Public Address - Hard News (Home)

The P Devil | Dec 12, 2003 11:54

I guess if I was Steve Williams' lawyer I'd have my client say "the P made me do it" too. It certainly makes for good headlines. But what's his excuse for the other 88 convictions?

In an editorial, the Waikato Times listed the familiar slate of P crimes, added poor little Coral Burrows and intoned that "given the increasing rise in the use of amphetamines, they are unlikely to be the last." The Dom Post offered a story headed P - Coral's real killer?

There is no doubt that Williams' P binges made a violent man more violent, and more capable of beating his stepdaughter to death in a blind rage. Heavy use of the drug must surely have altered his personality for ill. But it's not the root of the problem and if you think it is, you're missing the point. Darren McDonald, after all, was never likely to injure anyone but himself in the course of his celebrity methamphetamine addiction, and people will still kill children without the assistance of drugs.

An NZPA story this morning provides a fairly startling insight, however: Williams own father was shot dead by his partner as he tried to stab her adult son in, yes, a blind rage. No one appears to have addressed the possibility that the mental illness of Williams Snr was also visited on the son, either by heredity or environment. As touchy-feely-social-worker as it might sound, there was a cycle of violence.

Coral also, it has to be noted, grew up in a household where violence was not unknown, and where it was considered normal, even healthy, to hit kids for being naughty. In the family's own, chilling words to government do-gooders: "we don't need or want your help or interference with smacking our children - when they are obedient little angels all the time ... we will stop smacking them." I don't think a family that let this happen has a right to that kind of indignation.

I wonder if the-drugs-made-me-do-it has become an excuse for all kinds of behaviour - it certainly seemed that way in the Sturm case, with its unstupefied but apparently powerless complainants. There is, in the end, another P: Personal responsibility.

Speaking of losing the plot, don't expect to hear too much from Mike King for a while. Having had what was by all accounts a handsome bollocking from Tony Holden this week, King is under instructions to keep it zipped.

So it appears that talking about the weather is no longer a safe haven: it's just a bit too scary. Both tropical downpours and droughts will be the South Pacific's lot from global warming.

Salam Pax has a new Guardian column, about the pro-resistance DVD selling like the hot bread of Bab al-Agha in the markets of Baghdad.

Anyway, cheerier things: I caught the Phoenix Foundation last night. They were good - sort of Beta Band meets Bressa Creeting cake - for the first hour but sounded pretty much the same over the course of the next. Break out the vocoders, lads.

End-of-year exhausted as I am, I've been cancelling most engagements (I'll get around to answering your email, probably) but a bunch of us caught The Chills at the King's Arms last Saturday - a good, solid gig - and, having become somewhat excitable over the course of the evening, I headed downtown with Big Gay Paul, who got us into The Met and Code (not much different from the old Cardiac, but a younger crowd) and then took me to Flesh, where I haven't set foot since it was the more heterosexually-oriented Squid. It was actually the best club I've been to in a while: but why do they let in so many girls?

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Supplementary questions | Dec 11, 2003 11:47

Much of the opposition to the new trans-Tasman regime on dietary supplements has been, frankly, quite self-serving - and it has come from people not normally noted for their sympathy towards businesses struggling with regulatory burden.

But it's hard for Annette King to hold any kind of high ground after this week trumping a select committee report that found unanimously - Labour members included - that we shouldn't sign up to the Australian regulatory regime. It was shabby and expedient and it has given tons of fuel to panicky conspiracy theories like this one.

Our regulatory system for vitamins, minerals and the various non-prescription remedies that can be sold from any old shop is clearly in need of repair. The question is whether the Australian system is the best way to handle that repair.

In making the case for better scrutiny of exactly what can be safely sold, King noted two cases of liver toxicity resulting in death in men who had taken K4, a supplement containing 25-30 herbs that is sold as a cure for prostate cancer. K4 is among products mentioned in the FAQ for the Joint Therapeutic Products Agency on the Ministry of Health website.

Nonsense, said supplement industry lobbyist Ron Law in a Herald column in reply:

Contrary to her assertion, there has not been a single death in New Zealand resulting from dietary supplements. After an extensive inquiry, a coroner found that K4 was not the cause of death of a Hamilton man in his 80s; he had terminal prostate cancer.

