by Gordon Campbell

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this year’s referendum on the voting system is that it is being held at all. There was no legal obligation on the government to conduct a poll on the voting system – an exercise that could potentially cost $23 million all up, at a time when funding for public services is being squeezed. Nor is there much in the way of discernible public dissatisfaction with the current voting system. Auckland University Political Science Associate Professor Raymond Miller traces the origins of this year’s poll back to a promise made by Jenny Shipley in 1999 that National, if re-elected, would hold such a referendum.

After National’s election victory in 2008 Key, Miller says, John Key came under pressure from two directions to revive that commitment. “The first was from among National’s constituency, from the membership and activists in particular. And also I think, from members of the business community who had never been happy with MMP. I have the impression that he was never particularly enthusiastic about a referendum himself, but he felt it was a campaign commitment that he should keep.”

So…. thanks to National diehards and a few corporate chieftains, the public is being required to spend money and time on revisiting the battles of the early 1990s. At this year’s election, voters will get two votes on the voting system. Firstly, they will be asked whether they want to retain MMP, and – separately – they will also be asked to choose an alternative system from a list of options. If a majority fails to say “yes” to MMP the issue will be revisited at the 2014 election when there will be a run-off between MMP and whatever alternative system won the most votes this year. This underlines the necessity for even those who tick to retain MMP, to also vote in the second part.

It seems a big ask to expect that after a month of brochures in the letterbox and occasional 30 second ad on television that most voters will be well enough acquainted with the voting systems on offer – Supplementary Member, Single Transferable Vote, Mixed Member Proportional and First Past the Post – to make an informed call about their relative strengths and weaknesses. Is a referendum a good way of dealing with issues of such complexity?

It is, Miller replies, if is there a widespread mood for change, as there was in the early 1990s. “ While it is always difficult putting something as complex as this to a referendum, I think it’s the appropriate way to deal with an issue such as electoral reform. But the context in the early 1990s was so different from now. This time, there doesn’t seem to have been any public clamour for it at all.”

Not so in the early 1990s. At that time, the public had been battered by three successive waves of heavy-handed government : the Muldoon era, the Lange-led Labour government, and the Bolger-led National government. The cumulative effect was that voters felt themselves to be at the mercy of elected representatives who kept on enacting policies for which there was little or no public support. The inherent unfairness of the First Past the Post system, the lack of adequate checks and balances in New Zealand’s single chamber Parliament and the ideological extremism of both major parties had all served to create a perception that the voting system was delivering the public into the hands of an elected dictatorship.

“There was a widespread belief that successive governments had let the public down, that politicians were not listening, that they had broken their promises,” Miller [pictured left] says. “There was even a feeling that politicians were corrupt.” By the early 1990s, the government of the day was seen as being no better than its predecessors. “The Bolger government was deeply unpopular, particularly on issues around the [1991] Ruth Richardson Budget.”

Crucially, the hostile public mood had been given focus and intellectual firepower by the 1986 Royal Commission on Electoral Reform which had analysed the range of voting systems on offer. It had measured each voting system against its ability to promote democracy, and ended up strongly in favour of MMP. Therefore, when it came time to vote in the referendums of 1992 and 1993, the public had the Royal Commission’s endorsement of MMP readily at hand, for guidance. Moreover, the Royal Commission findings helped to unite the pro-change forces under the one banner of MMP, as the best reform option. Now, nearly 20 years later….the public is being asked to repeat exactly the same task of evaluating the various voting systems that it carried out during the first referendum in 1992 – but this time, the public has nothing like the same expertise on hand to help out.

That’s one of Miller’s chief worries. In his view, the advertising being put out by the Electoral Commission so far this year simply hasn’t been up to the job. “I’ve got in front of me the handout circulated to householders as a guide to the voting referendum. All they basically do is outline in the very broadest of terms what each of the systems happens to be. There’s very little on what the implications of what each of those options would be for the nature of Parliament, and for the business of government.” Surely, that is a major concern – given that the meat of the Royal Commission report was the way it examined the gist of each system, and analysed how fair and democratic the outcomes would be in each case?

“Oh, absolutely.” Miller replies. “They were looking at what they considered a good and fair electoral system to be. And they worked it out in terms of fair representation – including for minorities – and in terms of an effective Parliament, and an effective government. But all of that is lost in history now.” Note : the Royal Commission report can still be found on the shelves of the nation’s libraries. Even 25 years down the track, it is still the best guide to voting in this year’s referendum. Chapter two is the essential part, and is available online here.

The country has moved on. An entire generation of voters up to the age of 33 or thereabouts have voted only within MMP-style elections. Among older citizens, memories of the unfairness of the FPP system have faded. “We have an older age group,” Miller says, “ who are in their 60s and 70s and beyond – some of whom look back with nostalgia to FPP because they thought it led to more effective and decisive government.” Those two factors form part of the cultural backdrop for this year’s referendum.

While the public will always feels some degree of disdain and hostility towards politicians, there is little sign that the bulk of today’s electorate are feeling like taking that out on the voting system. “Its much less of an issue now because we have a popular government in power,” Miller says. “Had this referendum been put by a Labour government in its third term at the election in 2008, there may have been more likelihood of a judgement being made on politicians. But attitudes to politicians are far higher now, than they were in the early 1990s.”

As mentioned, the referendum this year has been foisted on the public by a few diehard members of the business elite, and by elements in the two main political parties who are seeking to claw back some of the power they lost 18 years ago, to MMP. “Yes,” Miller says, “ I think they see it that way. And in that respect, it’s interesting that they haven’t gone for FPP as the preferred option. That’s what they wanted in 1992 and 1993. This time, I think they are realistic enough to believe the public would smell a rat and see it as an attempt to get rid of all the small parties in Parliament and return New Zealand to a single party, majority government. That would not go down well with a lot of voters. There’s a very realistic view [among the anti-MMP camp] that they should look for a system that gives small parties some representation, but not enough to do too much harm.”

And therefore the anti-MMP campaign has settled on the Supplementary Member (SM) system as their alternative? “ Yes, they’ve ended up with SM. ” Around the country, National MPs appear to be being whipped into speaking out in support of SM. Tauranga’s Simon Bridges and Nelson’s Nick Smith for instance, have become public advocates for SM, which is not a proportional system. This could pose a problem for backbench colleagues such as Dunedin’s Michael Woodhouse – who, in order to be consistent, would need to vote for either MMP or STV, given that he recently described himself in Parliament as “a supporter of proportional representation.”

The Supplementary Member System

The word “ supplementary” is the tip-off here. Under SM, it is envisaged that there would be 90 electorate seats, and 30 list seats. SM is essentially a FPP electoral system in the electorates but with a limited – some would say token – number of seats allocated to each party in proportion to the number of votes they’ve won.

Put that another way : under the SM system, proportionality is confined only to the small minority of list seats. Therefore if a political party like the Greens got 20 % of the vote nationwide it would win only 20% of the token number of list seats, and not 20% of all the seats in Parliament, as would be the case under MMP. If there are only 30 list seats in a 120 seat Parliament such a party would get 20% of the vote, but only six seats. (Under MMP, they would get 27.) By the same arithmetic, if the 2008 election had been carried out under the SM system, the Greens would have got only two seats, and not their current tally of nine seats.

The same fate would befall almost every other small party under MMP. All of which makes it bizarre that National MP Simon Bridges has been touting SM as “ the moderate and balanced” option that combines the best elements of MMP and FPP. It is no such thing. Essentially, SM repeats all of the unfair, undemocratic aspects of FPP while adding only a thin veneer of proportionality. This may explain why, in the nicest possible way, the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform was utterly scathing about SM. Using the example of the Bob Jones’ New Zealand Party – which won 12. 3 % of the vote but got no seats at all in the 1984 election – the Royal Commission points out under SM, the same 12.3% tally would have still delivered the Jones party only three seats. The Royal Commission concluded by dismissing SM as a desirable option, calling it a “palliative” rather than a true prescription for improvement.

Miller agrees. SM is fine, he says, if you want a system that is not fair and not proportional, and that gives only token representation to small parties. “It really doesn’t fit the bill in a number of respects. The Royal Commission believed that fairness would be reflected in the diversity that came though in the party lists. A disproportionate number of women and ethnic minorities are on the party lists. It is those lists that have been responsible for increasing the representative nature of Parliament. SM can’t do that really, because its got such a small list component. Women, Maori and others would lose ground…”

Small parties would be severely disadvantaged by SM, Miller believes. “If you had 30 list seats and you’re only basing the proportions on the number of list seats then if the Greens got 10% of the vote – which they’ve never got – then they would get only 3 seats. That would deliver a mortal blow to them.” SM would not deliver an immediate blow to the Maori Party, he adds, but only so long as it managed to hold onto all of its electorate seats. If it couldn’t, it would begin to suffer the same fate.

Under SM, Miller concludes, the 2008 election result would have delivered a single party majority government with no need to go to the small parties. National’s haul meanwhile, would have increased under SM from the 58 seats it won under MMP to 67 seats under SM. (No wonder National MPs all around the country have become SM supporters overnight!) “ Under SM, we would have something very similar to what he had under FPP.”

For that reason, SM would sound the death knell to small party policy initiatives such as Kiwibank, which was a concession wrung from the Clark government, in the face of opposition from both the major parties. The role of small parties in a check and balance on streamroller executive power would also be lost. Under SM, the compromises negotiated with the Key government over its proposed video surveillance interim legislation would simply not have happened. If SM had been in place in 2008, National would have been able to ram through its initial draconian set of proposals unopposed.

Single Transferable Vote (STV)

Back in the early 1990s, the Single Transferable Vote system enjoyed a good deal of support, even among those who wanted to change to a proportional representation system of voting. It is used in some local body elections in New Zealand, where it is well recognised that aspects of STV help to foster grassroots democracy and independence. It does so by enabling voters to rank individual candidates and thereby minimises the role of the party ticket. That can work well in limited metropolitan areas, or in small countries like Ireland, which – in geographical area – is only half the size of the South Island. STV’s qualities may be less desirable (and less able to foster coherent government) at a national level.

Essentially, STV is a system that combines a level of proportional representation – which it achieves via preferential voting rather than by party lists. People rank the candidates in order of preference. Under STV, one’s vote is initially allocated to his or her most preferred candidate, and then, after candidates have either been elected or eliminated, any surplus or unused votes are transferred by means of the preferences that the voter has stated. Arguably, one downside of STV is that the electorates are far larger – there would be about 25 for the whole of the country and only five or six for the entire South Island. Each of these mega-electorates would have several MPs – up to five at the most, and almost certainly coming from several different parties.

As Miller says, STV doesn’t involve list MPs. “ So it has that attraction for those who don’t like list MPs. Its not as proportional as MMP, so it doesn’t deliver for small parties as much representation.” Because each large electorate has several members, there would not only be competition between parties, but also competition within each party as say, the five candidates in Labour vied with each other to get visibility and reach the top of the voter’s rankings. The potential for intra-party squabbling was seen by the Royal Commission as a significant drawback of STV.

If people have problems with party lists… wouldn’t it be almost as problematic that STV enables MPs to be elected on the preferences of voters who didn’t actually vote for them as their main choice ? Yes, Miller says – given that a designated quota of votes would be required, and these would usually be achieved by dropping off losing candidates and having their votes re-distributed. “So a lot of votes would not go towards the most preferred candidate, but to someone else. “

As in any system of preferential voting, STV would also skew the election campaign against the sort of parties unlikely to attract second or third preferences. Some parties could be scapegoated out of Parliament entirely, by missing out on preferences. In fact, couldn’t the whole climate of political advertising and campaigning be skewed under STV, as parties jockeyed for preferences just as much as they sought to promote their own policies? “This is a problem not only for STV, “ Miller says. “ but for preferential voting as a whole. Voters will be guided by political parties as to how to cast their second and third votes and so on. Deals are done between political parties on that basis – and that’s why the Liberal-National coalition has done so well for long in Australia.”

Seen in this light, STV hardly offers a spotless alternative to the deal-making over party lists and post-election coalition negotiations that some voters find objectionable about MMP. Arguably, STV also makes voting an intrinsically more cumbersome process. Since the ballots have to be far bigger to enable voters to rank their preferences, voter fatigue – or voter ignorance- can kick in, early on.. “We have this problem with STV in local body elections, “ Miller points out. “You can use up your top few ranks without knowing who it is that you’re voting for.”

Mere alphabetical order can become all important. “However you rank or weight the list, people start at the top and begin working on through.” In some jurisdictions, the names on the ballot paper are randomly rotated for this very reason, to try and compensate. Even so, Miller says, the candidates higher on the ballot paper under STV are likely to end up being ranked higher than the people further down the list. Moreover : ‘Overall, it is very hard for people who may have only voted for one party, to rank candidates from parties other than the party that they support.”

To repeat : the best thing about STV is that it creates the potential for more independent-minded people to be elected. “Under STV, it is easier to be elected,” Miller says, “without having been attached to a political party. That’s because [candidates] are putting themselves forward more often as candidates, than as representatives of political parties. “ Opting for STV would therefore mark something of a break from the tradition of party-based government that has been evident in New Zealand since the end of the 19th century. For that reason, it would have implications for the degree of unity of stability of government, since MPs with little or no party attachment would be more likely to take a stance on particular issues on a case by case basis. Some would see that as a virtue : others, less so. “ We saw a lot of party-hopping in the early days under MMP,” Miller says. “Under STV, there would be a greater inclination for that to happen. ”

So, in that sense, STV could feed the fragmentation of government that the current MMP threshold was supposed to prevent ? “ I think so,” Miller replies. “I think it would be inclined to lead to very small parties and independents.” As a consequence, wouldn’t it mean that backroom bargaining and inter-election deal making would increase under STV? “Oh, I think it certainly would. And the reliability of any election outcome would be in question, simply because the party wouldn’t exercise as much control as it currently does.”

First Past the Post

These days, First Past the Post has few friends. It is a winner take all system, even if that victory has been achieved by dubious means. More than once in New Zealand’s history, FPP has delivered outcomes whereby parties have won elections with fewer votes than their opponents, which is an impossibility under MMP. FPP is not only the least democratic system on offer in this year’s referendum. By its very nature, it generates a vast number of wasted votes – in that all the superfluous votes needed to win an electorate contest are wasted, just as much as the votes for the losing opposition are tossed in the dustbin. By contrast, almost every vote under the MMP system has some bearing on the final distribution of seats, and the election outcome.

FPP is also a system where the bulk of the electorates are ignored, as campaign resources are focussed on the small number of marginal electorates that decide the entire election outcome. Few people have lamented the demise of FPP – which was in essence, a vehicle for shutting out small parties and for passing the baton back and forth between National and Labour, who once elected, could wield unchecked power. No wonder the business elites who benefitted from this arrangement in the 1980s and early 1990s feel nostalgic about FPP and want it – or its SM lookalike – to be re-installed, at this year’s referendum.

MMP

Nothing in the above is meant to suggest that our current version of MMP is a perfect system. At the same time, nothing has emerged from the 15 years of New Zealand’s experience with MMP to alter the Royal Commission’s basic judgement – that of all the options available, MMP is the most fair system, and the one that delivers the most democratic outcomes. Essentially, its flaws are fixable – and those flaws are not as grievous as the ones in the systems vying to replace it.

Luckily, the mechanism for fixing MMP is already on the rails. The Key government – in the shape of outgoing Justice Minister Simon Power – has already signed off on an independent review of MMP to be conducted next year, with a view to addressing aspects of the system in need of fine-tuning. This review is likely to focus for instance on such issues as the one seat threshold – whereby if a party wins an electorate seat, it gets the bonus of extra seats according to the percentage of its vote, nationwide. Currently, that bonus kicks in even if the percentage is less than the 5% threshold that disqualifies those parties that fall below the threshold ( and don’t win an electorate seat) from getting any seats at all.

This unfair scenario was played out in the wake of the 2008 election. New Zealand First got 4.07 % of the vote and no seats, which meant that all of its 95,356 votes were wasted. At the same time, the Act Party got only 85,496 votes and won five seats, thanks to Rodsney Hide winning the electorate seat of Epsom. Similarly this year, the Mana Party is being expected to bring at least one other MP into Parliament, on the coat-tails of Hone Harawira’s likely electorate win in Te Tai Tokerau.

There are a couple of possible solutions to this problem. The simplest solution would be to abolish the one-seat trigger. This would reflect the reality that some small parties ( Progressives, United Future) have really just been one man bands for the likes of Jim Anderton and Peter Dunne. Another possible tweaking of MMP would involve reducing the MMP threshold from the current very high 5% level, and setting it back at the 4% level originally recommended by the Royal Commission. This would reduce the incidence of wasted votes. Miller believes that taking both steps at the same time would be the most desirable way for the review next year to proceed : “If you were going to abolish the one per cent threshold [ ie, the bonus for electorate seat gains] there’s a strong argument for reducing the 5% threshold, in order to reduce the incidence of wasted votes.”

The other, less substantial “problem” with MMP is the one highlighted by outgoing Labour MP George Hawkins in his valedictory speech this year – namely, that candidates rejected by their electorate can get back into Parliament on the party list. It is doubtful whether this is a problem at all. The Royal Commission actually commended the party lists, given they enabled people to enter Parliament from different backgrounds and with valuable forms of expertise that may not be the same as the skills needed for electorate work. Moreover, as Miller points out, there are relatively few examples where the alleged problem occurs. There were only four cases, he believes at the 2008 election – and George Hawkins neglected to mention that over the past 15 years, many of the beneficiaries ( Lynn Pillay, Damien O’Connor, Jim Sutton) have come from the Labour Party

Superficially, there would be an easy fix for this aspect of MMP : ie, forbid it by law to happen. Yet given that some small parties – such as the Greens – contest elections only as list parties, that cure would be worse than the disease. In order to maximise their list vote, parties such as the Greens stand their MPs in electorate seats.. Those MPs are being deployed solely as vote magnets for the party vote. (In Ohariu this year, the Greens have all but told Green supporters to vote for Labour’s Charles Chauvel in the electorate contest. ) Therefore, any tweaking of MMP that forbade electorate candidates from entering Parliament on the list would rule out the entire Green Party caucus, and would thus disenfranchise the 157, 613 New Zealanders who voted for the Greens at the last election. Arguably, even those who want to see changes in MPP should still vote “ Yes” to retain MMP in the upcoming referendum – if only because that is the only way to ensure that the promised independent review of the current voting system will actually take place.

Finally, how much knowledge of the various systems is needed, before voters can get to make an informed choice? Once again, the Royal Commission got that right too. At para 2:150, the Royal Commission conceded that not everyone would understand the full details of how votes are allocated under either STV, or MMP. “But we do not however, believe that it is necessary for every voter to understand all the intricacies of any voting system so long as voters can be confident that the system is fair, that counting is carried out by impartial officials under the scrutiny of candidates and parties, and that there are effective and impartial avenues to deal with any allegations of malpractice or unfairness.”

Even so, and as mentioned at the outset, there is no compelling reason for this year’s referendum to be taking place at all. There is little sign of public discontent with the current voting system, and a lot of satisfaction with how MMP has made Parliament far more representative. The point has been made throughout this article that no serious flaws have emerged sufficient to invalidate the Royal Commission’s verdict that MMP is the best and fairest of all the options that are available.

The Royal Commission’s conclusion is currently being supported far beyond the centre-left wing of the electorate. In an editorial earlier this year (called “MMP Deserves to Survive Referendum”) the normally conservative New Zealand Herald reached the same conclusion:

Proportional representation has changed less than its advocates hoped or its opponents feared. Minority governments still rule, tails have not wagged dogs, stability remains. The previous Government lasted nine years; polls suggest most voters want the present Government to have a second term…..

MMP is working well, and could be better with some refinements.

Most voters would probably agree with the Herald. Most of them are likely to vote to retain MMP, send it off to an independent review next year, By doing so, they will have frustrated the latest corporatist attempt to return New Zealand to the bad old days of the 1980s and early 1990s….when a largely unrepresentative bloc of white middle aged males ruled this country unchecked, largely for the benefit of their friends in the corporate sector. As it was in 1993, support for MMP is a vote for the future.

ENDS

Footnote : one of the least understood aspects of the referendum this year is that there are two discrete parts. Therefore, it is essential that even people voting “ Yes” to retain MMP, should also vote in the second part, because that second vote would determine what system would be put up against MMP in any subsequent referendum in 2014.

Unfortunately, it is likely that a lot of MMP supporters who vote in the first option, will neglect to vote in the second part. Perhaps they may even think it would cancel out their first vote to do so. That would be a mistake. It would do no such thing.

The reason why it is important? Because if, against the odds, MMP failed to win next month, the contest in 2014 will be between MMP and the most preferred option chosen from section two this year. The centre right is being told to vote SM. Most MMP supporters will probably tick STV, which is the next most proportional system after MMP. Personally, I think there is an argument – for tactical reasons – for MMP supporters to vote for First Past the Post, on the grounds that it would be the easiest option to defeat if it should come down to a second and decisive referendum, in 2014.

by Gordon Campbell

It is now 50 years since Amnesty International was founded. In 1961, the English labour lawyer Peter Benenson published a newspaper article about two Portuguese students jailed for allegedly “having drunk a toast to liberty.” At the same time, Benenson drew attention to the legions of people in all corners of the world who are “imprisoned, tortured or executed because his (sic) opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government.” Ultimately, Benenson’s article inspired the founding of Amnesty International – which from its inception has campaigned to protect those people imprisoned for the non-violent expression of their political and religious beliefs.

The focus may not have changed, but the organisation’s work certainly has. The 9/11 attacks and their aftermath have brought issues like torture and rendition – and the complicity of Western governments in these and other human rights violations – to the forefront of Amnesty International’s work. Inevitably, this has seen its work become far more polarising, on the home front. Last year for example, Amnesty’s campaign about Guantanamo detainees in unison with the Guantanamo torture survivor (and Muslim activist) Moazzam Begg sparked an internal rift in the organisation that saw the resignation of Amnesty’s then gender unit head, Gita Sahgal.

In early October, Amnesty International’s eighth director-general Salil Shetty visited New Zealand as part of AI’s 50th anniversary celebrations. Shetty grew up in Bangalore, India and was the director of the UN Millennium Campaign between 2003 and 2010. While here, Shetty put useful pressure on New Zealand about this country’s responsibilities under the Torture Convention for any prisoners captured by our SAS forces in Afghanistan. In a brief and truncated interview during his visit, Shetty spoke to Werewolf editor Gordon Campbell.

Campbell : At its inception in 1961, Amnesty’s work was widely seen to be about spreading the Enlightenment values of Western democracy to benighted Third World tyrannies. How have 9/11 and the war on terrorism changed the focus of Amnesty’s work?

Shetty : I’m not able to talk about attitudes that existed in 1961, when Amnesty was formed. But there is no question that what happened at 9/11 has brought a much sharper focus to issues of public security and individual human rights. The work that we’ve been doing on Guantanamo Bay, on rendition…right up now to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, within the past three days. These are things we’ve never worked on before.

That’s been the switch hasn’t it? Before, human rights problems were largely seen to be located over in some other country. Now the focus is much more on the behaviour of governments with respect to human rights here at home, within the Western democracies themselves.

And equally, also about issues like the discrimination against the Roma in Europe as an example…But yes, that’s correct. There’s been a whole re-balancing.

Part of the problem with that re-balancing is that most of the public believe torture and other violations of human rights DO help to protect their own security, To the point where they think that organisations like Amnesty or Justice UK, or Liberty are giving more weight to the human rights of possible terrorists than to the public’s own security. How do you go about convincing the public otherwise?

Well, first of all I have to say that Amnesty has more than three million members – and by a factor of ten or twenty there are wellwishers or supporters of Amnesty, even if they are not members. While you’re right to say this new and growing concern about personal security in the West has certainly changed the balance, there are still a lot of people who strongly believe in what Amnesty stands for. On the torture question, as you know, it is in the first instance, not acceptable.

Under no conditions?

There are no exceptions. In no circumstances is it acceptable. So legally speaking, it is simply outside the pale of human rights law.

And presumably you’re not taking that position simply for tactical reasons, in order to defend the Torture Convention…?

No, it is accepted by all shades of opinion…That is the human rights law point of view. But in very practical terms, there’s no evidence at all to show that torture increases the reliability of evidence, and it is very flimsy stuff to start with.

Yet there seems to be a view within MI5 and among some members of the public that there should be a trade-off between torture and intelligence information. Such that MI5 and other Western intelligence agencies will turn a blind eye to where and how evidence has been attained, so long as the intelligence information keeps on flowing. Yet you’re saying there are practical and moral reasons for why that approach is misguided?

There are legal, practical and moral reasons to show that it is simply not the way to go.

In Britain you’ve got a related problem at present, with the Detainee Inquiry [ set up to investigate Britain’s involvement in human rights violations such as rendition, post 9/11.] How on earth can the public have any faith in an inquiry into whether the British government was involved in the improper treatment detainees post 9/11, when the British government itself is demanding to decide what evidence the inquiry can publish about it ?

