Investigate, February 2007 by Investigate Magazine

INVESTIGATE

IN THIS ISSUE: After the Aussie bushfires...

February 2007:

Key & English their most in-depth interview

on Immigration:

“It’s our country, we should choose who we want to come here and who doesn’t come”

on Hagergate:

Key/English interview • Struggle Street • Aussie Bushfires • Universities

“Spying and burglary and theft at the highest levels of New Zealand politics”

on Key’s hitlist: “It’s got to be women”

on Helen Clark:

“No Prime Minister has been interviewed more often by the police”

on Maori seats:

“We believe in the abolishment of the Maori seats”

on Bureaucrats:

“I have seen good, strong, experienced civil servants, reduced to gibbering idiots”

TOP MARX

Issue 73

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socialist educators

TALES FROM STRUGGLE STREET ballerina buskers busted; “they’re putting a motorway through my lounge!”; and the muggers the cops refused to prosecute

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Volume 7, Issue 73, February 2007

FEATURES

24 32

KEYNGLISH – NATIONAL’S VISION

TALES FROM STRUGGLE STREET

It’s the most in-depth interview yet of National’s new leadership team, John Key and Bill English. IAN WISHART finds out the two men resent the ‘Labour lite’ criticism and are promising to keep National on track

Every month Investigate gets deluged with great stories we just don’t have the space to cover. Over the summer break it wasn’t any different, but this time we’ve selected three letters that illustrate the struggles facing ordinary people as they battle bureaucracy in their lives:

1. BALLERINA BUSKERS BUSTED

Their sister is one of the world’s most promising ballerinas, but when teenagers Michael and Daniel Sheffield tried to pay for her tuition by busking they were set upon by security guards and police, as CAROL SHEFFIELD explains

2. POLICE TURN A BLIND EYE

On the other hand, when your teenage daughter is mugged by a girl gang in broad daylight and the attack is caught on videotape, along with the names of those involved, you’d expect arrests, wouldn’t you? JUDY EVANS-HITA found police turning a blind eye

3.MOTORWAY IN THE LOUNGE

Imagine waking up to find someone trying to build a motorway through your house. BRIAN PRYOR is still trying to fight it

AFTER THE FIRES

TOP MARX: SOCIALIST EDUCATORS

How do you pick up the pieces after something like the Australian bushfires? And as MELODY TOWNS asks, how do you do it when global warming may be an ongoing factor?

Melbourne academic and author DAVID GREAGG suggests French intellectualism is wrecking western education and culture

Cover: HERALD/PRESSPIX

EDITORIAL AND OPINION Volume 7, issue 73, ISSN 1175-1290

6 8 14 16 18 20 22

FOCAL POINT VOX-POPULI SIMPLY DEVINE STRAIGHT TALK EYES RIGHT LINE 1 TOUGH QUESTIONS

Editorial The roar of the crowd Miranda Devine on flashing Mark Steyn on Saddam’s execution Richard Prosser on Pacific instability Chris Carter on real estate agents Ian Wishart on atheism for dummies

Laura Wilson is on leave this issue

Chief Executive Officer Heidi Wishart Group Managing Editor Ian Wishart Customer Services Debbie Marcroft NZ EDITION Advertising

Contributing Writers: Melody Towns, David Greagg, Amy Brooke, Chris Forster, Peter Hensley, Chris Carter, Mark Steyn, Chris Philpott, Michael Morrissey, Miranda Devine, Richard Prosser, Claire Morrow, Laura Wilson, and the worldwide resources of MCTribune Group, UPI and Newscom Art Direction Design & Layout

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2007 predictions Amy Brooke on failing schools The sniff test Dragon’s latest Naturally Speaking Chris Forster on the CWC Couch potatos Are MP3 players hurting kids’ ears? Americas Cup 2007 A stuffed turkey Michael Morrissey’s summer books Chris Philpott’s CD reviews Dreamgirls, Blood Diamond Pirates 2, Hoodwinked Gotta haves The Global Warming debacle

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FOCAL POINT

EDITORIAL

Time for an overhaul of parole

hat were they thinking? The Parole Board decides to release a whacko psychotic killer on the grounds he's been well behaved for a few months. Upon his release, Graeme Burton gathers a stash of guns and other weapons, before embarking on a bloody campaign of random murder and suburban terror. They should have seen it coming. Accordingly, here are the people who collectively form New Zealand's regional parole boards. Some of these people – in our view – are becoming desensitised to psychopaths: Chairperson: Judge David J. Carruthers Panel Convenors: Judge Peter Butler, Judge Russell Callander, Judge Michael “If any of you are reading this, Crosbie, Judge Avinash think hard before you next give Deobhakta, Judge Carolyn Judge Russell someone the benefit of the doubt” Henwood, Johnson, Judge Raymond Kean, Judge Bernard Kendall, Judge Barry Lovegrove, Judge Jane Lovell-Smith, Judge John Macdonald, Judge Patrick Mahony, Judge James Rota, Judge Cecilie Rushton, Judge David Saunders, Judge Ian Thomas, Judge Arthur Tompkins, Judge Patrick Toomey*, Judge EW (Bill) Unwin*, Judge Richard Watson. Non-judicial Members: Wendy Ball – has worked in New South Wales as a barrister for the Crown Prosecution Service, the Crown Defenders’ Office, and the Probation and Parole Service. She has also worked in the area of grief counselling. Associate Professor Philip Brinded* – is currently clinical director of the Mental Health Division, Canterbury District Health Board. Darlene Cullen – has been a tenancy adjudicator and mediator in Auckland for 17 years. She completed a Bachelor of Social Sciences from Waikato University. Janice Donaldson – works for Taranaki District Health Board. She previously held positions in health and social service agencies. Grace Dorset – is a former minister and participated in developing a hostel for released inmates and has wideranging community development experience. Sandy Gill* – has qualifications in criminology, management, counselling and adult teaching. She has worked with various organisations with extensive experience with

, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

at-risk youth and adult offending. Fleur Grenfell – managed Arohata Women's Prison for 16 years. Matt Hakiaha – was a probation officer and worked extensively in youth justice for the Department of Social Welfare. June Jackson* – was appointed to the former Parole Board in 1986. She is the CEO of the Nga Whare Waatea Marae and its prisoner re-integration programme. Richard Lewis – has a degree in social sciences, and a postgraduate diploma in social policy and social work, and was involved in the planning and running of the Kia Marama risk management group for sex offenders. Lavinia Nathan – has in-depth experience working with offenders and victims from Maori and Pakeha perspectives. She previously managed the Te Piriti Unit for offenders convicted of sexual abuse against children. Ievaivai Nua – was formerly the District Manager of Special Education for the Ministry of Education in Manukau. Patrick Tavai – was formerly a facilitator and therapist for the successful Pacific Island Violence Prevention Programme, Saili Matagi, which is based at Auckland Prison. Uialatea Stephen Thomsen* – has been involved in training programmes and Pacific Island-based crime prevention and reduction strategies. Jim Thomson – was a long-serving probation officer and service manager responsible for home detention in Christchurch. Alison Timms – has had considerable experience in the Department of Social Welfare and NZ Fire Service. Robin Wilson – retired in 1994 after 34 years in the Public Service with notable appointments as Deputy Director-General of Social Welfare and GM of the NZ Children and Young Persons Service. If any of you are reading this, think hard before you next give someone the benefit of the doubt.

* These people were the parole board that released Graeme Burton.

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VOX POPULI

COMMUNIQUES THE ART OF YEN

A very good article and about time this was brought to the attention of the public. Be aware however, that it is not Mr Watanabe who controls the family budget, including investment decisions such as whether or not to sell the uridashi bond portfolio. These issues are generally decided by Mrs Watanabe. She, along with the enormous spending power of the “Office Lady” economy, are a combined force to be reckoned with in more ways than one. John Wood, Christchurch

WHAT HOUSE BOOM?

The median house price in Auckland is now being reported in the mainstream media as around $500,000. After conducting some very basic research, using the real estate industry’s own data, I believe that this figure is being grossly inflated by those with a motive to deceive. On 8/12/06 at 4.36pm, the Real Estate Institute website www.real-estate.co.nz listed 8278 houses for sale in the entire Auckland area, made up of 7431 houses, and 847 townhouses. The properties ranged from a house for removal in Waiuku for $20,000, to a listing for the purchase of Pakatoa Island for $35,000,000. This number did not include apartments (2077), home and income properties (223), lifestyle blocks (1173), residential sections (2033), or units (669). Of the 8278 house properties for sale, just 32% were being listed either at or above the reported “median” Auckland house price of $500,000. 68% of house properties for sale were being listed BELOW the reported “median” Auckland house price of $500,000. Prima facie, the reported “median” sale price of $500,000 in Auckland is a fallacy, as over 2/3rds of the current property listings available to the real estate industry in Auckland are advertised below this figure. Either properties selling in the minority $500,000+ range are significantly distorting the “median” sales figure, or there is a “fire sale” of real estate going on in Auckland that the real estate industry isn’t telling us about. It would seem as if they are telling the public one thing when they encourage people to purchase property, yet practicing something quite different altogether when they go to sell these same properties. What would be very useful for the public to know would be the types of buyers of the properties that do sell,

, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

and how many properties are listed that either don’t sell, or are passed in at auction. First home buyers could then better acquaint themselves with the reality, as opposed to the fallacy, of the “median” sale price, and have some hope restored in one day owning their own home. Steve Taylor, Auckland

COT DEATHS

An article on SIDS in January 2007 issue was of particular interest to me on a number of fronts but particularly the photo of a cot on page 55. Why? As a former cop I had my share of cot death enquiries, and this cot is similar to the calico type basinets in that it is ‘boxed’, with high sides. It occurred to me that in the deaths I attended this ‘boxed in’ feature perhaps contributed to the babies’ breath being collected until eventually the oxygen was replaced by the babies’ carbon dioxide [which becomes toxic when concentrated – Ed.]. The babies were not only blue but had the reddish skin of carbon monoxide suicide victims that I also attended. There were other features such as air tight rooms where mothers believed that babies should be kept warm and out of draughts and over wrapping babies for the same reason. I’ve always known of Dr Sprott’s theory and the reduction in deaths of babies on wrapped mattresses is enough proof that its a wise thing to do. Gary & Jeani Keepa, Turangi Holiday Homes

DOOMSAYERS

Chris Carter correctly points out (Investigate, January) that in spite of the doomsayers we are passing quite safely into 2007. He then goes on to demonstrate conclusively that he’s one of them thar’ doomsayers. The doomsayers turn out to be those who were really peeved at National’s failure to become the government last election. The same people complain most about MMP. Surely MMP is a much more democratic system than the old FPP. Do we, or do we not, live in a self-styled democracy? With the briefest thought on the matter Chris would see the old argument that the tail wags the dog is true only while the two big dogs spend their time barking at each other. An Adolph Hitler has no show of passing legislation unless the majority of people in parliament sup-

port the legislation. If necessary the two biggest parties can easily vote against it. Of course the marketing strategists are keen not to blur any distinction between the parties. Another of Chris’ gripes against MMP is that if enough voters support a particular party it might be impossible to remove from parliament someone on that party’s list (e.g. an Adolph Hitler clone). Surely parliament should be the best place for debate of such peoples’ ideas. A bit of advice to the doomsayers. Helen Clark and her acolytes have successfully managed the country precisely because they understand all this. The National Party is still thinking FPP, the system that served them so well. I don’t blame them for wanting to go back. Historically they enjoyed extended periods of dictatorship. And of course the National Party is still largely made up of people who believe they have a right to rule. That right may come through God, genes or wealth (or all three). They oppose MMP because it’s easier to control a system with just two options. The conservative propaganda that there are just two options; black and white, good and evil, light and dark, truth and the lie, God and the Devil, derives from Zoroastrian beliefs from about 600 BC. Surely we are capable these days of a more rational view. I would like to see a parliament of two parties with 30% of the vote each and three parties with about 13% each. What sectors these five parties might represent will evolve over time. Long live MMP. Terry Toohill, Whangarei

For all the moments we’ve shared

LET THEM EAT CAKE

The review by Connie Ogle of the film Marie Antoinette had a significant error. Marie Antoinette was the daughter of Empress Maria Theresia, not Empress Regnant Maria. I am Austrian myself and can assure you that Empress Maria Theresia is even today held in very high esteem by her countrymen. To say that Marie Antoinette was the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Empress Regnant Maria is like saying Princess Beatrice was the daughter of King Albert of England and Queen Victoria. I have attached a brief history of Maria Theresia’s life to substantiate my comments. Maria Theresia (1717-1780), archduchess of Austria, Holy Roman Empress, and queen of Hungary and Bohemia, began her rule in 1740. She was the only woman ruler in the 650 history of the Habsburg dynasty. She was also one of the most successful Habsburg rulers, male or female, while bearing sixteen children between 1738 and 1756. During the last several years of her father’s reign, two wars had already left the monarchy financially compromised, and the army weakened. And since Charles VI had believed that his daughter would surrender true power to her husband, Francis Stephen of Lorraine, he did not take the time to teach her the workings of the government. Without money, a strong army, and knowledge of state affairs, Maria Theresia knew she had to rely on her judgment and strength of character. In 1765 Maria Theresia suffered a great personal loss, the unexpected death of her husband, Francis Stephen of Lorraine. Her love for him was so deep that from the day of his death until

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her own death in 1780, she dressed in mourning. After Francis Stephen’s death, Maria Theresia became increasingly withdrawn. She continued reforms, but they came at a slower and more systematic pace. The empress had a long reign which spanned forty years. She died on November 29, 1780. Some historians have termed Maria Theresia as the savior of the Habsburg Dynasty. Her efforts to transform her empire into a modern state solidified the Habsburg rule. Although when she came to the throne, her state appeared on the brink of dismemberment, Maria Theresia provided a strong foundation for the continuation of the Habsburg Dynasty into the modern era. Trudi Clements, via email

TEACHING OLD DON NEW TRICKS

I have been reading Warwick Don’s letters in various publications for some years. I fully understand his arguments but reject them. They are more about trying to convince himself than anyone else. But since he has taken to recommending the books of Richard Dawkins to thinkers like David Balchin who writes to the editor of the Otago Daily Times, I, in turn dare him to read An Anthology of C.S. Lewis – A Mind Awake, edited by Clyde S. Kilby – all of it. Colin Rawle, Dunedin

ID CASE A STITCH-UP

Like most of the evolutionists that write to Investigate, Warwick Don demonstrates himself to be woefully ignorant. As demonstrated here http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index. php?command=view&id=3829 90% of the text of Judge John E. Jones judicial decision [on the Intelligent Design court case in Pennsylvania] was lifted virtually verbatim from texts supplied by the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union, a major promoter of atheism]. Displaying the mental acuity we expect from the American judiciary Judge Jones even managed to retain false

statements that had already been refuted in court. • Claiming that Michael Behe had replied that articles supposedly explaining the evolution of the immune system were not good enough, when in fact Behe had said they were good articles that addressed a different subject. • Claiming that ID is not supported by peer-reviewed research when microbiologist Scott Minnich had testified that there are between seven and ten peer-reviewed papers supporting ID, including Stephen Meyer’s article in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. • Claiming that ID advocates do no research or testing when Scott Minnich had already explained how genetic knock-out experiments he had performed demonstrated the irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum with respect to its 35 genes. The principle of co-option, or exaptation, was addressed by Professor Behe in his own book, and always acknowledged as a possibility. However Kenneth Miller’s attempts to divert the debate by claiming that the Type Three Secretory System could function as a pre-cursor ignores the fact that three quarters of the flagellum’s construction is unique and therefore cannot be co-opted in the required way. Experts like Milton Saier believe that the TTSS is a degeneration of the flagellum rather than an ancestor. Casey Luskin has an article giving more details here http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command= view&id=3718. As visiting the Discovery Institute website and putting the word “exaptation” into their search engine would have given numerous results answering Warwick’s claims I conclude that he is too lazy to do any real research and relies on bluff and bluster to confuse his opponents. Too bad he likes to lead with his jaw. Jason Clark, Auckland

DEEPLY DISTURBED

I find your magazine very disturbing. I was on holiday recently with my wife, who decided to buy something “light” to read. While perusing the magazine stand, your December addition

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caught my eye (a magazine with an article on miracles, now that’s a bit weird for a public magazine stand!). Having flicked through a few pages, my Scottish heritage convinced me that I should keep my $7.95 under lock-and-key, but my wife told me of a dream she had the night before of a man called Ian Wishart who, although she “knew” him to be an older man with grey hair in real life, looked strangely like the photo of the editor of Investigate, and she suggested that maybe we were “supposed” to buy the magazine. I found that edition a very entertaining read, not like other magazines I had read, which might contain 1 or 2 articles of interest amongst a plethora of ads and wiffle-fluff, but one where “oh my gosh, I almost read and enjoyed every article in that magazine – maybe I don’t begrudge that $7.95 after all!”. Unfortunately, that experience left me hooked and I have resorted to surreptitiously reading back issues in the library. This is where I get to the disturbing part. Apart from the noticeable “non-PC right-wing fundamentalist Christian tone" of a lot of the content (which probably explains why I identify with a lot of the content), I have been deeply unsettled by many of the articles. Unsettled in the sense that I am practically extinct in New Zealand (happily married to my first and only girlfriend, 2 delightful and well-behaved children, financially solvent/stable, outwardly free of any vices, and only slightly emotionally crippled) and coming to the realisation that there are a lot of hurt, sad, angry and evil people out there perpetrating and perpetuating even more pain, sorrow, anger and wickedness through bad parenting and bad choices and lack of knowledge. Pained in the sense that I can see there is a better way, and I want to make a positive difference amongst all the crap in the world, but not knowing where to start. Yes, I am disturbed. How dare you interrupt my comfortable, insular, life and make me want to put myself in uncomfortable, challenging, sacrificial, disappointing, painful situations. What am I to do? Where am I to start? Do I spend the next 20 years of my life to become a Family Court judge to bring some sanity and compassion to that arm of the judicial system? Or do I give all my money to Parents Inc in the hope that their message will get where it needs to and sever the cancerous parenting of many New Zealanders? Or do I retrain to become a counsellor so that I can help a fraction of cripples understand that, despite the fact that my parents didn’t know how to show that they loved me (assuming my parents wanted me in the first place), here are some tools to help me become a slightly healthier, functional, contributing member of society? Or do I buy a soap box and placard and tearfully shout and plead at passers-by, “there is a better way”, “come out of the darkness into the light”, “Jesus Christ can take away your guilt and shame, and offers you a place in Paradise, if you will only surrender to his love”. Or do I become an investigative journalist to weed out the dirty stories behind NZ politics, industry, society etc, to hold people to account and disturb comfortable people to action?

Deeply disturbing. Deeply necessary. I might just ask my wife to buy me a subscription to your magazine for Christmas. I may even act on my disturbedness. Thanks. Mark, Christchurch

IN SELF DEFENCE

Can someone please explain why the police are pressing charges against the gunshop man who defended himself against his machete-wielding attacker? What did the attacker want from the gunshop? Weapons? What did he want with the weapons? To commit [another] crime? So wasn't the gunshop man defending all of us along with himself? Doesn't he deserve a medal? If the police are concerned that he did their job while not being a member of the police force, can't they do the commonsense thing and make him a member? If they don't want to do that they should station one of their members at all gunshops round the clock (since crime is increasing and this incident will doubtless be repeated). In pressing charges, aren't the police telling all criminals to grab their machetes and go to the nearest gunshop and take whatever they want because the police are teaching the gunshop owners and attendants to give no resistance, not even in self-defence? If we can't do better than this, who will help us? Fiji’s Commodore? Milton Wainwright, Woodville

DROP US A LINE Letters to the editor can be posted to: PO Box 302188, North Harbour, North Shore 0751, or emailed to: editorial@investigatemagazine.com

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 13

SIMPLY DEVINE

MIRANDA DEVINE

Misogyny’s rise no surprise when self-respect rejected

aris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan are the stars of a new slew of internet gossip sites, fondly known as the “slagosphere”, which run video of celebrity airheads and reams of paparazzi photographs that never make the magazines. Lately the on again, off again gal pals – or “frenemies” as they are sometimes called – have been plumbing new depths of banality and bad taste. They wear no underwear when they go out in their finery and keep accidentally-onpurpose flashing their shaven crotches to assembled cameras as they alight from Hilton’s car or some limo. The gynaecological photos, complete with fresh caesarean scars in the case of recently single mother-of-two Spears, have become the talk of the internet. But they have also unleashed a torrent of misogynistic abuse that is disturbingly violent and unhinged. The words are unprintable but the mouth-frothing hatred is startling. In site after site, from Egotastic! to The Superficial, anonymous writers tell the girls to “put it away” with a harshness that makes your toes curl. In one clip on the website X17, a male friend of Hilton’s spews forth the most disgusting comments about Lohan’s vagina to the paparazzi, now armed with video, while Hilton laughs up a storm at her frenemy’s expense. There is a terrible misogyny abroad at the moment – that has men walk up to attractive female strangers in nightclubs and hit them – not hit on them but punch them in the head with their fists. During schoolies week on the Gold Coast last month, for example, a 19-year-old man walking down Cavill Avenue king-hit pretty 18-year-old Natalie Montoya in the face, out of the blue, as she was standing on the corner with a group of girlfriends. “F*** off, slut,” he said, knocking her to the ground

14, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

and leaving her with a swollen nose and bleeding face. After the shootings this past year at an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania and a high school in Colorado, The New York Times columnist Bob Herbert pointed out, “the killers went out of their way to separate the girls from the boys, and then deliberately attacked only the girls”. Herbert describes the attacks in Colorado and Pennsylvania as “hate crimes” against women, “part of a devastating continuum of misogyny that at its farthest extreme touches down in places like the one-room Amish schoolhouse”. From the extreme pornography so easily available on the internet, to rap lyrics that glory in violence against “bitches”, to Big Brother’s male contestants holding down a woman and “turkey slapping” her, to pedophile fantasy fashions for little girls, the effect is the same. It dehumanises and disrespects women so that any degrading treatment becomes acceptable. But there is no point in simply demanding that men change their attitudes. It is no coincidence that the rise in misogyny seems to coincide with some women’s rejection of any self-respect or modesty. Underwear-eschewing paparazzi favourites such as Hilton, Spears and Lohan have become role models for young girls all over the world, as Shelley Gare points out in her new book, The Triumph Of The Airheads. When you think about it, the misogyny sparked on the internet by the It girls’ latest antics makes a sort of sick sense. Why would a man respect a woman who doesn’t respect herself, when most of society’s traditional protections for women have been torn down, often by women themselves, in the name of freedom? But freedom to flash your genitalia to the world is not liberating. It’s just sad and ugly, reducing womanly allure to the level of a baboon and giving men no reason to behave well.

SPORT WATCH SERIES

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 15

STRAIGHT TALK

MARK STEYN Liberal guilt misplaced

he execution of Saddam Hussein provided a useful study in contrasting pathologies. In Europe, the dictator’s hanging was deplored. “The death penalty,” sniffed The Guardian, “is an unacceptably cruel and unusual punishment, even in Iraq.” Really? Whether or not it was unacceptably cruel, under Saddam it certainly wasn’t unusual. By contrast, Tim Hames, of the London Times, supported toppling the butcher but not killing him. “Mainstream middle-class sentiment in Europe,” he wrote, “now regards the death penalty as being as ethically tainted as the crimes that produced the sentence.” “Mainstream middle-class sentiment” translates into English as: “People “Saddam was dispatched in some I meet at dinner parties.” to a poll pubdingy low-ceilinged windowless According lished in Le Monde, the room of one of his old secret- majority of Spaniards, police torture joints by a handful Germans, French and British were all in favor of of goons in ski masks and black executing Saddam. Indeed, leather jackets. It looked less like Mr Hames’ fellow Britons that far behind the the dawn of a new Iraq than a aren’t Neanderthal Yanks in their Russian mafia mob hit” enthusiasm for a good ol’ ethically-tainted hanging: 69% of respondents in the United Kingdom supported the death penalty for the dictator versus 82% in America. Mr Hames apparently defines “mainstream” opinion as the position held by under a third of his countrymen, not the 70% extremist fringe. Whatever one’s views on capital punishment, that’s not what it’s about. Hardcore dictatorships have to be not just politically but psychologically liberated. When one man is so murderously powerful, incarceration cannot suffice – because as long as he lives there will always be the possibility that he will return. After all, we’re talking about someone who by definition has never been bound by any of the other restraints – personal, moral, religious, constitutional: why should a court sentence prove any more effective? When a dictator has exercised the total control over his subjects that Saddam did, his hold on them can only end with his death. I would venture that, at some level, even the European

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political class understands that. But it doesn’t stop them preening on this issue. A couple of years back, Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Defense, Geoff Hoon, announced that in the event British troops captured Osama bin Laden they would not extradite him to America without assurances that he would not face the death penalty. The US Justice Department should have said: Fine, you keep him. Put him on trial at the Old Bailey and, assuming enough jurors survive to pass sentence, stick him in Brixton or Pentonville gaol for “life”, and sit back and watch as British subjects are seized and beheaded from Palestine to Pakistan and British consulates, banks and factories are blown up in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Belgium. If you’re determined to be that big a bunch of self-indulgent poseurs, you can explain it to the grieving loved ones of your own citizens. But the moral posturing of Europeans is less a guide to practical policy on war and jihad than a glimpse of their own psychological isolation. The German website Davids Medienkritik provided a useful round-up of local reports on Saddam’s hanging: “Die Europaer verurteilten die Anwendung der Todesstrafe,” declared Die Zeit. “The Europeans condemn the use of the death penalty.” What “Europeans”? Not the majority of Germans who approve of the execution. Not the 58% of French citizens. Not the seven out of ten Britons. When Die Zeit and The Times and all the rest say that “Europe” condemns the death of Saddam, what they mean is that a narrow, remote, self-insulating politico-media elite condemns it. Their assumption (in the face of all the evidence) that they speak for “Europe” is revealing because it helps explain why the Continent is having such difficulty coming to terms with every other issue, from its unaffordable social problems to its alienated Muslim populations. So, at one level, this should be a great moment for the Bush Administration. All over the world, genocidal thugs ought to be staring slack-jawed at the TV and thinking: “Wow! The cowboy did it. He went in, kicked the President-for-Life off his solid gold toilet, tossed him in jail and then had him tried and hanged like a common thief.” Unfortunately, when the US handed him over to the Iraqi authorities, the “authorities” did their best to look entirely unauthorized. Saddam was dispatched in some dingy low-ceilinged windowless room of one of his old secret-police torture joints by a handful of goons in

ski masks and black leather jackets. It looked less like the dawn of a new Iraq than a Russian mafia mob hit. A couple of guards gleefully yelled out, “Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada” – as in Moqtada al-Sadr – to which Saddam added a disbelieving echo: “Moqtada?” As well he might. It’s one thing to be done in by Bush but by forces loyal to the punk son of some nickel-anddime cleric you had murdered years ago… Granted, it was more genteel than the, ah, change of government in Liberia in 1990, when Prince Johnson had President Doe’s ears sliced off and stuffed them in His Excellency’s mouth before cutting off the presidential genitals and eating them himself in the belief that the “powers” of the person whose parts you’re chowing down on are transferred to the diner. But the general vibe was a bit too similar. And the many Muslims around the world who see this video and hear the “Moqtada!” cries may agree with the pithy summation of the Powerline blog: The thug is dead. Long live the thug! Given that Saddam was transferred from coalition custody to the Iraqi government only a few hours before his demise, I’d be interested to know whether US authorities proffered any “advice” on the optics: Ixnay on the torture dungeon, maybe in the exercise yard with a couple of Iraqi flags; get the heavies out of the Quentin Tarantino get-up and into some neutral prison-warden garb or Baghdad Airport parking-garage-attendant uniforms;

if you have to have victims’ loved ones present, go for the widows and photogenic orphans rather than Moqtada’s boys. Metamessage: “Time to move on, says Government of Free Iraq”, not “Payback’s a bitch, says local enforcer”. And, if nobody in the US government came up with any such advice, why not? How come we have a political culture that can produce a content-free party convention down to the nano-second but gives not a thought to hinge moments of history? The reality is that Saddam Hussein is dead because of George W Bush and a fledgling Iraqi justice system, not Moqtada al-Sadr. But that’s not the impression you’d get watching the final moments of this evil man’s life. And to permit some pipsqueak warlord wannabe to snaffle the credit is a very foolish thing to do in a part of the world that already has great difficulty accepting reality. My bottom line on Saddam? “Rejoice, rejoice,” as Mrs Thatcher advised after the liberation of South Georgia Island from Argentine forces. The posturing of the Europeans is decadent and self-indulgent, symptoms of a narcissist pseudo-power that has attitudes rather than policies. But Washington’s carelessness over the final moments of Saddam’s life is not encouraging either: if you needed it, this was a very vivid demonstration of how America’s hands-off approach has encouraged too many meddling fingers. The king is dead. Moqtada al-Sadr should be, too. © Mark Steyn, 2006

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EYES RIGHT

RICHARD PROSSER Trouble in paradise

he Pacific Ocean, according to Wikipedia, takes its name from Mare Pacificum, or “Peaceful Seas”, the Latin name bestowed upon it by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. Inclement weather aside, the description was probably true in Ferd’s day, half a millennia ago; the same cannot be said about the present, or indeed most of the last century. European colonisation, New Zealand Imperialism, disease, World War (episodes One and Two), nuclear testing, the Cold War, and more lately, organised crime, drug running, people smuggling, fisheries poaching, piracy, corrupt Governments and failed states, and, of course, coups�� d’état�� , have “The blunt truth behind the lies, ensured that the Pacific has spin, and vacuous pontificating been anything but a peaceful place for better than a of our Government, is that we hundred years. The latest coup in Fiji, couldn’t have done a damned which seems to be making thing about the Fijian military something of a national pascoup even if we’d wanted to” time out of such events, is but another indication of just how benign our strategic environment actually isn’t, along with unrest in East Timor, Tonga, and the Solomons. But the Fijian unrest is more than merely a canary in the mineshaft for the Pacific. It also serves as a blunt warning to nations such as New Zealand and Australia, of the tumultuous days ahead, and in New Zealand’s case, of the degree to which we have, in recent years, become unable to intervene in any meaningful way in our own back yard. Ousted Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase is reported to have asked both Australia and New Zealand for military assistance immediately prior to, and during, his overthrow by Fijian armed forces chief Frank (or is that really Voreque?) Bainimarama. Both nations politely declined; it’s not the way we do things, you know, it wouldn’t help, it might inflame the situation; we even went as far as suggesting that military intervention might be illegal. Heaven forbid that our Government should do something illegal, eh. The blunt truth behind the lies, spin, and vacuous pontificating of our Government, is that we couldn’t have

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done a damned thing about the Fijian military coup even if we’d wanted to. We simply don’t have the necessary military capability, or anything remotely near it, and we haven’t had it for almost a generation now. The Australians might have the ability to tackle the Fijians. Their reasons for opting out are probably genuine. Ours are simply an excuse, and a fortuitously plausible facesaving one at that. Fiji’s Army is bigger than ours. They have around 3,000 front line troops, and perhaps twice that number of reservists; but add in the men who have already served time in the Fijian armed forces, and are still of military age, and the number of trained troops on whom Fiji can call jumps to around 30,000. Compare this to the New Zealand Army, which has a nominal strength of around 4,500 plus a couple of thousand Territorials, but remember that once the doctors, and the dentists, and the engineers, and the pen pushers and the chaplains and the mechanics and the stores clerks and the digger drivers and all the rest of the non-combat infantry are factored out of the equation, New Zealand has at best about 800 – 1,000 actual soldiers, most of whom are already currently deployed overseas. The Army initially refused, and then struggled to fill, a Civil Defence request for anyone available to help out snowbound farmers and rural communities in Canterbury this winter gone. Our ability to intervene militarily, anywhere in our own region let alone globally, over and above current commitments, is virtually nil. We know that the Fijians are well trained and well armed, because, well, we helped to train and arm them. We know that they’re well experienced, because for many decades now the Fijians have provided troops, and lots of them, for UN Peacekeeping operations all round the world. The money which Fiji has received from the UN in payment for their services has made the Fijian military a largely self-funding organisation, and their effectiveness, and the high regard in which they are held, mean that the UN’s suspension of Fijian participation in such operations because of the latest coup, will be very short-lived. Even the much-vaunted (and rightly so) SAS is stretched, with deployments in Afghanistan, and a falling intake which is affected, primarily, by the same malaise of recruitment now showing across all branches of all three services since the New Zealand Defence Force was effectively demilitarised by the Helen Clark Labour Government.

