed and deported, some wearing wireless headsets.

I join the pro-civil union march, one of two opening acts for Destiny, and walk along with them for a while. It's a colourful gathering in more than one sense: multi-ethnic (pakeha, Polynesian, Asian), bohemian, bright. Someone has dressed as the purple Tellytubby. There is the occasional scattering of applause from spectators, and one woman drives by, honking and waving enthusiastically.

"God loves you people," offers one of the Destiny officers, stationed at the top of Lambton Quay.

Ten minutes later, the big march appears. It seems to find little purchase on Lambton Quay. The usual lunchtime crowds have gone somewhere else, and the default responses are indifference and disapproval. But Destiny probably wasn't expecting to find much sympathy on the streets of the Wellington CBD.

"Stormtroopers …" says the guy next to me.

I nod. I don't like to bandy about the N-word, but it's actually really hard to avoid the comparison as the black-clad men (and several dozen school-age boys) of the kapa haka group march past, chanting "enough is enough!" and pumping their right arms in the air in unison. I don't know if they know how ugly it looks, or whether they simply don't care.

The rhythm loosens as the march proceeds, and there are more women and children and a few elderly people. The marchers seem to be as much as 80% Maori, but there are also blond teenage girls. Most of the banners represent various branches of Brian Tamaki's personal church, with the same, generic 'Enough is Enough' message.

The next most popular slogan on banners and placards appears to be the familiar 'Adam and Eve - not Adam and Steve'. There are also at least three reading 'No prostitutes' (as opposed to 'No prostitution'), sundry Bible quotations and warnings to the wicked, and a couple referring to the foreshore and seabed.

Judging by their placards, one small group in the midst of the march represents the National Front. Nobody is dressed as the purple Tellytubby.

"One of them came in earlier to use the toilet," sniffs the woman in the bag shop. "I asked her what they were all about. She couldn't tell me."

By this time I've met up with my Mum. She has a personal faith that has sustained her through some difficult times in her life, but she's not at all impressed by the marchers. We watch the end of the march pass, and it's time to head for the airport. (For what happened later, Beautiful Monsters has a nice personal commentary and plenty of pictures from Parliament's grounds.)

It's been interesting, to put it mildly. This is an impressive mobilisation; thousands of people hitting the street with a purpose. But what does it signify? Well, this is it, fully erect. There are perhaps 2000 here on top of the national Destiny Church roll of 4600, a solid starting point for the new Destiny New Zealand political party. It's too widely dispersed to dream of winning an electorate seat, but is perhaps in a position to cause some disruption in the Maori electorates - and to do so at the expense of the Maori Party, even as it campaigns against Labour. It was not surprising that Tariana Turia was one of only three MPs to observe the march as it assembled in the grounds of Parliament. Maori politics is diversifying in quite unpredictable ways.

Destiny is not all bad. Doubtless, it has given some men a sense of responsibility, changed lifestyles for the better. It's hardly the first Christian church movement to harness the vitality of Maori culture. But its focus on its strutting, narcissistic leader and its sense of lockstep conformity do answer to the description of a cult. In the end, the Nazi comparison is way over the top - but Destiny's smooth discipline, encompassing community and well-dressed officer class do remind me of the Nation of Islam.

Stephen Franks can witter on all he likes about the "malignant left" and the "homosexual lobby" trying to suppress opinions it doesn't endorse (although he's been quite happy to shout down "bombast and mock piety" when it suits him). He can construct all the handy straw men he likes (but if he refers again to the Press Council complaint about the Star Times' now-infamous "homosexual rescue" story I would hope he's a lot more honest about the actual substance of it, rather than simply dishing out another easy smear).

Because there is an issue of values here. There's something nasty about the way Destiny identifies homosexuals and feminists not only as sinners, but as an active personification of social evil. They're teaching their kids this stuff. It seems odds-on to me that many of them will eventually tire of the peacock who presently leads them and takes 10% of their income - but that they'll take the beliefs away with them. In this light, it's a kind of boot camp for gay-bashing.

