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An Education | May 17, 2005 10:10
So, as I figured, the intention of last week's flurry of Parliamentary questions was to push David Benson Pope into a denial in the House - thus radically escalating the seriousness of the matter. And Rodney Hide's apparent backdown was also doubtless strategic.
If all of the allegations of historical bullying against Benson Pope were to prove true, they would have made it difficult for him to hold onto his associate education portfolio. But the idea that they should prevent him from continuing as fisheries minister would have been difficult to sustain - especially when former students and colleagues came forward to endorse his qualities as a teacher (as they are now, in some numbers).
But in Parliament last week he flatly denied a string of allegations about his behaviour as a teacher in the 1980s, ranging from the unexceptional to the unacceptable. If any of them are found to be true, he will stand accused of having misled the House, which is a matter for dismissal from Cabinet.
It all came to a head in a dramatic hour last night which began with 3 News's interviews with three of five of Benson Pope's accusers and concluded with an announcement from the Prime Minister's office that the minister had asked to be stood down pending an inquiry. And then Campbell Live had Rodney Hide with his serious face on. Nicely run, Rodney.
DPF says that if Benson Pope "had just said that he will not get into details, but regrets if any of his ex pupils felt his disciplinary methods were inappropriate, then the issue may be over. But like with Colin Moyle the denials are now the issue." This is probably true, but the Moyle parallel - with its implication of callous personal destruction for political ends - is unfortunate.
It is not to dismiss the complaints here to speculate as to how much this is part of a campaign of attrition on the perceived character of the government. If so, does the government now pick an Opposition MP with an unfortunate personal life and arrange for the favour to be returned? Or stick with its key message - Never Mind the Bollocks, We're Actually Doing Something?
We'll get lavish helpings of the latter with this week's Budget - especially as speculation mounts that Michael Cullen will actually spring a somewhat overdue shift in tax brackets on Thursday - but this might yet become a spectacularly nasty election campaign.
In the meantime, kudos to Olivia Kember at Dog Biting Men for launching the Gormsby meme.
Staying with schools, The Fundy Post has the lowdown on a story that's been quietly unfolding for a while: state schools allowing their Internet policies to be determined by a fringe Christian organisation:
New Zealand education has entered the Twilight Zone. Students can use the internet for study, but can only visit sites approved by a company run by fundamentalist Christians, who comb the records of sites visited by students to find new ones to ban and who encourage denouncement of sites they have not found themselves. They can do this because they have helped create a climate of fear where the internet is regarded as a lurking menace; they have used this fear to make profits and to impose their bigotry on students in our schools. Thanks to the Ministry of Education, this censorship is now available free of charge.
Here's a nice little video satire from Real Time with Bill Maher on the American debate over the teaching of evolution theory in schools.
PS: I decided to treat Sandra Paterson's frankly loopy column on the feminist underground (Dame Cath! You're being watched!) in the Weekend Herald as just a little breakfast entertainment rather than bother fisking it - although it was easy enough to determine that the shocking secret papers given to Paterson and (cough) Investigate magazine were hardly very secret, having been part of a select committee submission in 1973. But Anne Else on Scoop has taken it to bits quite effectively. So, er, when does John Roughan come back then?
PPS: This just in: Graham Reid, as ever, gets to the heart of the Benson Pope business.
Nightmare on Molesworth Street | May 16, 2005 10:54
The Herald has picked up today on the NBR's speculation about a possible deal to give Winston Peters the job of Prime Minister in a potential coalition with National, with Don Brash shuttling off to run the finances. Such talk will have been bolstered by last night's One News Colmar Brunton poll, which had Brash dropping five points to 15% support as preferred Prime Minister and Peters rising to snap at his heels. But … really?
It is possible to contemplate Peters making some sort of fist of a senior Cabinet post - at his third attempt. But Prime Minister? If I were a member of National's John Key-Katherine Rich axis, I'd be horrified by this idea, which has the potential to destroy National's long-term credibility. Much better to make an honest tilt this year and, if necessary, rewire the party for 2008, by which time Labour would also have to reinvent itself to have a hope of winning.
Update: DPF has spoken: "This is not going to happen. EVER. EVER. EVER. A disgruntled party member would throw a grenade into the caucus room, rather than allow such a deal to happen." Well, that might be going a bit far …
If no more V8 supercar racing in New Zealand meant never having to hear from Avesco CEO Tony Cochrane again I'd be inclined to think that was a good deal. Failing that, it would be nice if certain media - hello One News - could stop quoting him as if he were the Holy Oracle. This guy makes a career out of playing brinksman with city authorities. Or as V8X magazine put it, "sarcasm is his favourite method of putting down opponents but he is equally at home milking the pollies to stump up the cash for street races." Kerry Prendergast can blame the RMA all she likes, but her council got itself into this fix, by suddenly switching the route (from one that already had consents) to preserve its long-term plans to plant trees in the area. Public support for the race has plummeted as its implications - including digging up the streets annually - became clear. The idea that people on the new route did not have the right to be properly consulted about a multi-year deal that would have a direct impact on their quality of life is untenable. Was it ever really a practical proposition? And what's wrong with car races being held at, y'know, car racing tracks?