But even 20 years ago, at the time of Steve Rabuka’s first coup in Fiji (oops, silly me, he’s brown, remember, so I should call him Sitiveni), our military were powerless to respond, as the then Secretary of Defence Gerald Hensley had to spell out in very plain terms to then Prime Minister David Lange. Lange wanted to send in a Hercules full of SAS commandos to secure the detained Air New Zealand 747 in Nadi, and Hensley had to explain to him that such was impossible. The Fijians would know what was coming, they would know the direction from which it was coming, they would know when it was coming because New Zealand-based Fijians living next door to Whenuapai or Ohakea would phone up and let them know when it had left, and they would shoot the plane down, resulting in the loss of an irreplaceable aircraft and a couple of platoons of irreplaceable men. Lange was an intelligent man, but like politicians of all hues in New Zealand, over many years, when it came to matters military, he was plain dumb. I’m not sure quite why this is so. National or Labour, dove or hawk, New Zealand Prime Ministers and senior members of Parliament since WWII have characterised themselves by a seemingly complete inability to either recognise the present and growing threats facing this country, or to appreciate the value of the relatively miniscule sums of money necessarily directed towards Defence in order to counter those threats – particularly when they are compared with expenditures on Welfare Vote Buying, MP’s travel allowances, pay, and superannuation, a new stadium, wind farms, the America’s Cup, or placating the Taniwha so that roadworks may continue. I suppose it’s a bit like the blue-collar worker who will happily spend $20 every night on a couple of jugs and a packet of smokes on the way home from work, but resents having to fork out $100 a month on house, contents, and car insurance. Imagine the New Zealand military today having a crack at the Fijians, compared with their counterparts from 1987. The Army is around half the size it was then. Thanks to Helen and her equally unrealistic cronies and supporters, we now have no air force to provide cover for invading troops. We have no navy to speak of; one frigate away in the Gulf playing international policeman, another in refit, and the third, now decommissioned, about to be sunk as yet another diving attraction. When I suggested that New Zealand should invest in a submarine force back in 2003, a bunch of sunken frigates wasn’t quite what I had in mind. The rumour mill suggests that Clark will now, privately, admit the error of her ways as far as the disbandment of the RNZAF strike force is concerned; yet her ego apparently prevents any reversal of that appalling decision, and the stated position of the National Party gives little encouragement to those who might still hope against hope that a change of Government may bring with it a return to sanity. We can try the diplomatic course, and indeed there is no other option left, but even this is unlikely to be effective. Trade sanctions will only hurt ordinary Fijians, and many countries outside the Anglosphere and Europe, notably China and Taiwan, will ignore them, taking the opportunity to make further inroads into the fading relevance of New Zealand in the Pacific. Boycotts and sporting snubs may annoy those same ordinary Fijians, but to little effect – if they were possessed of the type of effective democracy within which such annoyance could be translated into a change of Governmental policy, we wouldn’t be attempting the boycott in the first place.

“The rumour mill suggests that Clark will now, privately, admit the error of her ways as far as the disbandment of the RNZAF strike force is concerned; yet her ego apparently prevents any reversal of that appalling decision, and the stated position of the National Party gives little encouragement to those who might still hope against hope that a change of Government may bring with it a return to sanity”

But they are not, and indeed, given the level of blatant and entrenched corruption within the Fijian political system, it is difficult to see what else the good Commodore could have done than to overthrow it and start again. I’m no fan of military dictatorships, but then I don’t much like bent politicians either, and Bainimarama strikes me as being at least a decent and honest officer. It’s hardly surprising that so many of our own political masters don’t appear to like him very much. The one thing of which we can be sure is that just because New Zealand doesn’t try to tidy up our back yard by sending in a gunboat which we don’t have, it doesn’t follow that no-one else will. China may decide the time is right to rattle the sabres and make a show of protecting the interests of Chinese nationals and business owners in Fiji, against the sort of excesses visited upon them in Tonga and the Solomons. India might well do the same. What chance would New Zealand have against such powerful nations? Not much, obviously; but it is worth remembering that they can only occupy the stepping-stones which are the Pacific Island states if we abandon them first, and the thing about stepping stones is that by definition they lead to somewhere else – and that somewhere else is not likely to be a country such as Australia, which has both good military defences, and an active alliance with the United States. It is far more likely to be an equally attractive country which has neither, but which is rich in resources and wide open spaces and the good things in life. Perhaps fortunately for some of our less than honest leaders, New Zealand’s utterly professional military has never been of a mind to intervene in politics even if it possessed the capability to do so, which is now questionable; a cynical viewpoint might suggest that at least some of the reduction in our defence forces in recent years may have been driven by politicians with half a mind on their own self-preservation. The ability of those forces to preserve the rest of us, however, is not helped by deliberate and misguided retrenchment in the face of the ever more clearly growing threats which loom ominously from the direction of our ever less Peaceful Seas. Magellan would be spinning in his grave if he could see how our naïveté and inaction was turning his Mare Pacificum into a Paradise Lost.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 19

LINE ONE

CHRIS CARTER

Been done on a property deal lately?

he real estate industry here in New Zealand is surely due for an enormous shake up in that apart from a series of recent and highly publicised rorts that have received nationwide coverage, the average vendor of a property for sale in the very best of circumstances can look forward to falling victim to a commission system bordering on common extortion. So perhaps it is time that we all took a good hard look at the methodology that has evolved in this country whereby thousands of properties change ownership each year, with the real estate industry clipping the ticket of the majority of all the deals made to the tune of around one billion dollars in commission fees, or, on average, about $14,000 per aver“How about giving the whole age, median priced home. system a complete shake up so Much has been advanced in the way of defense of this that perhaps at last the process method of marketing and of selling, what after all is simply then selling private propby Members of the a commodity, no longer attracts erty Real Estate Institute, who the extortionate fees being for reasons quite unfathcurrently demanded” omable to most members of the public, long ago, by legislation were given the absolute right to operate a completely “Closed Shop” operation whereby members, and only members, of the Institute could legally market and then sell property for reward. Indeed, so tight are the rules and regulations to maintain this happy and highly lucrative arrangement that should you for instance advertise and then sell your dear old Mum’s place for her and then accept any kind of reward for having done so, then at the very least should the REINZ become aware that these few dollars had escaped their avaricious grasp, then you, sunshine, would be for the fiscal high jump! In fact, so tight is the legislation that governs more or less anything at all to do with leasing, renting, property management, buying, or selling of real estate that it is hard to find a single area to do with property that the REINZ has not a death grip on its administration or execution. One might well ask why it is that Kiwis pay enormous commissions and fees in their dealings with this real estate cartel, which is almost a rhetorical question in that this state of affairs purely and simply exists

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because it is a cartel and that with the benefit of legislation to underscore its officially sanctioned greed there is simply no real alternative to becoming, in effect a victim of applied extortion. Worse of course, is should you in your dealings with this august body feel that you have been rorted or even just very badly represented by either a given sales-person or agent licensed by this outfit, then your only real recourse is to complain to the “Complaints Committee” of the REINZ, which as has been pointed out is not at all dissimilar in having to complain to the Godfather about the activities of the local branch of the Mafia. To his credit, the Associate Minister of Justice, Clayton Cosgrove, has recently issued dire warnings to the REINZ that he has his beady eye firmly fixed on their methods and practices, especially on those within the industry that he refers to as Sharks, being, one would imagine, the out and out bandits that have been ripping off in fine fashion innocent vendors, sometimes to the tune of a small fortune. The Minister’s main aim at this stage it would appear, is to establish an independent regulatory body, plus boost fines and penalties for miscreants into the tens of thousands of dollars, rather than the pin money that currently is all that these folk have to look forward to if caught. All of this Ministerial outrage however, is all very well and good, but where, we are forced to ask, does this in any way help ordinary Kiwis who wish to sell their home, and being effectively robbed blind for the pleasure of having done so, by having to deal with a closed shop sales system that brooks no competition and effectively operates a price fixing cartel. So, Mr Cosgrove, instead of just fiddling with the Real Estate legislation, how about giving the whole system a complete shake up so that perhaps at last the process of selling, what after all is simply a commodity, no longer attracts the extortionate fees being currently demanded. We could perhaps begin by deregulating the whole real estate industry, an idea of course that would have the current practitioners squealing like stuck pigs I would imagine, but think about it, why not? We’ve deregulated just about everything else...What’s so special about land and property? The REINZ would have us believe that their current system of training and registration of both salespeople and agents offers all sorts of protection for the consumer, when in fact apart from being a very necessary

part of the overall window dressing employed to justify their horrendous charges, does very little of note for the public good whatsoever. They make much of the care and professionalism required by a salesman to negotiate a price and then to prepare and have signed the binding sales contract, and this invariably carried out by people who in the main are – legally speaking – illiterates, who having attended an incredibly short real estate course at the local tech are somehow adjudged by the REINZ to be sufficiently competent to oversee the preparation and signing of a document that could very well spell financial disaster for either party if a serious legal mistake is made. Much worse of course, such is the nature of the New Zealand real estate industry, that providing that you haven’t been in jail recently, a bankrupt and are considered to be a “person of good character” then becoming a real estate salesperson is simply a doddle, which is just as well in that plenty of agencies, in my view demonstrably driven by greed, will cram as many “salespeople” into their premises as they can decently find space for. It’s not “professionalism” amongst this flock that they seek, as much as the more people you have that work for nothing until they sell something, the more eyes and ears that you have out there in the marketplace, then the old numbers game ensures that the Agency itself will be bound to prosper. Never mind that with around 80% of the money being made in real estate being paid to approximately 10% of the salespeople, that inevitably, the majority who therefore struggle will be more and more tempted to rort or mislead both property buyers and sellers simply to be able to survive financially. None of this apparently appears to worry the Agencies a jot, well, apart from the occasional $750 or $2000 fine that they have to come up with when a shoddy deal is perhaps occasionally uncovered. How many of us have been looking at a house to be told (and I have on two separate occasions), that “put in a reasonable offer because the owners are having a marriage breakup/are in financial trouble” and this of course from a selling agent who is meant to be representing the vendor’s best interests! The genuinely professional real estate salesperson would never do this, the problem being, the legions of people selling real estate who are desperate to pay their bills and that the industry simply treats as cannon fodder, sits them at a desk and in effect waits for them to either make the agency money or simply fall by the wayside. The turnover of real estate salespeople in this country is huge, meaning that a goodly proportion of the real estate business being conducted, quite logically, is being carried out by partly trained and largely inexperienced people, who nevertheless are gathering exactly the same commissions as the much smaller number of genuine professionals that are there and if you are lucky enough to have one to represent you! Imagine in a legal sense that you had been wrongly charged with say murder, so naturally being new in town you phone a large legal practice to get yourself a lawyer. The phone is answered by a guy who may very well have started at the company last week, sure he’s a licensed lawyer alright, but are you going to be his first case? Problem is that if this legal outfit follows usual real estate office practice, you become, by a sort of roster system, his client. It’s like buying a ticket in a raffle, you may very well get lucky and end up with a true professional, but the overall odds are that you are much more likely to end up with any one of the small

army of newbies who not only know bugger all about real estate, either marketing or selling it, but are also so desperate to make a sale that the much trumpeted REINZ ethics etc fall somewhat secondary to that inherent desperation. Figure it out for yourself, human nature has always dictated that desperate times lead to desperate measures, and it’s this cavalier employment policy and common thread of greed that is really at the heart of the real estate industry’s current crop of problems. Less-highly skilled and qualified real estate salespeople could well make individual fortunes from half the commissions currently being gouged from hapless vendors by REINZ Agencies. It’s just that some years back they decided to go commission only and load the place up with as many bunnies that they could. The end result we can see all around us, well perhaps to be fair with some notable exceptions, but certainly the industry at large has now gained a reputation of trustworthiness that your average car dealer would have nightmares about. The answer? Pay all new entrants into the industry a living wage, whilst they work under the close supervision of highly skilled, ethical, and senior real estate salespeople. This would immediately cut by two thirds the army of real estate salespeople quite naturally desperate to make sales. Mr Cosgrove, simply introduce a law that mandates say a two year apprenticeship for real estate sales and my pick is that most of the real estate industry problems would be over and the term “professional” would once again have some meaning. Chris Carter appears in association with www.snitch.co.nz, a must-see site.

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 21

TOUGH QUESTIONS

IAN WISHART Atheism for dummies

t never fails to astound me each year how many otherwise intelligent people are sucked in by the latest pop-culture paperback book challenging the truth of Christianity in some way. This summer’s offering – seized upon as secular-humanist gospel by National Radio’s Kim Hill – is The God Delusion by fundamentalist atheist Richard Dawkins. It’s a book that is not intellectually-challenging but intellectually-challenged, if you can appreciate the distinction. An epistle from a zoologist about religious faith. Nothing wrong with that, in and of itself because all of us are entitled to a view on religion, but when Dawkins professes to be an expert in the God field (which is implicit in the subject he tackles) it is akin to me writing a book about brainsurgery from an expert’s “Yeah, but there’s a sucker born perspective. Or zoology Dawkins would be every day, and gullible people with –theand first to taunt me on my government-approved educations lack of credentials were I to from NZ state schools continue attempt it. As a Christian in daily to believe the pap that people like life, one can probably go Wells or Robert Price put out” about one’s daily business and never be bothered by the fundamentalist atheists who prowl the letter columns of New Zealand newspapers and magazines preying on gullible readers. But as a Christian in the magazine business, I’m not so fortunate. Fundy atheism, touchyfeely we-are-the-world secular humanism and the horribly misguided theology of the late “Imagine there’s no heaven/no religion too” John Lennon would all be fine and dandy if they had a vestige of truth to them, but they don’t. Nonetheless, these otherwise decent human beings barrage the media with opinions on everything from the absolute “proof” of evolution to “the myth that Jesus Christ ever existed”, and unfortunately most of today’s journalists and sub-editors are so uneducated themselves in matters of religious faith that they wouldn’t have a clue whether the claims being made are true or not. If ignorance is bliss, New Zealanders must be among the most blissful in the Western world. We are becoming so profoundly ignorant about the philosophies and histories that underpin our entire civilization that we ourselves have become the barbarians at our own gates. Who needs Muslim hordes? Helen Clark, David Benson-Pope and

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Tim Barnett have done such a sterling job, along with the boffins at the Human Rights Commission and the Ministry of Thought Police and Child Indoctrination, sorry, Education. I engaged in a debate recently on the Investigate blogsite, TBR.cc, with Paul Litterick of the FundyPost (essentially an online journal for fundamentalist atheists). The debate started off as a commentary about Christmas Day, and slid off on a tangent about whether Jesus Christ and the town of Bethlehem even existed. The debate itself was not a problem, conducted politely if forcefully by all concerned. What really freaked me out however was how woefully out of date Litterick and other secular humanist activists seem to be with genuine biblical scholarship. Here’s how his gauntlet to me went: “Regardless of the considerable dispute among theologians about whether Jesus existed, it is doubtful whether Nazareth existed: “No “ancient historians or geographers mention [Nazareth] before the beginning of the fourth century [AD].” Nazareth is not mentioned in the Old Testament, the Talmud, nor in the Apocrypha and it does not appear in any early rabbinic literature. Nazareth was not included in the list of settlements of the tribes of Zebulon (Joshua 19:10-16) which mentions twelve towns and six villages. “Nazareth is not included among the 45 cities of Galilee that were mentioned by Josephus (37AD-100AD). Nazareth is also missing from the 63 towns of Galilee mentioned in the Talmud. See Zindler, F. “Where Jesus Never Walked,” American Atheist, Winter 1996-97, pp. 33-42. “And another small problem: Bethlehem did not exist at the time Jesus was supposed to be born there.” Hmmm, slam dunk? I think not. Here’s my first return volley: “Of Nazareth, while I agree it is not mentioned by name, absence of evidence 2000 years after the fact is not, of itself, evidence that the town itself was absent. The atheist polemics may have deliberately left out the evidence that does exist about Nazareth, and it is this: “Excavations in 1900 and again in 1955 by Belarmino Bagatti have showed human settlement at the town known as Nazareth dating back to Iron Age II (900600BC). They also found Roman artefacts there dating from the time of Christ. “It goes against all logic to suggest that the gospel writ-

ers “invented” a town that the leader of their faith came from, when copies of the Gospels and certainly the gospel stories were circulating well before the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. “If Nazareth were fictional, the error would have been patently obvious to every Jew at the time and since, yet there is no record in the ancient writings of anyone arguing against Christianity on the basis that Nazareth didn’t exist – that’s a modern phenomenon. “I certainly wouldn’t be putting much stock in Zindler – many have demolished his efforts but I think this from Tektonics sums it up nicely: http://www.tektonics.org/uz/zindler01.html “The Bethlehem argument suffers from similar problems.” For the record, “Bethlehem” is mentioned 42 times in the Old Testament beginning with the oldest book – Genesis. If the town didn’t exist, someone really should have told the Jews. Then there’s the hoary old chestnut of a fictional Christ. Paul Litterick urges me to read authors like George Wells – a professor of German who happens to believe Christ was mythical. The extent to which Wells’ theories – beloved of letter-to-theHerald writing atheists – are regarded as fringe can be shown by the fact that even the Christ-denying Michael Martin (again, a philosopher not a New Testament scholar) refuses to rely on Wells’ arguments. Another scholar, Richard France, criticizes Wells’ scholarly methods, saying “[Wells] always selects from the range of New Testament studies those extreme positions which best suit his thesis, and then weaves them together into a total account with which none of those from whom he quoted would agree.” In fact, of the more than 12,000 accredited New Testament scholars at universities around the world, fewer than half a dozen would come anywhere close to believing that Jesus didn’t exist. As one professor of New Testament studies (see “Jesus Outside the New Testament: an introduction to the Ancient Evidence” by Robert Van Voorst, Eerdmans Publishing) at a university in Michigan puts it: “The [Christ-myth theory] has always been controversial, and it has consistently failed to convince many who, for reasons of religious skepticism, might have been expected to entertain it, from Voltaire to Bertrand Russell. Biblical scholars and classical historians now regard it as effectively refuted…Although Wells has been probably the most able advocate of [the theory], he has not been persuasive and is now almost a lone voice for it.” Yeah, but there’s a sucker born every day, and gullible people with government-approved educations from NZ state schools continue to believe the pap that people like Wells or Robert Price put out. Many people have asked me how I became a Christian. The story has been well canvassed in media interviews elsewhere, but few have asked me the “why” of it. Why did someone who used to be a teeth-gnashing self-professed atheist like Litterick or Dawkins suddenly turn around and “get religious”, as some critics quaintly put it? Hard evidence. The more I looked, the harder it became to deny. Because at the end of the day it requires far more religious faith to be an atheist than it does to be a Christian. It takes more faith to believe that the story of Jesus Christ was a grand conspiracy theory, and the towns of Nazareth and Bethlehem likewise, a conspiracy theory that managed to fool Jews and Romans at the time, than it does to believe the most logical explanation: the Christ story is true. I have in my personal library something in the region of 150

mostly-hardbound books on Christianity and religion. Some of them run to nearly a thousand pages each. They are the sum total of some of the best scholarship in 2,000 years of modern human history. At my fingertips on any given day is virtually every single argument that has ever been raised about Christianity. Ever. What saddens me however is that most of my non-believing critics have probably never actually read a 1,000 page systematic theology text or gone through analyses of the so-called “discrepancies” in the Bible to work out whether they really exist or not. Nor have they actually checked the ancient Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic words the Bible was written in and understood the many variances and permutations of words used. Instead, these armchair atheists get their “arguments” from the intellectual equivalent of a cereal box (Michael Baigent’s “Jesus Papers” springs to mind). No wonder the West is lost.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 23

The new language of National

Keynglish 24, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

They say New Zealand politicians can’t be bought, but tell that to the person who, just before Christmas, shelled out more than $4,000 to have lunch with new National Party leader John Key after a charity auction on the Zillion website. All we can tell you is the mystery buyer wasn’t us. Instead, IAN WISHART caught up with John Key and his deputy Bill English for their most in-depth media interview yet on their vision for New Zealand

KEY: My view is that this brand is in incredibly strong shape, these are values and principles that go back 70 years. And if you really look at the sort of things that, say, for instance Holyoake was saying and you apply them to what I’ve been saying in the last three weeks, then I think you’ll find there’s a pretty strong match there. I think the reason that the party has endured for so long is that those values are very very durable. Now of course individual policies come and go, what worked for Holyoake and others won’t necessarily work for me in terms of absolute policies, because the environment is different, but I think one

of the aims of that speech is to really spell out that while I’ve used a slightly softer tone in the last few weeks, than maybe Don did, that fundamentally we are still going in exactly the same direction with values that line up with where we think New Zealand is heading. INVESTIGATE: It’s been an interesting time in politics, particularly since Labour took over in 1999, and I guess the period up to the 2002 election, where it had its vicious electoral defeat was marked, I think, by National still trying to establish what it actually stood for. Is there a danger in the slightly softer tone

that the clear delineation between National and Labour won’t be kept? KEY: Well, yeah, look, there are always risks as, in a sense, I don’t think beneath the surface, Labour has truly moved towards the centre, and I think the language they want to use and the spin they want to put on things is that they’ve got a tinge of blue in them, if you like, and they are hunting in the centre ground. Inevitably that’s where most New Zealanders inhabit and if we don’t try and win that space then by definition, it pushes us out to a much smaller audience. And clearly INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 25

we want to win the bulk of the party vote come Election 2008. So in a sense, we don’t make any apologies for hunting in that ground but I think there will be very different outcomes. Fundamentally, we trust the private sector and we trust New Zealanders to make good judgement calls for themselves and their families, and we don’t think Labour does and we think that their response is always one of the sort of Nanny State where Wellington knows best. When you see the results of the last few years, I mean, health is just a classic example, no one can say that Labour hasn’t thrown enormous amounts of money at it – they’ve taken the spending up annually from $6 billion to about $10.5 billion a year, but the results are at best pathetic. And why is that? Well, because they’re hiring as many bureaucrats as they are nurses. So I think you’ll see a very different approach from us, but one that the public will buy into, and I don’t think it’s one where they will be intimidated by it. I mean, my view is that if someone is looking for a hip operation or a knee operation, they care about the quality and the timing of that operation; in the end, the hospital that carries it out is probably irrelevant. INVESTIGATE: I see the suggestion that women in Nelson/ Marlborough will be without epidural services, because the government has rundown the health system to that extent, in what is a major provincial city. KEY: That’s an example of where their priorities are wrong. I think you can argue the same case with Pharmac – I mean, Pharmac’s funding has been static for the last four years, in nominal terms it’s been around half a billion dollars. In the last election campaign our policy was to increase their funding reasonably dramatically, and of course we were going to do that by not rolling out a subsidy in another area, but we thought that was a better allocation of funds. Now, that doesn’t mean it’ll be our policy in 2008 but what it shows is, I think, that we are prepared to tackle – you can’t just look at these incredibly large portfolios and just argue that there’s one solution, throw a bit of money at it and you’ll get the right outcome at the other end. I think you really do have to demand productivity and performance and have the right allocation of resources. INVESTIGATE: From my own time in Government working for Mike Moore in 1986, one of the key things in that first Lange administration was the perception, the hangover from the Muldoon years, of “bureaucracy capture”, whereupon a lot of the civil servants at the time had been with a National administration for years and were used to dealing with National and were very suspicious of the incoming Labour people. The reverse is now the case, you have bureaucracy capture with Labour – Tamihere touched on it in his interview with Investigate last year about the networks that now exist in the civil service. How seriously do you treat that as a problem? KEY: I think the winds of political change drift pretty rapidly in Wellington, it’s a world that revolves around the Beehive and Parliament, and my sense of the anecdotal stories and approaches below the radar screen that we’re getting at the moment is that the core bureaucrats in Wellington can sense pretty rapidly a change. So while, superficially, they may have nailed their colours to Labour’s mast for a while I think they can see that the time of this government is rapidly coming to an end and they’re making pretty clear and overt signals that they want to work with us. Of 26, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

course, we’ll have to demonstrate through our policies and our people that we’ve got the goods, but I think we very much do. INVESTIGATE: One of the issues, with the State Sector reform of the 80s, and it’s been a bit of a bugbear for parties in Opposition when they want accountability out of Ministers – is that Ministers now say “well, we can’t touch these civil servants because it’s all independent…” – Is there room for more political control of the senior departments and so forth so that you can get accountability back into the political system? KEY: Well I think you do need accountability. My guess is that the public will be looking aghast at the Liam Ashley case, and asking why a Labour party in opposition were so quickly calling for heads on the National side when we had Cave Creek, and yet when it comes to Liam Ashley they’ve been pretty quick to accept that they are politically accountable but not responsible, and therefore they don’t intend to do anything about it. So I think the public is entitled to accountability, and across a wide range: accountability even just for value for money – I think New Zealanders know they are paying a hell of a lot in tax, that the government expenditure has increased dramatically and in part that’s putting pressure on inflation in New Zealand, yet coming out the other end is something that even the incoming briefing to ministers confirms – to describe it as “sub-optimal” would be gilding the lily. It’s really a very low level of productivity. Yet every quarter for the last 20 quarters we’ve seen the state sector wages rising faster than the private sector, so there’s a real imbalance here. Government is a big beast now, and we need to have that beast performing if New Zealand’s economic growth and productivity levels are going to get us back into the top half of the OECD. INVESTIGATE: Well that gets me back to the question about bureaucracy capture, because there is this perception that we have an elected political system, but it has been disconnected legislatively from the civil service that it operates – KEY: Well I think that’s been a deliberate political ploy by Labour, I think you’ve seen that through the DHBs – that was a level put in place to ensure, again, that they were responsible but directly not accountable. Every time you ask a question they can simply say ‘Well that’s a matter for the DHB, take it up with them’, and when you try and take it up with them you get a blank response. I don’t think any of us should underestimate that Helen Clark is a cunning woman who understands the systems well and has worked them to her best advantage. INVESTIGATE: So is a Key government likely to be brave enough to figure out some way to bring that accountability back in legislatively so that it can control the public sector? KEY: We’ll certainly take a look at it. I think it is important when money is spent – and we’re talking about very large sums of money – that people feel there is a process of accountability. It’ll probably never be at the level that every journalist and lobby group would want, but I think nevertheless there are improvements that can be made. INVESTIGATE: In other words the pendulum has swung too far? KEY: That’s my sense of it. Like it has in so many things with Labour, it never self corrects until it’s exposed. INVESTIGATE: If you had to describe the Labour years, and taking the good with the bad, what would you say their biggest achievements are? KEY: Arguably they’ve been in the social policy area, you

