Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Claims | May 14, 2007 10:13

Ian Wishart seems to be getting his retaliation in first this morning, slinging off, ironically, at "all those mentally-challenged commenters on other blogs who resort to ad hominem attacks on myself or Investigate." I'll try and be a little more measured.

I don't find it hard to believe that Wishart would make reckless claims, because I've personally studied one Investigate story in which he made allegations against an individual (as part of an alleged feminist-communist-government conspiracy) that were quite simply baseless and slapdash - and had no success in prompting an acknowledgement, let alone an apology from him.

It should also be noted that some of the material isn't new: Police Commissioner Howard Broad confirmed on Morning Report today that there had been an investigation into something resembling the most incendiary allegation in Investigate - that of "a child sex, bondage and bestiality ring operating in Dunedin in 1984 run by the father of a police officer and attended by at least one Labour cabinet minister" - that had been concluded without proving that allegation.

It's not hard to conceive that senior MPs would have heard details of these and other allegations, either in an official capacity or from constituents who have brought them forward. This is not the same thing as the allegations being true. MPs' offices field some extraordinary claims from members of the public.

Wishart alleges that Michael Cullen and David Benson Pope "helped run damage control" control over the sex ring claims and that "current Labour coalition MPs Pete Hodgson, Tim Barnett, George Hawkins and Matt Robson" (the "current" part will come as a surprise to Robson) were briefed on same. He has made the odd, but unsurprising, decision to feature Cullen on the cover of the magazine that makes all the claims.

Other material comes from former police sergeant Tom Lewis, whose book Coverups & Copouts: NZ Police, the shocking truth, has failed to excite the news media since its publication in 1998, and has been championed by our occasional, troubled commenter Dad4Justice, and on grievance-driven websites like this one. It was also namechecked by Ron Mark in the Parliamentary debate that followed the release of the Bazley Report.

Joe Karam, who, whatever good work he has done on the case of David Bain, is an excitable personality (try asking a journalist who has written a story about him and received his subsequent communications) waded into the case with some gusto on Morning Report today.

I presume the allegations are also not unknown to some working journalists, especially those on the Otago Daily Times. It might be helpful if they were to shed some light.

But Wishart has had one allegation confirmed by Police Commissioner Howard Broad. In Wishart's words:

Instead, the savvy reader will notice that Broad has now confirmed 1) that a bestiality video was definitely screened at a police party, and 2) that Broad felt so intimidated by the prevailing police culture in Dunedin at the time that he didn't do anything about this criminal act.

Or as the official police statement puts it:

The Commissioner confirmed that a Police Rugby Club fund raising party was held at his place around 1981. About 100 people turned up. Old rugby films were shown in the lounge. Late in the evening while he was elsewhere in the house someone put a pornographic film containing bestiality on the projector.

Mr Broad says that when he was told about it he was annoyed and irritated and said so to members of the Police Rugby club present.

"The fact that I didn't take any further action probably underscores the standards applying at that time. Twenty five years on it is obviously a source of embarrassment having regard to my current position and the context of police leadership today.

Named police officers at the same party have come forward to support Broad's account; Wishart has an unnamed former officer who claims "He was there, reveling in the video. He loved it."

We have lately discovered some unhappy things about police culture in the 1980s, and for that reason it's hard to summarily dismiss further allegations with respect to that culture. But we shouldn't place much weight on the oft-voiced claim that if no one has sued Wishart, then everything he says must be true. Entering litigation is not a pleasant thing, and it may simply be the case that Wishart is not worth suing.

Alaso, a comment on Kiwiblog today says this:

A large part of the later allegations appear to be based on the testomy of a twice convicted killer. The killer claims to have been threatened with having a friend raped/killed by a policeman to confess the first time and then railroaded by police to cover up a police sanctioned murder the second time.

Either the corruption is very serious or the corruption is minor and extended fantastically by a fantasist.

If any readers have useful observations on these matters, make them. But we will moderate, and we will delete posts deemed reckless or defamatory.

