Investigate, May 2006 by Investigate Magazine

New Zealand’s most talked-about magazine...

INVESTIGATE

Louise Nicholas Trial

WHAT THE JURY NEVER HEARD

Danny Butler

Ritalin

v the flatmate v the deathbed confession v the missing police files v and much, much more inside

War in Sudan

Danny Butler breaks a nine year silence

Life on the run, the end of his marriage, & the sect that took his son

Drunk in charge of patients:

NZ psych unit run by drunks, pedophiles & a killer – they were on staff!

Issue 64

PLUS:

Fluoride – disturbing new studies ADHD – scientists caught shredding

$7.95 May 2006

May 2006:

LOUISE ON TRIAL:

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Volume 6, Issue 64,May 2006

FEATURES BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT

WHAT THE JURY NEVER HEARD

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST

DANNY BUTLER LASHES OUT

ADHD: SHREDDED EVIDENCE

THE FORGOTTEN WAR

MAJOR STUDY DUMPS ON FLUORIDE

It has turned out to be the most controversial court case in recent years, but what went wrong with Louise Nicholas’ case? MARIA SLADE was in the Auckland High Court for the duration of the trial, and says there were some key turning points in the case

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The story began its public life as a media investigation. IAN WISHART retraces the evidence that kickstarted this inquiry – much of it never put before the jury even though it might have swung the case – and looks at the difficulties of historic rape prosecutions

Is it time for a full-scale inquiry into our mental health facilities? IAN WISHART uncovers a New Zealand psychiatric unit attached to a major hospital where the doctors were comatose drunk, the nurses were having sex with the patients, and the orderlies included two pedophiles and a killer

A recent newspaper article painted deported Irish asylum seeker Danny Butler as a womanising layabout who destroyed his family. Naturally, Butler hasn’t taken it lying down. In this exclusive interview Butler breaks a nine year silence and speaks for the first time about his life since leaving New Zealand, as IAN WISHART reports

A former New Zealand doctor has helped expose Swedish scientists who shredded evidence on the so-called Attention Deficit disorder rather than let colleagues verify it. VIVIEN EDWARDS investigates

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Sudan’s terror gangs have killed more than 200,000, while the world twiddles its thumbs. SHASHANK BENGALI is in Khartoum

With Hamilton about to vote on a fluoridation referendum, there’s bad news for the Ministry of Health as a prestigious international study casts major doubts on the safety of fluoride in drinking water Cover: PRESSPIX

EDITORIAL AND OPINION Volume 6, issue 64, ISSN 1175-1290

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

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Contributing Writers: James Morrow, Rachel Robinson, Chris Forster, Peter Hensley, Paul Belien, Chris Carter, Mark Steyn, Chris Philpott, Michael Morrissey, Miranda Devine, Richard Prosser, Claire Morrow and the worldwide resources of Knight Ridder Tribune, UPI and Newscom Art Direction Design & Layout

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Editorial The Creep Miranda Devine on Iraq Laura Wilson on schooling Mark Steyn on a success story Richard Prosser on dog microchips Chris Hanlon on local loops Chris Carter on brothels The Gospel of Judas

Heidi Wishart Bozidar Jokanovic

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FOCAL POINT

EDITORIAL A time to take breath

f you’ve picked up this magazine, there’s a good chance you’ve seen the front cover, and absorbed the fact that we’re doing a major story on the Louise Nicholas case. Like many people, you may have heard the bush telegraph of speculation about the suppressed evidence in the case. There are good reasons for suppression orders, and I have the utmost sympathy for High Court judge Tony Randerson as he struggled to get four aces out of the kids’ “Snap” hand he’d been dealt. There were things, clearly, that he didn’t want interfering with the right of anyone to a fair trial, and sometimes natural justice requires that suppression orders continue for awhile after a trial has ended, for reasons that will ultimately become clear once they’re lifted. Nonetheless, suppres“There is a danger in holding sion orders in the modern up men like Clint Rickards, Bob era are beginning to take on the appearance of old Schollum or Brad Shipton as King Canute standing on poster boys for Mens Rights” the foreshore ordering the waves to go backwards. With the internet offering instant, and often anonymous, access to upload and download information it is becoming impossible to keep a lid on material that the public finds genuinely interesting. New Zealand courts can huff and puff all they like, but they have no jurisdiction over a blogsite hosted in Nevada which accepts input from New Zealanders. To all intents and purposes, the internet has become a kind of information tax haven, where authorities can have great difficulty tracing movement outside territorial borders. Sure, policing agencies have multilateral agreements to track child porn on the net and so they should, but it would be difficult to see Nevada State Police getting overly excited about a call from the New Zealand Government wanting to trace the person responsible for a blog posting that breached a court suppression order. For a start, suppression orders are extremely rare in the US justice system, where freedom to receive and impart information is a fundamental constitutional right. In the US, courts have long ago learned to deal with the reality that information gets out. In New Zealand, it seems, we haven’t. Yes, in an ideal world criminals would receive an absolutely fair trial based solely on the evidence in front of the court. But one has to point out the obvious: we don’t live in

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an ideal world and ironically crims have a large hand in that particular state of affairs. In an ideal world, teenage girls wouldn’t be used as blow-up dolls by men who get their jollies using police batons as sex toys. I mean, what’s with that anyway? In an ideal world, a police officer is there to help you, not deflower you violently while you whimper. In an ideal world, potentially incriminating evidence wouldn’t go missing from police files. There are those who think the jury made the right call, because too many women falsely accuse men of rape. This is true. But there is a danger in holding up men like Clint Rickards, Bob Schollum or Brad Shipton as poster boys for Mens Rights. At best case scenario – the one the jury ultimately bought – their exploits were a sick, reckless adventure of Icarus-like proportions. At worst, the jury got it wrong and those men truly are the violent raping thugs Louise Nicholas alleges them to be. Rickards, Schollum and Shipton – at the time of the alleged offences – were not the sweet family men they’ve been latterly portrayed as. To put it bluntly, by their own or their lawyers’ admissions, they were amoral chauvinist pigs who actually give the porcine community a bad name. In this issue of Investigate, we haven’t breached the suppression orders. Instead, our court correspondent Maria Slade takes an in-depth look at what went wrong in the courtroom for Nicholas, while the magazine also takes a look at the information uncovered by the news media back in 2004 that set off this whole powderkeg. Much of that information never made it before the jury in the recent trial, and some of it could have been devastating. The information in this issue takes it about as far as any media organization can legally go. We recognize that many of those who’ve been disseminating suppressed information on the internet may be reading this issue. Our advice to you is very simple: for reasons we are not allowed to disclose, there are strong, valid reasons for those suppression orders to remain in place for now. If you keep on breaching them, you will ultimately do Louise Nicholas a disservice. For now, New Zealanders should sit and wait, confident that the High Court does in fact know what it is doing, even if people can’t see why at the moment.

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VOX POPULI

COMMUNIQUES NAME CALLING

I do not find much satisfaction in reading the twisted headlines forced down my retinas by my Uberliberal ISP, XTRA, however today a particularly good one was there; the one where “Clark Calls Editor a ‘Creep’”. Normally I get this absolute liberal drivel sprawled out all over the computer monitor, but this evening, there was finally a ray of sunshine! You know that when the “so-liberal-she’s-a-commie” PM resorts to colloquial name calling, you have made an impact. Liberals absolutely excel in name calling. They can only lash out at people by trying to hang disreputable and undesirable labels on them, hoping to draw the heat away from themselves. Liberals are only truly happy when they can resort to name calling and other primary school tactics. Bravo, you have found the soft spot! I do hope you continue to chip away at it, because I’d love to see the PM lose her mind and go screaming, stomping and rampaging around on national TV, like Hillary Clinton does in the US, in a mindless, rabid fashion. Would do wonders for her re-election campaign to have video footage replayed over and over again, ad nauseum. I think it was well stated and very objective, balanced journalism. Therefore, Ian Wishart gets all my “cool points” for the week! Raisin Pie all around! Mike Evans, via email

PM’S OUTBURST

The Prime Minister’s recent outburst, directed at the editor of Investigate, only proves that the magazine is fulfilling its function well in keeping a close eye on politicians. The recent revelations concerning the British Labour party are a further reminder that politicians and political parties are not to be trusted. They need to be kept under close scrutiny continually. Philip Hair, via email

BE GLAD YOU’RE A CREEP

Take it as a compliment. The comments by Helen Clark today about you uncovering the shortcomings of her hand picked cronies should be encouragement enough to keep doing what you are doing. While we all have things we have done in the past that we would like to forget, a higher standard of behaviour is required of those in lofty positions.

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Be more concerned if she thanked you for being more co-operative. Keep up the good work. Bruce Ferguson, via email

THE PEOPLE’S CREEP

Concerning Helen Clark labeling you a creep, Take it as a badge of honour. Anyone that gets up her nose cannot be all bad! Hummmph! There’s a visual image you may want to repress... Anyway, Good on ya ! Chris Pennington, via email

A V.I.C.

Congratulations on being recognised as an important kiwi by the Prime Minister. It seems so few people do what they are “employed” to do, while you now get singled out and awarded an honorific. Well done. Keep up the good work and never back off. Ka kite. Graeme Camp, via email

OF VESTAL VIRGINS

Helen Clark has been somewhat intemperate in her description of Ian Wishart as “a scandal-monger … (and a) creep …” Would it be equally acceptable for someone to describe her as a dictatorial harridan? Does she expect us to see her as a “vestal virgin”? Surely her comfortable relationship with the police and with the Solicitor-General proves that such a high standard is not necessary. After all Terence Arnold would seem to be her very, very, very good friend if not a trusted ally. Unfortunately, our somewhat compromised democracy is in dire need of investigative journalism to counteract the constant usurpation of power by the Executive. There are numerous mechanisms by which the Clark administration wields undue power. Intimidation of the media is just one of them. For example: The disbursement of public funds to the union movement through the employment relations contestable fund facilitates attacks on the opposition by unions such as the EPMU, which represents journalists. Another powerful stranglehold on democracy is the farcical abuse of the Parliamentary Question system by Labour’s ‘coalition of the willing.’ Winston Peters appears

to have become the patsy questioner for the Clark administration; and his constant vitriolic attacks on the National Party opposition would seem to be contrary to the best interests of many people who voted for NZ First. May all our journalists keep up their good work. Hugh Webb, Hamilton

HEL’ RAISIN’

Helen and her gang must be stopped, and it’s influential people and organisations such as Investigate that will be of help to see them removed from power for the sake of this nation. I along with so many are amazed at the way nothing seems to stick to the PM, but she appears flustered by you, and now is resorting to name calling - a sure sign of someone under pressure. Mike Heard, via email

SCHOOL TXT BULLYING

I write to comment on Alex Teka’s tragic death. Acknowledging the courage shown by Deanne Teka in her candid presentation of the facts. Such courage is admirable. Exposing one’s personal loss and pain to public scrutiny is unbelievably frightening. Three years ago my son Daniel Gillies died in similar circumstances. Like Deanne we exposed our grief believing it would engender changes in culture, ensuring the safety of young people in the future. The nature of Daniel’s death attracted extensive media debate. This was the catalyst for many schools, revisiting existing, or creating new policies in regard to cell phone use at school. Like Deanne Teka, overwhelming empathy and support buoyed us. Sadly the intervening years have achieved little and I am very skeptical that current posturing will result in significant change. It is a tragedy in itself that the focus remains on text bullying. It is also unfair that schools are singled out. In our experience, schools in NZ have made a concerted effort to manage the

issue effectively. I congratulate schools that have increased student awareness and instigated policies to combat vulnerability. More than that they cannot do. A recent comment by a reporter covering this story for One News to “turn off the phone” is a good indicator of the complete lack of connection with technology dependence in the lives of our young people. Deanne Teka commented “the messages are still there when you turn it back on”. Add the fact that children’s television (NZ made) actively promotes cell phone use to elicit audience participation. This in itself could be seen as discriminating against children who have no access to the technology. Of particular concern when a competition between schools is involved and the only voting method promoted is texting. Text bullying is nothing more than a component of a much wider, more insidious issue. Bullying is rampant at all levels of our society. There is an increasing prevalence of bullying in the workplace. NZ has the highest incarceration rates of the OECD. The number of young people being held in prison cells is increasing. CYF is under enormous pressure. Our suicide rates are nothing to be proud of. In the past days we have seen a 13-year-old girl suspended from an Auckland College for stabbing another student in response to unrelenting verbal abuse. We as a society are failing. Why? NZ has a bureaucratic structure with a predilection for fitting people into boxes. A practice that infiltrates all aspects of policy development. We have government strategies which include Mental Health, Child Health, Disability, and Education but where are the linkages and collaboration? To succeed in a practical sense, the principles and priorities of these documents must translate into positive outcomes for individuals. The box approach has one guaranteed outcome. People will fall through the gaps. The deaths of Daniel and Alex are the responsibility of us all. We are all victims: the young people who have died unnecessarily, the young people who are now sentenced to bearing a lifetime

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006,

burden of guilt. We must work collaboratively as communities if we are to have any hope of addressing a trend, which is terrifying and for some participants irreversible. The destruction of young lives whether by bullying, crime, neglect, or abuse must stop! The way forward involves breaking down the silos and work in a more integrated way. To our leaders: Step up to the mark and support us. Make a sustainable difference. Stop isolating the symptoms and actively engage in treating the cause of the disease, or risk revisiting this debate in three years time, if not before. Helen Algar, Oamaru

EVOLUTION

Having followed the evolution/creation debate for some years I have grown used to placing evolutionists into categories. There are the intelligent proponents; they cite work by scientists like JBS Haldane and George Gaylord Simpson. Then there are the less knowledgeable and their sources are the works of populists like Richard Dawkins. The lowest rung however is occupied by those who reference people like Ian Plimer. Plimer’s exposé on the Creation Science Foundation, Telling Lies for God, was ably demolished on the Answers in Genesis website http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/Hot/Plimer.asp where Plimer’s fabrications and slanders are laid bare. An investigation headed by Clarrie Briese (former Chief Magistrate of New South Wales) found no substance at all in Plimer’s accusations. Terry Toohill should be asked what evidence we would expect to find after a global flood. Would we find massive numbers of animals buried in waterborne sediment; buried too quickly for normal decomposition to take place, so fast that delicate coprolites still remain? Perhaps ocean bottom-dwellers buried first under the deluge of silt, then swimmers, land animals, and then the birds as their wings finally fail? Humans would be underrepresented, clinging to flotsam until hunger and thirst finally caused them to fall into the maelstrom. From Manetho, via Josephus, we know that the Hyksos were expelled from Egypt around 1825BC, it is accepted they settled in Canaan and built Jerusalem, but the Israelites left Egypt in 1492BC some three hundred years later. The ruins of Jericho that concord with the biblical records have been dated between 1550BC and 1400BC, an agreement as close as any found in history. Plimer’s willingness to tell lies for evolution, so much so that some American sceptics are embarrassed by him, does not bode well for anyone who would use him as a source. Jason Clark, Auckland

ABOUT TOUGH QUESTIONS…

I would very much like the opportunity to reply in your magazine to the accusations you make in your column “Tough Questions” in April’s Investigate. You say I “fall into a trap of accepting the accuracy of an historical source outside the Bible, and assuming the Bible must be wrong”. This is most certainly not the case. Unlike many people I am simply prepared to consider all the evidence. In spite of what you say there are actually quite a few written records from the time. We’ve actually become bogged down with the Philistines. The problems for Abraham don’t just stop with them. You still have to explain how Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees. You have

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maintained that the Bible records ancient names. It seems to record modern ones as well. So who decided which bits to change? The Hittite and Aramaean problems have not been sorted out either. You could use the same arguments you have used with the Philistines of course. But it seems strange that all of them were around in the small region of Israel long before they are recorded elsewhere, even in what are considered to be their places of origin! We then have the problem of evidence for Solomon’s kingdom. For a huge kingdom it has left a staggeringly small amount of evidence. None, in fact. How do you explain that? I hope you have the courage to publish this letter. Terry Toohill WISHART RESPONDS:

Terry, it’s never about “courage”, only space. Picking up your last point, because we’ve dealt with others previously I believe, you are misinformed on evidence for the existence of Solomon. The Tel Dan inscription discovered in 1994 refers to a “ king of Israel” from “The House of David”, while the House of Yahweh Ostracon, a pottery shard from around 800 BC, records the donation of silver shekels to Solomon’s Temple, and is the oldest known reference to the Temple outside of the Bible. You also overlook that archaeologists think they might have now discovered part of David’s palace, as reported a couple of months ago. But add to that the fact that Solomon’s Temple was demolished by the Babylonians, and now lies underneath the most politically-contested piece of real estate in the world, I’ d say there are very good reasons why much of the history of Old Jerusalem has not been discovered.

PALESTINIAN LAND RIGHTS

Your article “Archaeology and the Bible” (February 2006) sadly illustrates how hard it is to deal with the history of Palestine without partisan distortions, and ideologically-driven propagandising. In asserting that finding a ninth century BCE inscribed stone bowl, at the site of what would have been a tiny village, represents `the discovery [of] the world’s oldest version of the modern alphabet’ you are not only factually wrong but miss the point. This is a claim that the discovery somehow proves that most people in that village would have been literate. Sorry, but it doesn’t. Even if it could be proved that the bowl originated in that village, which is unlikely, this would prove only that one person in that village was literate, at one time. Its discovery is suggestive but proves zilch. `The oldest version of the modern alphabet’ developed further south, in the Sinai region, nearly a thousand years earlier. The progress from a pictographic sign-system, as exemplified in Egyptian heiroglyphics, and a syllabary, as in Mesopotamian cuneiform, to an alphabet, with one sound per sign, is first seen with the `Proto-Sinaitic’ script, found on rocks, stones and potsherds, and the people who developed it were probably South Semitic people based in mining settlements. So, their descendants are more likely to be found among the Palestinians than among the Jews. At any rate, these Proto-Sinaitic letter-forms (some of them adapted from Egyptian pictographic signs) are generally recognisably the ancestors of the modern alphabet. The use of an alphabetical sign-system was carried north, and further developed, by the Phoenicians, who were thought to have

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come from Arabia, and developed settlements along the east Mediterranean coast; and it spread from them to the Canaanites. Inscriptions in the Canaanite language, an early form of Hebrew, have been found at their city of Ugarit, now Ras Shamra in Syria, from about 1450 BCE. The Abrahamic semi-nomadic tribes, who were Aramaeans from the north-east, settled among and eventually merged with the Canaanites, and generally adopted their language and its sign-system. All the same, the distinction between Hebrew and Aramaic languages, and scripts, persisted; and I was fascinated to learn from Iraqi Christian friends now living in my city that their first language is Aramaic. Lloyd Geering in his short book Who Owns the Holy Land? (2001) is wrong in asserting that the West Semitic people invented the alphabetical sign system about 1400 BCE (p.8), since he does not recognise that it had been invented by the Proto-Sinaitic people centuries earlier. What Geering does say is that the Hebrew king David, following his military victories over the Philistines, èstablished a mini-empire’ (p.13). The Philistines, of Greek origin, were forced back to their coastal cities, such as Gaza, Ashod and Askelon, and these retained their independence up to Roman times. Of writing of the èmpire’ ruled over by David and Solomon, however, you write of it as if it was a Jewish nation-state. Patently, an èmpire’ is an entity in which the leaders of one dominant ethnic group rule over others. After Solomon’s death, this mini-empire split into two kingdoms, Judah, with its capital at Jerusalem, and Israel, with its capital at Samaria. Ironically then, the Samaritan ethnic group, among the Palestinians, people who practise a relatively simple form of Judaism, have a stronger claim to be Israelites than the Israeli Jews do, who are by ancestry Judeans. They also claim to be the descendants of Isaac’s elder son Esau. Does all this pedantry matter? Unfortunately it does, because right-wing fundamentalist Christians all-too-often adopt the hard-line Zionist lines of rationalising to assert that somehow four million Palestinians don’t really have any claim to landrights in the land the ancestors of most of them have dwelt in for thousands, or many hundreds, of years. This provides licence for all kinds of gross brutality, cruelty, and racism. Given that the diverse ethnic groups that make up the Palestinian people are for the most part Semitic, this is a new and equally-lethal kind of anti-Semitism. One kind is no more excusable than the other. John C. Ross, Palmerston North WISHART RESPONDS:

I’m not arguing that the Palestinians don’t have land rights. To argue that would be likewise to argue that Pakeha have none. What is often overlooked in the Palestinian question is that fact that when Palestine was carved up in the first half of the 20 th century, something like 90% of the original Palestine returned to the control of the Palestinians who lived there. Many of those people are now called Jordanians. The remaining 10% was split into Israel and Palestine as we now know it, and the debate swings between Hamas who say the entire 10% belongs to them, and hardline Israelis who want about 7% of the land with 3% remaining in local Palestinian control.

A POST FROM THE DON

In addressing one of the points raised in my letter, the existence of disease-causative organisms, you maintain that evolutionists, in some desperation presumably, turn to “a negative form of the Intelligent Design argument to justify evolution – in this case, the concept that evolution must be true because an Intelligent Designer wouldn’t have done such a bad job of it”. However, as reiterated in my letter, the reality of evolution is based on overwhelming empirical evidence. It has nothing to do with Intelligent Design, a non-scientific concept, as a federal district court judge in the United States recently made abundantly clear. As previously intimated in this correspondence, the existence of obvious imperfections or undesirable elements (to which you allude above) pose no problem for the evolutionist – they are to be expected in a natural process of change that is clearly both amoral and opportunistic. On the other hand, disease-causative organisms and anatomical defects in humans, for example, do present a problem for those adhering to Intelligent Design. In spite of your attempt at rationalization on behalf of the deity – ‘the end justifies the means’ really does not wash in this case – such imperfections simply do not gel with the concept of a supremely intelligent, omnipotent, benevolent entity. Therefore I have to question your statement that “the manner of death is almost irrelevant”. Surely it is hardly so for anyone succumbing to a virulent disease, for example. A final comment. It seems I have to remind you that I do not regard the micro-organisms of organic decay as undesirable (see Investigate, August 2005). They are to be applauded. Not so their invasive cousins. Warwick Don, Dunedin WISHART RESPONDS:

I’m not sure that manner of death is relevant. Some people are eaten by tigers, some die in car crashes, some in their sleep and some from viruses. The issue is a metaphysical one rather than a scientific one. God says we don’t live in Eden and that the consequence of that is that we die. In the New Testament Christ says the people who died falling from a tower than collapsed had not been singled out by God any more than anyone else. The point of his mission, he said, was not to lead some sort of overthrow of the natural order at this time (although he proved through his nature miracles that he could do so) but to offer eternal life beyond the grave for those willing to accept it. Christ saw this life as temporary, and the next far more important.

Letters to the editor can be emailed to us, faxed or posted. They should not exceed 300 words, and we reserve the right to edit for space or clarity. All correspondence will be presumed for publication unless it is clearly marked to the contrary. Address: INVESTIGATE, PO Box 302188, North Harbour, North Shore 0751, or email to: editorial@investigatemagazine.com

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 13

SIMPLY DEVINE

MIRANDA DEVINE

From Iraq’s front line, it looks like the media has lost the plot

soldier friend stationed in Baghdad for the past two months has been sending me emails with such arresting lines as: “It’s late here and I [have] to get the Chief of Staff back to the Palace.” From his office in the fortified military and government area, the Green Zone, he scans the web for news about Iraq and compares it with his reality. “Baghdad is not burning down around my ears,” he wrote me late March. “Things were tense a while back, but violence was within limits. Callous thing to say, but that is the reality around here.” The only “quagmire” he sees is “the soft patch of ground out by the rifle range and no civil war in sight”. He exhibits a soldier’s “The anti-war protesters who sang-froid. “We are expectpicketed Rice might try having ing to be very busy the next days. The terrorists are more faith in the Iraqis and the few extremely media savvy (it’s brave soldiers like my friend who the only area they get to win) are supporting them” and will be looking for big headlines. End of religious festival, big crowds and convening of new government.” But with the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion just past, he says, “the only people who seem to have lost both their grip on reality and their nerve are the western media”. His reality is quite different: “I am more and more impressed with the Iraqis every day. There are problems, to be sure, but I do not know of any country that has gone through the sorts of upheavals that this one has without any problems. “One just has to remember the catastrophes of the French Reign of Terror, or the Russian and Chinese revolutions, not to mention the disasters that were Vietnam and Cambodia.” He also sent me a letter which has been circulating among soldiers for a month, from the mayor of Tal ‘Afar, near the Syrian border, praising the “lion hearts” of the US 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment who have changed the city from “ghost town in which terrorists spread death and destruction to a secure city flourishing with life”. The violence of revenge attacks on Sunnis across Iraq, after February’s bombing of the Shiite Golden Mosque in Samarra, led many commentators to declare the civil war they have been predicting for three years had arrived. But others point to signs the crisis has spurred Iraq’s political leaders to sort out their differences and work to form a

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national unity government, three months after their third successful election. And as Sunni politicians engage in the process, there are encouraging reports of infighting among Sunni insurgents. Last month Iraq’s new parliament was sworn in and 82year-old Sunni elder statesman Adnan Pachachi told its first short session: “We have to prove to the world that a civil war is not and will not take place among our people. The danger is still looming and the enemies are ready for us because they do not like to see a united, strong, stable Iraq.” The Iraqi parliament now has to elect a president and approve a prime minister and cabinet. Unlike John Howard, US President George Bush has been damaged by the Iraq situation and fears grow of political paralysis for the last three years of his presidency. But George Friedman, author of America’s Secret War and founder of Stratfor global intelligence subscription service, wrote recently that American weakness might in fact compel Sunnis and Shias to “sort things out themselves”. And in The Washington Post, David Ignatius, in Baghdad, wrote that the Samarra mosque crisis was the catalyst that broke a deadlock and brought Iraq’s political factions together. Also regarded as a positive development was Iran’s announcement it was ready to open talks with the US over its influence in Iraq. At the University of Sydney last month, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed her admiration for the Iraqi people. “Every time they have been confronted with a challenge, going all the way back to the transfer of sovereignty in 2004, the Iraqis have faced up to that challenge. “In the face of extremely difficult odds, the Iraqi people are trying to expand the realm of what people think is possible in that part of the world. They voted, then wrote and ratified their own constitution, and then they voted again. “And now their freely elected leaders are debating, and arguing, and compromising. In other words, they are engaging in a process called democracy.” The anti-war protesters who picketed Rice might try having more faith in the Iraqis and the brave soldiers like my friend who are supporting them. “I think it is right that we are here,” wrote my friend last week on his 39th birthday, “and that we support these people against the thugs, criminals and terrorists who would try and turn back the clock on them”.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 15

LAURA‘S WORLD

LAURA WILSON

Remember the days of the old schoolyard

lthough my son is only one, the question of his future schooling frequently arises in conversations. Will he attend the local school, what about Kindy and of course, High School? Not one to mince words, my response usually includes a vehement “over my dead body” at the thought of tossing my son into the mainstream at five and fishing him out at eighteen. In most people’s minds attending school is a given. Alongside falling off tricycles, changing of teeth and going through puberty it is automatic, unavoidable and natural. Yet there is nothing ‘natural’ about education. It is a philosophy, a belief system and is entirely contrived. Whilst it is one thing to “Forty years ago bullying was about unquestioningly accept a verbal name calling and teasing. system that is beneficent, it is quite another to accept Now it’s about gangs singling out one that causes significant individuals to ostracize and mentally suffering; indeed, one that children would rather and physically torture” some die than endure. I had a rough time at school, which naturally has jaundiced my view. I thought only rare sorts of masochists left school at eighteen, to return a few years later by choice as a teacher. Yet this is exactly what I did. At twenty-two I stood in front of my first class of thirteen year olds. I was more frightened than all of them put together times the power of ten. I was there because my own teenage years had been largely destroyed by High School and, like many a victim, I was drawn to the scene of the crime as if it were a puzzle I had to solve. Of course my High School experience was not isolated, and is well summed up by fellow sufferer, American activist and writer Naomi Wolf. Wolf puts the birth of her activism down to being “raised in total freedom and equality where everyone was valued for their differences and where education was a challenging and thrilling journey. I believed this was real. A microcosm of the real America, and then I went to College and discovered an absurd world ruled by race, class, sex and looks.” In the same way, my first week at High School was a massive come-down from the educational and individual journey I thought I was on. Up until 13, I thought the world really was there waiting for me, supporting