PRESSPIX

know, whether it’s banning smoking or changes that they’ve made in areas like civil unions – I’m not arguing whether they are good or bad, I’m just saying that they’ve achieved a result. If you look on the other side, economically, while I think they would point to the fact that there’s been reasonably strong levels of economic growth and job creation, I think if you really look at their policies they’ve just been riding a wave that they did very little to create. And I think when you really look back on the Clark years she won’t be remembered for what she’s achieved. I think she’ll be remembered for the way that she managed her caucus. There’s a big difference. INVESTIGATE: On the flipside of the same coin. What are their biggest weaknesses? KEY: Well, their weaknesses are, I think, they have very low levels of aspiration. Fundamentally, Michael Cullen and Helen Clark are deeply conservative people who doubt Kiwis ability to really make it on the world stage, so they don’t invest in things like infrastructure heavily, because they’re just not quite sure whether we’ll make it or not. Everything is done incrementally, everything is sort of second-guessed and micro-managed, and my sense of it is that New Zealand is sitting on a huge opportunity, which if it doesn’t capture in the next 20 or 30 years, will really set us back, because for the first time in our history we are probably in the fastest growing time zone. We’ve got a world around us that’s rapidly going to start buying the kinds of products that we want, but equally we’re facing competition that most Kiwis haven’t really focused on, coming

out of countries like Latin America, for some of our core areas like agriculture and forestry and wine, and ultimately the same thing could be true of tourism. And so I think you’ve got this sort of interesting world where on the one hand, there is this great opportunity – and the Internet is the same thing: all of a sudden people can tap into a billion people worldwide, have a niche product that they can sell from New Zealand and from their home (which may not necessarily be located in downtown Wellington or Christchurch), so the opportunities are limitless, and the tyranny of distance has been removed. But on the other side of the coin, the competition is coming from people that we are not solely focused on, and it’s coming on stream pretty quickly. So it is not a scenario where New Zealand is doomed if it doesn’t get its policies right, but it’s a scenario where we don’t achieve what we are capable of achieving. I think that would be hugely frustrating for Kiwis, and it’s also, I might add, extremely dangerous, because we’re sitting on the border of a country which is pretty aggressively focused on building its competitiveness – in the form of Australia – and we’re already seeing that: 685 Kiwis leaving a week. We’ve got a brain drain that the OECD is starting to mention as our number one issue, given that it is the highest in the developed world. So I think we really have to worry about those competitive threats and the only way to fix that is to come up with a set of policies under a timeframe, and with a commitment, that are world-class, that do sort of challenge where New Zealand could be if it wants to INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 27

achieve the kinds of outcomes that it is capable of achieving. INVESTIGATE: Catch-22 for National: under the new Brash leadership when he came on board, his Orewa 1 speech, catapulted the party back from the political doldrums to the point where it almost won the last election. He touched a nerve quite clearly on this whole issue of race and multiculturalism and everything that went with it. How difficult is it to you as a new leader to keep that support there and yet find a way of navigating a softer line? KEY: Well I think firstly, that obviously it’s critical that you maintain your core support, and I’d say National’s core support is in the mid-30s. I think that’s sort of where it sits, and that’s probably fundamentally true of Labour – we probably both have core support of around about 30 odd percent. But we had a particularly bad year in 2002, partly because MMP is very cruel to you when you are doing badly because they don’t necessarily jump to the centre-left, but they just go off to a party on the centre-right, and we saw that in 2002. The good news is its kind to you when they think you’re going to win and you’re doing well, you pick up a whole lot of people who vote for a winner even if they are a little unsure. So we obviously need to maintain our core support, which is critically important. The future of New Zealand is changing and we need to change with it. If we don’t, then ultimately there is no longterm future for the National party. Political parties represent the populace if you like, and we need to be part of that. If you really look at the policies, as I’ve said, fundamentally our policies on race have not changed: we believe absolutely in all New Zealanders being treated equally before the law, we believe in a speedy settlement process of historical claims and we believe in the abolishment of the Maori seats – if there’s a change, then it is over the timetabling of when that abolition will take place. It’s likely that our first caucus in February will come up with something that will reflect, arguably, a more conciliatory timetable around the abolition of those seats. So really, in a sense, all I changed is probably the tone. I make no apologies for wanting to talk about the language of development, not the language of grievance. But I do that for a number of reasons: firstly, of course as a political leader I could spend my life absolutely honing in on everything that separates us, and these days we are a pretty multicultural society and there are lots of differences. But equally, I believe that we’ve got to focus on what unites us and sort of have enough maturity as a country to say ‘there’s a lot that binds us together’, and even though there are many voices singing the same song, we’ve also grown up enough to recognize there are some differences as well. INVESTIGATE: We are heading into a world that is increasingly turbulent, and I raise the example of Investigate columnist Mark SteynKEY: I know him, yes. INVESTIGATE: -and Steyn has just published a book called America Alone where he makes a very telling case that, for example, Europe as we know it with its various different European cultures, will effectively cease to exist within one generation because of the huge influx of immigration from overseas. I think Muhammad is now the most popular name for baby boys in Belgium, and I think running at number two in France, so you are getting this huge cultural tidal shift. And that’s part 28, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

of the reason they’ve had these riots over there. But what he is basically saying is, the world is a very changeable place and the demographics are changing – in the West our birth rates are falling and our populations are becoming older. What does this mean in the next 15 to 20 years for New Zealand? KEY: I think we know that there will be a changing ethnic mix in New Zealand – most of the forecasting indicates that this is likely for the reasons that you pointed out, that we have a birth rate that is below replacement and unless we want to see our population fall then it is likely there will be some [ethnic] change. I think our position is slightly different in Europe. Europe’s had fairly open immigration for lots of different reasons, New Zealand’s been a country largely based on immigration. So I don’t think we need to be fearful of that. But I think we should just apply sound tests, which are: it’s our country, we should choose who we want to come here and who doesn’t come, and in choosing that we should pick people who we think can make a contribution, that can ultimately settle in and become New Zealanders. My sense is that we’ve achieved that pretty well so far. There’s always a process of digestion if you like, but I feel pretty confident we can manage that process. INVESTIGATE: Is there a need as part of that process increasingly to have some sort of national written constitution so that everyone who is a citizen of New Zealand understands what our basic principles are and we swear allegiance to that? KEY: A written constitution, not necessarily, but one of the things you’ve seen in Australia, and I have some sympathy for, is that through the curriculum and through the education system they promote very heavily to young Australians, wherever they come from, a deep understanding of Australia’s history, of its natural fauna and flora, all the historical icons of Australia. I think that’s something that can be looked at in New Zealand, because I think it is very important that when people come – not that they forget their historical roots – but the thing that will make any country work is not that we have differences, because clearly we will have some, but we also have something that we feel binds us together. What it means to be a New Zealander. At the moment, I would argue that we are best at expressing that when we are not in New Zealand, when we see each other on the tube in London or we are somewhere else. I think, increasingly, Australia has done quite a good job of that, you’ve seen this sort outpouring of nationalistic pride on Australia Day, my sense is New Zealand will evolve with the right political leadership to that. In other words, a sort of coming together of what it means to be a New Zealander, and there are certain pathways we can do to help achieve that in a world which, as you say, is likely to have greater immigration as a feeder of its population. INVESTIGATE: In terms of the rise of yourself and Bill English to leadership, I was reading the blogs for the next few days afterwards, and the reaction from some of the right-wing blogs was, “Oh heck, it’s Labour lite!”. What’s your reaction to that, have they got reason to be fearful or do you think you’ll be able to persuade them and keep them on board for the next couple of years? KEY: I think we will absolutely keep them on board. Look, there will always be a wide range of views. Again, if you go back to Holyoake, I think, he said if the party agreed with him 60% of the time he was doing pretty well. You are never going

because nothing is more special than time

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to get somebody who is going to agree with absolutely everything you say, and every policy you take as a leader, even as a political party. So in the end it comes down to a kind of theme, and values and the way you handle the decision-making process. Of course there will be some on the extreme right, who will want to have policies that we are not likely to be advocating, and again some on the extreme left, who will want policies that we are not likely to be advocating. Again, I make no real apologies for saying I take a relatively pragmatic view of things. In the end I want policies that work, but pragmatism should not be mistaken for not being decisive. I think we proved in the early weeks of the leadership that we are certainly prepared to make decisions, even hard ones, and we will make them pretty rapidly. I think even in my political career in the last 4 1/2 years, I’ve proven that through things like the tax plan, which was the biggest tax cutting plan that New Zealand has seen in its history. So I don’t think people can say that I’m not prepared to make hard decisions or decisions that when I believe in them I’ll back them. INVESTIGATE: Is this a sign of how you will treat your responsibility in government – as Helensville MP, you were personally not worried about civil unions but you had a large amount of lobbying going on in your electorate that suggested the people in your electorate who had voted for you did not want that passed. Still in a conscience vote, you opted to recognize the will of your electorate. Is that something you see as being fundamental to being a politician? KEY: Yeah, and you can take two views on conscience issues, one is to say that you vote on your own conscience, only what you think matters and to hell with the people that you represent; the other thing you can say is that you operate in the House of Representatives as their representative. I’ve chosen to take the latter view. Often the latter view coincides with my view, I mean, I voted against the Prostitution Law Reform Bill, because in the end I thought it was bad legislation as much as I got intense lobbying about it. It’s not that I’m too gutless to make a decision, because I will certainly make them and I make them all the time, but I kind of feel like the people of Helensville, who put me there, expect me to represent their views in Parliament, and I do. Behind the scenes you’ll see me doing that quite aggressively on a number of issues, one or two that I won’t bother sharing with you, but I can tell you from a local perspective that it’s been slightly different view from views others might have held and I’ll strongly advocate for that as well. In those instances, if the party has a different position, then I’ll be bound by the party’s position as I expect all of my MPs to be. But I’m not afraid to stand up to the people that put me there, and I think any politician that forgets who put them in Parliament will rapidly find themselves on civvy street. INVESTIGATE: What about citizens initiated referenda on conscience issues, is that something you’d support? KEY: Yeah, I think there is some room. You can’t overdo referendums – where you get to a point where the vote is on everything – because it becomes really difficult. And one of the really difficult parts about referendums as well is that you ask really simplistic questions for what are really complex issues. But, nevertheless, conscience issues are largely about the kind of society that we want, and some things, at a pace that peo30, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

ple feel comfortable with. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with having that kind of view. You wouldn’t apply it to everything, and there are certainly times when political leadership is required. You can take a simple example, where there are certain things around race for instance, where you couldn’t have – even if there was a majority – them inappropriately flexing their muscles on a minority. We are a better society for having politicians and leaders who, in the past, have stood up to that. And you can sort of quote Martin Luther King down. But I think that, in certain instances, there is a place for binding referenda and we should not be afraid to use them. INVESTIGATE: The Hager book that has attracted so much attention in the media, perhaps undeservedly, the general mutterings continuing behind the scenes would suggest that

there were no leaks, that somehow somebody has hacked into National’s computer system – is that a concern to you? KEY: It is a deep concern and I think all New Zealanders should be very concerned if that’s the case, because really we are talking about something very sinister, if that’s occurred. We are meeting with the police, we need to get to the bottom of it. We know they are taking it very seriously. One of the reasons that we certainly hold the view that it is likely our systems have been either hacked into, or there has been something occurring, is simply the sheer volume of information they have. It is just not credible that it was just a bunch of e-mails that someone left on a plane. INVESTIGATE: Your deputy Bill English is a conservative Catholic boy, do you believe in God? KEY: What I have always said to that question in its many

iterations, is, look, I have lived my life by Christian principles. I don’t go to church, I was never brought up in any major way in a terribly religious household. My mother was Jewish, which under Jewish faith makes me Jewish. I do go to church a hell of a lot with the kids, but I don’t want to hold myself out to be something that I’m not. I’m not Bill, I accept that, but I kind of try and live my life as best I can by a set of rules that I think works. INVESTIGATE: In terms of the votes that you’re out to capture by 2008, who are you after, what is your target market? KEY: It’s got to be women. Women are the clear audience – not that they don’t like what we’ve said in the past – I think it is adding on to the message that we’ve had. So that’s the first one, and I think the second is urban liberals and young people. But right across the board, I think there is room for improvement. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 31

INVESTIGATE: In terms of what you see as the biggest issues for National over the next two years, what would they be? ENGLISH: As the finance spokesman, the biggest issue for me is taking the economy forward in a way that rewards people who take risks, and shares the benefits and growth with New Zealand families, and it doesn’t all end up in the government surplus. INVESTIGATE: There has been an issue for several years now about the red tape, the compliance costs, and even the negative incentives that go on, how are you looking to tackle some of this? ENGLISH: Look, I think that’s really important, because we’ve gone down the track where the bureaucrats have set out to eliminate every risk. Now, you cannot have economic growth and success in business without risks, so New Zealanders want to work in a team but they want an entrepreneurial, and aspirational culture. And that is gradually being mothballed by continuous unnecessary regulation that is designed to get rid of every risk – and you can’t. INVESTIGATE: You see it not just in the business sector though. With this particular administration, you are seeing that same attitude applied right across the social sector, and protection for everything. Is that a problem overall? ENGLISH: Yes, it is a problem. It’s a problem because of the kind of attitudes it creates. Because if the government says that it’s got the answer to everything, and if there’s any problem they will fix it, people lose a sense of responsibility and consequences. National’s view is, the government is there to underpin what people do, not dominate it. INVESTIGATE: I asked John Key this, about bureaucracy capture in the civil service. Given that many of the people in senior positions were liberals appointed by the original Lange administration in the 80s, an incoming National government has to deal with that. How do you deal with a civil service that is possibly inimical to what National stands for? ENGLISH: Well I don’t believe all of them are, I mean, this is a public service who want the opportunity to serve the public instead of the Labour Party. I meet civil servants regularly, who are frustrated with the way that Labour thinks that putting together a list of things to do is the same as doing them. And that putting out a strategy to deal with some issue amounts to fixing it. What they want is the chance to be treated with respect, regarded as professionals. They don’t want bucketloads more money, because they know that that’s leading to a soft spending and low quality government. So I’m reasonably optimistic that the civil service is as tired of the Labour government as everybody else is. INVESTIGATE: Is there enough accountability in the public service at the moment in your opinion? ENGLISH: Not at the moment, no. And where there is, it is the wrong sort of accountability – I’ll give you an example, this is Labour’s definition of accountability: you remember a guy named Kit Richards? He wrote an e-mail the government didn’t like. The guy loses his job, and can never be employed in the civil service again, while Labour are in power. Liam Ashley dies, brutally murdered, while he is in the custodial care of 32, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

For National’s BILL ENGLISH, it’s back to the future – almost. Entering parliament 17 years ago at the tender age of 29, English had a brief flirtation as Leader of National in 2002-2003 but got bumped by Don Brash after National’s worst-ever election defeat. But now he’s back as deputy to John Key, and happy to stay in the number two role. He tells IAN WISHART National has a job ahead of it

the state. No one has resigned, no one is responsible, no one is accountable. And that stinks. So Labour focuses on accountability for meeting Labour’s political objectives, and if you get in the way of that you get dealt to. But accountability in the public service? That’s long gone. INVESTIGATE: Looking at the Brash years that followed on from your own leadership of National, why do you think National bottomed out, then bounced back up – what do you see, having had the advantage of being there at the helm, what was the thing that turned it for National?

ENGLISH: When National came out of government, it had a bad dose of low morale. I had some views about where it should go, that amounted to a longer term strategy, and I didn’t articulate that very well. They wanted quicker results that got them back in the game and rebuilt the confidence of the party. Don Brash came in as a bit of a punt at the time, he only just got across the line to the leadership, but it turned out the public responded to him better, I think, than most people expected. It also meant that with a small caucus after the 2002 election, once the leadership changed it did settle down, because we

stopped arguing about the leadership and got on and did a bit of work. What Brash did was gather up – in the 2002 election a whole lot of centre-right voters knew National didn’t have a chance and Prebble and Peters picked a lot of them up, and Peter Dunne, with some pretty simple messages, and Brash gathered them all up. The job now is to extend beyond that group of voters. INVESTIGATE: Jane Clifton in the Listener called John Key “Helen lite”, there is a perception that by sounding softer that National might abandon some of the ground that it has won. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 33

Is there any danger of that happening, or does the party have a cunning plan? ENGLISH: No, there is no danger of abandoning core positions that have been hard-won and are good for the country. Some of this is just about the man for the times, and I think John Key has had a great start to the leadership because he is seen as the man for the times. Don was suffering a bit, just from being seen as a guy who had outstanding public service in the 90s, but might not be able to carry that through. So we are not going to be abandoning core positions. Look, our view of the world is fundamentally different from Labour’s and I don’t agree with this “Labour lite” stuff. We have to work within the constraints of MMP, which means you need to have 51% support in the Parliament for what you do – you used to be able to do it on 35%. So, of course, our job is to convince the public that we can manage the politics on their behalf, and at the same time achieve our direction, because increasingly we are moving to wanting a direction that is about aspiration, responsibility, risk-taking, and getting ahead. INVESTIGATE: Just on the MMP point, you’ve seen over selective governments the damage that MMP actually does to the minor parties, every time a party enters into a formal coalition with a major one they get eaten. How will that affect politics long-term? ENGLISH: I think it would be a mistake to judge MMP on what has happened so far to the small parties, because a number of the small parties are personality cults. So there’s no particular reason for New Zealand First to exist except Winston Peters, you saw what happened to the Alliance, and then Progressives because that was dominated by one guy, Jim Anderton. United Future are going to find it hard to live past Peter Dunne’s life in politics. Now you are getting the emergence of parties that have a much stronger base, and that is the Greens and the Maori party. They’ve got a stronger base because they can exist regardless of the leadership – and the Greens have shown that, without Rod Donald they are still polling pretty well. They have learnt from watching all the variations that Clark has put in place, that they can get the right amounts of independence and influence, so I would see MMP in the future reflecting this. Those parties will be much more resilient than the ones who’ve been at the centre of MMP so far. INVESTIGATE: One of the things that the Greens and the Maori party have done is to try and steer clear of formal coalitions. ENGLISH: Yeah, that’s one of the lessons! Don’t let them swallow you up, and don’t spend too much time around the Cabinet table because then you become responsible for everything instead of just your own brand. And the second thing is, that you have to have a strong clear brand that is about issues, not personalities – and that’s where Act have a challenge because Act have lost their way on issues, they’ve become a personality party. And if they stay that way then they might get through a few more elections but they are not a permanent part of the system. INVESTIGATE: In terms of her Majesty’s loyal government, Helen Clark and team, how daunting are they, heading into a potential fourth term, for you and John Key? ENGLISH: We are not daunted at all. This is a government that has done what it came to do, they are now looking tired 34, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

and scratchy. I can see the signs, because I’ve been there, the signs of a fading government. They think the process is much more important than the result, so you just get endless strategies and collaborations and partnerships but no results. They are getting scratchy and bad tempered and trying to bully the media, the past results of their personal and political judgements are catching up with them. That’s what happens to third term governments, and we are not daunted by them at all. They got a long way in the past by talking their own book about what competent political managers they are, but in the end you get judged on results, not political management. INVESTIGATE: During the Brash years, what would you say are the biggest strengths and weaknesses of National coming out of that time? ENGLISH: I think the biggest strengths would be the hard work that’s gone into building some strong positions with the New Zealand public around lower taxes, around the way government should deal with Maori – we’re not going to give those things away. I think also Don’s temperament and professionalism had a big impact on how the National party operates, it’s a hidden effect, but a very important one. The party became more professional and better at making decisions under Brash. Coming out of it I don’t see too many weaknesses really, John and I would be the first to acknowledge that we have a terrific platform of 40 plus percent of solid public support to build on. INVESTIGATE: The Nicky Hager book, as the dust settles from that, there seems to be a growing suspicion that there was no leak out of National, but instead somebody hacked into the Parliamentary servers and stole your e-mails. What are your views on that? ENGLISH: Yeah, look, what you are seeing here is years of spying and burglary and theft at the highest levels of New Zealand politics. Watergate was one burglary, this is much more extensive than that. So it is really important that the police focus on getting to the bottom of how all that material came into the hands of Nicky Hager and his book. Hacking is one option, I think theft and burglary is another, and I think the rash of political stories we’ve had about politicians in the last 12 months indicate that there’s been fairly extensive private investigator or other spying activity on senior politicians, and who knows who’s next. INVESTIGATE: I have covered governments for something like 25 years now and in my view this administration would have to rank as one of the most corrupt – at an objective level, just in terms of all the stuff coming up around them – what’s your view? ENGLISH: This is an administration that has corrupted the whole political process. I have seen good, strong, experienced civil servants, reduced to gibbering idiots, because of the arbitrary control and punishment systems run by the government. I have seen all sorts of interest groups who have strong views, and in the past had advocated them aggressively in the public arena, bought off by the current government, with threats and promises. And then we’ve seen the straight out corrupt use of the taxpayers’ money and Parliamentary privileges, just this year, in the pledge card and Taito Phillip Field. That comes on top of a record that stretches back four or five years – no Prime Minister has been interviewed more often by the police than Helen Clark. INVESTIGATE: What do you think of Helen as a leader?

“A community that stops breeding, which the Western – particularly European – countries have, is going to get swamped by those who do breed. It’s a pretty fundamental fact of life on Earth. And we, in some respects, are not a lot different in New Zealand”

ENGLISH: She’s a ruthless and clinical leader, she’s respected for her political competence, and not loved for anything else, except perhaps in the arts world. She has set a benchmark for MMP management that future governments have to reach for stability, because she has had a stable team. She is focused very much on her own stretching power, and that is shown by the fact that she has failed to renew the Labour Party. She has gone for making sure that her prime ministership is stable and not contested. She hasn’t tried to ensure that the Labour Party can keep on governing, and they are about to pay the price for that. INVESTIGATE: In light of your own political career, do you regret the Brash years in any way? ENGLISH: No not at all. Politics comes and goes, timing is everything in politics, some of the things I was trying to do were just before their time. But the time is right now. Don Brash added much to the National party that I could not have added, even if I had been more experienced than I was. So, no, I have no regrets. I think we are in great shape now for a long and stable period in government, and that’s what we are working to achieve over the next 18 months. INVESTIGATE: Your relationship with John Key appears to be good, people were speculating that Bill might put ambition before the task at hand but you seem to have a good relationship. ENGLISH: Yeah, we do. And that’s because we think the same way about a lot of political issues, so that helps, we can make decisions quickly, because we are not arguing the point, and I think that’s been demonstrated recently. The other reason it works is that we complement each other. John is a terrific marketer, a very appealing media presence, and I’ve got the experience of government and policy. I think we have a strong professional respect for what each can do it, and that’s why it is working so well. INVESTIGATE: Labour has made such an issue out of social engineering, its social policy programmes and the like, how does National achieve its new focus without being seen to be

slipping towards what Labour has made such an issue of? ENGLISH: Look, I think that’s a real challenge. When you look at Labour’s track record, the things they really cared about were those things where they were telling other people how to live their lives, and doing their social engineering. On the economy, and their delivery of services to the public, there’s been a lot of talk – billions of dollars – but they are not really that focused on it, so they haven’t got anywhere. One of National’s core principles is freedom, we need to make sure that we don’t get sucked along, in the environment that Labour has created, into accepting things that unnecessarily take people’s freedom away or that have the government telling people they can’t take risks that any consenting adults would think they should be able to take. INVESTIGATE: On the whole global warming scenario, which I know Nick Smith has done some work on, there is, it appears, emerging with the National a belief that global warming is human caused. Yet there is a lot of scientific argument to the contrary. Is National wedded to the idea that it is human caused? Because if it’s not human caused, then there is nothing we can do about it. ENGLISH: We are open to the science, there’s got to be good science, and not hysteria, driving the policy. We’ve become quite worried that policies are going to be driven by this Armageddon mentality that the world has far too many people and far too much carbon, and it’s all going to unwind within the next 20 years. So we want to make sure, we’ve got an open ear to the science, we don’t go along with this idea that Labour do that you’re either – what do they say? – Helen Clark calls you a ‘climate change denier’, and it sounds like something out of the Inquisition – ‘how dare you!’. In fact, the science is complex, in our view it has moved in the direction of human causation, if more and better science says that’s not the case we are open to it. In the meantime, we do believe that the risks are great enough that we need some insurance. INVESTIGATE: What about the United Nations report sugINVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 35

gesting cattle are a bigger contributor to global warming than cars? I would have thought, if you go back 8000 years, there would be millions more bison, elephants and antelope roaming the planet, than we have cattle now. ENGLISH: The difficulty with climate change is going to be untangling the political agendas from the real science. It is going to suit a whole lot of people to believe that cars are not as polluting with climate change, because it would be very unpopular to curb people’s capacity to drive their cars around. In New Zealand, that is a very dangerous idea, because our biggest single exporter is based entirely on cows, and that’s Fonterra. Our job as a political party is to come up with sensible and reasonable policies that don’t put our economic growth at risk, that don’t put people’s freedom to make their own decisions at risk because of some hysteria. That is a real danger, we are going to see Labour casting around trying to rebuild credibility on the environment, and look like a government with some vision, and there’s a risk we’ll get some pretty stupid policies as a result. INVESTIGATE: Mark Steyn’s new book, America Alone, is warning that the world is about to become a whole lot more unstable as Western civilisation heads into an unprecedented death spiral, caused by falling birth rates, rising abortions and rapidly ageing populations, while Islam is set to take over Europe within a generation. That’s a pretty grim picture, if National becomes the government, how do you prepare for that kind of future? ENGLISH: Demography is destiny, I am absolutely convinced of that. A community that stops breeding, which the Western – particularly European – countries have, is going to get swamped by those who do breed. It’s a pretty fundamental fact of life on Earth. And we, in some respects, are not a lot different in New Zealand. There’s a couple of points that matter: firstly, societies that can adapt to it I going to do well, and societies that really struggle with the demographic changes are going to be riven with conflict. And we’ve seen how nasty and brutal as conflicts can be. You’ve seen it in Iraq, you’re seeing it in Africa, you are starting to see signs of it in the Pacific. I’m optimistic about New Zealand, though, because we have had our own reasonably intensive internal debate about history and who belongs where, and actually we have managed it pretty well by any international standard. So I think one of our advantages is going to be our ability to adapt to these demographic changes. The hard bit is going to be sorting out our role in the Pacific, where you’ve got the Chinese and the Taiwanese competing for influence, you’ve got ethnic strife in a number of places we hadn’t expected before, you’ve got political instability in the Solomons, Fiji and Tonga. We’ve got a number of those communities heavily represented in New Zealand, and I don’t think we’ve got a clue what to do – New Zealanders are so used to having the moral high ground, where we can preach about foreign policy and cultural difference to everyone else, that we’re just a bit bemused at the moment about what to do when we actually have to deal with the ugly reality of these issues. National has started already this year, on really trying to get its head around what is going to be quite a different world than the one that National was attached to, which actually ended around about 1985. INVESTIGATE: One of Steyn’s points in his book is that countries like New Zealand and Australia, because of the dis36, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

tance from world trouble spots may end up becoming immigration magnets for cultures fleeing Europe as those societies continue to break down. ENGLISH: We are going to look a lot more stable, just because we don’t have the geographical pressures, we don’t have these populations on our borders, but I think that flight won’t just be English-speaking for European – it will also include the middle-class of every country from Indonesia through to Zimbabwe. In fact, the arrival of the Zimbabwe migrants here is perhaps the shape of things to come, but they certainly won’t be all European or English-speaking. So our ability to adapt to it is still going to be really quite important. INVESTIGATE: With an incoming National government, is the anything in terms of Labour’s – particularly their social agenda – policies that you would tweak? ENGLISH: It depends what you mean by social agenda. The one thing that you can be sure of is that National is not going to carry on down the road of social engineering. When Labour had got through the prostitution bill and the civil union Bill, in 2005 the public said ‘enough!’ and every politician got that signal. What I find out is that the public are much more worried about the breakdown of fundamental social order, particularly around families, than they are about creating ever more rights and responsibilities that lead to that breakdown. INVESTIGATE: As education spokesman, you’d be where of the tensions that exist within the education ministry and the teaching profession, whereby a lot of them are what you would call urban liberal Labour supporters and have a particular worldview that they have brought to the education portfolio themselves. Does National have any plans to look long and hard at where some of these things are ingrained in the public service? ENGLISH: With respect to education, we’ve got one definite plan about teaching kids how to read, write, and do maths – and that is a private members bill of mine that got drawn last month to set national standards for literacy and numeracy which will focus schools on making sure kids can read and write and do maths, regardless of the political leanings or the educational theories of the people who are teaching them. They’ll have a job to do, it will be clear what is, and they’ll have to get on and do it. I think there is scope a stronger focus on schools on citizenship and a proper understanding of New Zealand’s history. The problem is that too many people in the education establishment believe the same thing at the Labour Party: that the history of New Zealand is the history of the Labour movement, and that is wrong, and that’s been one of the things that got us into trouble about Maori issues – that whole left-wing view of history. The third thing that I’m interested in – and these last two are not policy yet – is getting an ethos of enterprise and entrepreneurialism into our schools. Traditionally our state system has been anti-business, and anti-private enterprise, because of the political backgrounds of a lot of the staff. I see some very good things going on in schools now, through things like the Young Enterprise Scheme, but in the future I’d like to see business, in particular, take a really strong interest in their local schools. Get trades and business right into the heart of the education system and show our kids that there is a pathway for aspiration that is about self-reliance, about initiative and about reward for risk. There’s not near enough of that in our schools now.

