Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Not any Friday | Dec 02, 2004 09:18

Last night's Close-Up at 7 special on 1984's Aotea Square riot might well have been a wee bit of a promo for Dave Dobbyn's forthcoming national tour with Brooke Fraser, and its previously unseen footage didn't amount to much. But it was an able and useful look back on an event that seems unreal now.

Mind you, it seemed unreal as it was happening. I was at 89FM's 'Thank God It's Over' concert that day in my capacity as deputy editor of Rip It Up magazine. I wrote about it for the magazine and the report was submitted to the subsequent inquiry. I still have a copy of what I wrote, somewhere under the house, but I think I remember it well enough anyway.

I never saw the original disturbance, on the covered way by the Post Office, but as I emerged from the backstage area, there was already something going on behind the crowd on Queen Street. Police with helmets and long batons. We knew that sight well enough in those days.

I don't actually recall Dave Dobbyn's fateful words - "I wish those riot squad guys would stop wanking and put their little batons away" - but they were audible on a tape given to me later by Californian Ron Kane, a New Zealand music completist who recorded everything. The snatches of conversation caught on the tape were quite vivid: the music stopped (on the order of the police, as it turned out) and thousands of people who had been facing the stage turned around to see a line of riot police blocking their exit from the square. I don't recall the actual words, but there were expressions of disbelief, and then anxiety or anger.

And thus, by shutting off the music and blocking the exits, the police turned a disturbance into a riot. Figuring I'd be writing about it, I walked up behind the front line, where youths were throwing bottles at and taunting a line of police back at the Wellesley Street intersection. Crowds were packed along the footpaths and behind the police.

Something way out of the ordinary was breaking loose. I saw the young guys trying repeatedly to put a bin through the windows of the vacant DFC building. It would be dishonest of me to say it wasn't exciting.

Wendyll Nissen later wrote a dramatic story for the Auckland Star about cowering amongst terrified bystanders nearby. But I didn't feel any threat to my personal safety until the police charged. Like everyone else, I ran like hell. I was in shorts and jandals, and one of my jandals flipped off, leaving me hopping as fast I could around the broken glass. Quite quickly, the police fell back, and I was able to walk up and retrieve the lost jandal.

I watched a little longer, until the police charged again, at which point I decided it was time to head back to the Rip It Up offices. I felt a little chill as I walked past the information centre and saw flames through its smashed windows. On Wellesley Street, a member of the public was trying to dissuade a youth from putting a bin (was our tidy Kiwi status coming back to bite us?) through the windscreen of a stranded car.

I left not long after for a gig at the Windsor Castle - bringing with me the astonishing news of rioting on Queen Street - but the looting carried on. We tried to have a look on the way back from the Windsor, but a policeman stopped us on Symonds Street. Someone was running around with a gun, he said. It wasn't true but we didn't disbelieve it at the time.

So what happened? Well, things were different then. People just bowled up with their own booze, lots of it, and drank it in the sun all afternoon. The role of excess alcohol in what happened can't be escaped.

But the police were different too. The 1981 Springbok tour had hardened them, set them against sections of the public, seen them equipped with the helmets and long batons. But in a more general sense, they were a confrontational force, rather than one of order. The team policing unit would go to pubs at closing and basically pick fights. It wasn't entirely surprising that a chance to hit back snowballed the way it did.

In the end, I concur with what Dave Dobbyn said last night: a whole confluence of factors converged on Aotea Square that Friday; not least among them a sense of release with the end of the Muldoon era. Society was shifting and something was due to blow. I've been caught up in two riots in my life (the other was the Poll Tax riot in London, which we missed a good deal of by going to the pub) and in both cases there was poor policing, but also a tipping point of public permission from the wider crowd.

Three weeks later, I was in my parents' backyard in the Hutt Valley, waiting for a barbecue banquet to be served. Amongst the guests were a senior Maori policeman, a friend of my parents I had not met before.

"So," said my Dad, showing his usual tact. "Russell reckons your guys blew it at Aotea Square."

I cringed.

"Yeah …" said the policeman, quietly. "We did."

PS: I'm off to Wellington for a few days from this morning. Hopefully, I'll be able to pop in on Parliament for the second reading of the Civil Union Bill, and I've blagged my way into the The Seventies in New Zealand: A Decade of Change conference. And, of course, I'm going to see my Mum. I may or may not post tomorrow, but I expect there'll be something new from the crew.