The White House response to the slaughter in Uzbekistan - urging calm but effectively blaming the victims - has been an utter disgrace, if not wholly unexpected.
This Moscow-based blogger has been extensively covering the story and makes a salient observation on the official White House comment:
...people who were not really inclined to armed opposition but became sufficiently fed up with the authorities' tyranny to rebel in a similar fashion - again, imagine this taking place in Belarus. Would the Bush administration be "concerned" that people unjustly imprisoned were out of jail? Would they urge restraint on the part of the opposition, as they have done in the case of the Andijan uprising? I doubt it.
Does this mean the Uzbek opposition is somehow less of a "democratic opposition" than the movements in Belarus because the Uzbeks happen to be Muslims and the Belarussians are not?
Another report from The Guardian:
Witnesses said that on Friday when a group of about 70 protesters holding hostages at the square waved a white flag, soldiers opened fire.
"What kind of government is this?" asked one witness. "People were raising their hands up in the air showing they were without arms but soldiers were still shooting at them."
On the same tip, No Right Turn suggests that history is repeating and has an update noting the very stern EU response and recommending Registan for continuing coverage. I'll leave you to imagine what the response might have been if the government in, say, Iran or Cuba had behaved like this.
Someone has scanned Jeff Sharlet's fascinating feature on the megachurches of Colorado Springs in the current Harper's magazine - and placed it here as a PDF. I was fascinated by his description of the eroticised spiritual art of Thomas Blackshear, which hangs in the New Life Church.
This blog discusses Sharlet's story and Blackshear in particular. And there's a The Vessel, the work that made the most impression on Sharlet.
The Weekend Herald had a timeline of foot and mouth day, which is quite interesting.
Going nuclear? | May 13, 2005 11:41
I wouldn't put too much stock in Rodney Hide's apparent speedy withdrawal of his claims of historical classroom bullying against associate education minister David Benson Pope. I'd say the whole idea was to extract denials on multiple allegations in the House from the minister - so that if one of the alleged victims does come forward to claim anything in public, the Opposition can merrily kick around the idea that Benson Pope has misled Parliament.
It's worth noting that the principal of Bayfield High, where Benson Pope formerly taught, was keen to come on Morning Report today and affirm that there was no record of any such allegation, nor any memory amongst teachers who were there at the same time as Benson Pope. He told the Herald the allegations were "preposterous".
But at least Hide himself was prepared to come on the radio and talk today - unlike his co-accuser, National's Judith Collins.
[BTW, Labour list candidate Charles Chauvel also claims Collins, who worked at his law firm, is a key source for a number of allegedly inaccurate NBR stories about him, mostly relating to travel expenses in his role at the NZ Lotteries Commission. Although Chavel has circulated a lengthy statement rebutting the NBR stories, the paper insists that its stories are based on OIA requests and are sound. NBR also denies that Collins was a source, although Chauvel is emphatic that she was and notes her role in earlier stories on the same topic.]
There's a strategy here to attack the government on character (much as the Tories did in the recent election in Britain) and in it, ambiguity is the Opposition's friend. The Clark-Doone story has enough off a whiff of it for the Opposition to keep gnawing even after the public has lost interest. Likewise, no evidence for the lurid stories about what supposedly really happened with Dover Samuels has actually emerged (or is likely to, I suspect), but yet they linger.
Labour-blogger Jordan Carter has an angry post in which he notes that "those who are in glass houses really shouldn't throw stones." In the comments following, Tim Barclay declares that "it is all on and I look forward to it with relish. Get your missiles ready, the right is going nuclear."
Good grief. Is this the sort of election campaign we're going to have?
At last, some non-anecdotal data on the police 111 system - and it's bad. Bad enough for the government to put up $45 million in fix-it spending at the same time it released the report. But reading the report, it seems to identify so many design flaws in the 10 year-old system that you have to wonder: did it ever work?
Although there is some understaffing in the call centres, money does not appear to be the problem so much as systems and governance: the technology is apparently world-class. Its deployment is not. Was it Doone's delayed revenge? Still, no excuse: Labour has had five years to pick it up and only did so when the chorus got too loud.
In the Herald, Audrey Young explains why the government won't be seeking the head of the current commissioner.