The second person referred to by Ms King was also an old man suffering from terminal prostate cancer who died in Australia while visiting family and friends. Again, there is no evidence that he died as a result of taking K4.

Hundreds of millions of bottles of K4 have been sold around the world without problems. That Medsafe says something is dangerous does not mean it is dangerous.

This is deceitful in the extreme, I'm afraid. No, it cannot be conclusively shown that the two men in question died as a result of liver failure that was induced by K4. But, as this World Health Organisation bulletin on the New Zealand experience indicates, there was quite good evidence that the herbal remedy did, in 13 cases, cause liver damage to those who took it:

In several cases, patients felt well but liver function tests were consistent with acute hepatitis. In most cases, the hepatitis resolved gradually on withdrawal of K4. Both patients who died presented with acute hepatitis which progressed to massive hepatic necrosis confirmed by liver biopsy. Screening for possible infectious causes, such as infectious hepatitis, was negative.

It might also be noted that K4 didn't appear to do anything for their prostate cancer either. Quite frankly, Mr Law, I'm not really keen to have someone who glosses over that kind of detail running around claiming to have my health and welfare uppermost in mind. (It's tempting to wonder what might have been the reaction had, say, GM corn been associated with acute liver damage in 13 people, but presumably that would be different ...)

I can see I'm going to have to form an opinion here but for now, I don't think I fancy either side of this particular argument. I'll get back to you …

Iraq's looking weirder and weirder: Jim Henley at Unqualified Offerings has been trying to untangle the curious collision of factoids around the Samarra ambush and comes up with four possible conclusions. He also amusingly dismembers the Daily Telegraph exclusive on the Iraqi army officer who claims to have been the source of the infamous "45-minute" weapons claim.

Salam is back posting and bickering with Raed. He has a bit more on the national census plan mysteriously withdrawn on American instructions. Was it scotched because it might have opened the way for full general elections rather than the US plan for "indirect democracy"? Who knows? Riverbend has some comment too.

And it looks like the angry drunk behaviour is back, with the Pentagon's declaration that only countries which supported the war in Iraq will be eligible to bid for reconstruction contracts. Well, it's their money - or, rather, their yawning chasm of a fiscal deficit - so you might say it's their call. But it can hardly be argued to be in Iraq's interests to limit the field in such a way, and it already appears to have scotched the kind of co-operation on Iraqi reconstruction that the Americans desperately need. Petulant, and not very smart …

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Pompous Asses | Dec 09, 2003 09:53

It's exactly a year since the Auckland City Council sold half its shares in Auckland Airport, allowing the mayor, John Banks, to brag incessantly that the council was debt-free. The council got $4.90 for its 38 million shares. Last night they closed at $6.85.

Banks likes to pretend - and he invariably gets away with it - that the retirement of the council's debt was some particular act of personal financial wizardry on his part. Hardly. Council officials strongly urged Banks and his CitRat mates not to sell all of the city's shares (which were, of course, owned by ratepayers) at this time.

After declaring long and loud that wholly exiting the shareholding was the only way to move the city forward, the conservative councillors suddenly decided to have a bob each way and only sell half of the shares. Small mercies.

I should make clear that I have no objection in principle to the council divesting its interest - well, my interest as a citizen and ratepayer- in the airport. But the officials were right: there was so much upside that a sale at that time was a poor financial decision. After capital gains averaging 33.46% since they were issued in 1998, the shares appreciated by nearly 40% over the past year. So far as I can see, the council's balance sheet is about $74 million worse off than it would have been if Banks and the CitRats had listened to their advisors.

The trend seems likely to continue. The airport had its biggest week ever two weeks ago: 129,222 international passengers arrived or departed, a 17% increase on the same period a year ago. Don't expect to hear a lot of ballyhoo about dumping the rest of the shares: the council won't make that mistake twice. The point is, they made it once.

Banks gets away with it, of course, through copious application of bullshit. He behaves like a pompous ass and people seem to buy it. So it has been amusing this week to see him spluttering and fuming as details emerged of the government's grand plan for Auckland's transport problems.

From the moment he got into office, Banks began claiming initiatives that were either the work of the previous council, or of central government, as his own doing. Now that the government has been able to plan for the investment of taxpayers' money without his help, and in direct opposition to his advice, he's somewhat put-out.

