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Clever, creepy | Jun 28, 2005 10:23
On Morning Report yesterday, Don Brash declared that gay people are "clearly not mainstream New Zealanders … they're a very small minority." Pressed on whether they might reasonably aspire to be part of his "mainstream" he eventually quoth "I'm sure some of them absolutely are." And what, pray tell, are the others?
For all the fretting from the moral conservative fringe, the "normalisation" of homosexuality that they fear has long since taken place. Ordinary gay New Zealanders have simply got on with their lives, made their homes, pursued their dreams and paid their taxes. They are largely accepted, they are us - and we are all minorities in one way or the other.
I'm sure Brash knows this very well, which is why he makes such an idiot of himself when he's drawn to talk about it. His flip-flop on civil unions last year showed no sign of really coming from personal conviction (and provoked his memorable blurt about gay MPs to Camilla).
He is, rather, under direction. The wedge politics underlying National's pitch to the electorate would be neutered by woolly inclusiveness. The idea is to foster a budding sense of resentment, of "mainstream" people feeling they are being ignored or done down at others' expense. It's the same strategy that sets "Iwi" against "Kiwis" on the billboards. Maori are not mainstream either. Very clever; very creepy.
John Armstrong looked at the the strategy yesterday in his column Driving a wedge, the National Party way; noting that Gerry Brownlee's weekend conference speech deployed the word "mainstream" no fewer than 15 times:
National is saying the mainstream is "you and me", thus creating an us-versus-them mentality which seeks to portray Labour as pandering to extreme lobbies, noisy minorities and the politically correct.
While National would deliver tax cuts to the struggling mainstream, this scenario has Labour accused of wasting huge dollops of tax revenue on favouring its mates.
National's five core campaign messages - tax relief, ending the Treaty of Waitangi "gravy train", getting people off welfare and into work, stopping violent criminals getting parole and fixing slipping education standards - are based on focus-group research of what worries mainstream New Zealand.
They consequently enable National to claim it speaks for the mainstream, whereas Labour's tax blunder is being exploited as evidence of that party's increasing neglect.
The upshot is that, on the basis of its rhetoric, the 2005 model National Party is radically more socially conservative than the one that added protection on grounds of sexual orientation to the Human Rights Act in 1993 and, indeed, more so than any in the 1990s. It's easy to forget that the first Prime Minister to hold out the promise of civil unions was Jenny Shipley. Now it's us versus them.
But "blunder" is certainly the word for Labour and tax; an immediate realignment of tax brackets in this year's Budget might have produced only modest gains, but it was due, everyone (including me) expected it, and Labour missed it badly. Hence, today's horrible poll result in the Herald, whose only glimmer of light is that voters continue to favour Helen Clark over Brash as Prime Minister by a margin of two to one.
And National? Having initially promised to publish its alternative budget within two weeks of the real one, the party is now tossing out hints that it might not publish such a document at all; just some broad outlines. It has guessed that Labour, having settled on the slogan 'You're better off with Labour', has been poised to make enthusiastic and public calculations as to exactly how much better or otherwise its core supporters would be if they kept the faith. It makes sense for National to announce as little as possible as late as possible.
You'll have seen David Slack's handy tax cut calculator yesterday (and so has Colin Espiner). The thing to note about it is that is doesn't factor in National's spending promises. And I simply cannot see how National can pay for, to take one example, its vast law and order policy. That wasn't bothering Tony Ryall over the weekend - he just made a speech that was astonishing for its treatment of the facts. Crime was, he claimed, "out of control". And the statistics that say the opposite? Lies, apparently.
Ryall also declared that Labour "repealed National's tough home invasion laws". Well, no, the home invasion law was superseded by the far more coherent Sentencing Act. And that original, wretched piece of headline-driven legislation is the reason that Ryall is the Justice minister from Hell. In 1999, he responded to criticism of the draft law by both the Law Society and the Law Commission by trying to shove it through under urgency, within a week, and without select committee scrutiny.