Yet the final irony is that the imagery of this march will probably do more than anything Chris Carter could to mobilise mainstream opinion behind the Civil Union Bill. These are interesting times.

---

Meanwhile the debate on Don Brash's "Pacific basket case" article for the Australian Financial Review rolls on. The Herald finally cranked out an editorial (Brash entitled to speak his mind) yesterday, but it was stiff and redundant. Oddly enough, in the paper's business section yesterday, Fran O'Sullivan really nailed it, by actually addressing the content of what Brash said, rather than flapping about redundantly defending his right to say it:

New Zealand's per capita incomes have risen over the term of the Helen Clark-led Government and are well ahead of those of true Pacific Island nations.

It is still in the rich man's club, the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation, despite opposition predictions that it was on track to be the first OECD country to drop out.

Despite predictions of civil war - even by public servants - over the Government's foreshore and seabed legislation, New Zealand is a long way from such a future.

Our politicians are not corrupt, and our officials are not on the take, although there has been the odd bent Customs official.

It is irresponsible to suggest this is the case or maybe the case when the evidence is to the contrary.

And:

National's leader would have made a much more useful contribution if he had spelled out where his party stood on the single market and other measures which will avert his prediction of a failed state.

Instead his article reads as little more that a summation of why he came into politics.

The net impression from the Brash article is that anyone who lives in New Zealand is a loser - investor or individual.

What it doesn't say is why he bothers to stay and what he will do.

Wham bam, thank you Fran.

PS: Thanks to Steve Adams for this very interesting link to a discussion of Brian Tamaki on a forum operated by the Christian magazine Reality. Well worth reading, especially for the comments.

Digg this Scoopit!

Crumbs! | Aug 19, 2004 11:49

Well, that does change things. The best thing John Banks has had going for him in his campaign to be re-elected as Mayor of Auckland has been his rivals. Whatever their legitimate claims on the job, neither Christine Fletcher or Bruce Hucker - who in the only robust poll so far had more combined support than the incumbent - have seemed in danger of creating any great excitement amongst the public. The mayor, on the other hand, appears to be in a permanent state of personal excitement: a sort of headline-generating emotional priapism.

Now, cereal king Dick Hubbard has announced his intention to stand for the mayoralty, and would seem in a position to trump virtually any hand Banks could play: public profile; demonstrated business expertise; independence; affinity with Auckland.

I can appreciate his declared reason for standing, too: that Banks has simply become too much of an embarrassment to the city, most notably in the case of his recent fit of abusive press statements about the V8 racing. The Herald ran an editorial declaring that Anybody But Banks was not a proper basis for the selection of a mayor, but I'd have to differ. For quite a few people it's going to be the principal basis for their decision.

Now, of course, Hubbard will have to answer some questions. He says he supports a "scaled down" version of the Eastern Transport Corridor, but not exactly what he means by that, what his "scaled-down" plan might cost, or - and this remains the big one - how it might actually be paid for. His idea of developing and partially undergrounding the city's public transport network warrants scrutiny along similar lines.

But perhaps the key to a Hubbard candidacy lies in the part of his full page-ad in today's paper that talks about the "feeling of civic pride that has been fostered under the Mayors Vicki Buck and her successor Garry Moore," and the "Absolutely Positively" atmosphere nurtured by Wellington's recent mayors: the mayor as inclusive city cheerleader.

Banks fancies himself to be such a figure, but is too alienating, and far more obsessed with himself than he is with the city. He habitually says things that aren't true, or stupid, self-aggrandising things (an on-air promo using clips from Wallace Chapman's recent audience with the mayor is often taken by 95bFM listeners to be a work of satire, but, scarily, isn't). He routinely claims credit for things he didn't do. He has made a mockery of his declared "independent" status by virtually living in the CitRats' pocket.

In Christchurch on the other hand, I met Garry Moore at a civic function one night this year, and then bumped into him in the street the next morning, whereupon he walked with me through the arts precinct and up to Cathedral Square, enthusiastically pointing out elements of the city's civic plan, pausing only to bid a cheery greeting to the passing tram driver. It's a not-unattractive vision of civic leadership.