The Auckland region will have its own stand-alone public transport authority, but it's the regional part that Banks objects to: the authority will be answerable to the Auckland Regional Council. The ARC, of course, has had its problems, but, as Brian Rudman speculates, the structure of the new authority will prevent it being able to do much meddling with operational activities.

The longer-term fix, as I have pointed out before, would be for people to stop voting for Citizens and Ratepayers candidates: they invariably screw things up and do things they said they wouldn't, as Gwen Bull and her comrades have demonstrated at the ARC. Anyway, Auckland's transport solution must be co-ordinated at a regional level, by a single organisation.

I must say, I like the look of the proposed future underground rail route for the central city. Assuming the costs can be kept under control, Auckland will start to look like a real city and Britomart - delightfully pretty, but still only a railway station - will start earning its keep. Meanwhile, Banks' pet project, the Eastern Corridor motorway plan (with optional harbour tunnel, according to Banks' imagination) looks headed for a years-long shitfight, in which the council will face a determined and competent residents' lobby.

Pro-road campaigners invariably neglect to put a value on the sheer strife involved in projects like that. They're already complaining that the ARC will be biased towards public transport. If it is, I suspect that will look like a prudent position in years to come.

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Not impressive at all | Dec 08, 2003 12:08

Well, we seem to be getting a bit closer to the precise nature of the threat posed by Ahmed Zaoui. Strike out "terrorist", "physical threat" and "means us harm" and put a ring around "might piss off the French".

As this Herald story notes, the Crown submission to last week's High court hearing talked of "not an immediate or direct risk or intended harm to New Zealand", but rather "actions taken beyond our national borders that may still have long-term impacts".

The alleged jeopardy, it appears, might be to the SIS's operational liason with the French secret service. It's apparent that our government is in a difficult position: it does want to cultivate a helpful big friend in the Pacific, but that same big friend happens to be quite matey with Algeria's thuggish military regime, which apparently would like to see Zaoui dead (so, for that matter, is the US). Spurning the advice of both French intelligence and a French court, even though it appears to be incorrect and politically coloured, might be seen as unhelpful.

Meanwhile, the principal harm being wreaked at the moment is to the reputation of the SIS itself. Having illegally videotaped a seven-hour interview with Zaoui on his arrival, the agency failed to tell the Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence, Laurie Greig of the existence of the videotape and now says that an hour of audio on the tape has mysteriously gone missing. Zaoui says he was mocked by officers during the interview. Now, his legal team is trying to get the tape. Would it be rude to observe that this becomes more of a shambles by the week?

The story of Bruce Simpson appears, regrettably, to be another case of unseemly behaviour in officialdom. For years, Bruce has written a near-daily Internet commentary column called Aardvark, and he popped into the headlines when a reporter noticed his project making a homebrewed cruise missile based on a pulse jet engine he had developed himself.

He says he was about to sign a major deal with an American company to develop the pulse jet when - while he was out of the country - he was bankrupted by Inland Revenue, effectively wrecking the entire project. He admits to losing control of his tax affairs for a while, but he has made every effort to make good in recent years, and there's enough detail in his account of the saga to suggest an Inland Revenue vendetta against him. Bruce summed up the sorry tale on Friday - or you can read it blow-by-blow starting from last Monday's chapter. I don't entirely know what has happened here, but it seems nasty, unacceptable and a sorry waste of this man's talents. I sincerely hope that someone on the political front will take an interest.

Anyway, a copy of the new Dimmer single 'Getting What You Give' arrived first thing this morning, by courier. It's a limited edition mini-CD (and the courier was mini-sized too - nice touch!) featuring the slinky, supple title track (horns by Fat Freddy's, backing vocals from Anika Moa) and Gary Sullivan's video. But why does the AIFF file name and the CD database info in iTunes come up as 'You've Got a Way' by Shania Twain? Is there something we should know?

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Running Rings | Dec 05, 2003 11:13

I asked earlier this week if someone could shed more light on the controversial tax dodge associated with the production of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yes, I realise that much of it was traversed in Gordon Campbell's Listener story, but I didn't have that to hand.

