Investigate, August 2007 by Investigate Magazine

INVESTIGATE

August 2007:

Taito Phillip Field • George Galloway visits New Zealand • Child Support • Steam Train

Issue 79

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Volume 7, Issue 79, August 2007

FEATURES TAITO TAKES THE FIELD

For nearly two years, former Labour MP Taito Phillip Field has stayed mostly silent – certainly in regard to specifics – as allegations of corruption swirled around him. Now, on the eve of a High Court hearing to determine whether he be prosecuted, Field has come out swinging in an exclusive interview with IAN WISHART, revealing what he knew, when he knew it, and who was involved

DISGRACED MP TO VISIT NZ

A PARENT’S RIGHTS

I’M A, I’M A TRAIN-A

CAVE ANGST – BEAT DEPRESSION

24 32

A disgraced British MP, named in official investigations as benefiting from Iraqi bribes, is coming to New Zealand to lecture kiwis about being more tolerant towards fundamentalist Islam. IAN WISHART has the story of George Galloway’s visit and the continuing strange alliance between communists and radical Islam

Australia has recently overhauled its Child Support system. As MELODY TOWNS reports, there are lessons to be learned on both sides of the Tasman

One person who never forgot the Albert Hammond smash hit from the early 70’s is MICHAEL MORRISSEY who, for the first time, gets to ride in the cab of a giant steam locomotive

Depression is said to be the bubonic plague of the 21st century. But one researcher reckons he may have found clues on how to cure it naturally. EDWARD EVELD reports

Cover: Herald/Presspix/Martin Sykes

EDITORIAL AND OPINION Volume 7, issue 79, ISSN 1175-1290

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FOCAL POINT

EDITORIAL Bigger fish than Zaoui

hmed Zaoui’s time has come. Yes, Investigate magazine did a fairly extensive piece three years ago on his prior convictions and links to Islamic terrorists. And yes, we have no reason to doubt that information. However, Investigate is also on record that there comes a time for everyone to face up to the reality that the horse has bolted on this one, that the time for tough actions was five years ago, and that a humane solution needs to be found to the Zaoui dilemma. This month Zaoui has been getting his security risk certificate reviewed. Why has it taken so long? Partly because the wheels of our justice system now turn so slowly – thanks to the golfing and skiing schedules of lawyers and the judiciary – that cases “Nero fiddled while Rome burned, are routinely adjourned for and there’s a growing suspicion months, and partly because the security agencies didn’t that far too much fiddling is taking get off their chuffs and tell place in a certain Beehive office” Crown Law to stop kicking for touch. Immigration cases like Ahmed Zaoui’s should be heard from go to whoa in the space of 12 months, no exceptions. The irony is, and it appears to be lost on everyone except Investigate and its readers, is that while the country obsesses over the merits of formally allowing Zaoui into New Zealand, a string a far nastier characters have come and gone at the invite of local mosques, running youth camps and promoting their radical Islamic DVDs and booklets to young kiwi Muslims. Unlike Zaoui, some of these people have well-documented links to major terrorist organisations like al Qa’ida. Yet they’ve slipped in and out of NZ like our border was made of Swiss cheese. Tragically, they’ve been able to because – despite the Zaoui case and all of its attendant publicity – New Zealand has never set up a register of known terrorists and associates. As a result, barring Osama bin Laden himself walking through NZ Customs (and believe me, that’s not beyond the realms of possibility given current performance), there’s actually not much to stop an al Qa’ida cell whose members are wanted overseas from slipping through undetected. Likewise, we can search the bags and underwear of an 80 year old grandmother travelling from Auckland to

, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007

Wellington, and make sure that no one carries more than 100 mls of shampoo in their luggage, but we do nothing to run meaningful identity checks on who is coming in. Labour is caught between a rock and a hard place. Core Labour support, in the form of diehard socialists, is donkey deep in plans to actually help spread radical Islam, rather than moderate it. You’ve met the team at RAM (Residents Action Movement) in the June issue of Investigate. Well, they’re back. In late July they’re importing disgraced British MP George Galloway, the man pinged by both a UN investigation and a US Senate Inquiry as implicated in the Iraqi Oil for Food bribery and corruption scandal. Galloway, naturally, denies it, but the documents appear to tell a compelling story against him. Anyway, Galloway is coming to New Zealand deliberately to push the line that we must be more welcoming of Islam in New Zealand. Well, he would say that. Galloway’s ‘Respect’ political party is funded by both the Socialist Worker party (who also coordinate RAM in New Zealand) and – intriguingly – Islamic fundamentalists. They make for very strange bedfellows, as you’ll read later in the magazine, but for a man who is taking Islamic cash to be coming to New Zealand and telling us to be more ‘tolerant’ of Islam seems a bit rich. Especially when the NZ Muslim associations have aligned themselves with the neo-coms over at RAM and Socialist Worker NZ. For the umpteenth time, here’s my advice to the Federation of Islamic Associations of NZ, and their president Javed Khan: If you want the NZ public to take you seriously as moderates, rather than radicals, then stop associating with RAM and its hangers-on from the Communist parties of Britain and NZ, and stop inviting extremist Saudi preachers out here to indoctrinate locals in Wahhabism. People will judge local Muslim leaders not by what they say to the media, but by what they do and who they associate with.

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*Father’s Day special offer is only available from 0800 747 007 or online at www.evesbite.com INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007,

VOX POPULI

COMMUNIQUES REAPING WHAT WE SOW

In Westport, a 15 year old teenage thug, cheered on by his cowardly mates, repeatedly assaults a lone Police Officer in his 50’s; in Northland a group of 15 and 16 year old teenagers are caught by police whilst developing plans to make bombs and blow up local businesses; in Taranaki, amidst a civil emergency, another teenager engages in an emergency services texting hoax that ties up two police patrols and eight fire trucks for three hours. Having worked with at-risk youth for a number of years in various roles, I am convinced that the above incidents are the consequences of empowering adolescent dysfunction and wrong behaviour through the branding of “childrens’ rights”, at the expense of “parents’ rights”. It is not the Children’s Commissioner, not Child, Youth & Family, and not state funded “childrens’ rights” organisations that have to pick up the pieces of such outrageous behaviour - it is the police, the parents, and the public. It is a fundamental principle of natural law that parents, not children, are in charge in the home, and in society. Attempts by political parties and lobby groups to undermine and then overturn this principle has resulted in many children and adolescents becoming so “rights” focused, any semblance of personal responsibility or concern for others has significantly diminished for them. Parents are both expected to manage their children, whilst having every sensible disciplinary tool used to enforce reasonable boundaries taken from them to do so. Instead, the State believes that it is a better parent than the natural parent, and endlessly attempts to drive a wedge between parent and child. Such an attack on the family is unacceptable, and is eroding both civil society and natural law – it must be stopped, and (if I have anything to do with it) it will be. Steve Taylor, Deputy Leader, Direct Democracy Party of New Zealand www.ddp.co.nz

RESERVE BANK POLICY

It is time the Reserve Bank came up with other ideas to punish investors, other than putting up the interest rates. Every time he raises it he is hurting the first time home owner or those trying to buy their first home, and all that is happening is the investors are laughing all the way to the bank and the home owners are losing their homes.

, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007

If he brought the interest rates down no one would want to invest in New Zealand and the dollar would drop. At the moment, Bollard wants the interest rates to stay high and he wants the dollar to drop in other words he wants his cake and he wants to eat it as well. He must have a lot of money invested that is why he has put up the rates Bruce Gardiner, Hamilton

THE SAUDI CONNECTION

My husband and I have just returned into the country after being overseas for the last three weeks. On the Singapore to Auckland flight SQ285 that landed on 25 June at 12.30pm (just in case you could obtain the passenger list!) we were seated behind some gentlemen that I knew were Saudi Arabian and pious Muslims, unfriendly and thuggish in appearance. They had two friends also on the flight who came and saw them from time to time. They were in their thirties/forties and had printed material on them (like glossy booklets in Arabic) and Arabic Korans etc. The Singaporean air hostesses did their delightful best but weren’t given as much as a glance or acknowledgement of anything they did for them. Other passengers noticed them and were uneasy. Also on the flight were four other Saudi’s, younger, in their twenties. One sitting beside another passenger told her he was coming to New Zealand for four years for computer studies. The others were in pairs. I was gobsmacked. Why all the interest in New Zealand from Saudi Arabia all of a sudden. If this is what one plane brings in what about the others? I sighted all the passports of the older group of four men and three of the others – because of waiting to exit the plane and the long back to back queue through passport control. We were asked to form two queues one for Australia and New Zealand Passport holders and one for all others. All the young ones went into the New Zealand line and were holding Saudi Passports and were still processed. As my husband and I went through passport control I said to the officer, “Too many Saudi’s coming into the country, we can’t even go into theirs at all. Why the sudden interest here?” He laughed about it and was pleasant but he did say some even have residency here. As we left through the exit area an elderly Muslim man in traditional coat and cap with a grey beard was waiting to meet someone off the flight, presumably them.

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This is a concerning pattern. Particularly as they are Saudis. We know internationally they fund overseas mosques and in return control education. I am going to send my comments to the immigration minister and shadow minister. This situation is crazy, anyone can walk into this country. The latest move by the government re the Religious Diversity thing is, as you know, the path leading to the philosophical approach adopted by the Alliance of Civilisations instigated by Kofi Anan. The A of C list of 20 eminent persons is scary. A few one-issue type people, many Muslims and two worrisome characters. One John Esposito, an ex-monk funded by Saudi Arabia to run an inter-religious department at Georgetown University and, even worse, the ‘floating monotheist ex-nun’ Karen Armstrong. Both posing as ‘balanced’ interpreters of the moderate inclusive tolerant West. Karen Armstrong’s soft peddling distorting books are popping up everywhere and she appears to be a darling of the publishing world. Neither are practicing Catholics and are not believers in the exclusivity of Jesus Christ but of course there is something about that Catholic connection that seems to stick and supply some sort of credential. On a lighter note I loved the reaction of the security man at Warsaw airport. I had a Benedictine Crucifix I had bought in Rome (about 10 cms long) in my carry luggage. It went through the scanner and the Polish security man immediately came up to me and looking intently said “Have you got a cross of Jesus Christ in your bag?”, Without hesitation I proudly said “Yes” and he said seriously “That’s okay then”. I loved Poland and Czechoslovakia, the Church was great and in good shape. While waiting at Warsaw airport we went to the airport chapel for a visit and surprisingly found ourselves at Mass at 10.30 on a weekday morning and 25 people turned up! Pretty good for an airport I thought! Name and address supplied

AGE OF THE EARTH

So, now we have another ‘scientist’ who believes the universe was created in the last 10,000 years. This time it is a palaeontologist who wrote a doctoral dissertation on mosasaurs, which disappeared around 65 million years ago. He produced a 197-page thesis, mentioning the geological dates many times, but truly believes that dinosaurs died out during the great flood. Dr Ross published a doctoral thesis and attached his name to work he clearly considers as false. One would assume that the author of a scientific paper, let alone a doctoral thesis, accepts the data and his conclusion as correct, unless new data shows them to be wrong. Ross justifies his actions by stating that he is working under two different paradigms. Under the paleontological paradigm the dates in his dissertation are entirely appropriate. The other paradigm is the literal truth of the Scriptures. Needless to say, Ross was deliberately seeking a degree from a top-notch university, with a top-notch advisor, to further his credentials. He is now joining the ranks of Kurt Wise (who did his PhD under Stephen J Gould), Jonathan Wells (who studied biology to help him ‘destroying Darwinism’), and many others. We can look forward to seeing Ross’ name featuring prominently on the lists of Creationist ‘scientists’. Your article presents the whole story in great detail and, I must

add, objectively from both angles. But you write “The answers he [Ross] now offers have charged an explosive debate in universities and laboratories across the nation”. Perhaps the way he got his PhD, definitely not his answers to the age of the universe. There are a couple of other inaccuracies, e.g. science certainly does not tell us “that the earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago in a spectacular supernova explosion”. Hans Weichselbaum, Auckland Editor responds:

No, you are entirely right about that supernova. That’s the problem with the secular education system in the US, it still manages to turn out confused journalists.

EVE’S BITE

My wife and I went away for three days’ holiday last week. On the first day we went into a bookstore and saw your book. We decided to buy it – the information on the back sounded really interesting. We spent the rest of our holiday reading the book out loud together. We thoroughly enjoyed it...although it was a bit frightening too. Great work! Thanks very much. Scott Kennedy, via email Editor responds:

Great! If you’ d picked it up a day earlier you could have saved yourself the airfares!

TOUGH QUESTIONS

I emailed you earlier in the year asking you if you knew of any books looking at the truth of the Christian faith. I’ve since read “The Case for Christ”, and my initial impression is that it’s very good. If I could single out anything from that book that would be a “clincher” at this stage, it would have to be the fate of the apostles. Strobel persuasively argues that no-one would knowingly die for a lie. It takes a great deal of faith to believe that the disciples hallucinated or told a lie, and then went through enormous hardship for it. That was my initial reaction anyway. I do intend to study it further, I intend to read some of Strobel’s other books, including his latest, which is called “The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ”, which comes out early August, as well as books by other scholars and apologists. Also, I think your book Eve’s Bite was great, very eye-opening and shocking, but a wake-up call nevertheless. Just to finish off with though, a question actually, it relates to what I have found to be a barrier to becoming a Christian. “Why Did Jesus have to undergo such a brutal and violent death in order to save humanity?”, and also, I know human beings can do some pretty bad things to each other- but are we really fallen sinners in need of a Saviour? I know it’s a loaded question, and I know you’re a busy man, so you don’t have to give an answer straight away, you might even address it in a future issue of Investigate in “Tough Questions”. Anyway, keep up the good work with the magazine and take care. Name & address supplied Editor responds:

Given that demands for space have pushed me out of my Tough

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007,

Questions slot again, I’ ll try and tackle your questions here. Both of them really merge into the same answer. Having read Eve’s Bite, you’ ll have had a small taste of how vicious humans can be. However, it is worth reminding everyone of just what kind of carnage we are truly capable of. The bloodiest battle in all history was fought in Roman times, where an estimated 80,000 men were slaughtered in one day, on one battlefield. They didn’t have guns or missiles to lob surgically at an unseen foe – these were men facing men in hand to hand combat, fathers meeting fathers, each intent on wiping the other from the face of the planet. The Russian novelist Dostoyevsky, in a scene from The Brothers Karamazov, arguably provides one of the best modern articulations of human bloodlust, and the apparent absence of God from that equation. In the scene, an atheist named Ivan is talking to his brother Alyosha, a priest: “A Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow…told me about the crimes committed by Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a general rising of the Slavs…people talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beast; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel… “These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children, too, cutting the unborn child from the mother’s womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mother’s eyes. Doing it before the mother’s eyes was what gave zest to the amusement.

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“Here is another scene that I thought very interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They’ve planned a diversion: they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby’s face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby’s face and blows out its brains…” Dostoyevsky doesn’t stop there, and later outlines the story of a five year old girl, “who was hated by her mother and father…subjected to every possible torture…” and on it goes. There are children who suffer the indignities that the five year old suffered, here in New Zealand. Their names hit the headlines from time to time. Christ suffered the most agonizing death known to man at the time, because he had – as God – to take on the worst that humanity could throw at him. Only by going through the worst – in human flesh – could he say to every victim of human cruelty he later comforts, “I was there with you”. He did not save himself, and he does not promise to save the rest of us in an earthly sense from our oppressors. But he does promise that in the life to come, those pains, agonies and evils will be washed away in the love of God, whilst those who perpetrated evil and do not repent will be populating the same eternal holiday destination as everyone else who, for whatever reason, chooses not to take up the offer of eternal life. The answer to whether we need a personal Saviour in all this really stems from the above. The sin that claimed Lucifer was pride. Who amongst us can say humanity is without pride in the spiritual sense of the word? Evidence of human pride, and an almost institutional belief in the infallibility of human collective wisdom, is all around us and on the news every night. Examples of governments reserving God-like powers to themselves are legion. The entire planet, here in 2007, is buzzing with human pride and defiance – add a fuse and the mental picture of Earth about to go off is complete. The way I read it, God is currently allowing humanity to wallow in the evil we have collectively either created, or tolerated, because those evils are making an increasing number of people seriously consider what it is they believe and what it is they are prepared to tolerate on behalf of their children and grandchildren. Those who choose the good are already recognizing, in a sense, that something is badly wrong and getting worse. The Bible predicts a time like this. Now, sure, we can choose not to accept the divine olive branch expressed by the brutal atoning death on the cross and the Resurrection. The problem for all of us is, if the Christian story is true (and I believe the evidence is overwhelming), the risk that eternity for many will be hell – not because of fire or anything so trivial – but because the rest of the inmates will be the people who’ve helped create hell on earth to varying degrees. Eternity is a long time to spend with lousy neighbours, P-fiends and rapists.

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SIMPLY DEVINE

MIRANDA DEVINE When good liberals go mad

t is almost impossible to fathom the grotesque attempts this month to sabotage the Federal Government’s rescue plan for abused and neglected children in the Northern Territory. The plan’s numerous opponents must be in the grip of a hatred so intoxicating that it has stripped them of any objectivity, and induced a kind of “madness” as the Cape York Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson says. The former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, who has made an art form of attacking John Howard, has had the gall to put himself forward as a prime opponent of the plan, slamming it on the Monday it broke, as a “throwback to past paternalism”. But rather than criticising Howard for doing nothing about Aboriginal dysfunc“The troublemakers spreading tion for 10 years, he should unsubstantiated rumours about apologise for his part in creating the problem. As Helen women and children “fleeing into Hughes points out in her the sandhills” for fear of another new book Lands of Shame, Whitlam and Fraser stolen generation are risking the governments entrenched wrecking the entire project, just apartheid in remote comto score a win against Howard” munities – in the utopian belief that Aborigines would live an idyllic hunter-gatherer life unsullied by mainstream Australia. It’s a sign of how the debate has moved on that Fraser’s comments, after an initial flurry of attention on Monday morning, sank without a trace. Not a word on ABC TV’s 7pm news, or The 7.30 Report, or Lateline, which has been a shining light of journalism on this issue, breaking the stories last year that led to the Northern Territory report into child sexual abuse which prompted Federal Government intervention. But the harping classes still haven’t caught up. The supposed “helping” organisations such as the Australian Council of Social Service, Anglicare and the National Council of Churches, for instance, which this week signed a letter of protest to the Indigenous Affairs Minster, Mal Brough, have proven themselves morally bereft. Where is their alternative solution to abuse that is occurring now? How can you combat intelligent people who have deliberately chosen to misconstrue the Government’s intentions and have fallen into hysterical arguments about a

12, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007

“land grab” and “invasive” medical checks? You can only despair at the venom of critics such as Pat Turner, a one-time head of ATSIC, who said at a meeting of Central Australian indigenous leaders on the Tuesday: “We believe that this Government is using child sexual abuse as the Trojan horse to resume total control of our lands.” You can only despair as health experts have rushed to judgment, decrying the planned health checks of indigenous children in remote communities. And what about the commentators and leaders such as the West Australian Premier, Alan Carpenter, who describe the rescue plan as “another Tampa”, a new “stolen generation”, “black children overboard” and other such vapid one-liners. Pearson, as always, had the most potent response: “There is within every community good people and it is an absolutely shameful thing that those good people are misled by people whose children sleep safely at night,” he told Lateline. “That’s the horrendous thing here, that the people who are nay-saying any kind of intervention are people whose children, like my own, sleep safely at night. And I think that’s a terrible indulgence. When our children sleep safely we seek to put roadblocks in the way and we wish failure upon any decisive action that’s going to relieve the suffering of vulnerable children.” Do the critics, who profess to care about Aborigines, realise the damage they cause by willing the project to disaster? The troublemakers spreading unsubstantiated rumours about women and children “fleeing into the sandhills” for fear of another stolen generation are risking wrecking the entire project, just to score a win against Howard. Even the Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd, is not doing that, and he wants to beat Howard more than anyone. It is a measure of Rudd’s character and of his understanding of the shift in the public’s thinking on Aboriginal issues that he has gone along with Howard’s plan, and that he made an unscheduled appearance in Cairns at a conference on “rebuilding social norms” put on by Pearson’s Cape York Institute. Rudd had to be hastily squeezed into the conference agenda at 10.30am, but his impromptu visit and his declaration of support for Pearson’s welfare reform proposals demonstrate that he understands the Cape York leader is the intellectual

driving force and moral strength behind the Government’s bold new approach to Aboriginal dysfunction. Pearson doesn’t care who is prime minister. He just sees an opportunity to help children in danger. “My priority is to take advantage of immediate intervention for the protection of children. “It’s an absolutely shameful hour that has descended on us,” he told Lateline, “where even an emergency intervention to protect the safety of our children is … hindered by people who supposedly have goodwill for Aboriginal people and in fact [are] willing the protection and succour of Aboriginal children to fail in the same way and as vehemently as they will failure in Iraq.” A New York University professor, Lawrence Mead, an architect of the Clinton administration’s successful welfare reforms in the US in 1996, told the Cape York conference this month that work was the key to pull people out of depression, and was complimented by Pearson for his insights. But at a lunch in Sydney, Mead said he detected in Australia that much of the debate on

“And what about the commentators and leaders such as the West Australian Premier, Alan Carpenter, who describe the rescue plan as “another Tampa”, a new “stolen generation”, “black children overboard” and other such vapid one-liners” welfare reform was still stuck in the sort of symbolic rights rhetoric the US indulged in back in the 1960s and 1970s when disastrous passive welfare created family breakdown and crime. The rights agenda lobby who shrieked about paternalism led the US into a dead end that took decades to escape. Down just such a dead end Fraser and friends are determined to trap us all. devinemiranda@hotmail.com

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 13

LAURA’S WORLD

LAURA WILSON Interview with a vampire

know a ‘P’ dealer and he’s a really nice guy. Actually, he’s an ex-P dealer since he got caught last year and sent to prison. He’s been out six months and in that time has completed a compulsory course on criminal behaviour, a deconstruction of his past in order to reveal the incidents and choices that set him on his path. The goal is to encourage new, law-abiding choices based on an understanding of oneself and one’s likely future. The P dealer of our imagination is a loathsome creature. For many scared parents he is the lowest of the low, hanging around school gates to make customers out of vulnerable children. He’s a dirty, shifty, diseased wreck devoid of basic humanity. We want him locked up, his network obliterated so no more addicts are created to provide for him and his ilk. My friend, whom I’ll “He dealt P because in his call J, became attached to neighbourhood it was accepted my extended family. I got and he saw nothing wrong with to know him because I avoid him. I was it. He saw people using it to get couldn’t filled in about his recent happy, just like his Dad used booze past before meeting him at and dope. He saw it as people’s Christmas, directly after his release from jail. I prepared choice, not the evil it was made myself by rehearsing being out to be” polite to a brooding, angry young man with chips on both shoulders and Attitude. So when J walked through the door I was confused. I stayed confused for several months until I plucked up the courage to ask him what on earth he was thinking by selling P. J is a strikingly attractive, alert, intelligent and erudite man of 26. He has large, sensitive eyes that meet your gaze directly. Instead of the expected self indulgence he has an awareness of those around him, showing up in perceptive acts of consideration and kindness. If he is cleverly hiding a dark side it has not emerged in six months of frequent contact. It seems he is what he presents: an affable, likeable character with great potential. So to the conundrum, how to reconcile this man with the monstrosity of his acts? The answer of course is simple, I just had to walk a mile in his shoes. Only half an hour into his story I found myself understanding a world that exists outside my own. A world where feeling separate is a birthright. Where the

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young grow up knowing that society exists not for them, but against them. A world where you do not trust, where authorities are the enemy and you have to make your own way, usually doing the opposite of what they say. This is not in order to rebel, but to survive. Drugs were part of J’s growing up. They were what the people he trusted taught him to do. He saw the hypocrisy in our most heavily abused drug, alcohol, being legal while others were demonized. He dealt P because in his neighbourhood it was accepted and he saw nothing wrong with it. He saw people using it to get happy, just like his Dad used booze and dope. He saw it as people’s choice, not the evil it was made out to be. For J to build a different future for himself, he has to do something human beings find extremely difficult. He has to step away from those who formed him. Those he gave his heart and allegiance to. Even though J admits life was often miserable, these people were there to see him through. His character was born out of Wellington’s rough northern suburbs. It’s the genesis of his identity and always will be. Even though J remains loyal to his upbringing, he knows it has failed him. He can see two broad choices and in one, society is always against him. This is the path that ends in a broken old man. J knows too many broken, embittered old men still drinking and downing the drugs he grew up with. But the allegiance of a child is strong. J knows that going straight means abandoning his Dad, his friends, his whanau, or every time he goes home he reenters a world of partying, drugs and petty crime. Born into any other environment J would be a star. He has definite X factor coupled with real intelligence, and yet the struggle before him is immense. The criminal behaviour course gave him a new window through which to view his life. He seized upon the opportunity, but can’t help wishing that the reverse could also happen; that others could look through his window into their own lives. He has insights to offer, but realizes no one is interested. Although J has not had a model education, he has learned about life in a manner few get to see. J is every reason why justice should be all about restoration. He knows he was on an ugly path but his options were few. His whole life engineered him toward the P lab, and ultimately prison. Who among us can be sure we would have made different choices standing in J’s shoes?

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t is conceivable that within the next fifty years prospective parents will require a license before breeding. We add dozens of new laws that restrict and compel behaviour every year. Given this trajectory, a number of things we consider inalienable rights will become matters of the State, in the manner described by the recent Section 59 child-rearing issue. It’s called the Nanny State, and right-wing parties attempt to paint it as a socialist entity, when in fact it is an unavoidable aspect of Western culture regardless of political leanings. Don Brash fumbled over an attempt to define exactly which “PC” laws his government AND would quash if grantedOCTOBER office, because every NOW ORDERED ARRIVING such law protects a member of a minority. As all governments are LIMITED SHARES STILL AVAILABLE - BE IN FOR SUMMER! sworn to combat discrimination, it is very hard to stomp out laws without appearing a bigot. $50,620 As I sat in rush-hour traffic on the Pakuranga highway this morning I watched in shock as a large truck pulled out from behind me and into the opposing lanes (which happened to be empty) and went a good 500 meters up the queue before bumping back across the concrete median to catch the lights and disappear. The same distance took law-abiding me 20 minutes to cover. What amused me was my own reaction at the truckie’s initiative. I was outraged, but not because of the harm he posed. I simply didn’t want him exercising a liberty I had given up. If I had to suffer, so should he. • Free tuition plus ongoing training if required. Soboat whyhandling did I secretly admire him? For the same reason I am • Free Valet Boat parking and/or skipper fororder small in cost. ambivalent about our endless movesavailable to increase our world. • Free highest level of my support and service our boatdisorder owners heightens. As order increases, appreciation of for renegade And yet I would be among the first to make parental rights less automatic. It seems to me that of all areas of human entitlement, parenting is the one through which most harm can be done. What

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 15

STRAIGHT TALK

MARK STEYN

Exporting Islam to the dying West

year or so after the Ayatollah Khomeini took out an Islamist mob contract on Salman Rushdie, the novelist appeared, after elaborate security arrangements, on a television arts show in London. His host was Melvyn Bragg, a long-time British telly grandee, and what was striking was how quickly the interview settled down into the usual cosy lit. crit. chit-chat. Lord Bragg took Rushdie back to his earlier pre-fatwa work. “After your first book,” drawled Bragg, “which was not particularly well-received … “ That’s supposed to be the worst a novelist has to endure. His book will be “not particularly well-received” – i.e., some twerp reviewers will be snotty about it in The New Yorker and The “In 1998, the Algerian singer Guardian. In the cosy Lounès Matoub described himself world of English letters, it came as a surprise to find as “ni Arabe ni musulman” that being “not particularly (neither Arab nor Muslim) and well-received” meant foreign governments putting shortly thereafter found himself a bounty on your head and neither alive nor well.” killing your publishers and translators. Even then, the literary set had difficulty taking it literally. After news footage of British Muslims burning Rushdie’s book in the streets of English cities, BBC arts bores sat around on talk-show sofas deploring the “symbolism” of this attack on “ideas.” There was nothing symbolic about it. They burned the book because they couldn’t burn Rushdie himself. If his wife and kid had swung by, they’d have gladly burned them, just as the mob was happy to burn to death 37 Turks who’d made the mistake of being in the same hotel in Sivas as one of the novelist’s translators. When British Muslims called for Rushdie to be killed, they meant it. From a mosque in Yorkshire, Mohammed Siddiqui wrote to The Independent to endorse the fatwa by citing Sura 5 verses 33-34 from the Koran: “The punishment of those who wage war against God and His Apostle, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land, is execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land.” That last apparently wasn’t an option.