---

Oddly enough, I had just finished watching, The Shrinking World of L. Ron Hubbard, a remarkable 1968 Granada documentary about Scientology (featuring a rare interview with L. Ron Hubbard) when I came across this story about BBC reporter John Sweeney losing the plot in the course of an investigation into the Church of Scientology. The YouTube clip posted by the Scientologists is here, and the clip released in response by the BBC (to demonstrate the prior aggressive behaviour by a church official) is here. Also, Sweeney apologising after the incident, and Sweeney slagging off the BBC.

For something completely different, check out OurTube for some new Flight of the Conchords stuff.

And, finally, it appears that Public Address is the only finalist site in all the NetGuide Awards which can claim to be fully HTML and CSS-compliant. More comment here. And we bathe, thanks to CactusLab, in web standards virtue …

(438 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

The People's Choice | May 11, 2007 10:55

Public Address won the NetGuide People's Choice Award for Best Blog last night; which as I pointed out when I went up to accept it, was all the more remarkable for the fact that I forgot to suggest that you might want to vote for us until two days before voting closed.

Thanks to everyone who did vote for us, and, in general, to everyone who reads this site (and, of course, the lovely people who write it). The role of our readers in what happens here has become even more important since we launched Public Address System, and I am genuinely grateful to everyone who turns up here. Special big ups to CactusLab, and congratulations to the other two finalists, Kiwiblog and Radio Chick.

It's not lost on me that we have the advantage of scale in an award that rests on public votes. David Farrar and I had a brief chat earlier this week about the possibility of a judged New Zealand blog awards that could recognise excellence in a range of blog genres. I think that would be a great thing.

Meanwhile, what about Bain and Blair, eh? Apart from noting that I have for some time believed that the police case against David Bain and Tony Blair's case for himself were both flawed, I don't have much to say this morning. But you, of course, should feel free to offer comment.

Neil Finn has exercised a right of reply to his critics, some of whom, in the case of the herald's Your Views column, have been nasty and ignorant. I can certainly understand that he wouldn't want to be "a nice little icon who just shakes hands and smiles at the camera" - who would? - but I wish he'd get the chip off his shoulder. From his column in the Herald's Time Out yesterday:

My comments about the PM stem from the 2005 Music Awards which resembled a Labour Party Conference, complete with red balloons. According to organisers, Helen, rather than being invited to speak, had insisted on addressing the assembly. Like other years, she undoubtedly enjoyed being cheered by a grateful music industry while Don Brash sitting in the front row was insulted from the stage. Despite this - and to his credit - Don stayed till the end of the night, unlike Helen who left soon after the applause had died down. Many people felt uncomfortable and I left feeling a bit sickened. I don't believe it's healthy that musicians and politicians should be so closely aligned.

I was there too. There can have been few people present who weren't offended on Dr Brash's behalf by the sniping from the stage - which, it should be noted, came principally from two people who aren't part of the music industry.

The National Party contingent did hang around for the after-party, and good on them for that - as I recall, Georgina Te Heu Heu in particular seemed to be enjoying herself. Helen Clark did leave after speaking: perhaps she had urgent business (she was, after all, Prime Minister), or had another function to attend. Or maybe she simply headed home for a rest.

But what Neil misses is that Clark spent an hour before the ceremony mingling, talking to kids and posing for countless mobile phone snaps. I didn't even spot a DPS minder. That was pretty cool.

She then went on to give The Music Speech, which differed from previous years' versions most notably in a mention of diversity. We were not long out of an election campaign in which the idea of the "mainstream" had played a prominent and not particularly edifying role. When Dave Dobbyn subsequently namechecked Labour on receipt of his award, he wasn't talking about New Zealand on Air funding schemes. Neil clearly didn't feel as warmly towards Clark as many other people did, but the response was genuine, and it's patronising to suggest it was entirely to do with the arts piggybank.