We are very much involved in that process. And of course, you have the concern about what’s happening in New Zealand [with respect to the SAS handovers of detainees in Afghanistan] I’ve raised that while I have been here. It is particularly relevant given what’s come out in the leaked report to the UN [ about detainee treatment]. Amnesty has been raising this with respect to Afghanistan for months now. Given the evidence of systematic torture, NATO forces should not be handing over detainees to Afghan local forces under the present system. They’ve been ignoring us. We raised that here with the Minister [Defence Minister Wayne Mapp] almost a year ago, and he promised an investigation and we’ve not heard [anything] since.

That’s a more general problem, isn’t it? As I recall, the Canadian government investigation into detainee handovers in Afghanistan was suspended, and the promised New Zealand inquiry delayed. Does Amnesty regard this as an operational problem, or it simply a reluctance by the coalition forces to push their Afghan allies on this issue?

Really, I think its reached a point now where they [NATO forces] have formally decided to suspend handing over detainees. That has already happened. What we need now is a clear investigation to hold people to account. We have been raising this for a long time. We need to know what is the line of accountability on this issue, and how we can get justice. The other thing that is totally unclear is that at this point – now that NATO forces are suspending handing over detainees – what is happening to the detainees right now?

Because one wouldn’t want to be fostering a ‘kill rather than capture’ situation…

Exactly. With regard to the need for transparency about what is going on in the current situation – do these people have access to legal counsel, do their families have access to them, do they get medical support if there require it ? All the basic requirements. But the problem we have right now is that it is all shrouded in security-based secrecies.

Go back to the accountability point you raised. On past experience, the chain of accountability cuts out at a very low level. Look at Abu Ghraib…it tends to be only the underlings who get held to account and we don’t seem to have much luck – do we – in getting accountability further up the tree?

Fortunately, in the case of waterboarding, President Bush has now announced in his memoir that he actually authorised it himself. So since then of course, we’ve called on the US government to conduct an investigation into that. He was going to be travelling to Switzerland. We called the Swiss government to arrest him on arrival in Switzerland and of course, he [eventually]didn’t travel. And now he’s going to be heading to Canada, and we have written to the Canadian government as well, to urge them to meet their international obligations. So it goes right up to the top in that case.

On that point – when it comes to human rights policy, has the presidency of Barack Obama been a disappointment to Amnesty?

On Guantanamo Bay, yes. It s now more than two years since he committed to closing it. Of course, we know its now part of the political football in the US, between him and the Congress…

The other day, those US hikers in Iran – while criticising the evils pf the Iranian prison system – pointed to the way that Guantanamo Bay’s continued existence is being used by tyrannical regimes to justify their own human rights abuses. Is keeping Guantanamo open somewhat self defeating in that respect?

Without a doubt. The moral leverage of Western governments and politicians is steadily being eroded by not practising what they preach. So in the case of Guantanamo, that’s so, exactly. But it is also the case in the use of military trials. We have been saying that military trials simply don’t meet international fair trial standards. There is no reason why Guantanamo detainees cannot be moved to civil courts in the US.

In fact, article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights demands that this be done. .

Absolutely. Again, there was a commitment [by Obama] and an agreement and then a pulling back. So on that count too, President Obama has a lot to answer for.

Politically speaking, immigration seems a particularly difficult policy area for governments in Australia and New Zealand. Lets put that in a general context. The UN drafted the 1951 Refugee Convention with the fate of refugees from Nazism in mind – arguably, isn’t it now a somewhat outdated document, given that many current refugees are economic refugees, or are engaged in struggles where it can be extremely hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys?

I don’t think the Refugee Convention was trying to distinguish between good guys and bad guys. That was not the purpose of it. Look at what’s happening in Australia, where the situation is much worse than in New Zealand, as you know. The people who are seeking asylum in Australia are mostly from Burma, from Iran, from Sri Lanka…we know that they are fleeing from persecution. These are not people looking for better economic opportunities. Nobody is suggesting you can’t screen them, if there are identity issues. But once you are a signatory to international conventions then there is a certain obligation. New Zealand and Australia are among the richest countries in the world. So its not like they don’t have the resources. The numbers are ridiculously small, compared with the 30,000 or so coming to Sweden, or 40,000 in Germany, in France.

The argument is that the current practices are a preventative measure. Supposedly our immigration barriers exist to prevent us being swamped by boatloads of economic refugees. Does Amnesty believe that stopping that traffic is a legitimate policy goal?

No, because its based on a wrong set of premises. And when you are a signatory to an international Convention and you have agreed to comply with the basic rules of the game, you have to stick by it. The idea of sending them off to Malaysia which is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention and is known for caning and other practices means that the basic principle of non-refoulement is not being followed.

Given that both Australia and New Zealand have foundation myths that are based on pioneering forebears who risked long ocean voyages to start a new life elsewhere, do you think that relatively affluent Western nations are shirking their responsibilities in this respect, to poorer nations?

It does make it more paradoxical. It is more ironic, in that sense. Even if that wasn’t the case, they should still meet their obligations.

In one way at least though, technology is facilitating the violation of the Refugee Convention, in the form of advanced passenger processing intercepts. These identity checks stop people at the airport from crossing national borders and lodging an otherwise valid claim for asylum. It enables governments to pay lip service to the Refugee Convention, while happily using technology to prevent the very people it was meant to protect from reaching our shores to avail themselves of its protections. Is there anything that Amnesty can and should be doing to condemn such practices?

I must say, I’ve not really…its not something I’ve thought about. We could check. It’s a good question.

What are the implications of the Arab Spring for Amnesty, and how has it been affecting your work?

Quite profoundly. Partly because so much of our time in the last year has been so massive, our capacity to handle it has been reall;y stretched. We’ve been working on these countries, and these issues for a long time. The changes that have happened – and the things we’ve been calling for – have been about addressing the numbers of people behind bars without valid charges, and without due process being followed In Egypt, we’ve been calling for people to be released. Since it [ the Arab Spring] has happened, it has been great stuff. To me, I think the most important implication is that dictators all over the world now have to think twice before continuing their old practices.

Given the perception of Amnesty having its origins in the West, does the Arab Spring and the human rights problems involved with it create a further imperative for Amnesty to work in unison with Islamic human rights organizations – so that compliance with human rights is not seen to be something of a Western diktat ?

I think the beauty of what has happened has really exploded some of these ideas that human rights are Western ideas, or that Islam is incompatible with human rights. We always work with local partners. In fact, I was in Egypt last month. Most of the time was spent with local groups, with Muslim groups, on human rights issues. I am, by the way, very much in favour of significantly increasing Amnesty’s presence in the global South, in countries that are not classically Western. Because we absolutely need public constituencies of support in Brazil, in sub-Saharan Africa, in India. It is going to be a big part of what we are going to be doing.

Finally, I want to talk about the situation in Iran. Amnesty New Zealand has had a campaign of support for the Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi. It is very hard to judge in cases like that whether pressure from outside – given the nature of the Iranian regime – is actually being counter- productive. Are you seeing any sign that the pressure and campaigning that Amnesty is doing with respect to Iran is having the desired effect, rather than the counter-effect?

That’s always a debate we have internally, as to whether at which point we use external pressure, and at which point is it actually better not to put on pressure. Overall if you take the long haul, the fact that Amnesty has been pushing in all these cases – in Burma, in Iran, in Saudi Arabia – I think it all adds up. There may be some short-term wins and losses but in the long run…The case [in Iran] that we have been talking about most recently was the one of Narges Mohammadi the woman arrested from the Centre for Human Rights Defenders. We have taken up her case. She, of course, has been closely associated with [Nobel Peace Prize winner] Shirin Ebadi herself. Yes, there are challenges. And by the way, we are not allowed access into the country. But we work with a lot of local partners.

Has the Moazzam Begg/Gita Sarghal case hurt Amnesty?

Its a little bit dated now. It is behind us. But I would say it was a strange conversation, because when we support political prisoners of conscience…. In the case of Begg, it was because of what happened to him in Guantanamo That was the issue.

It didn’t signal a general support for jihadi causes or for any other cause with which he might sympathise?

No. We don’t support people on the basis of all their opinions. That’s not the issue. We were focussed on him in relation to Guantanamo. And of course to extend that and to say that he might have other views ..well, we don’t do that with anybody. We don’t support them for every single purpose.

Or screen them?

That would be fundamentally against what we believe in. We are fighting the case of the abuses in Guantanamo. There is no question of agreeing with [the inmates] beliefs or their actions. That’s not the issue.

ENDS

by Josh Gale
Photos of Crystal Valley and Steep Head Gully by Peter Langlands

Photo: Bubs Smith

Spotting a whio in the wild is a rare experience many nature lovers long for.

No surprise when there’re only 1500 breeding pairs of the endangered bird left in the country. The unusual whio, or blue duck, is one of only four duck species in the world that eschews the calm-water environments its relatives favour for a more exciting life on the rapids. Due to habitat loss, introduced predators and human disturbance, the whio is now more endangered than the kiwi.

A lot of hopes for the wellbeing of our remaining blue ducks have been pinned on a partnership brokered by the Department of Conservation’s Commercial Business Unit (CBU) with Genesis Energy. In August, Genesis agreed to give $2.5m over five years to DOC’s whio recovery programme as well as staff time and monitoring work. The funding will double DOC’s capacity to secure and recover the whio nationally. “In areas with no management, they’re doomed to extinction,” DOC’s whio recovery group leader Andrew Glasier says. “Support from Genesis gets us over the hump.”

To DOC Director-General Al Morrison, the partnership with Genesis reflects a growing recognition that investing in conservation is good for business. “Genesis Energy understands the true value of the native bird on our $10 note – a healthy whio population indicates a healthy river, which assists in sustainable power generation. It’s a classic case of looking after your business by looking after the environment.”

It is the kind of deal that Morrison wants more of – and it represents a shift in direction for DOC from wariness towards making deals with the private sector to aggressively pursuing alternative forms of revenue. Morrison set up the CBU in February 2010 to find, pursue and be capable play hard ball in such deals with business, to this end. He says the public sector often lacks the necessary business smarts to ensure the deals it does are wins for both sides.

“If we’re going to do deals, then we need to toughen-up rather than be a pussycat, lie down and be thankful for whatever deals we can get,” Morrison says. “We’ve been dealing with business for a long time, but to take a hard-nosed approach we need commercial skill which is why I set up the CBU.

It was my idea, it was my vision and I drove it real hard.” This avowedly muscular approach to commercial relationships will see the CBU become responsible for applying and instilling business acumen throughout the department’s functions, including recreation. So at the same time DOC announced plans to cut 96 jobs in legal, science, technical and communication roles, it also established new business development manager positions in all conservancy offices. DOC media advice manager Rory Newsam said the these new business development managers are charged with “working with local agencies and businesses to increase the engagement, involvement and investment in conservation” He added: “They reflect the move within DOC to forge more effective partnerships with outside agencies and businesses to achieve conservation gains.”

More specifically, Newsam says the CBU will be looking at such things as hut fee compliance as well as the possibility of allowing concessionaires to take over the running of certain high-profile huts around the country to shift funding to maintain low use facilities. DOC’s visitor services manager Gavin Walker indicated there is no agenda to privatise huts, but that DOC has to look at all its options.

“There has to be a really robust discussion around potential concessionaire involvement in what have been traditionally publically-managed facilities,” Walker says. “There is a whole range of options that could include concessionaires managing part of a hut and having the other part of the hut being freely available. But I just don’t know yet.”

Some groups, including Forest and Bird, Federated Mountain Clubs (FMC) and the Green Party, are concerned that DOC’s embracing of business is leading to the commercialisation of conservation. “It suggests the department’s priorities will be to further open conservation lands to business while reducing staff with the technical expertise to highlight the risks to biodiversity and non commercial recreation such commercialisation can involve,” says Eugenie Sage, Green Party candidate for Selwyn.

Forest and Bird’s conservation advocate Nicola Vallance points to the change in DOC’s strap line from ‘protect, enjoy, be involved’ to ‘conservation for prosperity’ as a “thinly-veiled shift in ideology” in how the Government conceptualises conservation. “Conservation for prosperity implies that a dollar value is necessary in order to give conservation prominence and significance,” Vallance says. “Conservation does promote prosperity; however, there is a worrying trend of compromising our conservation values to gain economic outcomes.” Being business-friendly doesn’t have to be bad, she says. “As long as they are required to make substantial and long term commitments, at market value, business can and should play a part in conservation, but the question must be ‘at what cost’?”

Just how hard a deal DOC can strike with business remains to be seen, but a recent land swap it brokered with an Australian company doesn’t instil Vallance with confidence. In March Al Morrison gave freehold title to 198ha of near pristine sub-alpine land, valued at $320,000 (located in the Craigieburn Range known as Crystal Valley [pictured left] and purchased in 2004 by the Nature Heritage Fund) to Blackfish Ltd, an Australian-owned company. In return, DOC received a 70ha block of coastal lowland forest, valued at $600,000, at Steep Head Gulley on Banks Peninsula.

Blackfish went on to sell its interests in Porters Ski Area, including Crystal Valley, for $6.9m to PSA Capital Ltd which is 60 per cent owned by four Russian investors and the other 40 per cent by Australian interests. PSA Capital is planning a $500m redevelopment of Porter’s Ski Area, creating a ski resort with a village, 3400 bed accommodation, access roads and an underground car park. The deal has outraged conservation and outdoor recreation groups, not least because the Crystal Valley land was due to be incorporated into Craigieburn Conservation Park.

Ski tour and walking guide operator Nicky Snoyink has extensive backcountry experience in the Southern Alps and takes many of her clients into the Craigieburn Range. She is opposed to the development for a raft of reasons, but primarily because she believes the way the development is presented will not match reality and will result in a loss of other opportunities. “A future project could have been a ‘Canterbury Walkway’ traversing this route, similar to the long Pacific Crest and the Appalachian trails in the US, both of which are enormously popular and valuable contributors to community wellbeing and the tourism economy, without serious negative environmental consequences,” she said in her submission against the land swap.

Forest and Bird life member Gerry McSweeney says the deal is a shocker. “Never forget Crystal Valley was owned by everyone in New Zealand and was designated to be part of Craigieburn Conservation Park and purchased by the Nature Heritage Fund for that purpose. That has been totally overturned by the government on the fairytale promise of hundreds of millions of dollars and a snowy alpine resort.”

However, Al Morrison says the land swap offers the chance to secure the future protection of a rare piece of coastal podocarp forest on Banks Peninsula.

“Protecting remaining coastal forest blocks like Steep Head Gulley [pictured left] is a conservation priority – bringing this forest under public ownership improves the quality and extent of land DOC manages,” Morrison said in a statement.

According to Eugenie Sage, the percentage of podocarp in the forest is overstated, with “mature podocarps sparse at best”. Sage, who is campaigning for the Selwyn electorate (which includes the Craigieburn Range) also points out that large ski fields on Mt Ruapehu and Mt Hutt operate on conservation land under concession agreements – so she questions why the same couldn’t have been done for Porters. “PSA Capital and its predecessor Blackfish Ltd’s dealings with DOC take the commercialisation of conservation land to the extreme,” she says. “The land exchange and associated decisions by the Minister and Director-General will allow PSA Capital to sell off former conservation land as part of the ski area and tourist town development. Under a concession, the company would not be able to on sell conservation land and pocket the revenue.”

Vallance described the touted conservation benefits of the exchange as spin: “The proposal to swap Steep Head Gulley is comparing apples and pears,” she said. “For starters, the land area is smaller and secondly Steep Head Gulley is already protected by the Banks Peninsula District Plan and is also protected by virtue of its topography. I don’t understand how swapping an alpine circ basin in New Zealand’s beautiful alpine habitat with a small piece of coastal forest can even be considered a sensible swap.”

Morrison acknowledges he gave up some biodiversity values for recreation and economic gain in the form of increased tourism dollars. “Was it a net gain for conservation? Probably not.” But he argues it was worth it. “If we don’t get it and fence it off now, these remnants of coastal podocarp forest are going to disappear.” A number of encumbrances were hastily written into the contract to improve the deal, including ensuring DOC continues to manage the land, guaranteeing public access rights and if the development doesn’t go ahead within 15 years, the land is returned to DOC.

That’s done little to allay the concerns of outdoor groups, who see the land swap as proof that Morrison is going out of his way to facilitate the private sector at the expense of conservation.

Morrison admits he is trying to turn conservation into an opportunity for extraction, but not in the way you might think. Despite the Crystal Valley deal, Morrison maintains the days of business interests milking the conservation estate for all it’s worth are over. He says the roles are being reversed, so that DOC is doing the milking by extracting as much money as possible from business to use for conservation. Morrison says DOC can’t afford to maintain the public land it manages and – with pests steadily eating our native birds and flora – something must be done to reverse this. “We need people with skin in the game to help us because we don’t and never will have the resources to manage a third of New Zealand,” says Morrison. “We have thousands of volunteers, thousands of community projects, but it will only take us so far.
“We want people with money who will do things for conservation.”

Green Party spokesman for conservation Kevin Hague is not opposed to some commercial activity on conservation land, so long as it’s on the terms set out in the Conservation Act. Section 6, Part E of the Act states the use of any natural or historic resource for recreation or tourism should be consistent with its conservation. It says DOC’s role is to foster these resources for recreation, and to allow their use for tourism. In a 2007 speech to the Methodist School of Theology in Palmerston North, Morrison acknowledged this section of the Act suggests a hierarchy of importance.

“The department must advocate, and manage for, the value of nature for its own sake,” Morrison said. “Provided it is consistent with that, we can ‘foster’ recreation and ‘allow’ for tourism. The hierarchy is clear: intrinsic value first, enjoyment second and commercial benefit third.”But according to a senior DOC staff member spoken to, Al Morrison has since said: “We’ve had to go past that [part of the Act]”.

In May this year DOC deputy director-general Felicity Lawrence made the same point in a speech she gave in Auckland. “Section 6 of the Conservation Act talks about fostering the use of natural and historic resources for recreation, and to allow their use for tourism,” Lawrence said. “Well, the practical and economic reality is that we have moved way past that.” Hague has sympathy for DOC, which he says receives inadequate funding, forcing it to seek revenue elsewhere. The Government’s $26.8b investment into roads over the next 10 years, including $2b for Auckland’s Waterview Connection, shows where its priorities lie, says Hague.

Despite the crucial role the conservation estate plays in the economy, the Government only spends 0.5 per cent of its total expenditure on DOC – about the same amount of money the health service consumes every nine days. DOC’s forecasted output expenses in 2011/2012 are $338m, while the Ministry of Transport’s is $1.8b and New Zealand Defence Force’s is $2.3b, 85 per cent more than what DOC gets to manage one third of New Zealand. “The choice to give low priority to conservation is one based on values rather than a real lack of money,” says Hague. “At the same time DOC is receiving cuts to funding, the Government is choosing to spend virtually limitless money on new motorways as well as choosing to keep troops in Afghanistan and provide tax cuts for the rich.”

A spokesperson for Conservation Minister Kate Wilkinson said the focus for DOC is to become more efficient. “There will always be criticism over funding, especially from people with a tax and spend mentality, but New Zealand doesn’t have an open chequebook,” the spokesperson said. “The Government has been looking for savings across the board, as the huge increase in state spending seen over the past 10 years simply wasn’t sustainable. Our national debt has to be brought under control.”

DOC CBU director Dave Wilks says whether the Government is flush or not is not the reason the CBU was created or the only reason why DOC is pursuing more deals with the private sector. He says “doing more with less” is a fact of life for the department. Working smarter, with fewer resources, means “you’ve got to find other ways to skin the cat…There’s a view that the only reason we’re doing this is because we don’t have enough money, but I’m not sure that’s totally true,” says Wilks. “Even if we had an unlimited budget, maybe we could say ‘bugger off’ to our business partners, ‘DOC can look after this itself’. But that’s about saying our society is like two sides of a ledger, rather than seeing New Zealand as a community that should be responsible for the place we live whether we’re a business, a community group or an individual. We’ve got to be open-minded about the way we look after the place we live.”

That’s a view also taken by Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright. She says DOC only conducts pest control on one eighth of the conservation estate and is fighting a losing battle. “Earning revenue from the DOC estate and using that money to fund more pest control is very appealing to me,” Wright said in a speech at Federated Mountain Club’s 80th anniversary conference in June. “But – and this is a big but – it must be done well. “It should be based on principles, not done in an ad hoc way.”

Wright became interested in the issue of commercial involvement in the conservation estate when her office investigated the National Government’s proposal to allow mining on Schedule 4 land. “I was really surprised how little money appeared to be paid by companies that were digging up gold and coal and other minerals on DOC land,” Wright said. “Miners with access to many hectares of land are paying access fees in the low thousands.”
As well as getting better financial returns on deals with business, Morrison wants DOC to get better gains for conservation, including with mining companies which, he says, do far less damage than pests like rats, stoats and possums. “Why wouldn’t we say part of the deal for a company to mine is it has to do mitigation at the site as well as put a capital fund into a trust so a huge area can be pest controlled in perpetuity,” he says. “That to me is a net-gain for conservation and that’s the bit the conservationists don’t like. They’re okay with everything DOC is doing so long as we don’t give up a single thing. We’ve got to be more pragmatic and prepared to do deals that clearly are good for conservation, but don’t give us everything we want, in every place we want, to the standard we want.”

As a former DOC Director-General, Hugh Logan understands DOC’s need to get revenue from the private sector. However, in his experience the revenue opportunities are not big. “My own view is that I don’t think there’s actually a really big financial opportunity in it,” says Logan. “Commercial organisations can present and help promote the view that conservation is a central and positive part of the New Zealand way of life. That to me is the positive part of working with the commercial sector.”

Logan thinks DOC’s business relationships should be with New Zealand-based companies only, preferably owner-operated. “I don’t think a business analyst living in Shanghai or London working for a big foreign company and looking to invest in New Zealand really cares about conservation here,” says Logan. “It’s just another overhead. But it’s different with domestic companies.” Logan wants the Government to establish clear principles so the deals done with business result in win-wins. He also wants more public consultation on any proposed deals. “DOC needs to be careful it doesn’t create a culture where everything is tradable,” he warns.

Resource Management Act lawyer and partner at Anderson Lloyd Lawyers Mark Christenson agrees “not everything should be up for grabs”. Christenson’s largest clients are the likes of Solid Energy, Meridian Energy, Main Power, Food Stuffs and Fish and Game. He is currently working on a project for Main Power involving a wind farm the company wants to build on Mt Cas in North Canterbury.

Christenson says debate about conservation and industry involvement has traditionally been positional and confrontational. “We need to learn to engage more constructively,” he says. “There’s a lot of goodwill in business, they want to do the right thing. DOC has a shortage of resources and business can help, but they need and want to do it in partnership.”
Christenson sees a lot of potential for the conservation estate in biodiversity off-setting and says this approach can go beyond the boundaries of DOC-administered land. “We can achieve conservation gains by working with business even though the operation is not on the conservation estate,” he says. “For example, a company with a mine on private land that is causing a biodiversity loss could, to offset it, do pest control on the conservation estate.”

For biodiversity off-sets to be ideal, Christenson says they need to be “like for like” and done close to the site to ensure the ecosystems are similar. This is why deals like the Crystal Valley land swap are difficult because “you’re comparing apples with pears”. Christenson acknowledges that even with the most robust processes, decisions will always be subjective. “While it should be a scientific and robust process, it all comes down to value judgements,” he says. “What we want to do is put some rigour and transparency into the process so, while you may not agree with the specific outcome, you can see how the decision-maker came to a decision.”

Al Morrison says by placing a value on biodiversity, off-setting and bio-banking become useful tools for conservation. “The tool I dream about, the one I want to see us more engaged with in five or 10 years time is bio-banking,” says Morrison. “When a company wants to do a development and it’s impossible to reach an agreement either through off-setting or mitigation, it can buy the banked biodiversity value, in the same way companies purchase carbon.
“It’s not a complete system, it’s not a complete answer, but it’s part of the mix that is going to allow [DOC] to manage the whole country’s natural resources, rather than just a third.”

FMC President Richard Davies doesn’t his mince words when he hears about bio-banking, describing it as “very dangerous groundfor DOC….New Zealand’s conservation land is not a bank to enable development and destruction of other bits of land,” Davies says. “FMC does not think that DOC has the expertise to do it properly; this is not something New Zealand should try to be a world leader in. Instead, we should properly fund conservation, see it as a public investment, not a cost.”

Critics of DOC’s business-friendly approach say with pests chewing their way through New Zealand’s forests, there isn’t time to wait for the private sector to come to the rescue. Dr Wren Green, who worked as a scientist for DOC for 10 years and who specialises in conservation science and policy, has the view that the threat posed by pests is too great to wait for a “miracle intervention”. Green says relying on the private sector will not result in a win-win for conservation in the long term.