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Britain got so many things wrong during the Rushdie affair, just as America got so many things wrong during the Iranian embassy siege ten years earlier. But it’s now 2007 – almost two decades after Iran claimed sovereignty over British subjects, almost three decades after they claimed sovereignty over U.S. territory. So what have we learned? I was with various British parliamentarians the other day, and we were talking about the scenes from Islamabad, where the usual death-to-the-Great-Satan chappies had burned an effigy of the Queen to protest the knighthood she’d conferred on Rushdie. I told my London friends that I had to hand it to Tony Blair’s advisors: What easier way for the toothless old British lion, after the humiliations inflicted upon the Royal Navy sailors by their Iranian kidnappers, to show you’re still a player than by knighting Salman Rushdie for his “services to literature”? Given that his principal service to literature has been to introduce the word “fatwa” to the English language, one assumed that some characteristically cynical British civil servant had waved the knighthood through as a relatively cheap way of flipping the finger to the mullahs. But no. It seems Her Majesty’s Government in London was taken entirely by surprise by the scenes of burning Union Jacks on the evening news. Can that really be true? In a typically incompetent response, Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, issued one of those obviously-we’re-sorry-if-there’s-been-a-misunderstanding statements in which she managed to imply that Rushdie had been honored as a representative of the Muslim community. He’s not. He’s an ex-Muslim. He’s a representative of the Muslim community’s willingness to kill you for trying to leave the Muslim community. But, locked into obsolescent multiculti identity-groupthink, Mrs. Beckett instinctively saw Rushdie as a member of a quaintly exotic minority rather than as a free-born individual. This is where we came in two decades ago. We should have learned something by now. In the Muslim world, artistic criticism can be fatal. In 1992, the poet Sadiq Abd al-Karim Milalla also found that his work was “not particularly well-received:” he was beheaded by the Saudis for suggesting Mohammed cooked up the Koran by himself. In 1998, the Algerian singer Lounès Matoub described himself as “ni Arabe ni musulman” (neither Arab nor Muslim) and shortly thereafter found

himself neither alive nor well. These are not famous men. They don’t stand around on Oscar night congratulating themselves on their “courage” for speaking out against Bush-Rove fascism. But, if we can’t do much about freedom of expression in Iran and Saudi Arabia, we could at least do our bit to stop SaudiIranian standards embedding themselves in the western world. So many of our problems with Iran today arise from not doing anything about our problems with Iran yesterday. Men like Ayatollah Khomeini despised pan-Arab nationalists like Nasser who attempted to impose a local variant of Marxism on the Muslim world. Khomeini figured: Why import the false ideologies of a failing civilization? Doesn’t it make more sense to export Islamism to the dying west? And, for a guy dismissed by most of us as crazy, he made a lot of sense. The Rushdie fatwa established the ground rules: The side that means it gets away with it. Mobs marched through Britain calling for the murder of a British subject – and, as a matter of policy on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity, the British police shrugged and looked the other way. One reader in England recalled one demonstration at which he asked a constable why the “Muslim community leaders” weren’t being arrested for incitement to murder. The officer told him to “f--- off, or I’ll arrest you.” Genuine “moderate Muslims” were cowed into silence, and pseudo-moderate Muslims triangulated with artful evasiveness. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, who went on to become leader of the most prominent British Muslim lobby group, was asked his

“Mobs marched through Britain calling for the murder of a British subject – and, as a matter of policy on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity, the British police shrugged and looked the other way”

opinion of the fatwa against Rushdie and mused: “Death is perhaps too easy.” In 1989 Salman Rushdie went into hiding under the protection of the British police. A decade later, despite renewals of the fatwa and generous additions to the bounty, he decided he did not wish to live his life like that and emerged from seclusion to live a more or less normal life. He learned the biggest lesson of all – how easy it is to be forced into the shadows. That’s what’s happening in the free world incrementally every day, with every itsy-bitsy nothing concession to groups who take offence at everything and demand the right to kill you for every offence. Across two decades, what happened to Rushdie has metastasized, in part because of the weak response in those first months. “Death is perhaps too easy?” Maybe. But slow societal suicide is easier still. © 2007 Mark Steyn

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EYES RIGHT

RICHARD PROSSER Interesting times

t is a curse, it is said, to live in interesting times. It is certainly a curse to live in times of interest. Interestingly enough, the charging of interest used to be known as usury, and it was punishable by death. Nowadays, usury has come to mean the charging of “excessive” interest only, and not paying it has become punishable by the imposition of additional fees and charges. But I am digressing almost before I have begun. The Governor of the Reserve Bank has been generating quite a bit of interest just of late (and yes, this second attempt at a pun is as intentional as the first). He has raised the Official Cash Rate twice this year, as well as, more recently, dabbling in the foreign exchange market. Why is he doing this? To keep inflation under control, ostensibly, and to a lesser degree, to restrain the “Why we bother to make wine soaring value of the New dollar. To this writat all, instead of just selling bulk Zealand er’s mind, the inflation goal grapes to the Aussies, I don’t is neither strictly necessary, know. Something must have gone nor being approached in the right manner. wrong with the system” Dr Bollard worries, as did Dr Brash before him, that New Zealanders save too little, borrow too much, and place too much reliance on home ownership as their only form of long term investment. This supposedly drives up the cost of housing, and raises inflation. Bollard is tasked with keeping inflation at 3% or below, under the Reserve Bank Act. But the RBA was drafted at the end of an extended and grating period of terrible inflation for New Zealand; many long years of it, most of them in double figures, brought about primarily by Muldoon’s “Fortress Economy”, when foreign exchange was strictly controlled. We effectively had two currencies in those days; the locally-issued NZ dollar, which was worthless overseas because the New Zealand Government didn’t want it back, so it couldn’t be exchanged for anything, and real overseas funds, which were earned from exports. Less than 25 years ago, people in New Zealand couldn’t buy a new car unless they had access to offshore funds – usually family money. Second hand vehicles imported privately from Britain sold for markedly more than their new price in the old country. The younger generation will not recall that you couldn’t even buy a subscription to

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a foreign magazine without overseas funds, and people making trips abroad had to apply to the Reserve Bank for permission to spend money, the amount of which was strictly regulated. The 1984 Labour Government of Lange and Douglas changed all that, amongst other things. The removal of foreign exchange controls was perhaps the only good thing to come out of that sad and painful part of New Zealand’s adolescence. And nowadays, of course, classical inflation no longer exists. Production is such that there will never again be too much money chasing too few goods. If there is a problem, it is with ensuring enough consumption, so that production may continue. And New Zealanders don’t save very much because they don’t earn very much, and are taxed too highly, and they don’t earn very much because the economy isn’t worth very much, and it isn’t worth very much because we don’t generate enough value-added wealth from the things which we produce most of. New Zealand doesn’t seem to have realised that Mother Britain has long since left us and taken up with Europe. Time was, we just stuck raw commodities on a boat, and money and manufactured goods came back the other way, and life was dandy. Today, we’re still doing it; only to different markets. We don’t sell so much to the UK anymore, but we sell the same things to Korea, China, Japan, indeed anyone who will buy. Not garments or carpets or even yarn – it’s raw wool which we export most of. Not furniture or dressed timber or MDF, but logs. Not supermarket blister packs, but whole frozen carcasses. We just don’t seem to get it. To have wealth we need to have factories, making things out of stuff, adding value, employing people at high wages not low wages. We have the late invention of refrigeration to thank for the dairy industry. We HAD to do something with the milk, or it would have gone off. If refrigeration had been invented a century before it was, we’d be exporting raw milk to this day. Why we bother to make wine at all, instead of just selling bulk grapes to the Aussies, I don’t know. Something must have gone wrong with the system. And we make money out of tourism, and tell ourselves it’s a real industry....and the Koreans who come to watch the whales, and go skiing, and take wine tours, earn the money to do that from working in factories back home,

where they have real industries...and we can’t afford to go and see Korea in the same way, but we can’t make the connection as to why this is so. And we like owning our houses, because they’re the only things of value that most people will secure in their economically miserable lives, and then we can sell them to pay for our rest home care, and we don’t care that Dr Bollard doesn’t like it, and he keeps putting the rates up so that people won’t buy houses, and all he achieves is the opposite...it’s like Grandpa Simpson, when his mate gets his beard caught in the pencil sharpener, and Abe keeps winding the handle, because that’s all he can do, and every time he does, he makes it worse, but he keeps doing it, because that’s all he can do. And the rates go up, so the dollar goes up because the speculators can make more profit on it, so the exporters and the farmers hurt even more, and they have less to spend back into the economy, and the manufacturers close up shop and move to Australia or China where the overheads are lower or the wages are cheaper, and so there’s even less money in circulation, and real wages decline, but houses are even more expensive and so is rent, and it keeps getting worse, but he keeps winding the handle because that’s all he can do. Inflation in number terms really doesn’t matter. If a loaf of bread costs you ten clams this week, and twenty clams next week, but your wages for the same period have increased by the same percentage, then both have maintained their value relative to each other, and the only thing which has changed are the numbers on the clam voucher issued by the Government – otherwise known as a banknote. But those banknotes, or their electronic equivalents, have attained a value all of their own, thanks mostly to the quite stellar rates of interest set by the Reserve Bank. Our base interest rate is the highest in the Western world, and because of this, currency speculators are able to make healthy profits by trading in it. An investor can, for example, borrow money in Japan, where the base rate is around 0.5%, convert that money into New Zealand dollars, lend it to a New Zealand borrower for say 9.5%, pay back the Japanese bank, and pocket the difference. Nice work if you can get it, and easy money. On it’s own, this situation wouldn’t really matter, were it not for two important considerations. The first is that the high profitability of the New Zealand dollar, afforded it by our high interest rates, means that its value as a trading currency is also high, and artificially so. While this means that imported goods are cheaper than they would otherwise be, it hurts the export sector, farmers and primary producers, because New Zealand products become more expensive in overseas markets. The second is that the high interest rates which must be paid by borrowers in New Zealand, are themselves an inflationary driver. From mortgage repayments and credit card charges, to business overdrafts and loan rates, every increase in the base interest rate has a knock-on effect through the entire economy. Rather than suppressing inflation, it actually makes it worse – just like Grandpa Simpson and his pencil sharpener. How valuable is the New Zealand dollar, to the international currency trade? Interestingly enough, very valuable. For a nation whose people comprise but 0.06% of the world’s population, trade in our dollar accounts for 1% of all currency transactions.

The Kiwi is the 13th most traded currency in the world. On an average day, New Zealand exports around $177 million worth of goods; on that same day, $18 billion worth of our money will change hands in the world’s financial markets. This would be a grand thing if we were making the profit; but we’re not. We are paying for it, however, through our mortgage repayments and various other bank finance costs. So what can we do about it? Cut the base rate in half, would be this writer’s suggestion. I confess to being a simple country yokel, but I can’t see how the solution needs to be any more unnecessarily complicated than that, nor do I believe it would cause the sky to fall. Let the dollar find its own level in the global monetary soup, determined by the real worth of our economy and our exports, not by the artificial and inherently valueless process of people making money, by buying and selling money. And build some factories, financed by the existing commercial banking sector, at half the current going rate. Employ people. Make stuff. Export it, and earn money, so we can all go and see Korea – or wherever. We are, of course, about to make the whole messy business a whole lot worse, by entering into a Free Trade agreement with China, meaning that the few remnants of our manufacturing industry will have to compete with an economy where base interest rates are below 6%, and wages hover about the Slave-ratesless-tax mark. Slashing the OCR would cause no harm to anyone other than overseas currency speculators, who don’t contribute anything to our economy anyway; but will the Governor display the courage and foresight to pursue such a course of action? I await his next move with interest.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 19

LINE ONE

CHRIS CARTER Support your local sheriff!

’ve noticed in recent weeks, as I’ve trotted about, how often conversation has been turning toward the current state and performance of our nation’s police force. I guess that this isn’t all that surprising, given the almost weekly media reports that have been scarcely designed to exactly fill the population at large with much confidence in our current crop of plods, but nevertheless, given the popularly held belief that an efficient and well respected constabulary is pretty vital if we are to have a safe and law abiding society, perhaps it is time to see if we can work out just what it is that has gone so horribly wrong. Like it or not to even begin to examine why it is that the current police image has sunk to the point that it has, we have to draw some parallels “Have these modern day thieves, between how it was then, thugs and general toe-rags any like within living memory, and how it is now. Probably fear or even any respect for our because we live in a time of uniformed police any more?” change, seemingly because change for no good reason is simply now the way that it is, yesteryear’s copper in the views of many in my age group has suffered a progressive emasculation of his, once, quite undoubted powers. Perish the thought of telling our local Epsom Cop to Foff, or to even consider doing anything other than exactly what he was telling you to do some forty years back. He was ‘the Man’, simple as that. Indeed, should one fall foul of the law and to be actually arrested by this otherwise pretty popular uniformed fellow citizen, little, if any sympathy was likely to be expended on your plight by either onlookers or very likely your own actual family. You were nicked, carted off to the cop shop, booked, and no later than the following day, placed before the Beak who, without benefit of enormous delays to have your head shrunk/innumerable forms to be filled in by sandalwearing councillors and the like, simply and finally was quite capable of fining you, or perhaps sending you to either Borstal or Prison. The arresting officer, apart from filling in a simple arrest report and summary of the facts, with perhaps a brief appearance in court on behalf of the prosecution, was quickly free to return to the streets and to get on with his prime job. No chance of this policeman to see an as yet untried ‘crim’ wandering around these same streets laughing at him, probably giving him

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the fingers and loudly describing him to all his mates as just a uniformed pussy! Justice had been seen to be done by the entire local community because it was swift, yet was also seen to be fair. The local cop had had his position suitably reinforced by the courts and was therefore able to maintain his street ‘cred’ in that there remained in the minds of all, even those of limited intelligence that this guy was the bearer of a very big stick indeed! He represented a highly visible system of justice that was both simple and highly efficient. And then, slowly but inexorably it all began to fall apart. Despite the undoubted fact that all laws and even mere regulations require a degree of fear of the consequences of breaking them to make them work or even to be relevant, like a virulent bacteria in a laboratory dish, a new strain of liberal bureaucracy began to infect our previously very healthy system of justice, but – not unlike cancer – no one really seemed to notice until the patient was bloody near dead! Which brings us to a time where, to be frank, we really should be holding a wake right now for an about-to‘kark’-it-completely justice system that before our very eyes is undoubtedly breathing its last. An offender today is arrested. Weeks, sometimes months, and on occasions even years will pass before a verdict will be reached. An absolute plague of lawyers, amongst the greatest number by population to be found anywhere on Earth, now earn a very good living by convincing defendants to defend the indefensible. Hordes of pink-cheeked counsellors and probation officers leave no stone unturned to find even a minute reason as to why even a dead-set thug should not have a three week jury trial, perhaps that they might have the chance to sonorously explain to the court that the defendant is likely the way that he is because his teacher once shouted at him! Meantime of course, the thug is out on bail and is free to engage in all manner of add-on crimes, safe in the knowledge that we have also adopted a “bulk discount” scheme for subsequently admitted crimes whereby – be it one charge or several – the sentence these days will probably be the same, i.e., stuff all. Meantime the hapless officer or officers who effected the original arrest of course, has the morale-busting delight of seeing, probably on a regular basis, this, and perhaps several other hardened young criminals, simply carrying on with their

lives pretty much as usual. Have these modern day thieves, thugs and general toe-rags any fear or even any respect for our uniformed police any more? Well of course not. Why should they. They know probably better than anyone else that today’s coppers have in effect been abandoned by a justice system that has systematically reduced a policeman’s image to being little other than that of a sheep dog rounding up the occasional black sheep. The same system has laden down a serving officer with enormous amounts of paperwork to the point where the number of arrests now made is in direct proportion to the reams of paper that an individual officer can actually produce in a day that the bureaucrats crave to advance their careers rather than serving any real purpose in an actual fight against crime. Youngsters now, almost by rote, bawl obscenities at the Police, safe in the knowledge that this is now judged to be quite acceptable behaviour, along, judging by recent fines, with tossing bottles or anything else for that matter at the coppers if at a street party or other general disturbance. This unhappy state of affairs, due to monumental stupidity on the part of Parliament was further eroded by saddling the police with policing traffic, and further more with the obvious remit of gathering millions in traffic fines. This onerous duty previously handled by the then Ministry of Transport used to separate the otherwise ordinary motorist from those that otherwise dealt only with the thieves and the rat-bags. Now the truth is, whether we admit it or not, that a very high proportion of folk actually despised traffic cops, who one is bound to say didn’t exactly help their cause by dressing like refugees from the Waffen SS, like complete with jodhpurs and jack boots etc. So by handing the NZ Police this necessary but highly unpopular duty, the ‘Pollies’ automatically guaranteed a transfer of this traditional animosity to a police force, who amongst the ordinary citizenry had previously enjoyed real affection. Think about it. When was it that police popularity began to really decelerate? Don’t have to be very bright to work that out do we? Talk to any young person who’s been given a series of nuisance (not accident promoting) tickets by a young eager-beaver copper trying his best to meet the day’s quota that the liars back at head office swear and declare doesn’t exist! He and his otherwise law-abiding mates are really going to look on the local policeman as their friend aren’t they? Which is what brought me to the opinion that if we folk want to help our Police to rebuild their previously highly thought of position in our society then it’s high time we gave the coppers a break and laid the real blame for their current woes at the door where it really belongs. “The Departments of Justice, Courts, “Corrections” and their mealy mouthed masters and mistresses in Parliament”. The NZ Police are being forced to operate whilst being gravely let down by every single Department that should be fully supporting them. We, the Public and taxpayers, need to recognise and damn quickly in my view, that the modern Copper is doing his level best despite working for a system of justice run almost in its entirety by complete ‘tossers’. Put it this way, should me and my family be confronted by a brace of P smoking thugs at my place in the middle of the night, I want to see, very quickly indeed, an effective police cavalry arrive to help...Then I want to see the ‘crims’ arrested, and starting to serve a meaningful sentence within no more than two or three days. Anything less should just not be in any way, acceptable. By the way, if that

“Put it this way, should me and my family be confronted by a brace of P smoking thugs at my place in the middle of the night, I want to see, very quickly indeed, an effective police cavalry arrive to help...Then I want to see the ‘crims’ arrested, and starting to serve a meaningful sentence within no more than two or three days. Anything less should just not be in any way, acceptable”

opinion makes me some sort of a right wing nut, then so be it. Better that I guess, than having to start shooting the ungodly myself, which apart from being illegal and highly uncivilised, would also make a hell of a mess in the lounge. Come on people, let’s have a change in direction, get in behind the cops and support them rather than babying the criminals who are profiting from the Police’s current problems. As for the Politicians who now look on criminals primarily as potential voters rather than scum, making life easy for them and near impossible for the Police, the jig is up and the BS needs to stop right here! Chris Carter appears in association with www.snitch.co.nz, a must-see site.

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 21

SOAPBOX

Dr ROBERT E. LARZELERE

fter 28 years of research, I came to New Zealand on behalf of her children, her parents, and her ethnic and religious minorities with the boldest claim I have ever made in the public arena: “There is no sound scientific evidence to support a smacking ban.” The best evidence the Children’s Commissioner could muster against that claim on the Campbell Live TV program was about my written reply to an anti-smacking article in a scientific journal 14 years ago – not because of its content, but because the journal was sponsored by a Ph.D.-granting Christian university! How could someone as knowledgeable as Dr. Kiro emphasize such a ridiculous criticism? She got that criticism from “With this bill, New Zealand has her Canadian consultant leapfrogged the field to ban more Dr. Joan Durrant, the Piper who wants to forms of traditional disciplinary Pied lead New Zealand’s chilenforcements than any dren to the Swedish utopia other country” that she could not lead her own country’s children to – because the Canadian Supreme Court retained their country’s version of Section 59 after considering both sides of the scientific and legal evidence. What does this Swedish utopia look like? One year after Sweden’s smacking ban, 3% of their parents admitted beating up their child – two to five times higher than the overly high American rate. Physical child abuse increased almost 6-fold during the next 15 years, according to Swedish criminal records. Criminal assaults by minors against minors increased over 6-fold during that same time period. The ability of parents to enforce appropriate discipline continued to erode until only 31% of 10- to 12-year-olds thought that parents had the right to use grounding in 2000. All these statistics come from Swedish anti-smacking authors. Even more worrisome, the just-imposed New Zealand smacking ban is more extreme than Sweden’s ban in three ways. Using force to correct children will be subject to full criminal penalties, although the government’s politically clever but inconsequential concession gives police the discretion not to prosecute mild offences. Sweden’s ban had no criminal penalty. In addition, New Zealand’s bill bans the mildest use of force to correct children, not just smacking. This removes most disciplinary enforcements parents have

22, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007

used for generations, especially for the most defiant youngsters. Finally, the required change in disciplinary enforcements will be the biggest change ever imposed on parents. The New Zealand bill’s proponents claim that missionaries were responsible for introducing smacking and bashing to the Maori and other South Pacific peoples. The irony is that they are doing the same thing they accuse missionaries of – imposing a European philosophy of child correction on native ethnic groups – this time enforced with criminal penalties. The bill was motivated by a commendable desire to reduce child abuse, but it has made it a crime to bring the most effective treatment for abusive parents to New Zealand. In a review of 20 years of treatments for abusive parents, eminent abuse researcher Dr. Mark Chaffin showed that none of them turned out to be effective. He then developed a new treatment that decreased recidivism of child abuse charges from 49% to 19%. It will be a crime to bring that treatment to New Zealand, however, because it includes a non-smacking type of force to enforce time out. The pervasive confusion about what will be permitted under the new law makes the pre-existing law allowing parents “reasonable force to correct their children” seem reasonable indeed, although it needs to be updated to clearly exclude physical abuse. As Bill Clinton said of abortion, smacking ought to be safe, legal, and rare. His successor had an overly optimistic view about invading Iraq because they heard only one optimistic side of the scenarios. Now our country is in a quagmire with no good way out. For the sake of New Zealand’s children and future, I hope they have a better exit strategy than George Bush. With this bill, New Zealand has leapfrogged the field to ban more forms of traditional disciplinary enforcements than any other country. But their ban runs counter to scientific evidence, previous experiences with similar bans, and the wisdom of previous generations as far back as we can remember. I feel like the engineer who predicted that the O-rings on the Challenger space shuttle were likely to fail, but no one would listen. His tragic prediction proved all too accurate. I hope I am less accurate about the forthcoming failure of New Zealand’s smacking ban than that engineer was. Dr Larzelere is Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Science at the Oklahoma State University, and was brought to New Zealand by Family First NZ as a scientific expert on child correction.

Soapbox is an occasional column in Investigate. If you have an issue you’d like to sound off about, email 750 words to editorial@investigatemagazine.com

NZ’s anti-smacking law most extreme in the world

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 23

Battle

FIELD

t has been a long time coming, this interview. Back in December, Investigate carried a story on the corruption allegations surrounding Taito Phillip Field, based on the testimony of his main accuser – Auckland builder Keith Williams. For his part, Field was maintaining ‘radio silence’ at the time – an instruction he now claims came directly from Labour’s leadership. Over the months, however, we’ve been asked by readers to take a second look at the Field case and see if we could get the former Minister to open up for the first time publicly. So as I enter the Mangere electorate office of newly-independent MP Phillip Field on a dreary wet Friday morning, I carry not just a copy of that December issue but a whole lot of unanswered questions that Field needs to answer if any of us – public or news media – are to get our heads around the issues in any upcoming trial. The be-suited MP’s new digs, down the road from his old Labour electorate office, are decked out with a traditional Samoan mat hanging on the wall behind him. Under the watchful gaze of his wife, Maxine, he ushers me to a seat with a wave of his hand and a quizzical glance at the digital recording device that made John Tamihere famous, leans back in his chair, and begins to tell a story that he says commenced with a Labour agenda to sideline him a long, long time ago… FIELD: I have taken quite a stand against certain legislative programmes the government party has had. We all know the reason for certain people having agendas, in terms of legislation they want to get past. And that relates to some of these moral issues. Certainly, from my mind, that has to be understood, as to why there may be incentives... INVESTIGATE: Well let’s go into that. Within Labour, it has talked in the past of being a reasonably broad church. Within Labour you would be considered a social conservative in a party that is largely social liberal. FIELD: Yes. INVESTIGATE: How long have the tensions existed within Labour between the conservative and liberal wings, and what impact has that had on your career? FIELD: It’s had an impact, because most people know I have very strong Christian beliefs, and I stick by that and I don’t

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The Fight Of His Political Career

Former Labour MP Taito Phillip Field has already made history by becoming the first MP in New Zealand to face bribery and corruption charges. Now he’s making history again by breaking his silence in an unprecedented three hour interview with Investigate editor IAN WISHART, on the eve of a second preliminary court hearing to determine whether he can be prosecuted. It’s the first time Field has spoken at length about the allegations swirling around him, and whether or not he is guilty. You be the judge: budge from it. They know that. And so when it comes to legislation like prostitution, homosexual rights, anything relating to any judgment that I make based on a moral issue, I will always take my Christian beliefs to the fore and I will stand by that. If you look at my voting patterns in Parliament they’ve been consistent right through. And I think that’s upset a lot of people in key positions. INVESTIGATE: When did you first become aware of people being upset with you? FIELD: Well I recall an argument in caucus where certain individuals took offence to the way that I opposed – I think it was the marriage bill by United Future, by Larry Baldock – where again a whipped vote was indicated by the Labour caucus that

they would not support it. That Bill talked about the sanctity of marriage, that it should be only between a man and a woman and in future could not be extended to homosexual couples. And I felt that was a good Bill, because it actually defined what a marriage is. So when they said, ‘we’re going to oppose this Bill’, I put my hand up and stood up and said, ‘My Christian beliefs mean I have to support this Bill. I can’t go along with your decision.’ I won’t get into individuals, but one in particular stood up and harangued me for being ‘homophobic’. Another incident happened later that day that clearly indicated to me you can forget about any political aspirations in the future. INVESTIGATE: What was the incident?

FIELD: I don’t want to get into it, but clearly the message was given to me, ‘If you think you’re going to be a minister again, think again.’ INVESTIGATE: How senior was the person who gave you that warning? FIELD: Middle ranking in Cabinet. But I don’t want to get into individuals. INVESTIGATE: This was prior to the 2005 election? FIELD: Early 2005, before all of this other stuff became an issue. INVESTIGATE: So your opposition to Labour’s whipping on the Marriage Bill, was that the first inkling of trouble? FIELD: No, there was always tension in regard to my opposition to homosexual rights, in terms of the civil union proposal. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 25

Because again in caucus, I insisted it should be a conscience vote. The argument from some in caucus was that it should not be a conscience vote because it was Labour Party policy in terms of sexual orientation. I didn’t feel that that was right and I spoke out against it. Some of the older members indicated it was wiser to give members the right to a conscience vote, but clearly the tensions were there. So there were tensions well before all this broke. INVESTIGATE: It wasn’t just you in the Labour caucus opposed to some of these issues. Paint me a picture about what life was like for you inside. FIELD: Oh clearly there were a number of us that had Christian values, and therefore we fell in opposition to some of the views and agendas that certain people in caucus had, particularly in regard to moral issues. There’s no question about that. INVESTIGATE: So in early 2005, after this caucus meeting, that afternoon a middle ranked member of the Cabinet, presumably a close ally of the Prime Minister, said basically you can kiss goodbye to being a Minister. FIELD: The message was quite clear, if you think you’ve got any aspirations of being a Minister again, you can think again. INVESTIGATE: So with this Minister coming to see you and suggesting that your career aspirations were negligible, it would be fair to say it was a fairly heated and nasty exchange? FIELD: It was. Initially. But the Christian thing to do, there was no intention to hurt him in any way. Because I said some nasty things to him too, like ‘can stick that right up your youknow-where’. So I apologized to him afterward, and he apologized too. INVESTIGATE: When was your first awareness of trouble in regard to Sunan Siriwan? FIELD: It was probably a week before the election, we were in my office doing a clinic and TVNZ turned up with their cameras, wanting an interview. So innocently I let them into my office, and then they put that question. I was taken aback, I didn’t know there was a letter. But apparently the letter had been sent on the 3rd of August. INVESTIGATE: So it had been circulated among your colleagues for about six weeks before the election? FIELD: That would be right, but I didn’t know about it until TVNZ told me the week before the election, and I didn’t see it until after the election. INVESTIGATE: What’s your perspective of what happened, how did you come to be involved with Sunan Siriwan and others, what’s the sequence of events? FIELD: In summary, I do clinics and we get somewhere between 50 to 100 people in a session. We spend normally from about 9.30 and we go on to 5. We do that twice a week, normally on a Monday and a Friday. Sometimes I don’t have enough time to deal with all of them, so if there is a spare time at home, in the evening, I might make another time depending on the urgency of the case. But people turn up anyway, particularly Pacific people. But it was on this occasion that this European man and this Thai man turned up, and my recollection was what I said to Ingram, that this was a man whose wife and child had been deported a month or so earlier. He was very distraught, and couldn’t speak English, it was mainly sign language, really. The European fellow, Keith Williams, did all the talking. 26, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007

The thing unfolded, that the police were after him and the immigration service was after him as well, trying to find out where he was. His circumstances resembled an African man’s circumstances, a refugee applicant who had been declined, who I explained to that there’s no exception in NZ law for refugee applicants who’ve been declined to have their situation reconsidered while they are still in NZ. He had to leave, no question. So I explained how I had helped this African man to go to Samoa for a few months, although he was in a relationship with a Samoan woman. He’d made it clear he couldn’t go back to Ghana, so I said he’d have to find somewhere else and given that he was in a relationship with a Samoan perhaps she had family who could look after him. I arranged with the Samoan authorities for him to be given a three month visa, that had to be some sort of a working visa I think. So he spent a few months, and we managed to help him, got him back into the country. But it is a fact that when Maxine and I were at Aggie Grey’s as part of an official delegation, he turned up, totally broke, so we gave him a couple of hundred bucks – tala – to tide him over. We managed to get him back to New Zealand, has had a baby, and named his baby after me. So I told all this to Keith and Siriwan and said, ‘the choice is yours, but from what I have heard, he has to leave the country.’ I had to welcome a whole lot of people so I told them, ‘you go away and think about it and give us a call’. And I think that’s why they later turned up at my house. My secretary was present the whole time, and they came along with a Thai woman, a translator. There may have been mention that, given the African man’s situation, you may have to look at 2 or 3 months in Samoa. You’ve got no family over there. I think Williams may have made mention at that time of the fact that he’d been working in American Samoa for two years and it might be a good option. I can’t remember exactly what was said, but I remember that if mention was made, given the African case, of Samoa being an option, then obviously the issue of how would he survive may have come up as well. That’s where maybe a work permit was necessary, so he could get in there and earn some money for himself. MAXINE FIELD: I was the one who jumped up and offered to help him. FIELD: No, that was later on, at the house. This was the first meeting. INVESTIGATE: So they went away, just one of the many faces you’d seen that day, but then they turned up at the house? FIELD: Yeah, that’s when things sort of firmed up. I had somewhere else to go to so I had limited time. But Maxine was present and was listening to the story, because I think they were trying to reclarify what was actually happening with the circumstances of his case and that he may need to leave the country because he was basically a fugitive at that point. He was distraught. We really felt sorry for him, because he was teary-eyed, something about a child being sick, the kid was taken away and the kid was sick, he was concerned about his son and I could understand that. So I think Maxine felt some sympathy in the circumstances. Faatasiga, our project manager, was also out the back on the computer. So my recollection was, part of the discussion, when I introduced Faatasiga as the project manager getting ready to go to Samoa, he wanted to

“This fellow, the European fellow by the name of Keith Williams, has used this story because, I believe, he got his nose out of joint because there was an accident and he was forced to pay 10,000 tala before he could leave Samoa” talk to Faatasiga quite a bit about the project in Samoa, because Maxine had offered accommodation for the guy because he had nowhere to go. MAXINE FIELD: I was in the house, offering cups of tea, there was a time while they were talking and I was always listening in, I didn’t want to interfere. Faatasiga would come in and sit in the kitchen, but in our house when you’re in the kitchen you can hear what they’re talking about. They started talking, and I could see at that point Sunan was very distraught. He was just about on the floor with tears. But when they were talking about trying to leave NZ that’s when I offered, to me at that time I felt, it was in my nature, I feel sorry for people and try to help them if I can. So when they were talking about going I said, ‘Oh, you can come to Samoa with me’. There were two options in my mind, because the house was not finished. Yes they could stay, because I know the place and it is livable, but I also offered and suggested to Keith Williams at that time, there is a family motel. When they arrived in Samoa it was the first thing I did, the first thing I remember saying to Keith, ‘It’s up to you. We have a motel here, it’s not very expensive, it’s cheap’. The first thing he said was, ‘No, I want to stay with Sunan.” That was his idea. We didn’t force or anything.