PPS: Only Camilla could innocently put it to Don Brash that didn't he have a couple of gay MPs, and worry that they might be scared to come out in the current climate. "I don't think there's any evidence that gays in the National Party caucus have been afraid to express their sexuality … I don't think there are any. But I could be wrong …" he said this morning on b. Wow.

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All the fun ... | Dec 01, 2004 10:03

The fallout from yesterday's "civil unions on a knife-edge" story in the Herald has been interesting. At least two of the apparent flip-floppers - Don Brash and Tariana Turia - went on the radio to confirm their changes of mind, but reports of the demise of the votes of Act MP Heather Roy and National's Pansy Wong appear to have been considerably exaggerated.

Roy emailed a number of people after the Herald story was published yesterday to say she had been misrepresented and still fully intended to vote in favour of the Civil Union Bill. Bizarrely, she's not even mentioned in today's follow-up, which does note that Pansy Wong, another supposed waverer, is "likely" to vote in favour as well. Herald reporter Ruth Berry will presumably be speaking to her sources.

Meanwhile, Labour's Muslim MP Ashraf Choudhary surprised everyone by declaring that he had examined his conscience and would be voting favour of the bill, rather than abstaining. The bill will pass its second and third readings, and not just by one vote.

I heard Turia give a rather strange interview to Noelle on bFM, in which she advanced a series of rationalisations for voting against civil unions: because they weren't "necessary"; there should be a referendum; and because it should be full marriage or nothing (but she refused to say whether she would vote for same-sex marriage). She also claimed that the majority of the same-sex couples who had lobbied her office were against civil unions. Que?

Brash had the virtue of clarity in his interview with Mary Wilson on Checkpoint (but what exactly was she working off when she put it to him that the public was "very strongly opposed" to the CUB?). He was concerned that the government had "ignored" the 90% of submissions against the CUB; that "hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders" were deeply concerned about the bill and therefore there should be a referendum, in which he would vote in favour of civil unions.

It sounded reasonable, but it didn't make sense. Yes, there were many submissions against the bill (although not as many as, say, marched in the hikoi to Parliament), but many of them were form jobs and some of them were plain sick. They were largely driven by well-funded organisations whose members tend to do as they are bid.

It is absolutely the democratic right of those organisations and individuals to make their representations. But when actual opinion polls have all run in favour of civil unions, are the submissions really to be taken as evidence of a great public groundswell?

Indeed, as the Campaign for Civil Unions pointed out in a release last night, in the two polls that have also asked questions about party support, National voters have backed civil unions by a margin of nearly two-to-one. Who exactly is representing them in the Parliamentary caucus? The comparison with the law reform era - where MPs were miles out step with the public mood, and cowed by a well-organised conservative campaign - becomes more apt by the day.

(If you want to join the fun yourself - just to show that relaxed, liberal, happy-within-themselves sorts can lobby too - The Campaign for Civil Unions now has a page for emailing MPs. I'm normally a bit wary about mass-mailing gizmos, but this one has been done quite nicely, with the intention of preventing abuse.)

And apart from anything else, protection on grounds of sexual orientation was added to the Human Rights Act by a National government. Since when did that minority right need to be endorsed by referendum? (And, for that matter, how keen would Turia be on a foreshore and seabed referendum?)

Brash, Turia and other MPs have noted that they have been subject to furious lobbying. Unfortunately, in some cases, that appears to have deprived some of them of their principles. I really can't read Brash's motivation here: if it's poll panic I don't think it's going to work. Moral bugaboos don't usually work very well on New Zealanders.

Meanwhile Garnet "Gazza" Milne, of the Campaign Against Civil Unions, continues to try and play the victim, claiming to have been "attacked" by Tim Barnett in a reply to one of his own emails, the full text of which is this:

From: Tim Barnett
Sent: Tuesday, 30 November 2004 9:01 a.m.
To: Garnet Milne
Cc: Tony Milne
Subject: RE: A plea for the afflicted homosexual

Dear Garnet,

I vote with the knowledge that your grossly misinformed and dangerous beliefs about homosexuality are much more a threat to the peace of our nation and that welfare of our people than anything I could ever do as a politician.

Best wishes,

Tim

Golly. Perhaps Gazza should hire private security in case the homos come and get him. Ironically, Milne's cry for help was posted only a few minutes after this rambling grab-bag of personal accusations and blathering about "immoral, unhealthy and dysfunctional" gay sexual activity. He's a right old laugh.