Hubbard's emergence presents an interesting quandary for the local Labour Party organisation, which has officially backed the City Vision ticket and Hucker's candidacy - but now finds itself opposing a noted Prime Ministerial confidant. I wonder if there will be discussions.

At any rate, Hubbard's platform looks a lot more like City Vision's than it does the CitRats' (and it should be noted that on important measures such as control of unbudgeted expenditure, the council performed better when CityVision held the reins). Fletcher's new "Team Fletcher" ticket ought to be treated as a bit of a joke until there is evidence to the contrary.

Anyway, as Alison Annan's last stand in Cambridge shows every sign of developing into full-blown Christine Rankin Syndrome, a couple of readers have chipped in with some interesting observations, not least from a former principal who dealt with Annan some years ago as part of an inquiry into relativity in principals' salaries.

We asserted that the professional demands were equal but different, but we conceded that the greater size of secondary schools, notwithstanding the additional support staff which could be hired in the high schools, did give them the edge salarywise at the top of the scale.

Alison would have none of it - she wanted the supremacy of her patch built into any new salary structure as a cornerstone. And then I noted her dismissive tut-tutting whenever we made a counter point in the discussions. She wouldn't debate the case.

Now this all came back when I heard Linda Clark interview a dissident parent who described the same characteristic when his son was about to be expelled. She hasn't got good people skills but she can massage a trustee's ego. And she tells good fibs. She referred to Cambridge as a rural school. Bollocks. Cambridge High serves a dormitory suburb of Hamilton, NZ's fourth biggest city, complete with its own university of which she is pro-chancellor.

The tragedy about the redoubtable Alison is that she could have been a truly great principal had she turned her energies into making Cambridge a good school using legitimate methods.

Don Brash's comment piece in the Australian Financial review is here (it's free, but you'll probably need to register).

In it professes his fear that New Zealand will become "just another Pacific island state - larger than most, to be sure, but potentially suffering some of the same kinds of problem." Well, much larger than all of them, actually, with the exception of Papua New Guinea - and I don't think even the most dedicated Jeremiah is really about to compare us with them - and with an economy so much more open, modern and transparent as to render the comparison farcical.

It's also pretty rich to be lamenting our race relations environment for the benefit of an Australian audience - and our labour laws too, for that matter. Anyway, read it for yourself, but I can't help but wonder is this is an error of judgement. Running down New Zealand to an Australian audience (and that's already how it's being reported) is not generally considered politically astute.

PS: And this is hilarious: National MP engages in reflex Maori-bashing, only to discover that the iwi she is vilifying has made its agreement with a property developer in which Brash is a minor shareholder, and which is emphatic that it was never "held to ransom" and simply had "amicable" discussions with Ngati Maru. Cue rapid withdrawal of statement - and then the withdrawal of her original claim to reporters that her first u-turn had nothing to do with discussions with the party's media unit, after the unit unwittingly told reporters something quite different. The fact that Goudie made her allegations in the first place says something about the current culture of the parliamentary party.

Digg this Scoopit!

Trivial typing errors and more | Aug 17, 2004 10:44

One of the perils of the line of work into which I have fallen, the media criticism part anyway, is that you won't always meet the standards you recommend to those around you.

Thus, my new Wide Area News column in The Listener contains an error and an ambiguity. The former is straightforward: a genuine Trivial Typing Error. I referred to Shenagh Gleeson's story "pointing out that Herald stories are often lifted, verbatim and uncredited, from radio news bulletins". That "from", of course, should be "for". You tend to see what you think you've written when you look over these things.

The ambiguity is in the part that says Herald photographer Glenn Jeffrey was "spoken to" in the course of the plagiarism investigation; which he was, along with others, but it could easily be taken to mean that he was in some way censured, which he certainly wasn't. I cut quite a few words from that part of the column, but you're always tempted to leave in a fact just because it's a fact, even when it isn't relevant. So allow me to emphasise that Jeffrey did nothing wrong. I'm annoyed because I was otherwise pleased with the column; I imagine Jeffrey is more annoyed and I'm sorry for that.