But getting back to the house, there was a time when they were talking. I heard it from the kitchen. I came right out and I interfered. I said, ‘hey, Keith, my husband never make any promises here!’ They were trying to sweet talk Taito. I could hear that. INVESTIGATE: What were they talking about? FIELD: He was trying to say – because Faatasiga was there and he had been talking to Faatasiga about the plans, and telling him how he’d worked in American Samoa, how he was familiar with American Samoa and could go with Sunan to help his friend. He said at one point, ‘I’m prepared to make a sacrifice to help my friend’, and he was trying to justify if I could cover his airfare, and the fact that he was going to miss out on two weeks wages, or two weeks income from his business, as a sacrifice to help his friend. I got the impression that he was trying to actually imply that if I covered his airfare, he would help. And I said, ‘Look, I’ve got a project manager there, he says your services aren’t required, everything’s organized.’ So clearly he was trying to justify his airfare by saying, ‘Look, we’ll give you a hand’. INVESTIGATE: So the chronology you’re saying is that you’ve seen the plight Sunan is in, and you’ve said, ‘well, maybe you INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 27

can come over there, live in the house’ etc, and then Keith has entered into discussions about, ‘well what can we do on the house, maybe I can go over and work on it’ – FIELD: It was more to do with Faatasiga’s discussions. They were introduced to Faatasiga so I think he may have asked – because I had to go and get ready at the point, to have a shower and go somewhere else, so they were there talking to Faatasiga. What transpired, I don’t fully recall, but later on I got it from Faatasiga that Williams was trying to say ‘we can do this and do that’, but Faatasiga made it quite clear that their services were not required. And the whole reason they came to see me was the predicament of the Thai man. That’s the whole emphasis. To see how we could help. INVESTIGATE: Williams has said publicly that there was an agreement to work on the house, and do some tiling and so forth. How did that come about in the end? FIELD: There was no understanding at all that they were required or expected to do anything. None of that! Because the whole emphasis was how we could help this man, like the African man. That’s where my mind was. Because we already had a project manager, we had everything, he was responsible for the labourers to be hired, and the project. He was a multiskilled builder. I recall Williams talking about waterproofing, and I didn’t even know what the heck he was talking about. I mean, I’m not a builder. Faatasiga said to me, ‘Look, we don’t need any waterproofer, I know how to waterproof’. So there’s no question in my mind, it was made clear to both of them, that they were not required. Why they turned up, what they were discussing, even why he was in the house, had nothing to do with the project in Samoa. They came to my office asking for help, and because we didn’t have time and had other people waiting, we made another time. And when they came to my house it was about his immigration status and how we could help him. The only reason I eventually said I would cover the airfare was because we had cheap airpoints that we earned from our world trips. So they were cheap airfares, and I could see that he was making a sacrifice to help this guy. And the other thing that went through my mind – if this guy is going to be in Samoa, how is he going to get around with not speaking English or Samoan? There would have to be a period where we tried to settle him in. INVESTIGATE: So there was an agreement to cover that airfare then? FIELD: Yeah, just because I could see the problems. We didn’t want to impose this stranger on our children and family in Samoa. They’re all working and have children. What I’m saying is that if this guy was going to go, at least Williams was offering to look after him. INVESTIGATE: So the offer is made for Sunan to live in the unfinished house, how did you expect him to support himself in Samoa, what was the idea behind that? FIELD: Well Maxine made the offer. I didn’t want to commit to it actually, it was her initiative, not mine. MAXINE FIELD: I asked my daughter in law to help me clean the house. Because I knew Sunan had nowhere else to go. I didn’t know about Keith, but I was willing to help Sunan. To be honest with you, if I had known then, if we had known, that this man had another woman and two children in Thailand, things 28, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007

would have been different. The whole family now thinks like that. But I said to Sonia, can you help me get all this stuff and all that? So Sonia’s boys, we all went up and gave it our best. We did. We took the curtains, the lino, into – they say it’s a garage, but it’s part of the house. FIELD: It’s an internal garage, it’s part of the house. MAXINE FIELD: It’s very nice, a big room. So we did it all, with curtains and two single beds that my daughter in law gave me. FIELD: The reason I can tell you that there wasn’t any agreement on where they were going to stay, or anything, is because Maxine actually offered them to stay at the motel. So when they left there was no understanding that they were going to stay at the house. INVESTIGATE: Paint me a picture of this house, was it just framing and concrete floors, was this a house that people were actually living in at the time? FIELD: When we bought it, it was just a concrete shell. In Samoa it is hot weather, it’s good climate, so you don’t need winter clothes. Our son had put in a shower, just outside, two metres. He said it was the middle of a paddock, it was two metres, three steps, from the back door. A nice shower and a toilet. So it had water and it had electricity. It was as good as a house. It had a roof, windows, concrete shell, waterproof. It was better than the average accommodation in Samoa. This nonsense about it being in the middle of a paddock was just that, nonsense. What I’m trying to say to you is that the idea of looking after Sunan wasn’t my idea. The idea of the possibility of going to Samoa was originally because of the African man’s case. Because my wife has a compassionate heart, when she heard how distraught he was, she offered to look after him if he went to Samoa. Her kind heartedness was on the basis that the Thai man would be looked after in the longer term, but this Williams was going to go there for a couple of weeks to settle him in. That was his choice, his decision. The fact is the decision to go to Samoa was their decision, not ours. INVESTIGATE: But Sunan did do tiling over there. How did that come about? FIELD: My understanding is that he volunteered, he wanted to volunteer his services. As far as I was concerned we were helping the man out. If he did anything, he did it voluntarily, there was no expectation on him to do anything. Besides, I was hoping to get him legally back into NZ as soon as possible. So he was engaged. As to when he actually volunteered his services, I don’t know exactly when, although it wasn’t until after the fact. But I certainly was aware that he helped out with various things. And the reality was, he asked, because he was crying to David, he asked for his wife and child if they could be brought to Samoa. He was fearful. He made it clear, right from the beginning in my office, that he didn’t want to go back to Thailand, and I thought that’s maybe why he applied for refugee status, some fear of persecution. It was a big question mark in my mind, because you’d hear about it from other countries in war or conflict, but not Thailand. But it was mentioned, about persecution. Later on, much later on, we found out that he had another wife and two children. INVESTIGATE: Now Keith Williams was only there for a cou-

ple of weeks, but it is a matter of record that you went to meet them at the house with a delegation from the Pacific Forum? FIELD: Yeah, they were there a day or so when we arrived. I was there with Phil Goff and Paul Swain. And we had some time after a prison visit and I was telling Phil about this house so we visited briefly. We had an entourage of all the police who had taken us up to the prison. So we had a long convoy of the top police officers, the police commissioner of New Zealand, the police commissioner of Samoa and all these police people. So if I had something to hide, or something that I felt guilty about, or something that I was doing wrong, why would I take up the top police officers in two countries as part of a convoy, and my ministerial colleagues, up to the house? Now as I said, I don’t recall, I remember introducing a few to them. They claim they were working on mixing, or leveling something, concrete or something, I don’t recall, but they’re trying to say there was an arrangement of employment and work, but that’s not the understanding at all. INVESTIGATE: Well our readers will ask the question, the offer to get Sunan over there, how were you planning to look to keep him fed, if he had no money, no income? FIELD: Well we didn’t know that he had no money. I just presumed that the man might have had some money to survive. He might have given some thought to the fact that they made

the decision to go to Samoa. It was not my decision, it was their decision. So you just presumed that they would have some understanding that they would have to keep themselves. INVESTIGATE: So the offer, as far as you were concerned, Maxine, was simply that, ‘look, if you go to Samoa at least we can put you up in the house and – FIELD: Feed you. INVESTIGATE: – feed you? MAXINE FIELD: Yeah, and then in our own Samoan love, we always give money. I give money all the time to people, when I have enough money. So I thought well, if he’s offered voluntarily to do some tiling then I think its really, in fairness, to give him some money for his food, so that’s what I did. FIELD: But even if he didn’t do any work, Maxine would have still looked after him. MAXINE FIELD: I would have still given some money to take care of him. INVESTIGATE: Because he’s over there – MAXINE FIELD: In our care. FIELD: And we were talking about the African guy, that’s why I gave the African guy 200 tala. We wouldn’t allow someone to be in that desperate situation with no food. MAXINE FIELD: It’s part of our culture, and part of our love. To me, it’s quite normal, it’s out of love. They were very desperate. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 29

FIELD: You need to understand that when we bought this house, this shell, there were steel and aluminum walls inside the house. There was no way you could tile the place until you got rid of the aluminum steel framing, because what Faatasiga said to me is the aluminum framing has to go because if it burns, if there’s a fire, it would create quite an intense heat problem and it would warp the steel, so we had to get rid of all that and that would have taken at least three to four weeks. INVESTIGATE: So you have Sunan over there and you are effectively providing board and food. What would you have spent on Sunan over that time to maintain him? MAXINE FIELD: You want to know? FIELD: You really want to know? MAXINE FIELD: Probably something in the region of 50,000 tala FIELD: Just take the airfares. The airfares alone, 20,000 tala. Maxine – it came out of her money – paid 5,500 for the [Thai] woman and her son to be flown from Bangkok to Australia (because they couldn’t come through NZ because she’d been deported). If you take accommodation, it came to 32,000, with electricity, the phone bills that they made to Bangkok. I paid them something like three or four thousand in cash to help out with school fees and the odd occasion. The last time I saw him I gave him a thousand tala, because they said to me they were down to their last 200. It all tallied up close to 45 or 50,000 tala. But I’d always said to Sunan, because he was distraught about his predicament, and I said, ‘Look, what Williams has done with his letter is destroy your chances of going back to New Zealand. I can’t see, with all the controversy, that you’re going to be able to go back to NZ, so you’re better to go back to Thailand and I’ll cover your airfares, you and your family.’ And he just refused, point blank. And I couldn’t force him. So he remained there of his own choice. But when he got Olinda Woodroffe to cry that he was living in poverty it was just nonsense, because the whole time he was there was because he wanted to be there, he didn’t want to leave. INVESTIGATE: Olinda Woodroffe is the lawyer acting for Sunan Siriwan. From my recollection there is some history between the pair of you, yes? FIELD: It goes back to the cyclone relief funding raised by telethon when Cyclone Val hit Samoa, and the Maori Queen was the chair of the committee set up by Don McKinnon, the Minister of Pacific Island Affairs, to distribute $2 million. One million from Telethon and one million subsidy, dollar for dollar, from the government. The situation was there was a controversy over Olinda Woodroffe who used carpenters and material that was there for building cyclone relief shelters in Samoa, on a property, on her own property, on the basis that it was to build accommodation for the builders. That controversy resulted in her suing me, the head of the Samoan Church and Community Leaders Council, as well as another gentleman that was on that committee, for $200,000 each, because she claimed that we defamed her by exposing what had happened. You’d have a record of TVNZ going to Samoa filming the house being built on her property by those cyclone relief carpenters. She pursued that defamation case for $200,000. It cost me $2,500 to engage in defending it. She never turned up, never proceeded with the case, and I believe there are bad vibes between us. 30, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007

INVESTIGATE: While Sunan was in Samoa, was he doing work on anyone else’s places? FIELD: Oh yeah. A lot of work. Dozens. The whole reason I got the work permit is because that’s the only way he could stay in Samoa. INVESTIGATE: So when he got there, because of his trade he was able to do other work? You’ve got affidavits to that effect? FIELD: Yeah, Maxine went around to help him out, got people who wanted tiling work. They’ve got all the affidavits to show that. INVESTIGATE: So for how long was Sunan under your financial care? MAXINE FIELD: Nearly a year, I suppose. FIELD: We always supported him. The whole thing has been twisted into something that it never was. The whole intention of the exercise was to help this man who came to me in a desperate situation. I looked at the ways, as I always do with people, ways that I could help him. What I offered Siriwan really came out of the successful exercise with the Ghanaian. We did that exercise because he had to leave the country. I needed time to do it legally from outside. And Siriwan, that was all I was trying to do, do exactly what I did with the African man. But this fellow, the European fellow by the name of Keith Williams, has used this story because, I believe, he got his nose out of joint because there was an accident and he was forced to pay 10,000 tala before he could leave Samoa. He probably saw the election as a way of recovering that money, and that’s probably what his letter was about, was really to put pressure to recover that 10,000 tala, which is about NZ$6,000 or NZ$7,000. The reality is, after four or five days that they were in Samoa, there was an incident which I felt made my position quite clear without any doubt in my mind. After that incident where we found two half-naked women in the house, with beer bottles all over the place, and that was only a day after I’d asked them not to bring any strangers or alcohol onto the property. And I said to them, ‘Pack your bags, I want you out of this house, I don’t want anymore to do with you – both of you! Find your way back to your country, and back to New Zealand.’ And I made that clear. They’d called a taxi, they’d packed their bags, their bags were outside, they were ready to go in a taxi. Keith Williams came in crying, literally with tears rolling down his cheeks, to Maxine, and said, ‘Maxine, can you tell your husband we have nowhere to go, give us another chance! Please, we have nowhere to go.” It was at this point that Maxine brought Williams, still crying, and Faatasiga our project manager and Sunan, and asked. That’s the basis on which I allowed them. Because I had to come back to New Zealand the following day. It was at that point that he was crying, he’d already talked to Maxine about his alcohol problems. This is before I had heard of it. He said, ‘Sorry Maxine, about the party and the women. I am an alcoholic’. This was during his time of crying, and he said that he had problems with his wife because of his alcohol situation. It was at that point that Maxine, because of her sympathy, started counseling him, and he somehow managed to get her sympathy again, and she brought them up to me to see me to give them another chance. The understanding, I said to them, was ‘If you don’t have anywhere to go –’ and I understand they’ve got nowhere to go,

and it was really my mind that it would be inhuman to chase them away – so I said to them, ‘OK, you can stay, on the understanding that you will go and find an alternative accommodation. Because I don’t want you womanizing, bringing women and alcohol onto this property. Go and stay near Apia where you can do your womanizing and boozing, down in Apia.’ I said to Sunan, ‘I will continue to help you, if I can.’ But as far as I was concerned I didn’t want anything to do with them anymore. I made that clear to Maxine. MAXINE FIELD: Yes, it was actually me, my compassion... FIELD: When I left for NZ, that was my understanding when I left Samoa, they were to go and find somewhere else to live. INVESTIGATE: So this was at the same time as your visit for the Pacific Islands Forum? FIELD: During that same visit, yes. It was only three or four days after they arrived in Samoa. Williams was only there for 13 days. When I left Samoa, that was the clear understanding. They were to go and find somewhere else to stay. Five days later, maybe longer, I get a call from Samoa. There’s been a car accident, and Mosé, one of our distant relatives, was lying in hospital fighting for his life. Now, what happened was that they’d rented a rental car, went to Maxine and said they wanted to go to Savaii. This is three or five days after I’d left, Easter weekend. They took the rental car to Savaii, came back, never took the rental car back at the time they were supposed to take it back, had a booze up in the local bar where they normally go, took some women and some beer again to have a party back up at the house, after being told not to and after being told to leave and find somewhere else to stay. Two o’clock in the morning, Mosé is handed the keys by Williams to take these women home. Mosé was asleep. My understanding from Mosé is that he was there when they were drinking at the bar with two women, and the two of them, Williams and Siriwan, were so drunk they couldn’t drive the car so they gave the keys to Mosé to drive them up the hill up to the house, with the women. They had a party, Mosé went to sleep. Two am he was woken up and Williams gave him the keys to take the women back to their house, because the women wanted to go home. Mosé was half asleep, probably intoxicated, goes and takes the women quite a distance, about half an hour drive, and then comes back and falls asleep at the wheel of the rental car and crashes it, writes it off. He ends up being taken to hospital with a head injury which affected his eye, and apparently he was fighting for his life because he lost a lot of blood. And the end result is that when Maxine was rung about it by the police, it’s all documented, they went up the hill to find out what the story was. MAXINE FIELD: After coming from the hospital, Faatasiga said to me we have to go and look for Keith. Because at that point Faatasiga had already gone earlier. He normally goes at 7am to work on the house. But when he passed he saw the car, and he had a hunch, because he’s the one who dropped Mosé off with [Williams and Siriwan] because Mosé saw their car parked at the bar, and he said ‘Stop here because I want to join up with these people’. Anyway, so they went out and partied. But back to Faatasiga, coming back from the hospital, he said he’d already been up, and then we saw Williams on the side of the road with his bags.

And Faatasiga just about grabbed him, saying ‘What are you doing here mate? You should be with the police’. We dragged him inside [the car], and I remember saying to Keith, ‘How could you do this Keith, after all our help for you? You know I went against Taito’s wishes and tried to help you and Sunan, and look what you’ve done now!’ I said, ‘Listen, we’ll take him down to the police.’ Because he said he wanted to come down. So we stopped at the accident area, and while we were looking, all of a sudden a police car arrived. It was like it was arranged, but it wasn’t. Then Faatasiga talked to the police, and while we were standing there with Keith I said maybe this saves us going to the police station to take him, ‘you can go with the police now’. Nothing else was said. FIELD: Never saw him again. Let me tell you how dishonest I believe this man is. Our information from the rental car company is that he wanted to leave on the next flight out of Samoa, and the police told him ‘This car is written off, you have to contribute to this’. There was an agreement for 10,000 tala, he gave his credit card. After giving his credit card our understanding was he went straight to the bank and tried to cancel the transaction. So Mr Williams then left Samoa. He had only been there 13 days so it would have been the end of April [2005]. INVESTIGATE: So when did you next hear from him? FIELD: Never. The only thing I heard was the TV cameras [September 2005]. INVESTIGATE: So he leaves Samoa having been forced to pay on this rental car that’s been pranged, and he doesn’t attempt to contact you at all and ask for any money or any recompense? FIELD: No. INVESTIGATE: So the first you were aware of any complaint from Williams at all was when the TV cameras turned up? FIELD: Was when the TV One cameras turned up. INVESTIGATE: The woman, or women, who were in the car with Mosé, do you have a statement from them? MAXINE FIELD: We found them. We found one of them living on Savaii. FIELD: They’ve done affidavits of what they can accurately recall. INVESTIGATE: So what do they say in their statements about the events of that night, do they say, ‘Yes, we were at the bar drinking’? FIELD: It’s consistent with what we’ve told you. But the thing is, I got a call from Maxine that was quite delayed. Because she told me later she really didn’t want to let me know, because of what I had said to her, that I didn’t want anything more to do with them. MAXINE FIELD: I was afraid to tell him! I think I didn’t tell him until two or three days later. FIELD: I didn’t want them there! I’d made that clear! INVESTIGATE: So your recollection was that they shouldn’t have been there, that you’d left them with an order to find alternative accommodation. FIELD: Yes, because I said to them clearly, ‘You are to go and find alternative accommodation!’ MAXINE FIELD: So I hid it from Taito. Two days later I think, is when I called Taito, and said something’s happened. INVESTIGATE: Just tackling some of Keith Williams specific allegations – FIELD: Just on the letter, he told so many lies in that. One of the lies that was clear: He tried to say that because Mosé is a INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 31

relation of ours and he stole the car – he was saying [Mosé] stole the rental car – because he stole the rental car and wrote it off, we should pay the money back. INVESTIGATE: Well I was going to say, he’s raised a number of allegations and that’s his construction of it. That’s why I asked, the women who were in the car with Mosé are saying that Keith asked Mosé to drive them back, and they’ve sworn that? FIELD: Yes. MAXINE FIELD: It started with taking them up in the first place, because Keith was so drunk. INVESTIGATE: Now Williams is claiming that in his discussions with you, here in New Zealand, that you said ‘The Minister and I have got an arrangement between us. I do things, he does things, I’ve got an arrangement with him.’ He’s making that allegation specifically and obviously police are taking Williams perspective in terms of their prosecution. Is that ever a phrase that has left your mouth? FIELD: No. I’ve been a Member of Parliament for 14 years. You don’t survive to be a Member of Parliament for that time if you say absolutely ridiculous and silly things like that. This seems to be the pattern of not only Williams’ account and what he is saying, but what is being conspired, what is being twisted in the wording of other witnesses, to try and suggest that somehow I have an arrangement with other people – that, as God is my witness, is absolutely untrue. I don’t speak like that, I’m not stupid like that. Even this thing about bribery – I’d have never taken a bribe. What has happened here, as far as I’m concerned, is that people have come to me for help, and all I have done is to take their circumstances and try and fit it in where I can help them legitimately where they comply with policy. And that is the points we make to somebody who does make that decision, whether it is NZIS or the Minister or whatever. And the volume of people I deal with, it is not possible for me to recall what they look like, recall their Asian name – I may at some point look at a face that is familiar and may vaguely remember they may have come to my office, that’s it. In terms of circumstances of their case it’s not possible for me to remember. At the end of the day it’s not possible for me to remember all that sort of detail, let alone a week down the road, after seeing 50 to 100 people. It’s not possible. It’s like shearing sheep. Somewhere down the track, I picked up a business card and contacted someone advertised as a plasterer and painter. And I had a job to be done so I rang them. They came up and I gave them – on the understanding that it’s a business deal. I engage a lot of tradespeople, I do exactly the same thing like that. I ring them, they come and do a job, they give me a bill and I pay it. That’s exactly the way I operated with these Asian people, I just presume – they’ve got a business card, they operate on a company basis, everything was done on a legitimate basis. At no point did I ever say to them, ‘Look, because I helped you, you do this for me’. That’s just a nonsense, absolute nonsense. Because there’s no way I could recall their particular circumstances. So what I’m trying to say to you, the suggestion of bribery and corruption, as far as I’m concerned, is absolute nonsense. What happens in my office, and the way I help people, is totally detached. There is no link or relationship to the fact down the track, one month or three months down the road, we suddenly have some people who I’ve had contact with, who have then 32, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007

done some work for us. There was one guy who was employed through Jinda by the name of “Deed”. That was the only name we ever knew him by. It turns out it was his nickname. After this all came up people started talking about a guy called “Chaikunpol” who I had assisted with immigration. I had absolutely no idea who they were talking about. It turned out that he was the same guy, Deed, who had worked on our properties. INVESTIGATE: Yeah, I think I recall from the Ingram report there was confusion among investigators too, because he had this alias, ‘Somdaet’, which I presume is where ‘Deed’ or ‘Daet’ comes in. FIELD: There were only two Thai people that I ever had some arrangement or understanding to do some work for me. The first one was Sompong, and that’s because somewhere I ended up with a card in my pocket and I contacted him. His wife, admittedly, came in because of a situation. But that couple, because they lived up the road, became friendly with Maxine. And because of that friendship they asked Maxine – they needed to go to the Thai embassy in Wellington. That’s why we talked about going to Wellington. It was mainly an arrangement between Maxine and them, and I sort of came in and showed them around Parliament. That’s all it was. There was no plan to go down and do anything. They may have said ‘well, you know, we’ll come and do things for you, help you for the weekend or whatever, trimming trees’ or something like that. INVESTIGATE: Just to get the chronology right on this, the issues where you have subsequently gone out and hired these people, have been well after the events in question where you actually assisted them? FIELD: From that trip to Wellington, that couple that initially went down, they enjoyed themselves so much that the time after that they came to us and said, ‘We’d like to come down to Wellington. We told our friends about it and they’d like to come down too.’ So that’s how that came about. Again that was an arrangement between Maxine and them. Because most of the time I was down in Wellington for Parliament. So we had no idea, all we knew was there were some Thai people who had asked Maxine to come down. There may have been some talk about, ‘Oh, we’re going to do some work there for the weekend’, we had another Samoan couple, and we may have talked about ‘We’re just going to do some work down there for the house, maybe mow the lawns, trim the trees’. That’s what we did, hired a bin. That’s what we’d do whether they were there or not. INVESTIGATE: But just to bring this back in focus, their immigration issues had already been dealt with? FIELD: Absolutely! INVESTIGATE: So this is long in the past? Because the Ingram FIELD: Long in the past. But the other thing is, I know some of these people may have been in my office – I only have a vague idea – but this is totally detached. I think the Ingram report talks about some of these people still having ongoing cases, and maybe they did but I wasn’t directly involved at that stage – they would have come to see Elizabeth in my office. As I mentioned in the case of Sompong’s wife, she had a situation arise and needed to go to the Thai embassy, but these things were generally historical.

“Jinda was a leading figure in the Thai branch of the Labour party, and she had better English than the others. So mostly I would call her, I wouldn’t know or care who she used, so she would organize someone and later pay them. So the suggestion of a link in bribery and corruption is an absolute nonsense” There were times when they came back to see my secretary – I didn’t see them – but they’d come back to follow up. This was something of Maxine’s as a friend of these people. They all wanted to be part of our organization. Maxine signed them up as members of the Labour Party and started a Thai branch. This second trip down to Wellington with these Thai people, we didn’t know who was going to be turning up, we had no idea. We knew that Sompong, the couple that asked to come down, were coming down. We had no idea who was coming down, we had no idea how they were coming down, we had no idea how many were coming down. They just all turned up. So how do you link a bribe to that situation? INVESTIGATE: Well I asked the question because if these events preceded you giving assistance, then one could say these people had been required to do work for you before you assisted them. FIELD: That’s nonsense. INVESTIGATE: But you are saying this was the other way around, that they’d already been dealt with, they’d joined the Labour Party by this stage and this was more of a social occasion? FIELD: Yes. I’ll tell you something else. My brother came to

help with a skylight thing on a sundeck, and I’d asked him to come and help me, but the Thais there, they hopped on the roof and helped out, and now that’s been turned into a ‘bribe’. That’s just ridiculous! The other thing is that we trimmed the trees, the hedge, and they helped me load the branches up onto the bin, and now that’s also being counted as part of the ‘bribe’. And it’s ridiculous the way it’s being twisted. Everything was above board. The only two Thai people I had an arrangement with I said ‘Bring the bill and I’ll pay you’. As I pay all the other tradespeople. There are times I do visit and I meet some of these people who are doing that and I just presume they are part of that contract. On some occasions one of these people would request payment and I would write them out a cheque. INVESTIGATE: Well, how exactly did it work? You are saying you only had an arrangement with a couple, yet a number of others are being named as doing work for you? Was someone basically subcontracting these workers to you? FIELD: The initiation or the organization of the contract was always through either Sompong or Jinda. At no stage was there INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 33

any suggestion at all whatsoever of any link, relevance or connection between this work and the fact that I may have helped them at some point by way of an initial 10 – 15 minute meeting in my office or subsequent contact with my staff or our representation on their behalf to New Zealand Immigration Service or to the Ministers Office. All cases relating to that representation were purely made on whether that person’s circumstances had some merit for consideration under New Zealand immigration policy. Their name, what they looked like or their ethnicity was irrelevant. There was absolutely no linkage or relationship between the help I may have given them and their involvement as subcontractors or later contact with me at some point down the track. You have to remember that a large number of painters and plasterers in Auckland at this time were Thai. Jinda was a leading figure in the Thai branch of the Labour party, and she had better English than the others. She was very much an organizer. I would request her to do a job and she would turn around and get somebody else to actually do the work. As far as I was concerned, the deal was with her. The others really couldn’t talk English anyway. So mostly I would call her, I wouldn’t know or care who she used, so she would organize someone and later pay them. So the suggestion of a link in bribery and corruption is an absolute nonsense. I had no idea of what now is being suggested is cheap labour. All I know is that they would present the bill like any other tradespeople and I would pay them on the basis that their rate was fair and reasonable for the work that they did. I was frankly too busy in Parliament in Wellington and travelling the country on ministerial duties to worry about chasing some Thai person over their bill. There was no contract price. All I said to them was, ‘This house has to be rented,’ or ‘This house has to be sold’, ‘just repair whatever, can you do a touchup so that it is rentable or sellable’. That’s all I said to them. There was no contract price, it was really up to them to give me a bill when they’d finished. INVESTIGATE: In your accounts, do you have invoices from other tradespeople that show the amounts you paid are similar to what you paid the Thai people? FIELD: Well I have to make returns to Inland Revenue, so it’s all there. They present a bill. I’m too busy to sort of worry about bills. When bills come in, I pay them. Or they turn up, because I presume now when I think about it, they can’t write English, so they turn up and say ‘You owe us this’, sometimes they want a cash cheque, sometimes they want cash. One Sunday morning this girl Jinda [Thaivichit], her husband and I think her uncle might have been there, they came around and we had a discussion. This was while Maxine was getting ready to go back to Samoa to finish the project. The conversation was, ‘oh, why don’t we come for a holiday?’ This wasn’t our idea, it was Jinda’s idea to come to Samoa for a holiday. And Sam, her partner, says ‘what’s a good time to come?’ And Maxine says ‘Well, Independence is not too far, it’s only a week or so away. That would be a good time for you to come and see our culture’. Anyway, what came out with Jinda’s idea of a holiday in Samoa was, ‘If you pay half our airfares, or contribute to our airfares, and we come and stay in the accommodation, we’ll go for holiday and give Maxine a hand with the house.’ I said, ‘That’s fine with me’. It was just a casual comment and 34, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007

I said, ‘I’ve got no problem with that’. INVESTIGATE: And she had no immigration problems? FIELD: No, she was a [New Zealand] citizen. She was already a citizen. MAXINE FIELD: But you know, we were all part of the Labour Party. FIELD: We were all part of the Labour Party, so I just said, ‘I’ve got no problem with that’. If they want to go for a holiday, go for a holiday. But the suggestion was to go for a holiday and help Maxine with the house. So long as I contribute to the airfare and they have accommodation in it. I said ‘That’s fine’. When I said I had no problem with that, that’s where I left it. The rest of the arrangement was made with Maxine. INVESTIGATE: There are a lot of immigrants who’ve joined the Labour Party. FIELD: We had a hundred members of the Thai branch, signed up by my wife, and most of them turned up at my office over there on a working bee, a whole Saturday they worked there, and I didn’t know about it. How come they haven’t listed that as a bribe? MAXINE FIELD: They were part of our Labour LEC (Local Electorate Committee), Jinda and her uncle, they come to our meetings. These people looked up to me like a mother, it was like a family. FIELD: Friends and family. MAXINE FIELD: And we all made arrangements to go [to Samoa]. When it was the Ingram Inquiry, when I went to Ingram, I wanted to, I said ‘I have nothing to hide’, I wanted to tell him that of course these people came, but somehow I didn’t! That was my mistake at the time. Because my son said, ‘mum, you have nothing to hide, tell them that these people came’. That was my only mistake, is not to tell these people of how I took them there, how I took care of them, how I went everywhere in Samoa and how they stayed with me. That was my mistake. Now if I have to go up and explain that to the judge, I will! I felt at the time, this is all a set up. We thought at the time it was irrelevant. It’s their business if they [the Thais] wanted to go, especially Jinda’s uncle. They were looking forward to it, they wanted to take their gear, because – FIELD: He knew, he told Maxine, he’d heard about Thais in Samoa working on the Mormon temple, so he saw an opportunity to take his equipment and possibly get a contract over there. MAXINE FIELD: When we came out of the court the other day, I said to Taito, ‘I wish I could just go and sit in front of the judge and tell him my feelings. It was my being stupid and naïve and always saying ‘yes, yes, yes’ that has landed us in all this trouble. If I had gone along with my husband’s suggestion, his decision, nothing would have come. Going back to Ingram, I came home and I just hated myself. It was a nice interview but I hated myself, and that day I had to go and see the doctor, I wasn’t well. And I hated myself. If only I could just say to Ingram, ‘Yes, so? You would have done the same! If people had come and stayed at your house, they would offer to come and help. Because I was taking care of them, I was feeding, we gave them our best, my children and our family, we gave them our best. FIELD: The other thing in Maxine’s mind, because she’s raised this with me in regard to her answer to the Ingram Inquiry,

was that the interest at that time was actually Siriwan’s case, and the attitude at the time was why should we focus on these other Thai people who actually wanted to come for a holiday and help out with the house because Maxine was going to be over there. She didn’t see it as relevant. INVESTIGATE: And just so I’m getting the right picture here, these people had already been dealt with by immigration, they were members of the Labour Party by this stage? FIELD: They were friends. MAXINE FIELD: We’d do things, we’d sell raffle tickets together! FIELD: The other thing Maxine was confused about was they didn’t want to talk to Ingram. MAXINE FIELD: I hope you don’t mind me saying all this, because I’ve been wanting to say it for a long time. INVESTIGATE: The Ingram report couldn’t reach a decision on these particular Thai visitors because Ingram didn’t have the information despite the NZ Immigration Service having an ‘informant’, and there was some talk of conflicting evidence, that Maxine remembered you meeting the Thais over there at a restaurant, but you apparently couldn’t remember. What’s that about? FIELD: I’m trying to remember back a year and a half. I went back briefly for a Matai title and we were staying on the opposite side of the island. So we were going to the ceremony and back, and we stopped briefly at Afiamalu and then at a restaurant. I don’t really recall about Afiamalu, I certainly didn’t see any Thais working there but I do remember, in hindsight, actually meeting briefly some people at the restaurant on my way out to the airport. So I did, I think briefly, meet someone and I think we took some photographs at the restaurant. This informant, by the way – [NZIS Samoa office James]