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me, looking forward to my maturation into a grown-up brain able to contribute brave new ideas. After 13 I very quickly adapted to a world wherein I was treated with suspicion, almost loathing. Where the modus operandi was ‘keep your head down’, do anything to avoid drawing attention to yourself, blend in with the background and do just enough work to pass exams then get the hell out. The next four years were ruled by fear, uncertainty and loneliness. As a teacher I was determined to give my students a different experience, and thanks to the slippery charisma of youthfulness, my first school let me get away with a whole lot of rule-breaking as I took my class here, there and everywhere with scant regard for consents and regulations. Anything to get the poor buggers out of the classroom. In my three years at the school I proved it was possible to learn whilst having a whole lot of fun, and to be close enough to the kids that inter-peer unpleasantness like bullying was unlikely to sneak beneath my radar. But I hadn’t solved any of the problems of education. There are always individual teachers who manage to make a difference within the system, to really bond with kids, making education personal and individual. Yet with each passing decade it gets harder to do this, especially in High School where the curriculum is laid out in ever-tightening units, loomed over by mountains of paperwork to prove the educator has crossed every ‘T’, dotted every ‘I’, and behaved as robotically as humanly possible. Whilst a truly dedicated, eagle-eye teacher can have an effect on cruelties such as peer bullying, ostracizing and violence, it’s never more than a band-aid solution, treating symptoms not causes. When we hear of teens being bullied to death in New Zealand people shake their heads in dismay at teen culture, as if it is a distinct entity off on its own mad tangent, lured down some weird path of destruction by the likes of Eminem, Southpark, Playstation and P. We can’t seem to understand where the violence, the cruelty, the desperation comes from. After all, New Zealand is a pretty benign nation by comparison with most of the world. We don’t have the dark hatreds of Northern Ireland or the Balkans, or the hopelessness of impoverished Africa, or the sexual bigotry of extremist Islam. And yet in the last six months three youths attending typical high schools chose death over living

one more day as a victim of peer hatred. A few years earlier it was Otago Boys High in the dark spotlight over a spate of terror-induced suicides. St. Stephens in south Auckland closed its doors rather than subject pupils to another year of rampant peer bullying and violence that staff simply couldn’t stem, no matter how they tried. How have ones so young had the time and the life experience to amass sufficient aggression to bully someone to death? Some research on New Zealand and overseas education websites revealed unanimously that peer aggression has increased every decade, since the ‘60’s when records began to be kept, and older teachers can remember back to. Forty years ago bullying was about verbal name calling and teasing. Now it’s about gangs singling out individuals to ostracize and mentally and physically torture. Where on earth does that kind of vindictive hatred come from? Perhaps William Golding was onto something when he wrote Lord of the Flies, suggesting that without adult steerage children would revert to an almost animal like survival instinct characterized by power-plays, aggression and ultimately murder. More likely (and testable) is the theory of Myra Reichart, head of a bullying crisis response team, stating simply that bullying doesn’t exist in a vacuum, nor do bullies suddenly appear at age 13. Precursive bullying behaviour appears in individuals as early

as two years old, and if not corrected by eight to ten years old, is hard to change. It seems the teen years are nothing more than a giant mirror reflecting back to society its own messages in a characteristically blunt and emotive teenage way. It is we who are ultimately responsible, not foul-mouthed rapsters or demonic video games. Children resort to ugly, intimidatory behaviour because they are lost in the machine, and we have our heads buried too deeply in the sand, or are too lost ourselves, to notice or to help. Out of the myriad causes blamed for the onset of bullying behaviour, two are universal. The most likely kids to become bullies are those who have received minimal attention in the home, and who have been bullied themselves by a powerful, controlling parent. Explained this way, what else can these kids be? A child who feels unimportant, vulnerable and a target of aggression will likely go to school and look for someone even more vulnerable to vent upon. It seems the startlingly obvious is being overlooked by parents. Kids need parents time, and this need does not stop at age twelve. It possibly increases in importance due to the mad cocktail of influences today’s teens are exposed to. Paying attention to your teen is not the same as being in the house with them while they watch television. It’s about preparing them for the world in safe and creative ways so that they become neither victims nor victimizers.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 17

STRAIGHT TALK

MARK STEYN An Iraqi success story

hree years ago, in the weeks before the invasion of Iraq, it fell to the then Prime Minister of Canada to make the most witless public statement on the subject by any G7 leader. “Your president has won,” Jean Chretien told ABC News in early March 2003. So there was no need to have a big ol’ war because, with 250,000 American and British troops on his borders, Saddam was “in a box”. “He won,” said Mr Chretien of Bush. “He has created a situation where Saddam cannot do anything anymore. He has troops at the door and inspectors on the ground… You’re winning it big.” That’s easy for him to say, and committing other countries’ armies to “con“My argument for whacking tain” Iraq is easy for him do. A quarter-million Saddam was always that to soldiers cannot sit in the the price of leaving him sands of Araby twiddling unwhacked was too high” their thumbs indefinitely. “Containment” is not a strategy but the absence of strategy – and thug states understand it as such. In Saddam’s case, he’d supposedly been “contained” since the first Gulf War in 1991, when Bush Sr balked at finishing what he’d started. “Mr President,” Joe Biden, the Democrat Senator and beloved comic figure, condescendingly explained to Bush Jr in 2002, “there is a reason your father stopped and did not go to Baghdad. The reason he stopped is he didn’t want to be there for five years.” By my math, that means the Americans would have been out in spring of 1996. Instead, 12 years on, in the spring of 2003 the USAF and RAF were still policing the no-fly zone, ineffectually bombing Iraq every other week. And, in place of congratulations for their brilliant “containment” of Saddam, Washington was blamed for UN sanctions and systematically starving to death a million Iraqi kids – or two million, according to which “humanitarian” agency you believe. The few Iraqi moppets who weren’t deceased suffered, according to the Nobel-winning playwright and thinker Harold Pinter, from missing genitals and/or rectums that leaked blood contaminated by depleted uranium from Anglo-American ordnance. Touring Iraq a few weeks after the war, I made a point of stopping in every hospital and enquiring about this

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pandemic of genital-less Iraqis: not a single doctor or nurse had heard about it. Whether or not BUSH LIED!! PEOPLE DIED!!!, it seems that THE ANTI-WAR CROWDS SQUEAK!!! BUT NO RECTUMS LEAK!!!! A new study by the American Enterprise Institute suggests that, aside from the terrific press, continuing this policy would not have come cheap for America: if you object (as John Kerry did) to the US$400-600 billion price tag since the war, another three years of “containment” would have cost around $300 billion – and with no end in sight, and the alleged death toll of Iraqi infants no doubt up around six million. It would also have cost more real lives – of real Iraqis: Despite the mosque bombings, there’s a net gain of more than 100,000 civilians alive today who would have been shoveled into unmarked graves had Baathist rule continued. Meanwhile, the dictator would have continued gaming the international system through the Oil-for-Food program, subverting Jordan, and supporting terrorism as far afield as the Philippines. So three years on, unlike Francis Fukuyama and the other moulting hawks, my only regret is that America didn’t invade earlier. Yeah yeah, you sneer, what about the only WMD? Sorry. Don’t care. Never did. My argument for whacking Saddam was always that the price of leaving him unwhacked was too high. He was the preeminent symbol of the September 10th world; his continuation in office testified to America’s lack of will, and was seen as such by, among others, Osama bin Laden: In Donald Rumsfeld’s words, weakness is a provocation. So the immediate objective was to show neighboring thugs that the price of catching America’s eye was too high. The long-term strategic goal was to begin the difficult but necessary transformation of the region that the British funked when they cobbled together the modern Middle East in 1922. The jury will be out on that for a decade or three yet. But in Iraq today the glass is seven-ninths full. That’s to say, in 14 out of 18 provinces life is better than it’s been in living memory. In December, 70% of Iraqis said that “life is good” and 69% were optimistic it would get even better in the next year. (Comparable figures in a similar poll of French and Germans: 29% and 15%.) I see the western press has pretty much given up on calling the Baathist dead-enders and foreign terrorists “insurgents” presumably because they were insurging so ineffectually. So now it’s a “civil war”. Remember what a civil

U.S. Army Spc. Derek Castro jokes with an Iraqi boy during a goodwill visit to Istaqal, Iraq. Photography: Michael Larson/DEFENSELINK

war looks like? Generally, they have certain features: large-scale population movements, mutinous units in the armed forces, rival governments springing up, rebels seizing the radio station. None of these are present in Iraq. The slavering western media keep declaring a civil war every 48 hours but those layabout Iraqis persist in not showing up for it. True, there’s a political stalemate in Baghdad at the moment, but that’s not a catastrophe: if you read the very federal Iraqi constitution carefully, the ingenious thing about it is that it’s not just a constitution but also a pre-nup. If the Sunni holdouts are determined to wreck the deal, 85% of the Iraqi population will go their respective ways creating a northern Kurdistan that would be free and pro-western and a southern Shiastan that would still be the most democratic state in the Arab world. That outcome would also be in America’s long-term interest. Indeed, almost any outcome would. In 2002, Amr Moussa, Secretary-General of the Arab League, warned that a US invasion of Iraq would “threaten the whole stability of the Middle East”. Of course. Otherwise, why do it? Diplomats use “stability” as a fancy term to dignify inertia and complacency as geopolitical sophistication, but the lesson of 9/11 is that “stability” is pro-

foundly unstable. The unreal realpolitik of the previous 40 years had given the region a stability unique in the non-democratic world, and in return they exported their toxins, both as manpower (on 9/11) and as ideology. Instability was as good a strategic objective as any. As Sam Goldwyn used to tell his screenwriters, I’m sick of the old clichés, bring me some new clichés. When the old clichés are Baathism, Islamism and Arafatism, the new ones can hardly be worse, and one or two of them might even buck the region’s dismal history. The biggest buck for the bang was obvious: prick the Middle East bubble at its most puffed-up point – Saddam’s Iraq. Yes, it’s come at a price. In the last three years, 2,316 brave Americans have given their lives in Iraq, which is as high as US fatalities in Vietnam - in one month, May 1968. And, if the survival of Saddam embodied the west’s lack of will, the EuropeanDemocratic Party-media hysteria over the last three years keeps that question open. But that doesn’t change the facts on the ground. Instead of relying on the usual ineffectual proxies, Bush made the most direct western intervention in the region since General Allenby took Jerusalem in the Great War. Now on to the next stage. © Mark Steyn, 2006 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 19

EYES RIGHT

RICHARD PROSSER Man’s best friend

here is a similarity, it is said, between slowwitted people and computers; you have to punch the information into both of them. Now I’m not of a mind to advocate violence, but y’know, some people just don’t get it. And whether it’s compulsory gun registration, or fart taxes, or the current Idiotic Suggestion Flavour of the Month, dog micro-chipping, it seems to be the same people who just don’t get it. Worse still, they’re frequently people who occupy positions of public office, tasked with responsibility, and granted the power to impose their stupidity on the rest of us. I struggle to understand what motivates these types. Are they mentally compro“Dogs registered prior to July mised in some way, I find 1st 2006 will, presumably, not myself asking; have they suffered accident or trauma, bite anyone anymore. What an is it perhaps a genetic flaw, amazing piece of legislation!” or are they simply burdened with hopeless naiveté coupled with a lack of capacity for self-analysis? I have the same gripes and reservations about micro-chipping dogs, and the same opposition to it, as I have about gun registration, and for the same reasons. It is unnecessary. It is expensive. It is intrusive. And most importantly, it just won’t work; and this is the bit which the proponents of this insidious and pointless scheme just don’t get. We are told that we must insert microchips into our dogs in the interests of public safety. The chips are no bigger than a grain of rice, we are told; they can be injected painlessly and without distressing one’s faithful mutt, and once in place, being able to be read by a hand-held scanner, our children will never have to fear the dog’s bite again. Quite how this is supposed to work, escapes me. Apparently, if I, as a law-abiding dog-owner, have a microchip inserted in my elderly, arthritic, blunt-toothed, Border Collie bitch with failing eyesight, in rural Central Otago, this will somehow prevent an unregistered mongrel pit bull-cross, owned by an unemployed gang associate, from biting someone in South Auckland. Hmm. Perhaps these aren’t really microchips; they sound more like magic beans. But the somewhat challenged individuals who make policy in this country appear to believe it, and microchipping is to become compulsory for dogs newly regis-

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tered from the first of July. I have a nice brochure from the Department of Internal Affairs, proclaiming that this will lead to “Better Dog Control.” “Better control”, in the minds of some, is apparently a euphemism for “more control”. I can’t help but wonder whether it would be cheaper for the nation to just pay for these sorry souls to have some proper therapy, than to let them vent their fixations on the rest of us. Dogs registered prior to July 1st 2006 will, presumably, not bite anyone anymore. What an amazing piece of legislation! See, it’s the whole registration thing which is at the crux of this matter. People will microchip their dogs when they register them, one process, all nice and simple, a bit like checking the batteries in your smoke alarm at daylight saving time. Pay your money, stamp the form, inject the chip, collect the tags, all done, thank you Sir, next please. No problem – unless, of course, you don’t register your dogs. And the fly in the ointment, which the air-heads in their fantasy land don’t appear to be able to understand, is that the people who are the worst owners, who own the most dangerous dogs, who don’t look after, or train, or control those dogs, and whose dogs are most likely to offend against society, are also the ones who just simply don’t register them in the first place. “But it’s compulsory!” wail the idealists disbelievingly. At this point you have to take them aside, and pat their hands, and speak slowly and comfortingly, because this is one of the things they just don’t get. Maybe they had a sheltered upbringing. Maybe they couldn’t see the blackboard properly. Maybe they’re just thick. Whatever the reason, some people in authority, and policy-setting authority at that, appear genuinely unable to grasp the reality that there are people out there who ignore the law. You can make something as compulsory as you like, and it will still only be the law-abiding who take any notice. “But with microchips, we’ll be able to identify the offending owners!” trumpet the naïve. Yes dear, but only if the dog HAS a microchip. And if it has a microchip, it’s also registered. And if you look at a registered dog, you’ll see some distinct features. Around it’s neck is a bit of leather with a buckle. That’s called a collar. On the collar is a wee plastic ring, proudly displayed in this year’s fashion colour. The ring has a number on it, and the name of

the issuing local authority. It’s called a registration tag. The number matches another number in the local authority’s data base, which contains all the identifying details about the dog and it’s owner. So we don’t need to reinvent the wheel; it’s already here, it’s round, and it works. “But what if the tag comes off, or the dog loses it’s collar?” they ask smugly. Yeah, what if? What if the sky falls, come to that? I wonder if any of these people have ever actually owned dogs. I wonder because I currently have six dogs (actually twelve if you count the puppies, but their registration won’t be my responsibility), and over the last thirteen years and a total of ten faithful mutts, I can’t recall a single occasion where a registration tag has broken off, and while I’ve had two particularly energetic hounds who were capable of crafty Houdini tricks with their collars, I’ve found the problem is easily overcome by putting them in a cage rather than tying them up. I suppose that comes back to looking after them properly once again. “But microchips will help to identify pets that have been lost or stolen,” they will suggest. Maybe so, and as such, some owners may choose to avail themselves of the technology, but it is not sufficient excuse to impose the mandatory cost and intrusion of it on the rest of us. Dogs do stray from time to time. On most of those occasions, they are found again, hopefully alive, still with their identifying collars and tags. But pets which are stolen are stolen for a purpose, and criminals are adept at finding ways around the law. In general, the sillier the law, the more easily it is circumvented. A late-night visit to a local vet clinic via the back door will swiftly avail a criminal of a scanner, and once found, a microchip can be removed by an effective if unsanctioned operation, allowing the unfortunate mutt to be sold to an unscrupulous buyer – who can, of course, have it re-chipped – or make a fist of it in the dog fighting ring. By a similar token, VIN plates were supposed to prevent stolen or rebuilt cars from being re-sold to unsuspecting buyers…. but shortly after their inception, it didn’t take a well-known gang very long to pinch a supply of blank plates, complete with an impressing machine for same. Now good citizens and law-abiding folk don’t go around stealing cars and cutting them up, but they do warrant and register and insure them. Crims don’t. Why do the powers that be have such difficulty understanding this? Good citizens and law-abiding folk don’t go around shooting people and committing crimes with their guns, either. They get licenced, and lock their firearms up in approved gun safes. Crims don’t. And good citizens and law-abiding folk don’t keep savage, uncontrolled, aggressive dogs. They keep registered pets and working dogs, look after them, and keep them under control. Crims on the other hand, or the plain unpleasant, obnoxious, or uncaring, keep undisciplined mutts, let them roam free, breed at will, and become a menace to society. They are no more going to register their dogs than their cars or their guns, and so the microchipping exercise quite simply won’t reach them. No microchip is going to prevent a dog from biting anyone, and no microchip is going to identify an unregistered dog. And as the cost of microchipping is added to the cost of registration, so more and more otherwise law-abiding dog owners will tend towards non-registration. Is this reality really so hard to understand?

“Could dog control be merely an excuse to perfect the technology of microchipping, to allow its future use on some other animal…say, as a for example, people maybe? Unthinkable? Conspiracy rubbish? Maybe; or maybe not. Britons are having identity cards forced upon them, a process one would have regarded as impossible even ten years ago”

Or are we suffering this insane regime for another reason? Could dog control be merely an excuse to perfect the technology of microchipping, to allow its future use on some other animal… say, as a for example, people maybe? Unthinkable? Conspiracy rubbish? Maybe; or maybe not. Britons are having identity cards forced upon them, a process one would have regarded as impossible even ten years ago. A great deal has happened over the last few decades which was once considered unthinkable. The Berlin Wall came down. Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa. We have photos on our driver’s licences. Wouldn’t a microchip be, well, so much more convenient than a passport or an identity card? Safer? More tamper-proof? Unstealable, unforgeable, unloseable? Hmm. Good arguments, and as these sorts of changes are brought about by a process of gradualism, you can bet your bottom dollar that sometime in the next few years, someone in authority will tentatively but seriously suggest it, as a first gauge of public opinion or opposition. Naturally, of course, the crims would find away around it, as would the authorities themselves; and once again, the only people to suffer from it would be those who were law-abiding anyway. The slow learners are of course free to follow the dictates of their political masters, who obviously have a different way of thinking on their home planet. They can chip their dogs in sheepish adherence to a foolish, unnecessary, costly, invasive, and unworkable law. Personally, I’ve half a mind to join with my farming neighbours in ignoring it. Maybe they’ll think again when they realise that the pounds, the vans, and the army of dog control officers who will inevitably be needed to enforce non-compliance with this new law will have to be paid for by someone, and that someone will be them, the taxpayer. This is a dog of an idea, and we haven’t got a dog’s show of making it work. You’d like to think they could figure that out for themselves, before it happens; but as we know, they’re not very bright.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 21

SOAPBOX

CHRIS HANLON

nsanity is a strong word and I would excuse you for believing that I am using hyperbole. But truthfully I believe that, if the act is not of itself insane, it will lead us down a path of insanity. There are two main reasons that I feel this will not be in the best interests of the average New Zealander. 1. The taxpayer cost. If the local loop is unbundled there will be disputes over who is responsible for this cabinet or that stretch of line. If there is a fault on your line who will you ring? Are you confident they will fix your problem? Or do you cynically believe, (as I am tempted to do), that you will be passed from one company to another as they play ‘pass the responsibility’? This will ultimately result in a Government department responsible for hear“Sure LLU will be great for the ing and dealing with these shareholders of those companies disputes and many others. For example check out this that want access, but it won’t link noting ongoing disbe serving the average bloke” putes in London after 3 years of LLU. The end result will be that the average consumer will see their Broadband bill reduced but in compensation they will see their tax burden increase – a zero sum game. No real benefit. 2. Increase in rural broadband costs. Currently Telecom charges the same amount for ADSL throughout NZ, regardless of where you live. I assume that this is tied to the ‘Kiwi Share’ agreement. In most free trade countries prices are set by the companies themselves and as a result of simple economics it is cheaper to service built up areas, therefore allowing lower prices in those areas. Currently in New Zealand this means that those of us who live in cities are, to some extent, subsidising those who do not. Personally I feel this is a good thing. It is a social decision rather than an economic one, and I won’t belabor the implications, I am sure you get the point. Should LLU go ahead then we will see companies such as Slingshot, Ihug, Telstra Clear offering cheaper access to those in cities, but not to those who are too expensive to reach. Obviously cheaper prices will attract many city dwellers, thus undercutting the margins, (subsidising rural customers), that Telecom enjoys there. Eventually, and as surely as the laws of physics, Telecom will be forced to charge more to rural customers than

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they do to urban ones. (Obviously the farmers are aware of this as one of the farmers’ associations recently spoke out against LLU). Should we then leave Telecom as a monopoly? Certainly not. It is my belief that we do the citizens of New Zealand a grave disservice if we focus our attention on this old technology and throw our resources into it. Sure LLU will be great for the shareholders of those companies that want access, but it won’t be serving the average bloke. A few years ago I spoke to a BCL insider who excitedly informed me that they expected to have WiMax rolled out in 2007. At that time I had no idea what WiMax was and did some research. To put it very simply BCL could put transmitters on its TV broadcast towers and create a ‘wireless network’ over vast urban areas. This wireless network can offer broadband connectivity and serve as a phone service. This is real competition to Telecom. In my opinion the government would do better in offering tax incentives to companies deploying their own infrastructure, such as BCL and Woosh, that brings NZ forward to the future, rather than fight over the scraps of an older technology that may not even deserve to survive. Interestingly BCL do not have the systems to look after a mass of “end consumers”, so their technology will be wholesaled, and Telecom, Ihug, Slingshot & Telstra will be on an equal footing as retailers of this service should they choose. I look forward to that environment, as then there will be no excuses for second rate performance. My only frustration right now is that most people only hear one side of the tale. They hear that they will get cheaper broadband if the Local Loop is Unbundled. If they live in the city this is true. Their telephone bill may be lower, but what are the other costs? Telecom are not particularly adept in communicating to the public. They are fortified behind the ramparts of lawyers and lobbyists, they appear distant, removed. Whereas Slingshot and others are extremely effective in selling their message to consumers. Whilst this is commendable in business, I believe it is time for a little clarity, time for some light to be shone upon the situation. In the interests of full disclosure I should mention that I have a minor role in Telecom and work there part-time (in the call centre). What I share here though, is entirely my own opinion and should not be taken as the opinion of Telecom or any of its employees.

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

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 23

LINE ONE

CHRIS CARTER

Take down number plates of brothel creepers

robably few issues illustrate how Mr and Mrs Average Kiwi have essentially lost the ability to take part in the democratic process, than the current debate as to whether or not Madam Fifi should operate her knocking shop pretty well wherever she chooses. Labour MP Tim Barnett, the current Government’s moral stalking horse, originally cobbled together the Bill that legalised not only the ancient profession of prostitution, but also the establishments in which this apparently vibrant and very profitable activity traditionally tends to take place. Naturally, from the Government’s ever avaricious “let’s tax everything that moves or breathes” point of view, the application of GST and various licensing fees to previously untaxable nocturBeing now a legal activity, how on nal diddling, was bound completely over-ride any earth can anyone deny a training to consideration of moral recregime to those who now wish to titude, so Labour in keepenter the profession? ing with its usual love affair with the a-moral if not actually disgraceful, hurriedly passed Tim’s major contribution to the Nation’s well-being into law. Which brings me to momentarily consider this actual process, and the follow through ramifications that you can absolutely guarantee these dimwits quite plainly did not consider for a moment. A Member of Parliament decides to draw up a bill that will make legal an activity that throughout all the previous history of this country was clearly against the law. OK, fair enough I suppose, we’re all entitled to an opinion or a suggested course of action. Nevertheless, Helen and friends, as I recall, did not give we voters any indication, prior to the election, of their intention to embrace prostitution and brothel keeping as a full on, officially sanctioned and legal career option for future school leavers by so enthusiastically voting for it either. Even taking into account Ms. Clark’s somewhat loose interpretation as to the legality of putting about her infamous “Pledge Card”, search as I may I cannot find any mention of making the gentle art of Hooking an activity that now presumably may become a part of the curriculum of the nation’s various technical institutions. Indeed, it now follows that should one of our daughters (sorry Tim, mustn’t be sexist must we: even perhaps one of our sons) decide that a career spent largely lying down was their preferred career option, then the Students Loans Board

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would have little other option than to approve this funding. Indeed, whilst the actual NZQA courses that would need to be introduced to teach the finer points of how to be a fully qualified prostitute or brothel keeper almost beggar the imagination, one can well presume that he or she who passed with flying colours the various papers and on the job experience sessions could well be adjudged an Intercourse Champion with no doubt their graduation photograph in the local suburban newspaper. Think I’m kidding about this logical extension to the legalisation of prostitution? Well ask yourself this...Being now a legal activity, how on earth can anyone deny a training regime to those who now wish to enter the profession? Well, quite plainly you cannot and indeed I’m now waiting with bated breath for the first BSC to emerge from university, (certainly NOT a Bachelor of Science!) and an eventual chair perhaps for a Professor of Prostitution. Can’t happen? I’ll lay money on it that it does, because there is now not a single valid reason why it should not. But let us return to the somewhat peculiar process that now has become common place, and that has largely supplanted any semblance of following the democratic process. Hands up how many of you wanted to have prostitution legalised, or for that matter, perhaps the establishment of a knocking shop a few doors down from where you happen to live? I wonder also just what it is that you plan to tell your children, when they ask you what’s going on next door with all the cars arriving all hours of the day and night. How to counter the otherwise nice little kiddie next door who keeps telling your children how nice it is to have hundreds of Daddies and why do you only have one! Then we have the other rather worrying situation that has recently arisen. The Auckland City Council, quite properly reacting to its residents’ concerns, passed a series of bylaws that made it virtually impossible for a brothel operator to open up or maintain an establishment in the city’s leafy suburbs. Sorry, City Council, you can’t do that, says the Court, quite properly pointing out that this is not what Tim and his political friends want, the law in fact, essentially saying bugger what you want, this is the way Labour wants it and therefore how it’s going to be, so, up yours you silly ratepayers and voters, it’s now the law. Which brings me to examine some of the things that we might legally do to counter what many people now seem to consider as legislation being rushed into law that in no way reflects our society. Let us assume that despite the expressed

opposition of your particular neighbourhood, a sporting house has nevertheless quite clearly opened for business. Apart from whatever moral considerations may have been trodden all over, even the most liberal of the folk in this particular suburban street are well aware that local property values are scarcely going to be enhanced by the activities of a gaggle of tarts plying their trade. By the way, don’t think for a moment that you could simply forget to mention to a prospective home buyer the fact that the house next door with all the cars parked out front is an operating brothel, because the Real Estate Agent would be duty bound to mention it! So what to do eh? Well it’s a funny thing actually, that legal or otherwise, brothel visiting is something that most men would rather keep a wee bit confidential. Like having to “buy it”, apart from a few fellers who apparently have worked out certain long term financial advantages in doing so, most men would never the less be horrified to have it being put about that they were in the habit of visiting “The Shady Ladies Of Shady Lane” for a wee bit of the otherwise elusive other. It therefore seems to be quite reasonable to me that local residents, simply noting the registration numbers of visiting vehicles from say a clearly visible vantage point, may well have quite a disastrous effect on the establishment’s potential cash flow. Now I’m not suggesting for a moment that any use whatsoever is actually made of the gathered rego numbers, the mere fact that they are so plainly being written down, I’m sure would at least dissuade many from coming to call, or perhaps that should be the other way around. A wee bit similar an activity to train-spotting I would think, rather, in this case, spotting the puffing billy goats, rather than just the puffing billies. Meantime, staying with our constant need to always remain within the law of the land, whatever our beloved leaders happen on occasions to believe that that should actually be, perhaps another workable ploy may be for a group of well heeled citizens to begin a resource consent for a 10 bed knock shop to be established in a few Cabinet Minister’s suburban streets...Then again, perhaps not, after all, we all remember the old adage about birds of a feather, do we not? Finally, following the now obviously ultra liberal agenda of this “see no evil” coterie of political misfits, how long will it be, following this new age dictum, that if a practice is fairly wide spread it should simply be legalised? How long before we can look forward to a franchised chain of legalised “tinny” houses and “P” parlours...after all, why not, because they could well use the same line to sell this eventuality as was used to sell having a neighbourhood knock shop. They would be licensed, have to pay tax and G.S.T., be subject to OSH and Health Department regulation, and gang members could be taught how to operate a P Lab properly, with quality control, and much less danger of blowing the whole neighbourhood up! It’s all a win-win situation as our politicians are so fond of saying. Gosh; the Police would be freed up to issue more revenue gathering speeding tickets. Oh what joy! And not entirely, I would think, beyond the bounds of possibility for those who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 25

TOUGH QUESTIONS

IAN WISHART The Gospel of Judas

y the time you read this, you may already have heard in the news about the socalled lost Gospel of Judas, published by the National Geographic worldwide just before Easter. If you’re a fan of Dan Brown’s fantasy novels, you might even be mug enough to believe that the Gospel of Judas is some revolutionary new document that further proves the Bible is a pack of lies invented by the Catholic Church to suppress the truth. Sadly, the Gospel of Judas is anything but – merely another footnote in history from a long-departed cult whose ideas linger well past their use-by date. Like virtually all the lost ‘gospels’, this one was written by the Gnostics, a group that “These documents essentially thrived about a huntell the story and beliefs of a dred and thirty years after the time of Christ. The sect that briefly tried to hijack Gnostics were the intellecChristianity and failed” tuals of their day, and they believed that only clever people could know God, and that God didn’t want any old peasant turning up in Heaven to spoil the tone. The name of their sect derives from the verb gnosis, to know. Their central theme was that God used secret codes and hidden mysteries so that the great unwashed would remain unsaved, and only the Gnostics who interpreted the special meanings and attained enlightenment could graduate to a higher knowledge of God. They replaced grace and mercy and forgiveness with a requirement for initiates to attain higher levels, a bit like Buddhism. Essentially, the Gnostics were a New Age version of the Ku Klux Klan. Their ideas survive today in books like The Da Vinci Code or The Holy Blood & The Holy Grail, and basically anything written by The Jesus Seminar. So here’s an idiots guide to some of the various lost “gospels” and how significant they are, in an effort to help you understand why these documents have little merit: The Lost Gospel of Judas: This is not really a gospel at all, nor was it written by Judas Iscariot, who died about a hundred and 20 years before this was written. The actual document published by National Geographic appears to date from the third or fourth centuries AD, and is a copy of the original version created about 150 AD. This is however the only copy so

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far known to exist, and emerged publicly in 1983 for sale on the international antiquities market. It was eventually purchased by a Swiss foundation and scholars have been working to translate it since around 2000. The Gospel of Judas and its contents have been known about for hundreds of years, because some early Christian writers refer to it derisively in their own letters. The Judas document basically takes a softer line on the fate of Iscariot, saying Jesus forgave him and sent him off to repent – a story that contrasts sharply with the more authentic, older eyewitness version contained in the real gospels. Says liberal scholar James M Robinson based on the pages of the Judas gospel that he’s seen: “They…don’t tell us anything new about the historical Jesus”. The Gospel of Thomas: Perhaps the best known of the Gnostic documents, and elevated by the Jesus Seminar to the bizarre status of being the “fifth” gospel, of equal rank with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Of course, it isn’t. Thomas also suffers from being written more than a century after the events it claims to record, by people who never knew Christ and never knew the original disciples. It’s a bit like expecting the Listener’s Diana Wichtel to accurately record first hand conversations from the original Waitangi Day back in 1840 – an especially impossible task when she sometimes has problems getting her head around events that happened last week. Thomas lacks the supernatural themes of miracles or the Resurrection, and as such appeals to those who prefer their Christ to be merely a wise man teaching his initiates, not the Son of God. The Gospel of Mary: This one is another Gnostic text, and again was not written by Mary Magdalene, who was long dead by 200 AD when this one came out. Mary picks up on the old goddess-worship cults of the ancient near east, painting Magdalene as Jesus’ pre-eminent disciple. The text is used strongly in feminist literature by authors like Karen King and Elaine Pagels. That’s just a handful, there are many others, none of which can be dated to within a bull’s roar of the time of Christ and were never treated as authentic by early Christians. Like most of the scrolls discovered at Nag Hammadi last century, these documents essentially tell the story and beliefs of a sect that briefly tried to hijack Christianity and failed. None of these lost “gospels” pose the slightest threat to Christianity, no matter what some might have you think.