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Dances wolves with

Tales from Struggle Street

CASE ONE: The outlaw buskers

olly Sheffield is arguably the best young ballerina in New Zealand, and one of the best in the world. She’s overcome a hip deformity as a baby and a bone tumour in her early teens to reach the top eight in one of the world’s most prestigious ballet competitions, and behind her stand her family. Raised in a solo parent household where every dollar counts, Holly has relied – and still is – on busking by her two brothers to help pay the nearly $90,000 a year tuition fees. But from the highs of being profiled in a TV20/20 documentary three years ago, Holly’s dreams are in danger – thanks to a security firm hired by Auckland City that doesn’t like her brothers’ busking. As mum CAROL SHEFFIELD wrote to Investigate, their treatment has been an absolute travesty of justice: The following is our story. You see my sons, from the ages of 14 and 19 respectively, have been arrested and thrown into cells for busking over and over again since October 2005 and they are New Zealanders – born in New Zealand – who had

38, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

Every month, media organisations and magazines like Investigate get bombarded with letters from ordinary people seeking help on what, to them, are major issues. Most of the time these stories fall by the wayside, but here are three, in the words of those involved, that shed light on the everyday ordeals of what media commentator Derryn Hinch would call “the residents of Struggle Street”

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 39

“Daniel’s arrest is still on the video camera to use in his defence of the remaining charge, however 24 minutes after Daniel was handcuffed and in the police car the tape was wiped from the time the police got him into the car. The wiping of the tape was done while the police had the video camera in their possession and Daniel was in a cell” 40, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

Daniel this year, this case (civil) between the council and our family is not yet before the courts. To have it heard in court even on Legal Aid in the interests of justice, could cost our family $100,000 as a charge to be paid, so it has been a very sad and stressful time for us all. The council says that our family had a meeting with the council where there was a verbal agreement that our family ‘The Sheffield Family’ were only allowed 30 minutes each! They kept on refusing to put this in writing, however we now have an audio recording of them saying this on the phone to us and also now a video recording! The council sent us a letter stating they do not intend to give the confiscated piano back and will dispose of it as they see fit. The council has had the piano for over four months now. Michael is a classical pianist, however can not take any pianist jobs offered to him as he now does not have his instrument to perform on. Michael has suffered the humiliation of a very public arrest and the devastating smashing up of his piano, the loss of his livelihood. As a result of this immense amount of stress Michael has suffered serious depression and is facing police charges as well. Michael has a full day hearing for these police charges on 15/5/07. Michael is putting off studying music at Auckland University until this matter is finally sorted out, due to the amount of stress and time involved in dealing with this. He and his brother’s busking had also been raising awareness for their sister’s need for sponsorship to study in the UK and to represent New Zealand in international ballet competitions.

T legitimate busking permits from the Auckland City Council. Michael, now 21, and Daniel Sheffield, now 15, were busking under those permits which allowed each of them to busk for one hour. Despite this, the council authorised the confiscation of their digital piano and equipment valued at $10,000 stating Michael had breached a Bylaw, that he had gone over the one hour. Michael has absolute total proof that he didn’t exceed the one hour, including video footage. In fact he still had five minutes left to go of his allocated time when he was already handcuffed by police and his piano smashed up through police actions. Apart from police charges yet to be defended by Michael and

his young New Zealand girl, who has represented New Zealand at the highest levels in ballet, has defied the odds against her with her successes both at the Adeline Genée International Ballet Competition and the Prix de Lausanne (Considered the Olympics of Ballet). At only 15 years old in Athens 2004 she made it to the finals of the Genée, the best 8 girls in the world! Holly was the second youngest and the only contestant not yet training at a full-time ballet school. She is one of only a handful of New Zealanders ever to make the Finals in the 75 year history of this competition. Holly has been awarded ‘Solo Seal’, the Highest International Ballet Award. When approached by School Directors at the Prix de Lausanne 2005 (Switzerland) she was offered places in a number of world renowned UK ballet schools without having to audition. She choose Elmhurst Ballet school, at the cost of $89,621.62 (fees and living expenses) for the first year and $83’264.00 for each of the following two years. Holly has made many applications to Arts and Funding bodies and has written to every single Member of Parliament! Some MPs have been supportive, though the generosity of individual New Zealanders is making the difference and have helped donate the money Holly and her family were unable to raise on their own. But all forms of our own family’s fundraising for their sister Holly have now come to a complete halt. Holly now in her second year of training, may have to return home and not do the third and final year of her training. Young Daniel does not want to perform on piano publicly anymore and doesn’t want to continue with his ballet. He has lost his confidence and is very embarrassed. This situation has impacted Michael’s, Holly’s and Daniel’s lives so much, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 41

however they are not criminals and have worked hard to help support their own studies to achieve their hopes and dreams. We are currently putting on protests in Queen Street, playing our video footage of all this treatment of our family, however the council says it’s illegal to play our portable DVD player in public! We said if this were true it would need to be printed on the DVD player packaging when people purchase a portable DVD player. Mr Turnbull, Compliance Project Manager of Auckland City Council, was recorded on video saying, “No it’s not written on the packet, it’s written in the Bylaw.” This is in breach of the Bill of Rights Act and a blatant denial of our democratic right of freedom of speech! Section 14 of the Bill of Rights says: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.” Section 21 says: “Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure, whether of the person, property, or correspondence or otherwise.” Beyond understanding, our youngest, Daniel Sheffield, was arrested on 24/10/06 during our peaceful non-obstructive protest. He was calmly standing with our video camera beside our protest trolley when First Security guards and police came to confiscate our portable DVD player and sign! Daniel filmed the security guards removing the sign, then he filmed the police arresting him and trying to turn off the video camera while they handcuffed him and roughly threw him into the police car. Shocked members of the public watched, however all this happened when his elder brother and his mum had just gone to the bathroom! We were only gone about 10 minutes. Daniel was assaulted in the police car, but police charged Daniel with assault on a security guard, resisting arrest and assault on a police officer. At Daniel’s second court appearance over this, the police decided to withdraw the charges of resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer as long as we don’t bring any claims against the police. Daniel’s arrest is still on the video camera to use in his defence of the remaining charge, however 24 minutes after Daniel was handcuffed and in the police car the tape was wiped from the time the police got him into the car. The wiping of the tape was done while the police had the video camera in their possession and Daniel was in a cell! Daniel has appeared in court three times now for his arrest, however his lawyer has yet to receive the police disclosure and caption summary! Finally the court decided to set the date of 5/2/07 for a half-day defended hearing for Daniel’s charge or charges, even though we don’t yet know what the police are saying happened. The police have filed two separate reports and charges over the weeks since Daniel’s arrest, neither of which has been given to Daniel’s lawyer and even the judge is now unsure as to what charges Daniel is now facing! Section 24 of the Bill of Rights says anyone charged with an offence: “Shall have the right to adequate time and facilities to prepare a defence.” All our confiscated possessions, excluding the piano, total in value to $2,100. 42, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

We borrowed money to immediately purchase another DVD player, made another sign and resumed our protest. The council has billed us for the cost of the seizure of the DVD player, equipment and sign, an amount of $438.75 which is to be paid within 14 days. The funny thing is the GST charge of $48.75 on the bill. We don’t think we should have to pay this bill let alone the GST, because they have the goods and we didn’t like or want the service! Although they try to confiscate our DVD player every time we come to protest, we will continue to stand up for human rights and freedom of speech in New Zealand and will not be silenced. If our $10,000 digital piano had not been smashed up and confiscated we would not need to protest, however it has and the council refuses to give it back taking away both Michael’s and Daniel’s livelihood. We have video tape of the dramatic arrest and smashing up of the piano on 13/7/06. We have many video recordings of the treatment of our family. We have transcripts of our recordings for easier reading. Can you help our family? Sincerely, The Sheffield Family, Carol (mum), Michael, Holly, and Daniel

CASE TWO: Police refuse to arrest muggers

girl-on-girl street gang mugging, caught on mobile phone video camera, but a refusal by police to lay charges. The mother of one of the victims, JUDY EVANS-HITA, wrote this letter to South Auckland police commander Steve Shortland seeking an explanation:

Dear Mr. Shortland I am writing to you about several concerns I have, regarding Police practices in South Auckland. On the 13th October 2006 (Friday) my daughter Bobby Webster-Kerr (16) and my Grand-daughter Jessica Alp (15) both stepped off the bus at the Wakefield Road bus stop. My daughter Bobby was immediately set upon by six girls and punched in the face, they then put her to the ground and proceeded to kick her about the head, back and ribs. My grand daughter Jessica yelled at them to leave her alone and two more took to her, punched her in the mouth and got her to the ground and started to kick her about the head also. While this was going on another girl was videoing the whole thing on a cell phone. At the time this was taking place, a friend of Bobby and Jessica’s who had gotten off the bus at the same time phoned the police and ran down the road to get me. I flew down the drive to get Bobby and Jessica who were by this time making their way towards me along the footpath. I spoke to the person on the other end of the cell phone requesting the police as soon as possible. The Police (to their credit) arrived very quickly and started talking to witnesses in the street. They then came down our drive and spoke to all three girls. The older of the two policemen that arrived was great. He looked to take the complaint seriously and at no time did he try to make light of the situation. We thought that as

Bobby Webster-Kerr sporting one of her injuries

soon as we could get things sorted all would be fine. As both were leaving, I asked about how to get in touch with both officers, should we gather information about the people responsible for the attack that they may need. With that the junior Constable [JC] gave us a piece of paper with numbers on it and advised me to ring, leave a message and pass on any information we managed to gather and he would get back to me as soon as he received the message. By Saturday morning (14th October 2006) I had the names and addresses and cell phone numbers of two of the pack. I phoned and left a message for JC. I phoned and left another message on Sunday 15th October 2006, again on Monday 16th October 2006, by this time I was extremely angry. I was told that JC started at 4pm so to call back around 4:10pm and that way I should get hold of him. I phoned back at 4:10pm to find he was out on the road. I left another message and this one he must have got because he then called me. I explained that I had had these names and addresses since Saturday. He said that he would pick the information up later that night. I waited until midnight but not a sign of JC. By Tuesday morning (17th October 2006) I was furious as nothing had been done. I, at that stage rang and left a message on your answer phone. I then rang back and spoke to your secretary Jean who was very helpful. I then phoned Mangere College and spoke to the Assistant Principal and left a message for the Deputy Principal who rang

back and I filled him on what had happened. I then gave him the third name I had just managed to acquire. He was very interested and said he’d get back to me. I told him to check (unlike the police) the cell phone and Bobby’s assault should be on it. He phoned me back within two hours and had several of the girls in his office as well as the cell phone, with her assault filmed on it. And still no Police in sight. I then phoned Jean back to update her on everything. I was told that Inspector Bind was going to send someone to see me. At approximately 3:25pm JC arrived with a blonde policewoman. He apologised for not coming over earlier. I informed him that we had done all the work and it seemed as if they had done nothing and I was very angry about the fact that the blonde policewoman trivialized the assault in front of my daughter. At the end of the day Bobby and Jessica are the victims in this. At no time has Jessica or her mother been updated since they were here on the 13th October 2006 and at no time were they ever offered Victim Support. This was a premeditated, cowardly attack by a pack of gutless girls, some with a history of this type of behaviour and as yet, nothing has been done. Since that day Bobby has heard once from JC to say they had spoken to four who had admitted it and they had two more to talk to. They were to let her know what had happened then it would go to Youth Aid. That was on 23rd October 2006. A Constable N phoned a couple of weeks ago and informed Bobby’s father that, as far as they were concerned, the action INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 43

taken by the school in the suspension of the girls responsible and with strict conditions placed upon them, on their return to school, it was decided that the matter would be left as it stood. I have rung Constable N twice and left my contact details for a reply, however again, I have not received any reply to date. It is unacceptable that these girls have not being charged with any offence despite my assistance that I wanted to see charges laid. Would it have been more acceptable to the Police if my Daughter and/or Grand-daughter had have been killed in order to prompt the appropriate action? It could have easily been a pre-meditated homicide investigation instead of an assault. The public of New Zealand are told by the New Zealand Police Public Relations machine that the police are there to take care of them, yet the evidence overwhelmingly proves the opposite to those claims. I now realise why so much crime goes unreported if this is the reaction to those reports. The Police can no longer occupy the moral high ground and instruct the public not to take matters into their own hands, when we are increasingly becoming the victims of rampant crime rate and an inept Police Force. I again insist that this matter is dealt with in an appropriate manner and charges are laid against those responsible for the attack. Judy Evans-Hita Cc: Minister of Police; Commissioner of Police; Police Complaints; Ian Wishart – Investigate Magazine

CASE THREE: When a Government agency steals…

farming couple nearing retirement discover the local council is planning to rezone their land “Industrial”, which will help them develop some business interests on their land. So far, so good. But then government-controlled Transit convinced the council not to rezone the land yet, because it first wants to purchase the couple’s farm at a low price, then get the land re-zoned and onsell it at a high price. BRYAN PRYOR calls it state-sanctioned theft of around $6 million, based on current land values, from his family:

44, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

Dear Ian Wishart Please could you help me? Transit is trying to take our land and make us pay for their motor way (Te Rapa Bypass – Hamilton). The problem started five years ago when I tried to obtain a Resource Consent for my business. The process was complicated with reverse sensitivity and Transit NZ bully-boy tactics. The Waikato District Council wanted to rezone our land Industrial. Transit NZ has bullied the local council to put this process on hold until after the bypass has been put through. Note the process has only been put on hold. Not cancelled. They want to buy our land at Rural then sell it on at Industrial rates. What they have done is made two councils withdraw their structural plans. In order words, Transit NZ has taken total control of all the development in this area until they think fit. This is wrong and breaks the law. They do not have the legal or statutory right to do this. The Zoning process started when a RMA consultant arrived on the 30th October 2003. Just that morning I wheeled my wife into the operating theatre for her heart valve replacement. The operation was horrendous and she has never fully recovered. At the time we were happy to be zoned Industrial. Prior to this I had been advised by Waikato District Council staff to put my RMA consent application on hold due to the reverse sensitivity and wait for the Plan change. They said it would be Industrial under the new District Plan and this would make my scheme a complying activity. In other words, it could be granted as of right. (Mayor’s letter confirms this view). The problem was, a neighbour would not sign our plans, which if the zoning did not change would thereby force my application to become a “Notifiable” Consent. If this happened, they told me, Transit and the local Maoris would oppose the application in court. We knew this to be true because three other business (Fonterra Te Rapa, Brian Perries Quarries – Horotiu, and Riverlea Sands quarry Horotiu) had experienced the same problem. Further, the problem neighbour, wanted to be paid. When I refused they belligerently organized a local Maori to claim there were bones under one of my trees. This made the whole RMA process a ridiculous farce. We simply did not have the funds to fight these cowboys. How many private citizens could fight Tainui and Transit NZ in court and there was no guaranteed outcome? Well we struggled into 2004 trying to cope. I was unable to get the broken tendons (broken shoulder – June 2002) in my shoulder fixed. With enormous pain I and my wife struggled to survive, we did not want any more pressure. But that was not to be. This time Waikato District Council and Hamilton City Council wanted to move the city boundary to our property. The new boundary line puzzled us. It passed diagonally

across our land. Normally city boundaries follow property lines or roads. The reason became obvious when a neighbour phoned me up asking “what did we think about the road through your place?” Road we asked? The notification made no mention of a roadway. He told me about a Council map showing a new motorway. When I approached the Council Planners they denied its existence. This made no sense. Why would a neighbour make up the story, so I asked him to show me the map. Sure enough the map was issued by the Waikato District Planning department. I went back to the planners. I asked “when were they going to inform us about the road?” I told the planners off, and no sooner had I arrived home their planning Manager phoned me to tell me off for upsetting his staff. When I explained what had happened and about my wife health, he backed off very quickly. So we found out by accident we were going to get a roadway through our house and no one had even had the decency to inform us. It had appeared extensive discussions had taken place. Transit had never said a word to us. I phoned Transit for an explanation. Terrified about my wife’s health (she had only two weeks to live prior to her operation) I asked the mayors of Hamilton and Waikato and Transit to be very careful and leave us alone (I have their letters to Transit NZ –Hamilton). As the boundary change hearing approached, I became concerned about the effects on our rates demand. I did not want my rates to go from $2500 to tens of thousands per year. So I phoned the Council staff again, only to find out one day from the hearing we were no longer going to be zoned Industrial. The very staff member who advised me to suspend my RMA application had shafted us. Transit had interfered with the proposed District Plan changes, changing it outside the normal legal process. They wanted our land to be kept rural to keep

the price down. Once again no one consulted with us. It seems these people have more rights over our land than we do. Once again we found out by accident. Great consultation. At the hearing I asked all the Councilors why was I being asked to make an informed decision on the bases of some hypothetical roadway. The roadway had no substance. It did not exist in fact or in law. Further, why was Transit interfering with the zoning? Was it to keep the land prices down? Interestingly most of them did not know what was happening. They had not been informed as to what was happening. When they found out what the effect on the price was, even they were gob-smacked (a loss to us of between $6 to $10 million). The original consultant told us it the new industrial zone would make our land worth $120 per square metre (8.59 Ha). I did not believe him so I asked two independent real estate salesmen for their thoughts. Both confirmed the price was at least $120/m². Transit wants to buy the land for $50/m². They propose to take aver 50 acres on this side of the Railway line, use about 8 acres, then sell the balance off for $200/m² (the current value of industrial land just down the road), making a cool $20 million profit after deducting the cost of the 400 metres of road through our property. Nice little earner? This is illegal. This is a tax.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 45

Boy did the councilors get a surprise. I was meant to be a straw-sucking farmer not wise to slick city-boy tricks. Now the Council is trying to distance itself from the staff members concerned. One works in Dunedin and the other has been made redundant. However, since I found out about their nasty little tricks I have been a thorn in Transit’s side. The cost of the motorway has increased from $40 million to $120 million in one year. It has now cost me my marriage (she could not cope with the pressure). My wife lives by herself in town. She was screaming in the middle of the night, dreaming about being run over by Transit NZ’s bulldozers. It all became too much for her. Transit is still organizing things for the designation hearing. Now, I have to face their legal machinery by myself. A senior partner in Minter Ellison Rudd Watts has told us that “Transit Hamilton is continually breaking the Law (27/4/05)…. take what you can and get out”. She said the “Hamilton Office is out of control and even Wellington cannot control them”. So who else has been screwed and what laws are being broken? Only I do not want to pay for their damn motorway. If it is for the good of New Zealand then let New Zealand pay for it. I am 61 years old and this is my only chance to get my superannuation out. Now I can only sell my land to Transit.

nce again the council staff are being lead by their noses. To counter Transit’s crap I wrote an article for the Waikato Times (Not published and copies given to Waikato District Council, Environment Waikato, Hamilton City Council and Transit NZ Head Office). This has caused Transit to put back their designation almost two years. They are now organising the two Councils to set aside their structural plans to counter my article. They know my article has real substance and places their scheme in jeopardy. I wanted to delay the project to get time and space for my wife. They have organised the dropping of the structural plans to deliberately defuse my article and confuse the situation. The article proves their roadway has a serious breach of public Health and Safety. It flies in the face of sound Resource Planning principles. The road is, in short, in the wrong place. Only, setting aside the structural plans does not make the problem go away. They are relying on others not to understand what is going on. This includes the courts. I have been researching back ground material for this subject, and found zoning should not have a bearing on land prices. Under the old Town Planning Act zones were important. But this Act has been repealed. It has been replaced by the RMA and zones mean very little. Zones in the District Plan are simply a ruler. It prescribes what the level of effect on the environment you have to adequately avoided, mitigated or remedied. (Dr Bryan Bang – University of Waikato) For a kilometre radius around us, there is industrial activity. We are, in a sense, in the middle of an industrial area right now. To illustrate my point: Fonterra, a neighbour, is allowed to generate up to 45bd noise at their boundary. However, under my current zoning (Rural) I am only allowed to create 15db of sound. No RMA Court would accept this value when my neighbour is allowed 45db (They have never achieved this value – ever – the lowest being about 53db). So zoning is just a ruler. But the Property Valuers are still living in the past. They are very frightened of Chapman 46, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

“So we found out by accident we were going to get a roadway through our house and no one had even had the decency to inform us. It had appeared extensive discussions had taken place. Transit had never said a word to us. I phoned Transit for an explanation” & Tripp (Transit’s lawyers) making them look-foolish in court so they will not value our land. It’s too confused and too subjective. Another valuer declined to value our land because it would get him offside with the council, and he wasn’t prepared to put his business at risk just to earn $1,000 from me. Duress? Bully-boy tactics? Call it what you will. Only it’s not fair. This is a conspiracy to defraud us of our true property value. Remember the Councils have signed a contract (2005) to change the city boundary after the road is formed… after the road is formed. Funny that. Funny how everything is “after the road is formed”. Remember the Councils have been telling everyone for over five years we are going to be industrial. So, the situation is very confused. Even today they are still telling us it will be made industrial but only after the road is formed (the road that goes right through our house). Hence the problem – what is its true market value (Section 62(1) Public Works Act 1981)? Are we city, in the country, rural or even industrial? Who knows? My suggestion is you obtain a copy of the High Court RMA decision c42/2006 Transit NZ verse Southland District Council & Foveaux Estate Ltd. Transit is breaking the law by manipulating our land price down. This is simply a tax. They are breaking the law by interfering with the zoning outside the legal process. Strangely enough, likewise, they not entitled to tell people how to use their land or say who has or has not access to the byways, but they continually do it. Read the judgment. This is an appeal case so it is strong case law. Even the Commerce Act section 27 or 29, which may not apply to them, states they cannot use their monopoly to influence prices in the market place. If they are not legally bound by this act, they are morally obliged to comply with it like everyone else. And on and on it goes. There is even more. I am tired. I really miss my wife. Her life has been destroyed by their silly games. Now I have to go on without her. It makes me very angry. I cannot fight these people by myself. Can you help me? Brian Pryor, RD 8 Hamilton

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Was climate change to blame?

Tasmania and parts of Australia’s east coast are beginning to pick up the pieces after last month’s bushfires, but MELODY TOWNS, who was on the ground in Tassie, discovers it’s really making locals think about global warming

isaster of the natural kind seems to be giving crime of the human kind a race for the news headlines. From the devastation of the 2004 Tsunami to the near abolition of New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, disaster is no longer just a word but a way of life for people across the globe. With climate change becoming less of a distant phrase and more of a way to describe the havoc-causing drought, floods and fire throughout our own backyards, people are realizing that the ‘crazy weather’, we seem to be experiencing

48, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

may just be related to the issue we have heard so much about but seemed so far, far away, that which is defined as ‘Global Warming’. While the jury is out on the exact cause of global warming – whether, as some scientists believe, it is caused by the creation of too much carbon dioxide, which in turn warms the earth and causes temperatures to rise; or whether as others suspect it is the result of a rise in the sun’s temperature and solar cycle activity – either way it is the effects of these rising temperatures that are making us worry and causing devastation and havoc throughout the globe. The increase of cyclones, hurricanes and floods is just part of the problem,

with cities and nations submerging under rising sea levels, and drought and fire ripping through cultivated land leaving more than just a barren landscape. In a state known for its luscious wilderness, abounding wildlife, and breathtaking greenery, Australiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Tasmania is a tourist haven for those wanting to experience nature. The north east coast is exceptionally beautiful as a turquoise coastline crashes against the finest sand; its whiteness contrasting starkly against the backdrop of dense Australian bush that it recedes into. Yet, the picture painted in so many brochures looks surprisingly different this year, as we drive through what is left of the town of Scamander after bushfires ravaged homes and country side only stopping at the beaches where residents huddled together for safety. It is a bleak picture that rings true the distant phrase of global warming, the rising temperatures no longer an answer

to prayer for sun baking Tasmanianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s longing for a little more heat for their tans, but a menacing force that causes concern every time the sun gets warmer and the winds get stronger. Racing home through thick black smoke and past police barricades, Linda Lacey feared the worst as reports of spot fires in the bushland she had fallen in love with now threatened all that she owned. After receiving a call from her husband and her son, Linda was frantic as she arrived to the blackened hillside she called home, where firefighters were now sprawled out exhausted under what was left of a tree in front of her house that they had worked so hard to save. Linda was one of the lucky ones. As the sleepy surf village of Scamander fought fires that did not discriminate between wildlife and property, up to 18 houses were left destroyed, the piles of rubble and tin the only remnants remaining of what were the beloved homes of people whose minds were on Christmas celebrations not the effects of climate change and the heartlessness of arsonists suspected as involved in adding to the already damaging effects of global warming. As the fires eased, Shane Garwood and partner Anne Jetson were two of the first residents allowed back in to a town that they were about to call their new home. Garwood had just

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 49

renovated the home and even put in a firebreak as he prepared to sell his bakery in Beaconsfield and make a sea change to the small village of 600 residents. As Christmas approached Garwood looked forward to showing his three sons his new home but, standing on the remains of the house that he thought he had fireproofed, now says that although they have insurance, all their plans have been put on hold. “You sort of hope for the best but there’s nothing to save here. You can see there’s nothing left”. Indeed, as you drive through Scamander the town does look like there is nothing left. One resident describes the fires on his Internet blog where he has posted personal photos of the devastation writing, “Trees were black and brown right up to the roadside. Piles of tin show us where people’s homes once stood. Their neighbours looked unaffected. Powerlines lay strewn across blackened paddocks. The fires destroyed parts of fences and left the others standing, melting steel posts a metre away. As far as you could see into the distance in the hills, brown trees stood stark. A family of wallabies searched for fresh food and water beside the highway. The whole thing was surreal. There were remains of wallabies everywhere, so much so that we had to be careful where we walked, which was so sad. If it

in a pile of rubble, it was the death of 62 people that shocked the nation. The once lush green slopes of the Tasmania landscape are now mountains of dirt, and fears that rains may never return to previous levels have started to make us all realise that in this part of the world at least our climate is changing. The report, Global Warming Contributes to Australia’s Worst Drought, warns that higher temperatures and drier conditions have created greater bushfire danger than previous droughts. Robert Neate is no stranger to drought. As a farmer for the last 30 years in northern NSW, Robert has seen his land dry up year after year, claiming that he has not seen any decent rainfall since October 2000. In fact, Robert has had to take a second job to support his family and sell off the majority of his livestock to keep what is left of the farm running. In an interview with Marie Claire magazine, Robert exclaims, “It was a sad day when I had to sell so many sheep at once, but I just couldn’t afford to keep them. The worst thing is that you start to wonder if it is ever going to rain again, and hearing constant reports about the effects of global warming is very hard”. With drought expected to expand from current levels of two percent of the land’s area to 10 percent by 2050, Robert has a

hadn’t felt so wrong I would have taken more photos, but it just felt a bit strange”. Australia is no stranger to natural disaster but there’s growing suspicion here as the continent bakes under a years-long drought that climate change is making things worse. From not being able to buy a banana for under $12 a kilo after Cyclone Larry struck Northern Queensland early last year, and that aforementioned drought that has been described as the worst type ever as a contributor to continental temperature rises and desertification, to fires ravishing throughout the nation and reflections of flames even reportedly seen from as far as New Zealand, global warming is no longer someone else’s problem it’s here in our own backyards. With fire bans and water restrictions throughout the state, Tasmania’s east coast fires are a grave reminder of the devastation of the 1967 fires that remains the single most devastating day of natural disaster in Tasmanian history. During a time of considerable drought, not so far from the big dry we are experiencing today, more than 264,000 hectares of land in southern Tasmania were ravaged by fire in as little as five hours. With 1400 dwellings and other buildings left burnt to the ground

reason to be worried. And so do the rest of us, according to climatologists, as carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere continues to increase while Australian individuals keep polluting the earth’s atmosphere daily, through the generation of cheap but highly toxic electricity. In fact, as one of the worst polluters in the world, some Green lobbyists argue it’s no wonder that Australians are starting to see the true effects of rising temperatures. But with a spirit renowned for its resilience, The Aussie Battler can make a difference. Aiming to be a world leader in green power instead of a world polluter, Climate Action Network Australia (CANA) has put out a campaign called, ‘The Big Ask’. From asking people to rely less on cars and placing more emphasis on the need for reliable and faster public transport, to making the switch to green energy and dumping the overuse of dirty fossil fuels, CANA claims that we can reduce carbon emissions and make a change in global warming before it is too late. Small changes to daily routines such as replacing ordinary light bulbs with more power efficient ones, and even planting a tree can make all the difference. Here in Tasmania, that’s something for locals to ponder as people gather together and pick up the pieces of what is left of their lives.

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RAGE, against

the DYING of the LIGHT

Rough translation: blame the French for the downfall of the West

It says something when an Australian academic and author has to come to picturesque Punga Cove at the top of New Zealand’s South Island to deliver a keynote address on what’s wrong with our universities and how that’s impacting on our civilisation. In this analysis, DAVID GREAGG attempts to answer those questions 52, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 53

ost, I think, would agree that the humanities have seen better days. If this is not their historical nadir, it is (for those who care for them) too close for comfort. What went wrong? How did we get into this mess anyway? Is there any hope whatever that academic jargon will ever be under-

stood by the layperson? What is wrong with humanities’ academics anyway? Why don’t students read books any more? And how, above all, did French theoreticians take over the humanities in a predominantly English-speaking world? The short answers to these questions are, reading from left to right: everything; inertia; no; academics don’t get out enough; students are too busy reading theory; and the Francophones’ revenge for Waterloo. Exactly what is wrong with the humanities as a whole is too big a topic, even for Punga Cove on a Friday night; so I will content myself with a few generalizations before tackling tonight’s big topic, which is the French takeover in general, and the late Michel Foucault in particular. Once upon a time, science was science, art was art and humanities were humanities, and everyone seemed fairly happy with this. The invention, after World War II, of the so-called social sciences, however, changed everything. The debate about whether the social sciences (psychology, sociology, economics and so forth) possess the same scientific respectability as physics, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics is a long-standing one, and there is something to be said on both sides. On the one hand, social sciences aren’t real science at all, because the same standards of proof as would be required in so-called hard sciences are not achievable. On the other hand, is the record of hard science as pristine and bullet-proof as its staunchest defenders would like it to be?1 Many would also answer: No. However, it seems clear enough that the new disciplines suffered from acute science-envy. And now the humanities have got into the act, and are suffering from social-science envy. Even in the formerly-hallowed fields of English, computer programs are now used to “prove” that some turgid drivel was actually written by Shakespeare – presumably with his big toe while he was doing his tax return. And it is no longer enough to study texts in isolation. Texts must not only be related to other texts2, but also to society, history, philosophy, cosmology, psychoanalysis and every other discipline under the sun. And it all sounds well enough in theory. Until you actually try to do it. I would further suggest that the humanities share what is a far more general question: what really is the ultimate question of university life, the universe and everything. And that is: what do we study, and why? The humanities, so-called, are a comparatively recent phenomenon in university life. It is not so long ago that the agreed curriculum featured theology, history, philosophy, natural philosophy (as science was then called) and of course Latin and Greek, though it was assumed that all students would be fluent in both languages. The idea that, for example, people went to university to study Shakespeare in the mythical good old days is quite simply a myth. A pity, really. But Shakespeare has come and gone, to be replaced by marketing, commerce, business management and information

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technology. From being havens of philosophy, universities are now devoted largely to vocational training, which is fairly ironic really, because it’s the one thing for which universities are almost entirely useless. So, in the modern university, humanities are under a fairly concerted attack from administrators who feel that if everyone isn’t studying IT or commerce than they’re being a fool to themselves and a burden to their friends. Modern-style humanities have few friends outside their cosy little world. This is so most of all in the world of business, where the captains of industry are apt to ask why they should fork out their hardearned taxes to support well-heeled academics who spend their lives devising critiques of capitalism and society. This is usually called biting the hand that feeds you, and it’s little wonder that men and women in business suits aren’t very happy about this. And university administrators tend to agree because humanities courses generally aren’t very lucrative and don’t impress their Asian clientele. So courses are cut. The first to go is usually Classics, on the nonsensical grounds that these studies are somehow less utilitarian. Modern languages belonging to people who are not current trading partners are next. History is only just hanging on, provoking some people to suggest that the commissars of our knowledge conglomerates don’t want us to learn history, for fear we might not only learn from it, but learn how to defeat them. Like most conspiracy theories, it falls to the ground because it assumes that these commissars actually have some idea what they are doing. And yet English flourishes, which on the face of it is a bit bewildering, until one grasps the essential fact that most ViceChancellors are so naive that they imagine English students are taught to communicate well in English. In the Benthamite nightmare world of the modern campus, would that it were so. Are the humanities worth saving? In their current form, probably not. But it didn’t have to be like this. And I intend now to outline a short history of English (or English and cultural studies, as my old University now calls it), to give some idea of how it happened that this field of study (or discourse, as it is for some reason now known) can only now be navigated using what appears to the layman to be turgid and incomprehensible gibberish.