“I see it as a win-lose,” says Green. “It’s a win for the private sector who get what they want, but a long term lose for the department which isn’t getting the investment from the Government it needs to do what it was created for. It’s far, far cheaper to invest now in keeping our ecosystems healthy than it is to have to front the repair bill.”

That’s a sentiment those working to protect whio and many of New Zealand’s other native species would agree with.

Footnote : This is a (slightly) edited version of an article that first appeared in the October issue of Wilderness magazine.

Josh Gale is a journalist living in the foothills of Auckland’s Waitakere Ranges.

by Philip Matthews

In PD James’s novel Children of Men, published in the early 1990s, there is a strange passivity to the way that the end of the world is playing out. A slow winding down, less a bang than a whimper. When he filmed the novel nearly two decades later, Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron added urgency and contemporary political allegory – all the Blair-era refugee and terror fear that led philosopher Slavoj Zizek to call Cuaron’s film “the best diagnosis of the despair of late capitalism” – and the quiet gentility of James’ end-times Oxford was mostly sidelined.

In a way, Mark Romanek’s recent film of Never Let Me Go, based on a novel on Kazuo Ishiguro, is closer in tone to the sedate James novel than Cuaron’s adaptation. But rather than a science-fiction Britain of the near future, Never Let Me Go gives us an alternate recent past. Opening titles tell us that post-war medical advances have pushed average life expectancy past 100 by the 1960s. By the time the story begins, in 1978, this medical paradise (for some) is well-established.

The film is in three chapters, across three decades: Hailsham, 1978; The Cottages, 1985; Completion, 1994. There are no visible science-fiction touches in any of the settings, beyond the electronic bracelets worn by children at a boarding school in the opening chapter, that continue to be worn into adulthood. Otherwise, this could be the same 1970s we remember – or even earlier. The scene is idyllic, pastoral: a country house in long grass, games outside in summer, rows of beds in upstairs rooms and the school running according to clockwork. But melancholy seeps into it too. From the first minute, Never Let Me Go has the wistfulness of an epilogue.

Hailsham is the name of the boarding school. But who are these children and why are they being kept apart? Why does their headmistress (Charlotte Rampling) tell them they’re special? Never Let Me Go – first the book, which was published in 2005, and then the movie, which was released in late 2010 and early 2011 and has just appeared on DVD – creates huge problems for anyone talking or writing about it. Spoilers aren’t the half of it. There are audience/genre issues. The film doesn’t look, feel and sound like science-fiction. Instead, it strikes you as a familiar kind of well-made British heritage picture with a melancholy sci-fi undertow, but given that science-fiction is normally used by fans of so-called serious literature as a pejorative (Margaret Atwood has been making a second career out of this position), you sense that it’s been a hard film to sell. And the numbers bear that out: on its US release last October, Never Let Me Go was considered an “undeniable disappointment”, with one of the reasons being – according to this LA Times blog – that “it’s a downer”. Even in the world of speculative arthouse cinema, they require a happy ending.

The film came and went quietly in this country too and seems destined to be largely forgotten, not even attracting enough attention to become the object of a cult. Which is a real pity. This film needs to be rescued and remembered as a worthy entry in the fine, long tradition of cerebral, dystopian, British-set sci-fi, predating Children of Men and 28 Days Later, and stretching back through the likes of the 1970s series Survivors and the Quatermass films to Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Day of the Triffids.

In Never Let Me Go, the world is not obviously ending. For most, life is being improved. But it dawns on us – and the children of Hailsham – that there is a cost. The children are clones, bred for a purpose – as they enter adulthood, they will donate vital organs to the non-cloned. They are being grown in isolation and harvested. They are expected to survive no more than two or three operations. Some of the clones will be donors and some will be carers. Not surviving is “completion”. Some want to find their “originals”. Every system has its euphemisms.

What does it mean to live and what does it mean to love? What if, as in Blade Runner, the clones began to feel as deeply as “we” do, becoming creatures with self-consciousness? The good news is that Never Let Me Go is mostly not about anything as obvious as that. Nor is there any sense of the doomed or exploited rebelling against their fate, as in stories from The Matrix to The Island to Logan’s Run. When the three donors we follow through the story – well played by Andrew Garfield, Kiera Knightley and, especially, Carey Mulligan – figure out what is to happen to them, they passively accept it.

This may be one of the most controversial aspects, and one of the bravest. In an interview in Sight and Sound in March 2011, Kazuo Ishiguro said: “None of us were interested in making a story about the rebellion of slaves, because we felt there were many stories like that already. In the novel I was going for an allegory about the human lifespan and our inability to escape it, and all the things we do to try and kid ourselves we can [escape it] through art or through some mystical idea. And I wanted to ask the question: when do you really start to accept that time is limited? What are the really important things you want to order?”

Now you can see why the Americans thought it was a downer. Some have felt that the film’s last voice-over line — “Maybe none of us understand what we’ve lived through, or felt we’ve had enough time” – is laying Ishiguro’s theme on too heavily. But the balance seems about right to me, and this elegantly made film hardly puts a foot wrong. Its most intriguing and mysterious aspect is how little we learn about the world beyond – the point of view stays limited, with rumours but no hard information about the wider society, and little understanding of how the clones are perceived by the non-cloned. Or whether, as with animals in factory farms for us, the rest prefer to never even think about them.

One of the great surprises of Never Let Me Go is that this English vision – the Japanese-born Ishiguro has lived in England since he was five and his friend, the English novelist Alex Garland, adapted the novel – has been brought to the screen by an American, Mark Romanek. But maybe the vision benefits from an outsider’s perspective, which Ishiguro may have provided too: his best-known novel, The Remains of the Day, is a subtle dissection of a self-deception at the heart of a very English life.

Romanek has said that in his preparations for Never Let Me Go he caught up on post-war Japanese cinema, and laid its simplicity – think of Ozu — over this very English story. At the same time, you realise that the rituals and obsessions with appearance and decorum in The Remains of the Day can seem as traditionally Japanese as they are English. Romanek has also said he sees something profoundly English in the understatement and restraint of the story – that tragic, mustn’t-grumble passivity.

So who is Mark Romanek? More than 20 years ago, I saw a film called Static in a largely empty Paramount cinema in Wellington. I remember it as a form of Lynchian Americana with satirical ideas about religion: a man who works in a crucifix factory claims he has invented a device that lets him see Heaven. Everyone else just sees static. For whatever reason, that first film didn’t lead to a second for more than 15 years. Romanek spent the time in between making music videos, at the expensive, borderline pretentious, high-concept end. “Scream” by Michael Jackson, “Hurt” by Johnny Cash and “Little Trouble Girl” by Sonic Youth are ones you might remember. One way to view Romanek is to take him as one of a cine-literate, music-clip generation, along with the likes of David Fincher, Jonathan Glazer, Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze, only with the weird good fortune to have made a first film before he made videos.

His second film, One Hour Photo (2002), was the kind of thing music-video directors get accused (usually unfairly) of making on their first time out – a display of style and a scrapbook of influences. Or even a young man’s film, no matter that Romanek was over 40 by that point. That it’s yet another film about a lonesome male stalker with delusions of moral righteousness – less Travis Bickle than Rupert Pupkin, though – and that said stalker is played by Robin Williams, in what seemed like gimmick casting, didn’t help.

The concept is that Williams’ Sy Parrish is the guy who develops photos in a printing outlet in a mall. He is a sociopath in a sunset industry, as digital cameras were just starting to go mass-market. He becomes obsessed with a family who seem to him to have the perfect life, and his obsession couldn’t be any more clearly spelt out – in his apartment, he has even made a shrine-like wall of their family snapshots.

It all sounds pretty routine. But when watched a second time, after the far superior Never Let Me Go, it gives you a sense of the ideas that interest Romanek. The retail assistants occupy the same low caste status that the clones, bred for their body parts, do in Never Let Me Go – they are strictly second-tier humans, largely unnoticed. There is a fascination with seeing and surveillance – how we are watched and how we watch others (the perfect Mom’s first line of dialogue, to her son: “Make sure I can see you okay”). There is the same careful attention to architecture and interior spaces as in Never Let Me Go, which has a couple of beautiful establishing shots of British modernist buildings in its 1994 chapter, as though this alternate UK was still embracing a modernist utopian ideal. In One Hour Photo this is about giving the film’s non-places, in the sense that Marc Auge used the term – the mall, the hotel rooms, the hotel lobbies – an almost science-fiction presence.

Romanek wrote One Hour Photo as well as directing. It’s been noted that in the decade since, its concept of privacy – hey, someone is stealing your family pictures and photographing you in secret! – seems almost quaint in an age of oversharing social media. Indeed, on Romanek’s excellent photo blog his life is an open book, which we are invited to flick through, as he takes meetings with other directors, mixes and launches his movies and catches fleeting glimpses of airport terminals and motorway tunnels from taxis. The perfect life? You might feel a little like Sy Parrish or some other second-tier human as you look closely at Romanek’s pics of film-maker pals — Gus Van Sant, Andrew Niccol, Spike Jonze, even Ron Howard – and follow that life around the world.

ENDS

by Rosalea Barker

In Article 1 of the California Constitution—the Declaration of Rights—Section 17 states explicitly: “Cruel or unusual punishment may not be inflicted or excessive fines imposed.” Is it cruel to confine prison inmates to solitary confinement? How about for years on end, sent there perhaps solely on the basis of someone saying you have gang associations? (A statement they might have made just to get out of solitary confinement themselves.)

Back in 2008, the American Friends Service Committee posted this short video about the effects of solitary confinement, which is a commonly used tool in US prisons, with 200,000 prisoners in solitary on any given day:

It is part of the Friends campaign “to stop torture in prison”, which you can read about at www.stopmax.org. Not surprisingly, when prisoners at California’s Pelican Bay supermax went on a hunger strike in July, the AFSC was one of the organizations providing support. The hunger strike expanded to more than 6,600 prisoners at 13 prisons across the state, and created a lot of media interest. A couple of weeks into the hunger strike, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation administrators said the strike was over, declaring in a July 21 press release that:

“They stopped the strike on July 20 after they better understood CDCR’s plans, developed since January, to review and change some policies regarding SHU housing and gang management. These changes, to date, include providing cold-weather caps, wall calendars and some educational opportunities for SHU inmates.” (SHU stands for Secure Housing Unit, one of the many names solitary confinement cellblocks go by in the United States.)

The prisoners’ representatives had a different view of the matter. They were just suspending the strike to give the CDCR time to come back with the details of how it would address their five core demands. A month later, the administrators met with the prisoners’ representatives again, but didn’t provide anything on paper. In the meantime, the CDCR invited media to tour Pelican Bay, a visit that is described in the last segment of this August 19 episode of KQED’s This Week in Northern California. (Begins at about 8:40.) The reporter who describes that visit, Michael Montgomery, also filed a radio report of the media tour here. Media weren’t given access to anyone participating in the hunger strike.

On August 23, at a California Assembly Public Safety Committee hearing, Scott Kernan, CDCR Undersecretary, Operations, stated: “We believe that the current process, which targets six prison gangs, needs to be modified, and what we really need to do is identify security threat groups. I do admit that our policies target just the prison gangs today, and we’re not capturing the inmates that perhaps should be segregated from our population…”

The prisoners’ representatives were naturally alarmed that instead of reducing the SHU population, the CDCR was intent on increasing it, especially since “security threat groups” could be construed to mean anyone in the general prison population who is on hunger strike. All the CDCR has to do is classify the strike as the security threat known as “disruptive behavior”, which—in the regulations that govern California’s prisons—is defined, in part, as “behavior which might disrupt orderly operations within the institutions,” and further defines that behavior to include a failure to obey “all laws, regulations, and local procedures,” or assisting “any gang as defined in section 3000.”

If you’ll bear with the regs and the definitions for a moment, you’ll see what a neat little snake-swallowing-its-tail ploy that would be.

Section 3000 defines “gang” as “any ongoing formal or informal organization, association or group of three or more persons which has a common name or identifying sign or symbol whose members and/or associates, individually or collectively, engage or have engaged, on behalf of that organization, association or group, in two or more acts which include, planning, organizing threatening, financing, soliciting, or committing unlawful acts or acts of misconduct classified as serious pursuant to section 3315.” And section 3315 includes “A serious disruption of facility operations.”

So, the hunger strikers have no common name or identifying sign. And they are back on hunger strike, as of September 26.

In an article posted on October 7, New York Times reporter Ian Lovett says that “the corrections department has cracked down, trying to isolate the strike leaders, some of whom say they no longer trust the department and are hoping to push the governor to enact reforms.” Further, he writes, the department has introduced new guidelines for dealing with mass hunger strikes:

“The new protocols seek to isolate inmates participating in the strike from those in the general population and potentially subject them to disciplinary measures, while prisoners identified as strike leaders could potentially be denied contact with visitors and even lawyers.

“In addition, two lawyers who had helped mediate talks were temporarily barred from state prisons last week because ‘their presence in the institution/facility presents a security threat.’ ”

An October 11 press release posted on the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity website states that some hunger strikers might be close to death because of their refusal to drink water, one was taken from Pelican Bay to a hospital in Oregon after he suffered a heart attack, and others are being denied their medications. Another CDCR ploy is use the air conditioning system to freeze the strikers into giving up. And there are concerns that the department will resort to force feeding.

Footnote : two good resources for background on California’s supermax prisons and the effects of solitary confinement are:

Parole, Snitch, or Die, by Keramet Reiter, and Buried Alive, by Laura Magnani.

ENDS

by Gordon Campbell

A few months ago, a writer in Auckland came up with what seemed like a good story idea for Werewolf. She had noticed a tendency for her acquaintances to use physical and verbal awkwardness as a social device. Several people she knew had begun to shamble a little, or to stammer in an endearing fashion…With varying levels of conscious intent, they seemed to be using an array of physical and verbal tics to convey an authenticity that mere confidence would only undermine, given the commonly held belief that sincerity is a rough diamond. Ultimately, the story never got written. Partly because it is a hard subject to write about without adding yet another layer of self-consciousness to the proceedings.

One reason I felt attracted to the idea was that it seemed like a social analogue for the writing style of the late David Foster Wallace. It seemed one more reason for regarding Wallace as a zeitgeist figure even now, three years after his death. As Slate put it a few months ago :

Increasingly over the course of his career, Wallace chased a humane sensibility on the page, a project that had less to do with arcane intellectual stylings than with his effort to break past them, to write about a social logic that didn’t depend on form or training. Reading the mature DFW means witnessing formal thought being juggled, shattered, and finally reconnected to basic ideas about how to live. In this, he channeled a peculiar hunger in his generation. His ascent coincided with a burst in higher education, leading more young adults than ever to enter the world rehearsed in systematic thought but unsure how to live humanely in a secular and pluralistic age. Wallace, in the books he published and the work he left behind, helped bridge that gap.

The omnipresence of Wallace on the cultural landscape is showing no sign of receding. The Marriage Plot, which is the new novel by Jeffrey Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides, Middlesex) contains a central character who is a large chunky guy who is depressed and wears a bandanna. He is clearly meant to be seen as David Foster Wallace.

When Wallace’s last, incomplete novel The Pale King was published earlier this year, his widow Karen Green gave a moving interview to the Guardian about her life with Wallace, and about her life after his suicide. At the other extreme, the novelist Jonathan Franzen ( Freedom, The Corrections) has been engaged this year in a bizarre takedown of his deceased friend. Franzen first tried to cut Wallace down to size in a New Yorker article in April, and then suggested in a seminar last month that Wallace had fictionally embellished some of the details in his much-loved Harpers magazine essay about life on a cruise ship. (Who cares?) Franzen’s New Yorker article is blocked by a paywall, but here are two of its more contentious passages :

He was sick, yes, and in a sense the story of my friendship with him is simply that I loved a person who was mentally ill. The depressed person then killed himself, in a way calculated to inflict maximum pain on those he loved most, and we who loved him were left feeling angry and betrayed. Betrayed not merely by the failure of our investment of love but by the way in which his suicide took the person away from us and made him into a very public legend … If you happened to know that his actual character was more complex and dubious than he was getting credit for, and if you also knew that he was more loveable — funnier, sillier, needier, more poignantly at war with his demons, more lost, more childishly transparent in his lies and inconsistencies — than the benignant and morally clairvoyant artist/saint that had been made of him, it was still hard not to feel wounded by the part of him that had chose the adulation of strangers over the love of the people closest to him.”

Got that? Got the annoyance over “the failure of our investment of love,” and the scoop that Franzen knew him so much better than his smitten readers…According to Franzen, Wallace deliberately chose to kill himself and sought the ‘sainthood’ that went with it because he preferred the adulation of strangers to the love of the people closest to him. Omigod. Obviously, suicide can provoke anger among those left behind to grieve, but if anyone has a right to such anger it is Karen Green, or Wallace’s parents. At any level, Franzen’s use of his friendship with Wallace for this kind of public pirouette is intolerable. If anything, I found this other passage from Franzen’s New Yorker article to be even more cleverly obnoxious:

When his hope for fiction died, after years of struggle with the new novel, there was no other way out but death. If boredom is the soil in which the seeds of addiction sprout, and if the phenomenology and the teleology of suicidality are the same as those of addiction, it seems fair to say that David died of boredom.

Wow. Died of boredom, huh? It takes an almost pathological level of insensitivity to portray Wallace’s decades-long battles with depression in such condescending terms, and for such self-promotion. It is almost with relief then that one turns away from Jonathan Franzen to the more straightforward hostility of Maud Newton – who claimed a couple of months ago in the New York Times that Wallace should be held responsible for the style in which people now choose to communicate on the Web, and elsewhere. The pre-emptive self-criticism, the ambivalence, the jocular sincerity…why, all of that can be sheeted home to David Foster Wallace, Newton argues. And no, she wasn’t meaning it as a compliment.

Just in case you have no idea who I’m talking about, and haven’t read Wallace’s magnum opus Infinite Jest, or his short stories or his collected journalism then this edited version of a speech he gave to a college graduation class in 2005 is a good starting point, and/or end point. I also recommend the short story “The Depressed Person” available here.

(In her interview with the Guardian, Karen Green explains how it was through her desire to do an art project based on this story that she first met Wallace, and that is how their relationship began.)

As much as any one piece can do, the graduation speech explains why Wallace inspires so much affection. It also demonstrates his self-critical, two steps forward, one step back, one step sideways, two steps forward style of argument which I happen to love, but which evidently drives Maud Newton of the Times and other critics like Geoff Dyer right around the bend. Here’s the gist of Newton’s beef with Wallace – and she has more variations on it than I’m giving you here:

Wallace….strived to make ethical arguments while soothing and flattering his readers and distracting them from the fact that arguments were being made….As John Jeremiah Sullivan astutely observed in GQ, Wallace repudiated the demands of “the well-tempered magazine feature,” which “seeks to make you forget its problems, half-truths and arbitrary decisions.” Yet Wallace’s rhetoric is mannered and limited in its own way, as manipulative in its recursive self-second-guessing as any more straightforward effort to persuade.

Wallace’s nonfiction abounds with qualifiers like “sort of” and “pretty much” and sincerity-infusers like “really… so frequently that it begins to seem not just sloppy and imprecise but argumentatively, even aggressively, disingenuous. At their worst these verbal tics make it impossible to evaluate his analysis; I’m constantly wishing he would either choose a more straightforward way to limit his contentions or fully commit to one of them….

So….he should have chosen a “more straightforward way to limit his contentions and stick to one of them?” Hmmm. You mean, Wallace should have fully committed to one viewpoint and presented it as the only truth that could possibly be entertained by a Rational Gentleman of Commerce, as they do in the pages of the Economist ? That was never an option.

The point being, the problem with the omniscient style (as practiced in the usual well-tempered piece of journalism) is that it comes to dinner with all its half-truths and arbitrary exclusions carefully tucked out of sight. That form of devilry – in journalism it masquerades as rational clarity – can’t be wished back into fashion quite so soon, not after Wallace had just managed to drive a stake through it. Amelia Atlas, in a perceptive 2004 essay on Wallace in the Harvard Book Review made much the same point as Newton, but (rightly in my view) saw his equivocating way of making rational progress as being a virtue. She also indicated why Wallace took the need for self- criticism so much to heart :

The most common problem in the writing classes he teaches, DFW notes, is “the error of presuming the very audience-agreement that it is really their rhetorical job to earn.” This seems a pretty basic element of writing but is, for reasons it takes DFW a half-page footnote to illuminate, in fact more difficult than people tend to recognize.

Exactly. That’s why mere conviction (a la Newton) won’t do any longer, because it begs the question. The related reason why Wallace put his analytical scouting missions and self–doubt right there on the page was that he belonged to a generation with a well-founded cultural distrust of polished certainties. Since DFW seemed to be working his way through the same doubts and feelings of ambivalence (and thereby doing the rhetorical spadework of earning the reader’s trust) his readers came to place a good deal of faith in his journey, and in the conclusions he reached.

Was there a schtick involved? No doubt. Certainly, Newton and other critics can point to the ways that Wallace almost compulsively revealed his false starts and signposted the rhetorical trapdoors he wanted us to avoid. Good for them, and good for him. A lot of Wallace’s fans can also see how he used casual familiarity on one hand, and obsessively geeky footnoting and self-criticism on the other, as pathways to the same goal. It doesn’t render the sincerity false – or any more false at least, than a public declaration of sincere intent can ever be. In that respect, the stylistic tics that bother Newton, Geoff Dyer etc strike me as being the track marks of a genuine search. They’re the brushstrokes, if you like, in a self-portrait of The Artist Trying Not To Be An Asshole.

Ultimately, was it still a seduction process ? Well, there’s a sense in which every journalist, artist or film-maker is engaged in trying to make a connection and in concocting a credible self for that purpose, even when they’re attempting to make the artifice invisible. DFW was not much interested in being invisible, not in his journalism anyway. Like some modern architects he put the mechanics in plain view, on the outside of the building.

Finally and chronologically, I think there’s a problem when Newton, Dyer etc take his 1990s journalism and short stories in the likes of Harpers magazine – great as articles like “The Depressed Person” still are – as the essence of the seduction he was allegedly engaged in. He’d moved on. I’m willing to bet his aim wasn’t about wanting to seem likeable, or to be seen to be grappling gamely with uncertainty. By 2005, his subjects had become too mundane and too close to the bone for that.

In the graduation address, Wallace talked about how hard it is to find a workable way of dealing with our natural, hard-wired tendency to regard ourselves as the centre of our own universe of experience. The world, he argued, will isolate us, trap us and frustrate us (or worse) if we surrender to that default position, and to the chatter of our own internal monologue. For sanity’s sake, he maintained, we need to learn how to think in ways that will enable us to survive the daily tasks of staying alive, and if we’re really lucky on some days, to infuse them with grace :

None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness — awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: “This is water, this is water.” It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.

Finally, in her review of one of Wallace’s books of essays, Amelia Atlas referred to a contrast that he’d noticed between his own response to the television images of 9/11 and that of the people in the rural heartland he was visiting at the time. Whatever America the men in those planes hated so much, Wallace suggested, was far more his America —the land of crass commercial cynicism—than it was the America inhabited by his companions. Atlas found that an interesting observation :

Here we have DFW at his most astute—he manages to render that strange double state we inhabit in which we rely on cynicism to access reality while finding it simultaneously repellant. [The essay collection] is at its best, a successful attempt to inhabit this uncomfortable purgatory. It does not really offer a way out, but for some reason, perhaps because as DFW forces us to confront our pervasive culture of “congenital skepticism” he is always right there with us, it is enough that he has tried.

Somehow, and viscerally, Atlas concluded, we get him. “Or at least we get him as an ethos, a presence on the page. We get that it is possible to think genuinely about how hard it is to be genuine, and still retain the wit and cynicism that we seem to need in order to think about anything at all.”

ENDS

by Gordon Campbell

For Ludwig Bemelmans, life was all about thriving in the situations his own impulsiveness had landed him in. When the success of Madeline finally made him an overnight success, he was already 41 years old. Over time, Bemelmans developed a jolly and sanitised version of how he had come to write his beloved story about the little girl in Paris, whose tale begins with some of the most famous opening lines in children’s literature :

In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines…

In an awards acceptance speech in 1954, Bemelmans told his version of how Madeline had come into being. While biking along a road in 1938 on the Isle D’Yeu with a bag of lobsters slung round his shoulder and his hands in his pockets rather than on the handlebars, Bemelmans came round a curve and get hit by the island’s only automobile, a four horsepower baker’s van that was, as he put it : “a fragrant, flour-covered breadbasket on wheels.” Bemelmans picked his battered self up, and walked a mile to the local hospital :

After I had waited for a time….I was put into a small, white, carbolicky bed, and it took a while for my arm to heal. Here were the stout sister that you see bringing the tray to Madeline, and the crank on the bed. In the room across the hall was a little girl who had had an appendix operation, and, standing up in bed, with great pride she showed her scar to me. Over my bed was the crack in the ceiling “That had the habit, of sometimes looking like a rabbit.” It all began to arrange itself. And after I got back to Paris I started to paint the scenery for the book. I looked up telephone numbers to rhyme with appendix. One day I had a meeting with Léon Blum, and if you take a look at the book, you will see that the doctor who runs to Madeline’s bed is the great patriot and humanitarian Léon Blum.

