Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Strung out, naked, etc | Jan 27, 2005 10:48

TVNZ's Sofia Wenborn was in touch yesterday regarding my comments on Close Up and its poll. She notes that the programmes won its timeslot with a "significantly higher" share than the equivalent Holmes show last year. I wasn't actually seriously suggesting that the audience had deserted the slot along with its eponymous host: it's quite clear that hasn't happened.

I'm rather less sure about her contention that, because the phone-in poll was opened only during the programme (rather than being promo'd from 4pm), it was "relatively speaking … a much larger poll than the first Orewa poll," which attracted 31,000 votes. It wasn't; and conjecture as to whether a longer voting period would have attracted more than the 10,000 votes it did get seem just that to me: conjecture. But that's enough discussion of meaningless responses to woolly questions …

DogBitingMen's Neil Falloon paints a sprawling political panorama around Orewa II, in which the best minds of his generation are strung out, hysterical, naked, dragging themselves through negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.

Meanwhile, Labourblogger Jordan Carter offers a rather good centre-left analysis of the speech, and Olivia Kember, who achieved merit in NCEA cynicism, pretends she went to the Big Day Out.

PA reader Philip Wilkie offers a breakdown of the "Bludger Numbers":

80,000 Unemployed. Currently about 4.2% of the working age population, and at historically low levels. A portion of these people are unemployable, for reasons of location, skills and age. Age is a particularly insidious one. I am a highly skilled automation engineer with up to date skills allegedly in short supply. Normally I work as a freelance contractor with an income in the $80k range. Last year however I applied for two full time positions, for which I was absolutely qualified. Both were very happy to agree to a package sight unseen over the phone, and agreed to interviews. I am fit, healthy and interview well. (I was a very successful sales engineer for over a decade.) Yet both got "cold feet" when they discovered during interview my age...49. One even admitted as such when pressed.

109,000 Sickness Beneficiaries. My younger brother has Ussher's Syndrome which is a challenging combination of deafness and encroaching blindness with age. He functions remarkably well and works as a gardner and handyman. Yet it took our family a 12 year battle to get WINZ to agree to a Sickness Benefit. And even now they insist on annual "checkups" just in case he has undergone a miracle cure. It isn't especially easy to get or stay on this benefit and yet there are many adults who deservedly qualify. Especially the significant number of individuals who used to care for in institutions and are now "cared for" on the cheap in the community.

120,000 DPB. Its all been said before, but how much is recovered by IRD from ex-partners?

The truly sad thing about Brash's "wedge" politics of envy is that his so called solutions are all tried and proven failures. Not one original idea or hint that he actually cared about the problem beyond what votes he can garner from the issue by appealing to the public's basest instincts.

On reflection, I think this is the thing I object to about the speech: not the policy prescriptions, which aren't all bad, but the considered attempt to drive a wedge between the "battlers" and the the beneficiaries. Having a long time ago had to feed a family on a benefit - and wrestled with the 97% effective marginal tax rate that applied if I was unwise enough to be paid for two freelance stories in any one month - I can testify as to what a battle actually is. As I've noted before, I've always been hugely grateful that I had access to two fairly loosey-goosey National government schemes - Taskforce Green and Job Plus - that allowed me the leeway to develop into the media colossus I am today …

Also: on Tuesday, I missed the fact that the New Zealand Jewish Council wasn't the only organisation to object to Wayne Youle's art at the Sarjeant Gallery. Representatives of two veterans' organisations also told the Herald on Sunday's David Fisher that they backed one of the Wanganui complainants. My point was that some groups (old soldiers included) can express cultural sensitivity without being reflexively accused of "political correctness". It would be nice if everyone enjoyed the same respect.

Meanwhile, The International Herald Tribune has an interesting story on the evolution of the meaning of Auschwitz in Europe, as the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the camp is marked. Michael Melchior, the chief rabbi of Norway and the Israeli minister of education and culture, advances the review that the enlargement of the EU is helping to "Europeanise the memory of the Holocaust."

Indeed, as the Holocaust begins to cross the border from human memory into human history, it appears to have taken on a renewed significance. The UN general assembly formally marked the anniversary for the first time this week, and Britain's Holocaust Day is only five years old. A Guardian editorial sees "a universal lesson about turning people of different backgrounds and beliefs (Roma, communists and gays also suffered and died in the camps) into pariahs - the first step, as Primo Levi warned, to physical extermination," and consequently laments the decision by the British Muslim Council not to participate in the commemoration.