Germanic Philology Meets The Scrutineers

The study of English literature is a 20th Century invention. Prior to this, English was studied in exactly the same way that Classics was studied. It was generally called Germanic philology, and the pinup working-class hero of Germanic philology was Joe White, who went to work in a factory at the age of eight, and taught himself to read and write at night. Then he taught himself Latin and Greek, followed by Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, Old Norse and various other tongues. He set himself to learn Gothic, and on discovering that there were no Gothic textbooks in English he promptly wrote one. He became Professor of English Language at Leeds University, and taught Tolkien everything he knew about English Language. Together with Walter Skeat and James Murray he supervised the construction of the first Oxford English Dictionary. In their photos the three of them look as if they’ve escaped from the set of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, but when people

French intellectuals not only inspired Cambodia's murderous Pol Pot regime, they also taught French university students. This past year, France has enjoyed the benefits of that education. PHOTO: THIBAULT CAMUS/WOSTOK PRESS

opened the dictionary to look something up they could feel perfectly confident that these three blokes were real scholars. What they didn’t know about the development of English you could stick in your eye. However, between the wars, Frank Leavis and his wife Queenie set up a new magazine called Scrutiny. They wanted to improve the profile of English proper, as distinct from philology, Germanic or otherwise; and in particular the study of novels. Their ideas were pretty weird: for example they got the notion into their heads that the novel was invented in the 18th Century by Englishmen. Cervantes, Lady Murasaki, and even the 17th Century English women novelists thus abolished at the stroke of a pen. They constructed a canon of great writers, who were worthy of endless study, as distinct from lesser writers who weren’t. These great writers were Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad and (of all people) D.H. Lawrence; and, as Frank Leavis triumphantly announced, their works were distinguished chiefly by their greatness.3 Frank was a bit of a dill (his wife had most of the brains in that household) but the whole idea of a canon of agreed texts which would be studied right across the English-speaking world was a good one, in principle. It’s certainly better than the Tower of Postmodern Babel which exists in English departments now.4 But the actual canon they chose is pretty problematic, as anyone will know who has ever slogged his/her way

through Middlemarch or The Rainbow. Why these more than any other? And, as Terry Eagleton points out5, the whole affair was basically a lower-middle-class revolt against encroaching 20th Century philistinism, as if the decline and fall of Western civilization was to be averted by close reading of texts.6 At least when it came to poetry and drama there was less argument. And while the Leavisite star shone brightly, Shakespeare was studied as never before. Most would agree that this is pretty much of a sine qua non. If you’re going to study English at all, it makes no sense to ignore the premier poet and playwright, though I might get a lot of argument from some academics on that score.7

A Spectre is Haunting Cambridge

Leavis’ arrogant and doctrinaire prescriptions, and his famously circular arguments, could not last for ever. It is an enduring miracle that they lasted so long, even into the late seventies in some far-flung universities. Long before this, Marxist ideas began to infiltrate into English departments. Unlike the mendacious tropes later emanating from France, however, it can be confidently stated of the earlier Marxists that at least they were intellectually honest. The godfather of this Social realist school was the Hungarian Lukacs Gyšrgy, and for those expecting Stalinist dogma his works and theories come as an agreeable surprise. Great works of art, in Lukacs’ view, are those which reflect social forces acting upon strategically chosen individuals.8 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 55

In the social-realist canon Balzac and Tolstoy tend to rank highest (which is at least defensible), while the impostures of pseudo-realists like Zola are clinically exposed.9 The reaction of English empiricism to this school was in the main tolerant acceptance.10 England is, whatever critics may say, an easy-going and open-minded society, and the suspicion must be that after Leavis, the contributions of Soviet-style thinkers must have come as something of a relief. Such guardians of national culture as England possessed must have been reassured by the entire absence in their writings (and those of Raymond Williams and his followers) of imprecations to the proletariat to rise up and slay their masters. In any case England has never really taken art as seriously as its continental neighbours. The threat that cultural studies posed to Western civilization had yet to manifest itself, and if there had been a perceived threat, it clearly made more sense to English Tories to give the new Marxism a place in its corridors of power, and thereby neutralize whatever danger there might have been. It is difficult to advocate bloody revolution against the status quo if you are yourself a stakeholder in it. This line of reasoning is quite ancient in England (it goes back, at the very least, to Wordsworth, Southey and Coleridge) and can generally be relied upon to ensure that public figures do not get too publicly ungrateful. But England reckoned without the greed and hypocrisy of the French thinkers who were still to appear.

Deconstruction’s Hall Of Mirrors

Deconstruction first reared its head in the English-speaking world through the works of the Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida, although Husserl, Althusser and others also played their part. It might be best summarized by the proposition that, since everyone reads a text differently, then each text is recreated by each new reader, and all Leavisite attempts to recreate the author’s intentions are doomed to failure. This led Roland Barthes11 famously to proclaim the “Death of the Author”, though this didn’t appear to stop him and his colleagues from writing more books12 and putting their names on the covers. Deconstruction has many implications and uses: its sharp instruments of decoding, the redrawing of metaphysical maps (which should be and occasionally is a healthy intellectual pastime) and some intriguing ideas about representation. Intellectual thought certainly owes Derrida and his fellow-travellers some debt for re-examining hidden cultural assumptions.13 In particular, deconstruction does provide us with techniques for turning their own weapons back onto themselves. Scepticism is rarely a bad thing in the history of thought, and to an extent deconstruction has been a beneficial addition. However, it was and is far too easy to get carried away with this. When I was studying medieval languages I was told that this was a vain and sterile pastime, inferior in every way to the exciting new world of postmodernity and deconstruction, since it was impossible to reconstruct the Middle Ages in any meaningful way.14 Are there, however, degrees of inaccuracy in reconstruction? I would argue that there are. In the garden of weeds which has sprung up in Foucault’s wake, we can read books about Abelard and Heloïse15 reflected through no less than four dis56, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

torting mirrors: what contemporary chroniclers thought about 12th Century happenings, what their translators made of the Latin originals, what Foucault made of the translators and what the authors made of Foucault’s deliberations. Is there anything left of the hypothetically “real” 12th Century after the hall of mirrors has finished with it? And is it any wonder that deconstruction flourishes in an era when students are no longer encouraged to learn ancient languages? It has long been an axiom of Classics (and Germanic philology) that students should refrain from theorizing about text and society until they have learned the languages in which the events and texts are written. Deconstruction is correct, up to a point. We really cannot place ourselves entirely in the mind of a bygone age, any more than we can make ourselves Javanese or Uzbek. But if we learn the language we can at least read text and society for ourselves, unhindered by intrusive and possibly fraudulent middlemen.

Left Bank Summer Of Love: The Politics of Collaboration

The so-called summer of love in 1968 was, indeed, something of a watershed in cultural studies. It was later said that if you can remember the Summer Of Love you weren’t really there - but this year really only brought peace and love to a few suburbs of San Francisco and adjoining metaphysical areas. Prague Spring (needless to say) brought a summer of Soviet retribution. And the student riots in France were no picnic, either. It was the French Marxists’ one real chance at grabbing power and they took it. And while governments trembled, France hovered on the brink of a bloody revolution, enthusiastically advocated by the French intellectuals of the day. The suddenness with which cultural studies and philosophy turned into a deadly weapon took the Western world completely by surprise. Who were these intellectuals? They included André Malraux, who is best remembered for one or two pithy quotes, and the presence in his lectures of a small group of Cambodians including Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, later famous as leaders of the Khmer Rouge. We don’t really know how seriously Malraux and his confreres took the doctrine of necessary violence: we may suspect that for them Marxism was really all about smoking Gauloises and drinking coffee in fashionable Left Bank cafes16. But being logical Orientals, their Khmer Rouge students seem to have taken them pretty much at their word. And how their fellow Khmers wished they hadn’t. Among others on the charge sheet was Michel Foucault, the principal subject of this essay17. The attempted revolution failed, (probably killed off by Russian tanks in Czech streets) and French intellectuals put away their dreams of direct world domination in favour of infiltration of the world’s universities via their humanities departments - English in particular. How on earth did they manage it? As I have attempted to show, they simply took advantage of the vacuum created for them by their less superficially impressive predecessors. Their abstruse philosophy was certainly impressive-sounding, in its English translations, and it filled a deep inner need on the part of English academics to sound like social scientists. English empiricism was on the wane, and things English in general began to be despised instead of worshipped, as the UK’s imperial power declined. During the rise of post-colonial stud-

CORENTIN FOHLEN/WOSTOK PRESS

ies, it was possible to blame the legacy of the British Empire for almost everything which had gone wrong in the world. Since this made a welcome change from blaming US imperialism (whatever that is) there was no shortage of academics and students prepared at least to entertain such ideas. This was especially so in the UK itself, for reasons which tell us quite a lot about the UK’s sudden crisis of national self-confidence. So long as M. Foucault continually trumpeted the need to oppose fascism in all its forms (and similar motherhood utterances) then we could take it for granted that he and his worshippers were on the right side of the PC fence. Can we? When we look at Foucault’s spiritual antecedents, they are a pretty mixed lot. Unlike his brilliant contemporary, Jean Baudrillard, Foucault has largely managed to escape identification with Friedrich Nietzsche (he of the supposedly Nazi sympathies), even though Nietzsche has clearly been a great influence. His debt, however, to Heidegger, is admitted by most critics. So who was Martin Heidegger? The short answer is that he was a reactionary, and all-but-impenetrable philosopher, who gave lectures in his Nazi uniform. Pro-French critics are a little coy about Heidegger’s openlyprofessed Nazism, and claim, with some truth, that the philosopher and the man are separable. So they are, but the stain of collaboration is not washed out so easily. Many of these modernist, postmodern (or antimodernist, or whatever) philosophers were collaborators of one sort or

another. De Man openly collaborated with the Nazis in France. Lacan, the fraudulent pop-psychoanalyst, passively collaborated and got very rich doing so. And Malraux, Foucault and company were only too happy to collaborate with the Soviet bloc in one way or another. At least Derrida visited the Iron Curtain when it was neither profitable nor popular; but the impression of postmodernists as collaborators with tyranny is not easy to combat. This being the case, is it any wonder that the followers of this French school are only too happy to collaborate with the present-day commissars of learning in our education factories? When morality, convention and common-sense are washed away in a postmodern whirl, what could be easier than simply to relax and collaborate with whomsoever holds the pursestrings? And this, I think, disposes once and for all of the question which has bedevilled many exasperated outsiders who ask the obvious question of why is it, as the humanities are destroyed, marginalized or reduced to gibberish, that nobody in our universities speaks out? Obviously those who do are dismissed, punished or marginalized themselves. But there are no gulags in Western democracies. Academics of the world, rise up: for you have nothing to lose but your superannuation? As a rallying-cry, it lacks something. Humankind enjoys a good martyrdom, but the warlords of our universities are usually astute enough not to indulge in heavy-handed persecution of dissidents. Our humanities academics potter on, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 57

vaguely unhappy about their lot, but comfortable enough to tolerate it without much more than token protest.

I, Pierre Riviere, Having Murdered my Mother, My Brother & My Sister.....

This is the name of a singularly repellent book18 edited by M. Foucault with contributions by the great man himself and a number of his disciples. Why they should have devoted a volume to a common murderer is intriguing. Certainly, Foucault’s long standing interest in criminology and psychology make it unsurprising, as does his continuing obsession with power. What is really interesting, and revealing, is what they make of the late M. Rivière. It is fortunate for us that a Canadian criminologist called Elliott Leyton19 has also written extensively on the same case.20 Foucault’s book contains a complete text of the accused’s confession, cobbled together in prison, as to his motives for familicide. Foucault refers to this text’s “beauty”21 and compares it with broadsheet ballads. Apparently Rivière was a peasant hero because he could write 40 pages of turgid drivel about his motives. There is more nonsense about weapon-discourse, and the crowning imbecility is the remarkable statement: “The point at issue, therefore, is whether he really was the author of the crime.”22 Really? His victims, whom he bludgeoned to death with a number of gardening implements, would say that he probably was. His rambling confession adds nothing except degrading prose to an already degrading series of actions. Foucault’s disciples go further. “If the peasants had had a Plutarch, Pierre Rivière would have his chapter in the Illustrious Lives.”23 An excellent example, if one were needed, as to why a classical education should be a prerequisite for academics. After all this nauseating flattery it is something of a relief to turn to Leyton’s Canadian common-sense. Leyton makes the obvious point that, far from being the ur-Marxist hero of the people Foucault and friends wish to make him, Rivière and his father were bourgeois to the brain-stem. Rivière senior was a petit-bourgeois land grabber who got into debt, causing Mme Rivière to nag her husband. Mme Rivière does not appear to have been a pleasant person, but did she really deserve to be murdered for being a manipulative shrew? A survey of all materials we have seems to indicate that King Louis-Phillippe and his advisors probably got it right, in commuting Rivière’s death-sentence to life imprisonment on the reasonable grounds that he was as mad as a hatter. And probably only a French academic with a pathological interest in power and violence would think otherwise. It is a singular fact, however, that the same class of academics who accuse Baudrillard of being racist, sexist and so forth24 seem quite happy to praise a young man who wiped out his family, including a brother and sister who did nothing whatever to deserve it. If Rivière’s victims had written books of their own, presumably matters would have been different.

The Debate That Never Was

There is a whole volume25 devoted to a disagreement between Jurgen Habermas and Michel Foucault. The debate about the debate goes to and fro with a number of interesting diversions, although the suspicion remains that Habermas had his 58, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007

adversary’s measure. Since Foucault’s critical structures are ultimately about power, Habermas claims that Foucault’s paradigm of critique is self-refuting. If critique itself is a form of power, then either it cannot be used to criticize power, or if it is used, it undermines itself.26 We will never know how Foucault would have got out of that one. However, the really interesting thing about this debate is that it never took place in person. Habermas appears to have offered to meet on any terms, but Foucault claimed afterwards that he himself had offered to debate Habermas on, of all things, Immanuel Kant. Kant seems to have exerted a strange fascination for Foucault, because one of his lectures is entitled “The Art of Telling the Truth.”27 As we would (after a while) come to expect from Foucault, the expectation of honesty is brutally denied. What we get is nothing but more Kant and a few waffling generalizations about signs. Very postmodern, doubtless, but not what we would expect of public intellectuals. Which leads inevitably to the question of what we DO expect from public intellectuals? Do we have the right to expect anything at all from them? They are on the public payroll in their country of origin, mostly; and even if they are not, publiclyfunded students are apparently expected to study their works and speeches, and include them in essays. Despite Barthes’ much-publicized “Death of the Author”, the books continue to come out, and publicly funded libraries are expected to buy them. What do we expect in return? Not a muzzling of free speech, certainly. But we do, I contend, have a right to expect that they should face their critics in the flesh, and be held publicly answerable for their theories in the intellectual domain. And it didn’t happen.28 An old Border saying29 runs: “Old words for speakin’ and new anes for readin’ Aye, that’s the chink, between thinkin’ and daein.” In other words, in times gone by it was expected that words are to be spoken, rather than simply read. Is the postmodern version an improvement? I doubt it.

Dreaming of Flaubert

It is not possible to summarize postmodernism in one paper, or a dozen, or a hundred. Briefly, we are taught that culture passes through three stages: realism, where art reflects reality; modernism, where art subverts reality; and postmodernism, where art reflects nothing at all but a passing parade of signifiers. So whither then? Jean-François Lyotard30 writes of a so-called “purgative” phase of postmodernism, where having drunk deep of the springs of scepticism, the academic mind may revive itself and return to .... precisely what? What exactly is the default position of French-inspired academics now? Sartrean engagement? Milk-and-water Marxism? Or just a diurnal round of comfortable critiquing of society and capitalism, followed by drinks in the staffroom? Clearly a mixture of all three, recombined to individual taste. Play the game, and you get the rewards. Which leads us to Jean Baudrillard, who has been such a disappointment to the cultural studies brigade. Many criticisms of Baudrillard are justified, at least in part31. Much of his work is chatty and anecdotal, and those who find it lacking in substance do so with jus-

tification. But it can at least be said that he is always arresting and thought-provoking. An example from his much criticized volume in praise of America32: “History and Marxism are like fine wines and haute cuisine: they do not really cross the ocean, in spite of the many impressive attempts that have been made to adapt them to their new surroundings.” Yes, very deep: one can hear the critics sneer. Just the thing for Book Club Of The Month. Very well. A little further on, he writes: “We criticize Americans for not being able to analyse or conceptualise. But this is a wrong-headed critique. It is we who imagine that everything culminates in transcendence, that nothing exists which has not been conceptualised. Not only do they care very little for such a view, but their perspective is the very opposite: it is not conceptualising reality, but realizing concepts and materializing ideas that interests them.”33 Baudrillard has begun to see deeply into a predicament which has haunted 20th century academia. The illegitimate godfather of postmodernism, and cultural studies itself, is none other than our old friend Plato, as some others have noted. The transcendant reality is the only real. But what happens to Plato’s shadows on the wall if the heavenly camp-fire is abolished along with all other certainties? Reality collapses, and nothing much is left. Elsewhere Baudrillard says: “I note, I accept, I assume, I analyze the second revolution, that of the 20th Century, of postmodernity, which is the immense process of the destruction of meaning.”34 He refuses to accept the dishonest purgatives of Lyotard.35 Why should he? And why should we? If the process of postmodernity must result in some regeneration (which for most of us it must, since otherwise there is arguably no reason to go on living) then there is no reason on earth why the default regeneration should be the cosy proto-communism of French and Francophile thinkers. On the contrary, having abandoned Marxism himself, Baudrillard savaged it. He has not been forgiven for the following: “A spectre is haunting the spheres of power: communism. But a spectre haunts the communists themselves: power.”36 It is symbolic of Baudrillard’s former status that his reputation survived at all. Anyone who lambasts communism so openly (not to mention praising America!) usually does not leave the lecture theatre unscathed. Possibly Baudrillard’s peasant credentials have saved him from further damage. But he has not and will not be forgiven for refusing the easy comforts of Lyotard, and deserves the thanks of posterity for that at least, if nothing else. Perhaps his truest antecedent is the melancholic novelist Gustave Flaubert, who hated the bourgeois 19th Century so much that he also refused the easy comforts of Romanticism.37 We cannot and probably should not attempt to be Baudrillardists. But we owe him something for pointing out the slippery chink in the postmodern armour. We do live in a postmodern world. Children grow up knowing that adults can be made to tell lies for money. The nexus between wealth and achievement appears to have broken down, perhaps irrevocably. Reality appears to be shattered into a million sparkling fragments. But if this is indeed the case, it needs more than the

cosy prescriptions of Lyotard to mount a rescue expedition into the abyss of nonsense.

Bring Back Latin!

If Gallic logic and theory has led us down a blind alley, then whither shall we look for a path back to sanity? Not, I would suggest, to the American Right.38 We are indebted to them for the exposure of many impostures (notably that of Lacan), but the default-position argument applies equally to most US Francophobes. For what is their default position but a continuation of the comfortable middle-class America which supports them? At least this passes the gratitude test (for these people are too polite to bite the hand that feeds them), but too seldom are their defaults aired in public. Let us take Foucault’s famous dictum of “the insurgency of suppressed knowledges”39 in an unexpected direction. I suggest therefore in conclusion that the reactionary rallying-cry of Bring Back Latin! would be a useful starting-point. Why Latin? Why not? At least we will get students who are capable of some elementary academic rigour. We will have an agreed canon, less problematic and impossibly Anglocentric than the prescriptions of Leavis. And we have above all a window into the past, without which we cannot hope to understand the present. The disappearance of history from student curricula has been, in many respects, a bigger disaster in education than anything which has happened to English. I have chosen to concentrate on English in this essay because this is where the mischief began. English academics sometimes claim that there is no need to study history because English already contains it. (Foucault himself is often cited as an historian as well as a philosopher.) But the history learned in modern English courses is impossibly flawed by so many cultural and Gallocentric assumptions that it has become unrecognizable as anything resembling history. We need not go back to imposing lists of Kings and Queens of England40. But we do need to study something, and if we learn Latin we have access to the Classical Age, not to mention much of the Dark and Middle Ages, almost unencumbered by intrusive cultural commissars. What will we learn, if we embrace Latin and go on to study other ancient languages? We will learn all about tyranny and conformity from Rome. We can learn about rewriting history from Livy, Sallust and Cicero. If we go back further and deeper, we will learn that the oldest and longest stories are usually about two villages, one called Us and the other called Them (whether Mahabharata, Kalevala, Pohjola or whatever). And we will not have to endure the hectoring of academics to learn about difference theory. Let us try it. It could hardly be worse than what we have already. The students might even enjoy it. And the taxpayers may well feel that they are getting value for money with their vast investment in the education of tomorrow’s citizens. And given that the whole basis of public education is under threat from the forces of economic rationalism (whatever that is), this may be a timely counter-measure in the propaganda war which has already begun. *David Greagg, B.Sc., B.A.(Hons),Grad. Dip Ed.(Melb) is a nom de plume for Wizard Dafydd of Footscray, in Melbourne. He is a refugee from the humanities, spending his time in mathematical speculation. His website is to be found at http://www.geocities. com/Athens/Olympus/5296

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REFERENCES 1 We need only recall the Dark Matter fiasco in astrophysics, where for years the existence of Dark Matter was postulated and assumed as a necessary balancing entry in the calculus of cosmology, until somebody belatedly wondered whether the axiomatic description of neutrinos as possessing zero mass was possibly an unwarranted assumption. The world of physics is still divided on this question. Would that Jonathan Swift were alive to dramatize the debate. 2 At least with Russian Formalism we knew approximately where we were. Texts only reflect other texts. 3 See the Introduction to The Great Tradition, Leavis, F.R, London 1960 (Chatto & Windus). 4 The idea that anything, even bus tickets, is a text which students can be read, is a necessary corollary of modern theory; but English students actually studying bus tickets is of course an urban myth. The proliferation of obscure texts and weirdly inappropriate study designs is however nearly as scary as this. 5 Literary Theory, Eagleton, T, Oxford 1983. The book is difficult, but nowhere near as difficult as, say, Foucault.

revolution; but since even his supporters appear to concede that he did, it is possible to accept this story, especially considering his views on M. Rivi re (qv). 18 The edition quoted from here is Random House, tr Jellinek, F, 1975 19 Leyton has also written provocatively (in Hunting Humans, Penguin 1986) on the differences in murder-rates between the US and the UK; his major thesis perhaps summarizable by the idea that in America a mass-murderer is a hero, while in Britain he (it generally is a he) is either a nutter, a loser, or both; and a subject of derision. 20 Sole Survivor, Leyton, E, Penguin, Harmondsworth Middx 1991 21 Pierre Rivière p.199 22 ibid. p.210 23 Peter and Favret, ibid. p.175 24 Occasionally Baudrillard has some mannerisms in thesedirections, it must be conceded. 25 Critique and Power (qv) 26 ibid. p.5 27 ibid. pp.139-148

Actually in real life Terry Eagleton is an erudite man capable of great lucidity of speech and explication. Regrettably, not even he can render modern theory digestible. 6 ibid. 7 Much more could be said about the quasi-Leavisite role of T.S.Eliot at this point in our cultural history, but in deference to my audience’s patience I will leave this appalling con artist to his own devices for now. We have enough trouble as it is with his modern French analogues without recalling Eliot’s inexplicable dominion over English departments over several decades. 8 It must be admitted freely that this is not all that far from the Leavisite view, but at least you get social-realist arguments without the Scrutineersâ constipated and doctrinaire prescriptions. 9 Unfortunately, this line of reasoning also works brilliantly for Sir Walter Scott, as Lukacs admitted in The Historical Novel, Lukacs, G, London 1962 (Burchall). A theory which puts Scott among the greats is, to put it mildly, problematic. 10 Anecdotal evidence has it that when Terry Eagleton applied for his fellowship at Wadham College, Oxford, his interview with the Warden went as follows: W: “Ah, Eagleton! You’re the chap that relates literature to society, eh what?! E: “Er, yes, Warden.” W: “Well, you have to relate it something I suppose. Jolly good! You’ll do!” 11 Barthes is now in eclipse, partly because his twin-left theory (anything leftist I like is called “Progressive”, and anything I don’t like goes into the box labelled” Stalinist”) was too transparent a fraud to survive, and also his ironic and untimely demise by laundry-van. “Death of the Author” indeed. 12 It has been suggested to me by a prolific novelist that Barthes’ statement was the end-product of years of frustration on the part of sterile critics themselves unable to create anything of value: truly the ultimate revenge of the proverbial “sneer on four square wheels”. 13 One of the saner summaries of Derrida’s influence may be found in Kevin Hart’s “Maps of Deconstruction”, Meanjin 45.1, Melbourne 1986 pp. 107-116 14 In Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate, ed. Kelly, M, MIT Press, Cambridge MA/London 1994, p.20 Foucault in one of his infuriatingly venomous moods talks of “The busy inertia of those who profess an idle knowledge ... those oddly indestructible societies unknown it would seem to Antiquity ... I mean to speak of the great warm and tender Freemasonry of useless erudition.” Indeed! Unlike, as it might be, those who praise common murderers and write impenetrable gibberish. 15 see for example Michel Foucault: Subversions of the Subject, Barker, P, New York 1993. 16 Another quote attributed to Malraux is that Marxism is not a doctrine, but an emotion: a will to think proletariat. Uncle Joe would have approved. 17 I have been unable to document when and where Foucault advocated this bloody

28 Some of Foucault’s disciples point to his untimely death as a reason. However, he certainly lived long enough to indulge in some impressive self-justification as to why the debate didn’t happen. 29 collected from the published oeuvre of the Lowland piper Hamish Moore. 30 Lyotard’s supporters sometimes claim he is actually an anti-theorist, as if theory is somehow his enemy. (See for instance Introducing Lyotard: Art & Politics, Readings, W. Routledge 1991) So? He writes theoretical books, and others write about his theories. Does this work? Only in cultural studies-World. 31 Especially astute is Seduced and Abandoned, ed Frankowits, P, Stonemoss, Glebe NSW 1984. In one article Foss writes:“With the recent Baudrillard, it is as though the critical distance has finally diminished to zero, so that neither the form nor the content being able to substantiate each other any more, the whole apparatus rises into the ether like one great transparent bubble of nothingness.” ibid. “Despero Ergo Sum”. Exactly! The same complaint is echoed and re-echoed in article after article, as if the writers, shaking their heads in sympathy and forbearance, cannot believe that their erring Master had really come to this, yet faithfully following the intellectual thread to its appointed conclusion. 32 America, Baudrillard, J tr Turner, C, Verso, London/New York 1988, p.79 33 ibid. p.84 34 Sur le nihilisme, Baudillard, J tr Foss, P, Editions Galileo, Paris 1981 p.231 35 In one article Lyotard himself plays high priest to the doubters: “Reply to the Question: What is the Postmodern?” ZX Sydney 1984 pp.1018 In a world afflicted with doubt, we are invited to soothe ourselves with his comfortable prescriptions. The paramedical imagery of so much cultural studies is possibly intentional, though whether the influence of Lacan is a cause or merely a symptom is an open question, and one beyond the scope of this essay. 36 “Le PC ou les paradis artificiels du politique”, La gauche divine, Baudrillard, J, Grasset, Paris 1985, p.13 37 McDonald and Delaruelle have also made this suggestion 38 Dinesh DâSouza, Camille Paglia, the Dartmouth Review and the Usual Suspects. 39 It is irony indeed that Gallic discourse has become so privileged that it has swamped all others in English and cultural studies. It was astute of the French to invent the theory of privilege and discourse on behalf of the voiceless, and even cleverer then to use it for their own ends. We owe them one back. 40 Although in this writer’s opinion we could do, and havedone, a lot worse.