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WOMENwWHO RUN ith the

WOLVES Did the Jury get it wrong?

No other court case in recent New Zealand history has created so much debate and division as the Louise Nicholas rape investigation. Was Nicholas, as some suggest, a female fantasist making up allegations against pillars of the community? Or is she a woman whose full story still has not been told: MARIA SLADE reports

COVER STORY

ouise Nicholas must have felt pure, white-hot anger over the years. The defence for Assistant Police Commissioner Clint Rickards says this working class, 38-year-old wife and mother-of-three, who has lived her entire life in Rotorua and its rural surrounds, has tried to ruin his career. After last month’s verdict in the High Court at Auckland, which acquitted Rickards and former colleagues Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum of all 20 charges they faced relating to her allegations of historical sexual abuse, the families claimed the whole prosecution was politically motivated. Shipton’s brother Greg says had Clint Rickards been a plumber from Rotorua, the case would have never come this far. “This is about politics and stopping the first Maori (police) commissioner from becoming.” Consider, then, what happened when Louise Nicholas first complained to police in 1993. She told them that as an 18year-old working in Rotorua, Rickards and Shipton repeatedly raped her at her flat in Corlett Street, and that the pair along with their colleague Bob Schollum raped her and savagely indecently assaulted her with a police baton at a house in Rutland Street. She also told them she had been abused as a younger teenager growing up in the forestry town of Murupara. For reasons that have yet to become clear, no statement was taken from her about the Corlett St or Rutland St incidents, as they’ve euphemistically become known. A prosecution was brought against one of the men she alleges abused her in Murupara. The identity of this man is permanently suppressed. She was told pursuing the Corlett St and Rutland St allegations at that stage would detract from the Murupara case. Imagine her fury when she found out, on the day they were to appear at the 1994 trial, that Brad Shipton, Clint Rickards and Bob Schollum were defence witnesses who would talk about having consensual sex with her. The man was acquitted. “I was angry that these men were able to come to court, take the stand, and say all this but nobody heard my side of the story,” she told Shipton’s lawyer Bill Nabney during last month’s High Court trial. She says after that she angrily demanded to make a formal statement to police, but was again told it wasn’t the time. It wasn’t to be the time for another 10 years. John Haigh, the QC for Clint Rickards, put it to her that when her allegations hit the media and took the country by storm in January 2004, she enjoyed the attention “in an extraordinary way”.

“I was given an opportunity two-and-a-half years ago to tell my story of what happened to me,” she retorted. “I didn’t instigate it. I was approached, shown documents and job sheets that made me realise that back in 1994...I had definitely been duped something shocking.” One could argue that this made her angry and vengeful. Or one could say she is a woman who has suffered more than one kind of injustice, who deserved, finally, to be heard. Either way, it’s extremely difficult to understand why any woman would want to tell a courtroom packed full of lawyers, jurors, media and public about jars of vaseline and vaginal and anal abuse, if she didn’t have good cause. “It is really stretching it to suggest the complainant bore a grudge for 11 to 12 years and has put herself through this trial to get back at Mr Schollum, Mr Shipton and Mr Rickards, for helping to get the other guy off,” Crown prosecutor Brent Stanaway told the jury in his closing address. One would also think that having come this far, the case against the three men would be triumphant. But even allowing for the fact historical rape cases are notoriously difficult to prosecute, this case was downright confusing in places. The evidence which potentially cast the greatest shadow of doubt over the Crown case was the testimony of Louise Nicholas’ former Corlett Street flatmate, ironically a prosecution witness. The woman, who has name suppression, now lives in Australia and did not appear in person, leaving no opportunity for cross examination. The prosecution also made no mention of an earlier police analysis that the flatmate’s testimony was not credible. Her evidence took the form of several statements she gave to police and a private investigator over the years. Initially in 1995 she denied all knowledge, later admitting she’d lied because she was embarrassed. The statements which follow vary, she is vague, and she can’t remember having had sex with Clint Rickards, as he claims. But the substance of her evidence was hard to pass over – that she and Louise Nicholas had consensual group sex with at least Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum at Corlett St, that the atmosphere was “friendly”, and that the incidents occurred mostly at night. In contrast, Nicholas says it was Clint Rickards and Brad Shipton who would turn up uninvited on her doorstep, sometimes in uniform, and intimidate her into sex. She says the six to 12 incidents always occurred during the day when she was off work and no-one else was home. The only point the flatmate and she appear to agree on is that the men were predatory: “They weren’t there to court us,” INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 29

the flatmate says. “They didn’t ever come around and watch a video or anything like that.” She alleges one incident when Brad Shipton was trying to “smooth-talk” her into sex – “He didn’t physically force me but he was persistent. On this occasion I’m sure it was clear I was hesitant, that I had to be convinced.” She says it was easier just to go along with it.

Brad Shipton at a court appearance. PHOTO: Alan Gibson/PRESSPIX

“Nicholas says it was Clint Rickards and Brad Shipton who would turn up uninvited on her doorstep, sometimes in uniform, and intimidate her into sex. She says the six to 12 incidents always occurred during the day when she was off work and no-one else was home”

30, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006

n his closing address prosecutor Brent Stanaway told jurors the flatmate’s evidence was “led as a courtesy to the accused”, and the Crown “can’t pick and choose its witnesses”. He questioned her credibility by saying aside from initially lying and being vague about identities, the flatmate also conceded she had no way of knowing how accepting her friend really was of the visits. It was Louise Nicholas’ own evidence that after the alleged baton incident at Rutland St, she felt so powerless she became “pathetically polite” towards the men, hoping the visits would stop. Brent Stanaway says the flatmate may have interpreted this reaction as consent. Louise Nicholas didn’t help matters in the way she answered John Haigh’s questioning about the flatmate evidence. He had to virtually pull teeth to get her to admit she believes the flatmate is wrong. Louise Nicholas: “I don’t dispute (her) recall. I can tell you it did not involve me.” John Haigh: “You can’t hedge your bets.” Louise Nicholas: “I’m not calling (her) a liar. That’s her recall. But it did not involve me. I’m not saying she’s got it wrong. But that’s her recall. I don’t recall that at all. I’m not disputing that’s how she sees it happened. I was not there. John Haigh: “She has got it wrong.” Louise Nicholas: “I wasn’t there, I don’t know, that’s her recall. (She) was never there when these men called.” Louise Nicholas’ husband Ross helped to add to the doubt about which of the three men it was who allegedly made the midweek visits to Corlett St. He told the court he had been off work one day with a bad back and was resting at his then-girlfriend’s flat, when there came a knock at the front door. “I could see a blue image through the glass door.” He says he opened it to two policemen whom he recognised as Brad Shipton and Clint Rickards. But in cross-examination John Haigh QC put it to him that he had told police in 1995 that it was Bob Schollum who was on the doorstep with Shipton. Ross Nicholas says in those confusing early days he didn’t know what was happening. “I must have got it wrong. I’d know which was which when I saw them walk up.” The only other evidence of the police and Corlett St flat came from Louise Nicholas’ mother-in-law, Phyllis. She says she twice arrived at the house to pick Louise up during a working day and encountered marked police cars in the driveway. The defence made much of the fact Clint Rickards and Brad Shipton were in the Criminal Investigation Bureau at the time of Louise Nicholas’s 1985 and 1986 allegations, and wore plain clothes. Therefore, it claimed, they could never have arrived on her doorstep in uniform. Prosecution witness Inspector Ray Sutton – the first policeman Louise Nicholas went to with her allegations – told the court CIB officers at the time were required to wear uniform on occasion, primarily for operations such as New Year’s Eve when police needed a higher profile on the street. He also described

the practice of ‘interchange’, when CIB and uniformed staff would swap roles for a five-to-10-week roster period. Clint Rickards told the court he never, ever wore uniform during this period, and was never part of an interchange scheme. The uniform issue was clearly top of mind with the jury, because on the first day of deliberations it returned to court to ask “do police own their own uniforms and are they expected to keep them?” But despite the importance of the point, there was no evidence that could directly answer their question. Justice Tony Randerson could only repeat Inspector Sutton’s evidence, that CIB officers were entitled to have a uniform and were encouraged to have one.

he February 1993 wedding of Louise Nicholas’ brother Peter Crawford is another confusing aspect in the narrative. It came just a month after Nicholas had sat in her parents’ lounge and told Ray Sutton about her allegations. Bob Schollum was a friend of her brother’s and would be a wedding guest, so things had the potential for disaster. Nicholas says she made a “solemn promise” to her brother and her family that she wouldn’t spoil the day. But under cross-examination from Paul Mabey, QC for Bob Schollum, it emerged Peter Crawford knew nothing about a promise, and wouldn’t have had the man “within a mile” of the reception had he known about the allegations. The wedding story became even more bizarre, when the Crawfords’ matron of honour Kerri Anne Best gave evidence for the defence. Best told the court that while photos were being taken at a local park, she looked over at one point and saw bridesmaid Louise Nicholas laughing with Bob Schollum and lifting her skirt to show him the lace top of her stocking. Another piece of conflicting evidence relating to Bob Schollum also cast doubt. In cross examination, Paul Mabey raised it with Louise Nicholas that in early 1994 she’d told police she had consensual sex with Schollum at his house in Kusabs Road, Rotorua, after a party. He says Bob Schollum has a similar memory, but he didn’t buy that house until April 1986, after the alleged January 1986 Rutland St incident. Nicholas told Mabey, “It’s in the statement, I must have said it, but I do not recall sex at Kusabs Road.” Later in closing Brent Stanaway told the jury if the drunken consensual sex happened at all, it would have been earlier, when she was 15 or 16. But it raised the question of whether the complainant really was having an ongoing consensual sexual relationship with Bob Schollum, as he claimed. Louise Nicholas says she never went to the Kusabs Road property during this time. Clint Rickards says this is where he and Brad Shipton had consensual sex with her, and that she seemed familiar with the house. The claim of an ongoing liaison with Schollum wasn’t helped by the evidence of Suzanne Canning, who had worked with Louise Nicholas at the Bank of New Zealand in 1986. She told the court in 1987 she went to look at a horse on a rural property the by-then engaged Louise and Ross were living at. While Canning was there a man she was introduced to as “Bob” arrived for an apparently friendly visit. She ran into Bob again at the Rotorua police bar, and learned his full name – Bob Schollum. In his closing argument, defence lawyer Paul Mabey put this spin on the events; “The reality is that she was welcom-

Bob Schollum at a pre-trial court appearance. PHOTO: Alan Gibson/PRESSPIX

“There was also the situation surrounding the car. Louise Nicholas says Bob Schollum picked her up in a tan-coloured Triumph on the day of the alleged Rutland Street rapes in January 1986. The defence says Schollum sold his tan Triumph in 1984”

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 31

Louise Nicholas and husband Ross leave the Auckland High Court after the not guilty verdicts were delivered. PHOTO: Paul Estcourt/PRESSPIX

ing Bob Schollum into her home, behind Ross’ back, just as she did at Corlett St. If she can’t live with that now, it’s not my client’s responsibility.” There was also the situation surrounding the car. Louise Nicholas says Bob Schollum picked her up in a tan-coloured Triumph on the day of the alleged Rutland Street rapes in January 1986. The defence says Schollum sold his tan Triumph in 1984, and did not have access to a similar vehicle owned by his colleague Trevor Clayton until Clayton was transferred to Rotorua in June 1986. The role of the now deceased Trevor Clayton in matters is another issue. Louise Nicholas knew him as a police officer in Murupara. She says it was he who introduced her to Brad Shipton and Clint Rickards. He is also one of the men she alleges abused her as a young teenager. And yet it was Trevor Clayton she went to, to get him to “tell his mates to leave me alone”. The timing is tricky, as his June 1986 move to Rotorua is six months after she says Rutland St happened, and towards the end of the period she claims the abuse went on for. Assistant Police Commissioner Clint Rickards was to all intents and purposes impressive in the witness box, the only one 32, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006

of the three to give evidence in his own defence. He’s educated – a Bachelor of Business Studies, a Masters in Public Policy and Administration, and a diploma in Maori development in the pipeline. This is on top of a sparkling police career, including three years undercover and a gold medal, the highest award possible in the New Zealand police. Add to that stellar sporting achievements – he represented New Zealand in judo at the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh – and you have the picture of an all-round, high achieving credit to the force. His testimony was emphatic and forceful. He was dogmatic, a tactic the Crown referred to as “the reciting of mantra”. He knew what he needed to say, and as a 27-year veteran of the police force was comfortable with the justice system. But there were glimpses of unattractiveness behind the slick veneer. Assistant Commissioner Rickards used the words “lies” or ‘lying” 11 times, by my count, to describe the case against him. Even when prosecutor Brent Stanaway put it to him that people could simply be mistaken, he insisted their testimonies were untruths. When he reached a point where he did not wish to say any more, he would simply repeat an answer, or use phrases such

as “I have given my answer”. Rickards also described the two incidents of consensual sex he says he had with Louise Nicholas as “jovial” seven times, a curious word to use when detailing infidelities against his young family with a woman he barely knew. In fact, Clint Rickards told prosecutor Brent Stanaway he couldn’t even remember the woman he’d betrayed his wife with, when her allegations were first put to him in the early 1990s. Rickards: “I had no idea who Louise Nicholas was at that stage.” Stanaway: “You asked Brad Shipton to enlighten you?” Rickards: “Yes I did. He talked about Kusabs Road, the woman at Kusabs Road. Then I remembered the person he was referring to.” Clint Rickards also says he had sex with Louise Nicholas’ flatmate, on the one occasion he says he went round to the Corlett St house and after he’d had oral sex with the complainant. He had apparently only just met her that night, and couldn’t remember her name. In his initial discussions with police, he couldn’t even remember the incident. Not only do these details indicate surprising moral amnesia, it’s also clear Shipton and Rickards at least had plenty of time to get their stories straight. Clint Rickards indicated he spoke to Brad Shipton about the claims before he spoke to the police investigating Nicholas’ complaints, and even then did not verify and sign a statement in the usual way. He told Brent Stanaway that, despite the seriousness of the allegations and how “shocked” he was by them, he didn’t feel it necessary to take personal notes about the conversation. By the time Clint Rickards was interviewed by Detective Superintendent Ira Lines on the 30th of May 1995, the same day Shipton and Schollum were also separately interviewed, he knew exactly how to respond. In cross examination, Brent Stanaway put it to him that it’s Ira Lines’ evidence that he had a transcript of the 1994 trial in front of him as he answered questions. Rickards to Lines: “I will give a statement but it won’t be in conflict to what I’ve already said in court.” Stanaway to Rickards: “That’s really the nature of the interview – you weren’t prepared to step outside what you said at the trial.” Clint Rickards says he can’t remember whether he had the transcript. Through the slickness of Clint Rickards’ testimony, the seamlessness of the stories is probably something the Crown did not gain enough traction on. While all three accused men admit consensual sex with Louise Nicholas to varying degrees, it’s interesting all three absolutely deny the Rutland St baton incident or anything like it ever took place. Based on the evidence before them, the verdicts jurors reached are understandable. But we as journalists are simply unable to give you the full picture, because of the myriad of suppression orders the court has placed around the case. Even jurors were not privy to the much wider landscape this black tale has been played out against. However New Zealand is a small place, and the story is starting to creep out. One day it will be told in its entirety, and it’s my view people will draw different conclusions to the one they have reached today. Maria Slade is an Investigate correspondent and senior journalist for Newstalk ZB. Her last feature was on the David Tua court battle

KEY WITNESSES LOUISE NICHOLAS – claims she was raped 612 times by policemen Brad Shipton and Clint Rickards at her flat in Corlett St, Rotorua, between September 1985 and December 1986 (6 representative counts). Also claims Brad Shipton, Clint Rickards and Bob Schollum raped her and sexually abused her with a baton at a police house in Rutland St, Rotorua, in January 1986 (6 counts). PETER CRAWFORD – Louise Nicholas’ brother. Knew policemen Bob Schollum and Trevor Clayton from the family’s time in Murupara. Says both men owned tan or yellow Triumphs. Says he would see Schollum, Shipton and Rickards around Rotorua and the trio were friends. Also says he saw Brad Shipton numerous times in police uniform. Says at the time of his February 1993 wedding he didn’t know about his sister’s accusations against the three. ROSS NICHOLAS – Louise’s husband. Describes how he started going out with Louise in late 1985, and bought her a white muslin dress while on holiday that Christmas (the dress Louise Nicholas alleges she wore the day of the Rutland St incident). Says he knew Clayton, and would see Schollum, Shipton and Rickards around the town. Also says Clayton had a yellowy-tan Triumph. Says when off work one day and resting at Corlett St, Shipton and Rickards turned up on the doorstep in uniform. INSPECTOR RAY SUTTON – the policeman Louise Nicholas first made her allegations to on 13 January 1993. Also gave evidence about CIB officers having access to police uniforms. FLATMATE AT CORLETT ST – says she and Louise Nicholas both had consensual sex with Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton at their flat. Then said she didn’t know if Louise consented. Did not appear for cross examination. IRA LINES, HUGH MOORHEAD, BARRY HUNTER – senior policemen who separately interviewed Clint Rickards, Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton on 30 May 1995. All men denied the Louise Nicholas allegations but admitted consensual sex with her. ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER CLINT RICKARDS – denies all Nicholas allegations, but says had consensual sex with the complainant twice – once with Brad Shipton at Bob Schollum’s Kusabs Rd house, and oral sex once at Louise Nicholas’ Corlett St flat. KERRI ANNE BEST – Matron of honour at Peter Crawford’s wedding. Says saw bridesmaid Louise Nicholas laughing with Bob Schollum and lifting her skirt to show him the lace top of her stocking. SUZANNE CANNING – says she was present when Bob Schollum paid Louise Nicholas a friendly visit in 1987.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 33

Beyond reasonable

doubt The evidence the court didn’t hear

IAN WISHART analyses the information the media discovered two years ago, and asks why much of it wasn’t presented to the Court

he allegations swirling around Louise Nicholas and several police officers had their public genesis in a media scoop, not as a result of Nicholas coming forward to police again. As media reports from February 2004 – when the issue first blew up – disclose, Nicholas had already complained to police, without success, in 1993. Back then, she went to see a senior Rotorua police officer [not Ray Sutton] who was an associate of the accused men, but he allegedly convinced Nicholas not to lay a written complaint about the pack rape. Instead, according to media reports, he carried out his own investigation which cleared the police officers of any criminal wrongdoing. The story, as Nicholas told the senior Rotorua cop and later recounted to One News was a simple, if sordid, one. Bob Schollum, an old friend of her father’s, had previously forced her to have sex with him but on this particular occasion in 1986 he took her to a police house in Rotorua where Rickards and Shipton were waiting. “I was led into there and my clothes were removed…I started saying ‘come on guys, I don’t want this to happen’…and then I know I was on the bed and the baton was produced and I just knew then…and I asked them not to use that but they did… they made me get on all fours and they used their baton.” Assistant Police Commissioner Clint Rickards told One News on January 31 2004 that a “full police investigation” in 34, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006

the early 1990s “completely cleared me of any wrongdoing”. Bob Schollum also told One News of the 1993 inquiry, describing it as a “careful thorough investigation by senior police officers”, and said he had been “completely cleared”. Brad Shipton used exactly the same phrase, saying he too had been “completely cleared” by the 1993 inquiry. But even early on there were doubts about the integrity of the 1993 investigation carried out by a colleague of the accused men. The then Detective Chief Inspector based at Hamilton, Rex Miller, re-opened the investigation in 1995 because of what One News describes as “unease” over the way Rotorua had investigated the alleged group-rapes involving its staff. Miller told One News it was “unprofessional” for a senior Rotorua officer to investigate serious allegations against his “close colleagues”, and he accused the senior officer of moulding Nicholas “like Play-Doh” to persuade her not to formally complain. On March 21, 2004, the Dominion Post covered off a TVNZ Sunday programme which revealed the same senior Rotorua police officer had been a witness at the earlier trials of another police officer accused of raping Louise Nicholas when she was just 14 years old. “The first two trials [of the officer] were aborted because [the senior policeman] gave hearsay evidence at critical points of the Crown case,” reported the DomPost. “The policeman was acquitted after the third trial”. Judge Michael Lance criticised the senior officer for not taking a note of Nicholas’ group-rape allegations, and for advising her not to make a statement detailing them.

Photography: Dean Purcell/PRESSPIX

A One News special investigation secretly videotaped the same senior police officer in January 2004 meeting Louise Nicholas to discuss the historic case, and he is seen and heard on tape saying “I certainly know the part relating to the baton wasn’t consensual…it would be hard to understand why you would consent to that.” But it is the backstory surrounding Louise Nicholas that provides the context. According to police files and Nicholas’ comments to the media, she was sexually abused from the age of 13 by another police officer in the village where she then lived (although the accused was eventually acquitted after a controversial series of trials), and as we’ve reported Bob Schollum was a family friend, as was another police officer, Trevor Clayton – also accused of sexually molesting Nicholas when she was younger.

icholas turned for help to Clayton – by then a Rotorua senior sergeant – after the alleged rapes at the hands of Rickards, Schollum and Shipton, but in the tight-knit Rotorua police force Clayton chose not to help the young girl. Police documents disclosed to the media in 2004 show Clayton told the senior Rotorua officer referred to earlier he was prepared to commit perjury if necessary to protect his fellow police officers. It is in that context, then, that Louise Nicholas’ older brother, Peter Crawford, told One News that Clayton made a “deathbed confession” to him while he lay dying of cancer. “He broke down and held my hand and basically he wanted to come clean with the issues regarding my sister. He asked me for

forgiveness and Mum and Dad’s forgiveness and Louise’s forgiveness…He told me he was gagged, that he was told to shut up.” Further clouding the issue is the revelation that the original police file on Louise Nicholas’ allegations has mysteriously disappeared, and appears to have been missing now since mid1997. Additionally, a diary belonging to the senior Rotorua officer which contained the only record of a formal interview with Shipton about the allegations has also vanished. Critics have made much of Louise Nicholas’ allegations failing to stick, but one has to ask what odds the TAB would give that crucial files in her case would disappear from police custody, never to be seen again, as a matter of “coincidence” on two separate occasions. For those who don’t believe lightning strikes twice in such circumstances, the only other option is that the files may indeed have disclosed something incriminating. Then there’s the issue of a former flatmate of Louise Nicholas whose testimony was used to devastating effect in the recent trial. That flatmate first came to media attention in a One News report on February 8 2004, which reported her comments that the sex was consensual and that Nicholas enjoyed it. In the same report, however, One News quoted Detective Chief Inspector Rex Miller as saying he didn’t believe the flatmate was a credible witness. Miller said he had flown to Australia to interview the flatmate but came away with the view she was lying about the sex being “consensual”: “I gained the impression that she was ashamed of what had happened and didn’t want to be reminded of it. It was just a gut feeling that I had that she wasn’t being as truthful as she could have been.” INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 35

Miller said Louise Nicholas was a far more reliable witness than her flatmate. “She was more believable and of course she hasn’t faltered one iota from day one, and she’s still telling the same story,” he said in the report two years ago. Surprisingly, Miller was not called as a witness in the trial, and nor was the flatmate. Unusually in a criminal trial, the flatmate’s evidence was presented in written form and she was not available for cross examination, or for the jury to read her body language and assess whether she was lying. In Investigate’s experience, it is rare if not unprecedented for such damaging evidence, and self-contradictory as well, to be allowed into the record without the witness being compelled to front in person. Also, unusually, she was a prosecution witness, despite appearing to offer little but confusion to the prosecution case.

he Louise Nicholas case is not the only historic group rape trial to have hit the headlines over the past year, but the other one had a markedly different outcome. Back in August four men were sentenced to jail for terms of up to eight years after being found guilty of the group rape of a woman in Mt Maunganui. The victim was 20 at the time of the 1989 sexual attack. In sentencing, Justice Ron Young told the court the woman had been attracted to one of the men, later described as “the ringleader”, and was lured to a hut at the Mount on the pretext of meeting the man for lunch. Instead, the ringleader raped her twice and invited three of his friends waiting there to take part as well. Each man was convicted of rape and abduction, while two of the men were also found guilty of unlawful sexual connection. Justice Young said the victim’s hands had been bound, and that a fifth man whose identity remains unknown had also taken part in the brutal rape. Two of the men, including the ringleader, were given name suppression, but Justice Young singled the pair out for special attention, saying they had intimidated the woman into not complaining to police, and that the pair clearly believed they would get away with the crime. “And you almost did. Your arrogance, in my view, knew no bounds,” said the judge. “It was a pack rape in the worst sense. She was, in her words, treated by you like a piece of meat.” The jury acquitted the two men with name suppression on charges of sexually violating the woman with an object. The nature of the object allegedly used has also been suppressed. The ringleader was jailed for eight and a half years, while the other un-named offender was jailed for eight years. The two others, Tauranga firefighter Warren Hales and businessman Peter McNamara, received prison terms of five and a half years and seven years respectively. The men have taken their case to appeal, although their credibility was damaged at the appeal hearing in February when the Crown read out emails suggesting the men and some of their associates were colluding to get their stories straight. One email read: “You need to whack something up like this attached, feel free to save and re-jig mine”, and the female victim of the pack rape is described in the emails as “the slapper”. Why the different outcomes? The most obvious answer is that they involve different cases and a different line-up of peo36, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006

ple. While the woman at the centre of the 1989 case was able to convince the jury that there was no way she would have consented to group sex with five big men, and that she told them “no”, Louise Nicholas was unable to convince an Auckland jury that she too had said “no” to group sex with three large men and a police baton. Part of Nicholas’ failure to connect with the jury may have been psychological – the result of years of trauma. No expert psychological witness was called in the Nicholas trial to testify about the trauma of rape on a teenage girl, particularly one who is alleged to have become somewhat of a sexual plaything at the hands of friends of her family. There is also the fact not discussed in the trial that back in the early 1980s women were publicly advised by police through the media not to physically resist a rapist, because of the risk of raising the level of violence in the attack. Women, instead, were encouraged to say “no” but to otherwise offer no physical resistance to the act. “There was a widespread public belief in the eighties, and police advice reinforced it that fighting back would just aggravate the assault,” recalls Alison Broad of the Women’s Self Defence Network. “The views, attitudes and expectations on how women should deal with rape were just different back then.” In other words, police advice to rape victims was essentially, “lie back and think of England”, a point made clear at police news conferences time and again back then. It was not until self-defence courses by people like Sue Lytollis became common in the mid-1980s that police and the media began praising women who had successfully fought off their attacker. But again, there’s a big difference between a woman fighting off one male, and a woman fighting off three police officers in their physical prime. Louise Nicholas appears to have been judged on whether she consented to group sex by the standards of women today: modern women would kick and scream and yell, therefore Nicholas’ acquiescence faced with three men wanting sex must have been proof of her “consent”. Alison Broad says if that’s the way the jury saw it, they got it wrong: “Consent is an active thing. It is not implicit.” Remember, the jury in the Nicholas case were never told that encouraging acquiescence by victims was official police policy at the time. Nicholas’ lack of struggle and apparent friendliness towards her attackers might also reflect the unique position she was in: her attackers were police – the very people you would normally call to help. The police were a tight brotherhood, and the men intimidated her. Police documents disclosed to the media reveal there was an attitude within Rotorua police that Nicholas was ‘an easy lay’. But was the teenager ‘easy’ by choice or because there was no place left to hide and no one to run to? Was her apparent good humour genuinely reflective of consensual sex, or alternatively born out of sheer, grit-your-teeth-and-move-on frustration at the dud hand she’d been dealt by circumstance? And if most of her sexual experience up to that point had been abusive, had that conditioned Nicholas to become sexually submissive at the first twitch of a finger by a predatory male? These are questions left unanswered by the latest trial, because no expert witness was called, and no one was there to give the case context.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 37

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST

A gritty investigation into Tauranga's psych unit Allegations of drunken doctors passed out in the grounds, nurses paying patients for sex, a killer and two pedophiles on the payroll, a psychiatric committal officer who likes watching beheadings on the internet, and staff smoking marijuana: IAN WISHART with this exclusive investigation into the Bay of Plenty’s main psychiatric hospital

ou could be forgiven for thinking the story that follows sounds like a Hollywood script, but the tragic truth is that no Jack Nicholson psych flick was ever this disturbing. Te Whare Maiangiangi is the Bay of Plenty’s main psychiatric unit, part of Tauranga Hospital and under the control of Pacific Health, a division of Crown entity Bay of Plenty District Health Board. You would think, with Health Minister Pete Hodgson having the statutory responsibility of appointing the chair and deputy chair, as well as four more of the 11 members on the board, that somewhere along the food chain someone had brought the goingson at Te Whare Maiangiangi (TWM) to the attention of those responsible. Well, as this story will show, they did. But what happened has become a story of betrayal, particularly of the most vulnerable members of the community – the acute mentally-ill patients who have been abused for years by staff, allegedly while management did nothing. Up until recently, Keith Wright worked at TWM as a health care assistant – in old-fashioned speak, an orderly. He’d been 38, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006

there for six and a half years, and in that time, he’s seen enough to make your hair curl. “I’ve witnessed a staff member, a registered nurse, on top of a patient with his hands around his throat, I’ve seen this guy James Hamilton, another senior nurse, grab a patient by the scrotum. I’ve seen marijuana smoked on the ward, I’ve complained about marijuana smoking on the ward and nothing was done about it. “I tried to speak to the former CEO at least 8 to 15 times and he refused to see me every time. There’s loads of evidence on their computers about this.” Wright has kept documents, and records. He reels off the names of staff at the mental health unit and what they were doing as if it was yesterday, like the aforementioned James Hamilton, who decided to draw a picture of a female staff member being raped. Pacific Health are basically protecting this guy. He’s a level 3 RN [registered nurse]. He’d been bullying a couple of us for a long time, him and another guy Bill Arabin, and he drew a picture of another nurse, basically a rape scene. Everyone I’ve showed the picture to has been absolutely distraught, it’s a rape scene, no doubts about it.” The picture is too explicit to display in full in this magazine.