The presidents of Israel, Germany, Poland, Russia, and France are among those to gather for the commemoration - it's a shame that Bush chose not to be there. It might have been useful in a number of ways.

And to conclude on a jollier note, a very funny advertisement on occasion of Australia Day …

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Gosh | Jan 26, 2005 09:54

"Gosh," said Susan Wood, always keen to interpret a phone-in poll for the masses. "Perhaps Don Brash has got it right again." Or perhaps not. Certainly, 88% of the people who called in on Close Up's poll last night declared that he was "on the right track". But only 9534 were moved to actually spend a dollar. In the Holmes poll that provided a heads-up on the Brash speech this time last year, 31,000 people voted.

Either the public has turned off in droves since Himself walked out the door; people have realised that donating money to TVNZ is a mug's game; or, most likely, they just aren't that bothered.

In truth, there wasn't much to get excited about in Don Brash's 2005 speech from Orewa. It targeted beneficiary levels, but much of it was either already National Party policy, already government policy, or (like the Shipley government's dud work-for-the-dole experiment) had already been tried and found wanting. Properly draconian proposals - time-limited benefits for example - were missing in action.

The vision element lay in the declared target of cutting beneficiary numbers by a third, to 200,000, in 10 years. But there was an awful lot of thin air between what Brash announced and that lofty goal. Who will mind the children of the solo mums sent out to work? Is the government prepared to offer those women a better deal on childcare than women already in jobs? Is that fair? What might a comprehensive childcare offering then cost? How much will compulsory makework jobs for beneficiaries cost? What will they do? How much will tens of thousands of government-funded makework jobs distort the private employment sector?

In the end, I was more exercised about the confused mess of a Close Up programme than about the speech. Trailered with promos asking whether time was up for "bludgers", it opened with an armchair-ride interview for Brash. Then Susan Wood tried to take minister Steve Maharey to task, but failed as he calmly batted back every question, having apparently memorised every relevant number.

Wood was all over the gaff: identifying herself with the "Kiwi battlers" (yeah right, as they say), opening her interview with Maharey by appearing to suggest that everyone on a sickness benefit was a scammer, then coming over all sympathetic with the programme's specimen solo mum. Next breath, she was asking the solo mum whether she'd have stayed in her relationship if there was no DPB (is leaving a bad relationship the privilege of well-off women only?).

Maharey, of course, noted that DPB numbers have actually been falling for the first time ever. But everyone seemed to miss the point that the woman's former husband was paying child support, so at least a portion of the lavish $440 a week on which she was raising four children was coming out of his pocket, and not that of the taxpayer.

National's backers will complain about the media coverage - and, indeed, they were doing so before the speech had even been made. David Farrar was spitting tacks about a short-lived afternoon headline on a Newstalk ZB story on XtraMSN ('Brash to Bash Beneficiaries'). In the comments thread, some of his readers displayed a turn of phrase that didn't exactly fit with the caring-sharing image: solo mums and their children were "maggots" according to one, "leeches" said another, who couldn't help "feeling the urge to flick cigarette ash into the $1,000 prams pushed by parent kids in Manners Mall." Charming.

Anyway, Nick Grant of OnFilm was in touch with some helpful additional information on the Beloved Entertainer Whose Name May Not Be Spoken Within Earshot of the PC Police:

Further to your observations regarding Deborah Codswallop's recent claims that 'The Best of Billy T James' would cause "an outcry" if released today, it's worth noting that in December last year two series of 'The Billy T James Show' were released on DVD by Sony Pictures. Self styled anti-PC culture warriors - and the rest of us - can purchase them here or here or, well, pretty much bloody anywhere actually.

In addition, 'Billy T Live' was released in June 2003 by the same company, although it was known as Columbia TriStar at the time. (I'm pretty sure the subsequent name change was in order to reflect the ultimate ownership of the company? rather than due to a violent boycott by legions of the culturally sensitive in response to the release of 'Live' but, hey, I could be wrong.)

Finally, she's clearly unaware that each year James' mana as a treasured NZ entertainer is further burnished by the showcase of leading NZ comics that bears his name - The Billy T Awards.

The man - and his work - couldn't be more mainstream, which is more than one can say for Debs and her political mates, whose appeal appears to remain mired within (appropriately enough, given DC's obvious difficulty with facts) the margin of error.

Several other readers pointed out that brown-skinned non-PC humour also appears to be thriving on private TV, in the form of the hugely popular Bro' Town. Debs had best put a bit more effort into research next time, huh?