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David Greagg delivered this keynote address at the third annual Summer Sounds Symposium, organised by Cognos Ltd at Punga Cove in the Marlborough Sounds.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 61

thinkLIFE money

Buckle your seatbelts

Peter Hensley’s outlook for 2007 is a bumpy one

he concept of a global credit expansion is a topic that most economic reporters are now highlighting. Markets are awash with money and asset prices are drifting higher. Readers will recall that borrowers have reasonably open access to most forms of debt including mortgages. This credit expansion has lifted share markets and real estate prices to absurd levels. A report recently released suggests that the average price of a home (in New Zealand) has gone from a long term historical average of three times annual income to closer on eight. Commercial yield is the rental return the owner of a commercial building receives from the tenant. Historically, yields of around 10 – 11% were the norm, providing compensation for investors who were taking on concentrated investment risk (by having so much cash committed to one investment and often a single tenant). Yields have now dropped below 7% indicating that prices and values have risen to unusual levels. When yields fall below the cost of money (current floating mortgage rates are approximately 9.5%),

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the longer term profitability of the venture is questionable. Another offshoot of credit expansion is GDP growth and inflation. This happens automatically because there is more money available in the market place and a large portion of it is spent on consumable goods & services. Companies, entrepreneurs and many individuals prosper as the economy expands. This period has now been relabelled as the goldilocks economy – we are in it now. The problem is, growth based on credit expansion is unstainable over the longer term. Sooner or later the debt has to be repaid and the next part of the cycle commences. Prosperity slows, debt is repaid, people start to save and money is taken out of the system. Another factor of credit contraction means that debt is more difficult to source. The system slows down, asset prices level off (or in some cases drop) and the economy goes into hibernation until the excesses are worked out of the system. There are several complicating factors, two of which are inextricably connected. The ageing baby boom generation and

Australian compulsory superannuation. Australia has had compulsory superannuation for over a decade. Taxpayers are committed to 9% of their wages being put aside for their greatly extended twilight years. Ten years after the introduction of compulsory super, the custodians of these accumulated savings are faced with the problem of investing it for a return. They have run out of obvious places in Australia and have jumped the Tasman with large cheque books buying everything that even hints of providing a return greater than cash. Many of the funds have resorted to investing in Private Equity. This happens after they have pushed the prices of public companies (share market listed entities) to nose bleed levels. They then look to buy the share holding (equity) of private companies. Superannuation fund managers even pool their funds into larger funds so that they gain access to bigger deals. One obvious and topical example of such a deal is the take over of Qantas (Australia) by a private equity consortium led by Macquarie Bank. In order to make such purchases economically viable, they make extensive use of leverage (more debt) which has the potential longer term to muddy the numbers underlying the transaction. Experienced market observers and commentators are torn between reporting the news of the moment and predicting the potential future folly of huge market deals. An easy choice really, news of the day wins every time, the future news will be reported as and when it happens. We are only three short years away from the pending retirement of the first wave of baby boomers. Extensive research suggests that despite all the financial literacy programs, the investment reserve of the average boomer is approximately $40,000. Many still have mortgage and lifestyle debt. They will look to the Government of the day to cater for both their economic and health requirements. The boomer wave is expected to continue until 2050. It will be fuelled by extended life expectancy, improved technology, not to mention the financial anticipation of millions expecting a pension in return for all the tax they paid over their life time. KiwiSaver is expected to go someway to fill the gap. Whilst KiwiSaver is a huge step in the right direction, the wide consensus is that it won’t be enough on its own. The New Zealand share market will benefit. The river of money will start a trickle and

the locked in nature of the investment will see it build over time. Initially it will provide a support for the market as a whole, however the longer term prognosis could be that it is destined to suffer the same malaise as Australia. Because KiwiSaver is a series of managed funds, with the individual taxpayer electing both who manages their money and where their funds are invested. It could provide parents/grandparents an opportunity to salt some cash away for their offspring. Imagine placing a legacy into a fund in a child’s name at birth, knowing that they will collect it in six score and ten years time. Picture a person walking up a stair case playing with a yo-yo with the yo-yo representing value of the fund. Because the funds are locked in, they would be inaccessible until retirement. Now that is what they call, a long term investment. As highlighted in previous essays, the restructuring of the asset allocation process used by my company early in the new century was bold and unexpected. The past four years has allowed us to implement and provide a conservative alternative to main stream investment advice. Our portfolios are boring, producing reliable income that can either be consumed or compounded. They are not designed to produce double digit returns, but they do produce steady dependable performance. We also believe that we have built in adequate protection from the inevitable correction that investment markets will suffer. When that correction will occur and what form it might take is anyone’s guess. There is no doubt that the combined actions of Central Banks around the world have certainly delayed the expected correction. The increase in liquidity has lifted markets and asset prices. It has also provided the necessary foundation for the expansion of the derivative market. Derivatives come in many forms and they could best be described as an insurance protection for investment portfolios and debts. As outlined in previous essays, they are either exchange traded (ETD) or over the counter (OTC) derivatives. As a rule of thumb our portfolios are not exposed to any products that are based on OTC derivatives. They are certainly missing out on an exposure to a large market. Latest statistics suggest that the derivative market has reached a face value of $480 trillion, which is 30 times the size of the US economy and 12 times the size of the world economy. These are huge numbers by anyone’s standards. Warren Buffet (the second richest man in the USA) calls them financial weapons of mass destruction. Should something happen to trigger a meltdown in the derivative market place, one has to remember that the fallout would not be that bad, research suggests that because it is a zero sum game (ie for every winner, there is a corresponding loser) the market loss could be approximated to around 5% of the total. Come to think of it, 5% of $480 trillion is still a very large number. Market chatter in New Zealand suggests that 2007 will see some rationalisation of the finance company sector. It will also see the introduction of Standard & Poors credit ratings, along with Risk Analyst Ltd and Fitch ratings. While the ratings are not a guarantee, they should provide an element of comfort that funds should be reasonably secure should a market downturn eventuate.

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thinkLIFE education

What you put in is what you get back The knaves, the fools, or the simply deluded? Who’s been running the show? Amy Brooke explains

ne of today’s sound-good, but essentially unctuous clichés claims it takes a village to raise a child. It’s been a great excuse for the socialist Left to interfere in almost every aspect of child-raising – once inconceivable intrusions into the protective and private home relationships of parents and children. What we should also be focusing on, with urgency, is how an entrenched and effectively pernicious education bureaucracy has managed to virtually destroy our state education system. Our present education crisis is not a recent, but a long, on-going one. The results are there – not just in our rootless, empty-minded, binge-drinking, bored-witless, fast-driving, drug-reliant, pop-music-wedded, even suicidal young – but in their parents, too. Many of the latter, in their 50s and

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60s, are still pathetically asking our statefunded Radio New Zealand to play their favourite Rolling Stones,U2, Elton John, Madonna, the Finn brothers and other ageing left-overs from what should have been a long-farewelled adolescence. We might have assumed that the majority of those with the chance to be our top students wouldn’t show the same signs of having been excluded from any state education system worth the name. We’d assume wrongly. Judging by university halls of residence magazines, whereas once the fringe, fast-living students at varsity were regarded as having problems, now binge-drinking and a casual amorality in sexual relationships are apparently regarded as perfectly normal among our nice, attractive youngsters. And how many times do media reports tell us of

our young casually referring to being “smashed”, or rioting after parties in affluent, not deprived, neighbourhoods? These are extraordinarily sad revelations of young New Zealanders who’ve deserved much better, deprived of pride in – even knowledge of – a rich intellectual and spiritually grounding heritage that the best of Western civilisation, long deliberately demonised to them as “colonial”, has to offer them. Shouldn’t even our most myopic utopians be wondering about the truth of a far more valuable saying: What you put in is what you get back…? What in fact have our education gurus given our children of lasting value? Precious little, looking at so many bright, creative – but uncritical, indoctrinated, ignorant youngsters. Effortlessly capable in electronic communication and web

“

How many would think it appropriate that someone who did not apparently achieve anything approaching standards of excellence in her own schooling should now – “direct what is taught in schools, choosing the material she once struggled to make sense of as a student

”

travel, coached in self-esteem, and heavily dependent on their iPod/mobile phone lifestyle, they are unable even at university level to string sentences together, let alone marshal their thinking into coherent essay form. Even at university? How did they get so far and remain so ill-taught? And what thinking? It hasn’t been a question of teaching them how to think – but what to think. The State has been doing this for them right through their schooling. We can see only too well what we’ve got back. The signs are of a shallow, disintegrating, crime-ridden society. The big question has to be – is this what was wanted? Who’s been running the show? Did those who have so long monopolised the thinking behind what has been taught, and what has been withheld from our children of all ethnic backgrounds, actually appreciate that what you put in is what you get back? The answer lies in the agenda of those who achieved positions of power within the now entrenched establishment, and seized control these recent decades. After 50 years of down-grading what’s been offered to New Zealand children under the weasel claim of “education”, the damage this Wellington-based, highly politicised establishment has caused to the intellectual and social climate of this country is sobering. It is too important not to examine its implications at more length in future. But basically, the key factor has been the Italian communist Gramsci’s advice to the Marxist Left to gain control of society’s institutions, so that Lenin’s “useful fools” – ordinary, decent teachers with no real appreciation of the agenda at stake – could be used to unsuspectingly promote the philosophy of the Left. Because of the importance of the young

to the future of any country, the attack was first mounted on, and then widened to emerge from, our education institutions, indoctrinated with the Left’s clichés and its educationists’ jargon. Some of the latter, well-known names, have openly espoused the principles of neoMarxism, with the aim of removing any advantage that they saw the middle-class (their former hated bourgeoisie) as “capturing”. Children envisaged with books, supportive parents, and other perceived advantages were to have these lessened by a dumbing-down of the system, the removal of external examinations, and by disparaging the former emphasis on grammar and syntax, i.e. learning to use well the tools of language and thought. Equally disparaged was the importance of teaching clear speech with a standard, easily understood English pronunciation, available to all, to achieve clarity in communication and a good command of language. Social Studies, too, an activist’s dream subject, was seen as a particularly useful tool of indoctrination in the politicised agenda of the Left. “Equality of outcome” became the new catch-cry – an absurd, unachievable and damaging socialist aim – by no means the same thing as the admirable “equality of opportunity”. It meant that the emphasis on removing all distinctions, competitiveness, places in class and external examinations – even the grade of excellence as a criterion in the easily manipulated internal assessment schemes – was well under way. The results are all around us. Thousands of children undergo remedial reading classes. Many adults themselves are unable to read well, because of the junking of the teaching of a phonic reading system. A bureaucracy that boasts of

young New Zealanders’ understanding of advanced mathematical concepts has produced thousands of youngsters unable to add, subtract and divide without the help of calculators, with little ability to verbally master even mildly demanding sentence structures. Hence the now ubiquitous use of “…I was, like…he was, like… it was kind of…it was, like” – the new argot of a proletarianised youth culture. Needless to say, the shockingly under-taught products of so many of our state schools are ignorant of history and its important lessons. Many have apparently been told it’s not “relevant”. Mangling the language, extraordinarily ignorant, brainwashed in the agenda with which the schools’ curricula have been riddled, they have little of substance to show for their long, wasted years at school. It was not altogether a surprise then, to find under a recent newspaper photo, the almost incredible: “Mary Chamberlain directs what is taught in New Zealand schools, yet she almost failed School Certificate.” Let’s try reversing this wording. “Mary Chamberlain almost failed School Certificate, yet she directs what is taught in New Zealand schools.” The question has to be – why? No matter that Ms Chamberlain may be a well-intentioned individual. How many would think it appropriate that someone who did not apparently achieve anything approaching standards of excellence in her own schooling should now – “direct what is taught in schools, choosing the material she once struggled to make sense of as a student.” Should we be surprised that the usual highly politicised topics like “globalisation and sustainability, assessing political impacts” etc. should be included in her curriculum, accompanying what a cynic might see as the usual lip-service paid to “greater emphasis on reading, writing and arithmetic.” Lesson one: nothing changes, and the game goes on. Amy) Brooke is the mother of four sons, a children’s writer, a Commonwealth-placed columnist, socio-political commentator and critic. Long involved in writing and researching education issues, she founded the annual Summer Sounds Symposium to open up debate poorly served by the mainstream media, and produced her own publication – The Best Underground Press- Critical Review, now reverting to an on-line journal. Formerly a secondary language teacher, she has remained teaching on an individual basis and assessing what’s happening in the education section. She is shocked at the intellectual short-changing of New Zealand children.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 65

thinkLIFE science

The sniff test A new study shows humans’ sense of smell stronger than previously thought, writes Jeremy Manier

HICAGO – Since the most ancient humans lifted their noses from the ground and stood upright, humanity’s sense of smell has dwindled to second-class status, a talent we gladly leave to drug-sniffing dogs. But a new study suggests that buried in each person’s olfactory lobe lurks enough tracking skill to make a bloodhound bay with resentment. If the results are surprising, that may be because no one ever tried putting a bunch of college undergraduates in a field wearing blindfolds and sound-muffling headphones, then had them crawl in the grass after a scent like pigs hunting for truffles. When researchers at the University of California-Berkeley did try that, they found that most of the students could follow a 10-metre trail of chocolate perfume and even changed direction precisely where the invisible path took a turn. What’s more, the subjects were able to smell in stereo; when researchers blocked their ability to smell independently with each nostril, the students’ scent-tracking accuracy dropped off dramatically. By revealing how noses locate smells, the scientists hope to lay the groundwork for electronic noses that could detect hazards like land mines. Their work, published online in the journal Nature Neuroscience, was funded in part by the U.S. Army Research Office. Other experts say the findings will help rebut the misconception that people stink at following scents.

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“What this study highlights most for me is that the human sense of smell is a lot better than many people think it is,” says Jay Gottfried, a professor of neurology at Northwestern University. “It’s true that our lives are taken up by visual and auditory streams of consciousness. But if you paid more attention to smell, it would become a more prominent aspect of your life.” Our dormant flair for smell comes as no surprise to many researchers who study perception. Humans need a good sense of smell to distinguish flavors, which arise only partly from the taste buds on the tongue. Without smell, people would have little ability to tell apart the flavors of different fruits or types of meat. Granted, we’ll never match the prowess of nature’s specialty smellers, such as rats or German shepherds. Other animals have bigger snouts to gather scents and more brain area devoted to processing smells, not to mention the built-in advantage of four-legged creatures that constantly put their noses to the ground. While it took the Berkeley students up to 10 minutes to navigate the scent path, a dog could do the same feat in seconds. In order to focus on the students’ olfactory ability, the researchers put together an outfit that one likened to a mobile sensory deprivation chamber. The subjects wore taped-over goggles, earmuffs and thick work gloves to block anything but smell from guiding their way. They also wore devices over their noses to control how

much scent each nostril could take in and to measure how fast they were sniffing. Decked out in full regalia, the students resembled members of an exotic humanoid species. “We drew lots of crowds,” laughs study lead author Jess Porter, a graduate student in biophysics at Berkeley’s neuroscience institute. A major reason the scientists studied human subjects is that people are more willing than animals such as dogs to put up with all the extra equipment the study required. “Dogs really don’t like having things in their nostrils,” says co-author Noam Sobel, an associate professor at Berkeley. To create a scent trail, the scientists soaked a line of string in the chocolate scent and embedded it in the grass. The people were set loose on the ground about nine feet away from the trail, then had to find the scent and follow it. Faced with a tracking task that virtually no person ever has to do, the humans quickly adopted some of the same habits that dogs use. They zigzagged as they tracked the smell, much like hunting dogs following a pheasant – in fact, dogs typically veer off a trail even more than the human subjects did. Scientists have seen similar behavior among crabs following scent plumes underwater. Although no one knows for sure why zigzagging is important, one theory is that tracking animals, including people, try to keep a sense of where the boundary of the smell is so they don’t lose the trail. “You want to maximize your chances of noticing when the track is going to turn,” Porter says. A key observation was that the people did better at tracking when they could sense distinct smells in each nostril. When the subjects wore a device that channeled the same air into both nostrils, their performance lagged. The researchers said the contribution of the two nostrils is similar to the way having two ears lets us find a sound’s origin. “When someone drops a coin on the ground, you immediately know where to turn,” Gottfried says. “That’s because your brain computes the difference in when the sound arrives at each ear and extracts information about where the coin fell.” Just so, Gottfried notes, the brain may use the offset odor “images” from each nostril to build a spatial picture of the scent trail.

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thinkLIFE technology

Scott me up, beamie

Ian Wishart discovers speech recognition software is light years ahead of where it used to be

t was in the mid 90s that Dragon and I first became acquainted, and I won’t say it was love at first sight. I remember walking into a Noel Leeming store and being told to come back in a week when the new, Dragon 2.0 version would be out – “much improved” on version one, the salesman assured me. I bought it, and given the limitations of the old 486 processors (remember those?) and the software, it worked OK. Good enough to be novel, not good enough to write a novel, if you get the drift, and certainly not as fast as speaking or as fast as a good typist. As a writer and book publisher, there were however certain tasks – like dictating someone else’s handwritten book manuscript – that made speech recognition software useful.

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I vaguely recall purchasing Dragon 4.0 at some point then misplacing it, and so purchasing Dragon 7.0 a couple of years ago when, again, I needed to dictate 50 pages of transcripts of a major Maori hui dating from 1861 for an Investigate article. It would be fair to say I was impressed by Dragon 7.0 and its ability, once I had trained it, to handle complex Maori tribal names and places like Whakarewarewa. Nothing wrong with version 7 at all and I still have it on one of the office computers, but when Mistral Software – the NZ agents for Nuance who now own Dragon – sent through the latest release, Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.0, I have to say I was blown away. The speed at which the software now translates as you speak is incredible, and

the accuracy is stunning to boot. We used it over the New Year break here at Investigate to compile the John Key/Bill English interviews in this issue – I simply played back the interviews on my MP3 recorder and live-dictated the questions and answers into the computer. The software transcribed so rapidly (Dragon boast 160 words per minute) that most of the time it was waiting for me, while I was trying to repeat a politician’s words on the wing so to speak whilst dropping the ums, ahs and pauses. Like much of the software, and for that matter hardware, on the market today, Dragon 9.0 is capable of far much more than the average punter will use. In some programmes that’s a negative because they’re so complex to navigate and unlock.

In Dragon’s case the company has always erred on the side of idiots, offering a package that allows users to either dip their toes in or plunge in. Like peeling away the layers of an onion, regular use of Dragon 9.0 turns up new tricks and new options on a semi-intuitive basis. It can, for example, scan a downloaded voice memo from a digital recorder, Palm handheld or Pocket PC device, and automatically transcribe and type it out. Bluetooth headphone support is built in, allowing you to pace the room wirelessly while dictating. If the idea of bells and whistles excites you, why stop at dictation? Dragon is also pitching virtually keyboard-free use of your computer simply by talking to it. There’s a memorable scene from the 1986 movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, where Scottie confronts a 1980s desktop computer and tries desperately to make it respond to his voice. It was to be a further 11 years before the first Dragon

programme hit shop shelves to help make Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s futuristic vision real. Dragon 9.0, however, is itself galaxies away from its 1997 ancestor. Nuance are boasting 99% accuracy with the latest version and, for the first time, no lengthy training process. In previous versions time had to be spent reading set scripts for yonks while the computer got used to your voice patterns. No longer. In what Nuance claim is a world first, it’s virtually out of the box and go, and the software learns intuitively the more you work with it. Streamlined processing means coughs, sneezes, ums and ahs are all screened out, so they no longer appear on screen like a swearword in an Asterix comic. As an office tool it’s excellent. As a homework aid, it allows students to much more quickly add passages from books or encyclopedias to their work There are specialized versions available for the legal and medical professions, and

the standard version of Dragon 9.0 kicks in at NZ$259 with a “Preferred” edition aimed at small business/home business users at $449, and a Professional edition for corporate and network use available as well.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 69

feelLIFE

sport

A younger Daniel Vettori, caught by England's Nasser Hussain, bowled Tufnell, in 1999. PHOTO: SportsChrome

Statistically speaking

Chris Forster has a different take on the Cricket World Cup

t’s a sport made for number-crunchers, trainspotters, folk with an unhealthy obsession with data, comparisons and analysis. Endless summer days and steamy nights hunched over computers and huge Wisden almanacs, mentally assimilating averages, records and the most obscure statistical delight. Nothing else quite compares to cricket and its endless well of numerical literature. But it’s worth looking at a pair of allrounders to get a figurative bend on the contrasting chances of New Zealand’s Black Caps and the all-conquering Australians at the World Cup cricketing fiesta in the Caribbean. DANIEL VETTORI and ANDREW SYMONDS are two key figures in the trans-Tasman camps, all-rounders with starkly contrasting styles.

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Vettori’s wily left-arm off-spinners and dramatically improved batting have transformed him into a world class one day player – critical to New Zealand’s plans to restrict the opposition and chase down a gettable target. Symonds is a swashbuckling, devilmay-care cricketer, able to swat successive sixes and bowl either off-spinners or medium pacers for his Australian captainof-many-riches, Ricky Ponting. But how do they compare? The tall, wiry frame of Vettori has been fixture on the New Zealand scene for 10 years, since bursting onto the domestic scene as a fresh-faced spin bowling prospect as a 17 year old. He’s nailed 162 international victims at an average of 34.25 in one-day internationals (ODIs). Batting down the order when the surge is on or

the cause lost means his average is only a touch over 15 runs per innings. One stat even cricinfo.com can’t tell you is Dan’s become a very economical man, only conceding 40 runs for every ten-over stint performed per match. He’s also seventh on the International Cricket Council’s esteemed and highly analytical rankings for ODI bowling. Vettori’s just behind team mate Shane Bond and a couple of places ahead of Kyle Mills, underlining New Zealand’s strength at the bowling crease. He even features at a very reasonable number 62 in the batting rankings. The 28 year old’s bowling graph’s been on an upward spiral since their rocky 2003 World Cup in South Africa, matching the guile and control he has flighting the ball and restricting the batsmen. Symonds is a very different cricket beast,

“

Australia’s had the upper-hand of some memorable one-day clashes in the cup’s 32 year history. They snatched victory over the New Zealanders in a virtual quarterfinal knockout in India back in 1986, chasing down a huge total after Chris Harris blazed a career best 130. Then in Port Elizabeth they recovered from Shane Bond’s 6 wicket blitz , to comfortably roll the stage-struck Kiwis by 93 runs

”

although still a crucial all-round element in the perfectly formed Australian lineup. Once regarded as a bit of a loose cannon, and famously quoted as “being a man without a map”, the 31 year old has learnt to mix pure aggression and power with the occasional defensive jab. His coming of age was the World Cup 4 years ago – when a brilliant 132 dismantled Pakistan to set the Aussies on the road to the title. Symonds is number five on the ICC’s ODI batting chart, where team mate Michael Hussey is number one and Adam Gilchrist and Ricky Ponting feature in the top 15. Five centuries, heading towards 4000 runs and an average of 39 is no mean feat in the one day arena. His bowling isn’t as impressive as Vettori – way back in 62nd in the rankings with 118 wickets at an average of 36.92. But

those figures don’t take into account his versatility and the brilliance in the field which makes him a wicket-taker even away from the bowling crease. There is a darker side to these stats for New Zealand fans, if you dig a little deeper. Vettori’s and Symonds’ records at World Cups, their win ratios and their comparative influence at cricket’s piece de resistance, make grim reading if you’re hoping for a Kiwi upset. Australia has won the tournament three times in its 8 editions, including the last two events in England and South Africa by a country mile. New Zealand’s reached the semi-final three times, most famously in its joint hosting of the 1992 tournament when their golden run towards the final was ended in traumatic style by Pakistan at Eden Park. Vettori has played in 7 cup matches and only snared two wickets at an unflattering average of 129. Symonds’ career erupted at the last event where he established himself as a world class performer. Australia’s had the upper-hand of some memorable one-day clashes in the cup’s 32 year history. They snatched victory over the New Zealanders in a virtual quarterfinal knockout in India back in 1986, chasing down a huge total after Chris Harris blazed a career best 130. Then in Port Elizabeth they recovered from Shane Bond’s 6 wicket blitz , to comfortably roll the stage-struck Kiwis by 93 runs. Australia’s also dominating the most basic of statistics, three world titles in the bank and aiming for a third straight shot

at glory under the searing Caribbean sun. Vettori, Symonds and the rest of their one day mates are getting to see plenty of each other these days. The Chappell/ Hadlee Trophy is named after the most famous of Aussie cricketing families and the best bowler New Zealand’s ever produced. It was launched in 2004 and is up for grabs every year. But the mini tournament’s ensured a trans-Tasman overload this summer, following the Tri Series in Australia which features both countries and the shell-shocked Englishmen. In fact they could well meet ten times before they even set foot in the West Indies, with four round robin games in the Tri Series, the possibility of three finals, and then the three Chappell/Hadlees. That’s a numerical blowout in anyone’s books and can only help the Australians with their huge depth of first class cricketers. Fate is the great intangible statistics can never take into account. And the cricketing gods are sure to line these two magnets up against each other at the World Cup – in the Super 8 Stage that follows the round robin, or the big time semi-finals or may be the championship decider. Andrew Symonds and the Australians know how to win, take advantage of their domination and pressurize their opposition into shells of human beings. Daniel Vettori’s time has come to show he can inspire New Zealand from alsorans to champions. There will be plenty of time in April to analyse how they fared. Note the stats quoted in this story are from after the Sri Lankan one-day series and before the Tri Nations in Australia

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 71

feelLIFE

health

Healthy goals

Claire Morrow seems to have been given some Tony Robbins CDs for Christmas

007, Year of the Car. I know, I know, it’s not very United Nations; in 2007 I plan to increase my ecological footprint. I have been telling everyone (for most of 2006) about my new year’s resolution. I have a small page in the back of my to-do book that lists the individual steps involved in learning to drive. Step one – purchase learner’s handbook (check). Step two – find said learner’s handbook (it’s in this house somewhere!), step three – get learner’s permit. Step four – if no progress has been made by the end of March, consider behavioral therapy...and so forth. The most popular new year’s resolution is to get more exercise. About 60-70% of people make three or more resolutions. About 40% of people succeed, and maintain their success for more than two months on the first attempt. About 17% fail six or more times, but still achieve their goal in the end. So that should inspire you. I am always somewhat surprised by people who don’t make new year’s resolutions – most people are just busy doing other things or have goals privately in

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place that they don’t feel the need to discuss at length, but there are two interesting sub-groups I have noticed. The “I’m so fine the way I am” group (may I suggest honest and searching appraisal as an appropriate goal for 2007) and the “I can’t change” group. The latter have things they reckon they would like to change but they couldn’t actually be bothered changing them. It’s like saying “I want to earn lots of money...but I don’t want to work for it”. Psychotherapy might be a good suggestion, or antidepressant medication. If you couldn’t be bothered changing it...stop complaining about it. C’mon. Get with – I detest this phrase – the programme. Research has actually been done – repeatedly – showing that in spite of the gut scorn we might feel about the overly optimistic on New Year’s Day, new year’s resolutions are actually a useful thing, and most people use them to improve their lives. A shock, I know. You decide you want to achieve something, then you do what you need to achieve it, and then – as if by magic – it’s achieved. Not as

much is known about what divides those who don’t achieve their goals from those that do, but enough is known about what constitutes a good behavioral modification plan that broad outlines of what will be most likely to work can be offered. Do you have your pencils ready? (many “New Years” resolutions are actually made around the end of January or beginning of February, when things are settling down after the silly – or flat out stupid – season) You must have put some thought into what you want to achieve, and be fairly motivated to achieve it. It is no good declaring that you will quit smoking (because you know you should and are tired of being hassled) when in your heart of hearts you know you like smoking and want to keep smoking, but figure you can white knuckle it through a few weeks to teach the hassler a lesson, and then light back up when they’re not looking. That is acting, but it is not a realistic goal. In that case a realistic goal might be “I would like to smoke less, exercise more and be more

assertive”. You are looking for something you want to achieve for your own sake. You need realistic expectations. You don’t just learn to drive in January. Frankly, I will be lucky if I find the book in January. You can lose ten kilos by February, but it will make you ill. Best aim for lose one or two kilos a month so I can wear a bikini next summer. Priorities again. I would like to lose ten kilos, but I have other things I want more. Losing ten kilos is not something I am highly motivated to do. Weight loss didn’t even make my list. A common resolution is to spend more time studying or working (23%). Aside from the obvious question (why?) the next really good question is – where will this time come from? You can’t just make more (if only!). So more time studying is not going to be much use to you in the long term if you achieve it by sleeping less (although this is a common short term strategy, and very effective for some people, it’s not going to work long term). Likewise if your mission is to spend more time working, you might want to check with your kids before you start skipping soccer practice to analyse flow variables. Ideally, you would actually find a way to work or study so that you achieve more in the same time. Or you would like to have a flexible timetable that you stick to. Or you would rather study on the train than listen to your iPod on the train this year. You get the idea. You need a plan. Well, not everyone does, some people just do it, as the slogan says. But the most effective goals (the ones that stick), tend to be better planned. You make a mini list of things you need to do to achieve your goal. Going out and buying the handbook is a first step. It has a date attached to it (The goal does. I haven’t seen the handbook in months so who knows what it has attached to it.) When you achieve that part, you move on to the next bit. You can’t overdo it to the extent that your first step is to order five or six books on reducing clutter. Ordering five or six books on reducing clutter does not reduce clutter. One book might, so long as you read it. Your goal needs to be very specific and have a date or series of dates attached to it. There is no need to quit smoking on January one. You can make quitting smoking your goal, and set a date to quit. Then you spend a few weeks preparing, then you quit. A goal of “be a better person” is hard to measure. Clarify what you mean. You might mean volunteer work or you might mean baking for the bake sale. You might mean you will stop throwing rocks at puppies. “Wear a bikini next year” isn’t specific enough, and you can’t measure it. Nothing to stop you. You mean “lose one-three kilos a month until I reach my goal weight of_____” And of course the other 2 stalwarts – if at first you don’t succeed, try try try again. People should have a plan B (what to do when things go wrong – and there will be stumbling blocks, practically guaranteed) and get support if you need it. Including, of course, tell people your plan. So I’ll let you know how the driving goes.

