Hard News by Russell Brown

One of the issues on Jacinda Ardern's first-day-back desk today is medicinal cannabis – and specifically, the issue of how to respond to pressure to compromise and incorporate key elements of National MP Shane Reti's private members bill into its own proposed law.

Both bills are flawed, but Reti's goes further than the government's in some key respects. The Greens' Chloe Swarbrick – who, part by fate and part through aptitude, has done more in her first year than some MPs manage in a Parliamentary career – has been meeting with both Reti and the office of Health minister David Clark in search of an outcome. And the Prime Minister has been watching.

I've looked at that in my story for the Herald today – and at how on earth Reti, a quiet, relatively conservative backbencher, has taken a caucus that merrily governed on never, ever changing the Misuse of Drugs Act into endorsing a proposal for perhaps the most consequential change to the law since it was passed in 1975.

The answer, I think, lies in a line from Reti's maiden speech: "It's cool to be a geek." Within days of the government bill being published, he got interested in the detail in a way that no Labour MP has, and he used the Parliamentary recess to pursue that detail. Is he right about everything? No. But he's trying. Labour, implicitly positioned as the party that might finally do reform, has been complacent in government. And I think Health minister David Clark – who took responsibility for the medicinal cannabis issue over his Green associate Julie Anne Genter – has to shoulder most of the blame there.

As I make clear in the story, I think it's a certainty that some of Reti's caucus colleagues saw backing his bill as simply a chance to get one over on the government. By the same token, the worst parts of his bill are essentially the price of getting it signed off by a National caucus. But it's also a wake-up call for Labour. And I think it might be a moment.

On Tuesday, the day I spoke to Reti, Simon Bridges declared that he would honour a vote for legalisation in the forthcoming cannabis referendum. Labour, absurdly, has manoeuvred itself into a position where it can't yet say the same – but hours after Bridges made his statement, David Clark declared that he personally favoured "more liberal drug laws because I think in the world when prohibition has been tried, it hasn't worked." These are not positions we're used to hearing from National Party leaders or Ministers of Health.

This is an unprecedented Parliamentary term for these issues. By the time the medicinal cannabis bill, in whatever shape, gets Royal Assent, we will be (or should be) into the process for the referendum on legalising  cannabis for adult use. And despite what various people have been keen to tell me on Twitter, that process will not be a simple or straightforward one for the government.

In a story out this week in Matters of Substance, I've looked at the road to the referendum question, with input from Helen Clark, Graeme Edgeler, Andrew Geddis, Khylee Quince and drug policy experts in the US and Britain, including the designers of the successful ballot initiatives in two US states. I strongly encourage you to have a read. This is, remember, the first national referendum on cannabis law reform. It would be good if we didn't screw it up.

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I didn't have room in the Herald story for all of the Shane Reti interview, including some interesting parts that weren't necessarily suited to a mainstream audience story. I figure it's useful to include those parts here.

On why National didn't embrace the statutory defence in the government bill for terminally ill patients to possess and use cannabis.

Several things. First of all, the terminal exception has problems. We're permissioning an illegal act – no one disagrees about that. It's an illegal act but once that act has been committed, you're okay. That's really awkward. We had the Police say it was going to be awkward for them as well. Are you inducing a crime? That was going to be a challenging area anyway.

Secondly, the time to roll that out as a temporary scheme that was expected to last two to five years. We could have a scheme up and running almost as soon as that temporary scheme could be up and running. So let's to a fully-fledged scheme right and properly and then wouldn't need the temporary scheme and the problems we've got with that.

On the odious fit-and-proper-person elements of Reti's bill, which ban anyone with even the most minor historical drug conviction (and anyone who was even sought help for a drug problem) from working in a new medicinal cannabis industry:

The answer to that is yes, it's another area of flexibility we have. We needed to draw a line in the sand. The officials were telling us [prospective directors of medicinal cannabis companies] would fundamentally only need to meet what the Hemp Act 2006 says, which is not to have have previous convictions under the Misuse of Drugs Act or under the Crimes Act. And that was it.

So on a spectrum of fit and proper people, you'd have nothing, do-as-you-please all the way to the Australians, who I think are too restrictive. They've very, very tough. What officials were also telling us was that because we didn't do anything in the Hemp Act or the Psychoactive Substances Act, we probably won't here either. That's not a good enough reason.