Anyway, someone who ought to know did get back:

New Line didn't get the tax break. New Zealand-domiciled companies such as the BNZ and Westpac sheltered hundreds of millions - and according to Treasury, the net cost to the country was $NZ217million.

Yes, GST, personal taxes, etc, were paid, but they would have been paid regardless of who funded the production.

But would the production actually have been funded without such a tax shelter being available?

Peter Jackson and his team have done a wonderful, fantastic job and their legacy is there for all to see. But if you are going to examine the costs and benefits, then separate out the elements, do the research and then write the story.

Lord Of The Rings was scheduled to go ahead and New Line had agreed to put up $US240 million ($US80 million per picture!). It looked like it was going to cost more. New Line said no more money from them.

The finance wizards came up with the tax scheme - net result, a complete save for New Line. About two years ago, just before Lord Of The Rings 1 was released, New Line said their total exposure on all three films was $US20million as a result of tax deals in New Zealand and Germany.

So yes, it would have gone ahead, and none of the profit comes back here.

Hmmm. It's worth noting that Jackson has consistently held that the film would not have been made here without the tax break, but you can see why Michael Cullen considered strangling the arrangement when he came into office; and equally, why he stayed his hand. At least we got a genuine historic work of cinema for our largesse. The last time tax advantages had a lot to do with movie production decisions here, all we got was Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence.

MediaCow has certainly been prolific since its launch, but typically only half right about most things. It lashes a "tired" Herald column in which Barbara Sumner Burstyn lists the sins of CanWest in relation to its Canadian newspapers, rightly pointing out that there is no evidence the company's policies have endangered editorial freedom at TV3, as Sumner Burstyn implies.

I think this is true. 3 National News can be alarmingly trite at times (compare and contrast with the all-new gravitas which appears to be developing at the opposition - polish up that BBC accent if you fancy a job there) but what it says and does is not being dictated from afar by the Asper family.

But MediaCow tries a bit too hard to dismiss CanWest's behaviour:

The truth is just slightly less hysterical. Yes, there was a stoush in 2001-2002 when CanWest attempted to make all of its newspapers carry the same editorials. CanWest's (perhaps naive) view was that owners should be allowed to contribute material to their own media. But only a few of those editorials ever ran, because of the outcry from (supposedly oppressed) editorial staff.

Yes, some staff were fired - and did a brilliant job of turning their dismissal into a 'freedom of speech' issue. A CanWest editor said at the time: "It's silly to make a freedom of speech issue out of this - this is a labour issue". He was, of course, ignored.

It was quite a lot worse than that. CanWests's attempt to have editorials for its 14 major dailies written at its corporate head office - the plan was for three a week, they settled for one - might have been a turkey, but that was only part of the picture.

From about December 2001, CanWest began to implement a corporate editorial policy - its key planks were support for Israeli government policy, and for the governing Canadian Liberal party, with which CanWest CEO Izzy had been an MP. Let me run that by you again: criticising the government was a breach of corporate policy.

This might not have been so bad had CanWest not acquired the 130-strong Southam newspaper chain from Conrad Black. Many of those titles were the only papers available in the places where they published, and the acquisition meant that CanWest controlled about a quarter of the Canadian media market.

In June last year, Russell Mills, the publisher of the Ottawa Citizen, was sacked for failing to consult with corporate headquarters before running an editorial calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. The editorial followed a major story alleging misconduct by Chretien.

Troublingly, the Aspers' policy applied not only to their employees, but to any contributor to their papers, including independent columnists. Mediawatch interviewed Stephen Kimber, a journalism professor who had written a column for his local paper in Halifax since 1985. He refused to write again for any CanWest paper after several of his columns had been altered, without consultation, to remove opinions that did not tally with group policy. Two journalists on the paper resigned after they were forbidden to report on Kimber's departure.

There were quite a number of other unpleasant incidents, some of them documented in a report by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (whose board of directors includes the president of news at the Aspers' perennial whipping boy, the CBC). There's another story here.

Things do appear to have calmed down recently, but CanWest's change of mind appears to have more to do with the market than any sudden attack of principles (the Ottawa Citizen lost 3000 subscribers in the first week after Mills was fired). Izzy Asper died in October. Good job, frankly.