National has some genuine talent, especially in its prospective new intake. But Ryall? I shudder. But don't necessarily believe me. Michael Martin sent me a good email after I expressed the fear about National's law and order policy last week:
I am not a man of the Left at all (in fact, as an Orthodox Christian, I consider Labour's social engineering to be anathema), but I tend to agree with your comment. Here's why.
Every longitudinal social study that has ever been done, shows without a doubt, that the single biggest predictor of criminality in children is the absence of the father. I would go so far as to say, that there is simply no such thing as disagreement about this subject, by anyone who has actually sat down and studied it. Large numbers of fatherless children = high crime rate. The divorce and illegitimacy bone is connected to the crime bone, in other words.
Shortly after Brash's Orewa II speech, I made an appointment with Judith Collins (Welfare and Family Spokesperson for the Party), and discussed National's family law policy with her. I told her of my grave concern that National thought that the solution to all the woes of family life in New Zealand was to throw all "deadbeat dads" in gaol. I further pointed out to her, that this has been done for 15 years in America. The result is, that not a week goes by, but that some non-custodial father in America, bankrupted by child support payments, and prevented by restraining orders from even visiting his children, takes a firearm or axe, murders his ex-wife and kids, then commits suicide in despair. I told Judith, that if she wants an increase in these horrific crimes in New Zealand, that National's policy is just the prescription to achieve that.
Anyway, having thought that I wouldn't mind seeing the All Blacks dick the Lions 3-0, I found myself feeling a little bit let down by the sheer lameness of the Lions effort on Saturday night. It has, however, been fascinating since, seeing the Lions' spin machine swing into action, with Clive Woodward's multimedia demonstrations of the "spear tackle" that dislocated Brian O'Driscoll's shoulder. I have watched the incident several times: O'Driscoll was picked up and dumped after wandering through a ruck in the first minute of the match. But I couldn't see a spear tackle - and neither, apparently, could the citing commissioner.
I did have an excellent night out after the game, though. Murray Cammick invited me along to see the Accelerants, up from Wellington and playing at Eden's Bar. They've been compared to The Checks, on the basis that both bands offer some sort of R&B. But not really - The Checks are precise, the Accelerants are primitive. And, in K Road bar full of indie kids on a Saturday night, really bloody good fun.
And finally … I'll talk more about the Great New Zealand Argument book tomorrow, when I'm sure it's in the shops (and yes, there will be a way for offshore readers to get it) - but for now, the Book Council is running an event for us at the Film Archive, 84 Taranaki Street, Wellington, 6pm this Thursday night. I'll make a speech, there will be a screening of David Lange's Oxford Union speech, and Jim Traue, Gemma Gracewood and I will discuss ideas arising from the book.
It should be fun and we'd love to see you there. You can get yourself a ticket ($15, $12 unwaged) by contacting the Book Council by phone (04) 499 1569, fax (04) 499 1424 or email: events@bookcouncil.org.nz. Get in there.
Actually, it's not alright ... | Jun 24, 2005 09:59
The reflexive forgiveness of Telecom over this week's big jumbo outage has obscured some salient points. Although both cable breaks were to the north of Wellington, many people in the city were unable to send emails across town. That appears to be because in the normal course of business, Telecom hauls such traffic to Auckland and back.
If Telecom was peering properly at the Wellington Internet Exchange - as the slogan goes, keeping local traffic local - could such problems have been avoided? You betcha. Adrian Smith of the National Library - whose swift and effective steps to maintain its service on the day were a direct result of its peering at the Wellington Internet Exchange - provided a substantial commentary for the NZNOG list:
When the big one hits New Zealand and we have a full-scale major civil defence emergency it will be far too late for the very capable technical people in each of the organisations to implement Internet peering. They will not be able to use the phone networks due to outages and overloading, and the current New Zealand Internet will fail because peering was not put in place and working.
It is in the interest of every single New Zealander that every New Zealand Telco, ISP and organisation connects their networks to the nearest Neutral Internet Peering Exchange and starts peering; and helps to create a real New Zealand Internet.
The original Internet was designed for this very reason for the US Defence Department to prevent a total failure of communications during major infrastructure outages and emergencies.