I think, and still, think there need to be some criteria for staff. Not as much as the Australians, but something. And that something could be retrospective, some leeway on that, and current and prospective. For example, if you are an active patched gang member currently under drug addiction therapy, I would suggest that you are probably not wise and probably not suitable for the cannabis industry. But some flexibility on previous convictions, which may be prohibitive as I've written it, I have flexibility on that. That is something we can tak about.

On his meetings with American public health officials and politicians:

My Boston colleagues were able to get really challenging and hard appointments with high-level people. Kay Doyle, the Health Commissioner for Massachusetts was very helpful. Let's also remember that a large number of medicinal cannabis schemes come up from referenda – they're public-driven initiatives. So she was given a time-frame and within 18 months, she had to deploy. That's why I'm saying for the time it took to set up the temporary exceptions [in the Zealand government bill], we could potentially have a full-fledged scheme underneath that.

So Kay and the [Director of Government Affairs at the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission] David Lakeman, they were very, very helpful.

In New Hampshire, I spoke with Senator Jeff Woodburn. New Hampshire's fascinating, in as much as there are other things that no one's talking about that come in around medicinal cannabis. Senator Woodburn said to me, 'Shane, we as a state have the second-highest incidence of heroin addiction and overdose – after we introduced a medicinal cannabis scheme, that has been significantly reduced'.

It was a question I asked of the New York people too, because I'm interested in other benefits that might come from it. The thing I was really interested in was, do you have any evidence on the impact of medicinal cannabis schemes on P? And all of them said no, which I can understand– it's a different class of drug. I know there are clinics and specialists in San Francisco who do believe that medicinal cannabis can be a go-to drug to wean people off P.

And some people will say, Shane, that argument is that you improve heroin addiction, but all you do swap one addiction for a lesser addiction. Yes, absolutely correct. That's exactly what we do with methadone – we swap one very addictive and damaging drug for one less addictive and less damaging. And then we look for the next step after that.

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Andrew Freedman, who was the previous director of marijuana coordination for the Colorado scheme, he was a really hard appointment to get, but my Boston team were able to secure that. He advises other states and jurisdictions on how they deploy medicinal cannabis. So speaking with him was absolutely fascinating.

I was able to explain what my thinking was and get their advice on it. And that then took me to New York, where I met with Dr Howard Zucker, who's the Commissioner of Health for New York state, and he brought together his whole medicinal cannabis team around the table. And again, they had excellent advice.

Because New York's one of about 15 states who prevent the smoking of loose-leaf. They actually do allow vaping, but they were similar to where I was heading. And so to get their advice, to find out what they did and the unexpected hurdles they encountered, that was really interesting.

Furthermore, all of the international experts have said 'however we can help'. In fact I've just got a question back to Commissioner Doyle in Massachusetts this afternoon, all of them have said 'we're happy to be available to you, however we can help, however we can transfer our learning, we'd love to do that.

The first time I met Tom Scott, I dropped some borrowed wisdom on him.

We were conversing in the 'Talking Heads' format devised by Sam Wicks for the short-lived Herald offshoot Volume in 2011 and I happened to mention something Don McGlashan once said, about how parenthood was good for creative men, because it raised the stakes and obliged you to get your shit together and focus. Tom, 27 at the time, declared himself very interested in that idea.

Seven years on, on his new single as Avantdale Bowling Club, 'Years Gone By', from the album Avantdale Bowling Club due out in a couple of weeks' time, Tom is that guy:

He's back in Avondale, changing nappies, looking at his baby boy and taking stock:

Watch his eyes

Watch your mind

Watch your life on rewind

The song itself is a seven-minute jazz hip hop timeline, recounting his birth in 1984 and the family move from London to Avondale in 1986, through years of heroic partying, friends and lives lost, awards won, and eventually a kind of national infamy he didn't want. There's a familiar figure in there: the dissolute father he always wants to admire and yet despairs of. The dad he loves and wants to be better than.

In a kind of open letter sent out with previews of the album he explains further:

This record is about ... growing up. I think. It's about dealing with your own shit for once. Accepting responsibility, maybe. It's a self-help book addressed to myself. And just like every other piece of art made in the history of the hominid, I was going through some shit when I made it.