The female nurse depicted being raped from behind had been taking a phone call on the crisis line nearby, while her bored male colleagues drew their fantasy sketch. Another senior nurse, Claire Olsen, clearly recalls Hamilton and Arabin showing off their “art” to other staff in the unit. “I am a senior nurse, I have 25 years experience, I’m double trained and I have a Batchelor of Nursing, and ultimately I was a witness to James showing staff the rape picture, that’s my involvement in the entire mess.” According to Wright, Hamilton dropped the picture in another female nurse’s inbox, to upset her. “It was an enrolled nurse, she’s now on ACC at the moment as a result and Human Rights are looking into it. ACC have recognized it as being a work place injury, so she found it and came to me for advice because I was the union delegate at the time, so I said ‘obviously you should get some counselling’, which she did.” Hamilton tried to blame Wright for somehow stealing his picture and placing it in the woman’s inbox, a claim Wright denies and says he can prove, because the shift times don’t match up. Regardless, Hamilton was forced to admit he drew the picture. “He clearly admits it is his picture, but says it’s just a bad taste joke. How you get a joke out of a rape scene I don’t know, and

if that’s humour to him then I’m very worried. But he doesn’t like me so he’s implicated me in the whole thing.” The biggest scandal of all, however, is that Hamilton is a Duly Authorised Officer, a man charged with the responsibility of care for the acutely mentally ill, a man with the power to help assess a patient to be compulsorily committed under the Mental Health Act. Nurse Claire Olsen says Hamilton was found guilty of sexual harassment of a colleague, and placed on a “final warning”. He had been previously “warned” for posting a picture of an obese woman’s naked backside on staff computers. But that’s not all, James Hamilton has also allegedly been watching video recordings of Iraqi hostages being beheaded – with the sound turned up so he could hear their screams. “The other thing this guy Hamilton was looking at was a website which has all the beheadings and the terrorism acts on it, and Claire Olsen witnessed him showing people that at work, so there’s all sorts of gross stuff been going on up there,” says Wright. Remember, James Hamilton is in charge of the acutely mentally ill. Claire Olsen remembers the incident well. “I saw that, he showed me that. He had the sound on and if INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 39

you’ve ever seen anything like that with the sound on you’re beyond reasonable doubt. I believe those were legitimate pictures, and I have to say I lost sleep for a few nights after that.” But if you think a psychiatric caregiver drawing rape scenes and watching beheadings on the work computer is bizarre, spare a thought for the senior psychiatrist hooked on prescription drugs and alcohol. “I personally eased him out of the garden and checked that he was alive, then I put him back in the garden, went to see the manager and I said, ‘look , you’ve got to do something’.” The reply? “ ‘Oh look, just mind your own business, you’re always creating waves’.” “I said ‘he’s pissed in the garden, I’m going to come down for my lunch in an hour, I want him removed’. And I must say when I went down an hour later he’d gone. He had a significant drug and alcohol problem, it was very, very sad. This was about 10.30 in the morning by the way. “The problem went on for 12 to 18 months. He was a psychiatrist. If there was an emergency he was the psychiatrist making decisions. He’d be on duty and there’d be a registrar underneath him. “If you pulled the old notes, even a lay person would think, ‘what’s going on here?’. I remember a committal form where the writing was on this huge angle.” So he would be in charge of deciding whether people got committed?, we asked. “There would be times yes. And he made decisions for medications.” How often would he have been drinking? “I think the question should be how often he wasn’t. I can’t think of a time when he wasn’t loaded in some way. He used prescription drugs as well.”

hen there’s the case of convicted pedophile Ian Thomas, a senior nurse at the mental health unit. The FBI had discovered Thomas was involved in child porn, storing more than 14,000 images and 800 movies on his home computer of young children and babies being raped and sexually molested by adult men. The offences had been taking place while he worked at TWM, and some staff believe he accessed porn on the internal work computers as well. Apart from the shock of discovering that a nurse involved in looking after vulnerable patients, some as young as 15, was a pedophile, Claire Olsen tells Investigate she was doubly upset that District Inspector of Mental Health David Bates, a Tauranga lawyer with the statutory duty to be an advocate for patients, turned out to be Ian Thomas’ defence lawyer. “The chap who was defending him was a lawyer by the name of Bates. He was a district inspector for mental health, so his primary job was to protect the interests of the clients. Now this staff member continued to work and in fact the only reason he lost his job is because the judge would no longer stop his name being published.” So throughout the time that he was actually on remand he was working there? “Yes he was, the management was aware of it, the night manager was aware, and some staff were aware as well. That was 40, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006

18 months ago and then he was subsequently – he got eight months in jail and he would have got a more serious sentence except that they hadn’t changed the sentencing at that time. “He wasn’t automatically disbarred from nursing because his sentence was under two years, and the reason he got disbarred is because a number of us, myself included, actually wrote to the Nursing Council. I mean, you just simply cannot have these sorts of people doing that kind of work. “For what it’s worth, I worked alongside him and he targeted young patients in that time. Males, 15, 16, 17, and the managers knew, so I think that’s pretty despicable, but that tells you about the culture of the place,” grimaces Olsen. “I really put my foot down. I remember the manager at the time telling me we had to support him. And I said, ‘No’. The details of what that chap was looking at was baby sex, and David Bates was aware of that. He was the District Inspector, he had an absolute conflict of interest in my view. “I actually spoke to Bates personally about it, and he said to me he was allowed to do what he wanted, and could represent who he wanted, and I told him ‘well you put me at risk, my family and my patients and I don’t appreciate it’. “The significance of Ian Thomas was that it became the culture of the place, that these things were not to be regarded as being as bad as they really were. That place is rotten.” But Ian Thomas wasn’t the only pedophile to darken the doors of Tauranga’s mental health unit. Somewhere around 2000, another man Stephen Derecourt, also worked there. “Derecourt?” recalls Keith Wright, “I worked with him for about six months. When I first met him I thought he was gay. I never warmed to the guy. I did a couple of transfers where you take patients to different places and we had one down to Turangi which turned into a mess and I ended up directing everyone to a police station. Because we were supposed to do an exchange and we stopped at the gas station, where the team from another hospital would meet us and we’d swap, the patient we were taking down would go into their car for the rest of the journey. But the patient got a bit riled up and there was a scene at the burger king service station. “He left from here and worked down at Rotorua.” It was while he was at Rotorua, working for Lakeland mental health that he was discovered in possession of video child porn involving children as young as six. Derecourt was fined, and eventually struck off the nurses register. Then there’s the issue of drug use by staff, and patients. A staff newsletter dated March 2006 and written by Chris Angus, the Acting Manager Quality and Risk, contains the cryptic story: “Illegal drugs and alcohol: Speaking of slightly bent, and coining a phrase from Thomas the Tank Engine, we understand that Dak, the Bullet Train has been pulling into TWM station a little too often of late. “As Plod the Police Pullman Car was on a different track, the Illegal Drugs and Alcohol Policy was called in for a major refit. We can all rest easy now as Dak, the Bullet Train, has been derailed.” Shortly before that newsletter was written, says Olsen, TWM’s line manager Kate Stewart had confiscated a packet of marijuana cigarettes from someone, but instead of safely disposing of the narcotics in line with policy, she allegedly placed

Te Whare Maiangiangi psychiatric unit, part of Tauranga Hospital

“The significance of Ian Thomas was that it became the culture of the place, that these things were not to be regarded as being as bad as they really were. That place is rotten”

the packet of cannabis cigarettes in the unit’s medical drug cabinet. An orderly, or HCA, stumbled across them later that afternoon and, assuming they were just normal roll your owns, put the packet in the “cigarette drawer” where cigarettes are “distributed to bludging patients”. Says Claire Olsen: “That afternoon, all the patients got stoned”. A pretty sorry sight, especially when medical studies are linking marijuana to the development of acute mental illness. But Olsen says that’s not all. She’s seen senior staff smoking cannabis at Christmas parties, “including several from the Drug and Alcohol Team”. Olsen named the staff to Investigate, and also provided the names of others who witnessed it. “I’ve seen marijuana smoked on the ward, I’ve complained about marijuana smoking on the ward and nothing was done about it,” confirms Keith Wright. “The other thing going on at the moment, there’s another HCA accused of sexual harassment by a patient, he’s been suspended and he’s being investigated at the moment.” According to Wright and Claire Olsen, that staff member is accused of obtaining sexual favours from a female patient in return for cash, in other words, turning an acutely mentally ill woman into a prostitute on the ward. “With regards to the male staff member involved, that is particularly disgusting,” says Olsen. “What I understand from the patient, and it’s a patient I’ve known for over 15 years, is that he asked her to do a handjob on him and he’d give her $50. She complied and he didn’t pay up. That’s how it became public knowledge. Now when the hospital went to do their little investigation, they encouraged her not to lay a complaint with the police. Now this is a client who has a history of paranoid

thinking, and none of these people ever want to go to police, but what happens from that is that the orderly doesn’t get to either establish whether he did or didn’t do it, and this patient gets another layer of abuse and mistrust upon her as well. “These people should be able to come into these environments and it be safe for them.” The incident apparently happened in the mental health unit’s filing room, which may explain another cryptic story in Chris Angus’ staff newsletter of March 06 that reads: “Apparently Jonny’s been snooping around the MHS with a thermometer and come up with some interesting readings… the winner is Filing Room, 44°. Whew! That’s enough to make anyone red faced!” Then there’s the case of convicted killer Ian Hamer, a senior psychiatric nurse convicted in 2004 of the manslaughter of his then partner, a Malaysian woman. According to the High Court, Hamer goaded his depressed partner into drinking an overdose of his own methadone medication, an overdose that left the mother of three a vegetable and eventually killed her some weeks later. Claire Olsen said she’d known Hamer well and liked him, but that he’d left the unit and “gone on a bender” with drugs and alcohol. When he returned and asked for a job again, she could see he was unfit and sought treatment for him. According to Olsen, when she rejected his sexual advances one evening the last thing he said to her was “There’s an Asian woman down the road who’ll have me if you won’t”. What Olsen didn’t know was that it wasn’t Hamer’s first brush with drugs, as a court report on his conviction in the Herald reveals: “Hamer was taking methadone to combat a drug addiction INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 41

he had had since the 1970s when he was convicted of possessing heroin and cannabis.” The court report was also telling about the former psychiatric nurse’s state of mind during the killing. “Yesterday in the High Court at Hamilton, Justice Rhys Harrison said if Ian Hamer had called for help sooner his Malaysianborn wife, Hasnah, would not have suffered permanent harm. “ ‘Even a child would have known to phone for help immediately’. “He sentenced the 47-year-old former general and psychiatric nurse to 10 years in prison, with a minimum non-parole period of five years. Hasnah Hamer died after she drank her husband’s methadone one night last February, following an argument between the couple. “Justice Harrison said aggravating factors were that Hamer had medical training yet had placed his wife in an upright position which worsened her condition. “ ‘You knew the longer you waited, the more likely it was that she would deteriorate and die’.” Hamer, of course, was no longer employed at Te Whare Maiangiangi when he killed his wife, but we did ask Pacific Health whether they were aware of his long history with drug abuse. “In his application form dated 6 April 1997, Ian Hamer was asked if he had been convicted of a criminal offence or been the subject of a professional disciplinary inquiry. Ian Hamer ticked yes to having a previous conviction – a drug charge before training as a psychiatric nurse 20 years ago in the 1970’s. “Given the age of the offence (nearly 25 years prior) he was employed as a Psychiatric Nurse by Western Bay Health on 14 April 1997 on the strength of his record and good standing since that time,” responds Pacific Health’s CEO Phil Cammish, who’s just completed a briefing for Health Minister Pete Hodgson on these matters. Cammish, who’s only been in the job nine weeks, went on to respond to some of the specific allegations Investigate is raising: “Bay of Plenty District Health Board would like to draw your attention to the fact that Keith Wright and Clare Olsen (both former employees who resigned) currently have personal grievance cases against the BOPDHB and have agreed to mediation of their claims. The DHB has already agreed to participate in this process. “The BOPDHB is carrying out an independent review of the process we have undertaken to resolve Mr Wright’s grievances, as well as to investigate any new allegations Mr Wright has made since leaving his employment at the BOPDHB to address Mr Wright’s concerns of ‘unfair process.’ “The allegations these former employees have made personally occurred over a time period of at least eight years. However, many of these issues have only very recently been raised with the BOPDHB.” For their part, Olsen and Wright deny that, and say the problem has been the tier of middle management actually running the psych unit, who allegedly failed to take their repeated complaints on board. On the question of why so many deviant staff were working in one small unit, against the law of averages, Pacific Health claim it’s only to be expected. “BOPDHB is one of the largest employers in the Bay of Plenty. The cross-section of staff we have working here is reflective of our community in all its diversity. The BOPDHB has 42, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006

a robust selection and checking process when recruiting new employees. However, we cannot manage or monitor the personal lives of our employees. “As a responsible and fair employer, we also cannot act on unfounded allegations against staff members until the natural justice system process has occurred. In all cases the BOPDHB acted once issues regarding our staff members were raised by the appropriate services or in some cases they had been found guilty of crimes.” Pacific Health’s appeal to natural justice is entirely responsible, but according to staff like Olsen and Wright it puts patients at risk. Investigate asked Pacific Health’s CEO Phil Cammish to comment on whether public service dismissal rules in professions involving patient care needed to be streamlined so that patients were not endangered by the Health Board following due process. Cammish declined to answer, instead saying: “The BOPDHB believes that all allegations raised to date for which credible evidence has been provided have been fully investigated and resolved in an appropriate and fair manner.” “In the seven years Mr Wright was employed by the BOPDHB as a Health Care Assistant (a similar position to that of an Orderly – no clinical training or care provision involved) there were numerous occasions when his own inappropriate behaviours and activities were brought to management attention and investigated.”

nd again, Wright admitted as much to Investigate before we even approached the Health Board, telling us that he’d been caught looking at fishing websites on the work computer. But in the documents he provided to the magazine, copies of correspondence with Pacific Health, Wright makes it very clear he believes middle management is waging a vendetta against staff who dare to question the much more serious behaviour that occurs on their watch. As an example, he says that after beginning to raise some of these issues with unit manager Kate Stewart, she suddenly threatened disciplinary action against him for wearing a hat on the wards, even though he’d worn one for six years without complaint. Wright says he’s on warfarin, a medication that leaves him feeling the cold, and being bald prefers to wear a hat. And when James Hamilton blamed Wright for distributing his rape picture, Wright says Pacific Health launched a kangaroo court type of inquiry where key witnesses were not interviewed, an inquiry that left Wright feeling persecuted unfairly. “There’s been so many resignations in the last wee while. There’s four of us nurses involved in this sexual harassment thing [Wright, Olsen, the woman depicted in the rape scene and the female nurse whose locker the picture was left in], we’ve all resigned, quit or been forced out.” Claire Olsen confirms this: “Ultimately I ended up resigning. I went through mediation and believed I had got a deal with them to do special projects for three months, but after a fortnight I discovered my special project had already been done, so I thought ‘I’m not going to put up with this bulls**t’, so I simply negotiated to resign immediately and I left. “James Hamilton was found by the hospital to be guilty of sexual harassment, but that was all. Nothing was changed, he

remains a Duly Authorised Officer, a DAO, who can assist in committing people under the Mental Health Act, he was still interviewing staff, doing all those types of things with no restriction at all.” “I’m sure management will say that I’m a troublemaker,” chips in Wright, “only because I have jumped up and down about it. I’m telling the truth and I’ve got nothing to hide whatsoever. I’ve got evidence to back up what I’m saying. I’ve been extremely thorough with all my paperwork.”

eturning to Pacific Health’s statement, meanwhile, the health board says it did not suspend pedophile Ian Thomas because it wasn’t told about his arrest. You’ll remember that Olsen is adamant the middle management knew, but this is what Pacific Health’s Phil Cammish says: “The BOPDHB was not informed of any charges being laid before the Court by either Mr Thomas or the Police. When Thomas’s court appearance was discovered he was immediately suspended and dismissed with seven days notice on 12 March 2004 [just after his conviction and lifting of name suppression]. “BOPDHB has no knowledge or records or any complaints regarding Thomas during his employ at the BOPDHB.” What about the decision by the District Inspector of Mental Health, a patient advocate, to act as Thomas’ defence lawyer? “�� For criminal cases, legal representation is via court appointment or personal choice. The BOPDHB is not involved in the appointment of legal representation for patients. Therefore the DHB cannot respond to this allegation.” Investigate tried to ring David Bates for his explanation but was unable to make contact by deadline. On the subject of the drunk psychiatrist, Pacific Health says it followed natural justice procedures. “First allegations regarding misuse of alcohol were raised with management in October 2000, with the situation initially being managed on a “one on one” basis by the Medical Advisor. “The subject of Dr [deleted for privacy reasons – he is not currently practicing medicine]’s alcohol misuse was raised again in August 2001, at which time the New Zealand Medical Council was notified. “As any good employer would, the BOPDHB initially supported [the doctor] in a number of ways to address his alcoholism. These attempts failed to curtail his alcoholism, and his resignation was accepted in December 2002,” says Pacific Health’s CEO. In other words, the doctor was drunk in charge of acutely mentally ill patients for more than two years. “BOPDHB is satisfied that the issues surrounding [the doctor] were handled competently. We have no knowledge of, and hold no records of the incident you are referring to in which you allege that [the doctor] was asleep in the garden.” And again, that lack of information would tend to support allegations of a failure by middle management to report the full extent of the problem, given Claire Olsen’s direct eyewitness testimony on the point. On the subject of marijuana usage, Pacific Health denies it has ever been advised. “The BOPDHB has not had any allegations regarding staff use of marijuana previously brought to its management’s attention through the incident reporting system.”

Yet Investigate has copies of notes from a meeting in October last year where the “use of marijuana” by staff was discussed. Again, that meeting involved Wright and middle management. On the specific incident a few weeks ago where marijuana cigarettes were obtained by patients, Pacific Health says this: “The marijuana which we would note was in the form of loose material in a pouch not in the form of cigarettes, Kate Stewart confiscated from a patient was locked away in a secure drug cabinet an appropriate action given that the police were due to arrive at 5pm that day to collect the drugs. A Health Care Assistant on duty opened the locked cabinet, and for unknown reasons removed the pouch. Removal of items from a locked drug cabinet by a Health Care Assistant is inappropriate and this action will be investigated. Pending the outcome of the investigation the protocols around access to drugs cupboards have been reviewed and revised. There was no reason to take disciplinary action against Kate Stewart.” On the subject of senior nurse James Hamilton: “The alleged event regarding James Hamilton fondling the testicles of male patients has not been reported to Management. “James Hamilton’s rape drawing is completely unacceptable. This issue was investigated and Mr Hamilton was disciplined as a result. It should be noted that there are also claims that Mr Wright had a large part to play in the distribution of Mr Hamilton’s drawing to other staff members. Mr. Hamilton has been referred to the Nursing Council by the DHB for their consideration of his actions. “The issue of James Hamilton watching beheading videos of Iraqi kidnap victims on the internet was raised with Management. A review of Mr. Hamilton’s internet usage at that time was unable to substantiate this claim. Improved monitoring of internet use has been implemented. This monitoring has not revealed any inappropriate use of the internet by Mr Hamilton to date.” Then there’s the case of the orderly who offered to buy sex from a female patient and then refused to pay her afterwards. You’ll remember Claire Olsen told Investigate the middle management team who investigated allegedly tried to persuade the patient not to lay a complaint. Here’s what Pacific Health says: “A Reportable Event Form was raised regarding the allegation that [Staff member X] offered to pay a patient for a sexual favour. This was investigated by the organisation and no proof of the sexual encounter was found. The allegations were therefore unsubstantiated. [X] was given a written warning for allowing himself to be in a position to be compromised with a female patient.” For his part, whistleblower Keith Wright says many other staff witnessed the events detailed in this report, but they’re too scared to talk. “They’re just so scared to say anything, because of all the crap that’s happened to us, they’re scared of losing their jobs.” Says Olsen: “When this started I never believed it would be the end of my career. I didn’t go nursing for this kind of stuff. As events unfolded they systematically got rid of every one of us and personalized it.” With a report now before the Minister, no doubt based on middle management’s version of events, it is likely more will emerge. In the meantime, you can almost hear Jack Nicholson auditioning for a reprise of his academy award-winning role. INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 43

AN IRISH

LEGACY Danny Butler’s first interview in nine years

Incensed by a recent Herald article on his life, Irishman Danny Butler has broken a nine year silence to tell his side of the story, as IAN WISHART reports

t seems like only yesterday that I was standing at a police roadblock in Auckland’s leafy St Johns, while all around me swooped Armed Offenders Squad members, ambulances, journalists and even Progressive MP Matt Robson. The focus of all the attention was a small feisty Irishman and his family, holed up in a house at the end of a cul de sac and refusing to come out for love nor money nor police dogs. That Irishman was the inimitable Danny Butler – prior to Ahmed Zaoui New Zealand’s best known asylum-seeker. It wasn’t yesterday though. It was December 1997 and the end of a long and winding road for Butler, who’d arrived back in the early 90s after being caught in a sandwich of unfortunate circumstances and political power games. Butler, you see, hailed from Belfast, had served time in the infamous Long Kesh prison during the troubles, and had tried to eke out an existence in Northern Ireland while walking the inevitable tightrope of compromise that living in a warzone entails. On the one hand, the republican IRA and its offshoot terror groups the INLA and IPLO. As a Belfast Catholic, Butler was expected to provide support, but told the republicans he’d served his time and wanted a quiet life. On the other hand, loyalist gangs and the Royal Ulster Constabulary also had their eyes on Butler, whose taxi business and nightclub were well 44, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006

placed for authorities seeking intelligence information. When Butler refused to be a government informant, the RUC threatened to leak word on the streets that he’d informed anyway. He was arrested soon after on what he alleges was planted evidence, and then the IPLO issued a public threat giving him 48 hours to leave Belfast. That’s when Butler decided losing his £50 bail bond was a healthier option than sticking around for the next court hearing – he jumped bail to come to New Zealand. After his deportation from the country six years later, New Zealanders quickly forgot about the Butler saga. There were reports of the occasional sighting, like Newstalk ZB’s Kerre Woodham who bumped into him in a Galway pub one evening while traveling, but by and large Butler was keeping a low profile, fearful of attracting the attention of republicans with long memories. A low profile, that is, until a New Zealand Herald article three months ago that revisited the Butler saga based on an interview with his estranged NZ-based sister Margaret (Marnie). It wasn’t long after that that a phone rang in the Investigate office, and an old familiar voice crackled down the line from 18,000km away. “That rag, the NZ Herald. You know the Herald, mate, they’ve always done hatchet jobs on me. But this one was 1,500 words plus a picture.”

HAPPIER DAYS: Danny Butler and Danny jnr in Galway, 1998

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 45

For the first time in nine years, Danny Butler is breaking a self-imposed media silence, fighting back against what he claims are the negative slurs in the latest publicity: “Let me read you some of the key bits. ‘Danny Butler arrived in 1991 on the run from British police…’ Wrong, it was the IPLO [Irish People’s Liberation Organisation]. ‘He landed on his widowed sister’s doorstep in St Heliers, Auckland with his oldest son – a boy in shorts – and his pregnant girlfriend Bernadette Daley. His sister let them stay, but on her terms – separate bedrooms – because she was a convent-educated girl’.” Butler’s distaste for his younger sister, who was quoted unnamed in the Herald article, boils to the surface. “She may be convent-educated academically, but not morally mate! Here’s the story. I arrived with my son, with Bernie and Danny in New Zealand. There were no separate beds, probably because I couldn’t get into one because Margaret was there with her lesbian lover. I went into Margaret’s room to say goodnight and there was this naked woman lying there – she worked at TVNZ – yelling at me saying “what are you doing here? Get out!”. Maggie had initially introduced her as “this is my nanny”, so the next thing this naked nanny is lying in bed beside her. After all, she was “convent educated”.

t is clear after just our first few moments of conversation that Butler blames his sister for an article he regards as deeply hurtful, and he is not impressed that she chose not to be named. “She wasn’t so coy about being named when she got $5,000 for writing an article about me for the Woman’s Weekly and a holiday in Noumea, while I was eating rice and gravy on Christmas Day. My lovely sister. She’s a Walter Mitty. “But where was I,” he asks himself after taking a moment to recompose. “Ah, that’s right, the article: ‘The first casualty of the Butler story was 20 year old Daley. Butler’s sweet nothings to her quickly turned sour when he told her he had to leave, his wife Colette was on the way from Belfast with their son. Daley had no option but to pack her bags…’ “The thing about this mate, and Bernie is sitting beside me now on the couch, and she’ll tell you that her visa had expired. She went home for two weeks and I brought her back again.” Butler has never before spoken publicly in detail about his relationship with Bernadette Daley, the ‘other woman’ in his marriage to wife Colette who flew out to join him in 1992 with their youngest son Tony in the family’s quest to start a new life away from the Troubles. Colette knew Daley was pregnant, and knew Butler felt he had a duty to support Bernadette and the new baby, Danielle, born in Auckland. But the way the Herald told it, Daley was hung out to dry by Butler. “Falling for a married man…meant she ended up in a tiny flat on the other side of the world alone until her daughter was born,” said the article. Again, Butler is livid. “Bernie lived with me in Meadowbank. You remember the inorganic collections? We lived with furniture, broken chairs and things we’d lifted off the inorganic collections. We got a fridge with no freezer off the Salvation Army. Now remember, I had no social welfare, nothing, and they wouldn’t give me a permit to work – and I was an electrical technician, a high priority skill!” 46, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006

“Although Butler admits the threat is receding, and hiding out in provincial Galway helped, nonetheless the Irish have long memories and he worries what might happen if one of his former foes wants to relieve the boredom of a Belfast weekend”

And again, Butler’s sister Marnie is never far from their thoughts. “One night Danny and I had an argument,” remembers Bernadette Daley, “a big blazing argument with a couple of drinks in us and I phoned her, and she took me into a women’s refuge up in Mt Albert. Now picture this, I’m in New Zealand for three weeks, 20 years of age, pregnant, who’m I going to phone but his sister? You know, have a wee bit of a cry. But she says ‘get outta there’, and she throws me into a women’s refuge for two or three days. I didn’t want to go to a refuge! I just wanted to go to her house for a couple of hours until everything calmed down, and then I’m sitting in a refuge going ‘what the?’ I knew he was going spare, and I was going spare sitting in a bloody women’s refuge in Mt Albert. And then Margaret goes, ‘oh, the girlfriend’s gone to a women’s refuge’. I didn’t go to the refuge, she put me there! In sixteen years I could count the arguments I’ve had with Danny on my hands.” So what has life been like during those sixteen years? “For 16 years yes, I was the other woman, but I knew he was always coming to me. I knew there was no love between Danny and Colette. I could show you photo album upon photo album, the boys were always in my house. Every birthday I had a party for them, never a year went by when I didn’t have a party for the boys. We went away on day trips together, me Danny, the boys and the girls. We were a normal family. It was two separate families but when we were together we were a complete unit, happy out.” The Herald article touched on Danny Butler’s marriage collapse, noting that wife Colette had remarried and was now living in Boston. Butler says it was a little more fraught than that. “My best friend was a bouncer, a doorman, and I was working six nights a week bringing Colette her money, and Bernie. So I leaves the house and this guy told me his brother Pat and Colette seemed a bit, you know? And I says ‘What?’. I says ‘look, I don’t mind Colette finding love, I’d quite like her to find love, but not with your brother. You and me are supposed to be best mates and you’re making me look like a real plonker. How long has this been going on?’ And it had been going on for a brave while.” The breakup coincided with a decision by their son Danny jnr to get married to a local Galway girl. She was a member of