There would also be benefits for the Telco's and ISP's if this peering was already in place before the Telecom outage on Monday. It may have been a non-event, when both fibres were cut, the Telecom network could have re-routed traffic around the damage over TelstraClear's equally capable backbone network.
Even if Telecom had to pay TelstraClear for the temporary transit traffic, it would have probably been a far less cost to pay both financially and politically. And the major disruptions caused to a lot of people waiting at airports, unable to use EFTPOS networks etc. may have been avoided, and Telecom customers would still have trust in them to provide Internetworking services.
This would also work in reverse should such an event hit TelstraClear's network.
So come on New Zealanders, please get the important message and do something about this situation today.
I also discussed the issue with Computerworld's Paul Brislen (or as he's known in hop-hop circles, The BRZA) on the radio on Wednesday.
Whoops! I have this $500 tax windfall - where on earth did that come from? Here we go: here's some new roads. As a matter of budgeting policy, the government's windfall splash on roads is arbitrary and unusual - and not exactly Kyoto-friendly. But as a means of grabbing back the news agenda from National, it appears to have been relatively effective. You don't have to be a strategic genius to see that the government needs to be seen as acting, rather than reacting.
Don Brash is starting to dampen tax cut expectations. As well he might. I think Labour has already demonstrated how unhelpful the fostering of unrealistic expectations with regard to tax cuts can be.
A Herald editorial says Brash is being disingenuous in demanding proof of climate change. I think "cynical" was the word the author was looking for …
Dr Brash might also ponder what would happen if, as National has previously proposed, New Zealand were to pull out of the protocol in 2012 if the United States and Australia had not ratified it by then. Withdrawal would mean reneging on an international agreement that had been signed by every member of the OECD except those two countries. That would inevitably be viewed dimly, especially as it involved a country only too willing to promote a clean, green image. In essence, withdrawal is not an option.
No Right Turn reaches the places others don't: he notes the complaints in the House by Dail Jones MP about the hoops a returning New Zealander has had to jump through to gain approval for his foreign-born wife and family to stay here. But hang on: Jones is a member of the New Zealand First party:
The sheer gall of this is simply astounding. One moment, NZFirst is demanding stringent checks to prevent migrants from using sham marriages (and sham parental relationships, even) in order to assist others to gain entry; the next they're complaining when such checks (or rather, far weaker ones - were those children DNA tested? I think not) are in fact applied. But I forget: Winston's stringent conditions were never meant to be applied to white people...
Perhaps a news reporter could ask Winston Peters what's going on here …
Dubber has written a lovely open letter to the Kansas State Board of Education over its contemplation of teaching "intelligent design" as actual science in schools. He was amused by this letter urging that the theory that " a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe" also be added to the school curriculum.
AmericaBlog is on the warpath over Karl Rove's claim that liberals didn't really think 9/11 was that bad, and that their "motive" is to get US troops killed.
Meanwhile, Fox News's Bill O'Reilly plays down an official report of a Gitmo detainee being chained into the fetal position for a day or more at a time by saying it's nothing special: "Most of us sleep in a fetal position." Huh??
Labour's Tim Barnett taps the Barmy Army for campaign contributions.
CommonBits has a torrent for Afghan Massacre: Convoy of Death (that looks a cheery little number).
And finally for yer Friday … I can see my house from space! Nearly. Stephen Taylor has pointed out that Google Maps has released a bunch of zoomworthy new photographic maps of New Zealand, including this one (zoom out and toggle your targeted region into the middle of the image, then zoom in). Cool.
Show us the money | Jun 23, 2005 10:45
If John Key wants to demonstrate that economist Peter Harris is wrong when he says National's tax and spending promises don't add up, he would seem better advised to do so by releasing the numbers than by impugning Harris's credibility. Wouldn't that settle the argument?
Key told The Press that he couldn't reveal National's numbers: "It's a decision for the leader's office." In other words, a tactical decision to hold off the presentation of an alternative Budget for as long as possible. Until such time as National fronts with its numbers, it can hardly complain that others are unfairly speculating on them.