The same thing might be said about most of his art. And it's hardly the first time he's looked back: the Home Brew album traces an arc from the kid who wanted to "just wanted to be a spaceman" and back. He's always harking back to growing up in Avondale. Even the initial capitals of 'Years Gone By' are a play on those of Young, Gifted and Broke, his old arts collective. 

But it does feel different, not only in his perspective on the stories he's telling, but in the music he's telling them over. The jazz in 'Years Gone By', not sampled but played by Julien Dyne, Tom Dennison, Guy Harrison, Mara TK, Ben McNicoll, Jong-Yun Lee and tabla player Manjit Singh, isn't just a bunch of licks to rap to, but a composition in its own right.

He's also got himself into management by one of the safest pairs of hands in the local music industry: Lorraine Barry, Dave Dobbyn's manager. This week, he released the entire back catalogue of Home Brew, @Peace and Average Rap Band, including a new album of Home Brew b-sides and rarities and a similar @Peace collection, onto the streaming services. More than a hundred songs. It's a setting of things in order.

I've always thought Tom had enough to say that he could do it for the rest of his life, if he could make it through. I'm pleased to say he's made it through.

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The lineup for The Others Way festival 2018 has been announced, and as ever it's just great. And it's the usual mix of vintage and fresh, with Bailterspace, Headless Chickens, Superette and 70s Aotearoa funk kings Collision(!) lining up alongside The Beths, Troy Kingi, Soaked Oats and Cool Tan, to name a few.

It all happens on Friday August 31. I will be there.

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When Chelsea Jade played Wondergarden last New Year's Eve, I felt like I really got  an impression of what she'd been up to in Los Angeles. Her show – only the second time she'd performed it, according to this new interview with Sam Brooks at The Spinoff – seemed well-honed and its vision of the kind of artful pop music she wanted to play clearer than before.

That same feeling is all over her debut album, Personal Best. The singles of the past year and a bit are collected on it, and they gain from being set in the context of an album. Of the new songs, the closer, 'Speedboat' – her version of a banger – is my favourite. It has sometimes seemed like Chelsea has been still exploring exactly how to say what she wants to say. Personal Best feels like she worked out the answer.

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If you fancy a bit of reggae talk, let me recommend Red Bull Radio's Fireside Chat with the Mad Professor. The prof recalls the way a childhood obsession with building radios in his native Guyana set him up for a life of producing music in London and elsewhere, working with Lee 'Scratch' Perry, the Beastie Boys and others. What I didn't know is that he's another artist who pays tribute to "this one guy" at the BBC who discovered and played his records – John Peel.

I tend to listen to Red Bull Radio content via the app. If you're interested in dance and reggae music and the people who make it, it's quite a resource.

I am indebted to the MP for Hutt South for alerting me to a new project on the internet: The McKenzie Tapes. It's “a collection of live audio recordings from some of the New York City-area’s most prominent music venues of the 1980s and 1990s," being progressively digitised this year. There are already recordings of The Replacments, R.E.M., Meat Puppets, Flaming Lips, Lou Reed, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Husker Du and more, a;; downloadable. In this Open Culture story about the project, there is also this period gig ad, appearing to show that The Chills cancelled and The Pixies got the date:

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A couple of new videos. Latinaotearoa's 'Jazzy Samba', which does exactly what it says on the label:

And this from Cymbol, aka Aucklander Shivnesh Sumer. It's contemporary radio fare in the mould of Australia's Future Classic label:

But Sumer, another graduate of the SAE Institute music production course, has also made things like this, a version of a traditional Hindu devotional song released for Diwali last year:

He seems quite an interesting young man.

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And finally, the Melbourne jazz-funk-reggae-disco label Left Ear Records is preparing to release Antipodean Anomalies, which is billed simply as a "compilation of Australian and New Zealand tunes made in the 1970s and 1980s." Quite a few people are waiting to see what they've come up with.

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Tunes!

Dick Johnson and Anna Coddington, are back as Clicks with a new single, 'White Mail'. This is the 'Diss You Dub', a harder version of the nu-disco A-side:

And a really great Hober Mallow take on Hugh Masekela's 1985 track 'Ritual Dancer'. Free download!