Auckland, 1997. The police siege at the Butler home

the Christadelphian sect, and according to Butler her parents initially threw her out of the house so he invited her to live with them. But it was a small house, tensions rose, and something had to give. “Danny jnr was earning about a hundred quid a week as an apprentice so how was he going to survive as a married man? I brings Danny and Johanna into the house, but Johanna and Colette didn’t bond. Johanna had to compete for the woman’s suite. This little 18 year old, she was 18, and Danny was 20, were sitting in the back of the car, and Danny says ‘Daddy, you see, for your happiness it might be better if you left the house’, and here’s me thinking, ‘you little dog, et tu, Brutus?’, and the little girl says, ‘for your happiness, Danny’. “So I leave the house, Danny jnr’s in the house, Colette’s new boyfriend is in the house, in my bed. I got a TXT from Colette: ‘We’re having a couples’ night in. Sex is tremendous!’ ” Accidents in love happen. They happened to Butler, and they happened to Colette. Given the blowtorch of the pressures in Belfast, the affair, the flight to New Zealand, the deportation and limited income thanks to Butler’s heart condition, there were no winners and the break-up was messy. Nonetheless, Butler snorts derisively. “Tony, my younger son, left the house, Tony wouldn’t recognize it. Apparently they’re married now and living in Boston. I heard that a long time ago but now I’ve seen it in the Herald that they’re married. Well I’ll tell you this, if she’s married then it’s bigamy because she got no divorce from me.” What about the question on everyone’s lips, the oft-repeated claim that his life would be in danger if he was forced to return to Ireland? Although Butler admits the threat is receding, and hiding out in provincial Galway helped, nonetheless the Irish have long memories and he worries what might happen if one of his former foes wants to relieve the boredom of a Belfast weekend. “It’s still stressful,” says Daley. “When you hear a northern accent you’re always kind of looking. Northerners travel, so you do get worried when you hear voices, and you think ‘is it…is it…are they looking for us?’ It’s not as if we’re living carefree, happy go lucky people. There’s always that threat that the bullet’s going to come. But we have to maintain a relatively normal family life for the kids, and they wouldn’t be doing so well at

school if we weren’t doing something right.” Danny Butler is now living with Bernadette and the couple’s two daughters, Danielle and Doreen, both New Zealanders by birth. “Our daughters are brilliant,” says Daley. “Danielle is an honours student in her second year at secondary school, and Doreen is finishing off her junior school, and she’s another honours student. The two girls are very academically gifted. The oldest one still misses New Zealand, and the younger one is starting to talk about it. They’ve both got New Zealand passports and birth certificates. Maybe one day they’ll invite their parents over to New Zealand for a visit!” For his part, Butler says Daley is the woman of his dreams and has been an absolute rock through the turmoil. “I love her to bits.”

ut there is one regret – the estrangement with his oldest son Danny jnr, again touched on in the Herald, another excerpt of which Butler reads down the phone line: “Danny jnr, who was with Butler the night he arrived in Auckland, did talk from his home in Galway city where he holds down two jobs and is married to a local girl. The couple have two small children. Galway isn’t large, but Butler and Danny jnr have never bumped into each other. What would happen if he knocked on the door and asked to see the grandchildren? ‘I would call the police and ask for a restraining order,’ says Danny jnr matter of factly.” Butler is seething. “The article implies I’m the bad guy who did wrong by my son. That’s not true, even their engagement ring came courtesy of me. I’ll tell you what it was. His girlfriend was a Christadelphian, they’re a sect that don’t believe in the Holy Trinity and they call the Catholic church and all the protestant churches ‘harlots’. There’s only about a hundred Christadelphians in Ireland and he’s married to the daughter of the deputy head of the church here. “The church here in Galway is Danny’s father-in-law’s house. His 16 year old son is an ‘elder’ who holds services because women are considered low in the pecking order – in fact they’re not considered at all. “While I still had some influence with Danny jnr and Johanna I urged them to baptize Nicole, my first grandchild, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 47

Galway, 2006. Bernadette and Danny, with NZ-born daughters Doreen (L) and Danielle

a Catholic. It caused tensions and I wasn’t invited to the christenings, and Tony didn’t go.” As a Catholic ‘harlot’, Butler claims he’s been excommunicated by his own son. Danny jnr and his wife have since had a second daughter, Aliyah. “I sent those kids birthday cards every birthday, Christmas cards every Christmas. Knew their birthdays perfectly, they’re my grandchildren. I knew the cards would probably be thrown on the fire but they’re my grandchildren and that’s the way it was. I haven’t seen my grandchildren in four years,” Butler says softly. Just before Christmas, Butler asked one of his friends, a lecturer, to pay his son a visit at his Galway home address. “The guy went up and Johanna came to the door, and she said, ‘look, if Danny knew you were here he would kill you’. And she closed the door. So he waited a bit then went up again. ‘Oh, you again? If you don’t get away from this house I’m calling the Garda [police].’ He said, ‘look, I’m just hoping to reconcile Danny –’ ‘That won’t happen! If he wants to be a good father and a good grandfather tell him to leave us alone.’ “He said ‘well I’d like to hear those words from Danny, if you don’t mind’. She said ‘Get away from this door or I’m calling the Garda’. “So what happened was, I’m waiting around the corner on him, and the next thing I see this car, and I thought it was Danny and I thought ‘stuff this, I have to see him’. The car went speeding by but she had her hair tied up and I thought it was Danny driving. But she went straight around to the GMIT [Galway Mayo Institute of Technology] to see her father. Now I’d followed her thinking it was Danny so when the car pulled up I stopped and got out but she saw me and recognized me straight away, and drove off again, not in a panic or anything. But the next morning the Garda are knocking on my door.” In a strange quirk of fate, Butler turned the tables on his daughter-in-law, convincing police to deliver a letter to his estranged son on his behalf: “Dear Danny, “Of all the letters I have written in my life, this is by far the most important, because I am writing it to the son I have loved unconditionally from the day he was born and I proudly held him in my arms, and have continued to love him to this day and until the day I die and beyond that. The same applies to your brother in equal measure.

“Your grandfather Butler and I did not always see eye too eye when I was younger but I always loved him and I always thought he knew this, as love between parents and their kids is covered by the unconditional. He and I enjoyed a great friendship and I stayed awake for 2 weeks nursing him until he died. When he died there was nothing left unsaid between us and his words to me were “I’ll keep a place for you cheeky face”. The nursing of him was not a labour but an honour and I wish he was here today so as you could have known him better. Unfortunately but true this is the circle of life and I would never wish the hurt on you if I died and we never talked. I say this unselfishly. “Although it doesn’t seem like it you were and still are my best friend. I would like to make it clear I am not out to come between you and Johanna. I will always support your choices as I have done in the past. Remember the rugby, week in and week out and I always ended up in the middle of the opposition support along with Lance’s father. I was very proud of your achievements. “I am so confused and disappointed how our relationship has come to this. We were so close. Danny the man bringing this letter to you is doing so out of a sense of civic duty. I would never in any circumstances send the Garda to you. He is a community minded man. The Garda have been to my house twice. Once over that stupid phone call which I apologise for and yesterday when an old friend of mine visited your house to talk to you with a view to reconciliation. This friend of mine wanted to help. He wrote you a letter about two months ago and visited the other night. This friend is a Senior Lecturer in Bolton University. “Danny I have never missed sending a card on Nicole and Aliyah’s birthdays. One of the greatest joys when you reach my age is knowing you have grandchildren who are loved unconditionally and the circle of life is unbroken and one of the greatest sorrows is having to ask people who have seen them the colour of their eyes, hair etc. “Danny I know you love your wife and kids very much and that’s very commendable and I wish you and your family all the best for the future. I think you and I have wasted enough time bickering. It’s been over four years now and that is time we will never get back. “You and I deserve better than this, you only get one chance in life and one only. All my love to you and your family. Your friend and loving father forever. “PS I have your lucky stone you gave me when you were nine . It is alongside your grandfather’s socks he wore when he died. Lastly Danny you know in your heart of hearts I would die for you.” To date, there’s been no answer.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 49

NOT A

SHRED OF

EVIDENCE Are scientists faking data on ADHD?

Medical treatment decisions are normally based around scientific proof but in Sweden researchers faced with a legal challenge, shredded their own evidence. The case involving increasing numbers of children diagnosed with neuropsychiatric disorders like ADHD questions research and its funding and the diagnosis and subsequent treatment of children with stimulant drugs such as Ritalin, as VIVIEN EDWARDS reports 50, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006

hen Dr Leif Elinder returned to Sweden in 1995, after working in Whakatane Hospital and in Waikato Hospital’s Child Development Unit, he became a community/schools paediatrician in Uppsala, a town with 200,000 inhabitants, 30,000 of them school children. Elinder was concerned that Swedish doctors were labelling more and more children with ADHD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders). He did not consider asking questions of parents and teachers to be a valid procedure for diagnosing a supposedly hereditary brain dysfunction. An incorrect diagnosis could impact on a child’s learning because of lowered expectations and affect their future job opportunities and earnings. Low intellectual test results could also lead to suggestions that special schools (Sarskolan) and classes were a child’s best option. Children attending special schooling with parents’ consent had nearly doubled in two decades, but this varied greatly in different communities. Schools received four times the amount of money for each special needs child, and Skolverket (the National Education Agency) told Elinder that migrants were more likely to be classed as intellectually disabled and numbers of children with neuropsychiatric disorders were increasing. In 1997, Elinder read a newspaper article signed by neuropsychiatrist Professor Christopher Gillberg and school doctor Sophie Ekman. Gillberg, a world authority on autism, headed Sweden’s most influential group of child neuropsychiatrists and

was chief adviser to the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelson). Gillberg and Ekman claimed in their article that 10% of Swedish children had lifelong neuropsychiatric dysfunction needing a doctor’s diagnosis. With 1,200,000 Swedish schoolchildren and 100 community school doctors, each school doctor could therefore be expected to have 1,200 children with a neurodiagnosis. Elinder believes less than one percent of children qualified for such neuropsychiatric labelling. The frequent use of amphetamine drugs like Methylphenidate (Ritalin) as a first line of treatment was of concern. Ritalin a Class B drug was open to abuse and posed additional risks for children with growing brains. Ritalin was being promoted in Swedish medical journals by the Gillberg group quoting American expert Dr Russell Barkley saying the drug was ‘very effective and harmless.’ Barkley, research professor of psychiatry at New York’s Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, claimed ADHD was due to a lifelong dopamine deficiency and that 80 percent of cases were incurable. Elinder, cautioned by his boss to look at recent research before speaking out publicly, says such a claim

was never proven. Stimulants sometimes brought about shortterm behavioural improvements and temporarily reduced hyperactivity, poor attention and impulsivity, but they did not cure. They suppressed spontaneity, and sociability, enhanced obsessive-compulsive behaviours, isolated the child from outside influences and increased social withdrawal. “Problem-solving and divergent thinking appear to be affected, and research studies on animals and humans suggests stimulants in a child’s growing brain can permanently alter brain function.” Berkeley psychology Professor Nadine Lambert spent 30 years following up 500 ADHD children to their mid or late 20s. When her study findings showed that those treated with stimulants were twice as likely to develop smoking and cocaine habits than those not treated, her research was criticised and she found it more difficult to get access to research funding to continue this work. After reviewing the literature Elinder presented a critical review at a November 1998 national doctors’ conference (Svenska lakarstamman) in Gothenburg. A 60 Minutes television presentation Bokstavsbarnen (‘The Labelled Children’) INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 51

followed, but Gillberg refused to participate. Since then wrong, but pointed out it was impossible to examine all the Elinder has suffered a string of untrue statements about himinformation in that short time. The Gillberg group and Preses self, including a supposed affair with Gillberg’s wife. His entire (President) Goran Bondjers, chief of the Sahlgrenska University family, including his parents (aged in their 80s) received abuHospital in Gothenburg then made media announcements sive letters. stating that the Gillberg group had been cleared by the Ethics Through a friend’s advice he met University of Lund sociolocommittee. gist Assistant Professor Eva Karfve who later in 2000 publicly Lundgren writing to the editor of Dagens Medicin (Medicine criticised the neuropsychiatric labelling of children in articles of Today) stated never in his professional life had he felt so and a book.1 They began supporting each other. The Gillberg exploited. The Ethics Committee never had freed the Gillberg group accused Karfve of her work being used by the Church group of scientific misconduct accusations. of Scientology in its own arguments against stimulant drugs. By then Gillberg’s wife and colleagues had shredded the group’s However, neither she nor Elinder have no such connections. research material rather than hand it over, citing patient confiElinder says unfounded guilt by assodentiality. The University reported this to ciation and slander enabled Gillberg to the police. Gillberg, deemed innocent of avoid debating the real issues of validity the destruction, said he was devastated. of diagnosis and risks of treating children However he renewed the employment con“Gillberg’s wife with stimulants. tract for one ‘shredder,’ Kerstin Lamberg and colleagues However, Elinder and Karfve’s comhis project controller, and increased her had shredded the bined criticisms did result in the Gillberg salary. Gillberg himself continued to group’s research group (in a document to Socialstyrelsen) receive considerable research funds from material rather reducing prevalence rates from 10% of the Scientific Council and from the State than hand it over, children down to 2-5%. Inheritance Fund. In 2002, Elinder and Karfve found But he still had to face the scientific citing patient inconsistencies in the Gillberg group’s misconduct accusations in court, along confidentialresearch. Gillberg had diagnosed 42 chilwith the University of Gothenburg, ity. The University dren at age seven in 1978 with MBD which provided protection, when it could reported this (minimum brain dysfunction) according have asked for names of Gillberg’s study to the police. to his own criteria, yet parents were never subjects to be de-identified, and a lockGillberg, deemed given a diagnosis. Gillberg’s wife Carina smith could have helped to access the followed up the same children at 10 and research material. innocent of the 13 years for her doctoral thesis. The diagIn May 2005, Christopher Gillberg, destruction, said nosis was changed during the study from Gunnar Svedberg (University Dean) and he was devasMBD to DAMP (deficiency in attenArne Wittlov (University Board chairtated. However tion and motor perception), a new conman, Scientific Council Board memhe renewed the cept at the time pioneered by Gillberg. ber and vice-president of Volvo) were employment conLars Hellgren (now consultant psychiindicted and put on trial at Gothenburg atrist to Socialstyrelsen) did his thesis, District Court. tract for one using the same children when aged 16, Meanwhile the Gillberg group organ'shredder,' Kerstin and Gillberg and his assistant colleague ised and circulated a petition among Lamberg his projPeder Rasmussen followed them up at 22 the medical profession supporting ect controller, years. By this time Gillberg was saying Gillberg’s court obstruction. Two hunand increased that DAMP was similar to ADHD. dred and sixty-seven doctors signed the her salary” Only three subjects dropped out, a low petition. Gillberg was in open conflict figure considering the study covered 15 through the pages of Dagens Medicin years and that no children were actually with his university boss Professor of treated. Yet Gillberg used this research Paediatrics Birgitta Strandvik over the to support his claim that DAMP/ADHD conditions affected petition. She told him it was not a good idea and could lead 10% of children, potentially making them candidates for lifeon to further crime. long stimulant treatment. Professor of child psychiatry, Per Anders Rydelius from the When Elinder and Karfve were refused access to the Karolinska Institute and Rolf Zetterstrom who was chief editor of Gillberg group’s raw data they took legal action. The civil court Acta Paediatrica wrote an article in Dagens Medicin. They pointed (Kammarratten) gave them the right to inspect the research out that the Gillberg group in order to prove their hypothesis material but the Gillberg group refused. As a compromise repeatedly changed the diagnosis and information in their mateElinder and Karfve suggested an outside, independent invesrial. Study results and conclusions were therefore unreliable. tigation by the Scientific Council. Instead, the Gillberg group “Accessible articles (from the Gillberg group) reveal that informally asked Ethics committee chairman Ove Lundgren those studied have been managed in an unscientific way – a to look at the material. Lundgren, given four hours to scruconclusion which does not need strengthening by what could tinise 100,000 pages of research material filling 22 metres of have been found in the destroyed research material”. shelf space told Gillberg that he could find nothing obviously Three professors defended Gillberg in court for not handing 52, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006

over the research material. Elinder was witness for the prosecution, but in a courtroom filled with ADHD supporters his wife could not find a seat in the audience. In June 2005, Gillberg was given a suspended sentence, two 50 unit fines2 plus court costs. Svedberg, the University Dean received one 40 unit fine and costs, and Wittlov was found not guilty. Svedberg later resigned from the University to take up forestry company opportunities. Another 60 Minutes programme Uppdrag granskning (Time for Scrutiny) screened on National Swedish television. Rutter, Rydelius and Lundgren were interviewed, but again Gillberg refused to participate.

n March 2006 the Gillberg group appeared in court charged with destroying Government property, an offence that could warrant six months to two years prison. Carina Gillberg, Peder Rasmussen and Kerstin Lamberg each received suspended sentences and 50 means-related unit fines for having destroyed the research material. Lamberg was already fundraising to pay Gillberg’s fines for his court obstruction sentence, through the Autism (patients) society Riksforeningen Autism for which she is vice-chairman as well as through the Attention (patients) society Riksforbundet Attention. Participants at a recent neuropsychiatric child educational conference held in Lund were also asked to pay Gillberg’s fines. Lamberg’s own salary was paid from research grants awarded to Gillberg from the State Inheritance Fund, and Elinder states that a substantial portion of Riksforbundets Attentions funding comes through drug company sponsorship. “Eli Lilly, manufacturer of Strattera (Atomoxetine an alternative ADHD drug that Gillberg was trialing in a separate study) is one of the Attention Society’s main contributors.” Gillberg has just organised and attended the second international Social Brain Conference called ‘Mindroom’ in Glasgow, Scotland. The conference patron was Queen Silvia of Sweden and important European psychiatrists participated. Despite his conviction, Gillberg has kept his Gothenburg University position. The Scientific Council can not investigate him unless asked by the University. But in a show of ‘revenge tactics,’ the University of Lund was persuaded to ask the Scientific Council to investigate Karfve and her book on the ADHD/Ritalin issue. The Scientific Council tried for over a year to get a panel together to scrutinise Karfve’s written statements, during which period she was denied research funds. The investigation, just completed, has freed her of all charges and blame. In Norway, Health Minister Sylvia Brustad stated on TV2 Channel 3 in March 2006 that the United Nations body for drug abuse is concerned. About 12,000 children in Norway (the highest number in Europe per head of population) receive daily stimulant drugs for ADHD. Brusted announced an investigation into the practise of doctors ‘labelling’ children, and their connections with certain drug companies. ADHD diagnosis in Norway had been influenced by Gillberg’s position as head adviser to the prestigious ‘Children in Bergen’ project, a post he now no longer holds. Having been convicted in Sweden he is also likely to lose his Royal Norwegian Scientific Council membership.

The Norwegians have taken a stand but in Sweden (the country that presents the Nobel prize) Gillberg carries on, supported by the State Inheritance Fund, and the University of Gothenburg, although he is no longer advisor to the National Board of Social Welfare. The Scientific Council, set up to promote good quality research and deal with scientific misconduct has been paralysed. If it stops funding for other Gillberg research projects, then money previously invested will be wasted. A project Gillberg started in 2003 for Eli Lilly, was expected to ease the way for the drug Strattera (Atomoxetine, previously promoted as an anti depressant) to be approved as an alternative non-stimulant ADHD treatment in Sweden. The trial on 40 adults was expected to last a year, but there are doubts it will ever be completed. Only half the patients enrolled, half of those never turned up and five experienced harmful effects. New overseas reports indicate serious side effects from Strattera can occur, for example, unexpected suicides, cardiac disorders and liver damage. In New Zealand, Pharmac received an application to fund Strattera but it has not been approved. Hjarnspoken – DAMP och hotet mot fokhalsan' (Brainghosts - DAMP) ADHD) and the threat against Public Health) published Stockholm/Stenhag 2,000 (Brutus Ostlings bokforlag Symposion AB 2 One unit fine is approximately one day's salary minus tax. 1

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 53

The Forgotten 54, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006

WORLDBRIEF

War in Sudan’s Darfur region has spread into Chad, writes Shashank Bengali

ZUMA

War

DRE, Chad – The war in Sudan’s Darfur region, where more than 200,000 people have been killed in what the Bush administration calls a genocide, is growing deadlier and more complicated. Since the beginning of the year, militias backed by the Sudanese government are crossing over almost daily into neighboring Chad and freely attacking Darfur refugees and Chadian civilians in villages along the lengthy, desolate border. Making matters worse, about 8,000 Chadian rebels have set up camp in Darfur. On March 30, they clashed with Chadian government forces 100km south of the strategic border town of Adre. Dozens of fighters were killed in an attack that Chad said Sudan supported. The mounting violence has driven at least 55,000 Chadians from their homes, and camps for Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad are swelling with hundreds of new arrivals each week. Much of the region is beyond the reach of relief agencies, and the U.N. World Food Program says several thousand people will go hungry in the coming months. There has long been trouble between Sudan and Chad, uneasy neighbors in a region of crosscutting ethnic and tribal loyalties. At the start of the Darfur war, in 2003, Sudan armed Arab militias called the janjaweed to quell a political uprising by Darfur’s black villagers. Many of the militiamen came from Chadian Arab tribes, and they occasionally attacked in eastern Chad. But with hostilities between the countries increasing, thousands of people who’d fled janjaweed attacks in Sudan now find they are no safer on the other side of the border. “Even though we are in another country, we are still being tormented,” says Yacoub Abakar, 43, a balding Sudanese with sad eyes. Abakar was shot in his left foot in a janjaweed attack last month near the Chadian border town of Goungour, where he’s lived with his family since militias torched his village in Darfur in 2003. Seated in his bed in Adre’s hospital – the only one for miles – Abakar gingerly rolls up his right pants leg to display a softball-sized scar on his shin. It was another bullet wound from the Darfur attack. That the janjaweed now are attacking Darfurians in their country of refuge creates “a nightmare scenario” for diplomats, says Baba Gana Kingibe, the top official in Darfur for

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 55

ZUMA

the African Union, the intergovernmental body that’s charged with peacekeeping in the region. Conflict between Sudan and Chad threatens to undo what little progress has been made in seven rounds of peace talks between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels, Kingibe explains. Some 7,000 African Union troops in Darfur – ill equipped to police a region the size of Texas – have been unable to enforce a cease-fire. A U.N. mission is due to take over in the fall, although Sudan’s Arab government has balked at the idea, calling it part of a Western plot against Arabs. Meanwhile, Sudan continues to support the janjaweed, though it’s denied that. Last month, Jan Pronk, the U.N. special envoy to the country, told the U.N. Security Council: “In South Darfur, militias continue to cleanse village after village. The government has not disarmed them.” Last month, Sudan refused to allow the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator, Jan Egeland, to visit Darfur - perhaps, Egeland said, because Sudanese officials didn’t want him to see how badly the situation had deteriorated. The campaign has forced 2 million people from their homes since 2003, including 220,000 who fled into Chad. While most settled in refugee camps far within the country, about 20,000 squatted along the border, hoping it would be easier to return home. But the violence has spread. In interviews, victims of recent attacks in Chad said the horse- and camel-riding janjaweed were heavily armed, and occasionally accompanied by trucks equipped with automatic weapons. The militias steal food and livestock and fire on villagers with impunity, victims said. 56, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006

Chadian officials accuse Sudan of supporting the cross-border raids as well as the Chadian rebellion. “The Khartoum government has emptied Darfur,” says Col. Touka Ramadan, the commander of military forces in Adre, “so they have come here.” Sudan has denied supporting the rebels, but the two countries have fomented rebellions against each other before. Analysts say the Sudanese government is trying to exploit a particularly unstable period in Chad. The ailing president of Chad, Idriss Deby, who’s running for a controversial third term in May elections, escaped a coup attempt by military defectors last month. Much of the 1300km-long border has been unprotected since December, when Chadian rebels launched a major attack on Adre. Deby, who seized power in 1990 by leading a coup from Darfur, moved troops into Adre from other border towns. Now Adre resembles a military base, with hundreds of troops in mismatched camouflage roaming the sandy streets, while only a few miles away the janjaweed carry out attacks. March 29, four men were taken to the Adre hospital with bullet wounds from a janjaweed attack that morning in Tougoultougouli, a village 16 km away. “They came in big numbers – about 50 of them,” says Ousmane Abdullah Ouaddi, 32, a thin man with a wispy goatee who lay in a hospital bed with a broken left leg. “They were well armed. They came to take our animals, then they left.” Ouaddi, who surrendered 45 head of sheep and 10 cattle in the raid, says he’d lost count of the number of recent janjaweed attacks in the area. The hospital, run by the relief agency Doctors Without Borders, has admitted nearly two dozen people whom the janjaweed shot in the past month. Ouaddi says he is considering fleeing with his wife and eight children. “With things like this,” he says, his voice weary, “we cannot stay.” Nearly all relief agencies have pulled back from the border, for security reasons. Aid workers who’ve traveled the desert south of Adre say dozens of villages have been evacuated. A survey last month by aid groups determined that 55,000 to 65,000 Chadians have fled their homes. More and more Sudanese are traveling long distances over scorching sands to reach U.N. refugee camps, which already house 206,000 people. Gaga, the only camp that isn’t too full to accept new arrivals, added 2,000 people in the first three weeks in March, according to the local office of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees. That was up from 1,700 in January and 1,900 in February. It was more than 100 degrees the day that Harna Azin Adam reached Gaga from the border. She’d traveled for three days with her 2-year-old daughter, 9-year-old son and their last material possessions: two donkeys. They arrived relieved but afraid: A village near Adam’s had just lost all its livestock in a janjaweed attack, and Adam had to leave her ill mother behind in the care of her two older children. “There is no security at the border. There is nothing to eat,” says Adam, 33, squinting as she held her baby under her shawl and out of the sun. “I hope that if I can find a place here, I can send for the others in my family. But I am very worried for them.”