Key has issued a press release slating Harris's "mumbo jumbo" economics, but attacks the report around the fringes rather than addressing its key contentions. It's not very persuasive, and Harris also seemed to have the upper hand in today's discussion on Morning Report.
Harris claims in his report for the PSA, The Myth of the Exploding Public Service (here in Word format) that there is simply no way that National can provide substantial tax relief and honour its policy promises by taking the scythe to the public service. He lists some of National's spending promises and concludes:
The inescapable conclusion is that if tax cuts are to be financed from cuts in government spending, the cuts must inevitably go to the heart of the social service elements and impact on benefit rates (including NZ Superannuation and family income support), health and education.
On a similar theme, Vernon Small has an interesting column today which appears to benefit from some insight into Labour's focus group work on how much of a tax cut - when it is finally revealed - would actually turn minds:
It's a game you can play at work or at home. What would be a big enough tax break to make a difference? $20 a week? $50? $100?
About $50 seems to be the trigger for most people, according to Labour's qualitative research.
To give everyone that much would be hugely expensive.
What's more, the amount of cash National can put in the pockets of those who receive state income support now is likely to be very small.National's finance spokesman, John Key, has indicated that any tax cut will be an offset for the Working for Families package. Those receiving, say, $80 a week from Working for Families may receive $50 under National and another $30 from a tax cut but no significant extra money.
There may even be some small losers from National's tax cut package.
When it finally comes clean, National will also need to explain a higher debt track, a lower provision for future new spending and cuts in the public sector necessary to help pay for the tax cuts.
The last of those – ironically, the one on which the public seems to need the least convincing – may be the hardest to justify.
This would seem to be a highly relevant area of inquiry - and rather more so than the pointless mud-slinging in Parliament yesterday. Labour should stop trying to bait Nick Smith and he, in return, would be well advised to refrain from shooting back with claims - regarding "Lianne Dalziel's drunken spell in Hanmer Springs" - that appear to be completely false. Stop it. Just stop it.
Elsewhere, RealClimate (a site run by actual climate scientists) takes on the Wall Street Journal over the paper's claims that scientific evidence for climate change "looks weaker all the time". It's a comprehensive counterblast that gathers much of the relevant evidence and addresses some of the more common canards. Perhaps Don Brash could read it …
Great Daily Show video (10MB QuickTime) on recent press conference action, including Bush on Europe.
Iraq's Justice Minister accuses the US of trying to hinder the investigation into Saddam and says "it seems there are lots of secrets they want to hide." No. Really?
A new CIA report worries that Iraq has become a valuable training ground for Islamofascist terrorists. Newsweek has the same report and its story concludes:
In Iraq, on the other hand, hostility toward America is practically the only thing that all insurgents agree on—foreign infiltrators and native recruits alike. And jihadists in Iraq are getting direct, on-the-job training in a real-life insurgency, with hands-on experience in bombing, sniping and all the skills of urban warfare, unlike the essentially artificial training that was given at Al Qaeda's rural Afghan camps.
One of the paper's main points is that America's Iraqi troubles will not end with the insurgency. In effect, Iraq is producing a new corps of master terrorists with an incandescent hatred for the United States—the "class of '05 problem," as it's called in the shorthand of CIA analysts. This war is proving to be longer and nastier than almost anyone expected. One day, its results may be felt closer to home.
Raed notes that not only are IED attacks on US forces in Iraq reaching unprecedented levels, the devices being used are becoming more sophisticated.
And Riverbend has an update on life outside the Green Zone.
Bits and pieces | Jun 22, 2005 11:03
Don Brash is officially a global warming sceptic. He wants proof that climate change is happening and that it is driven by human activity. Perhaps he should do some more reading, and try and think past September.
Meanwhile, a new poll says 83% of British people want Blair to face down Bush over climate change.
No Right Turn, as ever, is right on top of the latest Zaoui news. He also ponders the grim possibility of the case being decided by the next minister: Winston Peters.
Labour MP Tim Barnett has a new blog.
Priceless: the fundy-operated Watchdog screening system used in many of our schools has blocked - as apparent gay porn - the Vatican's latest statement on same-sex couples.