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The New Zealand Drug Foundation poll on cannabis law reform, whose results were published yesterday, is the first national poll to be conducted since the government promised a referendum on the issue. As such, it offers an insight not just into public sentiment but actual voting intentions.

I think, moreover, that it contains pointers as to what might constitute a successful referendum question, what proposition could persuade voters – and who will need persuading.

As has been widely reported, the poll shows a year-on-year jump in the public's willingness to countenance both possession and growing for personal use: from 65% to 67% for possession and, more significantly, from 55% to 65% for growing.

But those numbers need unpacking: they're a combination of the support for both decriminalisation (defined in the poll question as "it is an offence punishable only by a fine, like a speeding ticket and there is no criminal record") and legalisation. More people opted for legalisation than decriminalisation, but not many more. And while it made a bigger jump than any other answer in the poll (from 30% last year to 38%), support for selling cannabis "from a store" remains modest.

 Those responses might seem to conflict with the second question in the poll, which for the first time asks about actual referendum voting intentions. While in the first question only 35%  of respondents supported legalising possession of cannabis and 29% wanted to legalise its sale in shops, 49%, a plurality, said they would vote "in favour of legalising the sale" of cannabis in a referendum.

I think the reasonable interpretation here is that voters are more concerned about cannabis commerce than cannabis itself. The option the public has warmed to over the past year – self-growing – is probably not the one favoured by legislators and public officials. It's difficult to regulate and impossible to tax.

Perhaps New Zealanders will further warm to a cannabis retail industry as they hear the arguments and are given more detail about how such an industry would actually work. Maybe, like voters in US legal states, they will find the promise of a taxation bounty compelling. Or maybe New Zealand will find a different solution.

Cannabis Social Clubs operate in several European states, most notably in Spain, where they are regulated, non-profit private organisations – and effectively an expression of Spain's progressive decriminalisation of cannabis rather than its legalisation per se. Everybody gets the weed they want, but, in theory, there is no commercial incentive to grow the market. I know longtime cannabis advocates who would prefer this model to cannabis retail on the high street.

On the other hand, I spoke recently to the designers of the successful referendum initiatives in Califoria and Washington State. The ballot questions in those states did not emerge fully-formed: they were refined over time in response to polls and focus groups. What that research focused on more than anything was what it would take to persuade doubters. And overwhelmingly what doubters wanted was reassurance that the sky wouldn't fall. High-minded appeals to personal liberty generally fell on deaf ears.

By the lights of this weeks poll, the groups that reform advocates should concentrate most on reassuring are National Party voters – 63% of whom said they would vote against legalisation – and uncommitted voters. Clear majorities of supporters of Labour (57%), New Zealand First (68%) and the Greens (84%) said they would vote yes in a reform referendum. Uncommitted party voters were split, with 45% saying they'd vote in favour and 44% against.

There's a key difference, of course, between our referendum and the US initiatives. In the US, questions were designed by proponents, and shaped and reshaped in response to research. Ours will be the world's first national government referendum on cannabis reform and the question (or questions) will be written by the government.

We'll learn more in the next few months about how that will happen, but yesterday Justice minister Andrew Little indicated that he favoured a citizens' jury process like that created for Ireland's abortion referendum. Ireland's Citizens' Assembly was a randomly-chosen but demographically representative group of 99 people who gave up their weekends to listen to advocates and experts and, eventually, make recommendations on the shape of a draft reform bill. Whether we do this, or something more like the task force that travelled Canada to listen to arguments on that country's cannabis legalisation measures, I think it's pretty clear that a strong element of such deliberative democracy will be both necessary and desirable in the lead-up to New Zealand's world-first referendum.

In conclusion, you'll note that I haven't said anything about the medicinal cannabis part of the new poll. The already very strong support for the legalisation or decriminalisation of cannabis for pain relief is now overwhelming, with 87% in favour for chronic pain relief and 89% for people with pain associated with a terminal illness. That speaks to the timidity of the government's medical cannabis bill. But I'll pause on that until we find out what the select committee reports back – and what on earth the parliamentary National Party is up to.