Dalmer says he had an informant – but that informant was a top restaurateur who some other Samoan people had helped out the same way I helped out, because he didn’t want to go back to Thailand. So it’s not the first time, and it is still happening with other Asian people. But Dalmer engaged this gentleman and used him to gather – what’s interesting is that this gentleman now, after three and a half years in Samoa, after being turned down time and time again for his application, ends up now with a two year business permit and is now living in NZ in Papakura. It is interesting that this informant gets a business permit, and I know that he didn’t have a business and he didn’t have any money, because he asked Maxine if we could give him some money to start a business. It would be interesting to know how that person gets a business permit with no business and no money and who had been turned down three times earlier. He was given visitor’s visas by the NZ Immigration Service in Samoa, and the first thing he did was come to see Maxine for assistance when he got here. INVESTIGATE: Getting back to Ingram, well I was going to ask you, in regard to the Ingram Inquiry, what do you regret about that now? FIELD: Well the regret is, I should have been more forceful to try and encourage these people to cooperate. But they seemed to be vulnerable people. They seemed to be very afraid of the authorities, and I guess I was reluctant in relation to their desire not to be involved, I guess. So that’s the regret I have. The question was put to me about these people who went for a holiday in Samoa. And my reaction was really to minimize my responses to what I knew. The reality is I knew the fact that they went over there for a holiday, it was at their suggestion, but they also INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 35

said what Jinda suggested that if I paid the airfares for the holiday they would go and help Maxine with the house. So I should have been, perhaps I could have been more open with that. But I was responding to the way the questions were put to me, and what I said to Ingram when he put the question about what they did over there was ‘Well, I wasn’t there’. And that was sort of a factual answer. I wasn’t there, other than briefly crossing paths with them, so I can’t tell exactly what they did while they were over there. That is a regret. I should have expanded a bit more on what I knew about these people going for a holiday there and the suggestion of helping out Maxine. INVESTIGATE: Now given that the Police have worked so strongly with Williams in terms of their case being built around his allegations, does it surprise you that if Police are taking Williams at his word about you having an arrangement with the Minister – FIELD: Well that’s just absolute nonsense. INVESTIGATE: Yeah but, my question is does it surprise you that the police are not investigating the Minister if that is the claim. Wouldn’t you expect that? FIELD: Absolutely, because if I am reported to have said that, which to me is an absolute nonsense, yeah, they should ask the question, ‘Is there an arrangement between the Minister and Mr Field?’ Why would I actually say that to Mr Williams anyway? That’s a silly thing to say to anybody. What’s really sad, Ian, is things that were done with a clean heart, above board and really we were trying to help somebody in a desperate situation, have now been completely twisted. Things have been twisted, and turned into something that they never were. It’s just the lies, and the real concern is how people have told untruths – clearly with the design of malice, and that’s been accepted and swallowed by the authorities. INVESTIGATE: Just for the sake of context, people come to their local MPs deliberately in order to queue-jump, don’t they? FIELD: Some people, yes. They’ve gone to the agency or department and haven’t had satisfaction, so they see the MP as an option to forwarding their case. INVESTIGATE: Your exact role was, what – what did you do? FIELD: My concern is not really the individual. My real concern and focus is their circumstances. What they look like, whether they’re Asian, Maori, Pacific or European, really doesn’t come into it. I focus on their circumstances and see if we can help their case, whether there is something in the policy that can advance their case. That’s what I brief my secretary to draft the letters along those lines. They’re not my words. The circumstances and the notes I give, I give to my secretary because she’s there scribbling and Elizabeth will go away and draft a letter basically along those lines. She asks me and we have a discussion about whether it should go to NZIS, or whether it goes to the Minister because we’ve had no satisfaction with NZIS. And then she does that and if I am not available she scans my signature. And that’s probably an error in my operation, because sometimes it’s her wording but my scanned signature on it. INVESTIGATE: So you haven’t actually read the letter before it has been sent out? FIELD: She’s told me about, and I’ve said, yeah, that’s OK, and then she scans my signature, or she’s gone ahead because she knows the way I work. She sometimes lets letters go without 36, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007

even telling me. That’s because I’m all over the country, I’m in Wellington or overseas, and there’s things that have to be done urgently. So she does that because of the experience she has, she’s been with me a long time. I get people coming to me from outside my electorate. It’s partly culture and partly my Christian background. It’s embedded in us that you don’t turn people away who come to you looking for help. We have Pacific people who, because of their own difficulties with language, because of their own feeling more comfortable, come to someone they know can speak their language or knows their culture. We get Samoan people from all over Auckland, Hamilton, Tokoroa, even Wellington and Christchurch. Now that’s creating a whip for my own back because it is actually increasing my workload, quite significantly. But that’s the reason we do it. And this ‘lafo’ thing, people, may suggest that ‘that’s why he takes on people from across Auckland, just to get lafo’, that’s nonsense. But that’s the way we’ve worked for the last 14 years as an MP. I know there’s a need there and people come to me because of language and wanting to see a Pacific person as an MP. So that’s why we have a high volume of electoral work. Part of the reason we had problems with the other electorate secretary – who also brought up the lafo in the Sunday programme – is that volume of work. They resented that we were doing other MP’s work. INVESTIGATE: So a bit of politics behind that? FIELD: A bit of politics, yeah. And also the fact that I said to her she wasn’t honest with her hours and I told her to find another job. INVESTIGATE: Now just to clarify lafo, it’s like koha? FIELD: It’s exactly like koha. But it is an insult if you actually turn someone down. We get donations, we normally put it in the petty cash and my secretaries know that if somebody comes in desperate – a solo mother who doesn’t have food for her kids over the weekend – we give them some money to hold them over the weekend. That’s the sort of thing we use that money for. We use it for the odd, for whatever we need, as petty cash is used. INVESTIGATE: Is it receipted within the office? FIELD: It’s recorded. INVESTIGATE: Incoming and outgoing? FIELD: Yeah, but it’s very rare. It’s very rare. The way it’s been painted in the media– INVESTIGATE: – A palagi version would be that the person becomes a paid up member of the Labour Party and donates to the party in response for something – FIELD: If somebody gives us a koha for my campaign, then it goes to the campaign. If they give a koha for a cup of tea or your lunch, that’s where it goes. We’ve got affidavits, statements from people – we give generously! This is the thing about lafo, I would give about six or seven thousand dollars a year for helping families with funerals. When there’s a death of a significant person in our community, we have a Samoan custom of si’i. We give fine mats and we give – I’ll give you an example. Ingram talked in his draft report about being concerned about a Minister of the Crown receiving an envelope with a hundred dollars in it, and I wasn’t even there. MAXINE FIELD: That was when he asked me, and I told him innocently, and he went and made a big thing out of it! FIELD: My wife was asked to go and sit at the front table with

the church ministers after the burial of a prominent church minister, and they gave a fine mat to all the church ministers and an envelope. And that was lafo. INVESTIGATE: Is that any different from David Lange getting a jewel encrusted dagger worth $10,000? FIELD: Exactly! But Ingram raised an issue in his report that he was concerned a Minister of the Crown received a hundred dollars from the community. And that was because Maxine told him about the situation. What he failed to say, was that three days earlier we had a collection from the Labour Party because of our involvement with that gentleman. I personally contributed half to that, which was a thousand dollars. I think they raised $700 or close to another $1000 from the LEC, and we gave the family $1,800 to $2,000 then, three days earlier, along with a large fine mat probably worth another $1,000. That was never mentioned. So one side of the coin has been told, that this Minister of the Crown received $100 koha or lafo, and he’s concerned about him receiving that sort of money from the community, without saying what I told him – three days earlier out of my own pocket was a $1,000 contribution to the family. INVESTIGATE: Did you mention this to Ingram? MAXINE FIELD: Yes I did. INVESTIGATE: And the $100 that came in would have gone straight back into petty cash and receipted? MAXINE FIELD: Yes, in the envelope. FIELD: With lafo, if it is given specifically for you, it is for you personally. That’s part of our open culture. Now what he was saying was a concern about me receiving it publicly as a Minister of the Crown – I wasn’t being given it as a Minister of the Crown, I was actually being given it because of Samoan culture. MAXINE FIELD: Every time we get some money like that, either we give it back to the church, or we give it to someone in need, we do that all the time. FIELD: A family came and wanted to pay us a tribute in the Samoan cultural way, so they presented a fine mat and wanted to give $500, and I said to them, ‘I will only accept this on the basis that you know that this will be contributed to the church’, so they gave it on that basis. Another example, a girl turned up, she was in tears and her mother had just come out of hospital. She was top of her class here in Auckland and recommended to go to the music faculty in Dunedin. She had applied for a student loan, it was due a few weeks later, there was a deadline to meet, she had to fly out a couple of days later. The only way out was to pay her airfare and give her enough for accommodation until her student loan came through. I saw her exam results, she was a top notch music student. She deserved to go because of her circumstances. I said to her ‘we’ll cover your airfare and give you something for accommodation’. I went down, got the money out of the machine, gave her $600. And she wrote and thanked us when all this thing about lafo – I was trying to illustrate, as an MP, we only on rare occasions get a $50 donation, or $10 or $20 for lunch. We try and record all that and put it into petty cash for good use, but that is insignificant because it only happens on a rare occasion. But if you look at what we contribute, it’s just ridiculous the way it’s been painted in the media. INVESTIGATE: To those in the media, politics and obviously

“[ Sunan ] was fearful. He made it clear, right from the beginning in my office, that he didn’t want to go back to Thailand, and I thought that’s maybe why he applied for refugee status, some fear of persecution. Later on, much later on, we found out that he had another wife and two children” those who’ve made allegations that you are corrupt, what’s your response to that? FIELD: That is absolute nonsense. There is no bribery – never has been. There is no corruption – never has been. What they try and paint as corrupt, in terms of things like lafo, is actually a cultural practice that happens every day in our community. The thing with the Asian workers was above board, totally unrelated to things that had happened long after we’d helped people with immigration. And we treat Asian people like any other person who comes for help. We don’t question what they do for us, we just help 50 to a hundred people that come to my session outright. That’s my job, that’s what I do. There is INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 37

no way, in my 14 or 15 years have I ever asked, suggested or requested that they do anything in return for the help that I give them. That is the honest truth. We’re all human beings, and I have a wife who has been friendly and compassionate with other people in the community, and the Asian people saw her as somebody that was sympathetic to them, supportive of them, and because it was election year she wanted to start a Thai branch because of her relationship with some of these people. And that’s all it was. Because what they do is renovating houses, and because they’re part of my organization and our friendship with these people, they offered their services to do certain jobs. They weren’t major painting or plastering jobs. But we treated them like any other tradespeople. We gave them a job on the expectation that they would present a bill, and we’d pay for it. They did that. They actually presented bills and we paid for them. Cheap labour? The suggestion of cheap labour is nonsense. Certainly I wasn’t aware of any cheap labour. They never said to me, ‘I’m going to do this cheaply for you because you helped me’. There was never any knowledge of that. I don’t go around checking how many coats of paint they did, or how many hours they did. All I got, I said to Jinda, was an assessment of what I should pay for the work that had been done, and she presented that and I paid it. And then of course we needed some evidence, and I said ‘you need to present me with a receipt or something to prove that I’ve paid you that money’. And that’s like everybody else in New Zealand, if you pay something you expect some evidence of payment, and that’s all I asked. INVESTIGATE: Why do you think these people have turned against you? FIELD: Well I’m not sure that they have. They are people who are fearful of their immigration status. I think they are easily intimidated. I’ve been told by my sources that in fact they’ve been interrogated, some of them, up to eight hours without any food or water, that they haven’t been offered any legal counsel, they’ve been manhandled and their houses have been raided. Money has been taken off them. There’s a language problem as well. Were they given proper translators, or was it a police officer who maybe speaks Thai that took what version – I’m concerned also at the way evidence and witnesses can be manipulated, and the evidence doctored, so that is a concern. The other point to make is that these people are all part of the same group. They are all friends and they move as a group – they move like reef fish. INVESTIGATE: Williams told us that he has receipts for building materials that he ordered here in Auckland to go across to Samoa, and that he wouldn’t have done that voluntarily off the top of his head and that it is a sign of an employment agreement. Your response to that? FIELD: I don’t know why he wanted to buy that stuff. He may have thought in his own mind that he was offering waterproofing, but certainly as I said before, he offered but the position was made clear that his services were not required. Clearly the stuff that they may have purchased I think maybe was for Mr Siriwan in terms of his tiling, but they never used it. The waterproofing stuff he took to Samoa was never used. This is the thing with Mr Williams: what he has created in his own mind may be of his own creation, because he was pushy 38, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007

about what he could help with, and I think as I said before he was trying to justify for his airfare. I think in his later statement he said that he had to do something because his airfare had been paid for. INVESTIGATE: But the public are going to say, heck, you’ve offered to put Sunan up in Samoa, and it’s costing you thousands of dollars to do that – you’ve covered Keith Williams’ airfare – surely you must have expected something in return? FIELD: As far as I was concerned, Sunan paid his own fare. That’s why I said to him, ‘you pay your own fare, leave the country, why should I pay for your fare?’ We already had, or Faatasiga had already arranged, a tiler organized for the job over there, and tiles ordered. Now as it turned out, and I didn’t know this until later, the original tiler didn’t end up doing the job because Sunan volunteered and stepped in and did it. But the point is, it’s not as if we needed a tiler. The whole focus was helping this man get out of the country. We’re not stupid, we know that of course if somebody is going to be looked after in Samoa, you know, it’s like going to any country – if I was in a desperate situation and I was going to another country, and a family was kind enough and generous enough to look after me, and the family had something going, like cutting the trees in the backyard, and I’ve been fed and I’m getting a bed and a roof over my head, and I’m sitting there in the backyard while I’m watching the family cutting the trees down, of course we’re all human beings! We know, we expect that this person who we’re looking after and showing kindness to, may come and pick up a branch and put it in the flipping rubbish bin! You know what I’m saying? We know that Siriwan was there, being shown kindness. We’re being kind because Maxine felt for him, crying and distraught over the deportation of his wife and child, and had to get out of the country. He was fearful of going back to Thailand, he wanted to go anywhere else except Thailand. Of course we may be aware that or may even think in our minds, ok, he may help out with something. But that’s not an employment agreement! You’ve got to remember, at the time he went up to Samoa, the house was nowhere near ready for tiling. There was no work that needed doing when he got there. I think Keith Williams was the one who felt guilty and insisted on working because I’d paid his airfare, but then it all went bad when the car crash happened and he had to pay the bill. When you look at his letter to the Prime Minister before the election, you can see it is mainly about wanting me to pay his car crash bill. The other thing to make clear is that Sunan wanted to impress my family, because he wanted his wife and child to be brought from Thailand. INVESTIGATE: You say you spent about 45,000 tala (approx NZ$25,000) on Sunan Siriwan. Sunan told the Sunday programme his tiling was worth $25,000 for, what was it, 460 sq metres of tiling. Was he valuing his work based on New Zealand labour rates, or were tilers paid NZ$54 per metre for tiling in Samoa? I note the Ingram inquiry estimated between 20 and 30 tala per metre (NZ$11 to NZ$17) as the value. FIELD: We’ve got some quotes, the latest quote we’ve got is from one of the top tilers in Samoa doing the stadium, and I think his rate was 17 tala (NZ$9) per square metre. Sunan was charging other customers in Samoa 15 tala per square metre.

INVESTIGATE: In terms of your wider vision, given that you are currently fighting to save your political career, what are your aspirations for the future, and for NZ? FIELD: My aspirations for NZ are really to have a political vehicle that is going to stand for the values of the Pacific community that is prominently populated in my electorate of Mangere, and a lot of other people in Mangere are Christian people. That those Christian values and godly values, family values, are properly represented in a political vehicle that stands for those things. That to me is really my aspiration, to be part of a party that will truly represent those values in parliament, but also deliver on important issues of social justice, protection and rights of workers – as I’ve always been committed to. I feel that I have contributed to the needs of my community, to the needs of my electorate in Mangere, particularly low income people who continually come in great numbers to see me, so I want to continue that work and to represent them in parliament. I think we have enormous potential for the Pacific community and good leadership, I’m just really saddened that what has been done, from my point of view, quite innocently, has now been twisted into something that it never was. And I hope to clear my name and the truth comes out, so that people

throughout New Zealand can understand that there are areas where perhaps we did not envisage how things could be twisted, how things could be perceived wrongly, that could have been avoided if we were sort of aware of the scenarios where they’d come from. Some people might say that’s errors of judgment. Ingram never suggested there were major errors of judgment. I think other politicians suggested there were errors of judgment, but my belief is that I made the judgment based on people who came to me for help. INVESTIGATE: Given that, what would you do differently if anything? FIELD: What I would do is certainly be aware of a relationship – or how things can be misconstrued in terms of friendship, between people who have come to me for help, and particularly relationships that my wife may have developed with people in the electorate and community because of her desire to organize politically, because it was election year, it was her desire to maximize the vote for Labour in the electorate, and therefore starting a Thai branch was a good idea, and that was born out of those relationships. You asked what we would do differently. I would say, yeah, we INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 39

have to be aware. I’ve been a Member of Parliament for 14 years now, and we’ve never had this problem. We’ve operated best we can to be effective in that representation and helping people with their social issues and problems. Immigration, unfortunately, because of Pacific and Asian people, is a prominent issue with the people of this area and the people of Auckland. We have a very high diversity of these people in Auckland and they looked to me as somebody that could understand their circumstances and situation and actually help them. INVESTIGATE: And just returning to that ‘errors of judgment’ thing. Most of the media reports I’ve seen say the Ingram inquiry found you guilty of ‘errors of judgment’. You say it didn’t? FIELD: I invite every journalist reading this to do a text search on the Ingram report for the phrase ‘error of judgment’. It isn’t there. It actually is not there. The only time Mr Ingram even uses the word ‘judgment’ was in regard to one specific allegation that he ruled was unfounded. He certainly doesn’t say I made errors of judgment. Every journalist who has written that Mr Ingram found me guilty of that should hang their own head in shame, for not doing their job properly. INVESTIGATE: Why now? Why are you speaking out now? FIELD: I’m speaking out now because I think it has reached a point where it is really serious. The Ingram report I agreed to, on the basis it was nine days, and it was about conflict of interest – about my ministerial responsibility – and I knew that it had nothing to do with ministerial and everything to do with electorate work as a Member of Parliament. The police investigation came out of the blue because of the Sunday programme, because of maybe a political decision that someone had made. And because I felt I had nothing to hide – I’d done nothing wrong – I felt the police investigation would come up with that, they would find the truth of the issues. But what I find now is that things have been twisted, people have probably been intimidated. I have a real concern about stuff that has been said through intimidation or through a twisting of the facts to support a particular belief in prosecution or charges. I don’t believe the investigation that’s been carried out seeks the truth. What appears to me is that actually they’re not interested in the truth, they’re more interested in finding things that support their prosecution intentions. Now that’s a problem with me, because if people investigating are not interested in finding the truth to get to the bottom of things, and all they’re after is stuff that can support their charges or prosecution, then that in itself, that approach, I have a real problem with. Because it’s not going to serve the interests of justice if in fact the truth is not being sought. Because justice surely must come from the truth of things. INVESTIGATE: The public are going to say, why haven’t you spoken up earlier? FIELD: I haven’t spoken up because initially the request came from the leadership of the Labour Party, that, ‘we’re in a campaign prior to an election and we don’t want to divert the focus of the public away from election issues to controversy over your case’. That’s why I didn’t speak out, that was the advice I was given. After the election it was then an inquiry by the QC, and the advice again was ‘you shouldn’t go public whilst there is a QC investigation into the matter.’ After the QC came out with his report we did respond to the report but only a short time later a police investigation was called. I was then asked ‘Look, could 40, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007

you take some time off while the police do this investigation?’ And so again I responded by complying because I’m a person who has loyalty to the political team I belong to. So I followed that advice. I felt there were times when I was being attacked in parliament and I responded by raising my point of view at the time, but primarily there was a long period of silence on my part because I was being asked – it’s not appropriate to speak out when in fact these things are being investigated anyway. In the meantime politicians and the media have been attacking all that time and denigrating, using these false statements, untruths by various people, to denigrate me. But now that things have developed to where they are now, it’s important I guess to put my side of the story, and that’s the truth of it. POSTSCRIPT: It is not often that Investigate revisits previous stories, but on this occasion several factors tipped the balance. Firstly, and probably most importantly as we indicated at the start, there remained unanswered questions, and Taito Field has not, until now, publicly responded in detail to the claims made by Keith Williams in the December Investigate. Secondly, as Herald columnist Jim Hopkins noted in September last year, the police did not decide to investigate Field until the MP openly defied the Prime Minister by refusing to vacate his Mangere seat (allowing a by-election that would have brought new blood into the Labour Party’s ailing parliamentary team). The police investigation was launched literally 24 hours after Field dug his heels in. Thirdly, Investigate (which as readers are aware has been investigating police corruption and whether some of it is political) has become aware that key police witnesses are claiming police have tried to bully them into signing statements that incriminate Field – statements the witnesses claim police drafted and which contain false information. One of those witnesses is Samoan builder Faatasiga Sulusulu, who alleges New Zealand Police have flown up to Samoa after last month’s court hearing to again try and get him to sign a statement that Field told him to lie – an allegation Faatasiga maintains simply is not true. In the case of at least one Thai witness, it is alleged police threatened to have his immigration status altered if he did not give the preferred answers to police questions. Bear in mind that these allegations have not yet been tested in court, but if claims that police have tried to intimidate witnesses are correct, then they raise grave concerns about the integrity of the police investigation, let alone the cost to the taxpayer of bankrolling it and the likely appeals. There are also oddities, like the affidavit of Sunan Siriwan sworn late last year as the police investigation commenced, which alleges, “Taito said in Dorothy’s house… ‘Sunan, you must say to the police from New Zealand that you did no work at Taito’s home and you have not done tiling at Taito’s house… You must tell the police from New Zealand that you never saw Taito at his home’.” This seems an oddity, given that it had long been admitted and published in the Ingram report that Sunan did tiling work at Field’s house. The idea of Field suddenly urging Sunan to deny a matter of public record does not appear credible on its face. For all of these reasons, then, we believe publishing our exclusive interview with Taito Phillip Field this month is of overriding public interest in the widest possible sense of the words.

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Disrespect

NZ Mosques Flexing Muscles In Support Of Radical Agenda Prime Minister Helen Clark’s ‘Alliance of Civilisations’ project is getting a helping hand from disgraced British socialist MP George Galloway, due here shortly to address a series of public meetings to promote Western tolerance of radical Islam. IAN WISHART backgrounds the visit

hen ‘Respect’ Party MP George Galloway touches down in Auckland in late July, he’ll be hoping to get some – respect, that is – courtesy of New Zealand’s socialist and communist parties. The “Neo-Com” socialist coalition, exposed by Investigate earlier this year as providing a smokescreen for the spread of radical Islam in New Zealand, expressly invited Galloway here in what may turn out to be another backfiring PR stunt – hard on the heels of their embarrassment in the June issue of Investigate. The rise of the neo-communists hit the headlines just after Investigate revealed some of Islam’s leading preachers of hate and groups affiliated with terrorist organisations have been touring New Zealand running training camps and seminars for Muslim youth for the past seven years, without the Government or security agencies realizing. The Neo-Coms, sheltering behind the more innocuous title, Residents Action Movement (RAM), came out hissing in the wake of our exposé, attacking what they called the magazine’s ‘Islamophobia’ and repeating the mantra that “Islam is a religion of peace”. Now, only weeks after the abortive terror attacks in Britain carried out by foreign medical doctors, RAM has again swung into action in another desperate attempt to distract the public from the rise of radical Islam. The group has organized a series of public meetings – called “Voices of Peace” – in a bid to upstage what was – until now – a low profile tour by Australian Baptist preacher Stuart Robinson. Why target the little-known Robinson? According to a RAM email obtained by Investigate, it’s because Robinson is the author of a book, Mosques & Miracles, which catalogues the rise of fundamentalist Islam across the world and what it means for the West. More to the point, Robinson is

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conducting seminars based on his book, in Christchurch on 23 July, Wellington on 25 July and Auckland on 27 July, with an agenda laid out at http://www.meco.zuyouth.com/. For the record, details of the RAM rallies can be found at www.shahabnz.com. In the RAM email, Socialist Worker affiliate Grant Morgan writes: “RAM (Residents Action Movement) has taken a firm stand against these first stirrings of organised Islamophobia in New Zealand. With the blessing of an extremely broad spectrum of Muslim groups, along with many other faith and community leaders, RAM is organising Voices of Peace meetings in Auckland as a positive alternative to the fear, suspicion and hatred being spread by organisers of the “Mosques & Miracles” conferences. Our Voices of Peace meetings will be held around the same time as the “Mosques & Miracles” conferences (end of July).” As Investigate reported in June, RAM is the NZ political wing of the socialist and communist fringes, and is a sister organization to the Socialist Worker Party in Britain, which is where George Galloway comes in. Formerly an MP in Tony Blair’s Labour Party, Galloway was booted out in late 2003 for being overly critical of Britain’s support for the Iraq invasion. A loud and brash Scot with a neversay-die attitude, Galloway formed ‘Respect’ – a new left-wing political party (supported by Socialist Worker) and is now that party’s only MP. Publicly, Galloway had long been a champion of how Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime was standing up to the West, but until recently most people were not aware of damning allegations suggesting Galloway – or at least the charity he ran – had been bribed by the Iraqi government to stir up anti-war sentiment in Britain. With a prominent role in the “Stop The War Coalition” – the Socialist Worker Party front group behind massive ‘peace’ protests in Britain and affiliated to ‘peace’ groups here as well – Galloway has been well placed to influence large numbers of people. But his reputation came crashing down to earth two years

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ago, with the publication of a United Nations report on the Iraqi Oil for Food scandal, which named the British MP as part of a complex Iraqi plot to defraud the UN, enrich Saddam Hussein and deprive starving Iraqi children of food. All of which was ironic, given that Galloway had set up a charity, The Mariam Appeal, specifically to draw attention to the plight of starving Iraqi children. In a document published on Christopher Hitchens’ US website, researcher Michael Weiss outlines how the programme worked: “The program was initially designed as a conduit for humanitarian aid for the people of Iraq, and also as a partial compensation package for Kuwait, following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of the country in 1991. It accorded the Ba’athist regime the means, in light of the UN sanctions, to feed and provide medicine for an immiserated Iraqi populace, using revenue drawn from regulated national sales of petroleum. “However, shortly after the Oil For Food program’s implementation, the regime hit upon a clever way of exploiting it with a resulting trifecta of benefits to itself: 1. It would reap an illicit profit from oil sales (which went toward, among other things, building Saddam and his sons a palace in each of the 18 provinces of Iraq); 2. It would suborn and bribe powerful foreign flatterers and political supporters, effectively placing them in the regime’s employ; 3. It would covertly agitate against the very sanctions that had precipitated the Oil For Food program in the first place. “According to [another] report produced by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, ‘The plan was simple: rather than granting allocations to traditional oil purchasers, Iraq gave priority to foreign officials, journalists, and even terrorist entities.’ “The prerequisite for being considered as a grantee was an open and consistent record of opposition to the U.N. sanctions, and favorable speech or conduct toward the regime of Saddam Hussein.” Galloway had once been a harsh critic of Hussein, but his tone changed in the 1990s, around the time the Oil for Food rort was in full swing. He established the Mariam Appeal in

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1998, donations to which funded Galloway on a double-decker bus tour of ten countries between 1999 and 2002 where he loudly campaigned “against sanctions in Iraq”. The Appeal, named after a little Iraqi girl who needed medical care, also paid for Galloway’s trips to Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Iraq, Hungary, Belgium, the United States and Romania to push the same theme. When the United Nations and other agencies, like Britain’s Charity Commission, tried to investigate George Galloway’s ‘charity’, the UN panel reports they struck a mysterious lack of documents: “According to Mr Galloway, the Mariam Appeal records were sent to Amman [Jordan] and Baghdad in 2001 and could not be located.” Not to be outdone, authorities pieced together the moneyflows through Mariam with the assistance of banks and foreign exchange transaction records. “Following its establishment in 1998, the Mariam Appeal received three large donations totaling over £1 million,” reported UN investigators, “including £500,000 from the United Arab Emirates, over £100,000 from Saudi Arabia, and at least £434,000 from Mr Zureikat.” Fawaz Abdullah Zureikat was Galloway’s ‘partner in crime’ – a Jordanian businessman who’d helped the British MP set up Mariam, and who is named in documents published by the United Nations and the US Senate – in two separate reports – as being jointly implicated in the Oil for Food bribery scandal. The way it all worked appears quite simple. Under the rort, Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organisation (SOMO) initially granted favoured outsiders an allocation of X-million barrels of oil. It is important to note that this was not an allocation of actual oil, merely an option to buy and sell that many barrels of oil. The outsiders – those aforementioned leading lights of pro-Iraqi sentiment in the West – would then be approached by real buyers of the oil, who would pick up the allocations under the UN Oil for Food programme. The middlemen – people like Galloway’s partner Fawaz Zureikat – would pocket a maximum commission on the deal of around US$0.30 (thirty cents) a barrel. In return for this, however, they were required to pay ‘surcharges’ – or kickbacks – to the Iraqi regime. This was how the regime was able to siphon billions of dollars into Saddam Hussein’s black projects, courtesy of the United Nations. According to UN estimates, US$69.5 billion worth of Iraqi oil

was exported under the Oil For Food programme during its seven year run. Of this, around $30 billion was officially unaccounted for. Galloway, in a much publicized confrontation before the Senate Inquiry in Washington two years ago, thundered “I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one – and neither has anyone on my behalf”. This, along with a blistering attack on US President George Bush, gave Galloway a PR coup by making it appear the investigators had got it wrong. But as journalist Christopher Hitchens has noted, Galloway was telling the truth. Because the oil allocations were simply paper entitlement certificates to a future allocation to be shipped directly to a third party, Galloway never needed to see, own, buy or sell an actual barrel of oil himself. Hitchens compares it to the commission earned by a real estate agent, who gets paid a portion of the value of your house, even though at no stage does the agent actually own your house. Back to the Mariam Appeal, however. Of the £1 million it was given, only a touch over £100,000 was spent on medical treatment for little Mariam Hamza – the girl with leukaemia it was set up to help. After her treatment was paid for, the charity was supposed to send the princely sum of £65 a month to help her family out, but George Galloway’s organization was not always prompt with the payments, as this April 2003 report in Britain’s Telegraph newspaper reveals: “The father of Mariam Hamza, the 11-year-old Iraqi leukaemia victim championed by George Galloway, said yesterday that he was worried his daughter’s life was in danger because funds promised by the Scottish MP’s Mariam Appeal had failed to arrive. Hamza Abd Mittab said that the monthly allowance of £65 that the family of seven has received for three years from the appeal, to pay for Mariam’s food and travel expenses, had last been paid in January. Speaking at the family home in Baghdad yesterday, he said: “Mariam’s drugs are almost finished now and my daughter will die if she doesn’t receive assistance.” Additionally, the family was behind on its rent as a result and being threatened with eviction. Galloway’s charity, however, had bigger expenses on its mind than a £65 allowance for a leukaemia victim. Again, from the Telegraph: “The appeal was set up in 1998 to raise £100,000 to treat Mariam. Mr Galloway said at the time: “The balance after Mariam’s hospital bills have been paid will be sent as medicine and medical supplies to the children she had to leave behind.” “But he now admits that, after spending £100,000 on treating Mariam, the fund spent £200,000 on a Big Ben-to-Baghdad

double-decker bus publicity trip and £60,000 on a sanctionsbusting flight to Baghdad. “London offices accounted for £125,000 while £300,000 was spent on wages.” Those “wages” also included £18,000 paid to George Galloway’s wife, ostensibly to “look after” Mariam’s interests. Galloway admitted that £860,000 in total had been spent on administrative and PR expenses. In other words, the vast bulk of the funds, almost 90%, did not go to help little Iraqi children as promised, but instead provided a cash cow for Galloway to ride the world stage as a strident critic of US and British policy in the Middle East. So what did the people who donated money to the Mariam Appeal think of all this? Well, that’s where the Oil for Food scandal comes in, because it appears the Mariam Appeal was only ever a smokescreen for Galloway’s pro-Iraqi agenda. Galloway’s close associate, Fawaz Zureikat, is listed as donating £400,000 to the Mariam Appeal. But the documents in the UN investigation and the US Senate Inquiry report make it clear that Zureikat and Galloway were allocated options for 18 million barrels of oil, of which Zureikat appears to have collected the bribery commissions on Galloway’s behalf. Zureikat appears to have then “donated” the money to Galloway’s charity which, as you’ve seen, turned out to be a slush-fund to support Galloway’s flagging political career and advance the agenda of both socialism and radical Islam in the West. How radical? Galloway’s Respect political party is dominated by two key groups – firstly, the political Left: the Socialist Workers Party, The Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee) [CPGB], The International Socialist Group, The Socialist Unity Network, Socialist Resistance, and The Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) [RCPB(ML)]. Secondly, fundamentalist Muslims: The Muslim Association of Britain, and the Muslim Council of Britain. On the face of it, both Islamic groups claim they are peaceful and moderate. The MAB for example, lists its aim to “promote and propagate the principles of positive Muslim interaction with all elements of society to reflect, project and convey the message of Islam in its pure and unblemished form”. But like many assurances from ‘The Religion of Peace’, things are not always what they seem. The MAB has tried to prevent the prosecution of a ‘moderate’ Muslim who set up a website urging Muslims to kill Westerners. And as the Daily Mail reported last year: “Despite promoting itself as the ‘moderate’ voice of Islam, the Muslim Association of Britain includes a former military commander of Hamas, the Palestinian organisation behind dozens of suicide bombings in Israel. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 45

“The Association has also been described in Parliament as the British wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, the banned Egyptian group whose former members include Osama Bin Laden.” British government MP, Louise Ellman, has also warned about the radical aims of the so called “moderates”: “They are an extremely dangerous organisation,” Ellman told the Daily Mail. “Leading members of MAB have indicated their links with Hamas and their support for suicide bombings abroad. It is not tenable for a group to support suicide bombings in another country while expecting to be seen as moderate in this country.” The Muslim Council of Britain, likewise, featured in Investigate’s March 07 article on the spread of radical Islam into New Zealand, after the magazine revealed leading hate clerics – some of them endorsed by the Muslim Council – had been invited to New Zealand by the Federation of Islamic Associations of NZ, FIANZ. It is noteworthy that FIANZ president Javed Khan is listed as one of those endorsing George Galloway’s visit in the RAM email leaked to Investigate. Muslim Association of Britain leader Anas al-Tikriti is a high-ranking candidate on Respect’s list. He is also the son of Osama al-Tikriti, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Iraq – the ‘al-Tikriti’ name indicating he hails from Saddam Hussein’s home territory. Here in New Zealand, the Socialist Worker organization is effectively a political glove-puppet of its London head office – the same London organization whose political wing George Galloway fronts. In New Zealand, as in Britain, the tactics are the same: make a big song and dance about inclusiveness, tolerance and peace, whilst supporting the growing introduction of radical Islam and describing as “Islamophobic” or “racist” any New Zealanders who challenge them. In their leaked email, highlighting what they hate about the Mosques and Miracles conferences, RAM spokesman Grant Morgan highlights examples of what he calls Christian racism in Stuart Robinson’s book, such as this: “Islam is on the march and it has reached well within the borders of all Western nations…”

Morgan then writes: “We do not want this sort of racist bigotry taking hold in New Zealand because the outcome then would be nasty intercommunal conflict. We have a duty to make a united stand for social inclusion, justice for all and full rights for every religious believer (and non-believer).” And yet, here is the kind of hate-speech that RAM endorses and says New Zealanders should be forced to tolerate: “The clash of civilizations is a reality. Western culture led by the United States is an enemy of Islam.” This comment was made by Bilal Philips, the invited guest of the Federation of Islamic Associations in New Zealand. Hypocrisy on the part of Socialist Worker, RAM, Grant Morgan and George Galloway? You be the judge. Another example of what RAM claims is Christian hate speech and exaggeration: “The threat to the American way of life does not come from some militarily inferior cluster of far off powers. It comes from within... If the present trend continues it could well be that one day the stars and stripes may be replaced by the crescent moon.” Morgan mocks warnings like that, calling them “a very worrying development in this country”, and expressing faux outrage at “the first stirrings of an orchestrated campaign” against Islam in New Zealand. And yet, author Stuart Robinson is right – because here’s what another invited Islamic preacher of hate to New Zealand told one international audience: “If only Muslims were more clever politically,” Siraj Wahhaj told his listeners, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate. “If we were united and strong, we’d elect our own Emir [leader] and give allegiance to him…Take my word, if 6-8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us.” When Investigate reported these comments in March, RAM and the socialist party lashed out at Investigate and told the magazine and its readers to effectively ‘get with the tolerance programme’. So why does RAM attack people who blow the whistle on Islamic radicalism, but doesn’t want the New Zealand media

THE CASE AGAINST GALLOWAY

The United Nations Investigation (final report, Oct 21 2005) “Iraqi officials…stated that Mr Zureikat negotiated both his own oil contracts at SOMO as well as those for the benefit of Mr Galloway’s campaign. According to Iraqi officials, during some of his visits to SOMO to deal with oil contracts, Mr Zureikat discussed the activities of the Mariam Appeal and repeated on more than one occasion that the oil allocated to Mr Galloway was being used to support the activities of the Mariam Appeal or that the allocations were for ‘George’.” “11 million barrels of oil were allocated directly to ‘Mr Galloway’ and classified as ‘United Kingdom’ allocations and seven million barrels of oil were allocated to ‘Fawaz Zureikat’, also classified as ‘United Kingdom’ allocations or noted specifically as allocations for the Mariam Appeal. “Separately, Mr Zureikat was allocated a total of five million barrels of oil, classified as ‘Jordan’ allocations…Iraqi officials have confirmed that Mr Zureikat’s allocations classified as ‘United Kingdom’ were intended to benefit Mr Galloway’s anti-sanctions campaign…”

(most documents accessible via www.thebriefingroom.com) The US Senate Investigation (final report Oct 31 2005): 1. Galloway personally solicited and was granted oil allocations from the Government of Iraq during the reign of Saddam Hussein. The Hussein regime granted Galloway and the Mariam Appeal eight allocations totaling 23 million barrels from 1999 through 2003; 2. Galloway’s wife, Dr. Amineh Abu-Zayyad, received approximately US$150,000 in connection with one of those oil allocations; 3. Galloway’s political campaign, the Mariam Appeal, received at least US$446,000 in connection with the oil allocations granted to Galloway and the Mariam Appeal under the Oil-for-Food Program; 4. The Hussein regime received improper “surcharge” payments amounting to US$1,642,000.65 in connection with the oil allocations granted to Galloway andthe Mariam Appeal; and 5. Galloway knowingly made false or misleading statements under oath before the Subcommittee at its hearing on May 17, 2005;

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TOP: The blue dots signify a bank transfer of US$149,980 into the account of George Galloway’s wife, Amina Abu Zayyad, from Fawaz Zureikat – the funds allegedly a payment from the Saddam Hussein government. RIGHT: The big question: has one of the icons of the peace movement ever taken a bribe from Saddam Hussein, either in oil allocation commissions or monies paid to his ‘charity’? When Galloway met Hussein in 1994, Galloway told the Iraqi dictator: “I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability. And I want you to know that we are with you until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem.” – a comment interpreted as an endorsement of the Islamic desire to erase Israel from the map.

or the public to report or read any of these dodgy comments from Islamic leaders who preach in local mosques? Quite possibly because of the political and financial ties between radical Islam and Socialist Worker’s parent organization in Britain. One of the leading figures in Galloway’s Respect party, and its biggest single donor, Dr Mohammed Naseem – is also a senior official of the Islamic Party of Britain, which has called for the execution of homosexuals. Naseem provided a full onethird of the total election campaign funding for Respect, leading gay rights groups in Britain to ask whether Galloway had sold out to radical Islam: “Respect not only takes money from people involved in far right Islamist groups that want to ban gay organisations and kill lesbians and gays, it puts these people on its national council and makes them parliamentary candidates,” complained OutRage’s Peter Tatchell two years ago. Ironically, even some moderate Muslims are now distancing themselves from Respect and Socialist Worker – people like a British city councilor Waiseul Islam who quit Respect earlier this year to rejoin Labour, blaming Respect’s insidious way of “dividing” communities. “I have been more and more frustrated with Respect which offers little in the way of policies, direction or service to the local community in Tower Hamlets, which is the real reason why I entered politics. I reject the notion of dividing the local community for political gain, which is what I believe Respect are effectively doing.”