And so Madeline was born, or rather appeared by her own decision.

Grand. If only it were that easy. No doubt, the biking accident played a role in the evolution of Madeline, which took shape after Bemelmans returned to New York and sketched the basic story in a bar called Pete’s Tavern in lower Manhattan. Initially, the story wasn’t an easy sell. May Massee, his usually perceptive publisher at Viking Press, turned it down. The drawings were felt to be too sophisticated, the rhyming text too clumsy. Like a lot of things in Bemelmans’life, Madeline’s origins went back much further, into his spectacularly troubled childhood. For anyone with a taste for psycho-analysing authors via the fiction they write, Ludwig Bemelmans is a veritable gold mine.

Ludwig was born in Austria in 1898. His parents ran a hotel called the Golden Ship, and the first six years of life seem to have been blissfully happy. He loved his Papa, who was a painter and bon vivant. “[The family] worried only about their next day’s happiness,” Bemelmans later wrote, “which they made like the baker his rolls, and always while whistling singing and reeling in their fish. They found caves to illuminate at night, and gave parties in them. They covered wooden floats with flowers and sailed them on the lake. They sent off rockets that awoke the town and exploded high in the sky and filled the night with a rain of phosphorescent stars that were reflected in the lake. They gave concerts, sang operas and acted in their own plays…”

Above all, I admired [Papa’s] skill with napkins. After deft and precise folding of the snow-white linen, he turned the napkins with a last twist into the shapes of fans, ships, plants and swans. He also chiselled swans and castles out of blocks of ice.

In particular, young Ludwig adored Mademoiselle, the French governess whom he called Gazelle. As an adult, Bemelmans wrote about how intensely Gazelle had loved him in return : “ I was her little blue fish, her little treasure, her small green duckling, her dear sweet cabbage, her amour…”
Then came calamity. Papa got Emmy, the woman who later became his second wife, pregnant, and ran off with her. Gazelle, also pregnant with Papa’s child, committed suicide.

Ludwig passed into the hands of a “cold, strange woman” – his mother – who also happened to be pregnant to Papa, and who carted him off amid the shame of divorce to the alien land of Germany, where he didn’t speak the language and felt no kinship with the culture. His mother became determined to erase all traces of Ludwig’s past, while he defiantly fought to retain it. His grandson later wrote of Ludwig’s account of the attempts by relatives to make a little German out of him : “ The golden curls came off my head, I was shorn and put into new clothes, high-laced shoes with hobnails…I said to myself, they can kill me, but I won’t give in. I will not change, never, never, never.”

Just about the only positive legacy from those years, it seems, were some stories his mother told him of her days as a neglected little girl in convent school. In an extraordinary memoir called ‘Swan Country’ (contained in the 1985 collection Tell Them It Was Wonderful) Bemelmans wrote with voluptuous tenderness about those enchanted years with Papa and Gazelle, and how utterly they vanished, in a twinkling :

All had come to an end. Papa was gone, and so was my governess, and I wished so much that he had run away with Mama, and left me Gazelle… In the beginning, Mama tried to replace Gazelle; mostly in tears, she dressed and undressed me. There were no children’s books and she would tell me stories about her own childhood – of how alone she had been and how she was shipped off to a convent school…how the little girls slept in little beds that stood in two rows and how they went walking in two straight lines, all dressed alike. She was much happier than at home, for her parents had never had any time for her. This made me very sad. She cried, and I cried. She lifted me up. I looked at her closely, and a dreadful fear came over me. I saw how beautiful she was, and I thought how terrible it would be if ever she got old and ugly.

By his mid -teens, Bemelmans was an untameable wild child. After an uncle gave him a job as a busboy in one of his hotels, a headwaiter went at Bemelmans with a whip and the teenager shot him. Faced with a choice between going to reform school or being shipped off to America, Bemelmans chose America, spent a stint in the US Army, and worked briefly in a state mental asylum.

Life never really settled down for him. A largely self taught artist, he combined a career of service in the hotel industry with sketches of the guests and managed to thrive in the crazy, madcap years of the Roaring Twenties. Within ten years, he had worked his way up from busboy to being co-manager of a bar/hotel – and then with exquisite bad timing, he threw it all away just two weeks before the crash of 1929.

A decade of scrabbling for survival followed, punctuated by guilt for the accidental death of his brother, whom he had lured to New York. By the late 1930s Bemelmans’ talent for networking and his abilities as a writer/artist had landed him work in the New Yorker magazine. Encouraged by May Massee at Viking Press, he also began writing children’s books, and his third book Madeline not only made his career – it unleashed a floodgate of some 20 books of travel stories, memoirs and reminiscences. These included Hotel Splendide (1941) a thinly disguised account of his scandalous working years at the Ritz Carlton in New York. By 1945, he was in Hollywood, where he wrote the script for a Vincente Minnelli/Fred Astaire fantasy film called Yolanda and the Thief, which bombed at the box office.

Quite accidentally, Bemelmans’ behind-the-scenes tales of great restaurants and hotels told from the vantage point of the staff were years before their time. As celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain said in his review of a reprint of Bemelmans’ La Bonne Table in 2004, the creator of Madeline had got there ahead of him :

[He was] the original ‘bad boy’ of the hospitality business, decades before Kitchen Confidential….Bemelmans was a snob—one of legendary, titanic proportions—the kind who could only have emerged from the floor of a fancy hotel of the kind Bemelmans worked at for many years.. The Madeline books might be his most famous creations, but his writings on food and the industry are among the best ever.”

Money was also something of an obsession. Haunted by the financial insecurity of his early years, Bemelmans would trade his art for free accommodation at top hotels like the Carlyle in New York – where the murals that earned him 18 months free board can still be seen today in the old hotel’s Bemelmans Bar. His contempt for the upwardly mobile ran very deep. The habits of deferring to the elite while sharing their contempt for the nouveau riche stayed with him his entire life. One of his 1920s memoir/exposes (reprinted in 2004 as Hotel Bemelmans) does contain some amusing and sentimental moments, but Bemelmans could be almost pathologically venomous towards the socialites that he waited on and despised. He is reasonable enough when writing about the foibles of the men the men he served :

Men important in business or with positions of responsibility in Washington met here, and in the course of an evening a violent change often came on them. They arrived with dignity and they looked important and like the photographs of them in newspapers, but in the late hours they became Joe or Stewy or Lucius. Sometimes they fell on their faces and sang into the carpet. Leaders of the nation, savants, and unhappy millionaires suffered fits of laughter, babbled nonsense, and spilled ashes and wine down their shirt fronts. Some of them became ill. Others swam in a happy haze and loved all the world.”

But when describing the women, Bemelmans poyured out every resentment he had stored up against the gender ever since being abandoned by his beloved Gazelle :

Her skin had the texture of volcanic rock seen from the air, with dirty snow swept into the crevices”

Or take this description of the ageing wife of a steel magnate that he once encountered in the dining room at the Ritz Carlton :

Out of the shoulders came two arms, red and thick, coarse –skinned, with common hands…a face that had the texture of an old pocketbook ; on its worn out corners rested the ends of a mouth that closed with a snap. Grey, carmine and purple veins covered her face, and patches of the skin would jump, as does the skin on the flanks of horses when flies come near them…

Enough, already. Yes, the creator of Madeline does appear to have hated women.

Lively, always restless, and a raconteur who lived on the borderline between truth and fantasy for most of his life, Bemelmans died relatively young of pancreatic cancer, at the age of 63. Madeline and her several lesser sequels live happily on however, amid a vast array of Madeline-themed merchandise, ranging from dolls to furniture to toothbrushes.

Most attempts at explaining the book’s enduring appeal end up as mere description. The peculiar charm of Madeline escapes untouched. Certainly, the structure does juxtapose the feisty spirit of Madeline – who could be anywhere between 4 and 8 years old – with the conformity of an environment comically represented by the straight lines of beds, dining tables and walking groups. Not to mention the angular presence of Miss Clavel. Yet everything else about the book…the drawings, the central drama, the loopily stretched rhymes is elongated and unreal, and exuberantly self-mocking. The rhyme where the doctor calls the hospital “ And he dialled DANton-ten six – Nurse,” he said, “Its an appendix!” is merely the worst of several intentional groaners.

To my mind, the self parody is what keeps the book so airily buoyant even when depicting events that could otherwise be quite harrowing. For a child, living in an institution far from one’s parents, and then getting sick and being rushed to hospital could be the stuff of nightmares. Indeed, Bemelmans drawings are dream-like in nature (James Thurber and Raoul Dufy are the usual comparisons) and make no attempt at anatomical or architectural realism.

This elasticity hits its peak in the fantastic double-spread where “Miss Clavel ran fast – and faster” as her elongated image on the page stretches out fantastically across the page. For parents, it is like reading a great Cubist parody. And talking of parody, someone has uploaded to Youtube a terrific spoof version of Madeline and its hidden meanings entitled “Werner Herzog Reads Madeline.” Ze tiger dreams only of death,,,,

Finally, and despite the affection it continues to engender – it is striking that the story of Madeline is told largely from afar, at a curiously detached distance. There are no close-ups, and many very, very long views. Yet there is intimacy, regardless. All of which perhaps confirms Bemelmans own view of himself as primarily an artist, not a writer. In a letter shortly before his death, Bemelmans said that he wanted written on his tombstone the words “ Tell Them It Was Wonderful…” His wife Madeleine, who had been through it all since the 1930s, took a slightly different view. “It was,” she said, “and it wasn’t.”

Footnote : for this essay, Gordon Campbell drew on reviews and criticism contained in Vols 6 and 93 of the Children’s Literature review, and on the Tell Them It Was Wonderful memoir written by Ludwig Bemelmans

by Gordon Campbell
Photos by Rose O’Connor

During the past few years, independent record shops have been dying on their feet under the onslaught of…well, take your pick. The retail music industry has been dying because of (a) the growth of legitimate online purchasing (b) the growth of illegal downloading (c) the bulk purchasing deals enjoyed by chain stores (d) cut-throat competition for the leisure dollar (e) the global economic recession…For a slew of related reasons, bricks and mortar record shops are going the way of the dinosaurs. Much loved, but headed for extinction.

A few months ago, Werewolf published an article called “Record Shop R.I.P.” about this trend, and things have only gotten worse since then. The Real Groovy shop in Wellington has closed, and ditto the Marbecks outlet in Cuba St. On the same street, Slowboat Records continues to trade, buoyed by the fact that it owns its premises and therefore isn’t bleeding to death from rent payments each week. The fundamentals though, have not changed. Which makes it a source of some wonder that two new record shops have opened their doors in Wellington in recent months : Rough Peel Music (RPM) in Vivian Street, and a store called Evil Genius in Berhampore.

RPM looks like a clearing house for the Real Groovy shop in Christchurch. Evil Genius, too, is something of a refugee from the Christchurch earthquake. It opened its doors in Lyttleton only four days before the February 22 quake laid waste to its premises, and to the neighbourhood. Of the two shops Evil Genius offers the more interesting business model, in that it is a three-headed beast.

Primarily, it is (a) a record shop specialising in vinyl collectibles, with the music side of the store’s operation being under the care of former Wellingtonian Ben James, and Apa Chappel. It is also (b) an outlet for T-shirts, posters and other design materials created by the Chilean /New Zealand artist Oscar Guerrero, and thirdly, it is also (c) a coffee shop run by Rosie Smyth, recently a manager at Olive Café in Cuba St and the Lone Star outlet in Lower Hutt.

All the coffee on site comes from the Lyttleton Trading Company. The Evil Genius fusion of cafe culture and niche music is not unique – Baobab in Newtown is another community café with strong links to bands like Newtown Rock Steady and Nudge – but it does offer a homely feel to the shop, while providing an alternative source of income for Evil Genius on days when the music sales are running a bit slow.

As always, the cost of rent is a factor. When Ben James last lived in Wellington three years ago, the rents in formerly bohemian Newtown were still within reach. Now they aren’t. That’s one excellent reason why Evil Genius has set up in Berhampore, but this is still something of a mixed blessing. For years, the Berhampore cluster of shops has languished partly because there is so little in the way of available parking. Evil Genius plans on being the first good reason for people to make a conscious decision to go to Berhampore, and to stop there.

Yeah, yeah…there are plenty of reasons to be less than optimistic and Ben James has heard most of them. People tell him that record shops are going the way of the blacksmiths. “I hear all that. I don’t know if its because lots of my friends listen to records or love records…but I feel that vinyl is the one format in the industry that is always going to continue. It doesn’t seem to die. There are still new bands coming up that still want to release their music on vinyl. So in that respect, there must be a market out there for that format.”

Socially, there’s a perception that record shops serve as a kind of drop-in centre for over 30 year olds. “That’s true,” James concedes. “ But that’s changing with this whole hipster influx of young kids trying to look into the past and see what’s happened, and who also want to look into the future and see what’s coming. A lot of people are releasing on vinyl, and it makes it a cool thing for people to have. Not for everybody. But there are definitely young kids who seem to really like vinyl. They seem to be into buying a turntable and set-up, and collecting records.”

Hopefully, there will be enough of them for word to get around, and for Jthe Evil Genius crew to eke out a living. Some 90 per cent of what the store will carry, James estimates, will be rare second hand items. As always with vinyl, the packaging and freight costs of getting the stock in – and mailing some of it out again – in good condition, can push the prices to the brink of affordability. Nationally, the vinyl resurgence has been helped immeasurably by the existence of the two main New Zealand-based importers and distributors of vinyl – namely Southbound Records run by Jeffrey Stothers, and Andrew Tolley’s Kato Records operation. For Evil Genius, James says, both will be affordable sources of the rarities and niche music that he’s interested in stocking.

Which will be what, primarily? “ We’re really going to try more for the rare and interesting albums than your stock standard new issue vinyl.” Some will come from his own (and from friends) private collections. “There’ll be a lot of progressive psychedelic rock like King Crimson. A lot of old surf music. A lot of 50s and 60s as well and blues rather than…” The usual drum and bass? “There isn’t going to be any drum and bass.” Even with hip hop, the focus will be more on the 1980s Sugarhill to Run-DMC pre-gangsta era. “It will be more the origins of hip hop, rather than where hip hop has gone. The thing that we’re really going to push with Evil Genius is being a destination store, and appealing to collectors.”

With vinyl comes the love that doesn’t really apply to CDs, or to the typical CD relationship with their computer or their Ipod. “CDs, it seems to me,” James says with a sigh, “are just like…this donkey. You take the stuff off the donkey and chuck it on your computer and then its done. The CD is not valid anymore. But with records its a valid object already, and you store it away carefully and keep it nice and clean. Its also far harder to copy vinyl into a computer – you need special amplifiers to get in onto a computer – and most of the time, it won’t sound good anyway.”

Okay, but this seems to be running counter to the lessons of history. Surely, when the likes of Spotify arrive here, they will become the music equivalent of cloud computing. People may not even buy CDs or tracks from Itunes anymore. They’ll be more inclined to rent and stream their music from Spotify, rather than own it. Are hold-outs like James saying that some sense of primal ownership will always be a big part of music appreciation ?

“Yeah, And, if you’re into art and music, LPs are a really good format. It’s a large format designed to be enjoyed. Especially if it’s a gatefold that opens right up and you’ve got this very beautiful art work. It serves as both an art piece and music at the same time.” Moreover, with vinyl there is a ladder of sonic excellence ? “ Yeah. With CDs, you don’t get a different grading. They’re all the same. But with records you can get 180 gram up to 200 gram and then different coloured records. And these days you’re getting your MP3 download with your vinyl as well, so you’re getting both formats in one hit. So it’s a sensible format to go with, I reckon…”

Young hipsters aside, the vinyl resurgence can’t help but seem like a throwback to the period 30 or 40 years ago when vinyl ruled the roost. Back then, importing records was often an exercise in frustration and bureaucratic compliance, before there was any prospect of a joyful experience. First, you had to negotiate to get a money order from a bank in order to pay the exporter in London or Birmingham and then had to wait for months for the precious album to arrive – only to find (50% of the time) that the vinyl had been bent out of playable shape in the post. Arggh!

Thanks to people like Jeffrey Stothers at Southbound, most of the potential for that kind of grief has been taken out of the equation. If there are any vinyl pressing plants left in Australasia, Stothers says, he doesn’t deal with them. He imports all his vinyl from the US or Europe. Sure, freight is an ‘absolutely massive’ part of the cost structure of his operation. “A box of 50 bits of vinyl from the UK from the likes of Music on Vinyl would probably cost the equivalent of about 200 CDs in weight.” That adds substantially to his costs, and eventually to consumers. That’s understood, at least by most of them.

Much of the mystique around the superior sound quality of vinyl focuses on the gram weight of the recording.. A standard record usually weighs 120 to 140 grams. A heavy, socially superior record is in the 180 to 200 gram range, or beyond. Since a heavier record is thicker it enables the grooves to be deeper, allowing for more dynamic mastering and for the stylus to track the record better. All other things being equal, a 180 or 200 gram record is flatter and quieter than the standard pressing. (All of which can be cancelled out of course by the condition and quality of the cartridge and stylus, by turntable belt slippage and rumble, and by a whole raft of storage and care issues before, during and after playing the record.)

What we do know, Stothers says, is that CD sales – or at least the income from them – are falling, while vinyl is on the increase. Are the arcs intersecting at a point where say, the falling profits from CDs are being compensated by the return of vinyl ? Not any time soon. Even for Southbound, vinyl comprises only 6% of Stothers’ business, up 2% from last year. In this business, one looks for good news where one can find it. With that in mind, the range of options available on vinyl is definitely on the increase. “Four or five years ago,” Stothers says, “ you could probably go to any online shop or any distributor or wholesaler around the world and they probably had 500 jazz titles on vinyl That’s all it would have been back then.. Now, there’s probably as many as 5,000 in stock with some distributor or wholesaler.

People know they like. The 200 gram full weight King Crimson vinyl pressing of In the Court of The Crimson King for instance, had had to be repressed three times to keep up with demand, in runs of 500 to 1,000 each time. That’s the stuff Stothers would increasingly like focus on. “I’ve always sort of wanted to be doing 180 gram or better as the market I’d prefer to be servicing. Those are the people with reasonable turntables who are going to be looking at it and going…Its 180 grams, and yeah that’s the price, but I’ll buy it ! ”

In many respects, vinyl is a format ideally suited to impulse buying. People suddenly see in the racks a cherished object from their past – like an old friend that’s been forgotten about – and they want to reclaim it. When Stothers imagines his customers, are they mainly the middle aged boomers who never really fell out of love with the LP, and with the gatefold ? “I think it was, but I don’t think it is now. I’ve got a daughter who’s old enough to be at university, and her boyfriend got a turntable for his birthday. His dad turned 50 and his mates chipped in and got him a turntable because his son had one. That’s the spectrum we’re now talking about. ”

Sure, there is the some truth to the stereotype of the grey-haired fellow in the second hand shop flicking through the racks looking for a bargain, or for that elusive Bowie album on vinyl…”But the vinyl scene is now across all age groups. That’s one reason why I’m opening a shop.” [on Mt Eden Road, later this month] Sure, he adds, New Zealand doesn’t have quite the same wealthy elite as in fashionable London stores like Rough Trade East, where the store can routinely charge 20 pounds for a bit of vinyl. But some price expectation is built in, even here in New Zealand. “That’s the good side of the [vinyl] industry. It isn’t discounted. No one feels that it has to be cheap.”

Vinyl will always be there. It may be the last format, Stothers believes, even after the CD has gone the way of the 8 track cartridge and the cassette. Have I heard, he asks, of an artist called Delaney Davidson ? The Christchurch guy? “Yeah…Well, some 50% of the orders for his new album were for the vinyl. And I sold out of vinyl before the CD. I didn’t get enough of either, but half the orders were for the vinyl.” Same with the re-orders, which are running at about 75-80 % in favour of the vinyl. “People want that real package. “

In sum, the return to vinyl is about retaining a human dimension to music. Word of mouth, Stothers believes, is therefore essential to the wellbeing of stores like Evil Genius, perhaps even more so than having a presence online. For years, Slowboat and the late lamented Records Records in Dunedin put a human face to the storage and selling of music. The younger likes of the Evil Genius crew are very much about picking up the same torch. While providing some good coffee.

“There’s definitely a need for a good coffee shop in Berhampore,” James says with his usual positivity. “ I know that much. When we were painting the exterior, one of the things passers-by kept on asking was whether there would be coffee. We’ve got listening posts at the store, incorporated right in the café. So hopefully…people will come along, get a coffee, put a record on that they’ve never heard before and go whoah, that’s pretty damn good…”

He laughs. No- one, he concedes, is ever going to get rich out of this operation. “ We’re pretty humble dudes, though. We’re not in it for the money. We’re in it for the love.”

ENDS

“Well,” said the Baron, his voice causing the babbling voices in the hall to fall into expectant silence, “You ask me how I fared on my travels.”

He took a thoughtful sip from his wine, placed the goblet back on the table with a click, and began:

“I took ship from Bremerhaven, as you know, with a fair wind and a bold heart, but lady luck was soon to change her face. On the third day there arose a storm of unimaginable size – the waves were as high as houses, then as high as mountains; strange howlings came from the ocean; passing whales begged to be allowed on board as on that night the sea was no place for a creature of God; and I personally was struck by lightning three times.

“Naturally the mariners ran quivering under the decks to their prayers, and it was left to me to manage the ship, which – with some small difficulty – I did. Bow to the wind, I finally faced a wall of water so tall it reached – as I measured it with apparatus – all the way to the sky, and had no choice but to pilot my vessel straight into it.

“After a few moments under the water I passed a group of comely mermaids who, once they had recovered from their surprise, looked quite taken by my person and seemed on the point of asking me to spend more time with them when I, running short of breath for more reasons than one, was forced to move on.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever been trapped under several fathoms of water, struggling to escape and deprived of oxygen, as you face your apparently inevitable expiration knowing that no matter what convulsions you go through or how loudly you shout no living soul will know or care. It’s uncomfortably like being Phil Goff.

“Yet somehow – I attribute it to my fickle mistress Fate still holding some love for me (but that is another story) – I reached the surface alive and tasted air again.

“During all this time I had, of course, kept my hand on the tiller, but on resurfacing I discovered the tiller had become detached from the rest of the ship.

“It is of course out of the question that I should have run the ship over a reef, even in such trying circumstances as I have described. However it is the case that my vessel had met a reef; this particular reef notoriously mobile and aggressive – so without question it was the reef which ran itself onto me.

“I will not speak its name for fear of invoking it again. Suffice to say it is named after a piece of navigational equipment. This name, I can reveal, reflects the intention of its creator (a powerful sorcerer) that it serve as a scourge upon all those who (as, in this case of dire necessity, myself) fail to consult the instrumentation they were supplied with when piloting their ship.

“I was able to keep myself afloat by clinging to one of several thousand pieces of flotsam that chanced to be in the area, until I discovered a place where the surface was sufficiently solid for me to stand on it. (I am told this does not normally happen but I later discovered the sea had been decorated in support of the local team in a major sporting tournament.)

“I was, though at some leisure, still lost on the open sea, so I considered how to supply myself with a mode of transport suited to my status.
“Having recovered my breath I was able, by blowing into the end of the tiller, to inflate it into a serviceable boat and convinced a school of dexterous fingerfish (where do you think fish fingers come from?) to crew it.

Initially they were somewhat laggard workers but I happen to always keep upon my person a bottle of my patented welfare reform nostrum. Once applied, this immediately transformed them into happy and diligent workers and did not kill any of them in any way. I passed the rest of the journey with pleasure as the company was now rather better than the average at sea, though snuff was not widely available.”

Here the great raconteur paused, holding up one finger to suppress the murmur of applause that was about to turn into thunder. He picked up his wine again, wetting his lips then smiling behind the goblet as he is wont when about to demonstrate his greatest flights of fancy.

“Also,” he said, “The response to the Rena incident does not reflect of deep sea drilling at all, National Party policies are good for the underclass, there was an urgent ACC crisis, that RadioLive show didn’t encourage people to vote for John Key, we don’t deserve to know why Richard Worth was fired, those tax cuts weren’t really tax cuts but they did make everything better, the police surveillance bill was well thought-out and constitutionally justified and we will be back in surplus by 2014-15.”

With a flourish, the Baron drank off his cup, then dipped his head in a slight bow as our laughter and applause shook the hall’s very flagstones.

Truly, his mighty powers of picturesque invention will be unequalled in this or any future age.