It took no great insight to suppose that the main casualties of the report by the Office of the Prime Minister's Chief Science Advisor debunking the "meth contamination" hysteria would be the companies who for years made a profitable business out of testing buildings for "contamination". Well, it seems one of them is fighting back.

Miles Stratford is the founder of MethSolutions and, via his assiduous cultivation of unwary journalists, effectively the the face of the industry. This month, via the fyi.org.nz website, Miles made five Official Information Act requests related to to the report. Two of the five name me.

There's this one, headed Expert opinion on methamphetamine and addressed to the Minister of Employment, Willie Jackson:

Dear Willie Jackson,

Copies of written correspondence, meeting Minutes and participant notes relating to methamphetamine that have been held/exchanged with Russell Brown

Yours faithfully,

Miles Stratford

And this one, headed Communications regarding methamphetamine and addressed to the office of the Science Advisor:

Dear Office of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor,

Please supply the following information under the Official Information act:

Copies of written correspondence, meeting Minutes and participant notes between Anne Bardsley and the PMs Chief Scientific Advisor relating to methamphetamine.

Copies of written correspondence, meeting Minutes and participant notes between Anne Bardsley and/or the PMs Chief Scientific Advisor that have taken place with Phil Twyford relating to methamphetamine.

Copies of written correspondence, meeting Minutes and participant notes between Anne Bardsley and/or the PMs Chief Scientific Advisor that have taken place with the NZ Drug Foundation and/or Ross Bell CEO of the NZ Drug Foundation relating to methamphetamine

Copies of written correspondence, meeting Minutes and participant notes between Anne Bardsley and/or the PMs Chief Scientific Advisor that have taken place with Russell Brown, author of this article https://publicaddress.net/hardnews/we-ar...

Copies of written correspondence, meeting Minutes and participant notes between Anne Bardsley and/or the PMs Chief Scientific Advisor that have taken place with Dr. Nick Kim relating to methamphetamine

Yours faithfully,

Miles Stratford

Let me say here and now that I heartily support Miles' use of the OIA. And I welcome his inquiry as to my meetings, correspondence and other communications with both Willie Jackson and the OPMCSA and the report's co-author Anne Bardsley. Not least because there aren't any. (Although I would be flattered to think they read my reporting and commentary on the topic.)

The other three requests are this one to the OPMCSA, fishing for something in the report authors' communications with "overseas jurisdictions", another one to the same office which is a list of mostly silly questions, and this one to the Prime Minister, seeking communications between her office and Ross Bell, the executive director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation. (I have no idea whether there have been any such communications, but if there are I rather doubt that Ross has said anything that he hasn't said loudly and probably more rudely in public.)

Nonetheless, I wish Miles well with his use of this important democratic tool. And I wish him no luck whatsoever in seeking to operate his business in the objectionable and exploitative manner he has done in recent years.

PS: Thanks very much to Elise Alexandra for her tip about the requests.

Flying Nun Records' donation of hundreds of original master tapes to the Alexander Turnbull Library, announced on Friday, is significant in any number of ways. Firstly, it's a big step in addressing the problem of deteriorating masters, which has been developing for some years now, and not just for Flying Nun. Those tapes are cultural documents and they need preserving.

It's also highly significant that the Turnbull has chosen this project to launch its "centenary period" – marking 100 years since the original Turnbull bequest. What that says is that popular music, the popular music many of us grew up with, is culture and is part of our national culture

And it's a huge endorsement of the library's contemporary, realistic policy on music accessions. Over three years, the contents of the tapes will be digitised – and the artists, who retain all their rights in their work, will be able to use those digital files commercially.

Talking to Wallace Chapman yesterday morning, Flying Nun founder Roger Shepherd predicted "lots of reissues on vinyl" – including, you can be sure, the many things on those tapes that the public has never heard. Alternative versions and mixes, whole songs that never made it to the original releases. That will be subject, of course, to the artists' wishes, and some won't want their doodles published. But most will want to revisit and work through what's there.

What many people may not know is that Flying Nun isn't the first here. The Turnbull's New Zealand Music Archive already has significant collections of masters, mostly acquired in the past three years, from the sprawling Viking Sevenseas catalogue and from Ode Records. Within those, you see a different history; one full of Māori and Pasifika names.