Dave, of course, closed proceedings that year with a massed version of 'Welcome Home', featuring someone who would hardly be the star turn at a "Labour Party Conference": Ahmed Zaoui. Did Neil think that wasn't "healthy" either?

It's not that Neil doesn't have a point in some respects. It just a shame he has to be so bloody mean-spirited about making it.

Anyway, many thanks to Will de Cleene for making the Kittah that had to be made:

Heh. Much more lolcat/kittah here.

PS: I was a bit late getting the podcasts up this week, but there's new Public Address Radio for your ears today: An interview with the excellent Ardal O'Hanlon, a profile of Craft 2.0 and mo' Craig.

(145 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

I'm in yr Beehive tellin yr MPs about teh internets | May 10, 2007 09:52

Just a quickie from the road today. I'm in Wellington, having addressed the Parliamentary Internet Caucus - a cross-party group of MPs who care about communications technology - on the future of television. I shared the bill with Jason Paris of TVNZ and it was worth the trip. Jason and I answered a lot of questions and the session was curtailed only by the division bells.

I was surprised - although perhaps I shouldn't have been - at the extent to which MPs aren't familiar with the whiffier details of the Copyright Amendment Bill, but it was a useful opportunity to have a bitch about Section 84(c) - the part that would remove our right to time-shift TV programmes if there is an on-demand version of the programme available (TVNZ doesn't want it and thinks it's unrealistic; RIANZ is gaggin' fer it). Maurice Williamson, who had been regaling me beforehand with tales of how he uses his DVD recorder (he pays his nine year old son $5 for every programme he goes through and edits out the ads from!), certainly seemed to take the point.

So thanks to InternetNZ for bringing me down, and for the taxi chits. I have an interview with Hollie Smith this morning before flying back up so I can go to the NetGuide Awards tonight. That was fun last year.

Returning to business we've covered before, there's yet more evidence of falsification and lies in The Great Global Warming Swindle, with another scientist (a climate sceptic) accusing the producer Martin Durkin of fabricating data. It was hard to understand how Durkin could be allowed more TV time after his record of lying and misrepresentation: surely this is the final straw? Troublingly, the "documentary" has already been produced as a DVD, with the fake facts left in.

Meanwhile, CNN has screened another so-called sceptical programme by its loose-unit commentator Glenn Beck that - you guessed it - contains multiple (and apparently deliberate) falsehoods about climate science.

And another planet altogether, James Leckie, the idiot touch judge who made the most basic error imaginable in allowing a quick lineout with the wrong ball in the Blues-Force Super 14 game last weekend, has been rewarded for his incompetence by being named both linesman and reserve referee for this weekend's Blues-Sharks semi-final.

What exactly is going on here? We already endure the weekly reminder that Murray Mexted simply doesn't know the rules of the game - now it's the refs too? And they wonder why the viewing figures are tanking?

And, finally, check out Anika Moa covering the Mint Chicks in OurTube. Is nice!

(84 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Graceless Islanders | May 09, 2007 09:47

If you are ever rummaging through a second-hand bookshop and you see a book called Graceless Islanders, grab it. It's a collection of the Listener editorials of Monte Holcroft from 1959 to 1967. Within its pages, Holcroft charts a consistent, measured and liberal course through New Zealand's social challenges in those years.

The title essay, July 7, 1967, considers the Film Censor's infamous ruling that only segregated audiences - that is, either men or women, but not both - could see the film Ulysses, a decision, says Holcroft, "received with a mixture of resentment, indifference and quiet despair," while allowing it "a sign of grace that that the film could be screened under any conditions in this country, where grace is by no means abounding".

He notes that New Zealand is a society that enforces such segregation in the form of the public bar, under "the tacit assumption that that the male New Zealander is uncouth, unteachable, and potentially dangerous, at all times in need of protection from his ravening self." This is shortly before a referendum on six o'clock closing.

He laments a lagging of change in moral attitudes, in which "progress is delayed because morality is too often confused with intellect, so that certain kinds of behaviour are not only bad but unmentionable. The heart of the problem is a deficiency of imagination."