ENDS

by Gordon Campbell

Now that the summer’s music touring schedules have been released, it seems pretty clear from the 30 January line-up that Laneways has now eclipsed the Big Day Out (January 20) as the year’s “can’t afford to miss” occasion. Laneways has the roster with far more exciting musicians on offer. But before getting onto that though, two other tours are worth your dollar this summer. The Kurt Vile gig at the King’s Arms on December 1st has Alistair Galbraith as support, which is an inspired choice. Werewolf has been an advocate of Vile’s music for 18 months, and in March 2010 issue, this column was devoted almost entirely to him.

The other standout event of the summer – and one of the best live acts in the universe – is Merrill Garbus aka TUnE-YArDs (pictured), who will be playing the King’s Arms on January 12. Ever since November 2009, this column has been pushing the TUnE-YArDs cause, and earlier this year, Werewolf columnist and Oakland resident Rosalea Barker featured an exclusive interview with Merrill Garbus.

Safe to say, if you go to only one concert in the next 12 months, this should be it. She is a life-changing experience.

Okay, so why is Laneways so superior to BDO? Sure, Kanye West was OK last time, but that’s the problem. With BDO, there’s an unmistakable sense of yesteryear about the likes of Kanye/ Kasabian/Soundgarden and My Chemical Romance and though Girl Talk, and Battles will be reliably good, they’ve also been here before, too. Of the newer acts at BDO, Foster the People are a one hit band (“Pumped Up Kicks”) with little else to offer. That leaves the Odd Future collective of Tyler the Creator as the only wild card on the BDO roster – and though Tyler will get the predictable shockeroo treatment from the mainstream press, Odd Future can be an really unpredictable package on the day.

So who are the likely standouts at Laneways? After all the acclaim they’ve had this year, it will be fascinating to see if the Washed Out chillwave musician Ernest Greene and the Manchester group Wu Lyf can deliver the goods in person. Judging by the reception that Wu Lyf got in Australia in June, that shouldn’t be a problem. Yuck, who are a bunch of 90s revivalists from London, are also interesting. They’ll bring a setlist of strong melodies to the stage (eg “Milkshake” “Shook Down” )

More than anything though, Laneways 2012 features an immensely strong roster of women. The headliner is Leslie Feist, who finally makes it to New Zealand after rumours in times past that she might make the trip here with Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene. Other highlights include M83 (who has just delivered a career defining double album), the freakishly talented 21 year old Laura Marling, and EMA – also featured here in Werewolf, at the time when her Past Life Martyred Saints album was first released.

1. EMA. Initially, EMA’s showier tracks like “California” and “Milkman” gained the early acclaim. But over the past few months, it has become clear that “Marked” is her emotional Ground Zero. Anderson can be as gothically entranced with her own beautiful pain as Karen O, Siouxsie or long ago, Patti Smith. Yet the point where the drone on “Marked” gets interesting is not at the highly quotable midpoint (“I wish that every time he touched me left a mark”) but in the exultant final third of the song…. Eventually, EMA makes her aloneness feel immense and consoling, like a cathedral built for one.

2. Laura Marling Still barely 21, Laura Marling has left the contemporary woman-with-guitar-and-a-story-to-tell competition in the dust. To a point where Joni Mitchell is almost the only historical comparison. Which makes “Sophia” an appropriate choice from the new album A Creature I Don’t Know because it is the most slippery, ever-accelerating Joni –like track she’s done. I’ve included a live version of her most avowedly personal (as in autobiographical) song, “Goodbye England Covered In Snow” You might also care to check out a lovely 2010 solo version recorded in Australia of her first quasi-hit “Rambling Man”.

3. Wu Lyf Thankfully, Wu Lyf’s trip in June to Australia – where they did interviews here and also here has allowed them to shuck off the heavy mystique they’d draped around themselves before the release of their Go Tell Fire To the Mountain album in May. Previously, there had been no interviews, few photos and a lot of media-baiting symbolism (the band’s name stands for World United Lucifer Youth Foundation.)

Ultimately, the music has backed up the hype – especially on tracks like “Dirt” and on the many mixes now available online of the album’s magnum opus “We Bros.” The barked vocals by Ellery Roberts manage to toughen up the stately keyboards + percussion arrangements. I’ve linked the original versions of “Dirt” and “We Bros” below, but also recommend you check out the remixes of “We Bros.” The dry, stripped back mix by S Maharba is available here and ( my preference) the Young Montana remix is available here.

For starters though, here are the originals :

And finally… death can be a reminder of qualities formerly taken for granted. Unfortunately, the great British guitarist Bert Jansch happened to die on the same day as Steve Jobs, and the news may have passed many people by. Jansch’s work with Pentangle is a story in itself but prior to that he influenced almost every guitarist/songwriter during the mid 60s to mid 70s period including Jimmy Page, Paul Simon ( who recorded his version of “Angie” on the Sounds of Silence album) and Neil Young. Young’s “The Needle and The Damage Done” is a kind of companion work to Jansch’s own “Needle of Death.” During the last couple of years, Young had been touring regularly with Jansch.

Jimmy Page was upfront about his debt : “At one point, I was absolutely obsessed with Bert Jansch. When I first heard that [debut] LP, I couldn’t believe it. It was so far ahead of what everyone else was doing. No one in America could touch that.” Less generously, Page did a version of Jansch’s arrangement of the oldie “Blackwaterside” but didn’t credit him for it. As an aside, it is worth noting just how many great guitarists came out of that 1960s British folk scene : Davy Graham and Richard Thompson for instance, are probably the other two members of the trinity.

ENDS

Selling down the public’s stake in energy companies and Air NZ makes little sense, socially or economically

by Gordon Campbell

The rich can be surprisingly flexible. (It is their subordinates and political flunkies who tend to get religion, and cling to economic dogma.) Thus, in recent weeks, some very high profile members of the business elites in France, Germany, and the United States have chosen to campaign publicly for their governments to impose higher taxes on the rich. We’re talking about billionaires like Warren Buffett – who recently told the New York Times that it is now high time for governments to stop coddling the wealthier members of society:

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. {People like him, Buffett explained, face an effective tax rate of only 15% ] These blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places…But it is time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.

A month ago in France, a group of sixteen billionaires

wrote an editorial in the Le Nouvel Observatuer news magazine calling for higher taxes to be levied on the super rich. Among the signees were the L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, Christophe de Margerie, of the oil group Total, Frédéric Oudea, head of France’s second biggest bank Societé Générale, and Jean-Cyril Spinetta, president of Air France-KLM.

In Italy, it has been much the same story. Luca di Montezemolo, Fiat’s CEO, has recently explained why he thinks business leaders like himself should be paying higher taxes, especially during a time of austerity and belt tightening. His rationale applies equally to New Zealand:

“You have to begin by asking [sacrifices] of those who have most,” di Montezemolo says, “ because it is scandalous that it should be asked of the middle class,” In Germany, the tax-us-more movement is called The Wealthy For a Capital Levy and 50 of the country’s business elite have so far joined up. The motivation , according to the group’s millionaire spokesperson Dieter Lehmkuhl, is the growing recognition that the current slate of economic policies are creating levels of income inequality that are neither socially nor financially sustainable.

Of course, the rich could always give their money back. Yet individual acts of charity will not raise sufficient revenue, Lehmkuhl and his associates argue, to make a significant difference. Only higher taxes on all high income earners and all sources of wealth will do the trick.

The point of laying out the evidence for this trend is that it marks such a spectacular U-turn from 1980s dogma. Remember when lower taxes on the rich was supposed to generate such a tide of prosperity that everyone’s boat would be lifted? Well, that hasn’t been the only Chicago-school doctrine to be contradicted by reality. In New Zealand, which is simply too small for classically competitive markets to develop and flourish, the devotion to free market principles was always dubious, and has become less credible over time. To the point a few weeks ago, where business analyst Brian Gaynor could lament the measurable decline of entrepreneurialism in New Zealand:

In December 1986, all of the 10 largest companies had private sector origins, and most were named after their creators. Top 10 company founders included Ron Brierley, James Fletcher, James Wattie, Bob Jones and Frank Renouf. Chase and Equiticorp were also dominated by individuals, Colin Reynolds and Allan Hawkins respectively.

Thirteen years later only Carter Holt Harvey and Brierley Investments remained in the top 10….The latest top 10 list, based on Wednesday’s closing prices, includes six former publicly-owned companies; Telecom, Contact Energy, Auckland International Airport, Vector, Port of Tauranga and Air New Zealand.

It could be argued that only Fletcher Building and Ryman Healthcare operate in a truly competitive environment as SkyCity owns a monopoly casino in Auckland and SkyTV has created its own monopoly because of weak competition. These top 10 sharemarket value figures show that New Zealand businessmen and women have lost the ability to create great companies, and the domestic sharemarket is now heavily reliant on former publicly owned organisations.

In the process, our private sector is becoming more – and not less – dependent on the state. In that respect, the Key government’s asset sales programme looks like a further confession of failure. Allegedly, the proposed round of partial asset sales will enhance the quality of our sharemarket. Even if it succeeded in doing so, selling down the public’s stake in state energy companies in order to improve the investment options for the small minority who engage in sharemarket speculation hardly seems kosher – and especially when, as a final insult, the transaction costs of this exercise will be recouped from consumers via their power bills.

Few people with a sense of the country’s history would expect much different. Why would a state sector that has built the roads, the railways, the export trade in agriculture, the forestry and tourism industries, the telecommunications infrastructure, the banking system and the Superannuation Fund – not to mention doing the vast bulk of our scientific and industrial research – be expected to learn very much from a private sector that in the past 25 years has done little more than buy, sell and cannibalise the pre-existent store of state assets?

Regardless, the warning signs have been given. The government has announced that if re-elected in November, it will sell up to 49 per cent of the public’s current stake in the Solid Energy, Meridian, Mighty River Power and Genesis energy companies. It also plans to sell down the public’s current 74% stake in Air New Zealand, the national carrier that is vital to the wellbeing of our tourism and export industries, and of our provincial heartland. Asset sales are expected to play a significant role in this year’s election campaign. It seems worth examining some of the myths about them..

1. Asset sales will reduce debt and help the government to balance the books .

Selling all or part of a public asset is one option for raising funds to pay off debt. It provides only a one- off benefit, though. The alternative would be to keep all of the asset, retain the strategic planning advantages this affords, and reap the dividends over time. Unfortunately, the government has never put on a white board the net long term benefits of both options – vis a vis the cost of borrowing to repay debt – so that the public can make informed choices about what they’d like to see done with their assets.

On the evidence, the state energy companies have been high value performers. Air New Zealand has also done reasonably well, considering the impact the global recession and high dollar is still having on tourism – let alone the effects of the Christchurch quakes, the earthquake/tsunami and nuclear catastrophe in Japan, and the surge in oil prices. Despite all that, the airline’s after tax profit of $81 million was still almost identical to the year before. Long haul international travel however, continues to be a drain on Air New Zealand, with the company reportedly losing $1 million a week for the first six months this year, on those long haul routes.

Since fuel constitutes about 55% of its costs on such flights, Air New Zealand has its fingers crossed that it will still be able to take delivery in 2013 of a fleet of fuel-efficient Boeing Dreamliners for the long haul runs. More immediately, it clinched in May a new (and less risky) way of expanding into Australia by investing in a 15% stake in an alliance with Virgin Australia. This investment will hopefully allow it to combat competition from Qantas on the trans-Tasman route, and could even enable it take some business from Qantas on those long haul flights to and from the US. Judging by recent share prices, the government can expect to raise about $300 million from selling down its Air New Zealand stake from 74% to 51%. All up, the partial privatization of state assets envisaged is expected to generate $5-7 billion, with the sell down in Meridian alone accounting for about half that figure.

Yet…..why would any government want to sell down these jewels in the crown ? Why indeed. Early this year, the financial analyst Bernard Hickey examined the value and earnings that government is currently reaping from each of the energy companies that it now wants to put on the auction block – and after comparing those figures to the cost of retiring debt via borrowing, Hickey concluded that sell down being proposed was a losing game.

Meridian Energy returned NZ$353.5 million in dividends to the government in the year to June 2010 and shareholder equity was valued at NZ$5.07 billion, which suggests a raw dividend yield of 7%. It reports its return on average equity at 3.9% and its underlying return on equity of 19.8%. Here’s the annual report.

Mighty River Power reported an average return on equity in the year to June 2010 of 9.7%. It paid dividends of NZ$286 million and shareholder equity was valued at NZ$2.688 billion, which suggests a raw yield of 10.6%. Here is its annual report.

Genesis Energy paid dividends in the 2010 financial year of NZ$39 million and shareholder equity was valued at NZ$1.448 billion, giving a raw dividend yield of 2.7%. It says it achieved return on equity for the year of 4.9%. Here is its annual report.

Solid Energy paid dividends of NZ$54 million in the 2010 financial year on shareholder equity of NZ$436.8 million, delivering a raw dividend yield of 12.4%. Solid Energy and reported profit as a percentage of shareholder funds at 15.4%. Here is its annual report.

Hickey then totted this all up. Collectively, he estimated, the four SOEs potentially up for partial sale generated total dividends last financial year of NZ$732.5 million and shareholder (government) equity stood at NZ$9.642 billion. “ This implies a combined (and very raw) dividend yield of 7.6% last year. Yet the government is currently having to pay around 5.5% for the new debt it is selling, mostly offshore. So on the face of it the government is a net loser by selling half of these state assets, and avoiding having to raise new debt…”

For related reasons, business commentator Rod Oram is also skeptical about the alleged economic benefits of the asset sales programme. “It is incredibly straight forward,” Oram told me. “Basically what the government is doing is taking its capital out of productive assets – and very good productive assets in the form of SOEs – and putting it largely into [economically] unproductive assets. The one exception I’ve identified so far is the money they’re proposing to put into irrigation.” Even that, he says, has been assessed by Treasury as not delivering a particularly good return on investment overall, outside of Canterbury. “And lower than they would get from the SOEs.”

Clearly, Treasury will need to demonstrate the wisdom of Solomon (not usually its strong suit) next year when figuring out the book value versus the market value of these assets. Not only will Treasury have to wiggle the figures to ensure that asset sales (and not further borrowing) come out looking like the healthier option. Ultimately, Treasury’s valuation will also dictate how many New Zealanders can afford to be bidders – and therein lies the paradox. If, for political expedience, the value of these assets is set low enough to allow more Kiwi contenders into the bidders circle, the result will mean that far more New Zealanders will not be receiving the best price for assets they have built up over many years. Expect some very creative accounting.

The problem, Oram concludes, is that the government is using the money from the asset sales process to slightly reduce its medium term debt and will save some interest costs by doing so – yet according to Budget documents, only by the order of about $100 million. At the same time, it will be foregoing a larger share of dividends from the SOEs. “The problem is, once you sell the companies you can’t get them back. Whereas, if you’ve used debt to build schools and hospitals– which have a real intergenerational value, and the costs of should be shared inter-generationally – you can actually pay down that debt…”

More so than in almost every other country in the OECD, Oram points out, the ebbs and flows of government finances in New Zealand are tied to the swings in the business cycle, and the current imperative to sell assets strikes him as a good example. “Yes, the government is right to be cautious about debt. But I think it is foolish to be so consumed by that medium term debt track, as Bill English is, that they start making bad decisions. And this is a bad switch of capital on spurious grounds, that it will improve the performance of the companies.”

2. Asset sales will create an opportunity for ordinary New Zealanders – the so- called “Mum and Dad investors” – to own a stake in some top notch companies.

The obvious rejoinder is that every New Zealand taxpayer already owns these top notch assets, and that stake will now be diluted and sold off to a mixture of local and foreign buyers. Those New Zealand private investors who can afford to reap the benefits will be anything but ‘ordinary” folk and/or everyone’s typical “Mum and Dad” –given that market analysts estimate that barely 10 % of New Zealanders currently invest in the sharemarket. Even if these new and enticing prospects kick that figure up to 15%, we’re still talking about an elite group of “ordinary” Kiwis – and by and large, they will be the sort of Mums and Dads you’d be more likely to run into down at the tennis club, than on housie night at the RSA.. In sum, a stake currently owned by many will be sold off to the relatively few. On past history (see below) even those anything-but-ordinary Kiwis don’t tend to hang onto their shares for very long.

To date, a less publicised aspect of the asset sales programme is that four energy companies – either in pairs, or one after another – could easily become too much of a similar thing. One truism of investment strategy and security, Oram points out, is that you should diversify your portfolio. “ But what the government is proposing is do is to sell into the market a large number of electricity generators.” At first, any portfolio manager currently holding Contact Energy shares may well sell them and buy into Meridian – but then along comes Genesis, with more of the same in its wake. Would many investors really want shares in two electricity generators – much less in three or four? “ Any retail investor would be a making a seriously bad mistake,” Oram believes, “ to end up buying shares in more than one electricity generator. From a portfolio point of view, it would be a very bad strategy.” The likely return to the taxpayer from the later sales in particular seems likely to suffer, amidst this excess of familiarity.

3. Asset sales will help boost the appeal of the New Zealand sharemarket as a place to invest.

Yet again, one has to query whether existing public assets should be being used for this purpose, to enhance the appeal of investing in shares. Shouldn’t the private sector be creating new enterprises that attract investors? Isn’t that how capitalism is supposed to work?

The reality is that the stock market in New Zealand has been on life support since the crash of 1987, and barely grown at all in the interim. Moreover, as some punters have already pointed out, one reason why the New Zealand share market holds relatively little appeal to investors is because it contains so many low performing companies, exhibiting few vital signs of life. As Goldman Sachs strategist Bernard Doyle pointed out to RNZ in early September, only 15 years ago the stockmarket was worth 56% of the overall economy, but is now worth less than 30 %.

Rather than re-invigorate the stock market….isn’t it (just as) likely that over time, those fine state-owned companies will be dragged down the same path of the undead ?

If so, the government would be likely to extend a helping hand. As Doyle also pointed out, it is always helpful to have a cornerstone shareholder who will stick around to mitigate any risk being run by the private investor. In one of the examples Doyle gave, the Superannuation Fund had played just that cornerstone role in Infratil’s joint acquisition of Shell’s petrol stations and downstream assets in late 2009.

In future, the state will be playing the same unlovely role of propping up the proposed asset sales programme, in order to reduce investor risk. A government that bailed out the people who gambled and lost in the late Alan Hubbard’s dealings is probably just as likely to stick around to resolve any future problems faced by investors in the energy companies and in Air New Zealand – where there is already a track record of government coming to the rescue when private owners lose the plot. What taxpayers should perhaps be feeling annoyed about is that having already bought Air New Zealand twice, they are now being invited to buy it a third time – while still functioning (in their role as taxpayers) as the ballast and virtual guarantors for any foreigners or major local corporates who want a crack at the profit stream.

Until this unholy scheme comes to fruition next year, an immediate benefactor of John Key’s asset sales programme would appear to be Mark Weldon, head of the New Zealand Stock Exchange. Recently, the Standard website carried an interesting article and graph showing how the value of Weldon’s extensive shares in NZX appears to have risen since the announcement of the asset sales programme. “Mark Weldon has been pushing for asset sales for some time, “ the Standard noted dryly. “ He owns more than 6 million NZX shares. No wonder Weldon is smiling – that’s not a bad capital gain of $6 million in nine months.”

As mentioned, these partial floats will primarily be one-off sugar hits for the stock exchange. The underlying decline in private enterprise will not be resolved by the asset sales programme.. If anything, the process will increase the proportion of top New Zealand companies that owe their origins to the work, initiative and funds put in by the state, and ordinary taxpayers.

4. Asset sales will bring private sector disciplines and efficiencies to bear on the performance of these assets.

To some, the superiority of New Zealand’s private sector managers is an article of faith. Not even the real life example of Air New Zealand – which as mentioned, is back in government hands only because of the disastrous foray by the airline’s previous private owners into the Australian airline business – can shake the true believers.

Obviously, there are some very efficient private sector managers in New Zealand. As Oram pointed out in a recent Werewolf article, there are now firms in New Zealand that can remain globally competitive even when our dollar climbs over the 80 cents level against the greenback – when, only a few years ago, such a currency hike would have been curtains for almost all of them. The efficient firms and managers are still however, the exception to the rule. As Gaynor’s evidence indicates, the New Zealand private sector appears more competent at reducing wealth than generating it:

* In December 1986, all of the top 10 companies originated in the private sector and had a total sharemarket value of $20,712 million.

* Thirteen years later seven of the 10 companies started in the private sector and had a market value of $13,044 million.

* Today, only four of the top 10 have a private sector background and their sharemarket capitalisation is just $10,866 million.

Wealth going down. Time to consume more public assets.

5. The shareholding will stay in New Zealand hands.

No, not if the sale by the previous National government to a prior generation of “Mum and Dad’ investors is anything to go by. In January, Labour leader Phil Goff released figures showing that within six months of the Contact Energy sale in 1999, the number of shareholders had fallen by 34, 845. As of last year, there were only 80,911 shareholders – as compared to 220,000 immediately after the sale. The 51% majority shareholder is now Origin Energy, which is Australian-owned. Just over 75% of the shares are now held by a mere 20 companies.

Selling on their Contact Energy stake certainly did prove very profitable for Edison, one of the original foreign investors. In 2004, Edison sold its 51% stake for $1.7 billion. Not bad going, given that the whole company had been flogged off only five years previously for only $2.3 billion. Since then, Contact directors have also been big winners, with their fees reportedly rising from $270,000 in 2003 to $993,000 in 2010. One way and another, New Zealand electricity consumers are picking up the tab for that largesse.

This tendency for those fabled New Zealand “ Mum and Dad” investors to sell up their stake ASAP – even, or especially in those companies that have good long term prospects – is not exactly a revelation. We have done this for years. Here’s Brian Gaynor again, pondering this same mayfly tendency six years ago in the New Zealand Herald:

Air New Zealand peaked at 42,111 [shareholders] in 2001 but since then has fallen steadily. The decline has accelerated in the past twelve months.

Ironically the two best-performing privatisations have lost the most number of shareholders. Auckland International Airport is down from 65,411 since listing and….the Contact Energy figures indicate that New Zealand investors like to crystallise profits, even if their investment has great long-term prospects.

In 2011, here we go again. The politicians are promising to sell state assets to “ Mum and Dad” punters with their piggy bank investments – while knowing full well that the vast bulk of most of any little flutters on the stock market will be vacuumed up within a few months, or couple of years at most. On Budget day this year Finance Minister Bill English this year was promising that Kiwis will be ‘at the front of the queue’ when it comes to the asset sales investment programme. One might well query how, and for how long.

It is not as if the government is naïve, and unaware of the political risk it is running from being seen as flogging off Kiwi-owned assets either directly – or indirectly – to foreigners, or to local fat cats. As part of the smokescreen, this year’s Budget listed three possible ways (see Page 23 of the Investment Statement Supplement) to ensure that locals got that first and fleeting crack at buying back their own assets. These methods are listed as being :

+ a priority allocation, pre-registration, and instalment receipts

+ financial incentives, such as price discounts and loyalty shares and

+ hard ownership restrictions, such as individual or total ownership caps or separate domestic shares.

On paper, that last option might look like the safest way of trying to keep ownership in New Zealand hands – but it would almost certainly be incompatible with WTO trade rules that require the equal treatment of foreign investors. Probably for that reason, the government has tried a different tack – and sought to re-assure the public about the sales process in general – by touting a 10% cap on how much any one company can own. Theoretically, such a cap would prevent any single investor from being able to get a stranglehold in the boardroom. Crucially, since such a cap would apply equally to foreigners and locals alike and thus, would not be in violation of WTO investment rules.

Unfortunately, you could drive a truck through the spending cap being proposed. As has already been pointed out an investor could simply split their bid into three, four or five separate bids via shelf companies which New Zealand so readily enables, and these could then act in unison when it came to making electricity pricing decisions further down the track. To Phil Goff, the partial selldown is a mere ‘softening up prelude’ to an outright sale further down the track. One other way the government’s 51% controlling stake might be compromised – further down the track – would be if private investors sought to raise capital by issuing further shares, thereby diluting the government holdings. ( At which point, the New Zealand government of the day would need to spend more money if it wanted to stay in the driver’s seat.)

Foreign investors would prefer a more direct route to the goal of control. Even the Act Party (which supports privatization) has dismissed the 10% spending cap as a political ploy to temporarily re-assure the public – with Act leader Don Brash reasoning that most foreign bidders are likely to see an outright sale (ultimately) as the only logical reason for wanting to invest in the first place:

I suspect [the spending cap proposal] was put in place to reassure New Zealanders that large chunks of these assets won’t be bought by foreign companies or institutions. [But} I find it difficult to see why a foreign company would buy a large chunk of these assets, given the fact that the Government will retain a 51 percent majority."

If Brash is right, then Goff is probably right as well. The government may well be inclined to entice foreign bidders by quietly holding out the prospect of bigger stakes – or an outright sale – further down the track. Regardless, Kiwi consumers will experience foreign investors and New Zealand investors as being much the same at the receiving end, anyway. It is not as if local investors would be willing to forego profits out of any sense of patriotic compassion for their fellow citizen’s electricity costs. Yes, local ownership matters when it comes to the current account deficit. But ultimately, being screwed over on your power bill by foreign investors will not feel any different to being screwed over by the modern Kiwi equivalent of Sir Michael Fay and David Richwhite.