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feelLIFE

alt.health

Marla Jo Fisher reports that MP3 players may be wrecking the ears of a generation

iPod deafness syndrome

bout two years ago, University of California, Irvine, professor FanGang Zeng started noticing something alarming among his students: unexplained hearing loss. In each of his biomedical engineering classes, Zeng says, he’s found several students with the type of damaged hearing you normally wouldn’t see until 50 or 60 years of age. It’s been two years since the phenomenon began. And that’s about how long it’s been since the MP3 player became a campus staple for college students nationwide and in fact throughout the western world. Coincidence? He doesn’t think so. “We can’t say for sure it’s from MP3 players, but I don’t know what else has changed,” says Zeng, a researcher specializing in hearing loss. “The climate and the food are the same.” Another UCI hearing expert, Dr. Hamid Djalilian, is also concerned about the effects of MP3 players, saying parents are bringing in more and more teenagers complaining of ringing in their ears. Young children can suffer even more dam-

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age from loud music or toys, because their ear canals are shorter and not fully developed. “A lot of times it’s not recognized, because kids don’t complain,” Djalilian says. Experts say the problems are probably caused by the use of “ear buds” that sit inside the ear, coupled with the increased length of listening time available, compared to previous portable music players. Most MP3 players come with stock ear buds, which unlike headphones that sit outside the ear, fit snugly in the ear canal and do not allow any sound to escape. Because the sound is digital, listeners can crank it up louder without the distortion faced by previous technologies. One of Apple’s initial slogans for the iPod was “Play It Loud.” And, because MP3 players can store hours and hours of music, users can listen all day without stopping – producing an unending barrage of sound. At least with older audio devices such as portable compact disc players, the listener had to stop and change the CD or restart it. Over the past year, MP3 manufacturers have begun to respond to complaints about the problem. A class action suit was filed against Apple Computer in February in U.S. District Court in San Jose, alleging that the company had not done enough to protect its customers’ hearing and seeking to force Apple to offer a way to limit volume. A few weeks later, Apple introduced a free software upgrade that allows owners to set volume limits on their iPods. Parents can create limits that kids can’t change at will. An Apple spokesman did not return a phone call seeking comment. “If it were my kid, I would make sure they never have that iPod more than Level 6 volume,” Djalilian says. “At Level 7, you can listen for four hours a day or so, after that there’s a potential for hearing loss. At Level 8, no more than an hour and a half.” When sound waves enter your ears, they vibrate tiny hairlike cells, sending nerve impulses to your brain that tell you to hear. Loud noises damage those hair cells, usually temporarily at first, when they can be bent out of shape. This causes ringing in the ears or temporary deafness. Extremely loud noises, such as a close gunshot, can immediately destroy hearing cells. But they can also be killed by repeated

waves of loud sound, such as those coming in from digital music headphones or speakers at a concert. The longer the exposure, the more chance of permanent damage. Sounds that are 85 decibels or louder – about one-quarter of the maximum volume on some MP3 players – can damage hearing, at least temporarily. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health sets a safe exposure limit for workplace noise of 85 decibels spread over eight hours a day. The maximum volume on an iPod ranges from 115 to 125 decibels, depending on the model and who’s doing the measuring. Apple had to pull its iPods from the shelves in France temporarily, because their output exceeded that country’s 100decibel sound limit. In results released this year of an American Speech-Language-Hearing Association lab test of several models, MP3 players’ top volume ranged from 108 to 125 decibels. By the time you feel pain in your ears from loud noises, your hearing has been permanently damaged. “The kind of hearing loss we’re talking about is not going to show up when they’re teenagers,” says Dr. Brian Fligor, director of diagnostic audiology at Children’s Hospital Boston, who teaches at Harvard Medical School. “It will show up when they are in their 20s and 30s.” Fligor compared the damage to the cumulative effect of too many sunburns on the skin. “Doctors refer to it as acoustic trauma; normally it comes from explosions and gunshots.” Fligor says parents should model responsible noise control for their children, by wearing earplugs when mowing the lawn, firing guns or using power tools, for example. “Parents should have conversations with their kids about not abusing their ears at clubs and concerts,” Fligor says. Other experts agreed, pointing out that musicians now use earplugs onstage to avoid the kind of hearing damage faced by first-generation rockers. “Most musicians are smart enough now to be aware of hearing loss – but pity the poor kids down below the stage,” Zeng says. “If you go to a concert, bring earplugs.”

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Because Moving Planets Is Such A Hassle.

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 75

tasteLIFE

TRAVEL

America’s Cup 07: On the Spanish riviera

Elio Leturia checks out a stopover in Barcelona, while Jay Clarke finds the Silver Whisper cruise liner is well up to the task of being an America’s Cup viewing platform

ith the America’s Cup about to kick off in Valencia, Spain, this year, the big cruise lines are offering a number of packages to capitalize on what is likely to be one of the most hotlycontested and spectatored events in the Cup’s history. For the first time, the Cup is being raced in modern Europe, the hub of the lifestyles of the rich and famous. The cruise liner Silver Whisper is being used as an oncourse viewing platform/ hotel for the races and for the first time has been given permission to shadow the Cup racers down the course. Whisper will be departing for Valencia from its rival Mediterranean port, Barcelona on 22 June, which means if you time your flights properly there’s time for plenty of R and R in Barcelona for a few days prior. Barcelona is a city of contrasts, especially between the medieval sites and the newer, modernista areas. It’s easy to navigate and walkable, though you’d need a map in the charming and narrow streets of the Gothic Quarter. Here are your reference points: Gran Via De Les Cortes Catalanes runs parallel to the sea and divides the old city from the modern. La Rambla in the old city divides the Gothic Quarter from El Raval. Passeig de Gracia divides the more modern Eixample neighborhoods. Placa de Catalunya is the hub, at the end of lively La Rambla and at the beginning of chic Passeig de Gracia. It is the best place to begin after having taken a bus from the airport (around 4 euros compared to a much more expensive cab ride). The placa, or plaza, is a big, open space where multitudes converge and move off in different directions, looking for stores to shop in, sights to see, restaurants in which to dine. In the area there are stores,

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good restaurants, fast food chains, business offices and a busy subway stop. Let’s begin by walking in the direction of the sea, following the famous La Rambla. It’s like a carnival, busy and buzzing with tourist attractions. Magicians, mimes, musicians, exotic-animal vendors, beggars and fortune-tellers share space with tourists and strollers. To your right is El Raval. It is the poorest area of the old city and its reputation has been one of vice and crime. It used to be known as Barcelona’s Chinatown. Now, it has its share of interesting places and affordable restaurants, even if it is a bit seedier in spots than the Gothic Quarter or more modern areas. Among Raval’s spots of interest are the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, Antoni Gaudi’s magnificent Guell Palace and the Gran Teatre del Liceu. But if you are looking to explore the flavor of the city and the friendly demeanor of the locals for free, visit the Mercat de la Boqueria, a “modernisme” (Barcelona’s version of art nouveau) structure made of metal, where you can do your grocery shopping and choose from an extensive array of prime local ingredients and produce from seafood, breads and fruits to spices and vegetables. There is the old Hospital de la Santa Creu, which holds the Catalunya library (3 million documents, says National Geographic’s “Traveler Barcelona” book), where you can see students chatting in a building dating back more than 600 years. On the other side of La Rambla is the Barri Gotic, or Gothic Quarter, a labyrinth of medieval streets filled with stores, bars, restaurants, hotels, churches, a breathtaking cathedral (work started in 1298) and Roman ruins. With its dark corners, cafes and history,

the Gothic Quarter showcases a unique personality. An afternoon here is spent weaving through the crowds of tourists who fill the narrow, cobblestone streets, and you could easily spend days exploring its alleys and walkways. Next to the Gothic Quarter, you find El Born, a neighborhood that has been restored and embellished. It is home to the Picasso Museum, where you can see artwork from his early years (Picasso spent his youth in Barcelona). Be sure to walk through the 700-year-old Carrer de la Montcada, which houses grand galleries and sophisticated bars. At the sea edge of La Rambla, south of El Born, you find the monument to Christopher Columbus, then the waterfront. Facing the Mediterranean Sea, you notice a commercial area with numerous malls in what is called Port Vell, next to the water. Feel like shopping? This is a good place to find affordable items. You will also find the aquarium and the Maremagnum, a complex of stores, eateries, bars and discos. Facing the port, another neighborhood called La Barceloneta is to your left. Once a group of warehouses, it harbors pricey seafood restaurants and blue-collar housing in amazingly narrow blocks. Beyond that is the beach, which bubbles with sun seekers. On the other side of Placa de Catalunya, there is a dramatic change in the streetscape, as the view becomes that of modernist buildings and streets laid out in a grid. It’s L’Eixample (the extension), a district divided by Passeig de Gracia and its elegant stores, tapas bars, cafes and restaurants. This is a different face of Barcelona. Modernisme is the main architectural style, and it’s a delight to the eye. For Barcelonians, L’Eixample can mean a place to live, a place to work, a place to enjoy the nightlife and

especially, a place to shop. Unfortunately, most everything is expensive. What can we do here on the cheap? Try walking. In just one block on Passeig de Gracia you can admire the facades of three architectural wonders: Gaudi’s extraordinary Casa Batllo, with its undulating lines and balconies resembling jawbones; Puig i Cadafalch’s Casa Amatller and its geometrically tiled top floor and, at the corner, Domenech i Montaner’s Casa Lleo Morera, with its magnificent windows and bulging balconies. To see what’s inside these and other modernist buildings, you can buy a Ruta del Modernisme ticket that gives you access to these and other buildings, as well as other museums and attractions, at half-price within 30 days. The price is 3.61 euros for adults, 2.40 euros for students and senior citizens. A couple of blocks away on the same street you find Casa Mila, or La Pedrera, another Gaudi marvel. It’s so convoluted and striking, it’s difficult to describe. But think of the movie “Star Wars.” You will feel you are in outer space. Gaudi practically eliminated any straight lines in the architecture, from staircases to floors to ceilings. Following the work of Gaudi, you have to see Sagrada Familia, a cathedral, still unfinished, more than a century in the making. Inspired by Gothic cathedrals, this church’s design is unique, with its swirling towers and busy details. Ten blocks from Casa Mila, Sagrada Familia has eight finished towers which represent the apostles (four others are to be built). Drawings show that more towers are part of the original design, with the tallest representing God as the central axis. Work continues, but what you can see already is enough to take your breath away. It looks as if its towers were made of sand eroded by the wind. And still the overall effect remains solid and imposing. Eight euros buys you a visit from 9 a.m. till 6 p.m. during the colder months. The site is open until 8 p.m. from April through September. If you’re looking for more Gaudi at an even more reasonable price, visit Parc Guell, which is free. Originally conceived as a garden city, two homes were built in a setting supposed to hold 60. The park makes you feel as if you are in a fairyland, with its curved benches, fountains and plazas covered by colorful mosaics and sculptures of real and mythological crea-

“

On the other side of La Rambla is the Barri Gotic, or Gothic Quarter, a labyrinth of medieval streets filled with stores, bars, restaurants, hotels, churches, a breathtaking cathedral and Roman ruins tures. From the park, you can stare out over the city to the Mediterranean and feel the pure and clean air. If you’re looking for a smoke-free environment, try Starbucks. There are three of them, the only smoke-free places I found in Barcelona. On board the Silver Whisper, of course, it’s a different story again. I knew I was going to like the Whisper as soon as I stepped into

”

our suite. Our stateroom, like all others, had a walk-in closet – a feature that instantly convinced my wife that we were truly on a classy ship. Our bathroom was equipped with double sinks as well as a tub and separate shower – notice, not EITHER a tub or shower, but BOTH. Beyond the sitting area with its plush sofa and chairs was a veranda, a nice place to read a book or enjoy a cocktail while gazing at the restless sea. The mini-bar

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 77

ment, which uses cinnamon, ginger, sea salt, coffee, honey and steam, or go for a Hot Lava Rock Massage, in which spa personnel massage client’s bodies with steamed lava stones covered with a blend of rich cocoa butter. Luxury? Yes, indeed. Onboard diversions ran along traditional lines. Books, magazines, games and movie video tapes were available in the library. Daily bridge games attracted several tables of players. Trivia quizzes, musical and otherwise, were popular, and in the evening we enjoyed pre-dinner and post-dinner shows in the two-story show lounge. Other than the fitness room and the pool, there were few activities for more active passengers. Shore excursions, too, were more geared to the older travelers the ship caters to. On sum, Silversea gave us an experience well above what we’ve had on any other ship. It doesn’t get any better. was pre-stocked with sodas and liquor of our choice, and canapes were delivered to our suite every day at 4 p.m. Sometimes it was hard to leave our room. But of course we did, and found the rest of the ship just as elegant as our stateroom. Soft colors and rich woods gave the public rooms a warm feeling, and we never had to memorize fancy names for ship spaces. The decks were numbered, not named, the bar was simply The Bar, the restaurant was The Restaurant, the spa was The Spa, The Humidor was the cigar smokers’ den, the Terrace Cafe had a terrace and the Panoroma Lounge indeed provided a panoramic view. Simplicity can be elegant. It and its sister ship, the Silver Shadow, are the line’s largest vessels, but with a maximum of 382 passengers they’ll never threaten today’s giant cruise ships, which can carry more than 3,000. Which is how its guests like it. Luxury cruises do not come cheaply, and Silver Whisper’s clientele are discriminating yet very down-to-earth people, we learned. Such people demand a certain level of excellence, and they get it aboard the Silver Whisper. First, they demand service that is several cuts above that on mainstream ships. Our cabin attendant, a young Italian woman, was always around with a happy smile, making sure our needs were met. Dining room waiters did their job with skill and pleasantry, even knowing that tipping is a no-no on all Silversea ships. A room service meal was just as fine as the restau-

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rant’s, and if they said it would be there in 10 minutes, it was. We generally took a buffet breakfast in the Terrace Cafe, which transformed itself in the evening to an elegant, reservationsonly alternative restaurant. We often took lunch on the pool deck, and I thought it was sort of incongruous – considering that people were in shorts or bathing suits – that waiters stood by to carry our plate of hot dogs, potato salad or whatever to our table, just as they did in the dining room. A nice touch, though. In the evening, we took most of our meals in the dining room, where the menu was inventive, the food excellently prepared, the choices broad and the service impeccable. I was particularly impressed with a cannelloni that was delicate in taste and texture. Lifting an ordinary dish like this one to such heights was, I think, the mark of a good chef. Complimentary wines of high quality were served with lunch and dinner, with the sommelier choosing ones to complement the entrees. But passengers could order different selections if they chose, also complimentary. Bottles of rarer wines like the grand crus, however, carried charges that ran as high as US$785 a bottle. Yes, there were people who ordered them. In the Mandara spa, services were keyed to a high level. Businessmen breaking away from their workday gruel might go for an Executive Men’s Facial to smooth out those pinstripe worries. Women could luxuriate in a Javanese Honey Steam Wrap treat-

SILVER WHISPER Gross tonnage: 28,258 tons. Length: 186 metres. Beam (width): 25 metres. Passenger decks: 7. Passenger capacity: 382.

GETTING THERE Lance Green at New Zealand’s Viaggio has managed to secure berths on Silver Whisper for kiwis wanting to see New Zealand win back the America’s Cup on the Mediterranean. Green, who has extensive background in the cruise industry, argues the liner’s smaller size and upmarket décor make it the perfect viewing platform for the America’s Cup, allowing guests the advantage of both watching live from the decks as the yachts duel their way past, and also the closeup action on the live TV coverage on the ship and in the suites. “Throw in the fact that we’ve secured a package with no hidden costs, in NZ dollars, and we’re confident this is simply the best way to see the races, bar none.” Ph 0800 100799

the Americas Cup and a luxury cruise? there is only one way to view the Americas Cup and that is from your own private suite... JUNE 18 - 30, 2007 | Limited suites available Call now or email lance@viaggio.net.nz for details

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www.viaggio.net.nz

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lifestyle vacations INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 79

tasteLIFE

FOOD

Burning down the house

The kitchen, the kitchen, the kitchen’s on fire at Eli Jameson’s place

he holidays bring visitors from around the world, and for the past few weeks I have been playing host to my old friend insomnia who has apparently decided he needed a break from the harsh northern winter and the Seasonal Affective Disorder that is its constant companion. I’m not sure which aphorism is more appropriate here: that houseguests, like fish, stink after three days, or that when even your neuroses have neuroses, well, you really do have problems. In any case, three a.m. found me sitting up watching the sort of stuff one watches late at night on pay TV. No not that sort of stuff – get your mind out of the gutter. I’m talking about lifestyle programming, specifically cooking shows. Now regular readers of this column will know that I’m horrified by the current state of

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cooking programming and its programming-executive driven shift away from what is maligned as “dump and stir” TV and towards the clever gimmick. (Anyone who is interested in reading more about this transformation should check out – it’s very generously online – Bill Buford’s article in the New Yorker of 2 October 2006 on the rise of food television.) But then again, I’m a purist. Anyway, the gimmick behind the show I was watching was that a New York chef, himself the very model of a Modern Masculine Metrosexual, would travel around America’s flyover country, the unfashionable bits in between the coasts, and sort out home cooks’ inability to bake a ham or boil water. In the episode I was watching, a very nice lady had written in because she was depressed that

she couldn’t flambé some dessert or other – crepes suzette, I think it was. I was immediately struck by two emotions: envy and amazement. Envy, that in every damn lifestyle and reality show I see set in the US, Americans seem able to afford vast homes with barn-like lounge rooms and kitchens that could have been equipped by Gordon Ramsay himself. And amazement that anyone would have trouble setting fire to something in a kitchen. I couldn’t work out whether such a skill – or lack thereof – was, as the song says, a blessing or a curse. Me, I’ve been setting a lot of stuff on fire lately. It all started a couple of months ago at my annual turkey fry. Yes, turkey fry. Now for those of you not familiar with this custom, it originated in the southern United States, specifically Louisiana, and

involves the deep-frying of an entire turkey in a vat of oil heated to around 180 degrees Celsius. Accomplishing this is not an easy task, and requires some specialist equipment. If you want to do this, head down to your local Chinatown and get an outdoor wok burner that hooks up to your barbecue’s LPG tank. I cannot be much more helpful than to tell you that mine has no English characters written either on the equipment or in the documentation (which is all in Mandarin) other than the word RAMBO, and when you fire it up it produces a roaring blue flame that looks and feels like someone just hit the afterburner switch on an F-111. On top of this you will need to get a really large pot. This accomplished, frying the turkey could not be simpler, and what you get is – trust me on this – one of the tastiest birds you will ever eat. All one does is get a good free-range tur-

key, around five or six kilos and a lot of frying oil. Peanut is best but expensive; anything with a high smoking temperature will do. Start by plonking the bird into the empty pot and filling with water until it is just covered. Remove the bird and use a screwdriver or some other implement to mark the resultant water line as this is how high you will want to pour the oil. One wants enough oil to cover the bird but not so much that the stuff boils over. I think you see where this is going. When ready to fry, heat the oil – I can get 3 gallons up to temperature in about 15 minutes with my rig – and carefully lower the bird (which you have dried well and seasoned with salt, pepper and some cajun seasoning) into the oil. The pot will bubble up spectacularly, settle back down and in about 45 minutes pull it out. The skin will be golden and crispy, the meat moist and tender. Where I went wrong this year was to

add an extra two-litre bottle, “for good measure”. Aiding me in the actual lowering of the bird was my friend the Major, a veteran of several foreign theatres of war including most recently Iraq. This is relevant, because as it turned out it was good to have someone on hand who is cool under fire. With fifteen other guests surrounding the vat and the gas burner powering away, we put the turkey in. And as predicted the oil bubbled up. And up. And then, unfortunately, up and over the sides. Two jets of fire shot up the side before settling down into a scorching conflagration of flaming hot turkey grease and oil that could only be tamped down with a heavy application of – wait for it – kitty litter. The turkey, as it turned out, was delicious. The backyard pavement on which this occurred may never be the same, though: for weeks it drew every cat in the neighborhood.

Bananas Foster So it was Mrs Jameson’s birthday the other night, and I decided to finish our homecooked feast with this great recipe (which, oddly enough, is also a New Orleans creation). It’s a great capper for a romantic dinner because it is easy, delicious and impressive (especially if your kitchen is in view of the table, or you decide to do it tableside. To recreate this you’ll need: 1 cup brown sugar 75-100g good butter 2 bananas 100ml good dark rum, such as Havana Club, Mount Gay or Myer’s 1 hefty pinch cinnamon 2 scoops quality vanilla ice cream, ideally but not necessarily home made. Method: 1. Open your bananas and split lengthwise. Heat a pan over high heat and melt the brown sugar and butter together. When the mixture has turned into a nice caramel, slide in the bananas and

fry on both sides, coating with the sugar. 2. Now here’s the tricky part. And by all means, don’t pour directly from the bottle lest you conjure the ghost of General Molotov. First, turn out the lights for maximum effect. Then, pour in the rum carefully and then tip the pan forward to catch a bit of flame from the stove, or use a match if cooking on an elec-

tric. Flames should dramatically shoot up, and when they settle down add the cinnamon. Arrange the bananas with a scoop of the ice cream on two plates and pour over the remaining rum-caramel. The key here is to make sure you don’t be too generous, as I was, with the rum. Otherwise you might find yourself, as I did, finishing your special evening sans eyebrows.

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seeLIFE PAGES

Flying a kite

Michael Morrissey tracks the Rich, and finds a skeptic promoting unproven theories of her own THE RICH By William Davis Icon Books, $29.99

udging by earlier titles such as It’s No Sin to be Rich, Have Expenses, Will Travel, Children of the Rich – Davis is much given to writing about the wealthy. It is a breed of which he thoroughly approves. He vehemently attacks the arguments that being rich is a matter of exploitation. Terms like “stinking rich” and “filthy rich” spring from envy or flaunting of moral superiority, he says. He also makes favourable mention of those who give large sums to medical research or other worthy causes. Examples include Elton John, Eric Clapton and Bill Gates. The world’s wealthiest person, Gates has put $29 billion into a charitable foundation and claims he will give away 95 per cent of his wealth before he dies. Bravo Bill! And if this sounds too serious, just remember – as Davis reminds us – the rich do buy things like yellow subma-

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rines, Zeppelin airships and five-foot-high acrylic aquariums shaped like elephants. While it is heartening to read about the wealthy giving back the money to the wider community, Davis does not examine any of the sharp practices and ruthless conduct that often accompany the building of a large company though there is a chapter dealing with rich crooks. To be condemned by Davis you have to be outright crooked. Puzzlingly, Pablo Escobar, the Colombian cocaine drug warlord and arguably the richest crook in history, is not mentioned. In case – though it is probably unlikely – you find yourself invited to a weekend house by Old Money, Davis lists some handy tips on how to conduct yourself. Don’t, for instance, boast about a recent deal through which you made a packet – “simply not done”. On no account be impressed by the $50 million Picasso hanging on the wall of a room as large as a football field. After all, you are used to such luxuries, right? You must participate in any

silly parlour games played by these idle folk. Suitable topics for discussion include horses, dogs, gardens, taxes and, of course, problems with servants. Old Money conducts itself thus: “We do not hustle, we do not push, we are not aggressive”. Alas some of the rich, especially those showy folk called nouveau riche, appear not to have heard of these rules. Examples might include William Randolph Hearst, Donald Trump, Richard Branson and the late Elvis Presley. Monarchs are usually not bashful about flaunting their wealth either as Davis duly reveals. The rich can be found everywhere though still mainly in the United States followed by Germany, Russia, Japan and Britain. While providing an informative Cook’s tour of the famous wealthy, Davis’s accounts and analysis tends to be shallow and the inner psychology of what drives people to stop at nothing in the accumulation of wealth is not explored in any depth. His writing style is banal and often given to generalisations when particular-

ity would have better exampled his case. Eg “... cancer and heart disease continue to kill many people ...” While many a successful entrepreneurial rise to success has been made by ignoring negative advice – “It can’t be done. It costs too much. It’s risky. It takes too long to get returns” – there is, in the name of pro-wealth positivity, little examination of the overwhelmingly larger number of people who also ignored sensible advice and wound up broke. And, one wonders, is Davis himself getting rich by writing about the financially over-endowed? For his sake, I hope so.

MICRO NATIONS By John Ryan George Dunford and Simon Sellars, $29.99

f you stopped someone in the street and asked them, “What is a micro nation?” their eyes might momentarily glaze then they might respond, “A small country?” And they would be right. But in the context of this fascinating, entertaining and handsome little book, a micro nation is more or less an imaginary country invented by a single individual or a few which may have no actual territory or a very tiny amount, e.g. the “nation” founder’s own property – though there are some

interesting exceptions to this definition. Though some of these “countries” have no dominions to rule or no recognised government, the ingenious inventors have composed a geography and history. Some even have passports and stamps. One of the grandest of these non-United Nations recognised nations is the Hutt River Province principality in Australia. Hutt River was founded in 1970 by wheat farmer (now Prince) Leonard George Casley, after a dispute with the legitimate government about his crop allotment. The Hutt Valley nation is one of the larger micro nations covering some 75 sq kms with its own passport, visas, stamps and currency. In a spirit of invention that may owe something to Jonathan Swift and Lord of the Rings, The Hutt also has Province magnets,T-shirts, stickers, commemorative spoons, badges and CD recording of the national anthem plus a Royal Art Collection. There is a tearoom that offers light snacks but if you plan an overnight stay you are advised to bring your own food. Relations with the Australian government have proved difficult – it failed to recognise the province and demanded taxes – so the Prince declared “war” in 1977. So far no shots have been fired. Other colourful examples – though they are all colourful – include Freedonia,

which was originally named from the Marx Brothers’ film Duck Soup and associated with a disastrous claim to land in Somalia; the Copeman Empire which consists of a mobile caravan in Sheringham England – the owner and King, who owns a corgi, offers cucumber sandwiches and tea for a modest fee; Lovely, an invention of British comedian Danny Wallace who fronted a 6-part TV programme entitled How to Start Your own Country; Danny’s own country consists of his own flat, address not to be revealed – though a map is provided. In terms of exotic appellation, my favourites are the Sovereign Kingdom of Kemetia, Principality of Trumania, the Kingdom of North Dumpling Island and the redoubtable republic of Kugelmugel. There are more of these novel geographic beasties that you might imagine – Micro Nations has 52 entries but one website lists over 100. Are there micro nations in New Zealand? Indeed, there are. Two are mentioned here – Whangamonona near Stratford which in micro national terms has the full monty – its own football team, beer, hotel cafe and motor camp. “Buying a passport (NZ $3) is advised as the border guard has been known to be armed with water pistols”. Honourable mention is made of Borovnia, an imaginary land invented by Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme who murdered Parker’s mother in Christchurch in 1954 and recently the subject of the excellent Peter Jackson film, Heavenly Creatures. So far so good. But why no mention of the Sultanate of Occussi-Ambeno, an imaginary micro nation with an historical foundation – a former Portuguese enclave in east Timor excised from maps when Indonesia invaded in 1975 – invented by the mildly notorious Bruce Grenville. Apart from its magnificent stamps, it has an elaborate history and geography, and the photograph of the Sultan may possibly be Grenville himself in a fez.. Fauna include the Garuda bird and the flying Naga Unggu which curiously is related to the flightless Komodo dragon. I can only urge the editors of Micro Nations to do a revised edition and include this third kiwi micro nation. Obviously an imaginary country without any territory is a lot easier to create than one that lays claim to any land. Attempts to create new nations micro or otherwise in the real world are fraught

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 83

with peril. When a Las Vegas real estate property developer had several barges of sand poured on a reef just off Tonga and christened it Minerva, the Tongan government sent in troops to pull down the Minervan flag. To make it really difficult, the wet-blanket 1982 United Nations Convention of the Sea decided that any micro nation created at sea falls under the jurisdiction of the nearest country. Unless you own your own patch of dirt, the conceptual country existing purely as a work of fiction looks the safer bet.

IN THE NaGA’S WAKE By Mick O’Shea Allen & Unwin, $32.99

ention the Mekong river to most people and you might get a mention of the golden triangle – and not much else. This gripping travel account will expand the reader’s knowledge of the world’s eighth longest river – 4909 kilometres long. The kayak-based journey successfully completed by Mick O’Shea and his companions is not for the faint-hearted, involving numerous class V and the even more terrifying gateway to terror, class Vplus runs on boiling white water. The Mekong – which is sourced in the Lasagongma Glacier – along with the Indus, Yangtze, Yellow, Salween and Brahmaputra rivers originate on the vast and high Tibetan plain. Surprisingly – for this reader – fish can be found at 4600 metres above sea level. Journeys like these are a two-edged sword – much of the time death is not far away; at the same time O’Shea writes: “I don’t think I ever felt more alive.” And that was just at the beginning of his adventure. The last time a comparable exploration had been done was over 100 years earlier. The author’s daring is not just on the physical level – which involved 12 hours a day on the turbulent river – but also deciding to proceed without a permit. In the grand tradition of exploration, if you run a rapid you get the right to name it – or should one say, re-name it as the local inhabitants may already have named it. Like all specialist activities, kayaking has its own vocabulary. So we have wave trains, rooster tails and keeper holes. The latter is a whirlpool that keeps the kayaker whirling around in trapped circular fashion. Also “fat bastards” – big walls of crashing water named after the character

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in the Austin Powers’ films. In contrast to the gripping descriptions of battling turmoiled water, there is the generous warmth and hospitality of the Tibetan people, some of whom were more than a tad worried about O’Shea’s death-defying feats on the mighty Mekong. In the latter part of his book, O’Shea gives a lyric account of his travels through Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Burma and notes with regret that the enormous Chinese dam projects on the Mekong will have a devastating effect on the lives of river-dependent tribes and people down river. He also reminds us of the devastation wrecked in Laos during the Vietnam war by American bombing and the tragedy of Cambodian landmines. All in all, O’Shea’s tale is a triumphal run through troubled waters.