He concludes: "Yes some of us are weary of cautious and lagging policies or attitudes. It is growing late for men to be kept at school (in short pants, mark you) because they supposedly cannot behave as adults do everywhere - and indeed as New Zealanders already behave, when they leave these islands and cross the seas."

It's a beautiful piece of writing. Elsewhere, Holcroft examines both official censorship (the banning of Nabokov's Lolita: "A blanket censorship may pass unnoticed by the multitude; but it imposes on adult minds a restriction which narrows our freedom") and "the censor next door" in the case of the "Bick affair", in 1966, when Compass producer Gordon Bick resigned in protest (damning "the weak men of the NZBC and their timid decisions") at the NZBC's decision not to screen a programme on the change to decimal currency because Finance Minister Muldoon and his officials refused to appear.

Holcroft concludes by observing that "timidity cannot be put aside in one medium only; nor can the controversial mood be brought in by proclamation. The censor next door is still to be feared, still to be persuaded and removed from his self-imposed task; and this can only be done by gradual and continuing assault on all platforms. In a sense, perhaps, the battle can never really be won; the most we can do is to make sure that it is not abandoned."

Magic.

But perhaps the most remarkable element of the book is the way so many of the tribulations it weighs up are familiar today. I was prompted to get the book down off the shelf yesterday by the memory of his judgement on a scandalous event involving youth and public drunkenness that took place before I was born. We don't remember the 1960 Hastings Blossom Festival now - even though it was host to chaotic scenes in which a crowd of more than 2000 was hosed by a fire engine in the rain and about 100 people were treated for injuries.

But it seems at least a little familiar; as does Holcroft's disapproving description of the news media's exaggerated characterisation of events (choice line from a news story: "Most of New Zealand was horrified and disgusted at the performance of teenagers over the weekend"). He advises news reporters to stick to the facts.

Elsewhere there is a period example of the homosexual panic defence, in the form of a case where a gay man in Hagley Park was entrapped and beaten to death by six youth who were acquitted by a jury. Holcroft finds in this "a deficiency of understanding, a failure of compassion, which has its source deep in the national character," and a crime that "itself came out of an unhealthy concern with sexual deviation."

There is child welfare. You might be surprised to learn that in the three years till 1965, Wellington Hospital alone had received three children who had died from beatings at the hands of their parents; and taken in a further nine injured in the previous 18 months.

"We sometimes forget," says Holcroft, "that that the humane treatment of children, accepted by parents almost as a law of nature, and enforced by man-made law when parents fail, is relatively new in modern experience."

He cites the theoretical case of "the woman beaten in childhood who gives the same treatment to her own children, believing it to be necessary (it did no harm to her, she says)".

There's even a consideration of the Exclusive Brethren - forcing apart families even in 1964 - which ends thus: "As they have withdrawn from the world outside, they are beginning now to withdraw from people close to them, repudiating love and fellowship, or reserving them for the Elect. Soon they will reach their ultimate and logical isolationb: the true end of exclusiveness can only be extinctions."

You don't read editorials like these in the Listener any more - but you don't read editorials like these anywhere any more. The pace is too great, the language necessarily plainer; the Reithian position of the Listener's editorial page splintered into a horde of opinionists.

So many things have changed in New Zealand since Holcroft wrote these pieces. Yet collected here they serve as a reminder that there is still much about the place that hasn't changed.

---

PS: I'm joining the bloggers' boycott of the Subway chain over a disgraceful employment decision at a Dunedin branch, which saw a an employee not only dismissed but prosecuted for theft after she shared her free staff drink with an upset friend. Subway says it can't do anything about its franchisees' actions. I suspect it can be induced to reconsider that position. More here, here and here.

Update: This from a member of the AWU, the union representing the sacked employee:

nb: I've removed a statement about a boycott of the George Street Subway which was given in error by a member of the union representing the sacked worker. The union is not supporting any boycott of Subway.