Several readers emailed to agree about the One News coverage of the foot and mouth scare on Tuesday evening. Representatively, Jeremy Seed said "they really give me the shits trying to beat up something and in the process beating up staff who are doing their jobs and from what we can gather, doing them well."
Tim Selwyn begged to differ, claiming my "ridiculous" post said "TV One should never ever question MAF or other government authorities", which it didn't. It was the misinformation I objected to. Selwyn was more measured in a follow-up, although he intones that "people say he [ie: me] crossed over to the dark side many years ago." Yes, all Jedi are my enemies and must die. (I should say that I actually think Owen Poland is one of the better TV news correspondents, but that rushed report was a terrible clanger.)
Selwyn also enquires "Is it too much to ask that MAF inform the farmers concerned first rather than the media?"
Actually, yes it damn well is. In the circumstances, I can't think of a more hideously ill-advised strategy than holding the story back from the media and our trading partners while you call around advising individual farmers. It only takes one island farmer calling his cousin, or a Queen Street cocky whispering something to his mates and you have a total meltdown. Jeez Tim, don't ever go into communications …
Anyway, the situation over MAF personally contacting farmers on Waiheke as a matter of extreme urgency is now clearer. Farmers were contacted in the hours the followed - but, as the Herald editorial yesterday noted, not all of them:
Speed and transparency have been the keys to this success. No time was wasted getting diplomats on the job, and briefings in Wellington have delivered regular updates. This is exactly the right approach. Potentially ruinous scenarios, such as that on Waiheke, gather potency if attempts are made to keep them under wraps. Rumour and speculation replace fact, and soon flash around the world.
Although this scare was quickly identified as a probable hoax, that could never temper the on-the-ground response on Waiheke. The risk must be treated as real until it can be discounted. It was necessary, for example, to impose an immediate ban on the movement of livestock and associated risk material from the island.
If there has been a blemish in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry strategy, it concerns the notification of Waiheke farmers. Advice to this group, which should have been an integral part of the reaction, seems not to have happened in many cases. Yesterday morning the ministry said only 18 of Waiheke's 39 farmers had been contacted.
This, it seems, was not for want of trying. But some Queen St cockies - small-scale farmers who live off the island - proved hard to locate. This is unsatisfactory, given the potential damage of foot and mouth, the rapidity with which it can spread and the alarm that spreads throughout a farming community. Perhaps the ministry requires a database that enables it to contact all farmers, big or small, in such circumstances.
The editorial also sees off Don Brash's unfortunate suggestion that the threat should have been kept secret. The distraction was clearly not entirely unwelcome for Helen Clark, but I find the idea of the government springing a Wag the Dog strategy when the stakes are so high very hard to credit.
My mate Chris has a good new blog called Synthetic Thoughts , about geeky media content and management stuff. And sometimes Wimbledon FC, for his sins. He's currently talking about the fascinating backstage.bbc.co.uk project, in which the broadcaster is deliberately letting outside developers mess with its online stuff. There are prototypes here.
SciAm Perspectives is furious about some stories on Slate this week pleading the case for "Intelligent Design". I have to agree: using Big Science Words does not make it science.
New report: life is shit in Iraq. And then lots of people die.
Some music stuff: warmest congratulations to Fat Freddy's Drop for debuting in the local album charts at No1, Shihad for making No.2 and Scribe for going platinum in Australia.
A small gripe: why is 'Emptied Out', the final and best song on Goldenhorse's new album Out of the Moon so short? 2.17? WTF? It's such a lighters-in-the-air anthem that I actually have to play it three times in succession to get my kicks. Seriously.
And the very best of luck to The Checks, who are at the airport as I write, on their way to Britain to play the NME Tour and seek their fortunes. I've arranged for the band's singer, Ed Knowles to blog the three-week tour exclusively for Public Address, so you can look forward to that.
And, finally for your Friday: The Daily Show on cable news TV on blogs. Heh.
Some big news from me | May 11, 2005 09:40
I have some news: our Great New Zealand Argument feature is to be a book. I signed off the final copy on Monday and it will be out in the first week of July. The publisher is Activity Press, a new imprint founded by me and my former boss, Martin Taylor, who owns Addenda Books.
All the material we've published online so far is included in the book (in more precisely edited form) and our transcript of David Lange's Oxford Union debate speech is supplemented with an exclusive commentary by Margaret Pope, who wrote his original notes. I've written an introductory essay and the book concludes with Tze Ming Mok's 2004 Landfall prize winning essay 'Race You There'. You will all be very warmly invited to buy it when the time comes.
Activity Press also has a couple of quite commercial projects lined up for the Christmas market.