“In hindsight, my move to the Respect Party was a major error in my judgment and if I had the insight into Respect that I do now, it is not something that would have happened. “Respect is not a party that can deliver, especially when its elected MP is hardly visible in his constituency, leaving those who voted for him neglected. He has time to attend television shows and present radio shows but not to turn up to his surgery and meet his constituents. I believe this is wrong.” Ouch. And of course, Galloway presumably won’t be handling his electorate surgery whilst he’s down here in New Zealand drumming up opposition to the Mosques & Miracles conferences. “George Galloway has accepted RAM’s invitation to speak at our Voices of Peace meetings,” writes RAM’s Grant Morgan in the leaked email. “This is the British Respect MP who visited America several years ago to put US president George Bush “on trial” for war crimes in front of the US Congress. George Galloway is one of the world’s most powerful speakers for social justice and against the US war in Iraq and its terrible consequences, like the global spread of Islamophobia. He will attract huge media interest here in New Zealand and probably overseas too.” Not that Galloway is any stranger to media interest, especially after his stint on Celebrity Big Brother in the UK where he dressed in a lycra bodysuit to dance with cross-dressing singer Pete Burns, or his piece de resistance – pretending to be a cat, lapping milk from a saucer held by actress Rula Lenska and purring loudly as part of his role-playing. “NO RESPECT!” bawled one newspaper headline. “The sound of a career dying,” suggested another, dryly. Just how much ‘respect’ the daily media pay Galloway when he visits – given his background – remains to be seen. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 47

A Parent’s

Right

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The reform of Australiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Child Support system has raised the question of what parenting really means, once the family unit has broken down â&#x20AC;&#x201C; an issue resonating on both sides of the Tasman. Melody Towns reports

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 49

his is not the voice of a man who needs therapy, or the words of a father who is not stable enough to look after his children. These are not words of aggression instead they are words of love. Words from a father whose children will say he has always been a great dad, but sadly, even the words of his children didn’t seem to count for much in the eyes of the Australian Child Support Agency only a few years ago, when his children were swapped for a pay-cheque to his ex-wife. “The Child Support Agency has been a law unto its own”, he says, “It has always had its own judicial powers, and what my wife says has always been what’s accepted unless I decide to go down the difficult process of seeking a higher authority. Now that it’s changed, lets hope it’s a good thing, but for me, my close relationship with my children ended once the agency chose to see me as only an income and not a father”. Showing me a letter he wrote his child not long after the separation from his wife, this father had written, “Thank you love for letting me stay at your place this week, it breaks my heart that this has happened to our family and I hope someday the pain will ease. I love you kids more than can be expressed and I will always be eternally grateful for the times I have had with you and for whatever times I can have in the future”. Now five years after this letter was written, he is not only a grandad but all of his four children have grown up, his two youngest sons, one is 16, back with him after their mum took off with her boyfriend once the child support payments had been cut back to just one kid. They haven’t heard from her since, it’s been over six months. The problem however started when this father lost his right to be the type of father that every child needs, one that is there. “I saw Joe* once a week at basketball when he was 11 years old, right at the time when an adolescent needs his dad around. It went for about an hour and I probably got to talk to him for about five minutes. When he did come over to my place there was little to do together and as I had no money left after property settlement, debts and child support payments I couldn’t really afford to take him anywhere either. Eventually he stopped coming and as his mum chose to rarely take him to visit me, our relationship dwindled away to only limited small talk. Now I have the chance to repair it, but the damage has been done and it’s a long hard road to get back to the place where I can be the father that my sons need and deserve.” Describing the custody arrangement as one that can mean different things to different parties, he says that, “She said I could see the kids anytime I wanted but in reality it was actually very hard for me to see them at all as I wasn’t welcome in her home and she didn’t encourage them to visit me. Yet I paid her the money that was supposed to help my children when what they really needed was a father around regardless of the problems that we couldn’t sort out in our own marriage”. But the core issue of this story is what he says next; “I am paying to support my children except I have no role in their lives”. You can’t argue the heartbreak in his voice as you realise that what he is saying regarding the state of his relationship with his children is probably true. His boys have drifted slowly away from him and the normality of fatherhood that they were used 50, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007

to dissolved ever so quickly when his role of a father ceased to exist. This is just one of the stories that raised enough concern for the Australian Government to do a national enquiry into the state of the Child Support System and the families affected by it. These stories were serious enough to promote the need for serious change. But now that the system has been reformed, what does that mean for Australian families and has it really made a difference to not only fathers but also to mothers and most importantly their children? Described as the biggest shake up to family law in the last 30 years, the reforms to the Child Support Agency include insisting that divorcing couples go to mediation before they go to the family courts. Not only that but there has been a move to give parents equal rights regarding decisions about their children regardless of who they live with. One of the biggest changes concerns the actual payment with the non-custodial parent receiving a 25% discount if their child lives with them more than one night a week. While fathers groups are claiming this is the change that they have been seeking, the actual outcome for both fathers and mothers has been both positive and negative. “Reforms to Australia’s Child Support System have been criticised by mothers’ groups but welcomed by the Lone Fathers Association”, reported The Age, a major Australian newspaper. Lone Fathers Association Barry Williams was quoted as stating the changes would benefit the children and that mothers would be able to rethink their attitudes towards ex spouses. “They think they own the children and the father’s just a disposable cheque book”, says Williams, “(Fathers) are not paying child support, they are paying child support plus spousal allowance”. Strongly disagreeing are mothers’ groups who claim it is the children that will be left with less support. Says Jac Taylor from the National Council for Single Mothers and Their Children: “The winners are the fathers rights groups and the losers are the children,” she told ABC Radio. With mention that single parents would end up with less

money Kathleen Swinbourne, Sole Parents Union, says that “The reality is that people who see their children one night a week are not picking up 25% of the costs of that child, yet that is the discount that they’re getting in child support”. Roland Foster, father to six, disagrees. “What do they mean by child support?” says Roland, “it has nothing to do with the children. The system excludes everything that a father considers child support; it exempts clothing, food and shelter”. Roland refuses to pay child support claiming that the system is corrupt to its core and needs to not only be reformed but to be abolished. He says, “I still pay all of their private school fees, and do everything a normal father does. When they are with me, which I would like to be more frequently, I cook them dinner, tuck them

in to bed, and take them places where they want to go. No-one asks you how you support your kids before you separate”! Edward Dabrowski, Shared Parenting agrees. He told the television program ‘Insight’ that he takes his hat off to the government to trying to reform the system. “You have to look at children and their relationship with their parents. Children love their mother and father equally and they deserve a relationship that is equal or substantially equal with both their mother and their father”. There are of course fathers who are not so ready to want to father their children and this is where Tania Plibersek says it wont work. “We have some concerns about some of the changes”, she says “I think the underlying theme of this legisINVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 51

lation is the thing that prevents children from having relationships with non-custodial parents, you know, wicked ones who are trying, you know, to wreck their ex partners lives and in many cases the reality is quite different. I hear story after story of the custodial parent getting the kids ready for the next access visit and two hours later they’re still waiting for the custodial parent to turn up. There are sanctions in this legislation against custodial parents who don’t meet their end of the bargain, and there’s nothing in this legislation that holds non-custodial parents to account”. That may be the case, but men’s groups claim that the bias has been too much against men for a very long time and fathers have not been given the right to father. Dabrowski, Shared Parenting Council says, “We’ve had a bottom up approach in the family law system where the court has set in place this template of 80/20 residency and the custodial parent, non-custodial parent. I mean isn’t the language awful to be labeling parents as non-custodial or non-contact parents, and that’s been the template and that’s what was recognized and we tried to remove-reduce that 80/20 tension and bring things more in the middle, towards the 50/50 ground where both parents can play an equal part in their child’s lives”. The new legislation gives non-residential parents a bigger say in their children’s lives and is “a part of their lives that money can’t provide”, says Roland Foster. With more rights to make decisions in their children’s lives, non-custodial parents are being recognized as having the right to make decisions regarding things like where their children go to school, where they live and what religion they are taught. 52, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007

Attorney General Phillip Ruddock says the starting point in a separation should be the fact that both parents are going to try and continue to have a high level of engagement in making decisions for their children’s lives. “The legislation is designed to ensure that the way in which these matters are resolved, if there has to be an adjudication, will reflect that. But in terms of where it will work out practically for most people is when they sit down together, hopefully in a family relationship centre or in a like environment, and to come to a sensible agreement which meets both their interests. I don’t disagree that with some of the points that have been made that family situations will often dictate that 50/50 sharing of time between father and mother is the best outcome and people will recognize that themselves. I mean, I sat down and watched mediation in WA where a lady, who had the children with her, had a husband who was in fact a seafarer and he was spending very large periods of time away. Well, you know, 50/50 sharing wasn’t going to be possible but when he’s back from the sea a larger level of engagement ought to be possible and that was something they were being encouraged to work through”. Phiilip Mayne, Director of Public Affairs and Media has been previously quoted stating that, “Despite the fact that some people complain about the child support scheme and or/ CSA, most parents realize that child support is paid for the benefit of their children…unfortunately there will always be individuals and groups that have specific agendas and think the system favours one parent or another. Some groups say we aren’t tough enough in pursuing child support while others say we are too tough and payments are too high”. While the issue of the actual payment is a very hot topic, the root of the issue is the fact that parents need to be allowed to parent, which many say is the reason why family mediation has been introduced. Fathers groups have been lobbying for years to have the right to be a part of their children’s lives beyond a cheque and the reflection of this in our male suicide and depression rates have been linked directly to family breakdown. According to the Australian Christian Lobby, 70% of young male suicides are linked to family breakdown and emotional vulnerability. According to the men’s rights agency, “Men experiencing relationship breakdown, many of whom are involved in the Child Support Agency, are suiciding at a rate of 3-4 a day…” With statistics like this changes needed to be made. Bruce Smyth, Australian Institute of Family Studies says “the latest data suggests that one in three children, there’s 1.1 million children under 18 living with a parent living elsewhere because of separation or divorce. But one in three stay with their dad every second weekend or each Friday and Saturday night. One in four have little or no contact with their dad. Around 10%-15% have holiday only contact. 16% day time contact only, and the small select group, 6%, shared care or nearly equal care of the children”. Trying to increase this 6% of equal care seems to be the core of these changes, and with everything, only time will tell how much it affects people and implements real change. With arguments coming from every angle, the issue of child support and family breakdown is an issue where there are no winners, only people trying to pick up the pieces, in a system that hopes to create fairness for every party involved.

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 53

The Little

Writer

Who Could…

MICHAEL MORRISSEY fulfils a childhood dream when he gets to ride in the cab of steam locomotive Ja 1275

t is 9 am on a clear sparkling morning – the first day of winter – and I am the happiest man alive. Why? I am inside the cab of a 110-ton 22 metre-long 1400-horsepower black Ja locomotive that is steaming along the narrow rail divide across a green millpond Hobson Bay, and the whistle is blowing. And as we pass the neat flowered rows of the Purewa cemetery and head for the tunnel where only the firebox’s orange-red glow will cast light in the gloom, all is well with the world. Every small boy should enjoy what I am enjoying but of course that is not practical. This miracle of participation only became possible because I am a journalist and because this locomotive is now owned privately. And because of the thoughtful generosity of operations manager Michael Tolich and Mainline Steam representative Grenville Purchase who has stood down for me so I can ride the all too short 20-mile trip to Papakura. Thanks a million, Mike and Grenville. I would have paid hundreds of dollars for the experience that I am enjoying free. Alleluia! Though in his day, my father worked in the Otahuhu Railways Shops and helped fix locomotives, he could never have swung this deal. All he could do was take me to see the big black hissing roaring locomotives when they stopped at railway stations and explain how they worked. Back then, I was magnetically drawn to these locomotives yet afraid of them. I would no go closer than ten metres. Now prior to departure, I have actually gone up to the hissing black beast and placed the palm of 54, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007

my hand on the double-barrelled steam cylinder. It is warm, though not boiling. A mixture of invisible steam and visible water vapour oozes out of every pore. For me, there is no machine on this earth that exudes so much raw power and sexy glamour as a big black steam locomotive. In every sense, it is a fire-breathing dragon that can devour almost anything that gets in its way – your average Jap car would be crushed like a matchbox should it be foolish enough to try on the Ja in a duel. Impressive as Ja 1275 is, it is dwarfed by two other machines that Mainline Steam has purchased that await restoration – a four-year project that needs funding to the tune of $500,000. The largest of these are two Henschel 25s which are 120 feet long and weigh 220 tons. That’s larger and heavier than a blue whale. Larger than the largest dinosaur. Of course steam machines are dinosaurs and who in their right mind does not love them? In his heart, every small boy loves a dinosaur and the bigger and fiercer, the better. Before departure, I hear the heavy juddering thump of the air pump building up pressure. Michael Tolich explains to me the principle of how the steam train operates. I was hoping for the gritty authenticity of coal but oil is almost as good. A thick viscous tar-like oil is the propelling fuel. Steam jets smash the oil into droplets, which are ignited and the ensuing heat makes water boil which gives off the propelling agent of steam. The steam proceeds through dozens of steel boiler pipes to the steam dome thence onto pistons which compress

TOP: Ja 1275’s sister engine, Ja 1250 (second engine) pictured on Auckland’s Glenbrook line with WW 480. MIDDLE & BOTTOM: Ja 1275. Photography: MICHAEL TOLICH / DAVE WAGSTAFF / MICHAEL MORRISSEY

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 55

the steam which with the aid of long connecting rods turns the driving wheel – hence loco motion. Mere words cannot convey the thrill of seeing white wedges of steam issue forcefully from the pistons – and it seems just about everywhere else. As the Ja leaves its resting point, it is all but obscured in smoke. And there is that viscerally satisfying sound, so full of power, as the well-oiled pistons enter the steam cylinder. To the genuine steam head (count me in), even the gritty smells are a rich dark perfume. Diesel just doesn’t do it. Nor for that matter, can any computer screen. As far I know, monitors don’t issue wedges of steam and do not wheeze and smoke. Nor can any computer approach the dark grandeur of 110 tons of hissing steaming rattling iron. Back to my cab ride. As far as I can make out, driver Noel Marshall has five levers to operate – these are respectively: throttle, engine brake, train brake, regulator valve and reverse gear lever. And just above head height, is a clothesline-looking bit of cord knotted in a hangman’s noose knot which operates the whistle. There is a battery of gauges and wheels, the most important of which is the main pressure gauge – pressure must go over 200 pounds to the square inch (it’s hovering on 180) – and even more important, the boiler gauge. Too little water and the fire goes out, too much and the cylinder gets damaged. A string of light-illuminated drops of water indicates a slight leak from one of the guages. With steam, there are often slight leaks here and there. Now we are rattling along at 75 kph – nowhere near the top speed of 110 kph – and every bolt and plate of the engine is jolting and jumping. I’m standing on a moving iron plate behind 56, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007

which is the bus-sized tender filled with 1350 gallons of oil and 4000 gallons of water. I have been told not to put my foot behind the plate otherwise it will be sliced off, not to lean out of the cab and not to fall off. And though I wasn’t warned – not to put your hand in the 600 degree firebox which is invitingly half open. It’s tricky standing in the buckling sliding plate, no hands, trying to write in my notebook but I manage it. My days at sea help with balance. I have been so busy watching the driver I had almost forgotten John Paku, the fireman. It is his essential job to regulate the flow of oil. Back in the days of coal, he would have worked up a sweat shovelling coal flat out. Now he has a couple of valve leavers to keep his eyes on. But his job must be done accurately – he must work in with the driver so the two form a seamless team. At one point, I see Mainline Steam representative Lindsey Baker leaning forwards with a long shepherd-like steel crook with a rag hanging from the end. I ask what he doing but he is too intent on performing his action to hear or respond. In a minute, I discover he was re-igniting the fire – it had gone out! Man – steel hook– rag – light – fire! It’s so wonderfully primitive – there isn’t a wire, transistor or button in sight. Just as we are nearing Papakura where sadly I am to leave my Ja, Lindsey asks if I would like to blow the whistle ... Would I like to blow the whistle? ... Would I like to kiss Miss Universe ... Would I like to go to Heaven ... I pull that hangman’s noose cord for all its worth and the whistle blows – that lovely, sad, haunting yet curiously reassuring sound. I am the happiest man alive.

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www.mistralsoftware.co.nz INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 57

Cave

Angst Why are primitive tribes happier than modern Westerners? EDWARD EVELD reports on new research thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shedding light on combating depression

combating depression

58, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007

o confront the West’s growing depression epidemic, a modern phenomenon, psychologist Steve Ilardi peered backward into human history. Way back: tens of thousands of years and beyond. His research steered him there, to an examination of the hunter-gatherer way of life, to a time when humans lived in roving, close-knit bands. Back to the Stone Age. What he learned led Ilardi and his research team at the University of Kansas to propose a program to reclaim six disappearing lifestyle elements. They call it Therapeutic Lifestyle Change, intended to help modern humans deal with depressive illness. The team identified factors that are antidepressant but are compromised by contemporary culture: Exercise, omega-3 consumption, light exposure, sleep, social connectedness and anti-ruminative behavior. The latest and sobering statistics predict that one in four Americans will become clinically depressed by age 75, Ilardi says. Americans are 10 times more likely to have depressive illness than they were 60 years ago. Ilardi is an associate professor of psychology, not a self-help guru. And he knows the hunter-gatherer talk can sound a little wacky. But he says his early results are showing phenomenal success. About a year ago Becky Foerschler, a mother of three, felt herself drifting, pulling back from social commitments, uncharacteristically sapped of energy. Foerschler’s situation wasn’t dire. But a series of stressful family matters had preceded her troubling lethargy, and friends hinted that her symptoms looked like depression. “I thought, ‘This isn’t something that’s going to go away by itself.’” She wasn’t keen on taking antidepressant drugs, so when she heard about Ilardi’s research, she called to make an appointment. She met with therapists and was accepted into the program. Depression treatment often centers on talk therapy and antidepressant drugs. The drugs have been lifesavers for many people. But antidepressants aren’t working as well as advertised, Ilardi says, and their side effects can go from bad to devastating, including suicide. In the last two decades, the use of antidepressant drugs has increased 800 percent, yet depressive illness continues to climb. Recently one of the largest studies of an antidepressant drug found a 47 percent favorable response. “Favorable” meant complete recovery or significant reduction in symptoms. But that’s more than half who weren’t helped, Ilardi says. And other studies show that only 10 percent of patients using medication alone will have a full recovery that lasts five years. “Clearly we need to do better,” he says. Depressive illness is more frequent in developed countries than in developing ones and worse among city dwellers than INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 59

“Hunter-gatherers walked for miles. They got lots of light exposure. They slept when the sun was down. And they ate differently. Many obesity experts think our appetite and our desire for certain tastes trace back to a time when food was an uncertain commodity” among rural folks. The Amish have very low depression rates. An anthropologist who studied the Kaluli people, a modernday hunter-gatherer group in Papua New Guinea, found only one case of depression. Like hunter-gatherers of old, the Kaluli lack modern comforts and medicine. They deal regularly with infant mortality, disease and violence. Culturally the contrast with modern Americans is huge. Biologically, however, we’re not so different, not even from the hunter-gatherer clans going back hundreds of thousands of years. “In many respects we’re walking around with Stone Age brains and Stone Age bodies,” Ilardi says. Rapid cultural change is relatively recent, starting with farming, then city-building, then the technological explosion. So Ilardi asked: Are there built-in features of that ancient way of life that are antidepressant and that we need to reclaim? Hunter-gatherers walked for miles. They got lots of light exposure. They slept when the sun was down. And they ate differently. Many obesity experts think our appetite and our desire for certain tastes trace back to a time when food was an uncertain commodity. Ilardi and his team, using evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience, looked for the nexus between lifestyle practices and depression research. For instance, what specifically about food would affect mental states? Studies showed that modern Americans take in much less omega-3 fatty acids, important to brain function, than ancient humans. So far the program has treated 31 clinically depressed adults. Ilardi is impressed with the results: 86 percent recovered fully or had a significant reduction in symptoms. Rick Ingram, Kansas University professor of psychology, was skeptical of Ilardi’s program at first but sees the results as promising. One caveat is that the treatment program requires further testing, done independently from Ilardi’s team. “This is an innovative program in its initial stages, and, as such, the data are not fully in,” he says. Ingram says the Therapeutic Lifestyle Change program, rather than competing with traditional therapies, could eventually be used in conjunction with them. “Areas of biology and psychology converge in this program,” Ingram says. “The innovation is in bringing them all together.” 60, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007

In the 12-week program the 90-minute, weekly sessions are led by two clinicians and include five to eight clients. The six elements are introduced one week at a time. Clients talk with therapists by phone between sessions. Foerschler completed the program last summer and remains free of symptoms. “By the sixth week I was definitely noticing a difference, and by the end of the 12 sessions I wasn’t having any symptoms,” Foerschler says. THE SIX ELEMENTS OF CHANGE Researchers at KU are studying the effects of a six-part therapeutic lifestyle change program, specifically for people with symptoms of depressive illness. But the techniques could benefit a wide range of people, says Steve Ilardi, professor of clinical psychology. All six elements have been shown in previous studies to help ward off depression, he says. That means they likely would be beneficial for anyone at risk of depression or with a family history of depression. And many of the elements – including exercise, bright light, enhanced sleep and improved social interaction – have been shown to be mood-boosters for most people, not only those with depressive symptoms, Ilardi says. Here are the six elements. Clients in the study are under the guidance of therapists and doctors. Always consult with a doctor before starting an exercise program or using dietary supplements. OMEGA-3 FATTY ACIDS The brain needs essential fatty acids, omega-6 and omega-3, for healthy function. The typical American diet provides a 16-to-1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats. The healthiest ratio is 1-to-1. Omega-3 intake has dropped precipitously in the last 100 years, due in part to farm-raised meat and fish, Ilardi says. Studies have associated omega-3 deficiency with an increased vulnerability to depression. Treatment: Daily supplement of 1,000 milligrams of omega3, known as EPA (eicosopentaenoic acid), a concentrated form of fish oil, and a multivitamin. Ilardi says this is a high, therapeutic dose based on the best information available now, but that “nobody knows for sure what the optimal omega-3 dose is.” The multivitamin is intended to lessen the oxidative effects of the supplement. Clients are specifically reporting better sleep with the supplement, he says, a result he plans to study further. EXERCISE While people in hunter-gatherer societies spend hours a day in physical activity, walking as much as 16 kilometres a day, a majority of adults get no regular physical exercise. Clinical trials have identified exercise as an effective treatment for depression. One study found just 90 minutes of aerobic exercise a week to be effective. Treatment: Thirty minutes of aerobic exercise three times a week. Some clients use a walking program. LIGHT EXPOSURE Hunter-gatherers spend the day outside, exposed to sunlight. The light on a sunny day is at least 10 to 20 times brighter than light indoors, where most Americans spend much of the day.

SOCIAL CONNECTEDNESS Hunter-gatherer societies live in groups of 50 to 100, chiefly with close relatives and friends. American adults for several generations have grown socially isolated from other family members and from friends. Social support is a known safeguard against the risk of depression. “We’re designed to be interdependent,” Ilardi says. “We’re designed to have lots of face time with those closest to us.” Treatment: Therapists and clients discuss relationships that have waned or become shallow. Clients set specific goals for social activities, including scheduling meetings and phone conversations with friends and relatives. Ilardi noted that while spiritual practices are not a specific element of the program, many people find powerful social connections in church communities. ANTI-RUMINATIVE BEHAVIOR Rumination is the tendency to dwell on negative thoughts. Episodes of rumination occur most often when alone. Clients often don’t realize the amount of time they spend engaged in such thoughts or the amount of distress it causes, Ilardi says. Hunter-gatherers spend almost no time alone. With nearly constant social activity, they have little opportunity for rumination. People spend much more time alone, including sitting in traffic and staring at unengaging TV shows. Treatment: Therapists don’t try to explore clients’ negative thoughts. Instead they explain the toxic effects of rumination. One strategy to combat rumination is to avoid long periods of time alone. Another is to interrupt periods of rumination with an activity or by contacting a loved one.

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A lack of light exposure has been found to disrupt sleep and alter hormones, contributing to fatigue. Sunlight deprivation, acute in winter, is known to lead to symptoms of depression. “All of us get a mood boost from bright sunlight,” Ilardi says. Treatment: Thirty minutes of daily exposure to sunlight. The program provides clients with a 10,000-lux light box. (Lux is a measure of illumination.) They can sit next to or under the light box to simulate light exposure on a sunny day. SLEEP People on average get 6.8 hours of sleep a night. Just 100 years ago, they slept nine hours. Hunter-gatherers spend more than 10 hours in darkness, and some members of modern-day hunter-gatherer societies complain about getting too much sleep. Lack of sleep is a well-established health risk on many fronts, including an increased risk of depression. Treatment: The goal is eight hours of sleep a night. Therapists suggest ways to improve sleep, such as dimming lights and lowering the thermostat an hour before bedtime and retiring and rising at the same time each day, including on weekends.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 61

thinkLIFE money

The perils of being a trustee Peter Hensley uncovers a tricky situation for a family trust

he winter chills had finally set in and Jim and Moira decided to have their close friends and previous neighbours, Jan and Ken, around for a meal. Jim told Moira that they should arrange to eat early as the All Blacks were scheduled to play Australia at 7.30 and it was to be their last local game prior to the Rugby World Cup. Now Moira did not share Jim’s enthusiasm for the rugby, however they had been married long enough for her to tolerate his passion for sport, especially as it was our nation’s representative team. Jan and Ken arrived a trifle early as Ken wanted to talk through an issue relating to their family trust. Once they were settled he wasted no time asking Jim and Moira if their family trust owned any residential rental property. Jim was hesitant as he did not normally discuss their financial affairs with anyone except their adviser. He sidestepped the question by asking Ken the obvious question, why did he want to know? Ken went on to say that they had just discovered that a shed on one of their rental properties (they had four) was being used

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as a P lab. Well, you could have heard a pin drop. There was an awkward silence and then Moira asked how they found out. It turns out that a boyfriend of the daughter of the person who was renting the house was a patched gang member. The father was not aware of this and had allowed him to move into the sleep out attached to the garage. Not long afterwards the police turned up to execute a search warrant and they uncovered a virtual supermarket of drug making ingredients. The father had noticed that the boy kept odd hours and he told him that he was working night duty at the local supermarket filling shelves which was the reason he had put black out curtains on the windows. He seemed a reasonable lad and the excuse seemed plausible in that the curtains would let him sleep during the day. Jan and Ken found out about the police raid from one of the neighbours who lived next door. When they first bought the place, Jan had made it her business to visit the surrounding houses and made sure they were aware that the house was being rented and how to contact either of them

if there was ever any trouble. They had done that for each of their four rentals, however neither of them had considered that this event could happen to them. Jan was almost in tears. They had worked hard and been very frugal all through their working life, making sure that they vetted each tenant. They had been diligent in paying off all the mortgages and were justifiably proud they had accumulated property worth well in excess of $1.75 million which was allowing them to retire comfortably without having to worry about having enough money to live on. Ken was a little more practical. As soon as he heard the news he arranged a meeting with the tenant and instead of serving them notice, he agreed that they could remain on a reduced rental. Now it was Jim’s turn to look aghast, crikey he would have tossed them out on their ear. After blurting out what he would do with renegade tenants, he prodded Ken for his reasoning. It wasn’t that difficult Ken said. They had a property which was contaminated by being used as a P lab, generally this

would make it un-rentable. It was better to receive a reduced rent, than no rent at all. Jan and Ken had to pay to have the garage cleaned up and decontaminated and were grateful that they still had an income to offset some of this cost. Now that this was all out in the open, Moira thought it would be a good time to serve dinner as she knew that Jim would not let anything interfere with the All Black’s game. Whilst he was sympathetic towards the predicament that Jan and Ken found themselves in, it was a Bledisloe Cup game after all. Once they were seated at the dinner table, Ken then went on to explain that the P lab experience had created another problem for them. Moira, who was initially shocked when she heard of their trouble, was downright flabbergasted when she listened to the second part of the story. To get back to the initial question Ken had asked Jim, when they arrived, if their family trust owned any rental properties. It turns out that one of Jan’s daughters (from her first marriage) married a very litigious solicitor. The daughter is one of several secondary beneficiaries to Jan and Ken’s family trust. The daughter’s husband has been investigating the

idea of suing the trustees of Jan and Ken’s family trust for negligence. He is arguing that the trustees had a duty of care to maintain and look after the trust’s assets. They should have had an inspection program in place and as a result of their lack of care, the trust asset has not only lost value, but it has cost the trustees an immediate loss in paying for the clean up costs. This latest news came as a shock and it caught Jan and Ken completely off guard. They had set up their family trust to allow them to protect their assets whilst they were still alive and also to arrange for the orderly transfer of what assets would be left after they died to the next generation. They did not expect that the same vehicle would be used against them by the same people they were looking out for. Having sorted the P lab and arranging the cleanup, they were fortunate that it had not ended up being noted on the council LIM report. Ken was perplexed as to why his favourite step daughter would consider such an action. Once Jan was able to sit down with her, it turned out that this action by her husband was his

idea and she wanted nothing to do with it. In fact it was the end of the road for the relationship. She ended up kicking him out for even considering such action against her parents. As expected the subsequent divorce proved to be protracted and messy, however Jan and Ken’s forward thinking of allowing the daughter to rent one of their rental homes proved extremely beneficial and practical. Their independent trustee had insisted on regular meetings and detailed minutes which added to the robustness of their planning. Just before the game Jim shared with the Ken the fact that because they had not enjoyed being a landlord they had subsequently sold all of their rental properties. They were very pleased with the consistent performance from their conservative investment portfolio, which incidentally was of a similar value to Jan and Ken’s property portfolio and they enjoyed a higher level of income with obvious reduced hassles. Jim steered the conversation to the pending Rugby World Cup as the referee blew the whistle signaling kick off. Go the All Blacks.