Hans has a gay take on the Lions tour. What exactly is that in Ben Cohen's undies?
The American legislative system is insane. Having failed to use the FCC to force through an onerous and prescriptive law mandating copyright protection in all high-definition TV hardware, the motion picture industry is allegedly set this week to have tame lawmakers add the measure as a rider to a Senate appropriations bill - at 48 hours notice.
It's hard to know what's worse: this banana republic version of lawmaking, or its current focus: the so-called Broadcast Flag, a means by which the government will use technology to remove rights of media consumers, and to specifically dictate what TV, networking and computer hardware they can have in their homes.
Slashdot has a thread which boasts one of the best responses ever ("I'd write my senators, but I can't find my checkbook.")
A ZDNet story notes, however, that no Senators have yet said they will support the rider bill. It would be nice to think they'd go a step further and get rid of the ability for this kind of corrupt law-making altogether.
On a related tip, Dvorak on Microsoft's BitTorrent-killing vapourware, Avalanche.
Iraq's Ministry of Human Rights estimates that up to 60% of Iraqi detainees are suffering abuse:
"We've documented a lot of torture cases," said Sultan, whose committee is pushing for wider access to Iraqi-run prisons across the nation. "There are beatings, punching, electric shocks to the body, including sensitive areas, hanging prisoners upside down and beating them and dragging them on the ground…. Many police officers come from a culture of torture from their experiences over the last 35 years. Most of them worked during Saddam's regime."
Autism Diva hasseveral good links to further unpicking of the current outrageous mercury-in-vaccines-causes-autism scare in the US, and discovers for herself that the venue for the alleged cover-up meeting, "nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy," according to Robert Kennedy Jr's alleged expose, is in fact in an ordinary suburb. The American left has lost its mind over this one.
I'm talking to Helen Petousis-Harris of the Immunisation Advisory Centre about thimerosal (which has been absent from child vaccines in New Zealand for at least three years) at 1pm today on my 95bFM Wire show if anyone's interested. And Computerworld's Paul Brislen will be discussing the Big Telecom Outage at 12.30pm. Live streams here.
Reading the polls | Jun 20, 2005 11:13
Another round of political polling has delivered essentially the same message as the last: Labour and National are neck-and-neck, and the momentum is with National. Last night's One News Colmar Brunton poll had National edging ahead 43-41; this morning's Fairfax poll has Labour ahead 40-38.
Labour's biggest asset remains its leader. Even with a sharp revival in the One News poll, Don Brash's preferred Prime Minister rating is only half that of Helen Clark's. How Labour can present Clark will be crucial. I'd expect a very presidential pitch.
Labour's other problem has been draining-off of the senior vote to New Zealand First. I've spoken to two people with insight into Labour canvassing, and they're striking older voters who profess no particular enmity towards Labour, but believe that Winston will "keep them honest." Whether that lasts is open to question: the last two polls suggest the run may be coming to an end.
On the other hand, for all that Brash is claiming that the public likes National's other policies - on education, law and order and the Treaty - the evidence suggests that its pick-up in support is largely based on the policy it has yet to spell out: tax.
The Dom Post says the Fairfax poll that two out of three of even Labour voters felt they were due a tax cut. Well, that was the headline, anyway. As the Greens' Frogblog has been quick to point out today, it's a wee bit more complicated than that.
Fifty per cent of respondents did not support tax cuts if that was to mean cuts in public expenditure. Only 38% of Labour voters (still a pretty large chunk) said they would favour tax cuts if that meant spending cuts. It would have been interesting to see the response if people had been asked about their attitude to tax cuts funded by government borrowing. At any rate, the Dom Post's angle was wrong.
At the moment, people are being asked about tax cuts in the abstract. When they are confronted with the explicit detail of what they really stand to get, and where National will cut expenditure and, if necessary, borrow money, things may change a little. National has indicated that it won't unveil its secrets until Labour names an election date. I'm not sure how long Labour can allow National to keep its policy under wraps.