MediaCow also looks at the Herald's belated statement on the departure of cartoonist Malcolm Evans, and drags out on of its favourite words - "patsy" - in reference to interviews with Evans, including the one on Mediawatch. Bullshit. There was no other account available bar Evans' own at the time. The following week, I noted comments made by the Herald's John Roughan to AUT students, implying that Evans had been a difficult and disrespectful employee (much to the consternation of some AUT staff, who really need to think more like journalists and less about upsetting people), and linked to David Cohen's column suggesting much the same thing. Final call? Fault on both sides. I think Anthony Ellison on Eating Media Lunch made the most sensible judgement: Evans contributed to his own demise through his fondness for stereotypes.

Anyway, that'll do. Thanks very much for all the mail this week. I'll get around to answering some of it in the next few days, and perhaps quote the most interesting stuff on Monday. Till then, more evidence of shameless media management around Bush's Iraq visit (this after the White House admitted it made up the exciting story about Air Force One being sighted by a British Airways pilot), more made-up stuff - contradicted by both eyewitnesses and TV pictures of the injured - about the supposed battle with Iraqi insurgents this week. Editor & Publisher looked at the compliant way US media reported what they were told by the Pentagon. Bizarre, if all too familiar …

PS: The Listener has just posted Gordon Campbell's more recent story about the government film incentive package introduced in response to industry campaigning for some tax accommodation for major movie projects, which appears to offer little - and may even be counterproductive - for local producers. It should be noted there have been a couple of reasonable funding initiatives for the Film Commission since.

Campbell also cites a Variety story indicating that business is booming for digital effects houses such as Weta, suggesting that Anderton has been hoodwinked if he thinks otherwise. But a story in the Los Angeles Times a couple of weeks ago says that "Weta Digital, located in a suburb of Wellington, the nation's capital, is heading into a period of huge uncertainty," and would seem to indicate it's not all boom for Weta.

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Darth George | Dec 04, 2003 10:48

Yay. Quoted in Parliament yesterday. I like it when that happens. Although I have a couple of high-profile media gigs, this blog is principally compiled with resources available to any Internet-connected citizen, so it's nice to occasionally get a word in at the table of democracy.

Lianne Daziel quoted my frank assessment of Peters and his party from the first paragraph of yesterday's post and apparently it went down quite well. Jolly good. I couldn't find that online, but Marahey had an interesting response to a Peters question about immigrants and the welfare. It appears there are far fewer new migrants claiming emergency benefits than there were back when Winston was Deputy Prime Minister.

Thanks for all the appreciative emails about yesterday's post, too. Clearly, I'm not the only one irritated and appalled by New Zealand First's lying and despicable leaflet. But it's touching to see that the leaflet has at least one champion in the media, even if that champion is clearly barking mad. Garth George's comment in the Herald today - Like it or not, Peters' pamphlet pretty much spot on - includes passages like this:

"Hundreds of thousands of Third World immigrants have arrived since Labour was elected in 1999 - and they are still coming," writes Mr Peters. Absolutely true.

Well, actually, it's absolutely ludicrous and grossly inaccurate. Garth likes to witter on about values in his columns, but he appears to have dismissed the fundamental journalistic value: a commitment to the truth. If he can't manage that he ought to retire and make way for someone who can actually manage a few minutes' research.

Another paragraph is quite telling:

Mr Peters' pamphlet simply points to the fact that this country is being invaded by aliens, in much too great a number for our small population, who are physically, mentally, emotionally, culturally and socially so different from Pakeha, Maori and Pacific Islanders that their integration is virtually impossible.

So the presence and role of Pacific Islanders in our society is uncontroversial. It wasn't always thus. I'm old enough to remember - and Garth certainly is - when their presence was political grist to the demagogue of another era: Rob Muldoon. I remember when a lot of white folks didn't like to talk to Samoans. A mate of mine had Dutch parents, who'd stepped off the boat with barely a dollar to their names - they used to cop it. We didn't like them either.

And then there's this pearl:

The behaviour of some, the housing choices of many and the fact that some have been here for years yet speak no English, indicate they are not here to integrate, but to colonise.