Anyway, is Cambridge High a school or a personality cult? With the former principal Alison Annan addressing a march of students and staff through a loudhailer, and then claiming that she has not after all resigned, and might like her job back, it's getting hard to tell.

The Herald ran an editorial yesterday urging that Annan not be "completely vilified", even as it listed the various issues at her school. This is fair in the sense that in the years after she arrived as principal in 1992, she seems to have raised up a failing school. But the idea - popular in some circles, it would seem - that she was a plucky victim of the system doesn't hold up. The Herald editorial even sought to blame school zoning for her actions:

In part Mrs Annan may be a casualty of a school zoning. She ran a school that would not be everyone's cup of tea but which would appeal to many. With open enrolment in Hamilton and nearby districts, Cambridge High might have attracted enough well-motivated, high performing pupils to fill its roll.

But while Cambridge had an open enrolment policy, Hamilton schools draw pupils only from defined zones. And that effectively confines the catchment of surrounding schools, too. It is another example of how even partial zoning renders the whole system more rigid.

Pardon? That's not actually how zoning works. My understanding is that Cambridge could, and did, take pupils from anywhere it wanted - or at least that's what this story in the same newspaper said in January:

Cambridge High School is being inundated with students from around the Waikato keen to attend the school with the perfect NCEA record.

This week an extra 200 students will start at the college, boosting the roll from 1000 pupils last year to about 1200 …

The influx in students does bring its own problems.

Mrs Annan said there was no zoning, so students were free to attend no matter where they lived.

Students were encouraged to go to their local schools, but often parents were determined their child should attend Cambridge High.

But as Pamela Stirling pointed out in an excellent Listener editorial recently, questions were already being raised about the school's apparently flawless academic record:

And while all this was happening, those of us who had supported the NCEA as an answer to the problems of the old system were becoming increasingly uneasy. Last year, Cambridge High School's perfect NCEA record was questioned after a former student claimed that the school targeted students who were not going to pass and got them to do menial tasks like picking up litter so they could get extra credits. The school, which has the country's highest pass rate, responded that picking up rubbish and doing written exercises on it was a legitimate way to help students pass.

Now, TV3's 60 Minutes programme has revealed that students who had been "mucking around" in their media studies class were allegedly taken out of class and given instant unit standards to fill out to gain credits. One student testifies that he got an astounding 35 credits in a day in one subject. By contrast, there are normally 24 credits for a total year's work in English. It's alleged that teachers have written answers to exam questions on the board. And there have been criticisms of the way students have been pressured to withdraw from exams they might fail; something that would upset the school's 100 percent pass rate. Massaging pass rates often happened in schools under the old system, but the very rationale behind the new approach was that it would overcome that "league table" mentality. Cambridge principal Alison Annan denies that results are being manipulated, but confirms that students are discouraged from sitting external exams if the school believes they will fail.

I'm not sure that NCEA should cop the blame, however. Should an attainment system be principally designed to prevent cheating by schools? And a former teacher emerged to claim that there was manipulation of School Certificate results in 2000, which he brought to the attention of the NZQA after getting no satisfactory response from the principal or school board.

Currently, Annan's unusual simultaneous role as principal of a second, private college for foreign students is being investigated by the auditor-general.

Annan resigned - well, it appeared that she had - after being advised on Friday by the retired district court judge conducting a separate independent inquiry that she would be the subject of "adverse comment". In October, the Education Review Office will report on the multiple allegations of a bullying culture aired by former staff in the 60 Minutes programme.

It's not the first time the school has run afoul of ERO. In 2000, Cambridge was accused of risking pupils' education by running a deficit of nearly half a million dollars. The ERO report said: "The financial position in which the board finds itself is predominantly the result of poor strategic planning, the acceptance of low-quality advice to inform decision-making and lack of rigour in monitoring the budget."