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 57 Danish Sound Design

thinkLIFE money

Safe as houses

Peter Hensley reckons people donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t properly understand Home Equity Release loans

im & Moira had not seen their loyal and life long friends Paul & Debbie for several years now. Jim had not given it much thought, Paul did not frequent the golf club as much as he used to and Jim casually asked the secretary recently if Paul was still a member. The response shocked him, he had cancelled his membership over five years ago. This would have been the year after he officially retired. Moira was not surprised when Jim brought the news home. She said that it was unlikely Paul could afford to remain as a member. Jim found this difficult to accept. Moira, in her usual manner, suggested that not everyone was as well off as they were. Jim found this hard to believe, however Moira told him to wise up and look around. She had just been to a local coun-

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cil-sponsored seminar on Home Equity Release where their investment adviser presented some eye opening figures. She had also seen Paul & Debbie sitting at the back of the large audience. She had invited Jim to accompany her however he pooh-poohed the idea saying that it was only another scheme to steal from those who had worked hard to pay for their own homes. Jim thought that it was unfair that the next generation would miss out on their rightful legacy. The numbers at the seminar suggested otherwise. The place had been packed and the thoughtful questions asked showed that many had given this issue a great deal of thought. Moira went along because their adviser always put a lot of research into his presentations and this one was no excep-

tion. Early in his talk he suggested that academic research by the New Zealand Institute for Research on Aging showed that the topic of Home Equity Release suffers from a perception problem and a huge personal prejudice. Other studies showed that the main reasons for this are either ignorance or a lack of understanding or a combination of both. Their adviser went on to suggest that the widely known Paretoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 80 / 20 Principle could be used to explain the distribution of wealth in society. This rule suggests that 20 percent of the population control 80 per cent of the wealth. His experience implies that the figures are incorrect and that in reality ten percent of the population control 90 percent of the money. The corollary or natural consequence of this statement

“

Home Equity Release also allows pensioners to regain some dignity and personal pride by increasing the choices available to them. Money does nothing else but increase the number of choices available to an individual or couple

”

indicates that 90 percent of the population are left with ten percent of the wealth. Their adviser asked the audience to reread that last sentence. Studies of investment adviser client bases across the country have shown that the average client goes into retirement with a debt free home and about $100,000 in savings. It is important to note that those studies only refer to the ten percent of the population who have money to invest. Other studies show that the balance, the other 90%, get by on National Superannuation and a little (but not much) more. In 2001, Ferguson (et al) conducted a survey titled Living Standards of Older New Zealanders. Their research showed (amongst others) that (a) 85% of older people believe that they are managing their finances adequately and (b) that the vast majority of them have an annual income of $13,120. This amount is basically NZ Superannuation and these findings support the 90/10 split outlined above. Statistics NZ and the Retirement Commission got together in 2002 and their research showed that 95% plus of single home owners go into retirement with a debt free home. For couples the figure is 90% plus. Collectively, the above figures indicate that Home Equity Release could appeal to the vast majority of the retired population. Moira was a bit taken aback with both the figures being presented and the fact that others had not prepared as well as they could financially for retirement. Their friends had obviously worked diligently to pay off their homes, but did little other saving. She knew that she and Jim were well off financially, she just did not appreciate just how well, until now. Their adviser went onto to outline some important issues that should be considered by both individuals and the community. There are a limited number of suppliers who offer such a product. Sentinel, Lifestyle Securities and Save & Invest (owned by Dorchester). Sentinel has in excess of 90% of the market and processes approximately 60 applications per week. The average loan size is $40,000. The interest rate that they charge is considered by some to be excessive. In the adviser’s mind it isn’t. Current interest charged is approximately 10.5% pa compounded monthly. One has to take into account the big picture. The company taking the risk by making the loan, funds it by borrowing from

a property lending institution (normally a bank) who charges approximately 9% pa compounded monthly leaving the issuer with a margin of 1.5%. In commercial terms this is low. They are also obliged to make the mortgage payments on the loan while the home owner gets to enjoy both the house and cash without much responsibility. The home owner is allowed (under the terms of the contract) to remain there as long as they elect to, knowing that when they move the house will be sold and the loan settled. They have an obligation to pay the rates and ensure that the house is adequately maintained and insured. It is a pretty good deal really. The risk really lies with the company issuing the loan. They have done their sums and know that in some cases the house will become vacant sooner than expected and in others, the punters will live too long. In the vast majority of cases between 20 and 40% of the house value will be retained as a legacy for the next generation. Their adviser reminded the audience about the Rule of 72. It states that if you divide 72 by the interest rate being charged then the answer will be the number of years it takes for the loan to double in size. With an interest rate of 10.5% the result suggests that that it will take just under 7 years for the loan to double and assuming that the rate remains constant the average loan size of $40,000 will become about $160,000 in just under fourteen years. But that is not the home owner’s problem. Working out how to spend either the cash they withdraw from their home or the interest it could generate is their only problem. The other issue that the adviser discussed was whether or not to include the home owner’s family in the decision. It saddened him to quote from numerous real life examples where the kids had vetoed the idea because they did not want to see their perceived inheritance disappear. In other cases the kids were very supportive and assisted in the process. Research suggests that the decision rests solely in the hands of the home owner, not the kids. Home Equity Release also allows pensioners to regain some dignity and personal pride by increasing the choices available to them. Money does nothing else but increase the number of choices available to an individual or couple. Moira suggested to Jim that he might see Paul back at golf shortly.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 59

thinkLIFE education

Phonics – sounds like a great idea

There is a problem, there is a solution. What are we waiting for?, writes Miranda Devine

iane Philipson is a former primary school teacher who spends her days at home in New South Wales coaching children who are struggling to read. The week I spoke to her she had phone calls from two desperate mothers who say their sons, one aged 12 and one aged eight, feel life isn’t worth living. “The eight-year-old told his mother he’d rather be dead than have to struggle so much with reading,” Philipson says. Philipson is one of a number of backyard operators across Australia and New Zealand to whom anxious parents have turned to teach their children to read when school has failed. They invariably use a method that involves direct, explicit, systematic phonics. This is the inexplicably politicised way of teaching children that letters in our alphabet are associated with sounds. There is a pharmacist in a country town in NSW, for instance, dismayed by the number of parents coming to her to fill scripts for attention deficit disorder medication, when all that was wrong with their children was they couldn’t read. With a little research, she discovered a phonics-based course which she is agitating for the local school to use to further train reading teachers. In Newcastle, desperate parents found out about 63 year old Philipson by word of mouth, or through informal referrals from a learning disorders clinic at the hospital, which, according to one mother, “doesn’t want to be seen to be helping Diane’s business but they know what she does works”. Philipson has devised her own system of teaching, a systematic phonics program in which children hear a sound, say it, then read it and sound it out. “I’ve never had a child I couldn’t teach to read,” she says. Some of the children she coaches have specific learning disorders. Others, mostly boys, just haven’t been taught how to read in a way that suits the way their brain

60, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006

works. She has had 10-year-olds unable to read a word. No one blames the teachers, most of whom do a tremendous job, and the best of whom are saints. But as the committee of the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy (of which I was a member) pointed out last year, as many as 30 per cent of children are leaving school functionally illiterate. The report of the inquiry, released in December, finds that most teacher training institutions aren’t giving graduate teachers the repertoire of skills they need to teach all children to read. Less than 10 per cent of course time in university teacher education departments is spent training teachers how to teach reading. Australia’s former education minister, Brendan Nelson, set up the inquiry in response to an open letter from 26 of Australia’s literacy researchers, cognitive scientists, psychologists and speech therapists warning of the crisis facing large numbers of children who were failing to learn to read. The scientific verdict was in, they said, and it was overwhelming: phonics was a necessary foundation of reading. But from the start the inquiry was bedevilled by the belief within education circles, and even among some on the committee, that there was no literacy problem, that phonics was already being taught and that our students were superior to New Zealand and those of every country except Finland. Nelson’s concern was dismissed as pandering to right-wing extremists who were committed to imposing “boring phonics” on children as a form of ideological control. One leading educationist even drew a link between the teaching of phonics and the Iraq war. Try as it did to base its findings on the best evidence-based research, the inquiry never managed to escape the whole-word-

versus-phonics wars which have been raging for almost 40 years. The attack on its report was led by the popular children’s author Mem Fox, a whole-word devotee who seems to think if parents read enough of her books aloud their children will automatically learn to read. Some might, but at least 25 per cent of children won’t, according to Kevin Wheldall, director of Macquarie University’s Special Education Centre, and one of Australia’s leading literacy experts. Anyone who thinks we do not have a literacy problem should visit Aboriginal students on Cape York. Or perhaps doubters could spend an hour in Wheldall’s classroom at the Exodus Foundation in Ashfield, where underprivileged children in years 5 and 6 are given remedial reading instruction. There you will meet children who have spent five years going to school and haven’t a clue what those black marks on the page mean. And as many of the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy committee discovered, the effect on little boys and girls of not being able to read is devastating. The Reverend Bill Crews set up the Exodus program because, he said, he was “sick of burying kids”. Normal, bright children who weren’t being taught to read soon grew into sullen pre-teens who felt worthless and preferred to get into trouble than go to school where their “stupidity” was on display. Nelson, who often visited the Exodus classroom as a backbencher, said when he launched the inquiry’s report: “I ask myself, as a layperson, how is it we can live in a country where a boy at the age of 12, with neither a physical nor intellectual disability, can seriously [say], ‘I didn’t realise it’s the black stuff that you read. I didn’t realise you start on the left hand side and work to the right.’ “ Literacy was a pet project for Nelson and he warned he would withhold funding from states which resisted the recommendations of the inquiry’s report, which included systematic phonics teaching, improving teacher education, and testing children regularly. But Nelson has moved on, as politicians do, and his replacement, Julie Bishop, has yet to prove herself. We will know, soon enough, when the federal budget is released in May, how much Nelson’s fine words really meant.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 61

thinkLIFE science

You know you’re soaking in it?

Not only that, but the old toothpaste ads were right, fluoride does get in, and as Ian Wishart discovers now they’re saying it’s not good for you

he fluoride debate is about to get hotter with the release of a damning scientific report into the safety of fluoridated water in the US, a report likely to have major implications for New Zealand’s ongoing rollout of fluoridated water. The latest NZ city to face the issue is Hamilton, due to hold a referendum on fluoridation this coming month, but the battle over whether fluoride is good or bad for you is now getting headlines somewhere in the world every week. On March 22nd, the prestigious US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), released the magnum opus of fluoride studies – a 450 page epic by the NAS’ National Research Council. The main points, quite simply, are these: 1. the current allowable level of fluo-

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ride in water is not protective of the public health and should be lowered 2. that there are concerns about bone fractures caused by fluoridated drinking water 3. that fluoride may cause bone cancer 4. that fluoride is associated with joint stiffness 5. that it may cause Alzheimers 6. that it may cause hormone imbalances 7. that there are serious concerns about dental fluorosis, a discoloration and weakening of the enamel of the teeth that the committee noted is associated with other adverse health impacts and which can actually cause tooth cavities 8. that there are concerns about the potential of fluoride to lower IQ in children

While the latter should come as no major surprise – fluoride was used in Nazi concentration camps to keep inmates docile – the discovery of an impact on children’s intelligence linked to the low levels of fluoride in drinking water has come as an unexpected bolt from the blue. The fluoride industry and dental associations have long denied that fluoridation at the rate of only 1.5 parts per million has any harmful effects on humans, but the latest studies don’t bear out those assurances. After all, say critics, if fluoride can supposedly work magic on tooth cavities at the rate of only 1.5ppm, the same dosage levels must equally be capable of causing harm if fluoride is in fact toxic. Of course, scientists have known of fluoride’s toxicity for decades. It is the active

“

One of the apparent smoking guns in the NAS report is the finding in regard to children’s IQs. The study found that areas with high levels of dental fluorosis had children with lower intelligence

”

ingredient in the pesticide 1080 poison, and a few grams of the chemical is sufficient to kill a child. Toothpaste in the US is required by law to carry a warning that it should be kept away from children under the age of six. One of the apparent smoking guns in the NAS report is the finding in regard to children’s IQs. The study found that areas with high levels of dental fluorosis had children with lower intelligence. Given that the latest studies referenced by the US Centers for Disease Control have revealed up to 32% of US schoolchildren now suffer from fluorosis – a syndrome almost exclusively found in towns with fluoride in the water, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist, let alone a dental hygienist, to join the dots and realize that fluoride could be dumbing down our next generation. So the National Academy of Sciences report backs up what many of fluoride’s critics have been saying for years: what regulators currently think are safe levels of fluoride in tap water may be anything but safe. As the Portland Tribune in Oregon reported late March: “NAS panel member Kathy Thiessen, a former senior scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory who has studied fluoride for the EPA, said the report showed “the potential is there” that water fluoridation is unhealthy. As for the studies finding that higher levels damage children’s IQ, she said it’s possible water fluoridation levels may have a similar, albeit reduced effect. She said in her personal opinion the research suggests “most people should minimize their fluoride intake” – which includes avoiding fluoridated water. “I think you can look at most chapters of this report and say, ‘Whoa,’ ” she said. “We have made major strides from previous (looks) at this topic.” “NAS panel member Robert Isaacson, a distinguished professor of neurobehavioral science at the State University of

New York in Binghamton, agreed, saying that the possible effects on endocrines and hormones from water-fluoridation are “something that I wouldn’t want to happen to me if I had any say in the matter.” “The report “should be a wake-up call,” he added.” But it won’t be. At least not to the government agencies in New Zealand tasked with getting fluoride into the water supplies of all cities and towns. At one point a couple of years ago there was a suggestion that the Ministry of Health would try and make fluoridation compulsory, but so far that hasn’t happened. Instead, the Ministry is paying so-called “arms length” lobby groups like the Public Health Association to issue supportive media releases and to carry out “media training” to ensure journalists and editors correctly understand health issues. The Public Health Association is currently active in the Waikato fluoridation debate, for example. The Waikato District Health Board is also firmly pro-fluoridation, with spokeswoman Dr Felicity Dumble writing recently: “There is no evidence to suggest any effect on people’s health other than reducing tooth decay. While we know too much fluoride can cause dental fluorosis white flecking of the teeth – this is largely a cosmetic issue, with the teeth remaining healthy and strong.” Again, the massive NAS study’s finding last month that fluorosis appears to be linked to lower IQ and cavities should be ringing alarm bells. Stacking up against the governmentfunded PHA are community-based groups like the Fluoride Action Network. What annoys the community groups the most is the stranglehold that suave government lobbyists have on the mainstream media, and the ongoing discoveries that big business is interfering with scientific studies that show fluoride is harmful. Case in point? Just recently a Harvard

researcher found evidence that fluoride causes bone cancer, but as the Fluoride Action Network’s Caren McConnell notes wryly, getting that evidence published has been a major battle. “Basically a Harvard student [Elise Bassin] doing a doctoral thesis studied rates of bone cancer in fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas and found a two to sevenfold increased risk for boys in fluoridated areas. “Her results were suppressed by her supervisor Prof Chester Douglass who has for many years received money from Colgate – he has been stood down and investigated by Harvard, results of which are still “about” to be released although we suspect it will be another whitewash and he will get off. Regardless, Dr Bassin is standing by her research and it is about to be published in the medical journal “Cancer Causes & Control”.” The danger level for osteosarcoma, or bone cancer, according to the Harvard study, appears to be a fluoride level of one part per million in drinking water. So is the Waikato District Health Board’s Dumble out of touch in her statement on fluoridation when she says: “The evidence shows that fluoride in water at or around one part per million does not have any effect on the health of the body other than reducing decay in teeth.” New Zealand, like the US, is quite heavily fluoridated and the health ministries of each country are active proponents. In contrast, many other nations are ditching the chemical. Countries such as Canada, Germany, Finland and Switzerland have stopped fluoridating water entirely. The opponents have the support of most major environmental groups, which oppose tinkering with the natural balance of a water supply. They have also won converts in some scientific circles, most notably the union that represents 1,700 scientists and engineers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “The more we looked at it, the more it seemed to us that the whole water fluoridation issue is a big scam,” says J. William Hirzy, vice president of the union, which came out against fluoridation in 1984 after an employee complained of being pressured to have his research support the safety of fluoridating. “There’s some bad science behind this.” Additional reporting by KRT

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 63

thinkLIFE technology

Palm vs iPod

James Coates finds there’s more than one way to skin a tech cat

t was an accident of fate, or perhaps design, that late last year on the same day that Palm Inc. was launching two new breakthrough products in the handheld computer market – at virtually precisely the same moment in fact – Apple Computer Inc. chose to unveil its new video iPods. Palm’s big news was all but totally obscured by the day’s immense brouhaha over Apple’s enticing new video-capable iPod. Palm deserved better. Here, as they say on CSI, is the back story: As Apple’s Steve Job stood on a stage in San Jose, California and introduced Apple’s new NZ$540 and $699 video iPods, Palm’s Kent Wirth unveiled its startling new player – the Palm Z22, an elegant 85-gram personal digital assistant with a big color screen and a small price tag of $199. Palm had set aside the date months ago for a pair of major new handheld product releases, the Z22 and the Palm T/X, an equally elegant new version of the company’s

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widely praised Tungsten series of PDAs. Palm officials confessed their dismay when less than 10 days before their planned Z22 and T/X dog-and-pony show Apple plucked the same day seemingly out of thin air to debut the hotly rumored video-capable iPod. In an inventor’s worst nightmare, the world beat a path to Apple’s doorstep, trampling all over Palm’s hopes for getting some richly deserved attention for two products that raised the bar in the PDA world just as the video iPods did with mobile media players. The Z22, by breaking the $200 barrier for a color screen hand-held PDA capable of displaying photos, puts high-powered hand-held computers in the realm of stocking stuffers and party favors. The low price makes the Z22 the computer version of the disposable ballpoint. Even so, it’s a tremendously valuable new human productivity tool. And since Palm already has seen its product announce-

ments passed over, let’s not forget the other release on that ill-fated day, the T/ X, which for $599 offers a color screen more than twice the size of the one on video iPod. In fact, the T/X screen alone is about the size of an iPod, case and all. Unlike the iPod, Palm’s T/X also includes both wi-fi for Internet hot spots and Bluetooth that connects to cell phones, headsets and other mobile gear. The point isn’t that these nifty Palms are supposed to directly compete with iPods as mobile personal entertainment toys, but rather that they do many of the same fun things while also delivering more traditional computer tools. The sub-$200 Z22 offers businessstrength utilities to track one’s calendars, contacts and to-do lists as well as carry a few score of photos for display on that sweet backlighted color screen. And the $599 T/X adds a larger color screen with much higher resolution that can display music videos, downloaded news-

casts, home videos and other digital content to match everything the iPod offers. While the iPod can hold 150 hours of video, the Palm T/X’s 128 megabytes of memory would stretch to deliver a halfhour’s worth of movies, and if you want more video you would need SD memory cards that fit into an onboard slot. On the other hand, the iPod cannot access the Web for real-time headlines, nor can it download and display e-mail, nor can it produce spreadsheets and Microsoft Word documents. The inexpensive Z22 is geared to very casual users who want to keep far larger lists of phone numbers and addresses than their cell phones can accommodate. It does not play music but does show pictures. At 85 grams, the Z22 is almost exactly the size of a deck of playing cards and fits easily in a pocket alongside one’s cell phone. Programs are opened and images viewed using a combination of clickable icons and a circular joystick much like

the click wheel that makes those iPods so user-friendly. While reviewing the Z22 on a trip, I was delighted at how easily it connected with my laptop to download the digital pictures I took each day. This gave me a lot of enjoyment sharing my snapshots with traveling companions almost in real time. I took a T/X on the same trip and the still images were even better than on the Z22 when displayed on the T/X’s brighter and higher resolution screen. The T/X also displays movies and downloaded video content including music videos. Furthermore the T/X connected easily to wi-fi hot spots at hotels and airports to permit things like checking stock prices, news headlines and (gulp) Commonwealth Games results. I’m definitely guilty of comparing apples (if you’ll pardon the expression) to oranges, but at least it gives an opening to remind ourselves that versatile PDAs are constantly evolving right along with entertainment devices like video iPods.

“

The inexpensive Z22 is geared to very casual users who want to keep far larger lists of phone numbers and addresses than their cell phones can accommodate. It does not play music but does show pictures. At 85 grams, the Z22 is almost exactly the size of a deck of playing cards and fits easily in a pocket alongside one’s cell phone

”

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 65

feelLIFE

sport

Commonwealth games – Melbourne: A Kiwi dilemma or a failure to deliver? The dust’s still settling on New Zealand’s effort at the 18th Commonwealth Games in the go-ahead, sports savvy Victorian capital, writes Investigate’s sports editor Chris Forster

t was the biggest-ever team dispatched from our shores and it mustered just 31 medals – well short of expectations and predictions. Six gold, 12 silver and 13 bronze medals were the cold, hard statistics for the 250 athletes who crossed the Tasman hoping to hitch a ride on a sure fire Australian box office smash. Those numbers were buoyed by nearly 100 team players taking part in the basketball, netball and hockey competitions. New Zealand’s biggest ever contingent was burdened with a target of 45 medals by the government funded sports agency – SPARC, which divvies up cash for elite sportsmen and women. And sometimes that pressure told. Midway through a barren patch in the second week, journalists were counting up the extraordinary number of fourth place finishes for New Zealanders. The Australians took note too – describing the Kiwis as “tin medal specialists”. A string of “close but no cigar” finishes ballooned the unwanted tin-tally to 28 by the final Sunday of competition. The hosts could afford to gloat. The Aussies excelled at nearly everything they competed in. Eighty-four gold in a tally of 221 medals is mighty impressive, and a far cry from the 1984 LA Olympics where NZ took twice as many gold as Australia. From shooting to table tennis, diving to cycling, triathlon to their world beating women swimmers … the gold rush flowed from the first night through all 11 days of competition. At least the Silver Ferns denied the Australians one last crowing moment, with a gutsy 60-55 gold medal victory in the last event before the Closing Ceremony, avenging painful memories of Manchester four years ago. But for other sports and competitors the inquisition is underway.

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Nick Willis delivered the penultimate saving grace dominating the glamour 1500 metres event for New Zealand on the last night of track and field at the magnificent M.C.G. The 22 year old took full advantage of Australian rival Craig Mottram’s mid-race stumble to power away 400 metres from home, and never looked like being headed. In the fine tradition of Lovelock, Snell and Walker – Willis has put the famous black singlet back where it belongs in middle distance running. The American-based athlete with squeaky-clean image to match his Christian beliefs is a role model for all New Zealanders. He’s also got that ultra-competitive streak needed to compete at the highest level. The sort of guy SPARC needs to back 110% for the next Olympics. But Willis was realistic about his place on the pecking order for elite athletes, the day after his glorious victory. “To compete in Beijing in 2006 I really need to be running consistent times of 3 minutes 30, to even have a shot. The times and quality of the field here is probably only at semi-final level for World Championships and the Olympics”. His winning time in Melbourne was 3 minutes 38.4 seconds. Willis is striving towards the top flight this year. “I hope to close in on the 3:30 barrier this summer in the Northern Hemisphere. I had a 3:32 late last year, but need to improve to get into the top 5 or even top ten in the world.” Willis also had a parting shot at the performance-enhancing drugs which blight individual sports at the highest level. “I was thinking of why the standard of the Commonwealth Games isn’t approaching the Olympics and World Champs. The fact is they’re the cleanest of all major competitions. You can

be sure when you’re standing on the start line, 99.99% of your fellow competitors are clean”. Failure is a hard status for New Zealanders to come to terms with. To be brutally honest a number of sports failed to front-up in Melbourne, and that’s a deep-seated bruise on our psyche while the Australians trumpet their sea of gold and a hugely successful event. Cycling’s one of the glamour sports of any Games, but the 34 Kiwis could only muster a handful of silver and bronze in the track, road and mountain biking events. High performance coach Terry Gyde acknowledged the failures – and can only point to a lack of motivation in the top line track events when many of the cyclists “earn a damned good living” out of the sport. The bikers’ cause wasn’t helped by Sarah Ulmer’s untimely back spasms – which denied her an almost certain gold in the Time Trial. But it was the antics of three young members in the team the Sunday night after the end of the track meet that will have Gyde and his fellow coaches sweating over future SPARC handouts. Tim Gudsell, Mark Ryan and Elisabeth Williams have been reported as the three cyclists who had a night on the town then gave everyone a hangover with some allegedly lurid behaviour back at the Games Village. Chef de Mission Dave Currie was forced to front a heated media scrum to try and defuse one of the biggest scandals of the Games. The rest of the Commonwealth was watching, and he knew it. SPARC CEO Nick Hill’s got the job of being the voice of reason in times of savage self-analysis. The elected politicians are too busy making a meal of our failings and successes – while Minister-of-all-things-Sporting,

“

The stark truth is New Zealanders spend a lot of time trying to be good at an awful lot of sports, with a mere four million inhabitants Trevor Mallard made some typically redblooded Kiwi comments about all those fourth places. Hill’s going through an extensive debrief between now and the end of May balancing his books between expenditure and performance, putting all the sports under intense scrutiny and deciding how to get more bang for the taxpayers’ buck. “Winning international events creates a strong sense of national identity, pride and social cohesion”, is Hill’s catchcry. “It creates a healthy image abroad”. There are at least a few role models to rebuild for the Olympic challenge in China. Valerie Vili is a world ranked athlete who picked up premium gold, along with Nick Willis, Moss Burmester’s inspired butterfly on the opening night of the pool, Gordon Tietjens’ Sevens masterstroke, and the Silver Ferns superiority. They’re all premium gold. The triathletes certainly didn’t disgrace with two silvers and a bronze out of the six medals available. The Tall Blacks were mighty close to top-

”

pling the Boomers in the gold medal match – and Tony Sargisson went through the pain barrier for a surprise silver in the 50k walk. But what of boxing – whose six fighters couldn’t make a semi-final between them? There’s the 24-strong shooting’s paltry haul – saved by the steely nerve of Canterbury’s Graeme Ede who won a three way shootout for gold. Badminton, Table Tennis and Squash delivered three medals between them, and cycling’s misfires have already been well documented. The stark truth is New Zealanders spend a lot of time trying to be good at an awful lot of sports, with a mere four million inhabitants. Australia has five times the population and endlessly deep pockets for matters sport and recreation. Beijing is a mere two years away and the Olympics are an Everest compared to the Ayers Rock of the “friendly games”. Our world champion rowers and kayaker Ben Fouhy are top prospects along with a rapidly improving swim team and the successful athletics contingent.

The decision makers could do well take on board the single-minded pride and talent of shotput colossus Valerie Vili. She shed tears at the MCG with the New Zealand flag shrouding her broad shoulders, on top of the medal podium, as the strains of God Defend New Zealand rang around Australia’s most famous sporting arena. Covering a Commonwealth Games for a media organisation is a marathon in itself. It’s the first time Radio Live (as the news organisation for the CanWest group of radio networks) has sent a team to a major multi-sport event. My colleague Jo and I were charged with trying to cover New Zealand’s top performers in 17 different disciplines at a range of Melbourne’s impressive venues and landmarks. From the Tuesday before the Opening Ceremony right up to the spectacular fireworks on the final night we were dashing from venue to venue, with laptops and recording equipment lugged over our shoulders. We hoped to catch the magic moments – working out where New Zealand’s best medal chances were. The days sometimes stretched from first light until the early hours of the following morning. At around day three we wondered how we’d get through another ten days of 15 to 18 hour days. Being non-rights holders didn’t make life easy. While TVNZ and our opposition radio company (as rights holders) had immediate and open access to any of the athletes at all of the venues, we had to wait for up to 2 hours for medallists to be drugs tested, interviewed and deal with all their post event matters. We then had to hope the athletes had enough energy and goodwill to talk to us outside the venue. We also had to battle some incompetent media liaison officers for the New Zealand sports and over-zealous Melbourne volunteers who were itching to flex their muscles. But for all the frustrations there were still the stunning highs that made the “hard yards” worthwhile. Talking to an emotional Isaia Toeava after the Sevens gold inside the Telstra Dome, Nick Willis bending over backwards to give us an interview after his career high and the good grace of Sarah Ulmer to talk to us non-rights holders outside the venue after her heartbreaking injury withdrawal in the cycling time trial.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 67

feelLIFE

health

“

I don’t understand fear of vaginal birth, or an overwhelming compulsion to give birth on a particular day, but I’m not sure it’s particularly ethical to denounce it either. A caesarean is major surgery and if it goes wrong the consequences can be disastrous

Good birth? Good luck! Claire Morrow explores the obsession with having a ‘natural’ birth

ell, Britney Spears has been immortalized in sculpture giving birth vaginally. The artist, Daniel Edwards, apparently wanted to immortalize a young woman who has made decision to have a baby. All natural, all maternal, Britney is down on all fours, wide-hipped, round-bellied and big- breasted, in something like the position advised if the baby is coming too fast. This has stimulated – why? – a lot of controversy in some circles. In fact, Britney herself had a caesarian section. I don’t know if it was an emergency operation or if she planned it that way. And frankly, I’m not sure that I care. But some people do. I am ashamed to admit that when I used to know everything (before children) I would have been able to offer you considerable insight into (meaning judgment of) the meaning of celebrity Caesars. No kidding. And I think I must have still known everything after the birth of my first son because I managed to straddle both the anti-nature and anti-Caesar viewpoints. I had a lovely “natural” birth with no interventions except for a whopping great epidural and a drip to make the thing go

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faster and had no sympathy for anyone who did anything else. A first pregnancy is a major psychological and physiological adjustment and the majority of first-time mums have read just about everything there is to read about labour and birth. We effortlessly bandy about terms like “dilation” and “posterior” and we write birth plans and imagine ourselves swaying our hips to rhythmic contractions and usually decide to have drugs either “when it starts to hurt” or “never”. In fact, the purpose of the “birth plan” is to amuse the people attending the birth. It is a statement of your plans and wishes for the birth. A birth plan is reassuring because it gives the illusion of choice and control. It is true that you may well have a great deal of choice about drugs and other interventions, particularly if you give birth in a large hospital where all of the interventions and non-medical support are on-tap. However, what mums must understand is that they have very little choice or control over the actual event. A baby is – one way or another – going to come out. Over this, there is no choice.

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Most birth attendees will advise that for most births the baby should come out as nature intended. The available drugs depend on where your child is born. For all that we talk about our intention to “have an epidural when the pain gets too much” it is worth remembering that there are plenty of women giving birth in rural areas where there simply isn’t an anaesthetist on tap. So it can be done, and if you had to do it, you would. It has been recently recognized that women who have hideous births are more likely to have post-natal depressions, and more lately acknowledged that women define “hideous” differently. A sort of “customer is always right” mentality comes into vogue. This replaces the recent “the midwife is always right” phase, which was a backlash against “obstetrician is always right”. When obstetric care took over births (if you could afford it) it became common for women to be induced on a day that suited their doctor. Being induced is widely reported to hurt like hell and so there was a leap in painful protracted labours that necessitated further obstetric intervention. Mum was knocked out, cut open, and expected to just be pleased to receive her nice clean baby when she came to. In the backlash against this, women were encouraged to aim for natural births and (once again) the baby was thrown out with the bathwa-

ter. There are still women today who plan to birth without pain or fear, and I’m sure some of them achieve it. Most of them, however are in for a shock. Birth as a general rule is pretty painful and pain is frightening. There is a solid evolutionary basis for finding pain frightening and I am mystified that they can be separated at all. In my experience, it’s best to hope to be so distracted by the pain that you don’t have the energy for fear. Women increasingly choose drugs as their first option and elective caesareans as their birth preference. My gut reaction is to decry this, but I am a bit hard pushed to say why. I don’t understand fear of vaginal birth, or an overwhelming compulsion to give birth on a particular day, but I’m not sure it’s particularly ethical to denounce it either. A caesarean is major surgery and if it goes wrong the consequences can be disastrous. Few would undertake the decision lightly. But who are we to insist that a woman be forced to endure a birth she doesn’t want if the alternative is reasonably safe, and more acceptable to her? At the other end of the spectrum are women who ended up with a caesarean when they had pictured a vaginal birth, and just never quite get over it. Women who have caesareans that leave them miserable can too often end up in support groups struggling to understand why this has happened to them, and regretting their consent to the procedure. But really, I want to tell them to be thankful for their baby and get over it. Nice, I think. Sympathetic. No doubt this kind of attitude is prevalent, and I think we can probably all agree it’s not helpful. But the move away from “routine intervention’ in childbirth has seen a raising of the bar. Childbirth is no longer seen as inevitable, and in the hands of the gods. It is not seen as a matter of luck. Rather, a “good birth” is seen as a reflection of the parenting skills of the new parents. Whether they were relaxed enough, hypnotized enough, empowered enough to do it right. You can “fail” birth. A minority of women are so fed up with the hospital scene that they have subsequent births at home after a previous caesarean. True, the chances of the scar coming apart or a complete rupture of the uterus are small. But the consequences are dire. This can’t be right either. It’s true that childbirth is a natural event, but so is death during childbirth. The original caesareans, of course, were performed on dead mothers in a last ditch attempt to save the child. The reverse scenario – too grisly to contemplate in the modern age – was also not uncommon. Birth can be a wonderful experience. Or again it may not be. In some senses it is the ultimate rite of passage into motherhood. But then you have a good 20 years to get the parenting right. That day (or two) can’t be the be all and end all. The ultimate birth plan should read “get us through this alive”. Is a natural drug-free birth better? Well, sure. I’ve had one, and it was better. But making your own bread is “better” too. A lot of things are better. A drug free, vaginal birth is a matter of luck and genetics, as much as anything else. We need to acquaint ourselves a bit more with the notion of “good enough”. As the obstetrician said to a friend, after a long and stoic drug-free labour “well, that’s the easy part done”.