6. Asset sales will increase the pool of national savings and investment.

Well, not really. A fair chunk of the proceeds from selling the family silver will go – unsustainably – into day-to-day running costs. According to this year’s Budget papers, the sell-down of state energy companies and the reduction of the shareholding of Air NZ is forecast to pay for one third of the spending envisaged on schools, health and government services over the next three to five years. To which many taxpayers would respond….why not retain them and use the entire revenue stream to help bankroll those same social needs for generations to come?

Moreover…as mentioned, if foreign bidders are made to pay top dollar for those assets (to ensure the public get a fair price) you can rest assured any costs involved will be retrieved, at some point. The more that investors are made to pay upfront, the more they will seek to recoup in higher power prices (and in cost cutting via reduced domestic services by Air New Zealand) over time. It is not as if the public has much leverage over these companies, or any real alternatives. When it comes to domestic air travel, the public is already facing an Air New Zealand that enjoys a near-monopoly position, with over 80% of this country’s air business and rising to close on 100% when it comes to flying in and out of provincial cities and towns. By pursuing higher returns from the selling down of its Air New Zealand stake, the government is virtually inviting private investors to exploit the airline’s near-monopoly local conditions in order to hike prices, and to reduce the quality of services. It is called profit taking – and as usual in New Zealand, it will be from a largely captive pool of customers.

7. This is a good time to sell state assets.

Let's assume, for argument’s sake, that there is ever a good time to sell off stakes in our key publicly owned energy assets. Is next year a really good time to do so? Hardly. When historians look back at this period of economic history they will probably shake their heads in wonder at the counter-intuitive response of governments during the financial crisis. Given the belt-tightening climate, who would expect to get top dollar from a bunch of depressed local and foreign bidders?

As mentioned, the government has a political self-interest in ensuring a large number of local bidders, which almost certainly means the government cannot be trusted to drive a hard bargain, and seek a good price for these assets. This low-balling of the price is likely to be magnified next year by the competition for the scarce investment funds that the public has at its disposal. In a fascinating recent piece for the Dominion –Post, business journalist David Hargreaves has pointed out that the timing of the first of the energy company floats is not likely to be until October/November next year, with – for various stated reasons – Meridian and Mighty River Power being towards the front of the queue, and Genesis, Solid Energy and Air New Zealand going on the block somewhat later. As Hargreaves also points out, this means that Fairfax Media is likely to be quicker to market with its already-announced plans to sell up to 35 % of the online auction site Trade Me.

Ask yourself – when it comes to ordinary “Mum and Dad” investors, isn’t it more likely that the thousands of people who currently use Trade Me will raid the cookie jar for a piece of that action, rather than invest later in an energy company? In which case, the energy companies are more likely to become the investment-of-choice for canny professional investors who, as Hargreaves suggests, will have concluded that Trade Me may have passed its peak years. Thus, under the guise of keeping the share price within reach of “Mum and Dad” investors (who by then will have bought into Trade Me instead) the government will probably end up cutting the price it asks for the energy companies, to the very bidders who could have afforded to pay a premium.

Hargreaves is in no doubt which state energy company asset should be sold down first :

Market talk has suggested that Mighty River, valued at $3.7b, is likely to be the first sold. Your correspondent reckons that would be a mistake. It should definitely be Meridian. Meridian is the monster in the mix. Independent valuations last year gave the whole company - which owns seven hydro stations and five wind farms - a total worth of at least $6.3b. That means selling just under half of it through a stock market float would potentially take in over $3b.

If such an amount could be raised from the first asset sale it would take a lot of the financial pressure off the later sales. It makes sense for the Government to conduct the biggest sale first when there is a degree of novelty attached to the privatisation process.

Surely, there’s a logical contradiction here. If the scarcity value of good investment prospects on the NZ stock exchange is supposed to make it more likely these public assets will attract a good price – then equally, shouldn’t the advent of quality alternatives like Trade Me serve to push things in the opposite direction, and depress the price? And doesn’t that suggest that mid to late 2012 may actually be a very bad time to be trying to sell down public assets? Hargreaves deserves the final word:

[The] process needs to be done well. And competing floats such as Trade Me and possibly others still to be announced make the margin for error very slight. The government owes it to the public to get a good price for the partial sale of state assets. If it cannot guarantee that, because of market conditions or because there are too many other floats being conducted, then it should not hesitate to delay the sale process.

8. We have to sell state assets now, to pay off debt.

Not proven. This late in the game, it has still yet to be established that New Zealand’s debt position is so parlous that it is necessary to sell state assets. And as mentioned, it may well be less expensive to borrow to pay the debt until the recovery arrives and those debts are repaid – with the help of the entire profit stream from those assets.

Most of New Zealand’s debt problem has been incurred by the private sector. Government debt – which surely, should be the only reason for selling publicly-owned assets – has remained low by international standards, partly because the previous government used the fruits of the economic boom to pay off government debt. As a result, New Zealand entered the global depression with its government finances in a far better condition than many, many other OECD countries. Conclusion : we don’t face an absolute requirement to sell down state assets in order to keep the rating agency wolf from the door. It is a decision being driven almost entirely by ideology.

9. Privatisation, either full or partial, is a driver of innovation.

Well no. In fact, Telecom was the poster child for the contrary view that privatization in monopoly or near-monopoly conditions is more likely to create an active dis-incentive to innovate, given that the incumbent will have every reason and opportunity to block the onset of the competition that is the true stimulus for innovation.

Telecom was never pro-active, and rarely an agent of innovation. By the mid 2000s, its use of its dominant position to delay innovation (and competition) had left New Zealand 22nd out of 30 OECD countries in broadband adoption, with high speed Internet uptake being only half the OECD average, while the cost of high speed business broadband was the second most expensive in the OECD. For a geographically isolated trading nation like New Zealand it was all but treasonous for successive governments ( and corporate fellow travelers) to allow the cost and access to high speed telecommunications to be exploited in this fashion. (Having apparently learnt nothing from this episode, the current government is once again bestowing similarly dominant powers on Telecom in the faster broadband package, but that’s another story.)

Within the partial privatization as envisaged for the state energy companies, things are not much better – not at least, for the consumer. That’s partly because the presence of private investors can be a useful rationale (or scapegoat) for any government wishing to maximize their own dividends, while minimizing the political heat from doing so.

The asset sales, Oram agrees, will not be a spur to innovation. The main one being that that the generators [Contact excepted] are in very good shape already and operating near the peak of their game – and even Contact’s current problems with its call centres and consumer relations are likely to be transitory. The fundamental aspect of these companies, Oram continues, is that they invest large sums of capital over long periods of time. “They can be innovative and creative to some extent, but their whole mindset, their whole culture is not that, and never will be. That’s because they are high capital, long term utilities. Meridian with all the best will in the world, did try to innovate with [energy efficiency] programmes like Right House, which was absolutely the right thing to do. But they’ve just sold it, because a utility is not the right place for something like that. By nature, these are not fantastically innovative companies. That’s a relative term, but they’re not going to spark a Silicon Valley.”

Thirdly, Oram points out, the government remains the dominant shareholder, and is likely to continue to lean on the company in the various ways at its disposal. In Oram’s view, “The government can’t dress this up and say that once they’ve sold a [minority] stake in them on the share market, that these will somehow be [transformed into] a different kind of company.”

10. The asset sales are consistent with the government’s energy planning.

Well no, they tend to negate it. Flimsy as it was, the energy plan eventually released by MP Hekia Parata in late August restated a target of reaching a 90 % renewables energy target by 2025, but without giving any tangible details of how the government proposes to reach it. At the same time it put out the welcome mat for the foreign oil exploration multinationals, and signalled that most of the government’s effort would be going into oil and gas exploration.

Arguably, the state’s roster of energy companies might have served as a useful springboard for developing renewables technology and putting it to work for the national good. By inviting in private investors, the more likely outcome is that their advent will create pressure for short-term economic gain from existing technology and market conditions. Given the inbuilt conservatism and long term lock-in of investment that Oram spoke about, the private sector imperatives appear likely to delay and deter the switch to renewables. Along the way, New Zealand will have further downgraded its chance of becoming a cutting edge developer and marketer of renewables technology to the rest of the world.

11. Asset sales are consistent with Treaty principles. No. The likes of Tainui executive Tukoroirangi Morgan have already jumped at the chance of iwi forming a consortium to pool some of their $36 billion of tribal resources and buy into the assets being lined up for sale. As the Waikato Times has reported:

It is no secret that Mr Morgan is keen for Tainui to invest in the energy sector, particularly through Genesis Energy and Solid Energy. During his speech yesterday, Mr Morgan said Maori could grow their substantial collective wealth through state-owned enterprises. He said such a move would be possible if Maori joined together through an economic consortium….

Such a consortium would be formed to participate in the partial privatisation programme outlined by the National Party. The stakes are huge and nothing is certain but we know from past experiments that, with the exception of rail and Air New Zealand, once these assets are sold they are gone forever.”

What is good for iwi may not be good for many other Maori. Over a short period of time, the Maui Street blog has established itself as a perceptive commentator on issues affecting Maori, and in February, the site carried this useful rejoinder to Morgan and Co :

Maori, rightfully, control huge tracts of forestry land, some important national resources such as geothermal steam, lake beds and some of NZ’s most profitable tourism ventures. Why not add to that list Air New Zealand and a collection of electricity companies….

But what would assets sales mean for Maori? Profit (in the medium to long term of course). But will that profit flow back to the people? I doubt it. Many iwi authorities adopt a top down approach when distributing wealth. Tertiary students, kaumatua and kuia, Marae, researchers and employees usually receive generous support. However the unemployed, the desperate and the dysfunctional – or in other words those most in need – tend to receive very little, or nothing. So profit becomes meaningless for those at the bottom. Privatisation also means social obligation to those less able to pay is lost. Therefore, social obligation to many Maori is lost.

As far as I am aware the only iwi with the means to participate in assets sales are Ngai Tahu and Tainui. So what we will see is a concentration of wealth in two of our largest iwi. The small players will be left to dabble in little tourism ventures and land rentals. Such an inequitable situation cannot be good.

As I said in previous post assets sales will most likely lead to a decrease in government services. Iwi, as major proponents of asset sales, have an obligation, albeit a small one, to step in and attempt to negate the affects on Maori as a result of decreased services. The problem is iwi lack the economies of scale required to deliver what government once did.

With all of the above in mind assets sales seem like a dumb idea.

During the election campaign, these two conflicting perspectives are also likely to be played out in the political realm – between the Maori Party, and the Mana Party.

In sum, selling the current stake in the four state energy companies and in Air New Zealand makes little economic or social sense. By default, the partial privatizations the government has in mind are merely the latest round of asset-stripping the New Zealand economy, almost entirely for the benefit of local and offshore investors.

It is not as if there are not alternatives on the table. Further borrowing and a strategy to stimulate growth to pay down the costs involved as the business recovery picks up pace is the traditional approach – and one that would be only a little more costly (if at all) than selling down the energy SOEs and foregoing a bigger share of the dividends from them forever more. In the run-up to the election, Labour and the Greens will also be advocating another alternative to asset sales, spearheaded by a capital gains tax and a more progressive top tax rate.

To Oram, if the government is intent on selling down its stake in state – owned energy companies, there is an equal argument for re-packaging them beforehand. “For me, the solution for the electricity sector – and before the government sells off all these companies – is to bring them back together. Because I think the competition between them now is ridiculous. The government is pushing the retail competition and this ridiculous churn among customers in the electricity sector. Too much time and effort is being spent in churning customers. It is a very short-lived strategy to try and drive prices down. But it has no long term future.”

Nor can electricity consumers expect any price relief from the asset sales process. Once the transaction costs of the sales process are added to the extensive capital investment needs facing the sector (and necessary in order to keep step with demand and security of supply) it is inevitable that power bills will rise sharply next year. “We can be sure that electricity prices are going to rise, “ Oram agrees. “ because there’s so much more investment that needs to be made in the grid and in new generating capacity….But having said that, we remain one of the cheaper countries in the OECD for electricity prices. So that may not be a major issue in itself. Except that we still have some large chunks of industry where the whole business model is dependent on abundant cheap electricity.”

Well voters will not be taking much comfort from how much higher the power bills may be elsewhere in the OECD. For now, the asset sales programme has the potential to become the main litmus test for the government’s second term – in that the sales will concentrate public hostility to selling off the nation’s heritage to foreigners while ( fairly or otherwise) copping much of the blame for the major price rises that will become evident on everyone’s power bill next year. That will not happen soon enough to swing a decisive number of votes at the election in November – but the subsequent backlash to the partial asset sales is likely to blight the government’s entire second term.

ENDS

by Gordon Campbell

The causal links between cricket and depression, says Heath Mills, chief executive of cricket’s New Zealand Players Association, have been an issue in the game for many, many years. “There’s no question in my mind that in the past it was seen as a personal failing…It has not been recognised and addressed to the level that it should be. For too long we’ve had an attitude of hey, if a player shows a weakness, he’s got to harden up. That’s our culture, that’s being what we are. It has meant that people have been afraid to speak up when they’ve had issues. Depression has been almost suppressed within the culture of our team. And within the wider sporting environment.”

Some changes are afoot, Mills continues, but much remains to be done. The Players Association has run a personal development and careers programme for some six years now, which contains a risk management component that offers a number of services to the players – including psychological support and professional advice. “What I’m happy to say is that we’ve had approximately 20 players seek support through our programme in the past four to five years for depression, and other forms of mental illness. A large number of those wouldn’t necessarily be known to coaches or to team management.”

To make progress in this area, Mills believes, there needs to be a lot more communication with the game’s administrative body, New Zealand Cricket. Work needs to be done, he says, to create an environnment where people are comfortable talking about the issue. “That will only happen when there is no longer a fear that by raising the issue, [the player ] is going to be discriminated against, or that this is going to impact on their selection. For too long we’ve had a culture where athletes and top players have felt that if I put up my hand and seek to talk about this, then it will impact on my future selection, and on my future career and on my job..” Personally, he doesn’t think those currently engaged in the management and running of New Zealand teams are “ anywhere near the level required” on this issue.

Is something more involved than the normal pressures of top level professional sport – or is there something about cricket that renders its top players particularly vulnerable to depression? “There has to be a connection [with cricket itself]’ Mills replies. “ Not enough work has gone into finding out what that is.”

“What I would say about the cricket environment is that is unique in so far as the players are away from home for an enormous amount of time. We have international players who are away from home for ten months of the year and longer, in some cases. People say ‘Well, they’re well paid, it’s a career they choose, so get on with it.’ That’s all well and good, but its not showing a lot of empathy for the fact these guys are in hotel rooms on the road for ten months of the year, they’re away from their family support networks, they’re often operating in a workplace environment where they are under extreme pressure most days, and where their performance is judged publicly – not privately in a performance review as in a normal job, but publicly each and every day, on a score sheet. That’s not to make any excuses for the players or to say that other jobs aren’t tough, but this is not an easy work environment. And I think there is a lack of support and acknowledgement of how tough that workplace environment can be. And a lack of recognition of the lack of supports in place around it.”

Cricket’s administrators and publicists may resist their game being seen as the poster boy for depression – but cricket is its own worst enemy in this respect. The structure of the game allows for subtle and infinite variations of the individual’s efforts at batting, bowling and fielding, and how these fit within the team effort. Those relationships are utterly transparent, over days at a time – or months, in the case of a test series.

Down the years, this transparency has been widely celebrated. In his classic cricket book Beyond a Boundary, the Caribbean writer C. L. R. James made a case for cricket being the greatest of all games, and comparable at its best to the great works of art and theatre. He also credited cricket with helping to break down the barriers of racial and social intolerance, and saw in it the spirit of individualism being celebrated against the dead hand of conformity and the numbing effects of industrialization. (Clearly, he was writing before the age of limited overs and T20 cricket.)

Cricket, James maintained, involved a unique relationship between the individual’s contribution and the outcome for the team :

The batsman facing the ball does not merely represent his side. For that moment, to all intents and purposes, he is the side. This fundamental relation of the one and the many, individual and social…leader and followers, the part and the whole, is structurally imposed on the players of cricket. What other sports, games and arts have to aim at, the players are given to start with, they cannot depart from it. Thus the game is built on a dramatic, a human relation…which is objectively pervasive and psychologically stimulating…

OK, that’s the upside. What is not talked about very often is the downside : that of all top sportsmen, cricketers seem to be the most prone to depression. Could it be that the same ingenious structure that makes cricket supreme among team sports also renders its top players far more vulnerable to mental illness?

More top cricketers are now talking openly about this aspect of the game. The fact that several high profile players – such as the English opener Marcus Trescothick, the New Zealand pace bowler Ian O’Brien, the New Zealand batsman Lou Vincent, the Australian pace bowler Shaun Tait, and the English all rounder Michael Yardy – have all spoken publicly about the impact of depression on their lives, is helping to foster public understanding.

In late July, the Tasmanian batsman Ed Cowan published on Cricinfo a brilliantly succinct article on the link between cricket and the ‘black dog’ of depression.

As Cowan readily concedes from the outset, cricket shares many of the anxiety-inducing pressures common in other professional sports and among the population at large. Also, as he says, there are good reasons for thinking some of that anxiety is performance – enhancing. But he goes on:

David Frith in his book Silence of the Heart: Cricket Suicides contends that cricket is by far the greatest sport for suicides. Although some of his case studies bring forth tenuous links between cricket and the sad ends to several lives, his central thesis certainly has some validity: that the game promotes the thought patterns and anxiety levels required to tumble people into the desperate hole of depression. In an illustration arguably more significant than that offered by Frith’s cricket sample, Major League Baseball players – perhaps the only brothers to international cricketers – have been shown to be two and a half times more likely to commit suicide than the rest of the American male population.

So what is there about cricket that makes it more likely to lead the vulnerable down the path of depression? Cowan has this to offer :

Despite being a team sport, it is perhaps the only game where one’s contribution is entirely objective. There is no escaping the black and white of failure – among other things, it is statistically tangible. Nothing engulfs you like the self-doubt and frustration of sitting in the corner of the change room, cursing your own inability, wondering what you could have done to avoid the finality of dismissal. Your team may win, but more often than not, you are not even going to be partly responsible if they do. Your contribution, not only self-analysed, has the perceived added weight of 10 other sets of critical eyes. You can feel as though you have not let not just yourself down, but worse, those around you. While this may occur in other team sports, it rarely does with the frequency it does in cricket.

Again, Cowan links it back to the structure of the game that James justly celebrates, and to the tangible evidence of failure :

The time scales inherent in the game – the lag between a failure and the opportunity to make amends – can mean this cloud of doubt has the opportunity to precipitate into a sea of introspection. In a game that is often a one-chance saloon (and a chance that is sensitive to the adjudication of others) the margin for error is slim, and emotions on polar opposites of the spectrum are only ever a feather edge away.

At this point, family can be a crucial support. Yet as Mills has indicated, few – if any – games remove the players from the support of family quite as regularly and for such long periods as cricket does. Marcus Trescothick’s undoing as an international player via depression was not due to the pressure of playing top level competitive cricket per se, but to his inability to handle being away from the supportive reality check provided by his family. Cowan, again, hits this nail on the head :

In the next three years Australian cricketers will spend on average 44 weeks a year away from their own beds – only two of which are allocated to be fully funded family time. Families are welcome on tour at any stage, but the logistics for them to actually go are largely unworkable. Children still need to go to school, wives still need to lead their own lives. A travelling, brooding cricketer can be left to his own devices for extended periods – more often than not in this age of security, solely in the confines of a hotel room – which feeds the anxiety monster.

Ian O’Brien has spoken about this convergence of the natural performance anxiety felt by the professional sportsman, with the isolation of being on tour, in his case in South Africa in 2007 :

“I’d just got back into the Test team after two-and-a-half years out of the mix, but for the first two weeks of our tour to South Africa, I didn’t really leave my room. I was just too scared. I went and played cricket, went to training and did a bit of shopping. But most nights I’d eat by myself and order room service. The rest of the time I’d either hang out in my room or sit by the pool. Wrapped up in it is how you value and see yourself. I didn’t feel as though the guys I was on tour with were equals by any means. I didn’t want to bother them so I looked after myself. That’s still how I deal with it sometimes even now. If I’m having a few bad days, I’ll try to get away from people. I can still go and play cricket and have good days on the park, but the rest of it can be quite hard work.

At the time in 2008 when Lou Vincent went public with his battles with depression, NZ Cricket selector Dion Nash spoke to the media about his view of the contributing factors. Again, it was the combination of the game’s intrinsic pressure with the prolonged absence from family support that cropped up as being causative :

Cricket, [Nash] said, was one of the toughest games mentally – often it was about battling your own head more than the opposition. Players had to ensure they stayed consistently calm, positive and in a neutral headspace – this was particularly hard on overseas tours when players were away from friends and family.

Not everyone has been understanding, or supportive. The British mental health charity Sane has made it clear that depression is a serious condition that should not be regarded as weakness, or as an excuse for inadequate performance. The need for the organisation to speak out was triggered by formerplayer/media commentator Geoff Boycott’s uncomprehending attack on Michael Yardy, after Yardy returned home early from a tour to Sri Lanka, due to the onset of depression. To Boycott (who freely confessed he didn’t really know what he was talking about) succumbing to depression ( or not) merely came down to whether you were a good enough cricketer in the first place.

Boycott expressed sympathy for Yardy, who has returned home to his wife and two young children in Brighton after spending all but four days of the last four months playing in New Zealand, Australia, Bangladesh and India. “It’s obviously very sad,” said Boycott. “But I’m not a medical man, so I can’t tell you what it’s like to be depressed. I’ve been lucky, I’ve been good enough….

For Marcus Trescothick, the separation from family was (once again) a crucial factor. Being isolated for long periods on tour would exacerbate the probing questions about self that top level cricket naturally poses. In an interview with the Guardian, Trescothick talked about the times he had broken down on tours of India, and especially about the occasion in 2009 :

That took time to get over. That closed everything in the sense of me thinking: ‘Right, I’m not going to do that again. I have no ambition to travel abroad any more.’ Clearly, it only makes me worse so why should I even put myself in that position? The winter just gone has been great for me, the best since I’ve really started to struggle with depression, so maybe I’m now taking control.”
Not that the battle is ever entirely over.
But “the beast” still lurks inside? “Clearly,” Trescothick nods. “It’s not me. It’s somebody totally different who takes over. I think it always just lies dormant until the anxiety rises up. It’s more an anxiety issue I have, rather than a depression. Of course they’re two sides of the same coin but I can flip into anxiety state very quickly – because my brain doesn’t cope well with anxiety. At the same time you learn how to do all the good things so you can say: ‘OK, let’s get back to normal.’

Finally, if Trescothick, O’Brien and Cowan are right and the risks of depression are at their height when players are on tour overseas – for the New Zealand team, that means being beyond the reach of family support and whatever counselling is available via the Players Association back home – the onus comes back onto team management. As Mills says, the individual first has to recognize he may have a problem – but a climate also needs to exist where those concerns can be brought forward without fear of the consequences.

The need for early intervention also means that management has to be alert to the possible signs, and be willing to be pro-active in an appropriate fashion. “On tour,” Mills concludes. “we have to see to see that we get some support to them immediately. With all those things, there is a huge lot of work still to be done.”

ENDS

by Gordon Campbell

On a regular basis the media keeps reminding us that (a) young people are growing up too fast and are facing adult challenges about jobs and sexuality too soon while (b) the general population is rapidly ageing, as the boomer generation born between 1946 and 1960 heads into retirement. Few of us are relating those two trends back to the voting system, though perhaps it may be time that we did.

Because if young people are being sexualised and are facing worse job prospects and inheriting major national debt problems earlier than any other generation in the last 50 years etc – then arguably they should be given a voice somewhat sooner, on who should be running the country, and how. As the boomers head into retirement, perhaps we should also think about how and when they should start to lose the vote… Sometime at least, before a sizeable portion of the voting public slides into senility, en masse.

Putting those trends together could well mean that we can’t continue to deny 16 and 17 year olds the vote on the basis of say, their allegedly immature cognitive functions. No doubt, the scientists are right when they say that the human brain doesn’t fully develop until the early 20s. Yet clearly, that isn’t the current basis for earning and keeping the franchise. After all, if we want to make cognitive function the essential qualification for getting and keeping the right to vote – then how about those ageing boomers ? Should they still be allowed to decide the outcome of elections, even after they have begun to lose their mental grip? Any such change would not happen without a fight. Think of how firmly the boomers are holding onto their pension entitlements right now. Would they voluntarily give up the right to vote ?