thinkLIFE education

Education – or major social disintegration? Amy Brooke analyses the latest NCEA changes

ell, what a surprise – not – the unfazed alacrity with which principals who constantly defended the junk NCEA assessment system, have now changed horses mid-stream. If it weren’t for the sad consequences for New Zealand youngsters, it would be entertaining to note that whereas these same educationists aggressively defended dumbed-down courses, fudged assessment methods, and inappropriately named “standards” – standards so mean-minded that they wouldn’t even allow students to gain merit or excellence in pass rates – they now hail the NCEA’s long overdue reforms. Surely these weren’t the same individuals who lavishly praised a risible system allowing schools to abuse the notion of a quality education by opting for trashy courses to push up their pass rates; and

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an internal assessment procedure which allowed poor teachers to manipulate their results, to hide failure rates? Are these blithely hailing the reforms the very same who connived at withholding genuine assessment from state school pupils – even the quality teaching of worthwhile subjects? Where is their acknowledgement that they promoted the third-rate, while fulminating against those insisting we should be doing much better? As has been very evident these recent decades, the main trouble with our education system is the quality of those who’ve been monopolizing its directions, including compliant and well manipulated Ministers of Education. The same Steve Maharey, who for several years rejected cogent criticism of the Mark I NCEA’s obvious flaws, has now smoothly launched

the Mark II version, edging back towards acknowledging that there are genuine standards, that offering rubbishy choices to young New Zealanders inevitably displaces far better subjects for study, those of considerably more importance and lasting value. The lesson that needs to be absorbed is that no system which deliberately sets out to exclude the possibility of a keen student achieving merit or excellence can possibly be trusted – nor can its protagonists. Enabling teachers to fudge results, correcting or reshaping assessment tasks so that they become more the teacher’s than the student’s, is a corrupt, as much as a flawed, concept. So why are those who advocated and long defended this still running the show? They can’t have it both ways – or can they? Where is the accountability in all

this? Where is their explanation to parents and the community as to why they rejected any notion that such a flawed system needed revision and improvement? Why was an assessment system for vocational and trade skills used to diminish academic achievement, not only restricting the possibilities for our bright young, but affecting their competitiveness internationally? The concept that none must fail – that no children should be seen to be more gifted than others, academically – nor must any subjects be regarded as having more value than others – is of course much more about politics than offering an education of genuine quality to all children, irrespective of the advantages or disadvantages of their background. Founded on an industrial Scottish model for assessing young workers in the trades and industry, the NCEA was intentionally aimed at removing any distinction between what its champions felt was the unfair advantage academically bright, hard-working pupils had – contrasted with the under-achievement of some in lower socio-economic groups with indifferent or delinquent parents, and with little expectation of working hard to achieve well in school. Fundamentally, the NCEA was based on the “it’s not fair” concept, ignoring the fact that poverty by no mean precludes a child’s chances of a quality education, where this is actually offered in the school, and where parents, ambitious for their children, provide a supportive environment – as the late nineteenth, early twentieth century Scottish socialists well knew. Their children spread over the world as engineers, doctors, scientists, teachers – their parents’ respect for a work ethic providing them with the incentive to achieve. In New Zealand itself, the presence of young refugees from Asian countries like Cambodia, arriving with minimal knowledge even of English, but, in very few years, outstripping their peers to become duxes of their schools, has given the lie to the constant tedious claims of Maori disadvantage. Many whose second language is English have taken eager advantage of an education system with the potential to offer the best of the past, its discoveries in the fields of science, maths, physics, history; the multi-branched heritage of this country’s disparaged colonists. Our forebears launched the industrial revolution, with all its subsequent spin-offs in tech-

nology. Their brilliant inventiveness led to greatly improved living conditions for all those keen to embrace its gifts – to take advantage of which even those denigrating Western culture have not been slow. Yet our intellectual inheritance has been dumbed down by the New Zealand education bureaucracy, its neo-Marxist fellow-travellers long infiltrating our institutions – as advocated by communist ideology. Moreover, the damage of this Trojan Horse attack on the West and its intellectual traditions was, and is, compounded by the self-congratulatory liberal establishment caving in, attacking those, often snidely, wishing to pass on to the next generation the best of the past. So should we be surprised that aspiring police officers are getting their own remedial school to be taught basic reading and writing skills, and even minimal concepts of grammar and syntax, when Ministers of Education like Lockwood Smith weren’t at all convinced that English grammar and syntax were important for students to learn? Yet arguably, withholding from our young the possibility of genuine competence in language use can be regarded as a social crime, given its inevitable consequences. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn maintains, the West has gone soft. With intellectual authority and rigour relinquished, education is now an extension of political activism. What has been too easily forgotten – or even deliberately not taught to our children – is that it was the West which set the moral, political, and social standards for the rest of the world, and which led to an appreciation of individual liberty,

equality, human rights, and the importance of individual conscience. However, we now live in a country where prisons are exploding with inmates, and where a dictatorial government, dominated by a determined and childless feminist inflicting her claimed superior beliefs on conservative families (as with the appalling anti-smacking legislation resoundingly rejected by the electorate) has presided over major social disintegration integration on her watch. For one of the major reasons for a holistic education has been disregarded – that there is no automatic transmission of virtue, of goodness, or of moral behaviour, from generation to generation. This takes the conscious, committed care and teaching of adults, not as an add-on, but as crucial for any society to survive. Yet, the abdication of moral values and the creeping intrusion of the state into New Zealand homes, undermining family authority, have been a prime feature of this present Labour coalition – as with all left-wing governments – whose philosophy is that the State knows best. But no State entity exists – just the combined agenda of the Left. Essentially, education is far too important a field to remain a state monopoly. That the poor performance of our education politburo has now become publicly recognized offers the best chance to those fighting to reclaim it, for our children, from our nomenklatura. www.amybrooke.co.nz www.summersounds.co.nz http://www.livejournal.com/users/brookeonline

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 65

thinkLIFE science

Shaking language to the core The fight over origin of language gets heated, writes Ron Grossman

o get some idea of the brouhaha currently enveloping linguists, occupants of a usually quiet corner of the ivory tower, suppose a high-school physics teacher found a hole in the theory of relativity. Students of language consider Noam Chomsky the Einstein of their discipline. Linguistics is a very old science, but beginning in the 1950s, Chomsky so revolutionized the field that linguists refer to the time prior to his work as B.C., or before Chomsky. They may have to add another marker: A.D., after Dan. Daniel Everett, a faculty member at Illinois State University, has done field work among a tiny tribe in the Amazon. He reports that their obscure language lacks a fundamental characteristic that, according to Chomsky’s theory, underlies all human language. With that declaration, Everett pitted

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himself against a giant in the field, and modest Illinois State University against the nation’s elite universities. In the process, he drew national attention to this arcane field and enveloped scholars around the world in a battle that plays out over and over in – this is academia, after all – conferences and seminars. The ideas behind it are fairly basic: Some birds squawk and some animals grunt, alerting winged or furry compatriots to danger, but only humans can share complex thoughts. A Scottish professor illustrated that at a recent gathering with a nursery rhyme: “This is the cat that chased the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.” In those lines, the word “that” is what linguists call a recursive device. Recursion allows humans to link various parts of our experience: to direct others to not just any cat, but to the one that chased the rat.

The device enables humans to pool knowledge and skills, share hopes and ambitions, build sophisticated societies and elaborate technologies. Everett, however, fired a volley straight at the theory when he reported that the Brazilian tribe he was studying didn’t use recursives. “For a long time, I said to myself: ‘Maybe if I just hang around the tribe long enough I’ll find it,’” Everett said. “But after 30 years, I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to hang around.” When word got out of his research, The New Yorker magazine sent a writer to accompany Everett on an expedition up the Amazon. This spring, three dozen linguists, psychologists and anthropologists came to Illinois State University from Germany, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Hungary, England, Scotland, Croatia and Denmark for a

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He has been taking small groups of scholars to the Piraha’s villages. It doesn’t matter whether they agree with him or not; all Everett asks is that they be open to letting the data shape their theories conference that was basically a scholarly referendum on the proposition: Who is right, Everett or Chomsky?” Chomsky’s followers can’t shrug off Everett’s claim as an insignificant exception to the rule. By their theory, all humans are hard wired for speech essentially the same way. Yet here was an upstart claiming to have spoken with people who lack one of the wires. As news of Everett’s findings spread through the linguistics community, Chomsky, who is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and two associates fired back in a 2005 article in the prestigious journal Science, insisting that recursion marks the boundary between humans and our animal friends. They dismissed as irrelevant the “putative absence” of recursion in one language. At the recent Illinois State University conference, Chomsky’s followers took a similarly hard line, among them Tom Roeper, of the University of Massachusetts. “No! No!” Roeper shouted when another participant argued that recursion didn’t appear until relatively late in the Indo-European language, a theoretical precursor to French, German and other tongues. To Chomsky’s followers, the rules of language are the same always and everywhere. Yet other participants were equally convinced that Everett’s data can’t be ignored. “I’ve been a Chomskyan linguist for 20 years,” said Ljiljana Progovac, a faculty member at Wayne State University in Detroit. “But Dan is on to something. Anybody can make a mistake, even Chomsky.” Everett took a circuitous route to his role as the potential Jack the Giant Killer of linguistics. He notes that the journey cost him his marriage and his faith. Everett’s early training was in theology, partially at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, from which he graduated in 1975. He and his wife went to Brazil as missionaries and studied tribal languages

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in order to bring natives the word of God. They set up a base among the Piraha, a group that steadfastly had resisted the outside world. Their way of life was simple and their language spare. “They have no words for left and right, orientating themselves with reference to the river,” Everett said. “When a group was taken to an unfamiliar location where they couldn’t see the river, they were disorientated until told where the river was.” Another conference participant, Robert Futrelle of Northeastern University in Boston, noted that the Piraha’s example suggests a link between culture and language. “Maybe our languages are more complex because we have more to talk about,” Futrelle said. “As culture has gotten thicker, a language had to get thicker.” Everett, leaving missionary work behind, retrained as a linguist, completing a doctoral degree in 1983 from the State University of Campinas, in Brazil. At first, orthodox linguistics seemed a new revelation. “Chomsky’s theory was beautiful,” Everett said. After years of looking in vain for those missing recursives, though, he had to break ranks. In 2005, he published an article in Cultural Anthropology titled “Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Piraha.” Since then, former friends in the linguistics community have shunned him, he said. Still, he holds a trump card: Since he speaks Piraha and his opponents don’t, they depend upon his good offices if they want to try to prove him wrong. He has been taking small groups of scholars to the Piraha’s villages. It doesn’t matter whether they agree with him or not; all Everett asks is that they be open to letting the data shape their theories. “If you believe in God, you’re going to find evidence of him everywhere,” he said. “It’s the same thing if you’re wedded to a theory, but that’s not science.”

OR IS IT THAT SIMPLE? The clash between Everett and Chomsky appears, at first glance, to be a fight to the death over the origins of language. However, it may not be that simple. The Piraha tribe number, according to the latest estimates, somewhere around 300 people. They are extremely isolated and have become a self-contained, in-breeding population of humans in one of the world’s most remote environments. Not only is their language strange, but researchers have found the Piraha people simply cannot count. Not even to two. Not even after eight months of trying to teach them to count their fingers. “Their skill levels were similar to those of prelinguistic infants, monkeys, birds and rodents,” reported the BBC a couple of years ago, based on the research of Columbia University’s Peter Gordon. The Piraha, who live in small groups of 10 to 20 people per area, additionally cannot draw. “Producing simple straight lines was accomplished only with great effort and concentration, accompanied by heavy sighs and groans,” said Gordon. The tribe has no concept of storytelling, and hence no history that they themselves know of, as they have never passed stories from generation to generation. They live entirely in the now. So much so, that most of them do not even know the names of their grandparents or any relative beyond immediate sibling or children. According to Everett, in an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel last year, the Piraha seem reasonably quick-witted in relation to what they are good at, and thus they are not imbecilic. However, with such a tiny genetic pool, does their lack of language as we understand it really mean they were always this way? Without knowing their history, that question may never be answerable. However, clearly the Piraha people originated somewhere and, in all likelihood, their ancestors were probably the same as those of every other Indian tribe in the Americas. It is a fair bet that those ancestors could speak and think like every other modern human. If true, that means the Piraha’s unique language and inability to think abstractly has more to do with isolation and inbreeding over the centuries, than with a truly unique line of human development. If the Piraha have indeed been without meaningful language forever, then Everett’s discoveries would be extremely significant. But if it’s really a case of a small tribe going backwards and losing their ability to speak and think clearly because of isolation and genetic issues, then Everett’s discoveries are interesting but not earth shattering. Ian Wishart

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 67

thinkLIFE technology

Towards the paperless office Ian Wishart takes his office mobile with a portable scanner and a powerpacked new software release

t the height of this magazine’s investigation into police corruption, we made a series of lightning visits to a number of cities. Travelling at short notice, the mission was to duck in, obtain documentation and interviews, and slip out again just as quickly – preferably before suspicions were aroused in some areas. Thanks to a couple of new tech products on the market, the logistics of such journalistic blitzkriegs have become much simpler to manage. The first and most obvious accessory I needed was a scanner. The standard office version is a massive HP professional model, and thus out of the question. But scanner technology has come a long way in eight years. It’s amazing what an entrylevel model can accomplish. The scanner I took had to be portable, swift and simple to use. Enter Canon’s LIDE (stands for LED InDirect Exposure technology) 70 CanoScan. This creature has the same dimensions as a notebook computer. It was actually small and light

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enough to fit inside my notebook carrybag in a pocket beside my notebook! Naturally, this setup gave me grief at the airport X-ray machines, where both devices had to be de-bagged and inspected, but that’s a small price to pay for the portability. The CanoScan gets its power direct from the notebook’s USB port, so literally as soon as you plug it into the laptop, the scanner is ready to use. In a taxi, in a library. Literally anywhere. Not bad for $149. Now one could use the software that came with the CanoScan (which ironically turned out to be a stripped down version of a sister product to the one I’m about to describe), but I continue to have a new respect for Mistral Software and the Nuance range of products they’re distributing in NZ and Australia. As readers of previous columns will be aware, we’ve often used the Dragon Naturally Speaking voice dictation package over the years – probably Nuance’s best known brand. But I wasn’t so familiar

with the PDF software products they also produce. I had long assumed that Adobe Acrobat and Photoshop were pretty much the limit – given that Adobe invented the PDF format. It was an assumption that evidently stunted my growth as a publisher. The PDF format is open source, which in software terms means others can work on it and improve on it. Nuance’s Scansoft PaperPort 11 Professional is an example of just how far PDF technology has come. Traditionally, PDFs can sometimes be cumbersome to work with – the advantage of being able to format a document that looks the way you want it can, conversely, be a disadvantage when it comes to trying to extract data back out of that document, or alter it the same way you alter a Word document. It can be done, but it is generally a pain in the rump. The boast behind PaperPort 11 is that it is a major leap towards the ‘paperless office’. Just as I discovered with the latest version of Dragon, PaperPort lives up to its boast. The paperless office was a fantasy dreamt up by a spotty-faced tech-nerd back in the early 1980s who happened to mention the idea to his advertising guru father, who promptly spun the phrase for all it was worth to sell a container-ship’s worth of dodgy primeval personal computers whose OS was so archaic you had to download software from a cassette tape. On a tangent, I was present in the room as a young teenager when the very first fax machine (well, technically the second) in New Zealand was unpacked and trialed by Telecom’s forerunner, the old Post Office. The year was 1977, the machine was the size of a small desk and it took 40 minutes to fax a single black and white A4 page to a sister device back at head office. “This will never catch on,” I scoffed, failing to factor in Moore’s Law, the 1965 dictum that computers and related systems would double in grunt every two years. What the heck would I know? In a parallel universe to the fax machine, the paperless office has been a long time coming. It might nearly be here, however. PaperPort 11 controls your scanner. It allows you to rapidly scan a sequence of documents – say the entire morning’s mail – into one PDF document that you can email to your boss or save to an archive. If you collapse under the weight of paper, getting into the routine of running the scanner for 10 minutes a day is a

fantastic idea because, of course, Nuance have made their PDF archives searchable. No more hunting around for the power bill that came in three weeks ago, because you’ll find it pretty much instantly. If you wish, you can then use PP11’s OCR (optical character recognition) capabilities to convert your PDFs back to text documents that you can open in Microsoft Word. It was the ability to scan a range of documents into a set of PDF archives that impressed me. For Investigate’s raids into the South Island, we needed to be able to scan sensitive documents relating to police corruption swiftly, and in organized fashion. PaperPort Professional 11 basically took over, and you can see the results of one compilation online, at www.investigatemagazine.com/gibbonsmedia.pdf. That’s the file of incriminating documents we released online to accompany last month’s story on the Police Minister’s star witness, Peter Gibbons. A job that would previously have taken hours in Photoshop and Adobe

InDesign, took me literally 20 minutes. When I needed to erase personal information from some pages, PaperPort 11 made it incredibly easy – you simply open the file, select the page you want to edit, then use the eraser or text tools the same way you would on other programmes. The result is that PDFs, previously difficult to work with, are suddenly editable. Again, like Dragon before it, PaperPort 11 is pretty intuitive to use and I have not needed to scan the user’s manual. As always, there are many advanced features. Offices, for example, will benefit from the programme’s ability to deliver scanned content to specific networked computers, meaning reception can scan in the mail as it arrives and literally internally post original letters directly to the recipient’s computer where, if you don’t need to print it out, you can save it on disk and spare yourself the clutter. Some government agencies and companies provide online forms for customers to print off, fill out by hand and fax back, but

PaperPort Professional 11 permits you to “break” into those PDF forms, and type in the information directly, saving you the handwriting. For those involved in “projects” – whether journalist, lawyer, accountant, builder or school student – you can create a PDF document that holds all your relevant files for that particular project, and add to it as you need, meaning you keep one archival file with all the content relevant to that particular project. Students in particular will benefit from the programme’s PaperPort Watson, a nexus between online and offline allowing you to drag and drop documents and files found during a Google search online directly onto the PaperPort desktop for processing. PaperPort Professional 11 joins Dragon Naturally Speaking and the Arc Wireless mobile phone and broadband antenna as one of the standout products we’ve reviewed over the past year or two. To read the manufacturer’s voluminous information files, visit: www.mistralsoftware.co.nz

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 69

feelLIFE

sport

NZPA/Dean Treml

Speed wobbles

In one foul weekend New Zealander’s expectations of global glory went from great, to a bit dicey. Sports columnist Chris Forster reflects on a trio of setbacks

he bad vibes started in the early hours of Saturday, June 30th, offshore from the artificial millionaires’ playground in Valencia. Team New Zealand blew a spinnaker while leading around the first mark in Race 5 of their intense America’s Cup duel with Alinghi. Instead of a 3-2 lead in the best-of-nine contest for the Auld Mug, the Swiss holders snatched the advantage and rubberstamped it the next night in the lottery of light breezes that fanned the whole campaign. A captivated nation’s hopes of their underdogs bringing home the bacon were dashed, barring a miracle in the last three races. Sandwiched between these two bitter maritime blows was a reality check for the

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All Blacks at the MCG, and a severe staffing setback for the Silver Fern netballers. The incessant rain that soaked the nation that weekend hardly improved Kiwis’ optimism levels. GRANT DALTON has pulled off a remarkable feat even though he fell short of snatching the Auld Mug from the clutches of Brad Butterworth and his billionaire pharmaceutical boss Ernesto Bertarelli. After all the 42 year old Swiss backer of Alinghi has an estimated wealth of US$8.8 billion, courtesy of a family inheritance and a mammoth merger with an American company. That’s a fair bit of dosh to splash around on yacht designs and sailors over the last four years.

Compare that to Dalton’s mission to resurrect public faith after the disastrous 2003 campaign, relying on the generosity of sponsors and sailors loyal to the cause to even get to challenge Alinghi for the America’s Cup. The down-to-earth Team New Zealand boss turned 50 towards the end of the regatta – and in typical stoic fashion didn’t want a fuss. That couldn’t halt a rousing version of Happy Birthday ringing from hundreds of Kiwis dockside, as NZL 92 with Dalton on board made its way out onto the race course. That race was called off when the fabled sea breeze failed to eventuate at all, but there was a feeling of delaying the inevitable.

There may be no glory in defeat, but this courageous campaign has won a legion of fans at home and abroad. Skipper Dean Barker restored public faith and they lifted the nearly-as-famous Louis Vuitton Cup with a 5-nil sweep of Luna Rossa. But the real joy was watching them take the swagger out of the class act of Alinghi during the early part of the America’s Cup itself, with a mixture of brilliant sailing and canny navigating. “No man hugs” was Dalton’s call as NZL 92 swooned over the finish line in that famous victory in race three. And that kind of sums up the bloke. THE ALL BLACKS recent stumble to the Wallabies at the MCG was far less dignified. It certainly got the worry beads gathering on the brows of cocky New Zealand rugby fans. Until that wobbly old night – there was a feeling Henry’s heroes only have to turn up in France to lift the William Webb Ellis trophy for the first time in 20 years. Suddenly there was an element of doubt, a gnawing fear of another horror semi-final exit to the Australians, as happened in 1991 and even more infamously, four years ago in Sydney. Coach Graham Henry’s all-encompassing rest and rehabilitation plan suddenly looked fragile. There still seemed no logical successor to Tana Umaga at centre – six months after his retirement became a very public secret. Golden try scoring opportunities were fried when the Wallabies were there for the pouching, and the injury-struck locking stocks seemed less than world-beating. Even Dan “the man” Carter was far from his imperious best. A major reality check stated Henry – as he grumpily, but accurately pointed out post- match. “We’ve never underestimated Australia, maybe it’s time the public back home did the same”. All is not lost, not by a long shot. Even after the Tri Nations winds up there’s another two months to peak for their French voyage. Global betting agencies still have the All Blacks as raging favourites to break their drought. They were paying a mere 1-dollar fifty last month, compared to the next best odds of 7 to one for the hosts, 8 bucks for the Springboks, 9 for Ireland, and 10 for Australia.

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Last year they added Commonwealth Games gold in Melbourne. But it’s been a rocky old road since then, and the uncertain future of their tenacious centre Temepara George threatens their title defence in Auckland in November

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But the damage done that one late June night in Melbourne has shown the All Blacks are vulnerable in big match situations. That’s what they’ve been in three of the last four failed campaigns. In the space of 80-odd minutes at the MCG the task of overcoming the dreaded psychological barrier suddenly became a whole lot clearer to Henry and his coterie. THE SILVER FERNS are already reigning world netball champions. They muscled that crown off Australia in Jamaica three years ago. Last year they added Commonwealth Games gold in Melbourne. But it’s been a rocky old road since then, and the uncertain future of their tenacious centre Temepara George threatens their title defence in Auckland in November. George pulled out for personal reasons on the eve of the mid-year tests against Jamaica and Australia, and mysteriously failed to clarify whether she’d be back in time for the World Champs. Ferns Coach Ruth Aitken’s genial

demeanour and easy laugh hides a tough cookie underneath. She needs to be to deal with the resurgent Australians. The New Zealanders lost two of the three Fisher and Pakel tests on home courts last winter. Worse was to follow during a mid-May tournament in the UK this year. Unbelievably they lost to England for the first time in more than 30 years, and the media were quick to label majestic goal shoot Irene van Dyk as past-it. These are fragilities in the mid-court and under the basket, which were the Ferns’ undeniable strengths not so long ago. The netball showpiece is, after all, the last of four global sporting contests featuring New Zealand’s top teams. It follows hot on the heels of the Rugby World Cup, and in the wake of the gutsy America’s Cup effort in June and July. The fourth card in the pack, in case you’d forgotten, was the Black Caps’ semi-final exit at the almost farcical Cricket World Cup in the West Indies. These are worrying times indeed.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 71

feelLIFE

health

Listen up

Claire Morrow discovers the modern version of the plastic bottle dog-deterrent

usinesses and even some local councils in England have found a new – and clever – way to discourage young people from mooching around outside on the footpath. And the young, being demographically inclined to both commit petty crimes and be one step ahead of new technology, have taken the same idea and hijacked it for a different purpose. Bless the free market. If you wanted to keep teenagers and young adults off your property without annoying adults, what would you do? Teenagers aren’t usually found at bingo or retirement seminars, but you can’t do that around the clock. We will need to assume you don’t much care about root causes, or whether the rascals go harass the business down the block. There are, though, biological differences between a young adult and an older one. Those under 25 are still growing their brains and are particularly poor at calculating risk and consequence. But for the most part, things are declining by 30. Fertility in both genders is decreasing; the idea of having your first child at 40 still rare. Reading glasses become more common, and hearing declines. Which is where the mosquito buzzer comes in. No one is going to loiter around a building listening to a repulsive sound (night clubs excluded), but you don’t want to wake the neighbours with a bomb siren. The answer is mosquito – an irritating high frequency tone. An ear splitter, mosquito plays either a continuous or intermittent high frequency tone. It doesn’t have to be loud, it’s just annoying. The good news? Only the young can hear it. Dogs can hear it, kids can hear it; those over 30 cannot.

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Of course like all annoying noises, it was only a matter of time before it became a ringtone. The ringtone is not to annoy teenagers, it creates a “silent” ring. The rest of your class may hear your phone, but not your teacher. Neat, huh? Well.... The mosquito tones are around 17kHz, they are high pitched sounds (the highest note on a piano is 4 kHz). Humans can generally hear sounds with frequencies between 20 Hz and 20 kHz (the audio range) although this range varies significantly with age, most people can’t hear 20,000 Hz by the time they are teenagers, higher frequency hearing being progressively lost with age. Oddly enough, (in labs anyway) people prefer to listen to music containing sounds above the

human hearing threshold, and react physiologically, although they cannot “hear” them. Most speech communication takes place between 200 and 8,000 Hz, so although we are – indeed – going deaf from a pretty young age (called presbycusis, “aging ear”), it’ll be a while before you notice. It was once thought that men suffered more than women, but many have suggested that men are simply more likely to have noise induced hearing loss; sudden very loud sounds can damage hearing, as can constant exposure to rather loud sounds. Anything with headphones transmits sounds right into the ear, frequent use at high volume is thought to account for the growing number of young adults with hearing loss. They, of course,

can’t hear their “teenbuzz” ringtones either, and outlying adults who can still hear those high pitches at 40 or 50 years have also been found. Unfortunately, the perception that hearing loss is normal (which to some extent it is) prevents adults with reversible hearing loss from seeking treatment. Many a middle aged adult has been surprised to find that their “happens to us all” hearing loss disappears overnight when the impacted wax is removed from their ears (don’t try this at home). Ear wax traps stuff getting into your ears, protects them and migrates out of the ear by itself. That’s the theory anyway. The older ear is less flexible and not so efficient at removing wax. There are loads of products on the market to soften ear wax (either so it comes out by itself, or to make it easier for the doctor to remove), bicarb soda solutions (prepared by a chemist!) have been shown in a small study to be the most effective, the home remedy of olive oil is as effective as most of the other products on the market. If there is, indeed a reversible hearing loss, evaluation can point to appropriate strategies; even free government hearing aids have improved over the years, some ultra-modern types are nearly invisible and provide splendid sound. In children, hearing is often screened at birth and then forgotten until the school screen, if there is one. Unfortunately most hearing loss in children is not congenital; many hearing losses are acquired after birth from infection, medication or trauma. The a middle ear infection causes temporary hearing loss, but glue ear – mucous and goop sitting in the middle ear – can cause a fluctuating “temporary” hearing loss of months or years duration, usually without symptoms. They outgrow it eventually, of course, but if it is severe, there might be a case for surgical removal of the goop. Surprisingly, many people in children’s health consider the “hears a loud noise” or “responded to name” test reassuring although even someone with a moderate to severe hearing loss may hear a loud noise in a quiet room. Likewise moderate hearing loss might cause some speech delay but especially if the “late talker” is a boy with older siblings, the parents are often inappropriately reassured. Using hearing and speech milestone checklists only picks up about half of children who actually have a hearing loss – passing the checklist does not guarantee perfect hearing. The evidence is that parents who suspect their child have a hearing loss are usually right, but plenty of children are missed until kindergarten or later, the deafness being mistaken for “naughtiness”, “not listening” or ADHD. Hearing screening is usually free (ask around), so you may as well have it done if you suspect a hearing loss. For fun, and a vague idea of how well you can hear and far more information about the science of sound than anyone needs, the University of New South Wales’s website has a neat page: http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/ jw/hearing.html And to find out if you can hear “teenbuzz” and “mosquito” ringtones (please let the dogs out): http://www. ultrasonic-ringtones.com/

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 73

feelLIFE

alt.health

Grains of truth

Karen Herzog profiles the health issues behind whole grain foods

uying food made with whole grain is like buying a deluxe, new car. Let’s say before you drove that new car off the lot, the dealer wanted to “improve” it by taking off one of the four wheels. He also suggested removing 17 parts, then replacing only five of them – each placed in a different location on the car. “Would you be happy? Would you buy this new car?” asks Cynthia Harriman, director of food and nutrition strategies for the Whole Grains Council and Oldways Preservation Trust in Boston. Harriman says buying food made with refined grain is no different from buying a car that’s been taken apart and reassembled incompletely. Refining whole wheat into white flour removes 24 percent of the protein and 17 known nutrients, she says. Five of the 17 nutrients are added back during the enrichment process, but in different amounts than originally existed.

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Refinement is intended to increase product shelf life and “lighten” the product. To refine wheat, however, both the fibre-rich bran (outer layer) and nutrientrich germ (inner part) must be removed, leaving only the endosperm (middle part), which is a source of starch, protein and a small amount of vitamins and minerals. While few would disagree that whole grains “are good for you,” whole grains still are a confusing part of the nutrition picture, especially in the wake of the low-carb diet craze, which depicted whole grains rich in carbs as “bad” for your health. Whole grains haven’t enjoyed a fullfledged mainstream status. They were embraced by the counterculture, back-to-the-earth movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Their healthful qualities were not disputed, but they made baked goods heavier and the earthy flavor wasn’t universally appreciated. A recent push by the U.S. Department

of Agriculture’s 2005 Dietary Guidelines, calling for three daily servings of whole grains, is starting to boost the status of whole grain. Many food manufacturers, such as General Mills and Kellogg’s, have either developed new products or reformulated existing products to hop on the wholegrain bandwagon. “We feel vindicated now and hopeful that whole grains will catch on like the Atkins diet did,” says Rod Hall, owner of a bread franchise in the US. “The Atkins diet was very hard on business from early 2003 until late 2005. We took a substantial hit – a 20 to 25 percent loss in sales.” Whole grains aren’t as easy to understand as carbohydrates, Hall says. “People will see ‘whole-wheat’ bread that’s made with wheat flour, and think it’s made with whole grain. If you can look at a label and the first ingredient has the word, ‘whole’ in it, then it is whole-grain.

But ‘wheat flour’ isn’t ‘whole grain.’” In the US, bakers and food producers have adopted a “Whole Grain Stamp” offered by the Whole Grains Council – a postage stamp that indicates three different levels of whole-grain content, from at least a half serving to a whole serving with all whole grain. Almost 600 American food products now carry the stamp, which was developed last year. Reading food product labels can be time consuming, and some labels can be “misleading,” nutrition experts say. Milwaukee dietitian Colleen Kristbaum offers this example: One brand of snack crackers advertises “made with whole grain” on the package. But the first ingredient listed is “enriched flour” and the second ingredient is “stoneground whole-wheat flour.” The dietary fibre provided per serving (19 crackers) is only 1 gram (in 23 grams of total carbohydrates and 140 calories). Then there’s Kavli all-natural FiveGrain Crispbread, which does not market itself as a whole-grain or high-fibre product, Kristbaum says. One serving of this product offers 2 grams of fibre (in 9 grams of total carbohydrate and 40 calories). The first ingredient is “whole rye flour,” and the second ingredient is “wheat bran.” “It pays to know what to look for,” says Kristbaum, who also is spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Dietetic Association. The first ingredient in Wheatables is “enriched,” while the first ingredient in the Kavli is “whole.” Also, a whole-grain product will contain at least 2 grams of dietary fibre per serving. Hall says he began appreciating whole grains as a pre-med student concerned about proper nutrition. But he became “hooked” on whole grains because of their flavor. “I don’t believe whole grains have gotten better,” Hall says. “People have just learned better ways to use whole grains.” Hall says he intentionally distanced himself from the “intensely classic hippie, organic” movement when he got into the bread business because he wanted whole grains to be accepted as mainstream. “We buy the very best wheat in the world from northwestern Montana – it’s kind of expensive – but we grind our own flour fresh and use it within two days,” Hall says. If you consider whole grains in their historical context, appreciating their nutritional value is like going back 100 years.