(149 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

We'll find out where all the parties are | May 08, 2007 09:47

Only hours after The Press in Christchurch ran this hysterical, petulant story in pursuit of alleged Chinese cheats at South Island tertiary institutions, the paper had a more serious youth story on its hands.

Two kids dead, more injured and so many traumatised after a party for which the fateful text-message invitation signed off "no Asians, no gangsters". I know there is no connection, but the two stories sit strangely next to each other.

Inevitably, media attention has fallen on text messaging which, it cannot be denied, is a powerful new means to scale. The party in Edgeware Road couldn't have pulled 600 people - supposedly from as far afield as Ashburton and Timaru - without texting and Bebo. And, by the account of the hosts, it was never meant to.

But big, all-in parties are not new - and they're especially not new in Christchurch. When I was a teenager there we'd share addresses at the front bar of the Gladstone, after the band had played, and head off in search; a pursuit encapsulated in Mainly Spaniards' 'That's What Friends are For', a tune too innocent for what happened on Saturday night:

We'll find out where all the parties are
We'll go outside and we'll sit in the car

My Mum would say, "But you don't know these people whose parties you're going to?" Of course not Mum. Don't be silly.

Sometimes there'd be a kind of motiveless, frontier violence. We turned up one night at a party in New Brighton, got warned off by someone leaving the place, walked down the beach and suddenly had to leg it from unknown assailants. Another time, the local white-trash gang turned up at a bonfire party at Maclean's Island: my mate's car got tipped over (okay, it was a Fiat Bambina); a full beer bottle crashed through the rear windscreen of another car as we fled.

Then there was the night we didn't even get 50 metres from the Gladstone before some goons with axe-handles broke every window but one in our car, with axe handles and a baseball bat. That one ended up in court: we talked to the guys who'd done it and they were like, no hard feelings, eh? Even to kids from the northwestern suburbs, these things happened.

First-hand reports suggest that trouble was starting to spill in Edgeware Road before the carnage: there has been talk of fist-fights, even a stabbing. Eyewitnesses say the murderous driver ran from a brawl with skinheads to his car.

It sounds like a pretty uncontrolled environment for your 15 year-old daughter to be out amongst. But parts of the Christchurch CBD seemed pretty wild the last time I was there on a Saturday night.

In the end, two girls didn't die because there was texting or a party, or because of the drinking age. They died because a 22 year-old man, in the grip of whatever murderous, callous thing was in his head, revved his car to screaming pitch and drove it into a crowd of people he never knew. Whatever anyone says this week - and Paul Henry needs to realise that Close Up isn't talkback radio - that will be the truth.

So let's not demonise the kids. I'm sure some of them are really hurting as it is.

On another topic, the warmest congratulations are due to Idiot/Savant of No Right Turn, whose campaign on the sedition law presumably isn't the whole reason it is to be wiped from the statutes, but wasn't inconsequential either. He says, next stop: blasphemous libel.

The New York Times has a somewhat bizarre story about a philosophical split in the conservative movement over evolution, and PZ Myers catches the dreadful Dinesh D'Souza embracing evolution by redefining it.

And, finally, I got the hat trick (it sounds so much classier than "threepeat") at the Magazine Publishers' Association Awards on Friday: Best Business Columnist for the third year in a row. So I didn't jinx myself by actually going this time. I had a good yarn with Joe Bennett and, as the night wound on, I wasn't the only one appalled by the near-illiteracy of the text that displayed the nominees and winners on screen. If you're going to give someone an award for journalism, you should spell their damn name correctly.

But a word for the man who was made a life member of the MPA on the night: Warwick Roger, who was sadly too ill to attend. Roger's personality has brought him into conflict with a few of us over the years, but I don't think anyone in the room could have missed the significance of the historical Metro covers that passed across the big screens as the award was made. They spoke of real stories, stories that captured a time and place and, not least, stories that took both insight and courage. He has made a difference.

(156 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!