I'll be talking some more about all this at our Great Blend event with Karajoz Coffee Company, 8pm Saturday May 21, at the Auckland Maritime Museum, as part of the Auckland Readers and Writers Festival.
It will be a fine evening: after I launch proceedings, there will be an exclusive show-and-tell with David Herkt, about Fields of Dreams, his new three-part documentary on New Zealand drug culture, which screens next month on TV3. Then there'll be a panel discussion on election year media, mainstream and otherwise, with John Campbell, Gordon Dryden, Keith Ng and Damian Christie, with me as the mouthy chairman.
Then the Phoenix Foundation will play live. Before, amid and after it all, DJ Stinky Jim will be rolling out his olfactory audio excellence.
And you can come, if you're quick. We're very tight on this one, but if you click here you can RSVP for yourself and a friend. We'd love to see you there.
The news that some nutter has (in all probability) falsely claimed to have released foot and mouth disease on Waiheke Island has, as you would expect, dominated the local media since it was revealed at 4pm yesterday.
Inevitably, news organisations have had to focus on on the what if it were really true? angle to fill out the story. But Owen Poland's report on One News last night was just poor. He had, he told Judy Bailey, called six of the farmers on the island "and without exception, none of these people have heard nothing from the authorities this afternoon," that is, in the 90 minutes since the announcement.
He said that the largest landholder was unhappy at not being personally contacted by authorities, but "as a precaution, he's cancelled two truckloads of cattle going off the island for sale tomorrow." Well, no. As a precaution, MAF had already banned any movement of livestock and risk materials off the island.
It appears the farmers were contacted not long after Poland's report (our major trading partners were notified first), but he wasn't to be diverted from his angle; that MAF had been remiss:
If it's taking this seriously, why haven't the land owners on Waihehe Island been told, and if this was a real situation, what would the response have been?
I should also say that while there are no restrictions on people coming to and from the island, Waiheke residents always take their pets, their dogs and so forth, into the city and back again.
As of now, there are no signs at the Waiheke Wharf restricting the movement of pet animals off that island.
Well that would be because dogs, cats and other common pets don't fscking get foot and mouth disease - although I daresay you might have a problem if you turned up at the ferry terminal with your pet llama.
It would be possible in the case of a real infection for humans and animals to carry infected soil (although the parts of Waiheke from which people commute are basically suburbs), but if you were going to be banning pet dogs from leaving the island you'd also be banning everything that moved, on four legs or two.
It's simply not good enough for the national broadcaster to be questioning the official response even as it tosses out panicky misinformation of this kind. A confirmed case of foot in mouth disease, it would seem.
Barrels and bandwidth | May 09, 2005 09:17
It clearly hasn't taken long for Winston Peters to reach the bottom of his barrel of inappropriate Iraqis in our midst. His new target is a legitimate refugee - and by his own account, a whistleblower who fled the regime in fear of his life.
It's not like Peters actually cares, of course. If the wind goes out this one, he'll just move on, satisfied in the knowledge that his recent scoops appear to be boosting his personal popularity. The Herald has a roundup of a clutch of polls that will have Labour just a tiny bit concerned.
I'll round up some more observations on the British election presently, but for now: what sort of a system delivers a 66-seat majority to a party winning 35.2% of the vote? And Conor Roberts alerted me to this page containing Channel 4's project involving the ads the political parties really wanted to make. Both amusing and thought-provoking.
Australia's Crikey website has the story - and the evidence - of a Sydney radio newsreader's unfortunate experience reading a bulletin on a Saturday morning after a big night out. It's priceless. The link to the MP3 audio is at the bottom of the story.
Missed the The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe trailer on 3 News last night? You can see it on the Xtra site as a really crappy Windows Media stream - or as God intended - in QuickTime - at the AOL site, or just download the 53MB hi-res file here. I can't help the feeling that it looks a bit like The Lord of the Rings …
New species of mammal discovered in Borneo!
David Cohen came round to interview me on Saturday - an enjoyable, intelligent conversation - and left behind a copy of the Brit music mag Uncut, which contained news I'd somehow missed: the demise of Doors biographer Danny Sugerman. I interviewed Sugerman years ago, after the publication of Wonderland Avenue, his alarming tale of early 70s excess in Los Angeles, and got on very well with him ("You're asking me whether everyone in LA was as much of an asshole as me? Good question.").
I also took the opportunity to ask him about Graham Brazier of Hello Sailor being asked to join The Doors as the new Jim. The tale proved to be a somewhat exaggerated one, but he did remember the Sailor guys. He used to go around to the big house where they lived to score drugs - but he didn't really like it, because it was "too sleazy". Which, if you have read Wonderland Avenue, is really saying something …
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