Then, of course, there was the infamous "boner" essay incident, in which a student was indefinitely suspended for using his imagination, and the school's controversial zero-tolerance "exclusion" policy in cannabis cases, which depending on your view is either a tough response to a problem or simply a handy way of sending the problem somewhere else.

Now, the chair of the school's board of trustees has resigned, after, according to this morning's paper, coming "under increasing pressure to step down after claims that she had misled the public and school."

In light of all this, it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that a number of things were seriously wrong at Cambridge High School. Having turned around a failing school in the early nineties, Annan appears to have become, as much as anything else, concerned with the maintenance of her own reputation. What she, and many parents, seem to fail to grasp is that the upshot is that hundreds of students will go out into the world with a cloud over their educational attainment, whether they deserve it or not.

Digg this Scoopit!

Turn | Aug 16, 2004 11:17

The One News Colmar Brunton poll will have been the one that Labour was sweating on. Through some vagary of polling method, it is traditionally the unkindest poll for the centre-left. It was also the poll that confirmed the Brash backlash earlier this year. If that turned, then things were looking up.

And turn it did, quite markedly. If the Maori Party and Green votes are added to Labour's 44% then the centre-left is suddenly in a stronger position than it was at the last election. For all the fussing and fighting, the Maori Party is not going to get in bed with National, and its emergence may even have helped Labour by separating off the politically unpalatable staunch end of the Maori vote.

The Maori Party is going to win an electorate seat - and perhaps two or three - next year, but the Greens can't be as confident of reaching the 5% national benchmark. There will be room for tactical voting on either side of the political divide.

So wassup? My Mum's little birthday party in a Kapiti retirement village recently was the closest I've got to a focus group, and that was interesting. With a sole exception, the ladies thought Helen Clark, who had visited the area the week before, was a pretty good sort. And they thought that the week-long speeding-motorcade story was silly. For all the furious speculation about the political damage that might flow from the incident, I get the feeling that the reverse was the case.

National may, like New Zealand First before it, have discovered the limits of the grumpy vote. Its major policy announcements so far - the Treaty, law and order - have focused on grievance, and on luring a constituency, rather than on governance. The next one off the blocks - welfare - is from the same mould. It may be that there is an insufficient reservoir of anger out there to sustain such a strategy.

The electorate may also be starting to feel, with the present dream run of economic numbers, that things actually aren't too foul at the moment. Meanwhile, the conservative backlash has been tainted and will be rendered more so by tthe forthcoming National Front march in Wellington. No, of course, the National Party does not want a bar of the National Front, but the anti-liberal circus is brought low nonetheless by its presence. I have a feeling that Destiny New Zealand's Enough Is Enough rally won't chime with the public either.

But yesterday's poll demonstrates amply that Labour's key electoral asset is leadership. Don Brash shed seven points on the preferred Prime Minister question, down to 25% support, and Clark is riding high on 37%. The arrival in that poll of John Tamihere will hardly be unwelcome either. National has a clearly articulated message around Brash - that of a decent and serious man, untainted by politics - but the leader himself has struggled to do it justice. National might have to risk letting him ask some Parliamentary questions to let him get more air. After all, if he can't be trusted to ask questions, how can he be expected to answer them as Prime Minister?

This is hardly the final word of course. The NBR Philips Fox poll did show a boost after the law and order speech, and National is in a far better position than it was late last year. Labour has shown that it's more than capable of screwing up again. But Act is flatlining as a potential coalition partner and National's loss of its implicit role as a government-in-waiting may hurt as much as anything. The media's reef fish may now get bored and start swimming the other way.

Tracey's All Black game stats from the diabolical test match in Johannesburg are in, and it's not pretty. As she notes:

If you want to understand why we looked so appalling in this game, take a good look at the First 3 to the Breakdown numbers – compare them with previous games and you'll notice that the figures are lower than normal (about half of what we normally expect) and also take a look at where our loose forwards feature in the list. You'd at least expect to see our opensider appearing in the first three names, and certainly it wouldn't be expecting too much to see our blindsider and No 8 in the first eight named! Give the Boks that much latitude up front and you're going to suffer. Add to that the "hot potato" game the backs were playing, then it was just a recipe for disaster.