The owners of both Viking and Ode are still with us, but they don't necessarily have the energy, the market connections or the fresh perspective that a reenergised Flying Nun can bring to its archive. It would be great to see some projects develop around  the works they own. I thought Bruce Russell's Time To Go – The Southern Psychedelic Moment: 1981-86, a compilation that recontextualised what we thought the label was even about, was a real turning point for FN. It could happen again.

A similar sense of enterprise might also benefit the many New Zealand recordings controlled by overseas-owned major record labels. The majors haven't entirely been sitting on their hands: the RMNZ-driven Tied to the Tracks project has seen the digitisation of hundreds of albums, in some cases only after mouldy and deteriorating master tapes had been rescued. But they've gone largely into the streaming morass, which is where the majors are focused these days. Why not compilations and re-releases on vinyl or as high-quality lossless files on Bandcamp?

The demonstration, via the three important independent catalogues I've noted, that our national library can both care for the original tapes and preserve all the ownership rights in their contents might also help the majors get over their own squeamishness about donating masters for safekeeping.

All this, of course, is not to underrate the important fact that the Turnbull is a research library. Friday's announcement noted that not only the tapes will be digitised, but the housings they come in, "which are a rich source of information" for researchers now and in future. Information about us, for us to explore.

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Friday was also a big day for the little heritage organisation of which I'm a member, the Flying Nun Foundation. We weren't directly involved in the donation (although Roger Shepherd and Ben Howe, who were, are on our board), but we've been quietly working on a project to help the preservation of not only the label's recordings, but the culture around it. We have good relationships with the relevant archive organisations, including the Hocken, and we can advise on looking after your stuff if you want to keep it yourself. Have a look!

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A couple more things before I get off the history tip.

Audioculture has published my upgrades to its articles on Bird Nest Roys and Diatribe, which contain new interview material and a much better chronology of both bands. The Bird Nest Roys one is particularly close to my heart. There's also a new profile on the way of Diatribe's Ross France, whose musical path has wound through our political and cultural history since the 1970s.

And there's also part two of Lee Borrie's epic Radio With Pictures oral history, which I think is even better (and more frank on the part of those involved) than the first. And Murray Cammick's appreciation of our late, much-missed friend Duncan Campbell. And the Beastwars story!

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I've lauded the work of Blair Parkes before and I'm as pleased as ever to see a new album from him. Always Running is more rockin' and less dreamy than the last one, Saturations, but there's still an essential goodness of heart to this music. I like the way it throws together shoegaze guitars, pop melodies and the odd unruly synthesiser. And I continue to be amazed at the big, fat, fuzzy, buzzy sounds Blair can conjure from is little shed in New Brighton. He's a proper treasure.

NB: The same shed has also recently given birth to Schofield Spires' Belafonte, a nimble, finely-etched little album that reminds me at times of Anthonie Tonnon.

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I really enjoyed Yadana Saw's Music 101 feature on Wellington's Club 121 and "the rebirth of dance music". One of the nice things about dance culture is that it does get reborn for successive generations. It also made me wish even more that I'd been out at Avalon for 121's big rave on Saturday night.

Also, an interview with Eddie Johnston, aka Lontalius, who has been based in LA for two and half years and has released his first new music in that time. Including this:

And a rollicking interview from RNZ Sunday Morning, full of rock 'n' roll stories, with Maryanne Bilham and Robert Knight, the photographer couple behind Anthology Lounge, the excellent new "upscale rock venue" on K Road.

It's in the basement of the old Rising Sun building (the one you probably didn't know was there) and it's really well-conceived – design, sound system and stage. More than anything I suspect it's going to be the great jazz venue Auckland has never had. Robert wants to assemble a house band and there are plans to make a Hollie Smith live album there in September. I can see myself partaking of the wine list late at night.

I went along to one of the preview nights and caught the Leonard Charles trio grooving out:

And had a nice chat to Robert himself:

And finally – and sticking with K Road – The Others Way is back, on August 31. Looking forward to the lineup reveals there ...

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Tunes!

New High Hoops, and it's busy:

The daddiest dad mash-up you could wish for: Jungle Brothers meet Primal Scream's 'Loaded'. It's good! (And a free download)