The Rasputin of Hobson Street, TVNZ commissioning chief Tony Holden, has brought in Jason Daniels - the Grundy soap specialist who helped develop Shortland Street - to work on a new, in-house soap at state TV. Some other people have been recruited, but anyone deemed to have been too well-connected to Shortland Street's producer, South Pacific Pictures, has not, it appears, been welcome.

So why is TVNZ trying to work up a new soap when it has previously said it wouldn't be producing drama in-house, and when it already has a well-established and popular nightly soap?

Because Holden (who had a very bitter separation with SPP) wants to "break up the big production companies", and SPP in particular, as he seems to have been happy to say to a few people? Why would that be a good idea? Where does strategy stop and personal agenda begin?

There is a long and undistinguished history at TVNZ of successive generations of management having to climb out from underneath the agendas of their predecessors. It would seem to be going strong.

While we're with Shorty et al, I've been enjoying reading the comments on Idolblog in response to my Listener column about Idolblog and its founders, who recently launched the fan site Street Talk.

On which topic - and I think I may have asked this before - did anyone ever archive that star of the early days of the New Zealand Internet, Shortland Street Interactive? It was a series of mock Shortland Street scripts written progressively by readers, and at its best it was screamingly funny. Web servers being a little hard to come by back then, it was secretly hosted at the Crown Research Institute where its founders worked. I'd love to see it again.

But wait, there's more! Through the kind offices of Karajoz, Public Address is able to offer a hundred-odd readers a free preview of Team America: World Police next Tuesday, in Auckland. RSVP here. See you there...

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Real conscience | Nov 30, 2004 09:45

With various lobby groups pouring on the last-minute moral panic, it appears that the vote on Thursday's second reading of the Civil Union Bill might be a little tighter than anticipated. Surprisingly, this morning's Herald story lists Don Brash and Pansy Wong, the founder of National's nascent gay wing, as potential flip-floppers.

I'm considerably less surprised that Tariana Turia has dismissed the CUB as "unnecessary" and will be voting against it. I predicted a while back that the Maori Party would be the vehicle for a new Maori conservatism. But I look forward to interviewing Matt McCarten again: last time we spoke on the radio he assured me that the party would be socially liberal. I don't think so.

It's not hard to see what's going on here: a number of MPs are spooked by the lobbying from the religious right, and by the flood of form submissions to the select committee. But every poll taken on the issue this year has found a majority of the public in favour of the legislation, with the exception of one, in which a plurality was in favour. And this while various groups are telling everyone the sky is going to fall. It won't.

A little history would be in order here. In 1978, Victoria University's Richard Bowman set out to do what no one had yet done in New Zealand - or Australia, for that matter - survey ordinary New Zealanders on their views regarding homosexuality.

Nearly 500 people were surveyed, in the inner suburbs of Wellington, and in Hamilton. The results stood in stark contrast to what had gone on in Parliament in the preceding years. In 1976, Parliament had shunned a bid to decriminalise homosexual acts. In 1977, it ruled homosexuals out of protection under the Human Rights Act.

Members of Parliament presumably considered themselves to be standing up for social order. But Bowman found that three quarters of his subjects thought homosexual acts should be removed from the Crimes Act. It took MPs eight years and a good deal of struggle to catch up with the public mood.

Furthermore, 80% of the people surveyed said the Human Rights Act should be extended to offer protection on the basis of sexual orientation. That took 14 years!

But Bowman's topline number was the one: 94% of the survey - in 1978, remember - believed that what consenting adults did together was their own business. On issues of choice and morality, the change in society typically takes place long before the change in the statutes.

This year's Herald DigiPoll found a majority for civil unions, and for those unions to embody the same rights as marriage. But perhaps what was nicer than the raw numbers were the interviews in the Herald's report on the poll. A basic sense of justice, of equity, seemed to come through.

Writing in 1944, ARD Fairburn (whose alleged homophobia was a matter of writers' bitching rather than something he practised in daily life) saw something similar in us. He declared that "the capacity for preserving minority rights is one of the tests of a democracy." But he drew a distinction between what he called positive and negative rights.

The right to prevent people from doing things like drinking, dancing and sunbathing [and they were all variously proscribed by wowsers of the time) because, he said, "of pseudo-moral or pseudo-theological prejudices is negative, and is not justifiable even in a majority. But when a minority, which is in the wrong, manages to circumvent the desire and cripple the activities of the majority, then things are in a bad way."

The Dom Post this morning notes that the Relationships Bill accompanying the CUB won't come up for a vote until next year, after some more work has been done. This isn't news, and as I have said before, it is a good thing: the original bill stood to make uncommitted relationships more than they really were.

