Posts by Russell Brown
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I was campaigning (in my own no-budget way) for MMP at the time, a job which became enormously easier after Shirtcliffe started talking. People still didn't really seem to 'get' it, they just wanted to vote in the opposite direction from whatever that bastard was spending dumptruckloads of money to get them to do.
I had the most excellent fortune to be randomly called for a Campaign for Better Government focus group.
It was hilarious. They'd selected six people each who were pro and anti, I knew all their talking points, and by the time we'd finished the count was eight pro and four anti.
And, of course, it made an excellent Hard News that week.
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Now if what folks are really saying is that there's some causal relationship between dollars spend on an election campaign and votes received, I'm reasonably sure ACT's caucus would be significantly larger. Or ACT wouldn't exist at all, because the 1993 electoral referrendum would have been a landslide in favour of the status quo and the political landscape would be rather different.
True.
Ironically, Rodney Hide's first foray into the public eye was his job as point man for the Campaign for Better Government, the anti-MMP group fronted by Peter Shirtcliffe and secretly funded by Michael Fay.
In 2005 a lot of the ACT money swung National's way, with donors tiring of the bunch of clowns they'd been funding so handsomely. But more interesting -- and potentially more the target of the act -- is stuff like Maxim's shonky "NZVotes" project, which purported to be a educational initiative but was yer basic covert campaign.
I'm still a bit uneasy with the EFB. But looking at the British experience, it's hard not to admire the transparency their electoral commission is able to provide by registering "third parties".
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Fixed yr code dude.
Awesome post.
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From someone I find credible, with insight but not direct involvement in the spraying:
The plain facts are this:
(1) the people who were relocated were treated with great care and dignity on all occasions, many at great cost over and above the minmum requirements - and indeed, some who played the circumstances to the hilt were indulged with much longer times and distances away from home than required;
(2) those who complain of illnesses had them (some psychosomatic) before the spraying, which is why they were moved - the spraying did not cause the illness;
(3) the reason that a counter to the current furore is not being offered is that the spray content is "commercially sensitive" - I personally think it's time this was dropped in favour of clearing the air, which would stop the neurotic grizzling and uninformed commentary going on;
(4) you won't get any balanced reporting on this issue until MAF and the companies involved open up on this (but isn't it the reporters' job to do exactly that?). Inconvenience, yes; illness - no.
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Not a precise analogy, but it was a lot like the MeNZB vaccine - do I think the MoH could have done a better job of informing parents
Actually that is what it was *not* a lot like. As a parent I was far happier with the information and consultation, very well attended meetings and patience shown by the Min of Health. I really struggle to see just what they *could* have done better.
Actually, I'm with Craig on this one. The MoH played down potential side effects of MeNZB too much, even if they were unlikely. We weren't prepared for Jimmy's reaction, and I had feedback from parents who thought the same: one parent had a 3yo who they had put through all sorts of tests because he barely slept for a week. If the MoH had simply told people that sleeplessness was a fairly rare side-effect of the vaccine, it would have saved a lot of bother.
The MedSafe data sheet for MeNZB (which I found online and somehow wound up discussing on the radio with Linda Clark) was quite enlightening. I think it wouldn't have hurt to have it more widely distributed.
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Righto, I was going to raise this all tomorrow, but here's good.
Right up front, it's probably worth pointing out that the whiteymaleyiness is in part a product of the fact that white males post more often. Especially this one.
Also, there probably aren't many blog, even group blogs, where this is even an issue. People mostly keep to their own and there don't seem to be many group blogs where women and men share the stage, or pan-ethnic blogs.
And this remarkably smug libertarian blog positively sneered at my undertaking to tend to our ethnic and gender balance. So you can't please everyone ...
I have actually tapped someone who is not white, male, middle-aged or boring to try some guest blogs, and hopefully you'll see her soon. But it is a busy time of year.
And ... howz about tha ladeez nominate some of their own to write guest blogs? There are obvious candidates who I've been shy of asking because they have their own blogs, and it seems sort of paternalistic to ask.
But a little public pressure probably wouldn't go astray.
I vote Emma Hart.