Jesus. Why not just say "Yellow Peril" and be done with it? Yes, I know, it's just the blatherings of a silly old man, but he's a silly old man who happens to choose which Letters to the Editor get published in the Herald. (You may find that explains a few things for you …)

Anyway, for the benefit of lazy old men who prefer to consult their prejudices than the facts, just over one in 10 Aucklanders (13% ) are Asian, and six per cent ethnic Chinese, but they are not necessarily immigrants. Twenty per cent of ethnic Chinese in Auckland were born here, some from families which have been here for decades. The Department of Statistics' projection says that at estimated migration rates - hardly a given - all Asian people put together, including those whose families have been here for many years, will account for 13% of the national population by 2021. The Asian community's median age is currently 36 - seven years higher than that of the overall population - so natural increase will be modest. (Actually, the more you look at these numbers, the more it becomes apparent that the ageing of the overall population is more of a concern than the growth of any single ethnic group.)

This doesn't actually mean that in 20 years' time 13% of the population will look, act or primarily identify as Asian. In the commentary to its projection, the department notes (the boldface is from the original):

The Asian population includes people who identify with an Asian ethnicity, including those who identify with other ethnicities such as European and/or Maori. It is important to note that these ethnic populations are not mutually exclusive because people can and do identify with more than one ethnicity. People who identify with more than one ethnicity will be included in each ethnic population.

So, unlike Garth, the people who actually study this sort of thing clearly do expect Asian immigrants to integrate. The proportion of the population identified as European will decrease from the current 79% to 69% by 2021, but that will largely be driven by relatively higher birth rates in the Maori and Pacific Island communities - ethnicities of which Garth apparently approves. It's not much of a colonisation, really.

Just for good measure, Garth weighs in on something else he doesn't know anything about - the Zaoui case:

And when it comes to the question of whether the man is a terrorist, I have a lot less faith in the Refugee Appeals Authority and the courts, which sometimes put United Nations nonsense before the good of the country, than I have in the SIS, which answers directly to the Prime Minister.

Are you still calling yourself a journalist, George? The role of a free press in a democracy is precisely to hold the official view to account. He - along with daily letter-writers to the Herald - seems to have trouble understanding why Zaoui was ever "allowed past the airport in the first place". It's not actually that complicated: New Zealand has long been a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees, which obliges all states not to forcibly return people fleeing conflict or persecution in their homelands to a place where they would be in danger. We take a small fixed annual quota, fewer than a thousand (the US takes about 70,000, by comparison) and also hear appeals as to status, about 90% of which are either withdrawn or rejected by the Refugee Status Appeals Authority.

Anyway, whatever the nanny-state arguments currently raging, a story this week on California's 15-year history of anti-smoking measures, which extended to the ban on smoking in bars and restaurants in 1998, seems to show the desired public health effect:

One study showed that California's lung cancer rate fell by over 16% between 1988 and 1997, compared with a drop of 2.7% in the rest of the US. The number of smokers in California fell by 40% in the decade after the first tough measures were introduced, and rates of smoking in the state are lower than in the rest of the US with only 18% of Californians smoking compared with 25% of the rest of the country.

Next up in California: banning smoking on the beaches. I can't quite see that one flying here.

And finally, an interesting speech from Richard Prebble: Time to Ditch the Kiwi. I personally think national currencies are over-rated, so I'm amenable to arguments about consolidating money across national borders.

There were a couple of points of particular interest: the argument for abandoning a sovereign currency is usually made in times of weakness, but our dollar is currently stronger than we want it to be. The real problem, as he points out, is volatility. The other point: he suggests we should adopt either the US dollar or the Euro. Coming from a (recently) committed Europhobe like Prebble, this is quite an admission. But the greenback, of course, is heading south and is likely to keep on heading that way over the long term, such are its dirty little secrets. You'd hardly want to hitch a ride down. The Euro, on the other hand, would just bring us more of the same: it is too strong for the comfort of exporters. The Aussie dollar? No point. Too small. Some pan-Asian currency? Too scary by half at the moment. It looks to me like we're stuck with a volatile national currency for quite a while yet, if only because all other options are worse.

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Liars | Dec 03, 2003 10:37

If I were to say what I really thought of New Zealand First's 'Whose Country Is It Anyway?' leaflet things might get unseemly. So let's just observe that Winston Peters is a coward and a bully and his party is the home of fear, failure and resentment.

Certainly, the postal workers who initially refused to deliver the leaflets this week were on shaky ground. We really can't have the carriers of the mail deciding what we receive.