Speaking personally, it's National's other policies that I dislike. The law and order policy will ramp up prison populations from day one, with no realistic prospect of increasing capacity (which is already inadequate) for two or three years, and I think it would be counterproductive in other ways too. The Treaty policy is a recipe for endless, draining conflict. And the education policy - launched as a sort declaration of war on teachers - is dishonest: National is railing against school zoning, but will not actually change school zoning (ie: the right of pupils to attend their local school) in any meaningful way; leaving the policy not only permissive of school failure (a necessary condition of the proposed "elite" schools expansion) but contingent on it.
Meanwhile, massive support for restoring the drinking age to 20.
Note: I'm writing a story story on business and blogging at the moment - and struggling a bit to find local practioners. So if you publish a blog related to your business (or your to your field of professional expertise), I'd be delighted if you could click the reply link below and tell me about it.
Vaccination issues, again: the US left (via The Huffington Post and others) has gone off the rails on the idea that thimerosal, a mercury-based compound used as a preservative in some vaccines, has been responsible for a rise in autism diagnoses in the last couple of decades. The main problem with this theory is that its proponents suggest no physiological means by which this could happen (especially without triggering a corresponding rise in all other kinds of brain problems). But Respectful Insolence and Autism Diva do a better job than I could of explaining why the vaccine alarmists are wrong.
Regarding the continuing MeNZB controversy, I was contacted by W, who has been involved with the design of clinical trials as a computer programmer and believes there would have been scope for a Phase 3 trial of the vaccine in South Auckand, where the disease is most prevalent. He believes politicians and the medical establishment have "lost their heads" over the issue, and compares the death rate from the disease to that of children in car crashes every year.
On the other hand, I also got this email from Perry Bisman, father of little Charlotte Cleverley-Bisman, who lost her limbs to the disease:
Meningococcal is a winter disease like the flu. Often, high rates of flu are mirrored by high rates of meningococcal. Having the flu or being in the midst of an outbreak is not enough to warrant postponing the MeNZB vaccination. One is viral, the other bacterial so it's like comparing apples with pears and there are no safety concerns with administering MeNZB to children with the flu.
As the debate continues over the vaccination, bear in mind that independent overseas medical authorities including the World Health Organisation have approved every step of the Ministry of Health's research and that of independent trials carried out by Auckland University.
If proponents of anti-immunisation can bring similarly verified facts to the table then I for one would be prepared to listen but they haven't yet because they have misinterpreted the medical facts due to their own lack of understanding on the subject.I fear this is confusing the issue for many parents who can only make an informed decision based on the correct information.
At the end of the day, this vaccine is not much different from the highly sort after flu vaccine, an OMV or Outer Membrane Vesicle vaccine. This type of product doesn't need to go to phase three testing as some medicines do (similar vaccines are released in the USA, UK and Australia among others without phase three testing) and some claim proves it hasn't been fully tested.
To say the Ministry of Health doesn't know the outcome is stretching the truth somewhat. The NZ B strain of meningococcal is specific to this country and therefore impossible to test without using it here in NZ. However, after 70 odd years of using vaccines, there are expected outcomes that throughout trials and the roll-out have come to pass.
That is that the vaccine raises the anti-body levels four fold in 75% of cases.
Third phase testing would add years we do not have to the release date and might give a clearer indication of efficacy but would not provide any further safety data.
I am an unwilling participant in this debate but I cannot sit by and let people make claims about this vaccine that do not stack up with the facts as verified by medical authorities including the World Health Organisation.By the way, "Baby" Charlotte is doing really well and will be vaccinated next week. Having this disease does not make one immune. The only way to raise the anti-body levels sufficiently is via vaccination. This is now a preventable disease and the facts speak for themselves.
I would still take issue with the idea that there is no problem with administering MeNZB to children with the flu - even MoH is advising against that - and I still think the official advice to parents has been inadequate, but I certainly concur with Perry on the issue of trials and long-term safety.
And on a happier note, Michael Campbell has just won the US Open!
PS: Just heard from someone in Melbourne that the radio there was describing Campbell as "an Australasian who lives in Sydney." No, he's a New Zealander who lives in Brighton, England, you desperate buggers ...
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