The irony is that civil unions should never have been so controversial. They weren't when the legislation was first mooted, and they haven't been in Britain, where the civil partnerships bill has emerged from the House of Lords and is on its way to becoming law. It now appears that Ireland will be next off the rank. For goodness sake, even George W. Bush backs civil unions, and said so as recently as six weeks ago. Are we really to cast ourselves to the right of Dubya?

In most places where same-sex civil unions have been introduced, a small but dedicated lobby has been opposed on the basis that they aren't full-fledged marriage, and thus not equal. The same applies here, and there is some merit in the argument, but gay conservatives who believe that the defeat of the CUB would somehow open the way for same-sex marriage are fooling themselves.

I know that some of our MPs - including Stephen Franks, for whom this whole business has been little more than an excuse to preen - are a lost cause, but I hope that the waverers will take this as my personal plea for them to genuinely examine their consciences.

I'm not married, so the bill gives me an option, but for me, support for civil unions comes down in the final event to standing by my friends. I've always had gay friends, and I've had two old friends come out later in life. (One of them, at the age of 43, went and told his parents. And his mum said: "you're going through a phase, dear." The other one, it must be said, gave heterosexuality a really good go - to the point of getting married. He has been in a long-term relationship with a lovely man in London for years now, and will be delighted at the prospect of formalising a civil partnership.)

That action, that acknowledgement, that freedom to be, had a huge positive impact on the lives of my friends. It was as if a weight had lifted from both of them. And when I stand behind civil unions, I stand behind that.

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Incendiary! | Nov 29, 2004 10:39

Blowing up the PA system is the stuff of ordinary legend in garage rock. It takes a special talent to set the PA on fire by playing through it. And that, friends, is what the D4 managed at the King's Arms on Friday night.

There was a sudden burst of cheering on the far side of the room, and it soon became clear what it was about. Orange flames were licking out the front grill of the stage-right speaker. The D4, as you would fully expect of a group that has mortgaged its soul to 100% rock 'n' roll, kept on playing. Eventually, just as the mood of the crowd was turning from how-cool-is-this? to shouldn't-somebody-be-doing-something-about-now?, some guy turned up and put out the flames. With a hose. While the band kept playing. Cool.

It was the you-had-to-be-there moment of a you-had-to-be-there evening, which began for us when David Slack, Damian and I converged on the London Bar for a pint or three with our offshore blogging brother Che Tibby. Damian had later duties befitting a hip young media guy, but the rest of us, plus Che's mate Spencer, headed up the hill to the KA, where we arrived to a packed-to-the-gills crowd, just after the Fanatics had played.

We assembled in the old chaps' grandstand in time for the MintChicks, who were electrifying. I don't quite know how to describe them: punk rock art-pop with a little Gang of Four, maybe? Anyway, they clearly know what they're doing. "What did you make of that?" I asked Che. "I didn't know what to make of that," he confessed. But good, anyway.

The incendiary and electrifying came back around for Sunday morning, when a young All Black side summoned one of the great All Black performances to destroy France 45-6. With the exception of a few lost lineouts, it was hard to find any fault with the performance. A tight five that operated with such controlled fury that the vaunted French just about gave up; a loose trio that for once was not carried on the back of Richie McCaw; and some really pretty good backs.

It would be unreasonable to expect quite this sort of showing every time, and perhaps it was the old-soldier factor, with the poppies on the sleeves and the Dave Gallaher trophy up for grabs, that was the key to it. I was interested to hear both So'oialo and Kelleher talk afterwards about creating "a new All Black legacy". It might be a bit soon for that, but I wonder if this "new legacy" thing was a particularly clever bit of psychology from Henry and co., in the sense that the key to releasing the young All Blacks was getting them out from under the weight of old All Black legacy and letting them create something of their own.

I wonder what Simon Barnes - the sort of arrogant little snot that tends to converge on rugby writing in the British Isles - is planning to say in his follow-up to his pre-match sneer-fest under the headline All Blacks trading on nothing but worn-out myths.

Meanwhile, I got a stern email from Stephen Glaister, who professed himself very pro-civil unions and same-sex marriage, but was "disappointed" in me for lashing Stephen Franks, rather than Jacquie Grant over her "vaguely Orwellian threats" in two emails to the Campaign Against Civil Unions. I understand his point, and Grant, as she admitted, shouldn't have identified herself as a member of the Human Rights Review Tribunal (which she had been for two weeks before writing). But it might be useful to look at what she actually said rather than relying on the interpretations of others:

I will debate these issues with you anywhere anytime but I think you are basically cowardly people and I do not expect to have that opportunity soon. Rest assured you will be taken to task at every opportunity for hate crime.