But even in the most casual posties, you can usually divine a quiet pride in the fact that they do a job that society needs in order to function. It would be hard to feel pride in delivering a nasty item like that.

The text of the leaflet included claims that "We are being squeezed out of our own country ... It is not in our interest for thousands of Third World immigrants to come here for a life on the welfare system ... We cannot absorb these numbers without serious social and cultural disruption."

Along with these tawdry little unprovables, it contained the ludicrous claim that "hundreds of thousands" of third world immigrants have come to New Zealand since 1999. Lianne Dalziel told Newstalk ZB that the correct number is more like 20,000 since 1997, a little over 3000 a year (compared to, say, the net inflow of British migrants in the year to October of 10,000). I guess you could try and argue that China is a third-world country, but the Chinese who make it through our immigration requirements (12,400 in the year to October) hardly fit NZ First's welfare-parasite slur.

We are not, according to the Department of Statistics most recent release of migration numbers, facing a rising tide of immigrants:

Permanent and long-term (PLT) arrivals exceeded departures by 3,000 in October 2003, compared with 4,100 in October 2002. This decrease can be attributed to 600 fewer PLT arrivals and 500 more PLT departures. PLT arrivals have now dropped in each of the past eight months, when compared with the same months of the previous year.

Peters did not, of course, apologise for, or even seek to correct this apparently willful misinformation. Instead, he threatened legal action against the queasy posties, and claimed, fatuously, that a press release by Steve Maharey hailing Auckland as "a real twenty-first century melting pot" constituted a telling admission:

Mr Peters said he also applauded the Minister for finally admitting that there was a serious immigrant/refugee/asylum seeker employment problem in Auckland.

However, despite his sudden fit of political honesty, the minister conveniently forgot to mention that housing, health, welfare, education and transport systems were collapsing in Auckland under the weight of mass immigration.

Immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers. This is Peters' most recent variation on his perennial thing, a tack prompted in part by the current publicity over the Ahmed Zaoui case. We tend to forget how he will shift his targets depending on what's expedient. He used to make inferences about wealthy Asian immigrants with their fancy houses in Howick. Around the time of last year's election, it was Asian students, who were claimed (absent proof, as usual) by New Zealand First MP Pita Paraone to be milking the welfare. There's always some sort of foreigner looking to do us down, isn't it?

Anyway, back to reality: in the year 2000, the Refugee Status Appeals Authority adjudicated 1,449 asylum claims. It declined more than 80 per cent of the claims it heard, and approved only 270. A further 748 claims were withdrawn. In the year to June 2002 the authority received 1277. The figure to June 2003 was only 670 appeals, of which 129 were withdrawn before a hearing. Of all those, a total of 64 were granted refugee status (under, it should be noted, a law drafted when Peters was Deputy Prime Minister). There is no torrent of refugees. Quite the reverse.

I'm pissed off that, once again, Peters is taking Auckland's name in vain. His constituency - the people he's trying to scare - aren't really in Auckland. A robust attitudinal survey conducted for the November Metro magazine indicated that just under half of Aucklanders agreed that immigration has been good for the city, and fewer than a third disagreed. The same poll offers a clue to Peters' re-targeting of refugees, rather than Asians: 61% of those polled agreed that Asian immigration had been good for Auckland (while only a quarter disagreed) but 42% saw no benefit to Auckland from the arrival of refugees.

Yes, immigration is a factor in Auckland's housing boom (the others being returning expatriates and the long-established drift to Auckland from other regions), but blaming immigrants for the city's transport problems, which have been decades in the making, is simply fatuous.

And who are these refugees? Well, there's a refugee family in my street, headed by a solo mum. Her son is tall, athletic and handsome, and a thoroughly good kid. I'm pleased to have them as neighbours, and that my country and my city have been able to give them the opportunity to thrive. I'm deeply embarrassed that they stand a chance of getting Peters' filth in their mailbox.