Luckily, I don’t need to consider the legal and moral implications of this situation entirely in isolation. In the latest issue of the New Zealand Law Review, Jonathan Barrett traces the history of the franchise in this country when it comes to adolescents, and the ethical and practical issues raised as the voting public gets markedly older. Barrett’s article is called “ The Young, The Senile and the Franchise” but unfortunately, since it is not available online, so I will need to précis the content somewhat.

Even before he gets to the heart of his subject, Barrett provides some surprising information. I didn’t know for instance, that it is legally possible to claim assistance in the act of voting. “Electors who cannot complete the ballot because of vision impairment, illiteracy or lack of English language skills,” Barrett says, “may nominate a person to assist in the mechanical process of ballot marking.” This extends to circumstances where, quite legally, the helper can even mark the ballot for the voter, according to their instructions. What is essential is that the “ will and cognitive capacity to vote” exists, and it is only the ability to deal with the mechanics of the ballot that is lacking. At both ends of the age spectrum, at what point does that “will and cognitive ability” to vote responsibly come to fruition, and at what point can it be said to no longer exist?

Essentially, what’s at stake here is the value that society places on voting – if it is viewed as merely being able to tick a box, then no great cognitive ability is required. If however it is seen as an expression of citizenship that is expected to emerge from a process of evaluation and the weighing of policy options in terms of personal and national good, then a higher level of cognitive functioning should reasonably be expected. What should happen when that no longer exists?

Voting and the Young. New Zealand reduced the voting age to 20 in 1969, and reduced it once again to 18, in 1974. In 2007, as the follow up to her successful campaign to change the legislation on child discipline, Sue Bradford turned her attention to extending voting rights to 16 and 17 year olds. It was, in her view, a logically related justice issue about the rights of the young, and the merits of social inclusion. Therefore, Bradford’s proposed Civics Education and Voting Age Member’s Bill chose to frame the rationale in a way that the US Founding Fathers would have understood. Namely, that there should no taxation without representation – or, as the explanatory notes to Bradford’s Bill put it :

Such young persons are paying tax on what may be quite substantial full time earnings, but have no ability through Parliamentary representation to elect those who determine both the level of income tax and other taxes they pay, or the manner in which tax revenue collected from them is expended.

The emphasis on civics education conveyed by the title of Bradford’s Bill was not accidental. Mindful of the likely public opposition to extending the franchise to young people, Bradford was adamant that this step should proceed only in parallel with an education programme aimed at informing and educating young people on how to use the vote responsibly. In that sense, the Bill would not only foster greater awareness of the rights and duties of democratic participation. It could also assist in boosting the low turnout rates by young voters at election time, and help to transform the act of voting into a lifelong habit. However, in the face of strong opposition both from within the Green Party and beyond it, Bradford withdrew the Bill altogether.

The inconsistencies that she spotlighted remain today. Society is quite incoherent when it comes to the age at which the young are deemed ready and able to handle responsibility. At fourteen, teen offenders are considered capable of being responsible for their criminal actions. Sixteen is the age of sexual consent and when people can marry and have children. Sixteen is also now the age at which the young are felt competent to be put in sole charge of a potentially lethal automobile. At 17, the young can also join the armed forces and make life and death decisions about themselves and other people. Can the act of voting really be so much more fraught than this?

On the other hand…..society also decrees that people cannot gamble, buy cigarettes, see certain films, drink in a bar, buy alcohol from a liquor store or sign legally binding contracts until they are 18. The inconsistencies are rife and as Barrett says, are widely tolerated. For now, it seems clear that society – and those politicians aware of the almost toxic levels of hostility to the young felt by large swathes of the voting public – feel no inclination to lower the voting age for reasons of fairness, or logical consistency.

Are there any other solid grounds for doing so? Barrett chooses to side with the 1986 Royal Commission on Social Policy, which concluded that if young people “ are to be included as part of the community, the only justification for excluding them from voting must be lack of cognitive competence.” At which point – and despite what the neuroscientists say about the age of maturation of the brain sectors responsible for moral evaluation and impulse control – one also has to concede that the mere act of casting a vote is not rocket science. ‘To vote,’ Barrett points out, ‘all people need is to be capable of deciding for themselves who should represent them and form a government.” As he concludes, there is little doubt that 16 and 17 year olds possess the cognitive capacity for that task.

The fact that few 16 and 17 year olds seem to be agitating for the right to vote is a bit of a red herring. Relatively few adult Americans are enthusiastic about the right to vote either – and many don’t bother – but that’s not a reason for denying them the opportunity. Perhaps when and if Bradford returns to Parliament with the Mana Party she may feel inclined to dust off her Members Bill, and have another go.

The Issue of Senility If the yet to fully mature brain of the average 16 or 17 year old really did justify withholding the vote until 18, then arguably….the same exclusionary logic should apply at the other end of the age spectrum as well. Yet there is no groundswell for excluding people from voting on cognitive grounds, as their brain function begin to decay. As Barrett points out, there are some existing exceptions. For no good reason, people who have been compulsorily detained by the state on grounds of mental illness for more than three years, automatically lose the right to vote. “Exclusion here, “ Barrett says, “appears to be a disproportionate, and thus unjust, punitive measure designed to put detainees in a similar position to prisoners…”

Unless they have been detained for three years or more, the mentally ill within the community can register to vote and – as explained above – can also seek and receive assistance from others, to cast their vote. Fine. Voting may well be helpful to their wellbeing, and may enhance their sense of inclusion in the community. Yet, as Barrett says, such an inclusive approach to mental incapacity is significant for a country that has an ageing population. Especially so, one might add, when the cost of National Superannuation and the rising cost of healthcare for the elderly are likely to be hot political topics in future, and vitally affect the age cohort in question.

Already, older age groups are relatively more inclined to vote. Over the next few decades, self-interest is likely to enhance that tendency. Along the way, there will need to be matching investment in the infrastructure required to meet the voting needs of the aged, with more helpers needing to be assigned to the ballot booths, and more ballot booths physically located within the nation’s retirement homes.

None of this directly addresses the question of senile dementia – and here, Barrett offers some sobering statistics. “ A person over 80 has a 20 % likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease. It is estimated that by 2050, some 147,000 New Zealanders of a projected population of 4.6 million will suffer from dementia (mostly Alzheimer’s.) ” That is almost the double the projection of 75,000 similar sufferers in 2026, and 3.5 times the 41,000 (in a population of 4.3 million) in 2008.

That marks a significant shift, to numbers that could be politically decisive. They also raise a point of principle. As Barrett puts it : “Allowing people with cognitive impairments so severe that they are unaware of the very nature of the process in which they are participating to vote, may challenge the concept of voting as a rational act, and facilitate electoral fraud.” Thankfully, not everyone with Alzheimer’s is so impaired as to be unable to grasp the purpose and process of voting. Yet far larger numbers than what society is presently accustomed to encountering, will become significantly impaired.

Unfortunately, it is not evident that this situation can be managed in ways that guarantee the aged will be treated with dignity. History doesn’t give us many – or any – encouraging examples of how to administer the relevant tests, nor give us many pointers on how to manage the crushing consequences of failure for people deemed to be cognitively incompetent.

In concluding his article, Barrett warns against society treating the situation of the young and the senile as being analogous – regardless of the surface logic that if a presumed lack of cognitive capacity in 16 and 17 year olds bars them from voting, it should do likewise for the old, if and when their mental faculties start to desert them.

Why should we treat these two groups differently ? Well, so the argument goes, young people can probably handle it, and they will get older, and will be able to vote eventually. For older people, it is a one-way street. As Barrett says : “ For people engaged in an existential struggle, as their brains degenerate through disease and their powers of ratiocination haphazardly wane, to be deemed worthless as citizens would surely be a devastating affront to their dignity.” No one wants that outcome. Even so, the problem cannot simply be ignored, or willed away on compassionate grounds. “ Inclusion of an increasing body of senile people in the electorate,” Bareet says, “ is not an issue that can be ignored, but nor can exclusion of the capable young.”

The ideal outcome would be a greater degree of compassion and tolerance for young and old alike. Currently though, New Zealand seems to suffer from a fairly bad case of ephebiphobia, or the fear and resentment of the young. In this election year for example, 16 and 17 year old beneficiaries are being singled out for punitive action and control by the government – almost entirely for populist reasons of electoral gain – and without having a vote on the matter.

In stark contrast, the age of entitlement for pensions and the current superannuation payment levels remain politically untouchable, regardless of the cuts to public sector jobs and reductions in social services being promoted for everyone else. This situation is not going to be sustainable. Today’s 16-24 year olds are being expected to support the voting rights, the health needs and the dementia care of an older generation that seems happy enough to treat them with something close to disdain, or as fitting experimental subjects for welfare reform.

If only out of sheer self interest, a bit more respect by adults and a few more policies of social inclusion is advisable. Extending the franchise to 16 ad 17 year olds might be a good place to start. Ultimately, that might help to ensure that the senile get treated with more compassion, when the time comes.

ENDS

by Grace C. Russell

Access to the city streets – and the freedom to walk around the city, unhindered – has never been a privilege available to everyone. The French have a term – flaneur – for the gentleman who strolls the city in a contemplative mood, to sample its sensory delights. Women and children have been actively discouraged from doing likewise. In the latter half of the 20th century, feminist critics may have called attention to the gender politics of the flaneur, but relatively little attention has been paid to the way that children have also been denied access to the city.

According to Janet Wolff, women could not stroll alone in the city due to reasons of moral propriety and because of real or imagined concerns about their personal safety. Just as the city streets have been conceived as masculine space, they also tend to be treated as adult space. The sociologist Gill Valentine has pointed out the apparent ‘assumption that the streets belong to adults, and that children should only be permitted into public spaces when they have been socialised into appropriate ‘adult’ ways of behaving and using space.’ In part, this is due to the ways in which we regard childhood itself. Exploration of the city – the ability to experience it, read it and use it – is routinely denied to children.

Not surprisingly, children have been taught to internalize this message. I’d like to argue that popular films for children have routinely given children a vicarious experience of being a flaneur while – at the same time – teaching them lessons about the pleasures, dangers and boundaries involved. Children’s films about dogs have played a central part in this process – as I aim to illustrate via Disney’s classic animated film The Lady and the Tramp, and the 1974 live action film Benji. In different ways, these films depict the two major narratives through which society tends to conceive of childhood, and the nature of children – views that emerged during the Victorian era, and persist to the present day. Childhood sociologist Chris Jenks has called them the ‘Dionysian’ and ‘Apollonian’ views of childhood.

While the ‘Apollonian’ model regards children as being innately angelic, innocent and vulnerable, the “Dionysian’ view of childhood treats children as the inheritors of original sin, and as possessing animal-like instincts. Both concepts deny children access to city space: either their innocence will be corrupted by the city’s inherent perils (media hysteria about abductors and pedophiles has been a powerful tool for restricting children’s access) or the child’s menacing wildness will result in public disruption, and pose a danger to adults, or to other children. Because of these ideological visions of childhood, it is rare to find media depictions aimed at children that encourage them to explore or take ownership of urban space on their own terms. Instead, what potential there is for exploration is frequently depicted in popular culture through an intermediary figure – that of the doggy flaneur.

The homeless /ownerless dog characters that live in and live off the streets in children’s film are not usually represented merely as stray beasts. They are often shown to be intent – just like their male human counterparts – on gaining sensory and aesthetic knowledge of the city, by walking through it. Like the human flaneur, the canine flaneur moves through urban space unrestricted by adherence to rules, pre-planned destinations or durations to his walk.

This resistance to temporal and spatial restrictions is particularly important in children’s film. The animal characters may – in theory – share with children a lack of power, autonomy and freedom of movement, but through their flanerie, they can transcend such limits. Films in which the canine flaneur appears, therefore, can show the child viewer the boundaries that govern adult urban space – and thus serve to show, as Owain Jones says, that “these boundaries are to some extent permeable to children, [that] they have a chance to build their own geographies, to re-order the space to suit their own desires and in effect create a dimension parallel to that of adult space.”

Many films, from Greyfriar’s Bobby (1961) to Beethoven (1992) contain examples of canine flanerie. I’ve chosen to focus on Lady and the Tramp (a Disney film about a lower-class stray romancing an upper-class suburban pet) and Benji, an independent feature about a resourceful terrier who rescues some abducted children. I want to look at how these films subversively represent the uses and reclamation of adult human space…and how, finally. both of them promote a conservative ideology about the relative value of life at home, as opposed to life on the streets.

Through their depiction of the canine flaneur, Benji and The Lady and the Tramp provide the viewer with an imaginative map of the city. They illustrate how the city could be explored and enjoyed without the restrictions of adult supervision, and how this space could be traversed without obedience to the formal rules and boundaries that govern ‘adult’ space. Both films centre on the familiar figure of the urban (semi-) domesticated dog. Both Benji and the Tramp are ownerless strays – hence, they have the ability to be out on their own in the city with minimal interference. Both films conclude with the dog hero entering the safety of the suburban nuclear family.

In addition to these similarities, I’ve focussed on these two films because of the formal contrasts they provide. With Benji, we have a live action film with minimal anthropomorphism in the treatment of its dog hero (Benji doesn’t talk or think out loud, and behaves as we could credibly expect a dog to behave.) On the other hand, Lady and the Tramp is animated, with dog characters who talk and who have recognisably ‘human’ social relationships and interests. Despite these differing stylistic approaches, the two films establish their characters’ flanerie in a strikingly similar fashion.

Though we tend to think of the flaneur as a figure who strolls the streets quite free of the concerns about time and space that usually govern movement through the city, this does not mean that flanerie is not routinised. In fact, establishing the dogs’ routine in relation to their wandering the city is important in both films. In Benji, the first act status quo is introduced though a long sequence where we see Benji leaving his home (an old, abandoned house) and walking through the city streets, stopping off at various appointments along the way. He receives breakfast from two children at a suburban house, followed by footage of him walking through the city. He stops at a park to play with a police officer on duty, walks again, wakes an elderly cafe owner so he can open in time for the lunch crowd; then, more walking; he chases a cat, walks again, and finally returns home. From the responses of the humans he encounters within the narrative, we understand that this pattern is repeated daily. In this ninety minute feature film, roughly twenty minutes are occupied with semi-plotless observation of Benji walking, running or playing in the city.

The Tramp, too, appears to have a routine that governs his wanderings. He has several families he visits for food “one for every day of the week”, and various restaurants he is known at. For both characters though, their routine does not dictate their movement through the city. Rather, it provides a structure to it, in that they have places they tend to go or enjoy to go, but they are just as likely to be distracted by the attractions the city has to offer, as when the Tramp chases chickens, or watches puppies in a pet store window. (In similar fashion, Benji scent-marks trees and fossicks through trash cans.) For the child viewer, this particular form of flanerie illustrates how – given the time and the freedom – one might structure their use of the city, unfettered by adult demands and adult prohibitions on the use of time and space.

Walking in the city is “a process of appropriation of the topographical system on the part of the pedestrian” Michel De Certeau once wrote. By appropriating adult/human space, the dogs in these films are able to use and reconstruct it to suit their own needs, either by inobtrusively sneaking around the boundaries which normally govern civic space, or by openly and actively flouting its rules.

For example : both Benji and Lady and the Tramp treat fences as an important way that city space is governed. The dog characters in both films are always shown going through or under fences, rather than around them. This is either to hide from potential threats (the Tramp), to take a short-cut (Benji) or to visit friends (both characters.) In both films, fences are explicitly discussed as representing the limits on freedom. In Benji, the father initially refuses to allow his children to keep Benji as a pet, because they would “have to build a fence to keep him in, and he’d hate that.” In Lady and the Tramp, the point is even more explicit. When looking from a hill over the city, Lady sees “nice homes, with yards and fences”, while the Tramp sees “a great big world out there, with no fence around it, where two dogs can find adventure and excitement.” Just as these dogs find gaps in the fences restricting their freedom to wander in the city, children too – as Gill Valentine says, “often resist, oppose and find gaps in adult restrictions.”

Another way in which the direct transgression of the rules dictating use of space occurs in these films is through the canine characters’ disregard of signs. In the opening minutes of Benji, we see our hero casually cross a lawn with a large “Keep Off the Grass” sign, following which he is greeted by the gardener. This friendly reception is indicative of how Benji is received throughout the film – as a charming anomaly for whom the rules are relaxed, just this once. He is able to get around the restrictions of adult/human space because he is a ‘good dog’: just as children circumnavigate parental restriction and scrutiny by being well-behaved. Benji is granted the right to explore the city because he is well-liked.

The Tramp, on the other hand, must get around signposted restrictions covertly. He causes a fight between a policeman and a passerby so he and Lady can sneak past the “No Dogs Allowed” sign into the zoo. (The places visited by the canine flaneurs in both films tend to be ones that children would be keen on visiting if out in the city: parks; places to eat; the zoo; vacant lots.) The Tramp is constantly under threat of being apprehended and impounded by the city dogcatcher, and it is only through cleverness and trickery that he is able to maintain his freedom to access the city streets. Hence, if these characters are proxies for the child viewer, we can see from the Tramp’s treatment that he is presumed ‘bad’; disruptive, possibly dangerous: in need of control, i.e. a ‘Dionysian’ child-substitute, in contrast with Benji’s ‘Apollonian’ characteristics.

The city as a hostile or dangerous space is shown in these films through the filters of social class and gender. As Valentine points out, working class children tend to be less restricted in their use of public space, and boys tend to have more freedom to roam in public than girls do – in both these films, the depiction of the canine flaneur mirrors these dimensions of sex and class. Females and the upper classes, in Benji and Lady and the Tramp, are shown to be simply less able to survive out on their own in the city. They are not able to engage in flanerie, due to their inability to navigate the city’s dangers. As Walter Benjamin puts it, the inability to be ‘at home in the street’ “distances the bourgeois existence from the experience of flanerie.”

Without the Tramp chaperoning her, Lady twice ends up literally on the ‘other side of the tracks,’ in a run-down area where she is on one occasion attacked by other dogs, and on another, caught and taken to the pound. Being a ‘lady’, there are certain places in the city where Lady can’t go without running into difficulties. The Tramp’s access to the city however, has no such limits. While Benji’s ‘girlfriend’ Tiffany, is described by various human characters as ‘fancy,’ she is not upper-class – like Benji, she is a stray. However, she is shown to be less adept than Benji at exploring, and making use of the city. While he sleeps in an abandoned house, she sleeps outside. While he charms local humans into feeding him, she eats from garbage cans. While he knows to hide from the kidnappers, she is seen by them and kicked across the room with surprising violence. Benji and the Tramp’s ability to engage in flanerie, then, is not simply a case of being able to go out and take a stroll. It also requires a level of proficiency at reading the city (for opportunities, for danger) which they possess in part because of their gender, and partly because of their social position.

Although Lady and the Tramp and Benji show the child audience how the adult monopoly on the use of urban space can be challenged or circumvented, the subversive nature of this illustration is undercut in both films by their concluding emphasis on entry into the middle-class suburban home. As enticing as walking in the city may be, these films nevertheless show public space to be a site of potential danger. Both juxtapose the peril-filled climaxes of their narratives (Benji leads the police to the kidnapper’s hideout and the children are rescued; the Tramp is delivered from imminent extermination at the pound) with closing scenes that show the canine flaneur being welcomed into the family home.

By doing so, the films reinforce the binary opposition of the safe home and the dangerous outdoors. Though, according to Benjamin “the street becomes a dwelling for the flaneur [where] he is as much at home among the facades of houses as the citizen is in his four walls” this is not the case for Benji, or for the Tramp. Ultimately, their ‘street as home’ is shown to be inferior to a home within the nuclear family unit.

The nuclear family is promoted in both films as an ideal state. To that extent, the films reflect the philosopher Louis Althusser’s view of the nuclear family as “ an ideological state apparatus that universalises what is actually a specific historical construct: the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant nuclear family and the hierarchical relations of gender and class, sexuality and labour [made to] appear real, natural, inevitable and desirable. “

This ideological ‘rightness’ of the family is treated as such a given in both Benji and Lady and the Tramp that the films need not labour the point. It simply IS a happy ending that these dogs are now going to live in the (incidentally affluent, middle-class, suburban) home from now on. Benji makes slight reference to the way of life that Benji and his injured ‘girlfriend’ Tiffany are leaving behind: the father reassures his children that they won’t have to fence the dogs in, which, the children reason, is fine because “they’ll like it so much with us, they’ll never want to leave.”

Wandering the city, the film implies, can never be as attractive as being at home. The Tramp’s reception, meanwhile, of a new collar and license shows the extent of his domestication, the symbols via which we deduce his new roles of responsible father and faithful house-dog. The film conveniently disregards any attachment the Tramp might have had to his old lifestyle. These films narrativise and make finite the process of walking in the city, offering the home as the logical end-point from which no further exploration need take place.

The conclusions of these films, then, show an ideologically constructed home as the approved and preferred place for the canine flaneur to be. Moreover, considering that these films are aimed at a child audience. it could be argued that the home is equally being presented as the correct place for children to be. In essence, the social structure that these films depict celebrates the communal use of time and space, and has no room for the autonomous, anonymous use of time and space enjoyed by the flaneur.

This valorising of home and family also buys into a hierarchical structure, where both animals and children are always best off within the family, i.e. under the supervision and control of adults. Thus, there is a re-affirmation of public space as being adult space – after all, these films suggest, animals and children are so much happier when at home with the family, rather than out and about in the city. These restrictive conclusions work in opposition to the fascination with reclaiming public urban space that the canine flaneur has fostered.

The canine flaneur is a ‘type’ in children’s film – a recognisable figure through which the child viewer can vicariously enjoy and understand the experience of freely exploring the city. Films such as Benji and Lady and the Tramp illustrate the boundaries that govern urban space, but also how these boundaries can be transgressed, bypassed and subverted. However, this relationship to the city is also shown to be constrained by social class and by gender – and, ultimately, the freedoms involved are depicted as being inferior to the comforts of home, and to the security and comfort of traditional family structures.

The ways we manage the city and the popular media we create for children serve to re-inforce the message that children are to be discouraged from exploring urban space. Although the canine flaneur allows for a limited recognition of how one could freely range the city, the films in which he appears ultimately tend to downplay, and devalue, that experience.

ENDS

By Rosalea Barker

If you accept that social media are more of a plaza (where people meet and exchange views and information) than a highway (where views and information are driven at you), then claims that shutting them off temporarily is akin to a temporary road closure make no sense. That is the comparison that Conservative MP Louise Mensch made in support of PM David Cameron’s plan to shut down social networking services during the recent UK riots. Even the local police thought that idea was daft.

Here in the US, the current advertising campaign by wireless carrier Verizon has the tagline “Rule the Air!” and rival AT&T’s ads declare “In the network, anything is possible”. Little wonder then that ordinary people, reliant on email, texting, and social media like Facebook and Twitter to keep in touch with each other, see access to those communication tools as something THEY, not corporations or government entities, are in control of. To be deprived of those tools is to be deprived of a basic civil and political right.

In the States, the first recourse is to the Constitution, specifically 14 words contained in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”. State constitutions also contain similar wording, and the principle of free speech applies in a general sense—not just to laws that Congress or states make.

So when the Bay Area Rapid Transit police cut off cellphone service on the platforms of four underground San Francisco BART stations on August 11 in order to stop protesters organizing a demonstration, the focus quickly shifted from what the initial protest was about to questions of free speech and First Amendment rights.

Lest we forget

Before getting to the free speech issue, let’s remember what the initial protests were about. On July 3, BART police shot and killed a drunken homeless man on the platform of SF’s Civic Center station after he threw a knife at them. This wasn’t the first incident of BART officers shooting to kill—back in January 2009, an unarmed man, face down on the ground and handcuffed, was shot in the back by a BART officer standing over him on the platform of Oakland’s Fruitvale station. (I wrote my thoughts about that incident here.)

The BART Board of Directors—democratically elected by voters like myself—seemingly learned nothing from that first deadly shooting. They never demanded the resignation of the Police Chief, who was left to collect a big, fat pension when he eventually retired—and they have been the target of numerous protests about their actions ever since, with the lead role taken by No Justice No BART, which wants the police force disbanded. To his credit, NJNB’s spokesperson—“Krystof” (pictured left) as he is chyroned on TV news reports—keeps the message of the original protests to the forefront, despite the tangent that the cellphone service shutdown has led the media off on. Here is what he said at a recent BART board meeting, and here are his local beginnings as an anti-war-on-terrorism protestor immediately post-9/11. (See the last section about Christopher Cantor.)

The colonial beginnings of Free Speech

On November 2, 1734, a New York printer by the name of John Peter Zenger was arrested and thrown in jail. He had been publishing a popular twice-weekly journal that was critical of the colony’s governor, who would brook no opposition. When the resultant libel case finally came to trial by jury at the end of July the next year, Zenger found himself being defended by one of the greatest lawyers of the day, Alexander Hamilton. A Brief Narrative of the Case and Trial of John Peter Zenger, Printer of the New York Weekly Journal, a 40-page booklet that was published several times in London, Boston, and Philadelphia, contains some of Hamilton’s oratory, and was influential in persuading colonists to rebel against Britain, and the nascent States to demand a Bill of Rights that included the right to free speech and a free press.