We were clearly done like a dinner in the loose forwards. The absence of Richie McCaw has had a serious impact this season, and without him we're in a spot where our loose trio is outmatched for pace and power by those of our Tri-Nations opponents. Rush and Gibbes are stout journeymen well-equipped to take on the ponderous England loosies, but they simply lack the athleticism required for the top flight of the southern hemisphere game.

But who's in line? Jerry Collins is increasingly one-dimensional and Lauaki was a shambles in Auckland's Ranfurly Shield loss to Bay of Plenty yesterday (congratulations to the Bay, by the way). Tuiali'i still doesn't look the business either. This NPC season has suddenly taken on a whole new vibe: there will be a bolter or two for the end-of-year tour to England.

Word in the Sunday papers was that Tasesa Lavea will be among them. The Auckland first-five, a relatively recent convert back from rugby league, stood out for Auckland yesterday, and Auckland coach Pat Lam has hinted that he might yet hold his place ahead of Carlos Spencer. It seems an experiment worth considering for the AB tour too: if the coaching masterminds want to stick with their flat-backline theory then they should pick a first-five who can take the ball to the line.

Speaking of the Sunday papers, does the Star Times' Sunday magazine have a rule about never putting a story that's actually about something on its front cover? Yesterday's edition featured a really good profile of Auckland art dealer and former rocker Gary Langsford. He's a good-looking man, charming and the very picture of suave baby-boomer Auckland: a sitter for the cover, surely. But no: that went to another arbitrary social trend story, this time on "eco-chic", or, rather, an eight-years-too late story on Grey Lynn matrons who spend the household budget on organic food and alternative remedies. Zzzzz …

In the news section, Tony Wall has a story headed Destiny defends use of children, whose elements will be, er, familiar to Hard News readers. Don't Tamaki and his mates look like thugs in the photograph?

My Wide Area News column in the new Listener gathers the threads of the recent Herald plagiarism scandal. It is liable to upset one or two people, but some things needed saying …

Meanwhile, Yamis at BloggingItReal is doing a comma count on me! No, really, full stops are so last year.

And this just in … a stunning story from Atlantic Monthly's Alan Cullison about
coming into possession of al-Qaeda's computers in Afghanistan.:

Perhaps one of the most important insights to emerge from the computer is that 9/11 sprang not so much from al-Qaeda's strengths as from its weaknesses. The computer did not reveal any links to Iraq or any other deep-pocketed government; amid the group's penury the members fell to bitter infighting. The blow against the United States was meant to put an end to the internal rivalries, which are manifest in vitriolic memos between Kabul and cells abroad. Al-Qaeda's leaders worried about a military response from the United States, but in such a response they spied opportunity: they had fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and they fondly remembered that war as a galvanizing experience, an event that roused the indifferent of the Arab world to fight and win against a technologically superior Western infidel. The jihadis expected the United States, like the Soviet Union, to be a clumsy opponent. Afghanistan would again become a slowly filling graveyard for the imperial ambitions of a superpower.

Like the early Russian anarchists who wrote some of the most persuasive tracts on the uses of terror, al-Qaeda understood that its attacks would not lead to a quick collapse of the great powers. Rather, its aim was to tempt the powers to strike back in a way that would create sympathy for the terrorists. Al-Qaeda has so far gained little from the ground war in Afghanistan; the conflict in Iraq, closer to the center of the Arab world, is potentially more fruitful. As Arab resentment against the United States spreads, al-Qaeda may look less like a tightly knit terror group and more like a mass movement. And as the group develops synergy in working with other groups branded by the United States as enemies (in Iraq, the Israeli-occupied territories, Kashmir, the Mindanao Peninsula, and Chechnya, to name a few places), one wonders if the United States is indeed playing the role written for it on the computer.

Unintended consequences? Surely not …

Digg this Scoopit!