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I realise I am as at fault here as others - given my connections to the particular part of Tuhoe that Iti, Kruger et al represent and my long involvement with their objectives, I am inflamed by the accusations when they are mistakenly made against Tuhoe rather than individuals. Then I write a defense of this conflated group rather than for the particular members of Tuhoe that I have an association with.
I much prefer to see Tuhoe as characterised by Tuhoe.com, the wireless broadband network being built by the Tuhoe Education Authority (with the help of goverment agencies and Waikato Uni) where Telecom was never going to bother. It's Tuhoe owned and controlled and it's a visionary project. (Which reminds me I must grab the interview we did with Riaka Hiakita at the Digital Summit and put it on the podcast.)
But I'm not sure most people really made the equation Tuhoe = Terrorist. I can understand the hurt people feel, but no one with any sense has said anything like that. OTOH, I think a lot less of Tame Iti than I used to. I keep going back to the Dom Post story in the first couple of days quoting a kaumatua saying people had been anxious about the local self-styled radicals and weren't too sorry to see the police get involved.
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I guess I should point out I was fairly circumspect about the Louise Nicholas case for a long time, and I still think the not guilty verdicts were probably correct in the circumstances. It was always going to be hard to prove historical claims beyond doubt.
This is what Bomber doesn't seem to get when he rages that only 10 of the 60 complaints that came to the attention of Operation Austin were taken forward. While it all doubtless added up to a grotesque picture, the police had to be realistic about where they had a viable criminal case.
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__I think any final wash-up is going to show that the scale and nature of the police action on October 15 was excessive given the evidence to hand (which was still not trivial), and *perhaps* find some examples of unacceptable conduct towards individuals.__
This is genuinely heartening to me. The vehemence of your discussion on the other thread seemed to be precluding these possibilities.
I'm not sure how you got that idea, and I don't think I was particularly "vehement" either -- "shocked" would be closer to the mark. I did take exception at what seemed to me your willingness to escalate rumours in a fairly dangerous way: so an alleged "intimate search" became a confirmed "cavity search".
We saw the same thing with the supposed busload of traumatised schoolchildren that was boarded and searched by armed officers. It didn't actually happen. As I think everyone seems to accept now, the only kohanga reo bus involved on the day was waved through by police. A school van with three people in it (including one 14 year-old, not a kohanga pupil) was very briefly searched, after the occupants had disembarked. I think it's fair to see some hysteria in the way the wildly exaggerated version gained currency.
I had a good chat to Wayne Hope on Moday night. He's studied the affidavit, and I quite liked his characterisation of it: that there were some sick and dangerous people under surveillance, but that it was "an orange alert, not a red alert".
I still have no idea what was the supposed trigger event that made police command order such sweeping action. It had better bloody be good.
It's useful to view the operations on the day in this light. The cops on the front line weren't privy to all the details: all they knew was that there was evidence of guns and alleged terrorist activity. They were always going to be risk-averse. That might reasonably involve pointing guns at people.
I said fairly early on that I couldn't understand why the local iwi liaison officers hadn't been involved. I still think that was a bad mistake, but given that those charged appear to have had sources, it seems more explicable.
I think I said a while back that an inquiry (I'd like to see one) might find the scale of the police response was inappropriate, but I couldn't imagine it would decide there was never anything to worry about. That's still my view.
Are you prepared to acknowledge yet that the police action was not without foundation? And that maybe the community should also be prepared to blame some of its own for bringing this down?
__The comparison with whatever happened on the morning of October 15 is insane.__
Russell, I really don't know what exactly it is I'm triggering in your past, but your projections of me as hysterical and now insane are - well, just a little bit insensitive.
I was holding back, to be honest. I'm aware that the fact that I'm the gaffer hereabouts could be intimidating. But I was referring to your claims and arguments, not to you personally.
I think I understand what you were seeking to say, but I also think it had the effect of trivialising what happened in the Operation Austin cases. The two do not bear comparison at all well.
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What a knowledgeable bunch you are on the subject of vibrators -- I've learnt so much (particularly from Rob Stowell's link)!
The Hamilton Beach vibrator looks awesome -- like a prop from the Flash Gordon movie. Did they do one that made milkshakes too?
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