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 69

feelLIFE

alt.health

ASHINGTON – Some leading

public-health experts in the US want education officials to ban certain soft drinks from public schools until they’re proved safe and free of the cancer-causing chemical benzene. “It is irresponsible to provide to schoolchildren products that are unhealthy and may contain a carcinogen,” they said in a letter sent last month to state education officials. Benzene is a common industrial chemical that the Environmental Protection Agency classifies as a human carcinogen. Long-term exposure can cause leukemia and other blood cancers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Benzene isn’t an ingredient in soft drinks, but it can form when two commonly found ingredients react: ascorbic acid, otherwise known as vitamin C, and the preservatives sodium benzoate or potassium benzoate. The reaction can happen when products are exposed to light or heat. “Soft drinks that contain ascorbic acid and sodium or potassium benzoate include Diet Pepsi Wild Cherry, Fanta Orange, Hawaiian Punch, Mug Root Beer, Pepsi Vanilla, Sierra Mist, Sunkist and Tropicana Lemonade, among others,” the letter said. The signatories, who included experts in pediatrics and activists for student health, asked that state and local education officials halt the marketing and sales of certain soft drinks in schools “until you can look parents in the eye and assure them that their children will suffer no harm.” Kevin Keane, a spokesman for the American Beverage Association, the trade group that represents soft-drink manufacturers, says the letter was “irresponsible and reckless” and that the group behind the letter, Commercial Alert, has a history of “bashing” industry. “It would be gullible for schools to bite on this letter,” Keane says. “The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has given no indication there is a public health concern here. We are working with the FDA. There is no way we would put any product in schools or anywhere that is unsafe.” The possible presence of benzene in soda, juice drinks, sports drinks and bottled water became a concern recently

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The toxin in kids’ drinks

Benzene fears prompt calls to ban kids’ soft drinks in schools, writes David Goldstein when testing found that some products had levels two to four times higher than is considered safe in drinking water. The high levels surprised the FDA and the beverage industry. Benzene first turned up in soft drinks 16 years ago, but the FDA never told the public because the industry assured federal regulators that it would solve the problem. George Pauli, a top FDA food-safety official, said the overwhelming majority of test samples showed either no benzene at all or levels that were considered safe. The agency hasn’t made any test results public. “It doesn’t seem to be a big issue, but it’s an issue that needs to be fixed,” Pauli says. He claims manufacturers were reformulating some products or taking other steps to ensure their safety. “Where we’ve seen elevated levels, we contacted them,” Pauli says. “Generally speaking, there’s no trouble getting commitments to do something. The worst thing for these companies is bad publicity.” Dr. David Ozonoff, former chairman of the Boston University School of Public Health and a signatory to the letter, says that even if the risk of becoming ill from benzene were as small as one in a mil-

lion, “if you have millions and millions and millions of kids drinking soft drinks, which you do, the risk of one in a million suddenly starts to be real kids. “We recognize that’s a problem in drinking water,” says Ozonoff, who teaches environmental health. “If you take the same water, add artificial color, sugar and flavor, it doesn’t make the risk go away.” Commercial Alert is a nonprofit advocacy group that campaigns against commercialism aimed at children. Among those who signed the letter were physicians and public health experts associated with the Harvard Medical School, the Yale School of Public Health and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

IN YOUR CUPBOARD

In New Zealand, check your cupboard for drinks likely to contain Vitamin C, such as juices, flavoured waters or some soft drinks, and which also contain the preservatives 211 or 212 (sodium benzoate and potassium benzoate respectively).

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tasteLIFE

TRAVEL

March of the penguins

An Antarctic cruise finds penguins, icebergs and treacherous waters, discovers Tom Uhlenbrock

BOARD SHIP, Antarctica – Capt. Derrick Kemp watched from the bridge of the cruise ship as it backed from the harbor in Argentina at the tip of South America and turned toward Antarctica. “So, the adventure begins,” Kemp said to a small group of onlookers. It was 10:30 p.m., the daylight just beginning to dim, when the ship left Ushuaia (pronounced ooo-swi-uh), the southernmost city in the world. Some five hours later, we got our first taste of the captain’s prediction. The lamp between the beds in my cabin

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slid off the nightstand and two bottles of water flew from the dresser. The door swung open on the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and the contents dumped into the sink. A cacophony of similar crashes came from the adjoining staterooms as a storm beat against the windows. I fumbled in the dark, belatedly, for my seasickness patch. The ship was still rolling when a few brave passengers showed up for breakfast that morning. Wobbling through the buffet line, I took my hand off the tray to grab a croissant and everything went air-

borne. Coffee, juice, two eggs over-easy oozed amid the smashed china. The patch did its job. Welcome to Drake Passage, which runs 700 kilometres from Cape Horn to the Antarctic Peninsula and is reputed to be navigation’s nastiest stretch of open ocean. The passage is part of the Southern Ocean that encircles Antarctica, its waters whipped by winds that swirl around the continent. “There is no land mass to block the wind, so it’s like a whirlwind going round and round,” Kemp explained later. “We had winds up to 50 knots and swells up to

PictureArts

8 metres that night. That’s gale to strong gale; 8 to 10 on the Beaufort wind scale 11 is catastrophic.” If the devil lived in the ocean, hell would be Drake Passage. But the weather changes by the hour in Antarctica. By afternoon, blue skies shone over deeper blue seas. We spent the next few days visiting penguin rookeries ashore or sightseeing from the ship’s decks, watching the passing parade of icebergs in fantastical forms. Like gliding through a Dali landscape. Even the captain was impressed, coming out from his berth on the bridge to snap a photo or two. “I promised you a show, didn’t I?” he said. With glistening glaciers hanging from rugged mountains and floating “bergy bits” that glow Windex blue as if they’re illuminated from within, Antarctica is an otherworldly place, like visiting some frozen outpost of the solar system. Greenery is limited to patches of moss on dark pebble beaches.

But it is not lifeless. Humpback whales break the surface of the water, seals bask like furry sausages on the moving icebergs and seabirds swoop in the wake of the ship. I watched a black-browed albatross soar and circle for more than an hour without flapping its wings once, a model of aerodynamic efficiency. Inhospitable in winter, Antarctica warms up during its summer, from December through March, when the sun sometimes shines around the clock. The temperature reached 20 degrees while I was there in January. The ship’s two outdoor hot tubs were full, including one guy in a thong who was old enough to know better. Peter Carey, the research scientist who led the lecture series and offshore excursions on the vessel, has been to Antarctica 53 times on five ships and understands why it is growing as a tourist destination, drawing some 20,000 visitors this season. “It’s so different than any other place on the planet,” he said. “It just knocks peoples’ socks off.”

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Lars-Eric Linblad began taking tourists to Antarctica on the Linblad Explorer in 1969, establishing a model that is still followed for visiting the fragile ecosystem without trampling it. By 1994, the number of tourists outnumbered scientists, and those numbers have been growing since

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For centuries, explorers from Sir Francis Drake to Sir Ernest Shackleton have been drawn to the world’s coldest, windiest continent. Shackleton arrived in 1914 aboard the Endurance, which was crushed by ice, forcing him and his men into a grueling land-and-sea odyssey worthy of Ulysses. There are no cities in Antarctica, only research stations maintained by various nations. No country owns Antarctica, but seven nations claim slices of the continent. The research scientists used to jealously guard the remote continent, viewing tourists as amusing, but messy. Kind of like the penguins. Lars-Eric Linblad began taking tourists to Antarctica on the Linblad Explorer in 1969, establishing a model that is still followed for visiting the fragile ecosystem without trampling it. By 1994, the number of tourists outnumbered scientists, and those numbers have been growing since. Carey, the research scientist on our ship, said the 32 cruise ships slated to visit this tourist season will help spread knowledge about the continent without doing it great harm. “The impact still is very slight,” he said. “Everybody is briefed about not stepping on

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the moss and not harassing the penguins.” There are three kinds of cruise ships arriving: 1. Small ships with 100 or so passengers who go on a dozen or more shore visits. 2. Mid-range liners which bring about 500 passengers each and offer two or three shore trips. 3. The large liners with thousands of passengers that offer no shore excursions. Carey says it used to be that most visitors to Antarctica were wealthy older folks with time on their hands. That still would describe many of those aboard our ship. “But it’s getting younger,” Carey says. “And it’s no longer the hard-core nature buffs who spend 18 hours out on deck watching birds. “It’s a destination that people see as safer in these times, and they don’t have to suffer like Shackleton to see it.” Our first chance to go ashore was aborted – by another of Antarctica’s awesome displays of nature’s force. The ship sat in Hope Bay, and from its deck I could see the gray hillsides along the shore, with thousands of black-andwhite specks standing amid islands of pink. The specks were Adelie penguins – 100,000 nesting pairs with two chicks each. The pink was guano – penguin poop. As the first Zodiac was being loaded, I awaited my turn on a leather chair in the ship’s library, the large windows looking out on a glacier that hung to the water’s edge on the side of the bay opposite the penguin colony. Suddenly, the front of the ice broke free; a chunk the length of a football field plummeted with a thunderous roar into the water. The resulting wave rocked the cruise ship. The Zodiac passengers had reached shore and unloaded when the wave hit, lifting the empty boat and depositing it on the beach. Captain

Kemp, watching from the bridge wing, ordered the crew to get everybody back onboard. Carey came on the ship’s speakers and said: “Freshly calved ice is filling Hope Bay. It’s very important that we be on the other side of that tongue of ice.” As we sped out of Hope Bay, I looked back and saw that the spot where the ship sat was now a solid pack of ice. Carey said of the experience: “That was the biggest calving event I’ve seen in Antarctica. It was certainly several apartment buildings’ worth. The penguins immediately turned and scampered uphill. The issue was that we didn’t want to be stuck on the inside of the bay. The other concern was getting the Zodiac back to the ship.” We later visited a gentoo penguin colony at Paradise Harbour near the Chilean research station, and chinstrap penguins on the rocky outcroppings of Half Moon Island. The first site also featured a young female elephant seal dozing near the water, while the second had three Antarctic fur seals. The seals barely stirred to see what was up, but the penguins provided enough material for a sitcom. The penguins build their nests of gathered rocks, and they routinely steal stones from their neighbor’s pile. One penguin would be bent over snatching a rock from a nearby nest while the one behind her would be returning the favor. If a penguin decides to go for a swim, it has to waddle among the maze of nests. The birds are territorial and nip anything they can reach without getting up. The meandering penguin faces a gauntlet of sharp beaks. The fluffy gray chicks have beer bellies that sag to their feet. Penguins, by the way, are found only in the Southern Hemisphere, while polar bears inhabit only the North. Seems like the South won this one. While they squawked among themselves, the penguins seemed uninterested in the strangers in red parkas who stooped, knelt, bent and stretched to get yet another photo angle. Carey had instructed us in Penguin 101 that the birds have the right of way when they go for a walk. “The beauty of Antarctica is, if you stay in one place, the wildlife will come to you,” he said. “It’s a wonderful thing to have a penguin come up and check you out.” P.S: The Drake Passage was a lamb on the way back.

tasteLIFE

TRAVEL

Murder, she wrote

Barbara Doyle’s DIY murder mystery weekends are making a killing, writes Neill Hunter

he thing that strikes you about Whitianga is its newness, like someone simply opened their Coromandel map and said, “let’s put a new town… here.” Also, it’s much bigger than you…or I imagined, picture theatre, waterways, cafes and restaurants…of course, big supermarket, big, big new church, apartments and as Bob the tour coach driver pointed out, “they built that shopping centre over night and it was full the next day.” Barbara Doyle’s motel has been “full every night since Christmas” she says, opening her register as proof. It’s April 2006. Whitianga is going off. Within us there is a little boy or girl wanting to have fun, without permission. Walking around Whitianga dressed as a Bishop doesn’t need permission, only bravado. Barbara Doyle has asked her murder weekend participants regaled in fancydress if they wouldn’t mind all walking back to her motel along the main street – good public relations. Yes, well, hell might freeze over first before you’d catch any self respecting scribe wandering down Albert St or any other main street for that matter, dressed compulsorily without warning as a Bishop. We all did in the end, cajoled by the crazy elite of the costume-uninhibited, and a little more relaxed now that the grisly business of crime solving was over. It’s all part of the deal, at Barbara Doyle’s Mystery, Intrigue and Murder Weekends in True Agatha Christie Style. Describing Barbara Doyle, daughter of a local legendary game fisherman,

without using “icon” is a challenge. The Whitianga motelier’s long standing friend Mauveen, a Rangitiko College teacher beats the journalist…just: she’s a “blood under the finger nails type.” Teachers. The only woman to own an Army Surplus Store in New Zealand – she thinks, Barbara Doyle has been running mystery murder weekends for about twenty years but her eye for making money from something different has it roots in that 1950’s Auckland store. Or maybe it was manufacturing steel photo frames? Whatever. They take back stage to the 72-year-old grandmother’s straps hit long ago, in the hospitality business. Enter, The Ranch House, Auckland, 1969. Everyone here at the murder seems to remember it. Doyle says she’s sure her Birkdale restaurant and bar was the first to let patrons get their own food – smorgasbord had just arrived in NZ. But when she wanted to do more, like bringing in overseas acts, the government said no, so she had to start fighting, again. Fighting opposition, as endless newspaper clippings in an old scrap book testify, comes natural to Doyle, her kiwi battler approach perhaps rooted in her birth place – a remote Fletchers Bay farm near the top of the Coromandel, access by horse or boat. Government authority foolishly standing in the way of her Ranch House efforts to bring in live performances, were dealt to like a Maori side step at a Tairua rugby match, the opposition crumpled, and the way was open for acts like music legends

The Platters and Warren Mitchell’s superb cockney character Alf Garnett from TV’s ‘Til Death Do Us Part fame…The Platters… Alf Garnet superb cockney… you know, oh never mind. Cut to Coromandel Town March 2006 where a train driver has just made a joke about Auckland receiving Live Aid from New Zealand and while this train is no express, nor Oriental, nor will a murder, or anything else most foul take place here, it is a fitting prelude of things sinister to come. It is all simply part of the weekend…a murder weekend, along with tour coach ride around the peninsula’s spectacular coast and riding a train high into rich, green Nikau and Punga covered hills high above Coromandel Town, to another world where internationally acclaimed potter and self-confessed eccentric engineer Barry Brickel is re-establishing a kauri forest for future generations. Later it’s walks and lunch at Tapu’s breathlessly beautiful Rapaura Water Gardens and superb Café, washed down with espresso coffee which some might think coffee sacrilege to be avoided like a fancydress, murder mystery theme weekend. But the coffee connoisseurs here on this jam-packed-exquisitely-Coromandelweekend, insist the espresso is supreme. Rapaura’s owner Sally Sank says it’s all in the water, virgin-pure you see. A bit like fancy dress I suppose. A woman participant says it’s not her thing, “I wouldn’t ever do fancy dress but this makes you, so you don’t worry about it.” Like water forced

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through subterranean rocky filters high in the craggy hills of this special NZ place, emerging from one’s motel room dressed like Cleopatara …or a Bishop gone wrong, into the ego shattering wilderness of new ground, compelled by a fun-event, makes self consciousness drifts away like mist off a high rocky Coromandel peak. It’s 6.30 pm and the bus arrives to take Barbara Doyle’s guests at her Albert Number Six Motel, to the murder scene – Nina’s Café on Coghill St. Which begs the question – who does go to these things? Here at Whitianga’s very own CSI, they age range evenly through the 20’s to 60’s, hailing from Tauranga, Auckland, Hamilton, Holland, Scotland, Zimbabwe…and that bunch from Waiuku…who seem to get accused of everything. There are retired farmers, a student, a hardware and timber merchant manager and cross-cut saw national champion who says…she…cuts faster than a chainsaw, a hair salon owner, disabilities community worker – to name a few. Most are married but only two bring partners and only three are men. Some say they have come out only for a weekend away, to do something different. The common denominator for all is that murder is fun, but new friendships are better. Here at the murder scene, 18 fancydressed participants, wined and dined from a smorgasbord of teriyaki chicken on rice, a lasagne to-die-for, a robust potato salad and much, much more, are enthusiastically approaching the business of crime solving. “I’m into this…” says a harem woman then asks Constable Armstrong her first question – participants allowed only one, deductions come later. Detective Craig Armstrong, in constable uniform this night – on loan from South Auckland police, authenticates the night’s fun, along with…the body. The killer, shot the Princess of Mahabharat in the back of the head at point blank range, or so it would seem but constable Armstrong can’t

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be certain if the body was moved, “we just don’t know” he explains “until the forensic reports are complete,” responding to a question from that middle eastern woman some were saying came from King Furuk’s own personal Harem, others wondering if she did it – motive…jealousy. Seems Princess Draupadi was lusting after…a language school with a big reputation here in Whitianga, as you do. Fool that she should try though, because hovering in the entrepreneurial wings of dastardly property dealing is…well we can’t name her you see but she’s dressed as a 1930’s showgirl…Molly. Molly it transpires intended to score the language school all for herself, because, she confessed to the Bishop earlier, “I’m a widow and need it for my retirement investment.” Such 1930’s show girl foresight saw her visualise boatloads of English-illiterate aliens in the future rounding Mercury Bay’s Whakapenui Point into Whitianga Harbour, not Auckland’s, and heading straight for that language school (it’s true, there is one here). It’s all very mysterious but two get it right and share the $200 prize using elementary deductions of Clouseau-ish proportions, by deducing that with one clean shot through the back of the head, the showgirl did it, eliminating her buyer competition, near the last chapter of this value packed weekend, leaving the meanest, realistic-looking exit wound you ever did see. For Barbara Doyle however there’s new light shining at the end of her tunnel of mixed fortunes because this month she will temporarily pack up her award winning theme tourism event and take it to New Orleans adding that town to her other overseas conquests of San Diego, Western Australia and Tonga – special guest of their Crown Prince. But it’s not been plain sailing. Clawing her way seems natural for Doyle, whether it’s fighting a recent illness that saw her medication reduce from 80 mg to

eight, or recovering from bankruptcy when a venture involving Auckland’s Fisherman’s Wharf during the America’s cup went bellyup and she lost everything including her treasured Thames hotel, where the murder weekends all began. There, thanks to over zealous police work, she had to adapt. After buying the hotel in the 80’s Doyle received a visit from the local constabulary who were tired of their increased work load caused by the hotel. So they told her that unless she issued trespass notices against the troublemakers, they’d close her down. Ultimately virtually all her regulars were issued notices, she says laughing. So, in a Basil Faulty moment, she began searching for better clientele, but Basil wanted high class snobs, Dorothy Doyle wanted only customers who enjoyed fun, and so she began advertising theme weekends. One night she saw Murder She Wrote on TV, and instantly had the answer to not only her own business woes, but bringing extra income to the area. But when she asked for help from the government to promote Coromandel, they declined telling her the peninsular didn’t have the infrastructure to support increased tourism. “That’s why the Coromandel’s so great,” she cried, to no avail and there began yet another fight. The government eventually saw sense, giving $30,000, and the rest is history, as she produces a letter from the mayor of Thames applauding her skills which saw an estimated $7 mil’ brought to the region during the years her show was based there, before bankruptcy “encouraged me” she says, across the Coromandel Ranges and back home again, to Whitianga. After years away the little girl who once sold the most poppies for the Whitianga RSA has returned and set up shop in her motel, now she is still having fun, spending more time with her grandchildren, while the big corporates are booking in… to play murder.

GETAWAY GET YOUR BUSINESS SEEN! This space could be yours! From $110 a month (12 mth booking) or $150 a month (3 mth booking) Email sales@investigatemagazine.com for details

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tasteLIFE

FOOD

Gettin’ figgy with it

Eli Jameson finds he really does give a fig…

ould there be any fruit more seemingly innocuous, yet utterly controversial, as the fig? Having been cultivated for over 4,000 years, it has quite a history: Many scholars think the Biblical Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was in fact a fig tree, and in the Book of Jeremiah, they were symbolic of destruction. The Lord slated fig trees for destruction in Psalm 78, and Jesus, finding Himself confronted with a fruitless fig tree in the Gospel of Mark, became so enraged that he cursed it: “May no one eat of your fruit again!”. But figs also have had their fans throughout history: Pliny of Rome wrote that “Figs are restorative. The best food that can be eaten by those

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who are brought low by long sickness and are on the way to recovery. They increase the strength of young people, preserve the elderly in better health and make them look younger with fewer wrinkles”. Meanwhile the poet DH Lawrence wrote lasciviously of Ficus carica, thinking it first a masculine fruit in his poem “Figs” before agreeing with the Italians that, ultimately, it is female in nature. (I’ll leave it to your imagination why). Perhaps this is why figs are considered an aphrodisiac, especially among crunchier vegetarian types who weave their own yoghurt. Meanwhile Mohammed – ironic, given that many of his teachings were cribbed from the Old and New Testaments – was a big fan of

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At their best, they are tender, just before the point of fragility, and have a savoury sweetness that stands up to other powerful flavours such as balsamic vinegar and black pepper and stinky blue cheese

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figs, and to this day figs are considered, ahem, sensual in Arab culture. Hopefully no one will issue a fatwa on the fruit anytime soon. Here in New Zealand, meanwhile, fig cultivation is still fairly limited; they are delicate creatures that need to be gotten to market in relatively short order and don’t bear a lot of knocking around or long storage times like, say apples. No wonder they are so pricey. In any case, it’s really not clear why anyone would take umbrage to a fig. Though they can often be difficult or expensive to find, and anyone who has ever found themselves looking to cook with the things only to find them costing more per

kilo than printer ink or bananas in postCyclone Larry Australia may very well find himself uttering a few curses – though none with the power to leave a tree barren. At their best, they are tender, just before the point of fragility, and have a savoury sweetness that stands up to other powerful flavours such as balsamic vinegar and black pepper (in this case they are similar to strawberries) and stinky blue cheese. As always, the stinkier the better. And there is no need to limit one’s self to the standard issue fig dishes: everyone has had figs wrapped in prosciutto and baked with gorgonzola, and that’s fine. But why limit oneself? They make

Figgy Fettucini You’ll need: 250g fettucini (or other wide pasta, fresh is better) 125 ml unthickened cream 1 large white or brown onion, diced reasonably fine 1 bird’s eye chili (scud), thinly sliced 4-6 (or more) large ripe figs, quartered large handful basil, torn Parmesan cheese, freshly grated, about a handful Good salt and pepper Olive oil

Fig Souffle Here’s a fantastic savoury soufflé with a surprise in the middle: 45 g tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more, for greasing 30 g tablespoons grated Parmesan 45 g tablespoons flour 250 ml milk, hot 4 egg yolks Salt and pepper 1 teaspoon dry mustard 200 g crumbled blue cheese 5 egg whites 4 figs (or 2 large ones, halved) Pinch cream of tartar 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare 4 large individual-sized ramekins by greasing with softened butter and coating with Parmesan. Place a fig in the middle of each dish. 2. Melt the butter over low-medium heat in a thick-bot-

a sexy addition to many salads, perhaps one with lots of hand-torn buffalo mozzarella, a la Jamie Oliver. They can also be tossed into pastas and turned into tarts; one easy idea is to take several layers of filo, layer with thinly-sliced figs, brush with good balsamic vinegar (on the subject of aceto balsamico, I’ve found that the widely-available Mazzetti four-leaf vinegar is far cheaper and yet superior to most balsamics one finds in the gourmet delis) and sprinkle with crumbled blue cheese. My advice: If you see figs, buy them. They’ve got a relatively short season, and they can be pricey, but they’re worth the effort.

1. Bring a pot of salted water to the boil; when it’s rolling, throw in the pasta. 2. Meanwhile, sauté the onion in bit of olive oil, and add the chili. Add in the cream bring to a simmer, and add figs, stirring until they just begin to break up. Add salt and a good grinding of pepper. 3. When the pasta is al dente, drain well and toss in the pan with the sauce, torn basil, and cheese. Serves 2 as a main or 4 as a starter.

tomed saucepan. Just as the foam subsides, add the flour, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon or whisk to prevent lumps. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes to coat the flour and remove the starchy taste; under no circumstance allow to brown. Add the hot milk – warming it beforehand is the only way to avoid an unpleasant grainy texture – and continue to whisk until the mixture is smooth and thickened. Remove from heat. Beat in the egg yolks one at a time. Season with salt, pepper, and mustard. Stir in the cheese and incorporated evenly. Chill while preparing the egg whites. 3. In a separate clean bowl, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar just until they hold soft peaks. Fold 1/3 of the beaten whites into the bechamel mixture to lighten it. Then gently fold in the rest. Pour into the prepared ramekins and place on a cookie sheet. Bake on the middle rack for about 25 minutes. The souffle is done when it has puffed over the rim, and the outside is golden. The fig should be nicely baked inside, and will be a great treat with the blue cheese around it.

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seeLIFE PAGES

Forgetting the lessons of history …And other stories – Michael Morrissey reads about a tormented shrink and great civilisations ENVY By Kathryn Harrison. HarperCollins, $37

his is Kathryn Harrison’s fifth novel, and eleventh book. And if the previous novels are as good as this one I have some catching up to do. She is, incidentally, married to Colin Harrison who writes wonderful thrillers. Literary marriages are not unknown here (Barry Crump and Fleur Adcock, Maurice Shadbolt and Elspeth Sandys) but they are relatively more common, so it seems, in the United States. Envy’s main character is Will, a psychoanalyst, married, a father with children, plus a famous twin brother (long distance swimming) – and is deeply troubled. Readers of fiction will know most novels deal with people getting into trouble (albeit often of their own making) and, in any case, whoever heard of a happy shrink in American fiction? As Will writhes on the crosses that author Harrison nails him to, I was reminded of the kind of inner torments to which Philip Roth’s characters are often subjected. Not that I am complaining – there’s something indirectly cathartic about reading about others in so much emotional difficulty. Will is attending an alma mater reunion

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when he runs into an old flame, Elizabeth. Suspicion arises in Will’s mind that Elizabeth’s daughter, Jennifer might after all, be his own. When he makes the request for a strand of her hair to be sent to him for DNA testing, the notion is met with indignant refusal. Will’s descent into a hell of doubt and self torment is, however, just beginning. It turns out Elizabeth, true to her time, was highly promiscuous and having relations with at least four men. Unfortunately, one of them was Mitch, his famous twin brother, who ironically, Will had always regarded as celibate. Worse still, it appears Mitch has been shadowing him and following in his footsteps, intimately speaking. At this point, I found myself hankering for Mitch to appear on stage, as it were, and for the brothers to have it out. Alas, Harrison never writes in this scene which seems a dramatic copout, though there is the inner drama of wishing it there. The psychological murk increases when one of Will’s patients lures and blackmails him into having intercourse with her. What’s worse is, she then tells him she is Jennifer. This Oedipal turn of the screw ratchets up Will’s distress to breakdown level. He is told that since Mitch is his twin brother, their DNA will be the same. Consequently, there is no way he is ever

going to know the truth ... until the near the end of the novel, that is. No, I’m not going to tell but suffice to say, the book has an almost improbably happy ending. Will is also carrying the guilt of accidentally drowning his son Luke. Given his dire circumstance, it is hardly surprising – and I understand the arrangement is a part of the psychoanalytic system – that Will has his own psychoanalyst. God knows, he needs one. Harrison has a glittering show-offy kind of style (some of Jennifer’s ingenious speeches seem too clever to be other than written) that provokes some envy in this reviewer – but then there’s always a chance I might learn something. Either way I’m looking forward to reading some of Harrison’s past or future novels.