And Bryce Wakefield had some observations on the theories of Thomas P.M. Barnett noted yesterday:

Another problem with the whole "gap" and "core" idea is the whole cold war containment feel of it: this doesn't marry with geo-political reality. Surely Thailand and (from an American perspective) Israel, not to mention numerous Caribbean nations should philosophically be "core" countries. The U.S. would almost certainly come to their aid in the event of invasion by any "gap" nation. Why, I wonder, are they then lumped in with "gap" nations for the sake of geographical (and therefore representational) convenience?

This is pretty amazing: Alberto Gonzales, Bush's would-be attorney, turns out to have quite a history with his boss. In 1996, he tried to get Bush off jury duty in a drink-driving case - so that Bush would not have to declare his own 1976 DUI conviction, which only became public before the 2000 election.

Bush lied about his criminal record on his jury form. And Gonzales, according to the judge and lawyers involved in the case, has now lied to Congress about his own actions: claiming that he never tried to get Bush off jury duty, when everyone else involved recalls that he did. Wow. Looking forward to seeing how Power Line can spin that one.

Meanwhile, according to Human Rights Watch, the interim Iraqi government is clearly getting on its feet. It doesn't need outside help in torturing and abusing prisoners: it's doing that quite nicely itself. Also, Baghdad's water supply has dried up and Riverbend is even more pissed off than usual.

All too much? Here's news on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 2 then.

PS: Damian's latest post just missed this morning's mail-out. Nip off and read it, then …

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Redefining worthless opinion | Jan 25, 2005 10:36

Deborah Coddington's Herald on Sunday column continues to redefine the concept of worthless opinion. Last weekend's was particularly woeful. It opens with her usual hyberbolic flourish:

I watched an X-rated video last week. Well, it wasn't X-rated when made, but if it was to be released into New Zealand's current climate of "cultural sensitivity" there'd be an outcry. Endeavour Films, the company that made the video, would be called upon to apologise to every member of the tanagata whenua - alive or dead.

The offending video was called The Best of Billy T James and what a rollicking politically-incorrect laugh it was. It reminded me just how stuffy, pompous, humourless and scared of offending anyone the country has become. No wonder Graham Lowe is scampering to Australia. How did we get so boring?

She then goes on to "remind" us of "some of Billy T's most offensive jokes": classic TV moments (Te News, the brilliant joke about Ben Couch being asked if he used witty repartee in his speeches and replying "no, but I have read some of his poems") that will be familiar to most New Zealanders over 30. "No, it would never be allowed today," Coddington declares.

Does she really not know that (taxpayer-funded) Maori Television ran the entire Billy T collection in prime time from its launch last year? And that it's now about to repeat the whole lot (it starts again at 9pm this Saturday)? Possibly not: she memorably told Paul Holmes that she hadn't bothered to watch Maori Television after its launch because she was opposed to it. But surely she might have noticed that Billy T's work has been regularly showcased by state TV over the years?

She concludes by wondering whether even Holmes (whose "cheeky darkie" moment she seems to regard as the height of wit) would be "brave enough" in these politically correct times to play Howard Morrison's whimsical 1960s hit 'Mori the Hori' on the radio. That would be the same 'Mori the Hori' showcased in the current summer catalogue of Radio New Zealand's Replay Radio service, would it?

Her claim that edgy racial humour has been chased from the culture by the commissars of political correctness looks even more preposterous when you consider that the (taxpayer-funded) Eating Media Lunch concocted a hoax Maori porn film, Anal Mana this year, and couldn't get a rise (so to speak) anywhere outside Taranaki. Somehow, I don't think that would have screened in 1980 (the year that Patricia Bartlett convinced Muldoon to pass a law specifically denying support to New Zealand's first gay feature film, Squeeze). One is obliged to wonder: what exactly is the point of La Coddington's column?

Ironically, the weekend's papers also covered an edgy exhibition by a young Maori artist, Wayne Youle, which explores ideas of appropriation and transgression by blending (a la Gordon Walters) the traditional Maori motif of the koru with the dread symbolism of the swastika. I think it's pretty good art: it does the job that art can do of encapsulating complex and provocative ideas in a single, simple location. The mayor of Wanganui, whose gallery is hosting the exhibition, has backed freedom of artistic expression, and the only organisation to attack the exhibition has been the New Zealand Jewish Council - which, curiously, has avoided a flurry of Act Party press releases condemning its unacceptable "political correctness".