That was before technology allowed refinement for the purpose of extending shelf life and making bread “rise” easier with a lighter flour, notes Harriman, of the Whole Grains Council and Oldways Preservation Trust. “The ‘fad’ really has been the last 100 years, when we’ve eaten refined grains,” he says. “Now we’re getting back to whole grains because in the last couple of decades, a wealth of research has shown the benefits of whole grains, and manufacturers have gotten much better at making tasty wholegrain products.” Whole grains absorb moisture at a different rate than refined grains, so recipes can be adjusted for that, Harriman says. “For consumers, the bottom line is always taste,” she says. “The ‘hold your nose and eat it because it’s good for you’ appeal just doesn’t work.” Lunch and dinner are a “vast wasteland” of whole-grain products, Harriman says. The average consumer gets 70 percent of his or her daily whole-grain intake from breakfast and snack foods, she says. So the Whole Grains Council has been working with food companies to incorporate more whole-grain pasta, brown rice and other whole grains into lunch and dinner entrees and sides. “If we get lunch and dinner taken care of, in addition to breakfast, that’s three daily servings,” Harriman says. The Whole Grains Council has existed for only three years. It was formed by Oldways, a Boston non-profit think tank that promotes better eating, to counteract the low-

carb diet backlash against whole grains. Then, of course, there’s wheat’s ancient cousin, Spelt, which is all the rage at organic bakeries in Europe, as one retailer in London notes: “Many regard the grain spelt as a healthier alternative to wheat. Spelt was widely farmed throughout Europe until mass production favoured wheat because of its easily removable chaff. But the hard chaff that encases spelt is the secret to its nutritional value as it gives the plant extra protection from disease and weather. Spelt grain contains more protein than most wheat grains, it is slow release energy food and provides fibre, iron and complex B vitamins.” In the US, they’re touting spelt for its health attributes: “Just two ounces of whole grain spelt flour, the amount you would most likely consume in a couple of slices of spelt bread, will provide 18.9%% of the daily value for fibre,” reports the World’s Healthiest Foods website, whfoods.com. “Spelt is also a good source of zinc, a trace mineral frequently found to be low in persons with diabetes. This mineral is very important since zinc can help with blood sugar control, while also increasing the number and activity of certain types of immune system cells responsible for fighting infections. Two ounces of spelt flour provides 16.1% of the daily value for zinc.” In New Zealand, there’s a growing market for wholegrain breads and a range of boutique bread varieties are emerging. Getting consumers to wake up to the health issues, however, is an ongoing task.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 75

tasteLIFE

TRAVEL

The thing about Beaver

Self-proclaimed ‘uncoordinated mother’ Catherine Newton takes her kids to Beaver, Colorado

EAVER CREEK, Colorado – Here’s the truth. I dreaded our trip to Beaver Creek. The night before my two kids and I left for our four-night, threeday winter adventure in Colorado, I kept thinking that the whole thing was a whopping mistake. To begin with, I hadn’t skied since high school, when my second and last attempt to get down a puny hill had ended with a backward, knee-twisting slide followed by an embarrassing ride in the ski-patrol sled. There was also my deep-rooted fear of being cold, recently spurred by a friend who sent me Internet Wisdom titled “Ski Vacation Preparation Primer.” Among other things, the primer advised me to: “Fill a blender with ice, hit the pulse button and let the spray blast your face. Leave the ice on your face until it melts. Let it drip into your clothes.” And finally there was the not-so-small matter of baggage. My kids’ stepmum, Diana, who skis with them every year, had packed one small blue duffel with Jack’s ski clothes and one purple bag with Hadley’s, assuring me that it would be easier if all their slope-gear was in one place. Each also

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had a carry-on backpack crammed with CDs, books, homework and video games. Four bags, and I hadn’t even gotten to our jeans, turtlenecks, sweaters, toothbrushes, hairbrushes, five tubes of lip balm and one tub of Kiehl’s new All-Sport “Non-Freeze” Face Protector SPF30. Or my newly purchased ski pants, $25 socks, Hot Chillys underwear and fleece-lined boots. In the end, I crammed it all into a 20year-old wheeled duffel, giving us three bags to check, plus two backpacks and my laptop to carry on. I decided to pray for available skycaps, the patron saints of single parents. As I lay in bed that Wednesday night in January, repeating my somewhat redundant goals for this vacation – stay alive and stay warm – I tried to remember: What had made me book the flight to Beaver Creek back in the autumn? Again, it came down to two somewhat redundant things: A promotional notecard claimed that the resort, just 15 minutes’ drive from mega-resort Vail and three hours’ west of Denver, was “THE place for families.” But more importantly, my son Jack, 11, simply loved the sport and had worked his way up to double-

black diamond runs on frequent ski trips with his dad and Diana. It seems to me that one of the nicest things we can do for the people we love is to try to love what they love. It was going to be a challenge. When we landed at Eagle County Airport the next afternoon, it was -7 degrees (22 degrees Celsius below zero). “Find the nearest ice rink and walk across the ice 20 times in your ski boots carrying two pairs of skis, accessory bag and poles. Pretend you are looking for your car. Sporadically drop things.” – Ski Vacation Preparation Primer Everything is a matter of perspective. Friday morning, we flipped on the television in our Beaver Creek Village condo and learned that it was 6 degrees. “But it’s six above, right?” (still 15 degrees C below freezing) asked my daughter, Hadley, who is 8 and a reluctant skier. But ski school waits for no man, woman or reluctant child, so we piled on the layers and the gaiters and the fleece hats and the mittens, and by 8 a.m. were munching on bagels and cereal in McCoy’s at the foot of the mountain, a cafeteria-style restaurant. The children’s ski school was in the next building, and just a few forms later, the kids were enrolled and outfitted. Hadley would be in a ski class, while Jack would try snowboarding. Guided by an energetic, smiling Australian, they went off to what Family Life magazine rated this year as one of the top five kids’ ski schools in the nation. From there, it was a quick walk over to Snowell, the rental shop for Beaver Creek Sports, where I’d be getting my equipment, and along the way I discovered one of the very best features of this resort – my friends, Beth and Mark. I had known we would all be in Beaver Creek at the same time, but I thought the chances of running into anyone were pretty slim. Not so. It’s just as easy to meet people you’re looking for – be they friends or small fry – at this well-planned, intimate resort as it is to get from one necessary spot to another. Which is great, because after I picked up my equipment (just missing Frasier’s Kelsey Grammer, said the boot man) I learned that one of the very worst features of any resort is having to lug around a bunch of heavy, unwieldy stuff while wearing boots that feel like lead weights. Fortunately, our First Timers group

assembled just an escalator ride away from the rental shop. Our cheery instructor Ed, who’s been teaching for 11 years, assured us we would have a lot of fun. Indeed, Ed was patient and kind. On the bottom of the beginner’s hill, he talked us through everything from how to put on our skis to how to wedge slowly down a slight rise to how to walk sideways up that same rise. The sun was shining. It was not cold at all – in fact, I was so hot I took off my jacket. I was also less than a football field away from Jack and his snowboarding class all morning, and we waved encouragingly at each other. The mountains were gorgeous. Life was beautiful. At least until after lunch. Ed was torturing me. Somehow, when we’d graduated to the part of skiing that involves actually riding up a lift and coming down a slippery slope, I’d become his problem child. The rest of the First Timers – the two women from Florida, a blonde from Dallas and even the couple from England – were all swishing down the mountain without problems. I, meanwhile, could not make a left turn. I tried to follow Ed’s advice to think of my knee as a light and my belly button as a camera that must follow it. I tried to imagine pedaling a bike, as Ed urged me to. But panic has a funny way of making you stop thinking and instead decide to slam your body sideways down into the cold, wet snow. After many, many runs skiing directly behind Ed, who took away my ski poles and suggested, loudly and constantly, that I not give up mid-mountain, I began to get it, but I also began to understand why my daughter says it’s not skiing she dislikes so much as ski school. Public humiliation is exhausting. “Soak your gloves and store them in the freezer after every use.” – Ski Vacation Preparation Primer That night, Jack, Hadley and I snuggled under blankets on a sleigh, drawn by a Snowcat up the mountain, headed toward Beano’s, a gourmet restaurant where the only way in – or out – is by sleigh or cross-country skis. As the Snowcat tossed icy snow into our faces, our guide pointed out the homes of the rich and richer along the way. Firestone. Forbes. The prince of Kuwait. Beaver Creek, which opened in 1980, is a planned community that caters to those who like quiet, convenience and upscale amenities. Diana, who has been to nearby Vail, likened that sprawling resort to

“New York City in fur.” Beaver Creek, then, may be Vail’s Connecticut – family-friendly, more homogeneously tony and with streets that seem to roll up by 10 p.m. At Beano’s, grown-ups dine on an inventive, delicious five-course meal while children have pizza, pasta or chicken and ice cream -all appealing to even the pickiest palates. Even Jack, who laughingly calls himself a “carbivore,” was happy. On the way downhill through White River National Forest, we sat with our backs to the Snowcat to avoid the icy spray. The air was clear. The stars were out. The pine trees loomed above the sleigh, topped with dollops of glistening snow. My children and I were tucked securely under wool blankets. Life was almost too beautiful again. “If you wear glasses, begin wearing them with glue smeared on the lenses.” – Ski Vacation Preparation Primer The next morning, while Jack headed gleefully to snowboard school, Hadley and I decided to learn more about what other kinds of snow fun are found at Beaver Creek. Specifically, we boarded Strawberry Park Express, lift No. 12, to explore McCoy Park, 32 kilometers of groomed and rustic trails for snowshoeing and cross-country skiing.

“

Here’s what I learned: Snowshoeing is hard work. I run three miles twice a week in Texas, but after climbing 30 uphill steps at 9,840 feet, even in lightweight Atlas shoes, I was breathing hard. So was Hadley. “Look at the view,” I said, gazing in wonder at the Gore Range. “Who cares?” said Hadley. “Let’s just keep going till we get to flatter ground.” Our guide, Colleen, proved to be a nature girl of Euell Gibbons intensity. She pointed out animal tracks to the children in our tour group, helping them identify coyotes, foxes and rabbits. She showed us where deer scraped their lower teeth along the white bark of the aspen tree, which is an excellent source of vitamin C. American Indians used to make a tea out of it, she said, but she didn’t recommend it. She’d had it before and it didn’t taste very good. Colleen taught the children how to dig snow caves under an overhang created by a snowplow along the side of the trail. I helped Hadley and another girl dig. Lying on my stomach, reaching into the cold, I remembered something long forgotten in my mind: Snow can be fun. Snow can be very fun. That afternoon, the kids and I accepted an invitation from the very active and enthusiastic communications directors for Beaver Creek, who

I also began to understand why my daughter says it’s not skiing she dislikes so much as ski school. Public humiliation is exhausting

”

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loaded us into their Suburban and drove us 15 minutes to Vail. We hopped on the gondola (free after 2:00 p.m.) and found ourselves at Adventure Ridge, a little slice of kid snow-heaven. The best part: tubing. Tubing is sledding. Only waaaay better. You go on an innertube shaped sled, which is comfy and fast. You travel inside slick lanes, which have snow walls, so you don’t go out of control or fall over. To get up the mountain, you simply hand the ring of your tube to an attendant, sit in the tube and watch while he attaches your tube to a pole, then listen to the music blasting from the Tubing Booth speakers as you let the lift drag you up the mountain. Then you fly down, with snow blasting against your goggles. After tubing, we took the kids to the mini snowmobile park and watched them race each other around the course. I began to wonder if I were depriving my kids by having them grow up in a land without snow. I was loving waking up every morning, putting my hair in Heidi braids and spending the day outdoors in the fresh mountain air. After two days, I was Rocky Mountain high, and thinking that maybe I should move to Colorado. “Secure one of your ankles to a bed post and ask a friend to run into you at high speed.” – Ski Vacation Preparation Primer We’re riding up the ski lift, Hadley and I. She is talking a mile a minute, pointing down to the mountain and telling me her plans. She is my teacher for the morning and we have just completed our first three runs, in which she has learned what a terrible pupil I am. It takes me a little longer to get up each time I fall. My muscles are achy. I am officially Old and In Pain. “Mum,” says Hadley, “this time we’re not going to do the racing between the flags or the little jump near the covered bridge. You need to work on your C turns. When we get off the lift, we’re going over there – see?” She points to the top of the mountain where Ed had led me two days before. “This time, I’m going to ski right down to the Winnie the Pooh. I’m not going to wait for you, OK?” She points to a wooden Pooh sign that I passed a dozen times two days before but never noticed. The mountain is a playland for her, and she is helping me see it that way, too. At the top of the run, she looks over her shoulder at me and sees me hesitating.

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“Face your fears, Mum!” she says, smiling – and takes off in a pink blur. And so I do. We meet at Pooh, and then, to practice my turns, Hadley has me follow her, just as Ed did. I am thinking “light, camera, bicycle, leeeeean” when she stops me. “This is the trick,” she says. “Think of it like this. You’re making a sandwich. Peanut butter is your right leg. Jelly is your left. Just spread on one thing, then the other. Just think: `Peanut Butter, Jelly, Peanut Butter, Jelly.’” It seems silly, but I try it. And it works. I am relaxed. Not over-thinking, just getting into the rhythm. I hear Ed’s words in my head: “Just do what the skis want to do. Follow the mountain,” and it’s finally all making some sense. Next time down, we stop near Jack’s snowboarding class. He has mastered turns and is getting ready to learn how to link them. Hadley announces that she’s tired

and sinks down into the snow for a rest. Here we are, I think, my kids and me, in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Warm, happy and having fun. A friend has e-mailed me that it’s 70 degrees (21 degrees Celsius) back home, and I feel sad to be leaving this spot of winter. This is our last full day in Beaver Creek. Now, I don’t know if I love skiing, but I do know this: I love this day and this place and these two snow-loving children. Now if only someone would help me repack. GETTING THERE: Distinctive Holiday Homes have a 7,000 sq ft mansion available on the slopes of Beaver Creek, perfect as the base for your North American ski holiday and equipped with spa pool, luxury entertaining areas and a BMW X5 or Dodge SUV to roam around in. See www.d-h-h.com for further details.

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tasteLIFE

FOOD

Straight up

James Morrow explores the mystique and misconceptions surrounding the martini

here’s a wonderful little moment in the Simpsons episode, “Bart on the Road”, when Bart and his mates emerge from a movie theatre playing William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, having earlier bought their tickets with a fake ID. As the perplexed and disturbed lads walk out, one of their number sums things up perfectly when he says, “I can think of at least two things wrong with that title”. I had a similar experience the other day when, browsing through my local discount bookshop, I happened upon a copy of Martini: A Memoir by the Australian writer Frank Moorhouse. It had a blurry photo of a martini on the dust jacket, an appropriately 1930s-style typeface to announce itself, and best of all, a price tag of $4.99. Sadly, this was a case of why it is sometimes a well and truly awful idea to judge a book by its cover. For this was no reflection on what may very well be the greatest drink ever invented by the likes of, say, an American novelist like Updike or Cheever who would really know their stuff on the subject. Instead, this was a ramble – and for anyone familiar with the area of New York’s Central Park that goes by the same name, the implicit double entendre very much applies here – through Moorhouse’s colourful and lubricious past. Appreciations of

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the cocktail turn out to be quite secondary to his narrative. Without spoiling the plot of the book (or appetites of readers), and given that this is very much a family magazine, simply let me suggest that when Mr Moorhouse is offered a choice of having his martini shaken or stirred, he is most likely to reply, “Both”. What reflections on the martini are present in the book are taken mostly in the form of interlocutions with a fictional friend who seems to appear ghost-like with Moorhouse in watering holes around the world. Talk about your lost opportunities. For while smart cocktail bars in any city worth its salt have long competed to see who could come up with the most outlandish combinations of ingredients to serve in martini, or more accurately “stemmed”, glasses (for this we can surely lay much blame at the feet of Carrie and her needy and neurotic crew from Sex and the City and their steady diet of “Cosmopolitans”), the proper martini as something more transcendent and special than just a cocktail for city suits to spend $16 on after work is too often neglected. Why is this a bad thing?, I can hear you asking. Isn’t it better to simply let a drink do its job, and shut up about it already? The fact is that the martini is as much

part of the canon of modern drinking as Shakespeare, Chaucer and Milton are to English literature. One need not enjoy them personally – and here we won’t hold it against you – to appreciate their significance. There was a time in the United States especially when any man hosting a cocktail gathering would offer his male guests a martini. And even if none of his guests partook, the host would still hold court at his bar or liquor cabinet and mix one for himself simply as a discreet display of his talents. As much as anything else, a martini is what author Tom Wolfe – as much a sociologist as a novelist – would call a “status marker”. It may be apocryphal, but there is a story that, in the days before America raised its drinking age to 21, at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, alma mater of Bill Clinton, one particularly popular professor of diplomacy would wheel in a bar cart for his last lecture of the term. There he would teach his young charges the art of making a proper martini, on the assumption that this skill would help cement many a diplomatic bond and extinguish countless smouldering international incidents. Perhaps it is too long a bow to draw, but one does note the link between the fact that this particular professor has not taught for more than twenty years, enough time to cycle out a generation of diplomats, and America’s current standing in the world. But even if a martini cannot achieve world peace, it can for a brief moment help its consumer achieve an inner peace – what Richard Nixon’s saintly Quaker mother called “peace at the centre”. No wonder the poet E.B. White once called the martini “the elixir of quietude”. The biggest question when it comes to martinis is that of rules. Ask any barkeep and they will tell you that martini drinkers are the most persnickety of all their customers. On the eternal question of shaken versus stirred, I’m afraid I have to break with MY (fictional) Anglospheric cousin James Bond and say that stirred is the way to go. This is not about “bruising the gin” so much as it is about introducing an unacceptable amount of water and aeration into the drink. President James Bartlet of The West Wing nailed this when he said, �� “Shaken, not stirred, will get you cold water with a dash of gin and dry vermouth. The reason you stir it with a spe-

cial spoon is so not to chip the ice. James is ordering a watered-down martini – and he’s being snooty about it.” Likewise, the well-intentioned technique of many bartenders to ensure dryness that sees them swirl a bit of vermouth over the ice before tossing it out seems to me a practice that runs the real risk of warming the ice, which should be very cold, hard and dry, not starting to warm and weep. Interestingly, martinis used to be made with a far greater proportion of vermouth than they are today, sometimes sitting against gin in as much a 2-1 ratio. This is a product largely of America’s Prohibition era, when “bathtub gin” was barely palatable and needed something else to mask its flavour. Today we have no such problems, and every week it seems a new high-end gin is finding its way onto our shelves to compete with the likes of old standards such as Bombay Sapphire and Tanqueray, as well as that locally-produced beauty, South Gin. Indeed if there is one hard-and-fast rule of martinis, it is this: Everything must be cold. Gin lives in the freezer, along with the cocktail shaker and if room permits a glass. Vermouth, being unable to stand such chills, lives next door in the fridge. I’m not one for measurements but several glugs of gin over ice, followed by a quick snap of vermouth, stirred briskly and then strained into the glass is all one needs to produce a slightly viscous, bracing, bone-dry cocktail. Finally on the question of garnish, I’m for once something of an agnostic. Yes, a martini with an onion instead of an olive is a Gibson, and some people prefer a lemon peel. My only concern in this regard is that olives not be too big – some of the giants one encounters out and about seem like nothing so much as a ploy by bar management to displace liquid volume and disguise meagre pours. If there is only one rule that I would urge readers to follow in terms of martinis is also the hardest one to observe: Stick to one. I’m serious. A proper martini is almost a straight slug of an awful lot of 80 proof (or higher) spirit. Its effects roll in far differently than those of a handle of beer or a glass of wine. Think of it like the afterburners on a fighter jet. Fire them once, and you’re at altitude in record time. Fire them again, or too often, and you either wind up flying too high and running out of oxygen or simply flying too fast and running out of fuel.

Most of us think of a martini as something to be consumed with nothing more than its garnishes, or perhaps a handful of nuts from the bar. And perhaps this is the way it should be. But a martini can also be a great prelude to a meal, so long as the food to come is as honest and straightforward as the drink itself. A great piece of steak and some perfectly cooked fries – what the French call steak frites – fits the bill perfectly.

For the steak You’ll need: 4 beef steaks, such as porterhouse, sirloin or rib eye, shell or filet mignon (250g or so each and 2-3 cm inch thick) 5 tablespoons unsalted butter salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste 1 tablespoon water 1. With a sharp knife, make small incisions, about 3-4 cm apart in the fat around the outside of each steak. 2. Melt 3 tablespoons of the butter in a large heavy skillet or sauté pan over high heat until hot but not smoking. Add the steaks and sear for 1 minute on each side. Reduce the heat to medium. Season the steaks generously with salt and pepper and continue cooking, turning the steaks every other minute, until you see little pearls of blood come to the surface, about 4 to 6 minutes for rare. 3. Remove the steaks and place them on warmed plates. Over medium heat, deglaze the pan with the water and swirl in the remaining 2 tablespoons butter. Drizzle these pan juices over the meat and serve at once with fries.

For the frites You’ll need: Vegetable oil 1 kg starchy potatoes 1. Pour enough oil into a deep fryer or heavy pan to reach at least halfway up the sides of the pan but not more than three-quarters of the way up. Heat the oil to 165C. 2. Cut the potatoes into sticks 1 cm wide and 6 to 8 cm long. Dry all the pieces thoroughly in a clean tea towel. This will keep the oil from

splattering. Divide the potato sticks into batches of no more than 1 cup each. Do not fry more than one batch at a time. 3. When the oil has reached the desired temperature, fry the potatoes for four to five minutes per batch. They should be lightly colored but not browned. If your fryer has a basket, simply lift it out then remove the fried potatoes. Otherwise, use a longhandled skimmer to lift out the potatoes. Be sure to bring the temperature of the oil back to 165C in between batches. At this point the fries can rest for several hours at room temperature until you are almost ready to serve them. 4. Reheat the oil to 165C. Re-fry the potatoes in 1-cup batches until they are nicely browned and crisp, one to two minutes. Drain on fresh paper towels or brown paper bags and place in a warmed serving bowl lined with more paper towels. Sprinkle with salt and serve. Never cover the potatoes to keep them hot as they will immediately turn soft and limp. If you are inclined to perfectionism, leave some potatoes to fry halfway through the meal so you can serve them crisp and piping hot. (Adapted from Ruth Van Waerebeek’s Everyone Eats Well in Belgium)

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 81

seeLIFE PAGES

Hunks of burning love Michael Morrissey writes of infidels, painted ladies and the ghost of Elvis INFIDEL By Ayaan Hirsi Ali Free Press, $ 34.99

yaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born woman who rose to be a member of the Dutch parliament and became world famous (in the case of Islam, worldnotorious) for her scripting of a short film that showed the words of the Quran on a woman’s body. The intention of the film was to criticise the treatment of Muslim women. It was anticipated the film would create a furore but on its initial release nothing happened. However, in 2004, a Muslim assassin murdered the film’s maker, Theo Van Gogh, who also happened to be a descendant of the famous painter Vincent Van Gogh. His dying words were, “Can’t we talk about it?” A letter pinned to Van Gogh’s chest promised that Hirsi Ali would be killed next. So far, thanks to the protection of the Dutch and American governments, she has managed to survive. This autobiography traces Ali’s mental, social, political and religious evolution from being a member of a Somali tribe to a non-believer – hence the title, Infidel. Apart from the blasphemous nature of the

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film she scripted, according to Muslim religious law, she merits death as an apostate. Officially therefore, Islam is a religion that is easy to join but very difficult to leave. This is a moving and courageous book but one calculated to anger and even enrage Islam rather than make peace with it – if indeed that were possible. Obviously, Hirsi Ali’s conscience and newly acquired beliefs will not permit any reconciliation. This review began with the book’s conclusion but necessarily this account starts with Hirsi Ali’s childhood. It begins movingly with her grandmother asking “Who are you?” This is the prompt for the five year old Hirsi Ali to recite her blood lines going back 300 years. The psychological effort required to leave such a deep inheritance cannot be underestimated. Her grandmother tells them history and stories as she cooks. Some are stories of how to survive against wild animals, others are tales of treachery, bloodshed and revenge – a rich brew in other words. When Hirsi Ali’s liberal father was in prison and her mother was away, the grandmother, who could not read or write, arranged the children’s circumcision. When one reads of the trauma, bleeding and infection, and the resultant sewing

up of the wound, the word has a euphemistic ring. Though circumcision predates Islam, Hirsi Ali states that Islam reinforces it. Imams do not discourage the practice because it keeps girls pure. Hirsi Ali relates how her mother, a frustrated and angry woman, often beat her children. Though thankfully a reconciliation occurred in later life. The book’s odyssey sees Hirsi Ali growing up in several other countries – Saudi Arabia (which she and her father hated for its oppressive practices) and Kenya and Ethiopia. Despite his pro-democratic attitude, her father enthusiastically arranges a marriage for her to a man who is not to her liking. Her rejection of the marriage proposal alienates her father and her departure from the Islam faith makes that alienation permanent. By now Hirsi Ali has fled to Holland and this is where her gradual secularisation really begins. She observes that the more provocative dress of the Dutch women does not produce the sexually aggressive reaction she had been told to expect; that Holland is better and more fairly run than her own country; that the government is fair and liberal and not tyrannical and corrupt; that women have rights and are free citizens.

In a word, Hirsi Ali becomes pro-Western and pro-democratic. Her “conversion”, so to speak, is of her own free will. Hirsi Ali is no saint. She admits she told lies to gain entry to Holland and these later rebounded on her when her citizenship was annulled – though later reinstated. From the cover of the book, Hirsi’s steady unflinching gaze must strike any who pick up the book as a woman who is resolute and defiant. Though her actions have been provocative in the extreme, she can only be viewed as a woman of extraordinary courage.

RAW PLACES By John Horrocks Steele Roberts, $24.95

ohn Horrocks is a new, confident and mature voice on the over-crowded New Zealand poetry scene – overcrowded it must be said with much prosaic mediocrity and chopped up banal prose masquerading as poetry which often reads – and indeed may be – random line-breaked regulations copied from the back of bus tickets. In other words, dried-up wheat biscuits masquerading as caviar. Horrocks gives us a full banquet and leaves the reader’s palate still moist. This collection of honest, honed poetry is from a man who has not only worked the land – sixteen years farming north of Auckland and in the Wairarapa – but has written an impressive complex PhD thesis on William Blake called “Imagining the Tiger”. Horrocks also lectures on psychology and in a former life was headed for a PhD in the now more or less obsolete school of Skinnerian behaviorism. In other words, the still handsome Horrocks, scion of the distinguished Auckland Horrocks family, is somewhat of a Renaissance man – a concept that has increasingly become anomalous in today’s world of contemporary specialisation. Horrocks sees the landscape not only with a local eye but with a historic perspective: The sky over Waitaha mimics those ostentatious sunsets the Chinese saw two thousand years ago. The reference to Chinese history isn’t just dropped as a one liner but is pleasurably extended: Those courtiers in their brocaded gowns looked fearfully at trumpet flames and dusts of strange vermilion light

Steele Roberts is to be congratulated on publishing some interesting new voices which might otherwise have not seen the light of day.

RAINFOREST By Thomas Marent DK, $68

ust as you think photography has reached its zenith in warm detail of that far-off organic cranny another book happenstances along that caps the last one. In other words, as far as my eyeballs are concerned, Rainforest tops anything I’ve previously irised. Take the orange-magenta explosion spreadeagled over pp178-179. It could be a galaxy giving up the ghost, a psychedelic utility belt, but actually it’s a Peruvian caterpillar with finely erect hairs that make it difficult for parasitic wasps to land and lay their eggs. Or take the eye of the fruit-eating toco toucan on pp 110-111, it could be closeup of a deliriously expensive Van Gogh or the eye of a marooned alien from one of Saturn’s moons, but it’s clearly terrestrial, a wild shock of colour. The fallen flowers of a sea poison tree resting on the black volcanic sand of a Sulawesi beach could be bursts of refined lava mushrooming out of fumaroles. Yes, New Zealand is here but rather modestly and rather disappointingly in a few Fiordland ferns. It’s a shame really – for the author could have caught a giant Mahoenui weta or a pohutukawa blossom being raided by a tui or a tuatara basking in the sun. Apart from the less than satisfactory inclusion of New Zealand – not a major flaw given the ambitious scope of the book – this book would be ideal as a Christmas gift or a boon to school libraries.

PEGGY GUGGENHEIM: Mistress of Modernism By Mary Dearborn Virago, $32.99

ny culturally-minded visitor to New York will probably have the Guggenheim museum in mind as a place to visit. And they will not be disappointed – the building is unique, its giant conch design spiraling ever upwards, and the art collection is impressive. Alas, for my temporary ignorance, this Big Apple gal-

lery was created by Solomon Guggenheim, Peggy’s uncle. Never mind. Having read this absorbing biography I am equally if not more impressed with Peggy Guggenheim’s own bona fide achievements in the art field. Peggy Guggenheim came from a rich German-Jewish family with strict social and marriage expectations of their daughters – they should marry a banker or lawyer of similar background. Peggy decided to rebel. She went to Paris and got involved with a handsome, dashing, golden-maned poet called Laurence Vail. Unfortunately, Laurence was also an alcoholic and an abuser. He regularly beat and humiliated Peggy in public. Peggy seems to have been somewhat of a masochist because several of the men that figured in her life were physically abusive. The sadistic Laurence goaded her with the assertion that she had only been invited into the art-bohemian scene because of her money and that without him she would have no such entry. Yet despite humiliations, drunkenness and general indulgence, Peggy was making her way in a milieu that she preferred to the safer more sedate world from which she sprung: “They’re full of wonderful ideas and fantasies, they are so much more alive than stockbrokers and lawyers”. Though rich, Peggy was not nearly as wealthy as her hangers on supposed. On the death of her father, she received an inheritance of $450,000 or about five million in today’s money. However, she gave steadily and generously to many artists and writers such as Djuna Barnes, the talented but alcoholic author of Nightwood, the anarchist Emma Goldman, Dorothy Holms, Eleanor Fitzgerald as well the abusive Laurence plus donations to a relief fund for out of work coal miners in West Virginia – and yet she was accused of stinginess! Whatever her faults, Peggy had a kind heart and a conscience.. Being part of the bohemian whirl of Paris, Peggy was able to throw a sumptuous party for Isadora Duncan, famous modernist dancer. Included among the guests were Jean Cocteau, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Andre Gide, plus Marcel Du Champ. One hand grenade would have destroyed many of the giants of modernism. When a fracas occurred in a cafe (as they often did), the artistically witty Du Champ would suggest turning on the charm of which he had a ready supply. Despite her large nose, which an early attempt at plastic surgery

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 83

failed to improve, Peggy also had her share of charm, attractiveness and wit (and money too of course). Among her many amours were Du Champ and Samuel Beckett, who at the time was a struggling writer and not the world-famous author he was to become. As the clouds of war descended on Europe, Peggy fled back to the United States. And as war peaked in Europe, she began her financial and artistic support for the stormy artist Jackson Pollock who became the most noted painter of his time. For this alone, she might have found a place in art history but there were grander things to come. When she set up her own gallery in New York, Peggy truly entered the history books. This was a bold move for a woman to make at the time – there was one other woman art dealer in New York. As Dearborn puts it, “her gallery would change the course of art history in the twentieth century”. She achieved this by creating a gallery that was not sedate and stuffy but “vibrant and innovative”, “a real experience to visit, which drew guests in and encouraged them to interact with the art and any artists or critics they might meet there”. She was greatly assisted in this enterprise by Frederick Kiesler, a diminutive but brilliant Viennese architect. Under his direction, all manner of unusual viewing strategies were put in place such as unframed art for immediate impact; showing as many paintings in a small space as possible; lighting devices that would switch off, but could be turned on by the viewer pulling a lever plus an eyepiece attached to a large spiral like ship’s wheel to view one of Du Champ’s creations – all of these devices were part of Kiesler’s Kinetic Gallery allowing the viewer to interact with the art. Following the end of the war, Peggy acquired a famous palazzo on the Grand Canal of Venice. Previously occupied by Browning and Henry James, Peggy assembled within its wall a famous collection of Surrealists and modern American artists which can still be viewed by visitors to the watery city. This biography is a well-focused study of a lively woman who helped change the way art is displayed. So vivid is the portrait of the subject with warts, big nose and all, I felt a twinge of sadness at her parting – a tribute to Mary Dearborn’s carefully detailed study, rendered in flowing highly readable prose.