I don't like the term "hate crime", and I think the concept probably amounts to gimmick law (in a similar way to, say, the home invasion legislation). But the emails are clearly personal (full text here) and I just don't think they can reasonably taken as a threat to bring down the dark hand of the state. (A definition of take to task ...) Unwise? Probably. Orwellian? Sinister? Hardly.

Indeed, and ironically, it's not Grant or any of her friends seeking to bring official retribution to bear, but the Campaign Against Civil Unions itself, which claimed in a press release to have obtained legal advice that Grant's words were a "threat of legal action against our website on the basis that the dissemination of its contents constitutes a 'hate crime'."

So, um, they were being threatened with prosecution under a law that does not and may never exist? Wow. The campaign followed that up with a letter to Margaret Wilson seeking to have Grant (who says she, too, is a Christian) fired from her new job. Meanwhile, everyone seems to have missed the fact that Peter Dunne tried to get the Human Rights Commission to act against Express newspaper because he didn't like being called "the ugly face of homophobia". Now, when some people even talk about doing this sort of thing, they're "liberal fascists", but if Peter Dunne does it, he's ... oh, whatever. There is no consistency.

And certainly not in the person of Franks himself, who is perennially happy to shout down the speech of others, and - as when he tried to have Haami Piripi dismissed after his submission on the foreshore and seabed - summon official retribution if he doesn't get what he wants. On the other hand, he is so obsessive about the right (which is not presently being challenged) of religious fundamentalists to use lies and bogus science to vilify a group in society that he wants to insert a bizarre amendment into the Civil Unions Bill to specifically approve it. Go figure.

There was more on the CUB from the Weekend Herald's pet conservative, Sandra Paterson, who said in her column on Saturday that:

Contrary to widespread belief, same-sex couples already have exactly the same next-of-kin and hospital or mortuary visitation rights as heterosexuals, according to human rights legislation and in hospital codes of practice. Telling the country that we need to pass this new legislation to give gays those rights is downright dishonest.

It's a bit glib to say that the only reason Nigel Pearson was not allowed to see his deceased partner or deal with the body was because "normal process was not followed". Feel free to read the submission by Calum Bennachie, in which he notes that on entering hospital in 1998, "despite my father having disowned me, and my wish to have my partner, and my partner alone, listed as my next of kin, I was forced to nominate my father as next of kin." One problem appears to be that the meaning of next-of-kin is subject to the interpretation of individual hospital staff. Would you want to gamble on striking a supportive nurse in your time of crisis? I understand Nigel Pearson has already sent a right-of-reply letter to the Herald.

Still, best of luck to Sandra in the soul-saving league table. You go girl!

There wasn't a whole lot added to the SIS story in the papers this weekend - in either the Star Times' crusade or the Herald camp's all-to-eager attempts to dismiss the whole thing - although the private security consultant retained by Tariana Turia did emerge for a front page story, to confirm his view that her phone had been tampered with. Trouble is, no one seems to think it was the SIS that did that. I thought Chris Trotter's comment in the Star Times - weighing up the idea of a younger, more nationalistic faction in the SIS leaking information to the likes of Scoop - was actually the best of the writing, but it doesn't seem to be online. Anyway, this post is already over 1300 words, so perhaps I'll leave that weighty topic till tomorrow.

Bridget Saunders really ought to stick to what she knows, even if that does narrow things down quite a lot. In an ill-informed snipe at bFM in her celeb section in About Town, she claimed that "95bFM is not the crowd-pleaser it once was. Ratings, in fact, are a bit depressing and advertisers are rolling their eyes." Darling, ratings in fact went up in the latest survey (and, for that matter, the one before that, I think).

The 12-2pm weekday slot that is The Wire has added 1.6 points of share in all listeners 10+, and 7000 listeners to the weekly cume since the last survey. In bFM's - ahem - target demographic of 18-39, the Wire slot has a cume of 9400 listeners; 10th overall and more than Newstalk ZB. I don't think anyone's grieving over that.

Just one more thing: the New Zealand Herald popped up with a nice new website on Saturday. Among other things, it makes it much easier to find the opinion writing. But mostly, I was relieved to see the search window finally turn up on the home page this morning. It's still not actually working, but I was afraid that through some mad reasoning, it had gone away for ever …

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