On the other hand, it's hard not to sympathise with probation officer Josie Bullock, now the subject of a complaint after she refused to sit at the back of the room during a traditional farewell for departing prisoners. How far into the secular, mainstream world should marae protocol really extend? Is there an alternative view of the tikanga? Should it apply in an environment where women like Bullock play the same, challenging role as their male colleagues? This is worth discussing.

Elsewhere, the great irony of Andrew Moravcsik's essay Dream On America is that it apparently appears only in the international, and not the domestic, edition of Newsweek magazine. Lord forbid that, in the week of the grand, bland imagery of Bush's inauguration speech, a mainstream publication should seek to question the American dream. It's actually really worth reading. While various passages will annoy or anger some people (it skips too lightly over the nature of American brilliance and creativity, and the challenges that face welfare states), its premise: that the world's emerging market democracies are not adopting the American model, but something more akin to the way of Europe (and for that matter, the Antipodes) is sound. When I was at high school, we were presented with the American system, with its "checks and balances", as a model democratic design. Now, who would seriously adopt the American way as a detailed model?

Moravcsik, inevitably, invokes last week's BBC/PIPA global poll, which is provoking some truly amazing contortions in the right-wing blogophere in the hope of rationalising the Bush administration's failure in the war of ideas. This guy takes on the poll of 22,000 people - which found that a majority in 18 of 21 countries surveyed thought Bush's re-election was bad for peace and security - and works it around to a positive endorsement, by accepting only the results for the 10 countries for which detailed numbers have so far been published, arbitrarily dropping China (not a democracy), aggregating their combined populations, then "averaging out" the results from the nine favoured nations, including India, with its 660 million people. Nice work! He manages to ignore the fact that, even by the lights of his remarkable logic, it's ludicrous to count every Indian peasant as a Bush-backer when the polling was done only in cities. If reality doesn't fit, it must be re-interpreted until it does.

I picked up that one from a link in a comments thread at the website of the conservatives' favourite Pollyanna, Chrenkoff, who has taken a break from his 'Good News from Iraq' to rant about a bogus survey he took of Iraq coverage via Google News. Surprise! There are many more bad news than good news stories (although many of them are simply different publications of the same wire stories). But Google reflects the decisions of hundreds of editors in dozens of countries: it's not a global conspiracy to undermine the Iraq project, it's a fairly straightforward decision about what news actually is. The ideal Chrenkoff bulletin would lead with: "A school in some Iraqi village got two new classrooms today, according to a coalition press release ... meanwhile, in other, minor, news, 36 people were killed in bomb attacks and assaults on coalition forces passed 2000 for the month …"

In a comment on freedom and tyranny in the wake of the inauguration speech, The Guardian's Gary Younge dares to utter the U-word - "Uzbekistan".

In the Washington Monthly blog, Kevin Drum looks at Thomas P.M. Barnett's book The Pentagon's New Map, which proposes a new global divide - that between the "Core" (market democracies that play by the rules and are committed to globalisation) and the "Gap" ("a collection of disconnected, lawless, and dangerous countries such as Colombia, Pakistan, and North Korea, plus most of the Middle East and Africa"). Thus, China, with its growing economic engagement, is a Core country, and not a threat. (There's a map of good and bad states on which - quelle horreur! - New Zealand does not actually appear.)

I'm quite open to the idea of a rules-based global economy as the touchstone of peaceful development. But Drum finds Barnett then allowing himself "something little short of religious faith in America's ability to be right under all circumstances", and therefore to project its military might as it sees fit. The salient point, surely, is that no democracy has done more to bend the rules (torture, pre-emptive war, cute games with trade policy, etc) than Bush's America has done in the past four years.

In conclusion, I wonder what those who maintain that aid and welfare are properly the role of the private sector make of the rather curious sponsorship situation in the international cricket series between the Black Caps and the FICA World XI. The series aims to raise money for tsunami victims, and like the recent benefit match in Australia, has attached bonus sponsorship values to various match elements - $1000 for a boundary, $5000 for a six and so on. But while Australia companies lined up to donate to their match (Toyota Australia put up $50,000 per six), in New Zealand with the exception of one sponsorship from Vector, all the donations come from … the gummint, which presumably stepped in to avoid a terrible embarrassment for New Zealand Cricket. Given that the money being donated presumably comes from the already-announced government aid package, the only real sizzle in those sixes on Saturday was watching Stephen Fleming hit them into the stand. Where are the titans of economic freedom when you really need them?

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