So imagine my consternation, then, at watching Eating Media Lunch (excellent again!) last night and seeing Jonathan Eisen on the steps of Parliament with his newly anti-GE buddy Winston. And no, it wasn't an accident: Eisen actually had Peters conduct the public launch of his nasty and defamatory book, The GE Sellout. You take public fear where you find it, I guess. They would seem to have plenty to learn from each other …

PS: It seems a shame to have to append a thank you to Debra - always such a warm and human presence as a blogger - to the considerations of venality above. But anyway, she's retiring for the same reasons as Chad: to concentrate on the big job of writing novels. Of all of us, she posted least but crafted and nurtured her prose the most. We'll miss her. Yes, there will be some new Public Address regulars along presently, but for now, love and thanks.

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About culture | Dec 01, 2003 11:29

What with all the hoopla, it was proper that someone should play devil's advocate, but Peter Calder's sceptical look at The Lord of the Rings phenomenon in the Weekend Herald's Canvas magazine bugged me for a couple of reasons.

Calder takes exception to what he considers the "conceptual bankruptness" of a recent Prime Ministerial speech on film-industry spin-offs - which, as he points out, are difficult to quantify - and in particular, Clark's hailing of the benefits of the LOTR trilogy, and subsequent statement that "on a smaller scale, Whale Rider's success is also very positive for New Zealand overall.":

And that, it seems to me, is the nub of the question about what cultural benefit Rings may have conferred on the nation as a whole. Except to the extent that it showcased the extraordinary resourcefulness of Jackson and the people he gathered round him, Rings says nothing about who we are. But there would not be a person on the planet - among those who have paid US$40 million ($63 million) so far to see it - who would be in any doubt that Whale Rider is made in New Zealand and is about New Zealand. It is when our film-makers tell our stories that we get a priceless spin-off.

Well, for a start, I don't think the producers of either film would welcome them being put up against each other. They're quite different projects, and each is a remarkable success in its own right. And if we're to be sceptical about the financial benefits of LOTR, it would be fair to note that only a modest proportion of Whale Rider's box office gross will actually flow back to New Zealand.

But mostly, I can't help but feel that Calder has skipped too quickly over the "extraordinary resourcefulness" of Jackson and his team. Because that very resourcefulness - the ability to work together towards a highly demanding creative and technical goal - is a part of our culture. New Zealanders function best at the intersection of creativity and technology, as they did for LOTR.

An example: an old mate of mine, one of the most ingenious people I have ever known, has just finished up with Weta. He started out fixing the computers there and wound up doing CGI sequences for all three movies. He's over it now, understandably - he wants to go build robots or something - but the fact that he was able to do that kind of work in New Zealand for such an extended period is remarkable.

Ditto for Ngila Dickson - who was charming and talented when I first met her 20 years ago, and is now, thanks to this project, in the top flight of movie costume designers - and any number of others. To deny that they have brought both their personalities and their culture to the job seems mean-spirited.

The fact that there now exists in Wellington a busy, international-class post-production facility - Russell Baillie tripped over the ship models from Master and Commander on his tour through Weta - is amazing. Who would have predicted that 10 years ago?

No, we can't keep on buying in projects by handing out tax favours, but letting New Line set up its tax shelter in this instance seems to have been eminently worthwhile. For all the griping about the arrangement, I still haven't seen a bottom line on it. What is the net effect on the revenue base of the trilogy being produced here, taking into account taxes on income and the GST on both production and personal spending of those involved? Am I right in assuming that it is positive? Can anybody help me here?

Anyway, there don't seem to be any stories to link to yet, but Whale Rider picked up yet another award over the weekend - best feature film in the BAFTA Children's Television and Film Awards. Excellent.

And good news for Public Address too. November has been a hell of a month. Not only did we win our NetGuide Award, but the traffic stats are through the roof: 45,000 visits from 17,000 unique users. Thanks to everyone involved, and most especially Chad, who is taking his leave in order to concentrate on his primary task of writing novels.

I'm a big fan of prose style (kind of like one of those annoying muso types who gets technical about somebody's fretwork, I guess) and there aren't many people I know of who craft prose with the care, precision, ability and insight that Chad does.

I can understand what he says about the essentially reactive nature of daily blogging - Mike King loses the plot, we get lots of traffic - but I'm a kind of lab-rat in that respect. I'll press that button every day if it keeps on giving me a buzz, and I probably check our stats more often than is healthy. The idea of finishing something and then waiting until 2005 to see it, as Chad will, would drive me mad.

Anyway, thanks pal. See you for a beer real soon.

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