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IN SEARCH OF ELVIS By Charles Connelly Little Brown, $39.99

t was 1956, year of the Suez Crisis. Waikato had resoundingly defeated the Springboks, and the country was in a Mooloo delirium. Not this Mt Roskill state house boy. I was reading Foundation by Isaac Asimov and my mind had been blown by the notion of galaxy containing a quintillion human beings – 40 billion alone on Trantor, eg Earth. I turned on the radio and heard Heartbreak Hotel sung by a young Memphis boy called Elvis Presley. He sounded as though he was singing from the bottom of a well but that just added to the thrill of the new. He was singing about loneliness and love – common themes in songs at the time. Other artists popular at the time included Connie Francis, Jim Reeves, Marty Robbins, Pat Boone, the Four Preps, and the Four Aces. Generally, a wholesome bunch. Elvis wasn’t wholesome – he was indefinably bad, from the wrong side the tracks, singing the Devil’s music – this latter charge turned out to be ironic because Elvis cut his teeth on gospel singing and recorded several gospel songs himself. Apart from his Brylcreemed swagger, mobile hips, brooding gaze, Elvis had an extraordinary voice. It oozed a confident, alley-smart sexiness never since equaled or surpassed. It seems the world concurs because according to Connelly’s charming account, the world is being overrun with Elvis Presley lookalikes. (“In 1977 there were 185 impersonators in the world. In 2005, there were 186,000. At that rate of growth, by something like the year 2060 one in four people in the world will be an Elvis impersonator.”) No other artist is copied or mimicked as much as Elvis. Actually there are two types – serious Elvis impersonators who try hard to look and sing like the King – including his skillful body gyrations – and playful imitators (usually fat guys) who just pretend to be imitating Elvis. Some of the Elvis worship is close to that given to saints. So quite soon, don’t be surprised if someone with a lame foot claims to have had it straightened by praying to Elvis. One could say his posthumous adulation is a sort of secular miracle. But let us go on a journey courtesy of

Elvis enthusiast Charley Connelly – and he, by the way, claims to be a mild case of the genre. It seems the Presleys come from Scotland. Andrew Presley emigrated from Lonmay, forty miles north of Aberdeen to North Carolina in 1745. This Scottish origin has led – have you guessed already? – to the creation of a Presley tartan though not thankfully a Presley haggis. Alas there is a dark side – like the woman in Australia who shot her husband for playing “Burning Love” over and over again. How about Elvis in Uzbekistan? Uzbekistan has the privilege of being one of the only two countries that are double-land locked. This geographic remoteness doesn’t mean they are sufficiently out of the way to escape Presley mania however. The Guli-Bonu Producer Center is swathed in Elvis memorabilia and there is an Elvis Cafe. In Porthcawl, Wales a black Elvis lets loose on the stage. Connelly’s Elvis odyssey necessarily takes in Sun Studios where Elvis cut his first disk – the same studio that kickstarted the careers of Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash – and Las Vegas where the King reigned supreme for several years. Canada has Dan Hartal, better known as Schmelvis, the world’s leading Jewish Elvis impersonator. And perhaps most exotic of all is Dr Jukka Ammonds who perform and records Elvis songs in Latin and Sumerian. Most lavish of the tribute spots is the Elvis diner in Israel which has displayed on the ceiling “a fantastic painted mural that depicted Elvis’s life from start to finish and ran the length of the room in a distinctly Sistine manner”. After a book filled with light-hearted banter about the peculiarities of Elvis obsession, Connelly closes on a moving note. He was given a hand-signed picture of Elvis by a German fan and entrusted to deliver to the diner in Israel. He does just that then he realises something deeper is going on – two members of formerly enemy nations are being linked by a shared obsession. Elvis here becomes a sort of peace maker uniting people more effectively than politicians have done – not only German and Jews but Arabs and Jews have been blissfully united by Elvis enjoyment. Quite simply there was nothing more for Connelly to do than sip his beer, watch the sun set and listen to Elvis singing “I Just Can’t Help Believing”.

healthy eating from the ground up

At Venerdi, we bake our spelt and gluten free breads with your health and wellbeing in mind. We use only organic ingredients, grown in healthy soil and packed full of natural goodness.

time to restore the balance Bread is a staple of the NZ diet, and our aim is to provide a truly healthy bread option for everyone. Venerdi gluten free breads, pizza bases, biscuits & cakes: tasty, different, great for general well being, extra energy and all those gluten issues. Venerdi Spelt breads: the easily digestible wheat, delicate gluten, B vitamins, minerals trace elements - you will feel the difference. Organic production and manufacture means; chemical residue free and the living soils grow food rich in nutrients, vitamins and enzymes that are so vital to our good health. Find out more information and where to purchase at our website www.venerdi.co.nz

enjoy a slice of the good life with free toast for two Call 09 813 5481 or email info@venerdi.co.nz for a free info pack, complete with two slices of tasty Venerdi bread for you to toast for breakfast. You can choose from our ‘sour seedy’ spelt loaf, jam-packed with an organic blend of 6 seeds, or try our ‘country’ wholemeal gluten free loaf, also created from a blend of 5 seeds and organic flour giving you the best of both worlds - good health and good taste. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 85

seeLIFE MUSIC

Eclectic blue

Chris Philpott rates Xavier Rudd, not so keen on the ex-Cranberries lead singer XAVIER RUDD White Moth

POWDERFINGER Dream Days at the Hotel Existence

DOLORES O’RIORDAN Are You Listening?

f you’re familiar with Xavier Rudd, you would be forgiven for thinking that he is your average Californian beach bum who probably hung out with Jack Johnson and made regular trips to Hawaii. Indeed, some of his nature-centred lyrics would almost confirm that thinking. In fact, Rudd is an Australian born multi-instrumentalist based in Canada who carries his son’s sock around on tour and learnt to play the didgeridoo on a vacuum cleaner pipe. Somehow all these facts reconcile themselves in Rudd’s music, with the end result landing somewhere between Ben Harper and John Butler Trio. That said, White Moth is incredibly interesting to listen to – encompassing reggae and blues, as well as the beach sound made famous by the likes of Jack Johnson, Rudd has a rather large canvas on which to experiment with a wide range of instruments including the didgeridoo, Aztec, slit and djembe drums, as well as comparatively orthodox acoustic and slide guitars.There are some great moments on White Moth, and Rudd’s eclecticism really works on tracks like “Stargaze” and “Choices”, but it does tend towards the disjointed at times too. Not a mainstream record by any standard, but still worth checking out if you get the chance.

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he Aussie invasion continues with the latest release from this Brisbanebased supergroup. After announcing the effective demise of the group (some describe it as “exploring our own interests”), few were surprised when Powderfinger emerged with new work, announcing the imminent release of Dream Days at the Hotel Existence, their sixth full length album. A successful solo release from your lead singer Bernard Fanning will do that. The good news is that its not bad – recent fans will find Dream Days a logical follow-up to 2003’s Vulture Street, while long-time fans will find that the sparse, hugely melodic acoustic guitar parts hark back a few years to the groups earlier work, like 1998’s Internationalist. A musically wide ranging effort, Dream Days at the Hotel Existence kicks off with a hiss and a bang with openers “Head Up In The Clouds” and “I Don’t Remember” before settling back into the melodic, softer rhythm that forms the backbone of the group’s sound. In particular tracks like first single “Lost and Running” and “Wishing on the Same Moon” stand out. This is a great new release from a group at the peak of their powers, with enough highlights to satisfy any listener. Highly recommended.

t’s obvious from the first line of album opener “Ordinary Day” that you’re listening to the former lead singer of Irish wunderkinds The Cranberries. But gone are the uplifting pop ballads and the catchy, sometimes witty lyricism of her former band; Dolores O’Riordan shows a rockier side of herself in fashioning her debut solo release out of her own introspective tendency, and combining the resulting dark lyrics with more traditional rock guitars and ballads. Not quite as depressing as the likes of Evanescence, even though O’Riordan shows her voice still contends with the best around, Are You Listening really sounds like a little bit of Bjork, mixed with a little bit of KT Tunstall, mixed with a sprinkling of “whatever is popular on radio at the moment”. Tracks like “Apple Of My Eye” with its sweeping string arrangements, and “In the Garden” with its grunty electric guitar riffage, are at opposite ends of the rock spectrum, with only O’Riordan’s familiar wailing holding it all together. Ultimately, that is the failing of Are You Listening – it sounds too much like other things, and while it does a decent enough impression of what’s hot, it’s far from the album of the year.

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seeLIFE MOVIES

The recipe works

Colin Covert finds success for Diane Keaton; Roger Moore is still worried about Robin Williams however Because I Said So Rating: PG-13 (for sexual content including dialogue, some mature thematic material and partial nudity) Starring: Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore Directed by: Michael Lehmann 102 minutes

t’s apt that the two main characters in Because I Said So are professional bakers, since the film so carefully follows the standard recipe for women’s romantic comedy. All the ingredients are there, from the bad-date montage to the Golden Oldies sing-along to the dog that observes crazy human antics with befuddlement. But these films don’t demand originality to succeed. They’re souffles that rise or fall on the zest with which they’re handled, and this time the results are pretty tasty. Diane Keaton plays Daphne, an unnervingly robust bakery owner, and the wellintentioned but overprotective single mother of three adult daughters. Maggie (Lauren Graham), a successful psychologist, and Mae (Piper Perabo), a free spirit, are contentedly married, but young Milly (Mandy Moore) is a romantic also-ran. Daphne con-

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spires to save Milly from a lonely life like hers by matchmaking via Internet personals; when Milly realizes that her revitalized social life is the result of Mama’s interfering, their relationship is put to the test. Keaton’s coquettish Daphne is a lean, elegant fireball who’s something of a passiveaggressive monster. The film makes it clear that her marriage was unsatisfying, and she put aside post-divorce romance to build her business and raise her girls. Now she’s getting on in years, but still young in spirit. Her every move telegraphs a wired urgency. About to turn 60, she’s curious about what she has missed, doing some research on randy Web sites whose audio feeds include lusty sighs, groans and the occasional moo. When she auditions potential suitors for Milly over drinks in a hotel bar, there’s a broad suggestion of sexual rivalry, and one prospective beau thinks the glamorous, revved-up Daphne is on the hunt for a younger man herself. Eventually Milly finds herself torn between two fairly well matched suitors who are unaware they’re sharing her attentions. Tom Everett Scott plays a dreamy, successful, somewhat finicky architect; Gabriel Macht is a handsome musician with limited future prospects. You can probably guess

the outcome, but the deck isn’t stacked too obviously one way or the other. Moore is well cast as Milly. She reflects Keaton’s ditzy energy, but adds a soft, needy undercurrent of emotional tension. While Daphne secretly pulls the strings on Milly’s love life, Moore practically cries for her consolation and confidence. It’s a vicious cycle. The more a parent implies a child can’t handle independence, the more infantile the response, proving the parent’s dismissive point. Daphne sends Milly off to meet a couple of eligible guys with the oh-so-helpful advice that she shouldn’t do that ugly hyena laugh she makes when she gets nervous. Naturally, Milly begins to cackle and snort uncontrollably. Thanks, Mom. Add in the fact that Keaton is a trim silver fox and Moore has the substantial figure of a woman who enjoys a good meal, and you’ve got a messy relationship. It’s funny and a little unsettling – the clearest link between this fluffy film and director Michael Lehmann’s earlier jetblack comedies Heathers and Meet the Applegates. The best moments aren’t belly laughs (there are a couple of those, too) but the jokes that ring uncomfortably true. Reviewed by Colin Covert

License to Wed Rating: PG-13 (for sexual humor and language) Starring: Mandy Moore, John Krasinski, Robin Williams Directed by: Ken Kwapis 90 minutes

ince Shakespeare’s time, there’s been a hard and fast rule for romantic comedies. You’ve got to have a wedding. License to Wed tests that truism, and how. This halting, sometimes sweet, sometimes silly, always insistent farce has a little romance, a little wedding wisdom, the odd nice moment and the nice odd moment, and Robin Williams, running at half speed. That was enough to make RV a hit, and License could turn the same trick. But it’s a pity the movie Williams put about half his A-game into is a stumbling stiff much of the time he’s not around. Williams riffs his way around a script that has him playing a control-freak preacher who puts a betrothed couple through the ringer before he’ll preside over their nuptials at his gorgeous, pseudo-traditional/pseudo-hip church. Mandy Moore and John Krasinski (of The Office) are the ready-to-weds. Sadie is prepping her dream wedding in the

church her wealthy Chicago family helped build. Ben, like most grooms, is just along for the ride. Enter Rev. Frank. He has a pushy, pintsized and smart-mouthed “Ministers of Tomorrow” protege (Josh Flitter of Nancy Drew) and a crash course in married life that Sadie and Ben have three weeks to pass. Rev. Frank baits Ben. He sets up word association/role reversal games sure to get a rise out of the couple, the in-laws and everybody else. He spies on them. He makes them agree to “no more sex” until the honeymoon. And Ben slowly melts down as they tote mewling/puking robot infants to Macy’s and pick out which nutty cheese to serve at the reception. There’s a promising premise here: Compress a lifetime of marital obstacles into few weeks. The sentiment is kind of sappy sweet. But the situations are frankly dull when Rev. Frank isn’t there, and often dull when he is. Krasinski is getting a premature “next big thing” star push that he simply doesn’t have the presence to pull off. He is all but a non-entity here. Moore is properly perky and moony and likable, but while they’re believable as a couple,

there isn’t much comic heat to their disagreements. Director Ken Kwapis (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) tosses in random laughs here and there (Jamaican bus passengers, a visit to a maternity ward with the obligatory Wanda Sykes cameo). But he’s hard-pressed to take us anywhere the script-by-committee story hasn’t lifted from a dozen other movies. (Unless you count the robot-baby diaper change.) Williams, as has been reported elsewhere, had his long, dark rehab of the soul sometime after finishing this movie, which explains the Robo-on-slo-mo speed of his familiar patter. He recycles a lot of his TV preacher riffs (“Heal. Demons be GONE!”) for Rev. Frank, and despite offcolor cracks (“Let’s get the flock outta here”) he never lets the man of the cloth have the edge the movie demands. The title and the genre promise us a wedding, as Shakespeare decreed. And there’s a harmlessness to the humor that some will find comforting. But somewhere along the way, somebody should have pulled this License, at least until the writers found funnier stuff for everybody to do. Reviewed by Roger Moore

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 89

seeLIFE DVDs

Will Smith’s greatest role

Roger Moore give’s Pursuit four out of five The Pursuit of Happyness M, 117 minutes

“

ope can be cruel. It’s that thing you still hang onto even after reason tells you the game is over. Having a little hope can be more wrenching than the simple act of giving up. Hope is a vicious mistress to Chris Gardner. It’s that one sale that can let him pay the rent; that one bus that he just missed for the job interview with a brokerage house; the one deal he is five minutes too late to make. Hope keeps him going. But hope keeps putting banana peels on the stairs he tumbles down in “the pursuit of happiness.” Or in this case, The Pursuit of Happyness. It’s a poignant but relatively dry-eyed holiday weeper about a single dad (Will Smith) who always seems half a step away from success, even as his life spirals downward into homelessness. A feel-good movie, you ask? Why, yes. But first you’ve got to feel miserable. And more miserable. By degrees. This movie lets its hero (a real person) take one step forward, always followed by two steps back. It’s wrenching that way. Chris is peddling a bulky, suitcase-portable bone-density scanner, doctor to doctor. He’s sunk all the family money into these things. And virtually nobody wants one. So his wife (Thandie Newton, angry, defeated, magnificent) leaves him. He won’t let her take his son. He was 28 before he met his own father. “My children were gonna know who their father was,” he narrates. He spots a man getting out of a sports car and finds out what the guy does for a living. You don’t need a college degree to be a stock broker. You need to be “good with numbers and with people.” Chris is. But his timing is terrible. If only he can make an appointment to apply for a Dean Witter internship. If only he can con the guy who hands out

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For anybody who’s ever been at the bottom, or feared they were headed there, it’s a reminder that there’s no guarantee of luck or happiness in the Declaration of Independence – just the right to pursue it

”

those internships into letting him take a cab ride with him. If only he can solve the guy’s new toy, a Rubik’s Cube (this is set in 1981) and impress him. If only he can get away from the cabbie he can’t afford to pay. If only the internship paid. Christopher, his 5-year-old (Jaden Smith, Will’s kid with Jada Pinkett Smith), can’t quite figure out what dad is doing or why they keep sinking further and further into the abyss. Unpaid bills, eviction after eviction, stumbling through the subway with everything they own in a suitcase, Chris does not let on to his son that they’ve hit bottom. He barely lets himself see it. Smith immerses himself in this part to a degree we haven’t seen since Ali. He can play personable in his sleep, but here, he gives us a man struggling to keep his desperation off his face. He cracks, but doesn’t break, as he mixes with the white, more-affluent folks he so desperately needs to impress to succeed. The movie’s sense that luck has a lot to do with happiness is a little unnerving. Nobody here can see how close he is to the edge. But the audience can. And we feel it. A great device – Chris loses one of his

scanners, and has several chases with assorted San Francisco street people for it. Director Gabriele Muccini, who wrote and directed the Italian version of The Last Kiss, pays tribute to that Italian epic of the down-and-out, Bicycle Thief, showing a proud man having to lie and skip out on his bills just to survive. He vividly brings the feel of 1980s America back. The Reagan era was optimistic, full of entrepreneureal opportunity. But it was also the age when we perfected homelessness, as safety nets disappeared for people on the margin, and Americans learned, from their leaders, to just ignore the man asleep on the sidewalk. The learning curve Chris goes through, and passes on to his son, reaches for maudlin but never quite gets there. The narration (“This part of my life is called ‘Internship.’”) is cloying and unnecessary. But for anybody who’s ever been at the bottom, or feared they were headed there, it’s a reminder that there’s no guarantee of luck or happiness in the Declaration of Independence – just the right to pursue it. Reviewed by Roger Moore

CHRONO ALTIMETER

COMPASS METEO

THERMO ALARM Michael Owen, International Football Player

than a watch Founded in 1853, Tissot is proud to display the Swiss flag at the heart of its logo. The Tissot , representing Tradition, Technology, and Trend, combines with the Swiss flag and its central sign to reflect the Tissot philosophy of giving its customers MORE: the best materials– 316L stainless steel, titanium or 18K gold, scratchproof sapphire crystal, Swiss ETA manufacture movement and minimum water resistance to 30m / 100ft - in a watch that offers careful attention to details and “Gold value at silver price”. The Tissot T-Touch was created as a worldwide exclusivity in 2000. Once the tactile sapphire crystal is activated, a light touch on the glass will select the function - compass, altimeter, barometer, thermometer alarm, or chrono - and provide the information in the digital window. MORE THAN A WATCH, T-Touch combines an innovative timepiece with a precision instrument.

Tissot, Innovators by Tradition. Available at selected jewellers throughout New Zealand. Call 0508 566 300 for your nearest stockist. www.tissot.ch promotus 3357m

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touchLIFE

TOYBOX Tissot T-Race wrist watch

There’s no doubt about it, the number ‘1’ and the colour orange stand for Nicky Hayden, the 2006 MotoGP World Champion and Tissot ambassador. So it comes as no surprise that Tissot has created a dedicated 2007 T-Race watch for Nicky Hayden fans. The rubber strap and design details on the carbon fibre dial of the quartz watch reflect Nicky’s team colour of orange. The case back is engraved with his number 1, his signature and the limited edition number out of 11111. The stainless steel and carbon case is light, yet solid and the dial with its three 1/10 second, 30-minute and 60second counters is reminiscent of a motor-bike speedometer. Other biking imagery includes the steel bezel, inspired by brake discs with their slating ventilation shafts and the screws either side of the pushers, indicative of the Allen screws used throughout a motorcycle frame. The Nicky Hayden Limited Edition is presented in a mini rider’s helmet, making it a prized collector’s item. RRP $1050. Ph: 0508 566 300 for stockists.

Time to live

Mobile office essentials

Toshiba Satellite P200

Toshiba’s Satellite series offers an extensive range of consumer notebooks, from entry-level desktop replacements through to high-end gaming powerhouses. The Satellite range consists of the Satellite A200 (previously the A100) and the Satellite P200 (previously the P100). The new range includes models that feature a 1.3MP builtin webcam for live video chatting, as well as the latest Intel 802.11n wireless standard, Kendron n wireless, for enhanced wireless connectivity. The updated notebooks come pre-loaded with Windows Vista Home / Vista Home Premium. RRP$2,999 or $3,999 Inc. GST). www.toshiba.co.nz • Available in two models with Intel Core2 Duo T7200 / T7400 • 17-inch TruBrite Widescreen XGA+ • 200GB or 320GB hard drive; 2GB memory • nVidia GeForce Go 7600 video card • 1.3MP with mic

Canon SELPHY DS810

This compact photo printer has a large 2.5” (6.3cm) colour LCD screen to simplify operation. View, select, edit and print your favourite photos without even connecting to a PC. Detect then correct red-eye, brighten faces and smooth out jagged edges automatically. A clear keypad and user-friendly interface make every step easy. Print photos directly from popular memory cards and PictBridge compatible digital cameras and camcorders – no PC is required. Print a photo lab quality 10 x 15cm borderless photo in approximately 63 seconds in Standard mode. Enjoy fast borderless photo printing on a convenient credit card size and mini stickers. Canon’s ChromaLife100 system of print head, new formulation inks and Canon genuine photo papers preserves your memories producing long-lasting beautiful photos. www.canon.com

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DENON CX3 AUDIO SYSTEM

The Denon DRA-CX3 Stereo Receiver delivers robust yet pristine, stable sound through its newly developed amplifier circuitry. Despite the compact size, the DRA-CX3 delivers a powerful 150W + 150W (at 4 ohms) for superior speaker drive. In addition, the circuits of the pre-amp and the power amp sections, including their power units are completely separated from each other to minimise mutual interference on the signal, ensuring the music you hear is powerful and, above all else, clear. The CD/SACD player plays MP3 and WMA files recorded on CD-R/RW discs. It also offers goldplated, machined brass input terminals with 18cm pitch (for CD), enabling upgrades in sound quality using high-class audio RCA pin cables. A choice of optical digital outputs accommodates connection of a digital recording device while a stylish slim system remote controller provides ease of use. RRP $6,999 includes speakers. For further information visit www.audioproducts.com.au or contact John Murt on (07) 5471 1062 or email johnmurt@highprofile.com.au

EMP-X5 Multimedia Projector

Epson has released four new stylish, reliable and high performance multimedia projectors – the EMP-S5, EMP-X5, EMP-83 and the EMP-822 – with improved brightness, increased security and reduced operating costs for the education and business markets. All four projectors use Epson’s patented low cost E-TORL lamp with an extended life of 3000-4000 hours depending on operating mode, that provides a higher brightness at lower power consumption and can be replaced from just $320 plus GST. Each projector has a tough built-in security bar that allows it to be locked to the mount as a reliable counter measure against theft when used in public areas and lecture rooms. The EMP-X5 has automatic source search and vertical keystone correction, along with a 5 second startup time and instant shut down, making it a fast, easy to use and reliable companion for presenters on the move between training rooms or classrooms. All projectors feature Epson’s 3LCD technology with no moving parts and no interruptions to the light path generates bright, natural images, and smooth and sharp playback of action scenes with no colour break-up. www.epson.co.nz

SE W660 – a Walkman phone

With a tactile finish that just begs to be touched, it’s a classic-design 3G phone available in two distinctive colours, Record Black and Rose Red. Also introduced is a compact new music accessory, the Snap-on Speakers MPS-75, which let you play the tracks stored on your Walkman phone out loud. The W660 Walkman phone can store up to 470 full-length songs (in eAAC+ format) on the 512MB Memory Stick Micro (M2) supplied. As your collection grows you can expand the memory as you need and, by way of example, a 1GB Memory Stick Micro™ (M2) will hold up to 1,000 tracks.As well as high speed music download and web surfing, the W660 can deliver RSS feeds straight to the phone’s desktop to keep you up-to-date on the latest news and gossip. It also packs a 2.0 megapixel camera and Picture Blogging capability, allowing you to capture that picture and upload it instantly to your personal blog site – all at 3G speed. The W660 Walkman phone is a UMTS 2100 and GPRS 900/1800/1900 device and will be available in selected markets from Q2 2007. www.sonyericsson.com

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 93

realLIFE

LAST WORD

Bard on the run

Christian John Wikane catches up with the iconic Paul McCartney

EW YORK – Paul McCartney suddenly requests a warm beverage and, to my astonishment, it is not a cup of tea. “Have I got my Starbucks? This is only ‘cause I wanted a coffee and there’s one across the road. This is not a commercial,” he assures me, minutes after we sit down for our interview. Nestled inside the recording studio of David Kahne, who produced McCartney’s 21st non-Beatles album Memory Almost Full, he admits, “I’ve become more of a coffee person, though not because of Starbucks.” This scenario illuminates a couple of facts: One is that, even in the self-consciously hip Meatpacking District where Kahne’s studio stands anonymously, you can hardly turn a corner in Manhattan without encountering that annular logo of the meditative mermaid. The other is that for coffee drinkers and sexagenarian musicians alike, all roads eventually lead to Starbucks.

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In a joint venture with Concord Records, Starbucks’ Hear Music imprint promises what Paul McCartney’s old record company, EMI, cannot: frontline sales in the 10,000 stores Starbucks operates worldwide, serving a constituency that doesn’t frequent record stores like they used to. (Though Concord is an independent label, it’s served by a major label’s distribution system – Universal – in traditional retail outlets.) About the increasingly antiquated structure of major labels, McCartney observes, “I think that they admit themselves that they’re in a very awkward time. They had it all their own way for a number of years. They’ve got huge stables of acts and artists on their books so it’s very difficult to get singled out as an artist. You can’t get arrested. You’ve got a good album and no one will listen to it just because they’ve got to listen to 300 other albums. I think

that’s the phenomenon that people are getting fed up with.” Majors, are you listening? Pop music’s statesman has spoken. Cradling his cup of Starbucks, McCartney has a lot on his mind, and it’s not just the java. The night before our chat above Gansevoort Street’s cobble-stoned pathway (a few blocks south from his designer daughter’s boutique), McCartney gave a “secret” concert at the Highline Ballroom. Nearly 800 lucky fans and industry folks stood at maximum capacity and reveled in a rousing set of new rockers from “Memory Almost Full” and vintage Beatles material alike. The intimacy of the venue reminded McCartney of the small and steamy venues in which the Beatles, to borrow a phrase from “That Was Me,” used to “sweat cobwebs.” He says, “When we were starting out, all our gigs were like that. They were all little ballrooms or little clubs. It’s almost like a family party as opposed to a big arena show. I just like the intimacy and the sweatiness and the one-on-one. In fact, I wish it were a bit sweatier!” McCartney seems particularly keen to ruminate about his past on Memory Almost Full, or at least create compelling music from it. “My Ever Present Past” and “You Tell Me” conjure different feelings about the past – one somewhat desperate, the other bittersweet – while a suite of five songs frames the past as a place to visit but not dwell. “Vintage Clothes” advises, “Don’t live in the past/Don’t hold onto something that’s changing fast.” Could the edict apply to popular music and how it continually recycles motifs from 40 years ago (see Amy Winehouse) or pays homage to entire decades (see Rod Stewart)? McCartney suggests that musicians don’t so much hold onto the past as refer to it. “I think everyone kind of does that,” he says. “We used to do that. We would refer to Elvis, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly a few years before we made it. We referred to it and then moved on from it, so I think it’s a good jumping off platform.” Some listeners do, however, resist moving beyond, say, their well-worn vinyl copy of Sgt. Pepper and dismiss contemporary music, a situation McCartney cautions against. “There are some people, maybe older fans, who will say to me, ‘Your music’s so much better than anything they’ve got today. It’s rubbish today.’ I think, `No, no.

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, August 2007, 95

That’s dangerous talk.’ I think it’s just too cheap a shot to say, `It’s better than all this hip-hop stuff.’ I have a very wide taste in music. I will go back before my father’s era to Fred Astaire and right up to hip-hop.” In fact, on this morning of our interview, the Billboard charts reveal that Memory Almost Full trails close behind a hip-hop act: T-Pain’s “Epiphany,” which held the top spot (Rihanna’s “Good Girl Gone Bad” sat in between at No. 2). The news alights McCartney’s ageless visage, as if he scored a hit album for the first time. “It’s really cool! It’s nice to be in the Top 3. It never hurts. I think it’s kind of interesting to be up with contemporary acts like that. It’s a good sign.” At 65, McCartney has survived music trends of all kinds, outlived the combined lifespan of countless hot upstarts, and remained relevant even if critics have sharpened their pencils to a stiletto point over the years. Peruse any number of reviews and you’ll see “erratic,” “self-indulgent,” and even “sloppy” describe his solo output. McCartney offers a balanced perspective about the criticism: “After the Beatles and during the Wings period, I think there might have been a period there where I

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just wasn’t as into what I was doing and so they might be right about certain periods there. On the other hand, they might be wrong. A lot of people surprise me because I’m ready to buy that theory: ‘You’re not great all the time.’ What will happen is someone will say, ‘No, Paul, that is my favorite song of yours.’” One area pop music critics might be less qualified to adjudicate is classical music. Since the early ‘90s, McCartney has scored quite a few pieces, dating back to Liverpool Oratorio (1991) and continuing through the recent Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart) (2006). For a man who cites Little Richard as an influence, McCartney doesn’t see much of a separation between the environs of rock and classical: “It’s still the same sort of land to me. What (classical music) gives me is a new ballgame in which I haven’t really explored ... but it’s still music so I still am doing what I do but in another area. For instance, I don’t have to sing the songs, normally. I’ve had sopranos, soloists, choirs singing it. It’s very interesting to grapple with another kind of music although, like I said, I don’t see any barriers. It’s more long form, so it’s more like writing a novel ... the pop song is more like the short story form. What I have to think about when I write more the classical stuff is to not write a collection of short stories. I have to actually realize that I want ‘through flow.’ I believe it’s called ‘durchkomponiert’ in German: ‘through-composed.’ It’s a nice idea – not just rejecting a melody because you’re onto the next track. You can bring a variation back.” Outside the realm of music – pop, classical, or otherwise – McCartney has extended his sensibility to painting. McCartney’s mastery of the brushstroke stems from his schoolboy days when he would draw and sketch for his mates. He cites a particular conversation with renowned abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning as his inspiration to pursue painting. He remembers about de Kooning, “He was so off-hand about the meaning of one of his paintings. I said to him, ‘Bill, what is it?’ He said, ‘I don’t know. It looks like a couch, huh?’ and it just totally flipped me. It just relieved me of every block and every sort of worry I had about ‘Oh, it must be Hugely Significant.’ It was like, no, it’s paint.” The liberation of unconstrained creating is what links McCartney’s artwork to his music. “Freedom,” he says, “is the relation-

ship” between the two artistic expressions. One need only hear “McCartney” (1970), for example, to experience a kind of freeform sound collage. As a musician, he is the master of stringing together different ideas within the constraints of the pop song. Even on his biggest hits (“Band on the Run,” “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”), McCartney is like a painter brushing the canvas with unconventional colors and shapes. McCartney also has made peace with his mortality, having survived the premature deaths of John Lennon, George Harrison and the love of his life, Linda. On “The End of the End,” the last tune in the five-song suite, he looks death in the eye and smiles: “On the day that I die I’ d like jokes to be told And stories of old To be rolled out like carpets That children have played on And laid on while listening To stories of old.” How does McCartney reconcile his own eventual passing? “I’m kind of fatalistic about it, really,” he says. I know when John died, people sort of said, ‘Are you really worried?’ I said, ‘No.’ When your number’s up, it’s up. I concentrate on living day to day. I don’t know what I’d like my funeral to be outside of the track on the album (“The End of the End”) and I’m not even sure if I want that. It’d be kind of good for people to ... celebrate your life rather than sit around moaning. It’s something I don’t really think about too much. I’m too busy living. I just enjoy what I do and get on with it.” Paul McCartney didn’t need to record Memory Almost Full. He didn’t need to perform at the Highline Ballroom and he certainly didn’t need to speak with me about what it all means. Whether holding a paintbrush or a guitar, he’s constantly driven by the muse. Despite a batch of new songs that reflect and remember, McCartney is completely engaged in the present. In times of adversity, he remains an optimist. If he wakes up to an overcast, rainy day in England, he thinks, “It’s great recording weather.” He won’t stop recording anytime soon. He’s interested in hip-hop, Jackson Pollock and his audience. He knows no boundaries to composing and recording music. He’s mastered the art of living ... and he takes his Starbucks with two sugars.