A SHORT HISTORY OF PROGRESS By Ronald Wright, Text Publishing, $27

loomy books are the trend these days and maybe we need even more of them to frighten us (or politicians and directors of large oil companies) into ways that will make the planet greener instead of darker, blacker, more certain to be heading for environmental catastro-

PHAIC TAN By Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner & Rob Sitch, Hardie Grant Books, $30

phe. If you haven’t read Jared Diamond or Paul Ehrlich or whoever in this vein, then Ronald Wright’s short book is an excellent place to start. This book is composed of Wright’s 2004 Massey lectures given on ABC radio. Sometimes talks, lectures et al don’t read as well as they might, but this series is a happy exception. To back up the text, there is a very large quantity of footnotes – 54 pages out of a 211-page book. On occasion, I found that having read only a paragraph, the text had slipped in five footnotes. Not a complaint exactly, but like many readers I tend to charge through the text and catch up with footnotes later. In the case of Wright’s book, it’s as well to keep up with those highly informative mini-essay type footnotes, that give you the population of Rome or Antioch at its height or whatever. Being a fact-geek, I like this sort of thing. And it adds a layer of veracity and facticity to the text. Depending on your sense of historic proportion, it may be a surprise to some readers to learn that Rome had a million at its height, though some estimates go as low as 400,000. By contrast, the ancient city of Ur had no more than 20,000. Similarly, I was surprised to read (though perhaps I shouldn’t have been) that the Aztec and Inca empires each contained 20 million people – as large as contemporary Australia. Wright’s book, which reminds me of a cross between Jared Diamond and H.G. Wells, focuses in particular on four civilisations that have collapsed – Easter Island and Sumer whose ecologies completely broke down and two others – Rome and

the Maya, which left remnants of societies whose descendants remain to the present day. In Wright’s crystal clear prose (backed up by those ample footnotes), it makes for very sombre reading. When, the reader might ask themselves, did a society ever learn the lessons of history and ecology? Seemingly, never. Equally, there is a clear necessity for us to learn these lessons, otherwise the future looks not just like a passing Auckland squall, but a hurricane plus tsunamis on an ongoing basis. It doesn’t pay for any culture to be arrogant about the past. As Wright eloquently writes, “We no longer give much thought to mortal progress – a prime concern of earlier times – except to assume that it goes hand in hand with the material. Civilised people, we tend to think, not only smell better but behave better than barbarians or savages. This notion has trouble standing up in the court of history ...” I earlier compared Wright to Diamond. Wright, however, takes a sideswipe at the American writer’s famous book Guns, Germs and Steel, in a footnote: “ ...informative on germs but should not be relied for archaeological and historical data or interpretation. The dating and description of New World agriculture is flawed and his portrayal of Atahuallpa’s overthrow ... omits important data and strikes me as tendentious”. A broadside of this sweep needs particularity to strike home. Notwithstanding, this is certainly the best short book on the subject of ecological collapse. As the book chillingly concludes, “Now is our last chance to get the future right.”

ired of that time share apartment on the Gold Coast? How about a trip to an unusual country called Phaic Tan? The capital city, Bumpattabumpah, admittedly has traffic problems but then don’t most big cities? Quote: “For the first time Western visitor, a trip to Phaic Tan can be a genuine assault on the senses - an overwhelming explosion of sights, sounds, tastes, smells and strange colonic movements.” Maybe that was a misprint. Let’s try another entry: “Many visitors to Phaic Tan are keen to witness a kick boxing match ...Ticket prices vary dependent on where you sit – expect to pay extra for anywhere close enough to be showered in blood”. Something doesn’t seem quite right. Check those names again – Bumper to bumper. Fake Tan – get it? Phaic Tan is an imaginary country though it doesn’t take (taic?) the seasoned Asian traveller too long to figure out it’s based on Thailand. Needless to say, not a single place name in this hilarious and seemingly thoroughly researched tome is genuine. It would be an interesting exercise in market research to get a hundred people to open this lavishly illustrated “guide” at random and see how long it takes for any individual to figure out it’s ... phaic. On every page, there is (or ought to be) a giveaway. Quite often – as indicated in the quotes already given – it occurs in the last sentence, the sting in the tale, so to speak It’s all here in comic and satiric code – palaces, kick boxing, rivers, animals, hotels, hill tribes, jewellery shops, go-go bars – all given an impudent twist. I’ve been told that it’s worth more than your life to disrespect royalty in Thailand but not even they escape in this warts and all portrayal. Not even the index can be trusted. And the ubiquitous Department of Immigration form found in many countries (as well as Phaic Tan) also has fun poked at its blandness – eg Place where you will be spending most time (do not include hospitals). Not for the politically correct, this book is also off limit for those who lack a sense of humour. Hence (possibly), one lone “straight” title – Travel for Germans. If the last pages are to be believed, there will, in due course, be available several other titles of a similar lampooning style on countries such

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 81

as Cartelombia (Columbia?) Sherpestan (Tibet/Nepal?), Gastronesia (Indonesia?) And possibly Newd Sealion – or will the joke have worn thin by then? Probably not. With over 200 countries in the world to go, the Jetlag Travel Guide series has its work cut out for years to come.

BROTHER FISH By Bryce Courtenay, Penguin, $27

ryce Courtenay is a publishing phenomenon. He is the best-selling Australian author and by now is probably one of half dozen authors whose names are well-known throughout the world. Being a closet literary snob, I sometimes resist reading super-circulated authors in the same way that might (say) not dine at McDonalds. This then was my first Bryce Courtenay. Overall, I was surprised – though perhaps I shouldn’t have been – at how oldfashioned Courtenay’s sense of character, drama and short telling are. (This is a book that could have been written in the 50s or 60s.) You could say the same about the Star Wars series or Steven Spielberg and look how popular they are. (And by the way I am a Spielberg fan.) So what’s cooking with Brother Fish? Three large stories – so large as to be three separate novels – all intertwined, in my view, rather clumsily. The main characters of this sprawling 835-page novel are Jack McKenzie, a Korean War soldier; Jimmy Oldcorn, a six foot nine former New York gang leader now in reform mode and Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan, a White Russian Countess raised in China. If you’re thinking – what do these folk have in common? – you’d be right first time – nothing. Though Courtenay bringing them together is the mark of a natural story teller who revels in the improbable nexus that life can bring about. Courtenay doesn’t stint on raw uncooked emotion and a few tissues might be in order for more tender-hearted readers of which I suspect Courtenay has more than a few. For this reviewer, the 200-page flashback – surely the longest in writing history – where Nicole Lenoir-Jordan tells a jaw-dropping Jack and Jimmy her highly colourful story of being the mistress of Sir Victor Sassoon, English industrial magnate and Big Boss Yu, a powerful gangster, is the best of the three stories. It’s a rich period-piece evocation of Shanghai

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during the roaring 20s and 30s when the International Settlement was at its decadent height and I found myself wishing it had been a separate novel in its own right. Also well-rendered is the cold and savage fighting in the Korean War. Apart from any other writing aspect, Courtenay can describe a scene so vividly that you feel every smell, taste or other bodily sensation as though you were there. The third story – blessedly shorter than Lenoir-Jourdan’s intriguing tale of Chinese criminal intrigue – is Jimmy’s somewhat tedious flashback narrative of a difficult to horrendous adolescence concerning his sexual entanglement with an older woman. The highly idiomatic style of Jimmy’s speech which makes one wince slightly has him saying, “Brother Fish, Nicole ma’am, she done out-think us. She don’t know foh sure how do folk on dis island dey feel, an’ she gonna find out. No pressure- jus’ come in nice an’ quiet an’ now she gonna find out ” and it’s like dat every time dat big man speaks. All appropriate to the time and period, I guess. Brother Fish is a great book to take on a long Australian train ride but like the rail tracks of old, it changes gauges a few times and there are lots of bumps and curves along the way but for that mythical person, the ordinary reader, and even sneakingly some of the time myself, the long journey is eventful enough to keep you on board as a beguiled and willing traveller.

KAFKA ON THE SHORE By Haruki Murakami, Vintage, $26.95

his must be the weirdest novel I’ve read in a while and I’m still not sure how much I like it (or dislike it). It starts off straightforwardly – Kafka Tamura, a fifteen-year youth who is, perhaps, a mite too sophisticated for his years decides to run away from an abusive father, full of doom-laden Oedipal prophecies. Chapter 2 has a Top Secret US Department of Defense report on a mysterious silver light rendering a class of schoolchildren unconscious; chapter 3 switches back to the runaway Kafka. Chapter 4 has more Top Secret reporting and chapter 5 further development of Tamura’s runaway adventures. Chapter 6 has an old man talking to a black cat and the cat responds in like manner ... Pretty weird mix, right?

Believe it or not, these disparate narrative strands do slowly weave into a gripping skein but it takes a while. The runaway narrative worked best with this reader; the blanked-out children episodes are rendered in a step-by-step bland English style that reminded me of science fiction about fifty years ago and the talking black cat – and other similarly loquacious moggies – got on my nerves. Talking cats are great for kids, cat lovers or devotees of sword & sorcery (among which I am not numbered) but this in-your-face weirdness can pall unless the cat is so enriched by offbeat sentience, that his feline ramblings seize attention. Sometimes the cat(s) grabbed me, then they bored. It would have been interesting if Kafka himself (Czech author not Japanese runaway) had taken charge of this segment of the book. However, the further you go into Murakami’s novel, the stranger it gets. The old man gives off a strong reek of schizophrenia though this assessment is never made. He presents (to use the current vogue psychiatric term) as himself, gifted with the ability to talk to cats and as it turns out this may have something to do with that silver light ... This brief outline has not done justice to the rich if not maddening brew of pop culture icons the novel contains though much of the time this sushi of ideas (like sushi) left me cold. Some may find the Platonic thread of everyone looking for their lost soul mate intellectually provoking and others, like myself, may find a philosophical pimp in the guise of Colonel Sanders or a highly talkative Johnny Walker annoyingly twee – though again some regard it as iconically postmodern. For me, the book was a roller coaster to which I was partly attracted and partly repulsed. Frankly, I am baffled by critics who liked it cover to cover. I believe Kafka himself would have detested it. That a fifteen year-old contemporary youth would spend a lot of time loitering in libraries, especially after running away, challenges credibility – though credibility is the last thing this type of novel worries about. It is in a library that Kafka meets one of the two interesting female characters – the androgynous Ms Oshima (the Platonic original before being split in two halves?) and the psychologically damaged Miss Saeki. Despite my highly mixed reaction to Kafka on the Shore, I feel sufficiently provoked to try another of his books to see if it is less or more weird.

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seeLIFE MUSIC

Last is not least

Chris Philpott finds Jose Gonzalez outstanding, and promise in the others as well SHAWN McDONALD Ripen

t has been two years since Shawn McDonald’s self-taught debut Simply Nothing hit stores and hot on its heels comes sophomore release Ripen. Has McDonald’s sound changed? To steal a well-known slogan, the difference is clear. Much like his debut, Ripen is built around Shawn’s spiritual beliefs and a musical core of simple acoustic guitar and cello. But this album is far more than just that – where Simply Nothing toed a musical line and then stopped, Ripen sees McDonald crossing that line into previously unexplored territory and it is here that the growth in his sound can truly be heard. That musical growth is plainly obvious on tracks like “Reason”, “Imago” and “Perfectly Done” as McDonald has focused a lot on arrangement this time round, giving Ripen a dynamic that was lacking in his previous work. Lyrically, McDonald really sticks to familiar themes which I feel hurts a few tracks. McDonald also has a habit of reverting to the sound he is most familiar with when it feels like he should go in an entirely different direction and that can be frustrating at times. However these are minor slights on a strong sophomore release from this unique songwriter.

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CORINNE BAILEY RAE Corinne Bailey Rae

f the hype surrounding Corinne Bailey Rae is anything to go by then music promoters have been looking for someone to be titled “the next Billie Holliday” for a while and this gorgeous blues singer appears to be the perfect choice to hang it on. Of course, it’s a big expectation to live up to, so the question is whether the music justifies the comparison. For my money, Bailey Rae’s debut album is pretty good – not so mainstream that it’s pop music, but a little too mainstream to be straight blues or even soul music. Yes, she leaves all her chart-topping peers behind as far as quality goes, but songs like the album’s highlight “Like a Star” don’t appear to have the widespread appeal needed to get to number one. Admittedly, Bailey Rae does have a remarkable voice, and the songs featured on this album have been designed to play to that strength. But she reminds me more of artists like Morcheeba, Macy Gray or Joss Stone than anything really unique and I think that hurts the album’s effect on me personally. This is a solid showing, but definitely one for fans of the blues or soul genres.

JOSE GONZALEZ Veneer

ince the inclusion of his song “Heartbeats” on the great advertisement for Sony’s Bravia television, Swedish-born Argentinean Jose Gonzalez has enjoyed an unlikely rise to stardom and it was that fact which drew me to Veneer, his stunning debut album. Proving that big sound and numerous instruments are peripheral to good music, Gonzalez has armed himself with nothing more than an acoustic guitar, creating an album of short acoustic pop songs that are beautiful and intriguing, yet remarkably simple. While Veneer does run at a fast and consistent pace from start to finish, every track is striking in its own right and all offer something different in terms of enjoyment – on tracks like “Remain” and “Hints” it is the Spanish sounding guitar that stands out, whereas on tracks like “Heartbeats” and “Stay in the Shade”, Gonzalez’ haunting vocals shine through. However, the combination of both is what makes this album work and Gonzalez’ talent for finding that balance is what makes Veneer such an amazing achievement. In fact the only real problem with this fantastic collection of songs is that the album is far too short. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to listen to it more often.

seeLIFE MOVIES

Inside Man

Spike Lee hit the big time Inside man a top-tier heist flick Inside Man Rated: M Starring: Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer and Willem Dafoe Directed by Spike Lee 129 minutes

nside Man is good enough to restore your faith in mainstream moviemaking. Viewers may be surprised at the smoothness with which the frequently bombastic Spike Lee navigates the mainstream. Aided by Russell Gewirtz’s witty screenplay and a dynamic cast headed by Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster, Lee delivers a top-tier heist flick. Although each headliner has individual scenes that qualify as star treatment, the A-list trio services the story. And, for the most part, so does Lee. Some of his signature touches are better suited to his

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“message” movies, while others, including flash-forward police interrogations, work in behalf of the story. Washington, a frequent Lee compadre, plays NYPD hostage negotiator Keith Frazier, who is called to deal with a Wall Street bank robbery where at least 50 hostages have been taken. Owen plays heist master Dalton Russell, who engineers a fiendishly ingenious heist. Aside from state-of-the-art weaponry, he’s armed with a withering sarcasm that’s as piercing as any bullet. Frazier is no slouch when it comes to repartee, and one of the movie’s pleasures is witnessing the pungent verbal duels between Washington’s Frazier and Owen’s Russell. Both actors are outstanding, with Owen suggesting layers of subtext for his philosophical baddie. Foster, with less footage than her costars, delivers a quietly devastating performance as frosty, arrogant power broker Madeline White. Dressed in exquisite

designer garb, she oozes the smugness of someone who knows where bodies are buried as well as who buried them. Madeline is the key link to a subplot involving bank chairman Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer), who knows more than he’s telling. Although Case seems lifted from the poignant German/Hungarian film Gloomy Sunday, the silken Plummer makes him as pitiable as he is despicable. Willem Dafoe, for once on the right side of the law, has strong moments as a self-important captain of the Emergency Services Unit. Many heist movies falter in their resolution, and, sadly, Inside Man is no exception. Its conclusion is prolonged, and some questions remain unanswered unless you watch and listen very attentively. The musical score ranges from grand orchestrations to Bollywood hits. Like the movie, its canvas stretches at points. But also like the movie, it works. With Inside Man, Lee does the right thing. Reviewed by Philip Wuntch

The Matador

The Matador Rated: R Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear, Hope Davis, Philip Baker Hall Directed by Richard Shepard 97 minutes

eard the one about the hit man and the entrepreneur who walk into a cantina? Perhaps we shouldn’t smear dissipated Julian Noble (Pierce Brosnan) by calling him a hit man. For this guy, who swaggers up to the hotel bar and staggers through its lobby, styles himself a “fatality facilitator.” Also, perhaps we shouldn’t aggrandize the meek Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear) by making the struggling Denver businessman sound more successful than he is. But as musky tequila and citrusy Cointreau become something else entirely when shaken into a margarita, so salty Julian and sweet Danny blend an unlikely friendship in Mexico City, where they bounce between bar and bullfight.

Brazenly enjoyable, The Matador is a picaresque cocktail with a Tarantino twist. It is The Odd Couple with a buzz on. The film, written and directed by Richard Shepard, boasts a bawdily entertaining performance by co-producer Brosnan, whose work here has prickliness and heat not typically associated with the blandly smooth actor of Remington Steele, James Bond and Thomas Crown. There is nothing suave about Brosnan’s scruffy Julian. His brushy mustache makes him resemble a debauched Tom Skerritt. His cocksure strut is 180-proof Mick Jagger. And his volatility suggests a nuclear reactor on the verge of meltdown. By contrast, Kinnear’s Danny is cleanshaven, Simon-pure and straight-arrow, all the better for Julian to corrupt him. Kinnear’s centered performance is the fulcrum for Brosnan’s seesaw dance. The crisply written film takes its title from the corrida where Julian observes to Danny that hit men, like matadors, should complete the kill in one swift jab. At the arena, Julian shows Danny how he goes about his work. Combining a chessmas-

ter’s strategy with a magician’s misdirection of his observers, Julian deftly shows how to get his mark in his crosshairs. But the murder business is murder, and Julian needs a break. What’s refreshing about The Matador, which combines the pungency of Sexy Beast with the poignancy of Sideways, is that it doesn’t adhere to the beats of the oppositesattract comedy. It is an opposites-transform comedy, but unpredictably so. Good comedy depends on surprise, and throughout The Matador I had no idea where the film was going, especially in a scene where Julian, in Speedo and unzipped ankle boots, saunters through a hotel lobby, chugging a cerveza. Most unexpected were sequences involving Danny’s wife, Bean, beautifully underplayed by Hope Davis, that most believable of actresses. As always, she elevates the performances of her co-stars and makes what might have been a contrived buddy-comedy conflict seem like the most natural of human events. Reviewed by Carrie Rickey

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 87

seeLIFE DVDs

Life imitates art

A movie about the fall of an Attorney-General is released, and Cusack is every girl’s ideal boyfriend

discovering the man is a ravenous steakeater. During his last visit here his hosts at Auckland’s Tibetan monastery tried to serve up the usual course of mung beans and six month old goat curds to their honoured guest, only to be essentially told: “Get me a Porterhouse, now”. It is the human side of DL that interests me more than the spiritual, probably because I regard Buddhism as a flawed theology. But viewers of Kundun, being released on DVD for the first time, will find the human element of this movie and the struggle for Tibet is fascinating, even if Buddhism gets an easy and unchallenging ride in what doubles as a promotional video for the Eastern faith. Reviewed by Ian Wishart

ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN PG, 139 minutes Must love dogs PG, 98 minutes

romantic comedy is only as irresistible as are its temporarily star-crossed lovers. By this barometer, the enjoyably breezy Must Love Dogs boasts quite a pedigree. Starring the reliably effervescent Diane Lane and John Cusack – the one man every woman between the ages of 25 and 55 can agree is the Perfect Boyfriend – the film is goofy and improbable and as unsurprising as most TV sitcoms. But it’s also spritely, well-acted and a great deal of fun, probably the best date movie of the summer. Contrary to what you might expect, the main characters don’t even own dogs. But “must love dogs” is a crucial requirement of the online profile of Sarah Nolan (Lane), who has been divorced for eight months and is only tentatively back in the dating world after much nagging by her large Irish family, headed by her widowed father (Christopher Plummer). After a stereotypical series of horrific encounters with losers, Sarah hooks up with Jake (Cusack), who has the required artistic and noble career of hand-building gorgeous wooden racing sculls, plus a cool name. Jake is recently divorced, broken-hearted, with a tendency to lounge around watching Dr. Zhivago and proclaiming his need for a love that transcends time. Sarah and Jake are perfect for each other, of course, but formula dictates roadblocks. One snag comes in the form of the

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handsome dad of one of Sarah’s students (Dermot Mulroney), for whom Sarah has more than a passing interest. Other hitches occur thanks to Jake himself, who tends to babble incoherently when he’s nervous. Nothing unexpected happens in Must Love Dogs; there’s nothing to make you think or reconsider your life. The film’s revelations are modest and yet universally appealing. View it as a fat-free but tasty cinematic treat in the middle of the long, hot summer. And you didn’t even have to beg for it. Reviewed by Connie Ogle

KUNDUN PG, 135 minutes

y all accounts, the Dalai Lama is a genuinely nice guy. The spiritual leader-inexile of Tibet, and Buddhist guru to millions worldwide, DL remains imprinted in my own memory for two reasons. Firstly, on one of his visits to New Zealand he was being interviewed by Radio Pacific’s Jenny Anderson who’d just asked a question along the lines of: ‘What’s the answer to life, the universe and everything?’ Just as DL was getting to the crunch point of the answer everyone was waiting to hear, Jenny cut across with “and we’re crossing live now trackside to Race Number 5 from Addington”, or something like that. It was one of those immortal moments (no pun intended) that only commercial broadcasting can deliver. The second quirk involving DL was

or the first time on DVD, the epic Watergate thriller that first hit the big screen 30 years ago (count them). Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman star as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters whose “muckraking” brought down the AttorneyGeneral in the Nixon administration, and ultimately Nixon himself. Yes, there was something very ironic that we sat down to review this DVD the same day Investigate’s last issue went out, toppling New Zealand Attorney-General David Parker. In the movie, the journalists are shown week after week writing stories, never letting go of their target, while all around them politicians and even some of their fellow journalists are calling them scumbags and scandalmongers, out to destroy good family men. At one point, when they’re forced to use yet another unnamed source, Jason Robards – playing Post editor Ben Bradlee – exclaims: ““Goddammit, when is somebody going to go on the record in this story? You guys are about to write a story that says the former Attorney General, the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in this country, is a crook! Just be sure you’re right.” Indeed. Special features on the DVD include profiles of Woodward and Bernstein, and a feature on the man who was Deepthroat, former FBI #2, W. Mark Felt, whose identity was only made public less than a year ago. Reviewed by Ian Wishart

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INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 89

touchLIFE

TOYBOX

HONDA TRX 250EX

Things to spin your wheels Track and trace with these gadgets

PATROLBOT

For the managing director who has everything, a new security robot from MobileRobots Inc. This baby features remote video from low light, pan-tiltzoom, two way audio so you can tell your intruder he’s cornered, optional detection of smoke, water, heat or other nasties. The robot uses motion sensing scanners to not only detect an intruder but track them, even in full darkness. Likewise it can be programmed to work with an existing alarm system to go to the point of entry for verification, and you can watch all this from the comfort of the worldwide web. www.mobilerobots.com

90, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006

The reviewers at US autozine Nadaguides have just announced their top ten vehicles for 2006, among them this grunty ATV from Honda. “The TRX is versatile for all skill levels, responds powerfully in virtually any driving environment, and consistently outperforms the competition in tight situations. I like the sleek look of the TRX and I love its power.” Added features include an exclusive ‘no-stall’ Honda SportClutch, a five-speed transmission with reverse capabilities, electric start and two color choices – red and black. $9995 from Blue Wing Honda.

The most fashionable Four-Wheel Drive ever

Reaching out to the young, fashion conscious who want it all, the irresistible pink and lime Sahora Brights also pack in a host of sophisticated features – hardware with colourful accents, retractable pull handle, two pairs of cross ribbons, a zipped internal compartment and userfriendly pockets in the front shell. All the ergonomic handles, zippers and closure systems integrate discretely into the suitcase creating a compact and tidy look. Sahora Brights come in Red, Black or the limited edition colours – Lime or Pink. The new Sahora Brights range is available in department stores and at specialist retailers. Find the dealer nearest you on www.samsonite.com

BEOCOM 2 Ltd Edition

It’s the cordless phone you have when you really seriously want to make a statement. In this case, it’s a limited edition run of the Beocom 2. The BeoCom 2 cordless telephone has a unique organic shape, created through the use of a hydro forming technique that shapes the telephone into a very tough, one-piece telephone without sharp edges or unattractive joins. BeoCom 2 has a unique ringing tone, which has been specially created by Danish composer Kenneth Knudsen and is a pleasant invitation to pick up the phone. Everything you’d expect a phone to have, plus Danish design.

THE WORLD’S FIRST 8GB HARD DISK EMBEDDED PHONE – the i310

Samsung breaks the storage limit in mobile phones by introducing the world's first mobile phone equipped with a 8GB hard disk drive (model: SGH-i310). With the large storage of 8GB, SGH-i310 will change the way people manage and use the mobile phone. The i310 works as a perfect platform for users by combining a phone, a digital camera, and a MP3 player with its immense storage capacity. It enables users to carry around 2,000 songs (4MB/song) wherever they go. The i310 comes with the latest version of Windows Mobile 5.0 for Smartphone which allows users to view files and easily carry their music library with them. It also offers USB 2.0 and Plug & Play feature which allows the phone to be utilized as a removable hard disk. Businessmen and students can easily store and transfer files to/from their computers in any format conveniently. The i310 has all the latest features including a 2 megapixel camera with flash, microSD slot, document viewer and TV output. Users can record video with the 2 megapixel camera in high quality resolution. Visit www.samsung.com

INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006, 91

touchLIFE

CATALOGUE

GET YOUR BUSINESS SEEN! This space could be yours! From $110 a month (12 mth booking) or $150 a month (3 mth booking) Email sales@investigatemagazine.com for details

Want a free iPod?

Email media@vof.org.nz, complete our survey, and be in to win one of 10 iPods. Voice of Friendship Reaching the out of reach

92, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2006

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realLIFE

15 MINUTES

You can’t keep a crazy horse down

Neil Young was an iconic voice in the 70s, and Dan DeLuca discovers he’s still got the fire today

1982

eil Young is exactly where he wants to be. Dressed in a cowboy suit, playing a guitar that belonged to Hank Williams, the 59-year-old rock and roll maverick is on the stage of Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, his wife Pegi by his side, his old friends Emmylou Harris and Spooner Oldham in the band and his son Ben watching from the crowd. He looks out from beneath the brim of his gaucho hat at the worshipful audience in this former church that is country music’s most hallowed hall, and takes stock of what’s been lost.

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His song is “The Painter,” the first written for Prairie Wind, his sweet, ruminative new album which Young is performing in its entirety while director Jonathan Demme’s cameras roll for an as-yet-untitled performance film to be released this year. “I have my friends, eternally/We left our tracks in the sound,” he gently sings, in that immediately recognizable nasal voice. “Some of them are with me now/ Some of them can’t be found.” Were it not for what Young, sitting for an interview in a Music City hotel the next day, calls “absolute dumb luck,” he might

easily have joined the dearly departed, who include his father, Scott, who died last June. Three months earlier, Neil Young was successfully treated for a brain aneurysm. The condition was discovered by accident, when he woke up one day to find that the world looked like “a shard of glass was poking into my eye.” Doctors at New York Presbyterian Hospital said the visual impairment was caused by migraines, but they also discovered an unrelated, life-threatening aneurysm, and scheduled surgery for two weeks later. Nonetheless, Young flew to Nashville, where he had recorded country-flavored `70s albums such as Harvest and Comes a Time, which the ghostly, becalmed Prairie Wind is clearly connected to. “The doctor told me that I had the condition for `hundreds of years,’” Young says with a laugh. “And he also told me we need to do something about it right away. But I had already booked the studio time.” Young went to Nashville with only “The Painter” written. He began working with old cronies such as steel guitarist Ben Keith, who played on “Harvest” (1972) and “Harvest Moon” (1992), and the songs came quickly, some in less than 15 minutes. “I hadn’t written anything since Greendale” – the 2003 collection of linked songs – “and I was starting again. And when that happens, you don’t mess with it. That’s one thing I’ve learned, to stay open.” Young, who wrote and recorded “Prairie’s” first eight songs before going under the knife, says he was not scared of dying. Not consciously, anyway. “I’m sure that subliminally and subconsciously I was aware that I was at risk. You don’t have an aneurysm and take it lightly. A lot of people get them, and they die.” What he did think a lot about, though, was not being able to play music – which he’s been doing since he was 8. Then, his father, a Canadian sportswriter and author, brought home a plastic Arthur Godfrey ukelele and taught him how to play “Bury Me Out On The Prairie,” a memory he recounted before playing the nostalgic “Far From Home” at the Ryman. (An obsessive compiler of his own musical history, Young will this year begin releasing the archival project he’s been working on for 15 years, when Reprise

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issues the first of five five-to-eight-disc box sets.) “I thought more about being incapacitated,” says Young, the father of three grown children, who has lived on a northern California ranch since the early `70s. He wrote the gorgeous lullaby “Here For You” for his 21-year-old daughter Amber. His sons Zeke, 32, whose mother is the late actress Carrie Snodgress, and Ben, 27, who is a quadriplegic, both have cerebral palsy. Young and his wife are cofounders of the Bridge School for disabled children. Prairie Wind confronts the haunting fear of being unable to communicate with loved ones who are no longer known to themselves. The title song is about memory and aging and Young’s father, who suffered from dementia. “Tryin’ to remember what Daddy said,” Young sings, “before too much time took away his head.” “At our school, we deal with kids who have brain injuries, strokes, cerebral palsy, things like that,” Young says. “I’m very familiar with that. So I was thinking of not being able to do what I do. It didn’t freak me out. It just made me think: Now you’ve got to play this card. Now you’re going to do what you can, in the time that you have.” Young wrote the title song for Demme’s 1993 movie, Philadelphia, and Demme directed videos for the 1994 album Sleeps With Angels featuring Young and his primordial rock band, Crazy Horse. By then, Young was deep into his “Godfather of grunge” comeback from irrelevance in the `80s, when he was sued by Geffen Records for making music that didn’t sound like the iconic Neil Young heard on albums such as 1979’s Live Rust. Demme, who helmed the Talking Heads concert movie Stop Making Sense (1984) proposed working with Young after hearing “The Painter.” “You just hear the first line of that song – `The painter stood before her work, she looked around everywhere’ – and you know it’s going to be great from there,” Demme says, in an interview after filming two nights of Young in concert before an invitation-only crowd. The filmmaker says Young was a most cooperative collaborator. He even performed a solo acoustic version of “The Old Laughing Lady,” Demme’s favorite song, after the Ryman crowd (which included fellow Young fans Meryl Streep, and Paul Thomas Anderson and his wife, Maya Rudolph) had gone home.

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The doctor told me that I had the condition for `hundreds of years,’” Young says with a laugh. “And he also told me we need to do something about it right away. But I had already booked the studio time

“He’s such a beautiful dude,” Demme says. “The thing about him is that he’s such a world-class timeless artist, and he’s also such a mensch.” The last two songs that Young recorded for Prairie Wind, which is his most consistently stirring set since 1992’s Harvest Moon, were “He Was The King,” and “When God Made Me.” The former is an engaging if lightweight tribute to Elvis Presley, who, like Hank Williams, performed at the Ryman when it home to the Grand Ole Opry. The latter is a hymnal on which Young plays piano and is accompanied by the Fisk University Jubilee Choir. It’s also an overtly political song from Young, a Canadian citizen who supported Ronald Reagan in the `80s but joined the

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anti-Bush Vote For Change shows. It’s about what Young calls “the hijacking of religion,” a subject that, along with the state of the environment, gets Young agitated. “Only 20 percent of our Founding Fathers were God-fearing men. Now we have 95 percent in office, and they’re all Christians ... We need to be reminded of the basic freedom of having your own way of making peace with God, and standing before God directly.” Young has time left until he must stand before God directly. But here, surrounded by beloved friends, on a stage worn by the footsteps of his musical heroes, Young is at peace with himself. “And it’s a good feeling,” he says. “I just wish the country felt as good as I do.”