ODDZONE By Vicki Hyde New Holland Publishers, $29.99

icki Hyde is a leading New Zealand skeptic. She is chair-entity (!) of the New Zealand Committee of Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal aka NZ Skeptics and also manging editor of SciTechDaily Review. Mention of Little Green Men is enough to bring her out in a Large Green Rash. In this tidy tome, she disposes of UFOs and aliens, ghoulies and ghosties, mediums and psychics, possibly surviving moose and moa and, in the last and largest chapter, hoes into alternative archaeology. But before tackling these controversial notions head-on she has an interesting introductory chapter entitled a “Toolkit for the Mind”. She makes the philosophical point that “if something cannot be explained it does not mean it is inexplicable”. She reveals that her own early reading has charted the familiar path of the believer in “alternative thinking” e.g. lashings of science fiction (Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov) plus Immanuel Velikovsky and Erich Von Danikin. However, rather than becoming a convert, she has reacted back into the apostasy of being a skeptic. As she points out, many an investigator would give their eye teeth for absolute proof of mind-to-mind communication but various offers of considerable sums of money from the likes of Harry Houdini, James Randi as well as skeptic-minded

organisations in Australia, India, England and New Zealand have failed to produce convincing demonstrations and tend more to show the opposite. She concludes by noting that proving something is not the case is more or else impossible. To prove there were no moas left in Aotearoa, for instance, you would have to search every square inch of New Zealand. On the other hand, to prove there is a moa all you have to do is capture one and produce it – so far no one has succeeded. And it seems highly unlikely – though there’s always that lingering romantic hope. After all, the storm petrel was re-discovered 155 years after it had “disappeared”. Cloning, anyone? To her credit – in case you think Hyde is a cast-iron skeptic about anything that runs against science – she instances the existence of meteorites. The French Academy of Sciences dismissed their extraterrestrial origin until some 3000 stones fell near L’Aigle in 1803. No one now doubts that they come from beyond the earth. Some of the skeptical explanations for not-quite-explained phenomena are cheerfully romantic. The first New Zealand UFO sighting in New Zealand occurred in 1909. Hyde comments, “It’s just possible that a lone German Zeppelin cruised through New Zealand skies in 1909.” What an exciting idea! – worthy of a Peter Jackson film. On the other hand, alien abductions fail to convince her. Some UFO abduction proponents claim as many as five million Americans have been abducted while here in New Zealand the total is a more modest 3000. Barry Brailslford, Martin Doutre, Ross Wiseman and most recent of all, Gavin Menzies, are all considered by Hyde but in her view fail to prove their colourful theories concerning Waitaha tribe preceding Maori, or the Celts, Phoenicians or Chinese arriving in New Zealand prior to other ethnic groups. I am sure I am not alone in wanting some of these assertions to be authentic; and if they not literally true then they are the stuff of exciting fiction. The possibility of relevant special effects films is even more pulse-raising. Imagine a fleet of Chinese junks sailing into New Zealand and encountering Maori tribes! That Hyde has not quelled a mythological yearning in her own mind is indicted by her concluding thought that if hoofbeats heard at night prove to be a unicorn, give her a call – or is this her ever present skepticism?

UNCOMMON ENEMY By John Reynolds Polygraphia, $29.50

ohn Reynold’s first novel belongs to a genre that continues to fascinate – what would happen if Germany had won World War Two? Dozens of examples of the genre have been published. Prominent titles include The Sound of His Horn by Sarban, The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick and Fatherland by Robert Harris. The Sound of his Horn and Fatherland were both set in Europe and Philip Dick’s book set in America. Daringly, Reynolds places his Nazis in New Zealand. Uncommon Enemy is an intriguing alternative to the more expected Japanese takeover which is prominently featured in an essay in the recent anthology of speculative alternative history New Zealand As It Might Have Been edited by Stephen Levine – “What if Japan had Invaded New Zealand?” Curiously, many more novels have been written about Germany winning than Japan emerging victorious.

Though not formally part of this particular strand of alternative future fiction, C.K. Stead’s Smith’s Dream comes to mind as another exploration of a neo-fascist takeover of the New Zealand government. In Reynold’s well-detailed period piece, Auckland and nearby environs are the centre for much of the action. In particular, Auckland’s North Shore – a more than familiar literary landscape as a consequence of Devonport/Takapuna being New Zealand’s largest literary colony so to speak – is the backdrop of much of the vigorous in-fighting that features in this book. The hero of Uncommon Enemy is an idealistic high-spirited young man called Stuart Johnson, and from early on in the novel he is locked in combat with the odious and bullying Hamish Beavis. Initially, they are rivals for the affections of Carol Peterson, and later, perhaps a little predictably, given Beavis’s aggressive nature, they found themselves as ideological protagonists. Stuart joins the resistance and Hamish joins the Nazis. War time Premier Peter Fraser has a cameo role as a leader who pays the price for refus-

ing to make a Nazi salute by being assaulted by Von Ribbentrop’s henchmen. Reynolds describes an effective Germanisation of England and New Zealand – fascist Oswald Mosley is made Prime Minister of England, Winston Churchill’s home becomes a Gestapo headquarters and the Duke of Windsor is reinstated as King Edward V111; in New Zealand, the Northern Club is occupied and the Academic Values Authority squashes academic freedom at Auckland University College with the decrees of its New Order. A secondary thread in the plot which adds to the mounting drama of the story is the presence of a couple of White Rose members one of whom does not turn out quite as she seems to be. The White Rose was a student resistance group against the Nazis in wartime Germany. The novel reaches an exciting climax which leaves a lingering strand of hope for the future of the resistance movement. Reynolds’ novel should be enjoyed by those old enough to remember New Zealand’s wartime years but also by younger generations interested in the dark possibility of Nazi rule.

This Valentines Day say it with candles from Wax Works

Dozens of designs handcrafted in New Zealand to choose from, with a variety of scents and colours to suit your mood Stockists nationwide, see www.waxworks.co.nz for details INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 85

seeLIFE MUSIC

The sophomore dilemma Chris Philpott finds two artists looking for crucial second-album success Brooke Fraser Albertine

Foo Fighters Skin and Bones

Gwen Stefani The Sweet Escape

ow known nationwide as much for her good looks as for her penchant for songwriting, the gorgeous and highly talented Brooke Fraser, daughter of All Black legend Bernie Fraser, returns with her sophomore album, Albertine. Lead by first single “Deciphering Me”, Albertine is a much more focused affair, missing much of the variance in style that made her debut album, What To Do With Daylight, such a massive hit 2 years ago. While vocally Fraser is stretched more than on her debut, the style here seems far more formulaic, and she seems to be following a particular pattern with each of the tracks here. Luckily, for the most part, it works. Lyrically, Fraser examines 2 main themes, primarily relationship, likely influenced by her time at Hillsong church in Sydney, Australia; an experience which has also had a noticeable, but positive, effect on the finished sound of Albertine. Fraser also closely examines her worldview, shaped by her recent travels in Africa with charity organisation World Vision. All in all, this is a very strong showing, although it does seem to drag on a little towards the end of the album. Despite this, Albertine, and Fraser, are worth keeping an eye on in 2007.

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o you’re a rock band with 12 years and 5 albums under your belt, you’ve achieved all you could have dreamed, and you are wondering which direction to head in next. Such is the (extremely fortunate) predicament the Foo Fighters found themselves in last year. Skin and Bones is effectively a continuation of a tangent the band started with the second disc of 2005 release In Your Honour, a disc made up entirely of acoustic tracks – recorded live at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles in August 2006, Bones is a collection of highlights from that disc, mixed with a handful of Foo Fighters standards, including “Everlong”, “Big Me” and “My Hero”. As far as live recordings go, Skin and Bones is incredibly high quality. Along with the 4 main members of the band, the use of violin, keys and an extra guitar really give the songs that ‘oomph’ that I imagine an acoustic recording of this type would need. Frontman Dave Grohl’s gifted songwriting and performing talents hold everything together well, helping the album flow brilliantly. This is not just an album for fans of the Foo Fighters, but would also make a great introduction to the band. Highly recommended.

t’s a curious phenomenon that many recording artists fall under what is called the “sophomore curse” – that is, they ride high on the success of their debut album, and then fall seriously short of expectations with their second release. The question for Gwen Stefani, after the huge success of debut Love Angel Music Baby, which spawned 5 hit singles, is whether The Sweet Escape is going to meet the expectations of a tough pop music audience. The answer, in this reviewer’s mind at least, is a resounding no. Its not that the songs are poorly constructed or badly produced, but more a case of repetitiveness. Stefani has really just produced a second album which doesn’t grow or expand on anything she did on her debut. Worse still is the fact that some of the best aspects of Love Angel Music Baby are totally missing; gone are the pop-rock and synth aspects of the first album, replaced by the dull bass and beats of run-of-themill radio hip-hop. The Sweet Escape isn’t a horrible album and will surely appeal to fans of radio pop music. But it doesn’t challenge listeners in any way, and certainly doesn’t offer anything new, creatively speaking.

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seeLIFE MOVIES

Dreaming of diamonds One works, one doesn’t Dreamgirls Rated: M (Contains drug references) Starring: Jamie Foxx, Beyonce Knowles, Jennifer Hudson, Eddie Murphy Directed by: Bill Condon 130 minutes

ny way you look at it, Dreamgirls works. As a showcase for individual performers, this film adaptation of the Broadway musical will launch the relatively unknown Jennifer Hudson into full-fledged stardom and revive the reputation of veteran Eddie Murphy. As a bit of social commentary, the film examines nearly two decades of popular entertainment, from African-American culture’s suppression by a white establishment to its ultimate triumph. And as pure entertainment, Dreamgirls grabs us with the first scene and never lets go. Director Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters, Kinsey and the screenplay for Chicago) masterfully blends all the elements of the movie musical, giving us a story that despite its broad strokes has moments of shattering intimacy and ribald humor. Roughly inspired by the story of the Supremes, Dreamgirls begins in the early

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‘60s in Detroit with a trio of teenaged singers struggling for recognition at a talent show. Deena (Beyonce Knowles) is the slender pretty one. Lorrell (Anika Noni Rose) is the silly one. The most talented of the three is Effie (Hudson), a big girl with a bigger voice. Calling themselves the Dreamettes, the three fall under the spell of a fast-talking young manager, Curtis (Jamie Foxx), who takes charge of their careers, dictating their look and repertoire and transforming them from naive young things in frilly frocks to well-coiffed stars of the chiltlin circuit. But Curtis, a manipulative schemer of Machiavellian intensity, is only getting started. He believes the Dreamettes can be molded to appeal not only to black audiences but to whites as well. The girls can be the foundation of Curtis’ own record label (if you’re thinking Berry Gordy and Motown, you’re on the mark). All it will take is some tweaking of their image. For starters, that means projecting the beautiful Deena as the lead singer and reducing the other two girls to backup status. When the willful Effie objects to being downgraded, Curtis kicks her out of the group and out of his bed. That’s the setup for Effie’s big solo number, “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going,” a betrayed woman’s defiant plea for love.

It made a star of actress Jennifer Holiday when she sang it in the Broadway show, and it will do the same thing for Hudson. When it’s over, don’t be surprised if the movie audience erupts in applause. But then Dreamgirls is thick with terrifically performed musical numbers. The film’s recreation of old-style soul revues is dead on, and Condon cannily explores the evolution of black music during this era. Early on he cuts from a soul singer delivering a gutsy, bluesy number to that same song – slowed down into a syrupy slog – being performed on television by a squeaky clean white kid and two girls in poodle skirts. It’s a great throwaway visual gag that says volumes about how black music was watered down for Caucasian consumption. (Not that the money- and power-mad Curtis won’t do the same thing.) The film moves along at such a brisk pace there’s not a lot of time for conventional character development. Indeed, these are mostly stock characters, stereotypes we’ve encountered before. But here’s the magic of musicals: The songs illuminate the inner life of the characters well beyond what’s in the script. Among the movie’s many joys is Murphy’s scintillating turn as James “Thunder” Early, a substance-abusing soul man who bears more than a passing resemblance to James Brown. Murphy

turns out to be a terrific singer, and his portrayal of a performer who struggles to conform to changing audience tastes provides a cautionary tale about straying too far from one’s roots. Dreamgirls has it both ways. On a superficial level it’s a wildly entertaining showbiz story. But look a little deeper and you’ll find the broad sweep of American popular culture. Mostly you’ll have a great time. Reviewed by Robert W. Butler

Blood Diamond Rated: R Starring: Jimi Mistry, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, Michael Sheen Directed by: Edward Zwick 138 minutes

hat with the cast lurching and hopscotching through hailstorms of gunfire and artillery shells, it must have taken lots of stamina to film Blood Diamond. It certainly takes loads to watch it.

Perhaps the goofiest message movie ever made, it aims to rally viewers to a cause that must look quite pressing from the vantage point of a superstar’s RollsRoyce: We must all make sure when purchasing diamonds that they do not come from war-torn regions of Africa. Let me note that on my shopping list right next to skim milk and frozen pizza. The film gives us Leonardo DiCaprio as a brash Zimbabwean soldier of fortune turned diamond smuggler. During the 1990s civil war in Sierra Leone, he learns of a gigantic diamond discovered, and hidden, by a fisherman (Djimon Honsou). The notably picky DiCaprio, who has starred in only six films since Titanic, presumably signed on for the chance to do a R-r-r-r-r-r-hodesian accent. It’s hard to see any other explanation for agreeing to a script that should be held by two fingers at arm’s length and dropped in the nearest rubbish bin. Although Blood Diamond carries an air of social importance (it is directed by Ed Zwick, that one-man cavalcade of nobility who gave us Glory, The Siege, Courage Under Fire and The Last Samurai), it is

“

It must have taken lots of stamina to film Blood Diamond. It certainly takes loads to watch it

”

simply a mindless action flick with gallons of bloodshed. The characterizations are shallow and the film, while using massacres of natives and teeming displacedpersons camps for tear-jerking effect, gives no insights into the political unrest in the region. Tying an action adventure to documented facts wouldn’t be difficult, but the noisy, insubstantial Blood Diamond exists in that fantasy land where the good guys can outrun explosions and the bad guys’ machine guns never hit their target. Neither does this film, by a long shot. Reviewed by Colin Covert

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 89

seeLIFE DVDs

Dead man’s last laugh Critics panned Pirates 2, but it took US$1 billion at the box office Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest PG-13 (for intense sequences of adventure violence, including frightening images), 154 minutes

ollywood’s smart guys predicted producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski were sailing into disaster with 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. After all, no swashbuckling pirate movie had made money since the 1950s. It was a film based on a theme park ride, for Pete’s sake, and was cast mostly with unknowns _ except for Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush, neither of whom had ever starred in a monster hit. We know how that turned out. Black Pearl grossed US$340 million, buoyed by its pirates-as-ghost-story plot, endless special effects and especially by Depp’s off-the-deep-end performance as the gloriously fey Captain Jack Sparrow. Here’s the weird part: The Pirates sequel, Dead Man’s Chest, is precisely the disaster they were expecting from the first movie. Plotless, essentially characterless and purposeless (unless you count the desire to make a load of money), the second

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Pirates (a third has already been filmed) has been beautifully shot, impeccably edited and is a veritable master class in technical craftsmanship. It also makes no sense, is leadenly paced, has only a handful of so-so laughs and chronically mistakes big for better. Painfully self-indulgent, it runs for two-and-a-half-hours and feels like an endless version of the theme park ride that inspired it. Worse, it’s open ended. To see how it’s resolved, you have to go to the next installment scheduled for release later in 2007. Reviewed by Robert W. Butler

GEOFF THOMAS’ NEW SNAPPER SECRETS G, 120 minutes

HOODWINKED G, 80 minutes

HUNGER FOR THE WILD G, 160 minutes

whodunit for kids and adults alike, this DVD snuck out just before Christmas and is a welcome addition to the holiday arsenal. The premise is simple enough: did the Wolf get framed in the Red Riding Hood story? Throw in a kind of CSI: New York subplot and the same kind of humour as Shrek, and this movie becomes a fairytale with a very comedic twist. Featuring the voices of Anne Hathaway as Red, Glenn Close as Granny and David Ogden-Stiers as the Detective. Reviewed by Ian Wishart

nother seasonal release. It’s been 16 years since Thomas first produced the VHS version of Snapper Secrets, now he’s back with a fresh take on DVD. At 120 minutes it is full feature length and runs the gamut of targeting, baiting, tackling and landing the big ones using the latest baits, lures and technology. The mother of all snapper featured on the DVD front cover should be a giveaway for any lingering doubters. Reviewed by Ian Wishart

ellington restaurateurs Steve Logan and Al Brown, of Logan Brown’s, take a hike around New Zealand in search of wild game and recipes in this seven episode DVD of their TVNZ series. From crayfish at the West Coast’s rugged Punakaiki rocks or whitebaiting in the nearby Mokihinui River, to encounters with wild pig up the Whanganui, pheasant in Rotorua or floundering on the Kawhia Harbour – every installment is mouth-watering. Reviewed by Ian Wishart

106594 HEP Advert

5/11/06

11:24 AM

Page 1

The world’s first waterproof and shockproof digital compact camera – the Olympus Mju Tough 720SW

699

The new Olympus Tough 720SW is a world’s first – fully waterproof to a depth of 3m, shockproof from a height of 1.5m, yet slim, sleek and highly stylish.

RRP

The Olympus Mju Tough 720SW is available in two stylish colours: Silver and Aqua Blue. Features:

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3m waterproof

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1.5m shockproof

The highly innovative Tough 720SW suits a wide range of everyday uses: whether you’re a sportsman wanting to take pictures while snowboarding or mountain-biking; a fashionista who wants the latest sleek and stylish camera that copes with spilt champagne or party crashes; or a hectic mum who wants peace-of-mind that her camera will stand up to being played with by the kids or falling out of her bag.

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7.1-megapixel

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3x optical zoom

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2.5 inch LCD screen

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Movie Mode with sound

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Bright Capture Technology

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Built-in help guide

Fashioned for everyday punishment.

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New easy-to-use menus

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Slim lithium ion battery with power for approximately 200 shots

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19.1MB internal memory plus takes xD-Picture card memory

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Up to 3.7 frames per second high-speed continuous shooting

www.olympus.com.au/tough Endorsed by the

For more information contact: H.E.Perry Ltd. Phone (03) 339 0028 / (09) 303 1479 Available from all leading photography and specialty outlets.

touchLIFE

TOYBOX

Fatman itube

Coming up shortly are a range of integrated valve amplifiers at affordable prices. All designed by skilled audio engineers in the UK, these designs offer superb sound and stunning visual appeal. The range includes Single ended and push / pull designs, ranging from the iTube 182 at 18 watts up to the iTube 402 at 40 watts per channel. Please contact Paul Quilter on 07 859 2512 or 021 764 336 for more information and the details of your nearest stockist. Email paul@pqimports.co.nz or visit www.pqimports.co.nz

Returne of the valve What's new in audio

Aquos LCD TV

The first LCD screen in New Zealand to feature Sharp’s 8th generation glass, the 46” features a “Full-Spec” High Definition LCD panel from Sharp’s new Kameyama Plant No. 2, the world’s most advanced LCD production facility. This newly developed Black Advanced Super View Full- HD 1080P LCD panel boasts an incredible native contrast ratio of 2000:1 in combination with a full-motion video response rate of 4msec* to produce excellent black enhancement and clear, vivid video reproduction. This means viewers will enjoy stunning high-definition video images in vivid, vibrant detail and with ultra -crisp blacks, regardless of their viewing environment. The new Aquos LC46G7 looks as fantastic as it performs and can be either wall mounted or stand alone. This new model also offers wide viewing angles of 1760 from top to bottom, or left to right, enabling greater freedom in viewing position. The LC46G7 will be available in early February 2007. For more information please contact Anna Smith, Sharp Corporation of New Zealand Ltd, phone (09) 920 4114.

Sharp’s new TV Cabinet

Designed to complement the Sharp Aquos LCD TV range, the easy to assemble ANPR1000H can also be used with other brands. It features a 2.1 Channel Front Surround System delivering high power Sound Playback. Boasting 300W RMS Total Output Power, the ANPR1000H offers truly remarkable home theatre sound quality without the complicated setup of multiple speakers, wires and components. The ANPR1000H, Aquos rack system, is due for release in February 2007. For more information please contact Anna Smith, Sharp Corporation of New Zealand Ltd, phone (09) 920 4114.

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CONTROL4 MEDIA CONTROLLER

The Control4 Media Controller digitally stores music collections and delivers simultaneous audio streams over a wired or wireless home network. Utilizing online music and movie recognition, the Media Controller makes managing your music collection a breeze. The Media Controller can also be the centre of a complete home automation system. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a sophisticated, and yet simple platform, to control lighting, security, temperature and more throughout the home. It communicates with and controls other devices include CD players, A/V receivers, DVD players and in addition when used in conjunction with iPod and MP3 players, allows you to select your music using cover art on your TV, complete a play list, store thousands of song tiles and play music in different rooms. All this convenience in a practical and affordable home entertainment solution, that doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t require remodeling your entire home to install the system. For more information visit www.control4.com or contact John Murt on 07 5471 1062 or email johnmurt@highprofile.com.au.

Blackbox M14

Blackbox M14 noise cancelling headphones represent the finest of Kiwi innovation and ingenuity. Designed for the frequent traveller, M14's boast the latest in advanced noise cancellation technology from New Zealand's own Phitek Systems. These very comfortable ear candies block up to 92% of background noise and provide listeners with an ability to enjoy their favourite music in peace and quiet. Image that, sitting on an aircraft and being able to hear your inflight movie! Blackbox M14's are supplied with a detachable audio cable to connect to your mp3 player, PC or PSP, luxury carrying case and airline adaptors. RRP $426 Blackbox M14's. For more information, please visit www.blackboxonline.com

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, February 2007, 93

realLIFE

LAST WORD

Profits of doom

Guest commentator John Clements takes a light-hearted crack at Global Warming ‘As I was going to the fair, I saw a man who wasn’t there He wasn’t there again today, Oh! how I wish he’ d go away’.

o, approximately, goes the little ditty learnt years ago at school. It seemed ‘right’ then. But now one sees the flaw in the logic. It took a while! It’s a faulty premise leading to an illogical conclusion. Yet perhaps one can – in one’s imagination – ‘see things that aren’t there’? If you really, really, want to believe someone or something you can. Just as some people believe in those that profess to talk to the dead, some folk hypnotize more easily than others, and some reckon there are UFOs. But why do they have to ‘fly’ and be ‘objects’? It sells better – that’s why. That’s how global warming enthusiasts like Al Gore, greenies, the IPCC and sundry others attack the problem. There

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is nothing to see, nothing tangible, so it’s easy to wool pull. They do. Their main prop the ‘hockey stick’ – indicating a bit of an upturn in ‘global’ temperature in the 20th century – has, it seems, been proved crook. A crook crook no less. But to hell with that, forget it, and mercilessly press on with the doom and gloom message. We’re gonna die or at least drown. Mr Gore tells us we must get on bikes. I tried, fell off and globally warmed my knees. Change light bulbs. Done that. Plant a tree. I’ve planted dozens of ‘em and I know of others that have too – yet we’re told we’re still spinning crazily towards ‘over temp’. Clearly bikes, bulbs and trees aren’t working too well. But of course it suits well intentioned ‘green’ people and those possibly aspiring to, or in, political office, to push the barrow for other reasons – sensible ones. Well one, to be precise. We do need to reduce

pollution even if only because it’s bad for the lungs. And of course we should reduce the number of cars on the road. They’re a most ‘inconvenient truth’ – especially when one goes shopping. Trees are interesting. Tree ‘sinks’, it seems, are the answer. Well they were when Labour tried to figure out how many we need to soak up our carbon emissions. That the government missed the arithmetic by tens of millions of dollars and trees and – wow – discovered that far from being in ‘credit’, we were in deep excrement, is not surprising since they couldn’t even figure out how much they’d spent on their election campaign whose ‘numbers’ were easy by comparison. It sounds awful when ‘earth people’ and genuine conservationists say GW (in this case bush – not Bush) is caused because Asians and South Americans are ‘decimating rain forests’. That is bad. But has any-

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one bothered to count the zillions of trees being planted on a daily basis ‘planet-wide’ by people like, er...me? No. So the maths is utterly flawed and maybe even impossible. One has to wonder where all the smoke from those ‘decimated rain forests’goes? And at the same time wonder where all the CO2 goes? ‘We Must Save The Planet’. How? By getting on bikes, changing light bulbs and planting things? What bunkum! And what profound arrogance to think that mankind is so omnipotent (and opinionated) that we might be able to change – even slightly influence – God’s grand plan for the planet. A plan frequently modified and adjusted through natural cycles and occasional ‘catastrophes’. Like Al Gore. Now, after The Book: ‘Earth in Balance’ Al gives us The Film: An Inconvenient Truth. The ‘inconvenience’ of truth of course works both ways. But Al steers well clear of any possibility other than that we are warming up. It woud be hellishly ‘inconvenient’ to find that we may not be. Of course the truth is somewhere in the middle. Some places (on the planet) are in fact cooler and some warmer. My back yard is cooler than it used to be but no one has even asked me why. It’s because I planted a bunch of trees that cause shadow that reduces the heat. It’s a highly complex phenomenon. Ice in the Antarctic is accreting. Elsewhere it is not. We only get pictures and reports (strangely in reputable magazines) of places where ice has ‘disappeared’. The odd glacier in Switzerland has ‘disappeared’. No half measures. Gone! Where will the Gnomes ski? Surely all glaciers would ‘disappear’ or at least reduce in size if affected by the alleged ravages of global warming? Sea levels are predicted to rise by 23 feet – or a few inches – depending on how alarmed you want to be. A 23 foot rise would wipe out vast tracts of India, Vietnam, China and Bangladesh – to say nothing of my back yard. But it had better get a move on because in the past 50 years the tidal range on the coast where I live has changed not one millimetre. Surely since most oceans are ‘connected’ the rise would affect all coasts? Not just a few places under the ‘ideal fluids property’ where tides (and gasses) can gather in huge quantities if enough scientists and pollies say they can. To hell with physics. And all of a sudden we are believing politicians. Holy mackerel! 74% of

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Americans, we are told, are ‘more convinced now about global warming than a couple of years ago’. They would be. Many have now seen The Film. Yanks tend to be ‘moved’ by movies. TV devotes 24/7 to movies. Yanks are brainwashed by movies and TV. But hang on a minute, 95% of US residents believed Bush’s ‘take’ on Iraqi WMDs. And with slight over generalization, the problem is ‘Worse than anyone thought’. Well, that’s not right because I don’t think it’s worse. And I doubt that everyone has been asked. What about the Masai for example? Or the Taliban? Have they made a comment? And a mate of mine doesn’t think it’s ‘worse’ either and he’s got several science degrees. So not everyone does think ‘it’s worse’. An earnest young lady, looking distinctly in need of a job, asked me on the street: ‘Are you concerned about saving the planet?’ That’s a loaded question and she knew it. If I say ‘No’ I’m labelled an inconsiderate twit (and there is some truth in that so my wife tells me) but if I say ‘Yes’ I am trapped into taking some action like planting trees and changing yet more light bulbs. I said ‘No, I think God, through nature, is coping very well thank you”. She said: ‘Well piss off then!’. I did. But being in a contemplative mood I thought about the young lady’s question again as I sauntered away with her strikingly green eyes boring a hole in my fifth vertebra. I really do believe that the planet (well the fair amount of it that I’ve seen) has proved itself very capable of ‘saving’ itself. God moves in a mysterious way….etc. Of course it hasn’t had to try that hard given man’s feeble attempts to, well…‘destroy’, it I guess. On the contrary, I reckon mankind has done quite a bit to assist Mother Nature. For example, our ‘planetary’ drainage (except for some rural places in the UK that I’ve visited) is way ahead of what it was in the 19th century. Many countries re-cycle quite well (which should impress Al Gore given his predilection with bikes). And I see there is a move to get ladies to use re-usable unmentionables. That, it seems, will mean less waste and will thus reduce global warming. I can’t see it catching on. Hot and cold flushes Not bicycles, in this case, but cyclical forecasts by ‘world scientists’ over the last 100 years or so. They go like this

1895 – ‘The world may freeze up again’ 1912 – ‘Encroaching ice age’ 1923 – ‘Ice age coming’. ‘Canada and Switzerland will be wiped out’ Then, a mere 10 years on… 1933 – ‘Longest warm spell since 1776’. Yeah Right! 1974 – ‘Near certain crop failures (due cold) in a decade’ 1975 – ‘Mass starvation, anarchy and violence (due cold)… blah , blah, blah’ Nothing much happened ‘temperaturewise’, either up or down for 30 years, then … 2005 – ‘Greenland gaining ice and mass and warmer than it was in the 1930s’ 2006 – ‘North polar ice cap melting at an alarming rate’. 2007 – Worse than anyone thought’. ‘The climate is crashing’. Duck! ‘The worst problem facing mankind’ (Prince Charles and Al Gore). Of course, no ‘global warmers’ mention that NZ has just suffered one of its coolest winters on record. Is it not just possible that some places are a bit warmer and some cooler? Instead we get: ‘Kiribati, 6ft above sea level, is vanishing (sic) and we need to prepare for a mass exodus’. Welcome to Godzone! In July Tuvalu was supposed to have been swamped. It wasn’t. Ask the odd Tuvaluan about it and they say: ‘Rubbish, we’ve had these tidal surges for years’. …And on and on it goes it goes. Selective reporting. Nothing to counter it. A sham. The Labour Government thought ‘fart tax’ a good idea for our farmers but as soon as the Poms find an economist with a knighthood (and blinkers?) to say there should be a Kiwifruit transport tax, it’s a bad idea. Where’s the consistency? Both ideas are crap (to stick with the vernacular). But what about the great seer Nostradamus? You’d think he’d have foreseen earth’s ‘meltdown’. Not so. For 2007 his major forecast is: ‘Death of France beginning’. Yeah right! And for the next 50 years, during which time, according to Al Gore, Prince Charles, the IPCC & Co, much of the planet (not just bits of it) will be ‘submerged’ or ‘vanish’ dear old Nostra’s best guesses are that a few Popes and ‘Asiatic Leaders’ will get the chop. He could attend to a few punters closer to home I reckon. And that’s about it. John Clements is a 70 year old helicopter flight examiner and sceptic