The following short extract is as apposite today around the globe as it was in 18th Century New York:

“I pray, what redress is to be expected for an honest man, who makes his complaint against a governor, to an assembly who may properly enough be said to be made by the same governor against whom the complaint is made? The thing answers itself. No, it is natural, it is a privilege, I will go farther, it is a right which all free men claim, and are entitled to complain when they are hurt; they have a right publicly to remonstrate the abuses of power, in the strongest terms, to put their neighbors upon their guard, against the craft or open violence of men in authority, and to assert with courage the sense they have of the blessings of liberty, the value they put upon it, and their resolution at all hazards to preserve it, as one of the greatest blessings heaven can bestow.”

SCOTUS fine-tuning

Over the years, the US Supreme Court has continually refined what is considered to be “protected speech”—most notably, where “public safety” or “national security” is involved, First Amendment protections aren’t applied. Other SCOTUS decisions have revolved around whether interference with free speech was content-neutral, and whether the “time, manner and place” of the exercise of FA rights is inappropriate.

Jesse Choper, listed as a faculty expert on constitutional law on UC Berkeley’s website, gave an explanation of why he thought the BART telecommunication shutdown was not breaching free speech principles when he was interviewed by Warren Olney on To the Point, a Public Radio International program broadcast on August 18, and available for download here. (The discussion begins about 8 minutes in.)

“There is no exercise of First Amendment rights [involved in the protests on the BART platforms],” said Choper. “The devil is in the details, and in the facts. I think it’s wrong to compare what happened here as what happened in the Arab Spring. … The rule is pretty simple. It’s got to be a content-neutral regulation. That’s not self-defining. First of all, they [BART] didn’t have a rule” about when cutting off telecommunications would be appropriate. “They will after this—there will be a general rule that talks about interference with the safety of passengers on platforms. The BART board will get their lawyers to draft up a rule that will protect them.”

Choper continued later, “If people want to protest against the killing by the BART officers, they have every First Amendment right to do so. Is it important that they do it at the BART station? Well, if they think it is, they can parade peacefully and without interfering with traffic all day long outside, right outside the entrance to the BART station. This is not a restriction of speech; it’s a regulation of time, place and manner.”

One of the other guests on the show, Judith Donath (pictured left), who is Faculty Fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, expressed the opinion that the technology of today’s world means that:

“We’ll be thinking about different types of public spaces that are purely virtual, which may change some of our constitutional understanding of when we can shut down a network if we say that the things we want to protect about the ability to speak freely and to hold a rally in a public space—what about if those spaces increasingly become online forums? What does that mean about the importance to the access of technology? One of the things we can see already is that our understanding of what is traditional public and private space is a little iffy. We really don’t quite know what a train platform is. It’s going to be changing a lot as technology both spreads our physical public space into the virtual world through cameras, etc, and the virtual world increasingly becomes our gathering spaces.”

Meanwhile, the protests about BART’s handling of the police shootings—and now, also, their handling of access to commercial telecoms networks on their platforms—continue every week. Commuters are variously in support of the protestors, or mightily pissed off with them because of the mess it makes of their evening commute. Some have adjusted by going in to work early on the days that protests are planned so they can leave early, before the stations might potentially be shut down.

-ENDS-

by Philip Matthews

Alpha and Omega. By accident or design – and one hopes it was design – the opening and closing night films of the 35th International Christchurch Film Festival (and maybe elsewhere too) made for complementary book-ends. On the first night, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, in which the human scale and individual grief – a nuclear family in suburban Waco, Texas, Malick’s hometown, in the 1950s; a grown son of that family in Texas in the present – were set against or within what you would have to call the cosmic scale: the creation and unfolding of life on Earth. Not for nothing has The Tree of Life been called the Christian 2001, although its opening quote from the Book of Job (“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? … ”), and its picture of universal order and purpose, are of a different type to Kubrick/Clarke’s vision, which was just as ordered but remains inscrutable to us.

By accident or design: Malick suggests a universe operating by design, divinely ordered; by contrast, in the closing night film – Lars von Trier’s Melancholia – the universe is at best an accident. No one or nothing laid the foundations of the earth, no angels ever shouted for joy.

Melancholia is best understood as the second film in a von Trier series that began with 2009’s Antichrist. On the day of her wedding, Justine (Kirsten Dunst) notices a red star in the sky over the lavish resort where her family have gathered for the reception – Justine’s wealthy brother-in-law and sister, John and Claire (Kiefer Sutherland and Charlotte Gainsbourg) live in and manage the resort. The reception is something of a von Trier reunion: besides Gainsbourg, there is John Hurt (as Justine’s father), Stellan Skarsgaard (as her employer) and Udo Kier (as the wedding planner), plus Charlotte Rampling as Justine’s mother and Alexander Skarsgaard as the groom.

Dunst spends the film’s first half – titled “Justine” – mostly in and occasionally out of her white wedding dress, wrestling with her ambivalence about the marriage, her job, her place in the family. This is all immersive film-making, but without the rigorous commitment to a raw, neo-realist “dogma” (handheld shooting, no unnatural light sources, etc) that formed as a self-conscious school in the mid-90s around the time of von Trier’s not dissimilar – more on that point later – Breaking the Waves. Instead, as in Antichrist, von Trier’s visual style – assisted here by cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro – is glossy, deliberately beautiful high-end film-making; in fact, the entire two hour story is told first as a condensed, seven-minute prologue through a series of stills that resemble spreads in luxurious fashion magazines (it might help to know that Justine works in advertising).

For Variety critic Peter Debruge, reviewing Melancholia after its Cannes premiere in May, this opening sequence was reminiscent of the Dream House series by American artist Gregory Crewdson, who staged eerie and highly art-directed apocalyptic scenes in everyday suburbia. This even gives us a New Zealand connection, as one Crewdson work appeared on the cover of Tim Wilson’s apocalyptic novel Their Faces Were Shining – that mysterious shot of Tilda Swinton, stepping out of her car and gazing upwards with a look that could be terror or wonder or disbelief, is a Crewdson moment that resembles von Trier.

Justine’s ambivalence – although that is far too coy a word – becomes self-destructive, and we learn that she has been prone to possibly bipolar episodes. As with Gainsbourg’s “she” in Antichrist, we can assume that Justine is a personification of von Trier’s famous, recent bouts of depression, although she also fits into a pattern of the suffering heroine that has been a von Trier obsession since Breaking the Waves.

As part two – titled “Claire” – opens, Justine is deep in the fog of depression, sleeping for long stretches, barely speaking or eating. She has returned to Claire and John’s resort to recuperate; meanwhile, John, an amateur astronomer, is tracking the slow arc of a planet named Melancholia, which has appeared in the sky and is heading towards Earth (a potentially destructive planet hidden behind the sun – such a great metaphor for depression). Like part one, part two is set entirely in the home and on the grounds of the resort – shot in Sweden – but within a less compressed timeframe. And the planet approaches.

In Antichrist – a more provocative and shocking film than Melancholia – von Trier also invented a new cosmology. Gainsbourg’s character, recovering from grief in a cottage in the woods, with the “help” of her psychiatrist husband (Willem Dafoe), is a student of medieval attitudes to women and imagines a new constellation, based on the Russian folk story of the Three Beggars (a pagan trinity of fox, deer and crow). The film explored – without at all agreeing with – the ways in the Church has seen (female) nature as evil: nature is “Satan’s church”.

But in Melancholia, nature – or the movements of planets and stars – is neither good nor evil, just indifferent. If The Tree of Life is optimistic, religious and redemptive, Melancholia is pessimistic, secular and doomed. No one prays, petitions God or forms doomsday cults. But despite the trappings, there is no science-fiction solution either, no team of rogue scientists or oil drillers out of a Michael Bay movie ready to save the world as soon as someone says the word.

Midway in the schedule between The Tree of Life and Melancholia, the Film Festival programmed Mike Cahill’s low-budget Another Earth. What has been in the air this year? This film seemed almost to blend with the other two: grief over a lost family, the shock and awe of a new planet breaking through the sky. But as indicated by the title, the new planet is really us, a duplicate Earth. At one point, the planet is described as a “cosmic mirror”, which has the sound of Solaris about it.

At first, the new Earth is just a blue light in the night sky. Teenage Rhoda (Brit Marling, who co-wrote with Cahill) is distracted by the blue light while driving and crashes into a car driven by John Burroughs, a composer (William Mapother), killing his wife and son. Four years later, Rhoda comes out of prison and attempts to make amends, approaching John anonymously.

The film is quiet and often undramatic, and those who like to pick holes in plots would probably have a field day – there is a tedious kind of literalist who alerts the internet to “goofs” such as the following, which I swear I have not made up: “Apart from the fact that the gravitational perturbations would have made such a planet’s existence evident a long time ago, the presence of another planet the size of the Earth would be catastrophic at the least, and at the distance shown in posters, cataclysmic.” (All stories must be run past the fact police.) But Another Earth is strongly performed – you might remember Mapother as the bad guy in In The Bedroom – and has the neat, haunting quality of a well-made short story.

It asks: do you believe in second chances? The most haunting aspect might be the discovery that the new planet is not just a mirror or duplicate of Earth, but, from the moment it first appeared in the sky, has been a world in parallel. In other words, that point in time four years ago represented a fork in the road; since then, one sequence of events has happened down here, another up there (it is many-worlds theory, in action). Is John’s family still alive on that other Earth? And the other Rhoda – is she living the life she once expected to?

While imperfect, the film stayed with me for days, not least because of the context. We watched Another Earth – and Melancholia and The Tree of Life and all the rest – in a Hoyts multiplex in suburban north-west Christchurch, as the festival’s regular venue was ruined, far behind the city’s earthquake cordon. Images of destruction and grief seemed relevant and familiar but so did the notion of a second chance. I found myself thinking about a scenario in which another Christchurch – a non-ruined, intact one – had somehow existed in parallel, separating from the real one on September 3, 2010. In that parallel city there were never any earthquakes; our homes, our places of work, our schools, cinemas and – if you’re that way inclined – churches are untouched. I wondered whether that would be a better city than the one we are currently in.

The cheap, sentimental answer is that it would not – that we have learned something from the trauma and adversity of the past 12 months, we have changed and grown and discovered our inner “resilience” – but I doubt there is a single person who would not swap the current, ruined Christchurch for a parallel, untouched one, if it could somehow exist. I wonder if anyone else in the small crowd sitting in the dark, nearly a year after the first earthquake, was thinking the same thing as they watched John and Rhoda contemplate the question: this existence or that one?

At Cannes, Melancholia was overshadowed by inane controversy surrounding its director. Von Trier in Nazi shocker: when asked by a film critic at a press conference about the influence of German Romanticism on his films (the sensational prologue to Melancholia is set to Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde), von Trier launched into a rambling speech about growing up thinking he was Jewish and then discovering he was not – that he may really be a Nazi or at least sympathetic to Hitler. Not that he supported the Second World War, you understand – and on and on he went, digging a deeper and deeper hole.

He later apologised, saying his comments were “unintelligent, ambiguous and needlessly hurtful”. What seems interesting about this minor controversy – and, no, of course von Trier isn’t a secret Nazi – is the way in which it feeds into roughly two decades’ worth of critics and audiences being unwilling to take von Trier seriously and his complicity in that. In other words, he is sometimes his own worst enemy (example: did you know he added the “von” at film school, to jokingly appear noble?). Themes and scenarios in von Trier films might have marked him out as a high modernist successor to Dreyer and Bergman but you can also sense that some other force in him wants to undercut those serious impulses with shockingness and black humour (exhibit A: The Idiots, which can seem sad on one viewing and viciously satirical on another). Like Justine in Melancholia, he can be self-destructive.

Does that make it harder when he wants to be believed? Two years earlier, von Trier outraged Cannes for another reason, one which is worthy of more consideration than the “I’m a Nazi” joke that backfired. He dedicated Antichrist – a film stuffed with physical, spiritual and sexual violence; a film that speaks in horror-movie language, the theological-arthouse Saw – to Andrei Tarkovsky. For marrying that hallowed name to this base content, he was booed and jeered.

But was the Tarkovksy dedication just another provocation or gag, like adding “von” to his name as a student? Or did he actually mean it? The reality is that if you are going to tackle theological material in cinema, Tarkovsky is one of those directors you will have to absorb, challenge or come to terms with (as are Dreyer and Bergman). If the basic point of Antichrist is that, contra centuries of Catholicism, the female body is not the source of all evil then a dedication to Tarkovsky may not be too far off the mark.

In his documentary about Tarkovsky, One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich, Chris Marker muses on why there is so much nature in Tarkovsky films. Those recurring images of water, horses and fire – the style has influenced Terrence Malick too, and his most experimental and personal film, The Tree of Life, resembles Tarkovsky’s most experimental and personal, The Mirror. The shots of trees, grass, rotting leaves. Marker says of Tarkovsky, “Like the Japanese [he has] a physical relationship to nature. There’s nothing more earthy, more carnal than the work of this reputed mystical film-maker. Maybe because Russian mysticism is not that of Catholics, terrified by nature and the body. Among the Orthodox, nature is respected. The creator is revered through His creation.”

A good friend of Tarkovsky, Marker filmed the Russian director during the making of his final film, The Sacrifice, in Sweden in 1986. When I first saw the trailer for Melancholia, back in about April, I figured this was von Trier’s version of The Sacrifice. In the Tarkovsky film, the threat of nuclear destruction is the cosmic backdrop to a family drama in the foreground. As in Melancholia, a family live in an isolated home and follow news of the possible disaster on the radio. But the main character in The Sacrifice makes a deal with God in the hope of averting disaster.

In Melancholia, there is no one or nothing to pray to or make a deal with. Science fails too. But along with similarities in the story, there are obvious Tarkovskian touches in Melancholia: shots of horses and a coastline are reminiscent of The Sacrifice, while a reproduction of a particular Brueghel painting appears in both the main story and the prologue. Tarkovsky’s love of Brueghel was well-known (“Brueghel is close to Russians and makes a lot of sense to them,” Tarkovsky said in 1969). And it not just any Brueghel painting – it is Hunters in the Snow, which appears in Solaris as a kind of relic or reminder of the lost Earth, the lost home. Its appearance is heavy with nostalgia.

Perhaps von Trier should have dedicated Melancholia to Tarkovsky, rather than Antichrist. But maybe that would be too straight-forward, too predictable – even acceptable. Also, it might be that another of von Trier’s more Tarkovskian films has been hiding in plain sight for 15 years: Breaking The Waves. No one doubted that film had a plainly religious sensibility, with Emily Watson’s unforgettable performance as Bess influenced strongly and obviously by the suffering of Dreyer’s Joan of Arc, Renee Maria Falconetti, at the hands of a gang of ugly and bitter men. Watson’s Bess communicates with God just as Joan of Arc did – in a way that suggests madness or at least heresy to everyone else – while von Trier makes it clear that she is not deluded. The landscape stills that break up the film, set to 70s rock, have been described as a God’s eye view (Jethro Tull, Deep Purple – who knew that God had this kind of taste?).

But the most Tarkovskian moment in that film might be the most problematic moment – the very last shot. If you remember, Bess sacrificed herself for her husband, and her body was dropped into the sea from a ship. Then bells ring. You hear them. You also – and this has divided every audience I’ve seen it with – see them. You see bells ringing in the sky.

How do you make sense of this? I think you have to go back to the last chapter of Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev. In medieval Russia, Rublev witnesses a young man, Boriska, who claims he knows how to make bells – that he has learnt his late father’s art. Boriska casts the bell, which successfully rings – and then he confesses that he never learnt the art, that he was operating on faith alone. Seeing this, Rublev breaks his vow of silence and his great career as an icon painter begins.

It is a basic statement of hope and faith, the impossible or the miraculous – the bells ringing when they should or could not — and when appropriated by von Trier in Breaking the Waves it suggested a form of hope, or maybe just a belief in the value of a resolved ending, that evaporated sometime before the making of Antichrist and Melancholia and has not returned yet, if it ever will.

ENDS

By Lyndon Hood

DAY ONE The minister has tasked me with investigating the state of workplace safety in New Zealand. After that she went back to the departmental budget – as I left I heard her telling someone there was a recession on and there was no money for new carpets or filing cabinets or air conditioning and there were people in Christchurch who would be grateful to have carpets at all.

First priority: background. Examined the departmental statistics.

We have, actually, been known to prosecute employers. Not sure how to feel about this, officially. One might consider it to be Doing Our Jobs, but there is also the need to balance this with letting employers, who are the lifeblood of our economy, do whatever they like. This is called Ease Of Doing Business.

I stopped in to see how the inspectorate was going. He said he was fine.

On the way out I sprained my ankle on a hole in the carpet. I filled out a form about it.

The form gave me a papercut.

DAY TWO I asked the minister what measures the Government was taking to improve workplace safety. She said the were allowing employers with better safety records to pay lower ACC premiums, as well as restricting union access so the whiny socialists wouldn’t distract anyone or get jammed in important machinery.

I asked whether the ACC matter might encourage under-reporting of accident and risks. As might the 90 day trial period.

She told me if I were any sharper I might cut myself. I told her I had cut myself, yesterday, on a piece of paper. We agreed that was not best risk management practice, but I assured her I had filled out a form about it.

She told me not to do so in future.

Had lunch on the Wellington waterfront. Wharf very pretty in the sunshine. Safety rails often minimal or even absent. There was not even a sign saying Warning Do Not Fall Into The Harbour.

“Don’t people fall into the harbour?” I asked the gentleman sitting beside me.

“Mostly not,” he replied.

I said that was interesting because of my job.

“Are you from OSH or something?”

I explained that the functions formerly served by Occupational Safety and Health had been subsumed by the Department of Labour.

DAY THREE My report must be accessible. I tried to explain the principles of risk management to a man at the pub.

Consider, I told him, the statistical chance of a bad outcome, multiplied by the cost of it happening.

He wanted to see how it worked in practice, so I got out my departmental calculator. The cheap plastic cover cracked and I received a small shock, the jolt from which cause me to knock over and break my wine glass, cutting myself quite badly.

I explained the irony of the situation to the paramedic and added that, since I was not at work, I could safely fill out a form.

He asked about my job and I told him, no, it’s the Department of Labour now and, since he looked like he had ideas, asked him if he had any ideas.

He told me we should reform ACC so that after an industrial disaster the jobless victims can mount a court case to extract compensation from the bankrupt company. Or something like that – the painkillers were kicking in by then.

He also added that I “should all be fired”.

I felt in the circumstances it would be reckless to disagree.

And that does sound like the kind of approach the minister might like. It would certainly make her job easier.

DAY FOUR Spent the day reading the proceedings of the Pike River inquiry. Executive summary: they got confused between the kind of mine that produces coal and the kind of mine that explodes when you poke it.

Googled “coolstore”. Am now nervous of the fridge.

Note: in future, keep a close eye on people who work with things that might explode or catch fire. Except, of course, if they are connected to the film industry.

Had been sitting awkwardly due to hand. Sore back.

What happens to all these forms? Under this National government we now only have have Front Line Officers and no Back Room Bureaucrats, but I assumed someone was dealing with them. Probably the same people who deal with the employer inspection reports.

Is it supposed to be me?

DAY FIVE To be credible, my report must investigate heart of economy. I told the minister I was going to go on a fact-finding trip to Auckland.

“Well, be careful,” she said, “They can be dangerous.”

“What, Aucklanders?”

“No – facts.”

On the plane up the young lady beside me explained that public transport has a lower relative injury rate than private. Decided to catch a train.

Are they usually that full?

Do they usual come to a complete halt like that?

We were rescued not a moment too soon; we had just discovered later the people in the carriage in front had declared the collapse of civilisation and were making serious preparations to capture and eat us.

I too, arguably, had some thoughts of cannibalism – at least, I was seeing the appeal of the Rugby World Cup or Transport minister’s head on a platter. But it is as well things went no further. It’s not that I was personally afraid – I believe I am too stringy to be a high priority – but it would have been professionally embarrassing.

At the station I tracked down the manager and suggested an emergency buffet car might mitigate such risks in future.

“What, are you from OSH or something?” he said.

I showed him my stationery and made him point to the bit on the letterhead that says “Department of Labour”. Then I shut my suitcase on his fingers. He won’t make that mistake again in a hurry.

DAY SIX Returning to the office I noticed a room was sealed off with red tape.

There were signs and so forth but naturally, the first thing I did was cut through the red tape.

I discovered later some significant piles of unprocessed accident forms had begun to moulder. In the still air, this raised methane levels to unacceptable levels and the area had been sealed off.

At least, I suppose that’s why everything exploded.

It was generally reckoned to be a victory for ease of doing business.

*********

by Brannavan Gnanalingham

Werner Herzog has gained such a reputation for films and documentaries on overblown figures attempting to do big things (and invariably failing), that The Cave of Forgotten Dreams has already been dismissed by die-hard Herzog fans as being lesser Herzog, even though its critical reception has been almost entirely enthusiastic. Maybe the film’s embrace of 3D and/or Herzog’s recent appearance on The Simpsons led people to assume he was starting to relax a bit. Yet Herzog’s simple pleasure in showing the opposite of what his career has been built on – small people doing big things, despite not setting out to do so – and the sheer beauty of the 3D images, make The Cave of Forgotten Dreams a remarkable experience.

The Chauvet caves feature art from around 32,000 years ago. The caves themselves are shut off to the public, and Herzog managed to get a limited chance to film the art work. He decided to use 3D, a technique he had previously derided, in order to capture the contours and movement of the art itself. The images, almost so close that you feel like you can touch them, are so stunning, that you emerge from the film as if from a dream. The title has an obvious allusion to Plato’s allegory of the Cave – the idea that the shadows are the closest way to viewing reality, even if this reality is merely an illusion. And, as Herzog releases us from the cave, it is the light, the knowledge, and our overall understanding of this reality, which he is challenging.

The art itself is spectacular. By using 3D, Herzog manages to show how the “primitive” artists used the contours of the rocks for spatial and aesthetic purposes, how metaphors and symbols were used (though for what, that’s anyone’s guess), and the intricacy of the lines and strokes. The film can easily be enjoyed simply as an exhibition.

Yet the film is typically freewheeling – hung together by thematic concerns rather than any strict narrative build-up. There are the typically eccentric figures that populate many of Herzog’s films, interview subjects who occasionally provide useful information on the caves and the paintings themselves, but who also have hints of the obsessive. There is also a cheery critique of those who valorise Picasso’s modernism (these paintings were doing it thousands of years before Picasso “invented” modern art). The film also features Herzog’s undeniable presence, and his constant philosophising. I for one have no qualms about hearing Herzog’s musings – perhaps it’s his deadpan German accent, or the fact that his seemingly throwaway comments re-contextualise the images (even if they take a bit of deciphering).

In a typically Herzogian flourish, the film ends with an almost unbelievable coda featuring mutant albino crocodiles living in the run-off of a nuclear power plant (!). Throughout the film, Herzog struggled to determine what the art meant, the context of the paintings themselves, and the day-to-day realities of the artists themselves. The crocodiles may create a similar reaction in a few millennia’s time – judging by the audience reaction to it, the confusion exists today – just what will our descendants make of our behaviour? What will our legacy be?

Herzog’s subjects throughout his career appear to lack a common thread, and he barely seems to discriminate in who might appeal as a subject – whether it is the Saharan mirages of Fata Morgana (perhaps a clear link to Cave of Forgotten Dreams), ski jumpers (The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner) or the mysterious case of Kasper Hauser (The Enigma of Kasper Hauser) or failed Spanish conquistadores (Aguirre, Wrath of God). Herzog’s films have often looked at figures whose behaviour cannot be rationally explained; characteristics such as folly, madness, obsession, misplaced faith, and blindness (both literal and metaphorical) frequently abound.

Frequently the images themselves are simply the end result of folly – the stunningly beautiful and disturbing images of burning oil fields in the aftermath of the first Gulf War in Lessons of Darkness. In that film, the landscape has a voice removed from humans, but inextricably tied to what humans have done to it. And, Herzog’s legendary travails match his interests – e.g. his notorious relationship with his frequent lead Klaus Kinski, or the strained circumstances in which his epic on Peruvian rubber, Fitzcarraldo, was shot.

Herzog’s films have also looked at the fragility of language, whether it’s the subject of his 1971 documentary The Land of Silence and Darkness, Fini Straubinger, who was deaf and blind or the last man to leave a leper colony in Last Words, a lyre player who refuses to speak. Or, conversely, the baselessness of an overuse of language – such as the auctioneers in How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck. The smallness of humankind’s expressions however can leave lasting scars on the landscape, even if the individuals are easily ‘squashable’ or even if the individuals don’t quite fit in with society.

His films have also been nomadically restless – unlike his ‘70s New German cinema contemporaries who had been read as trying to express then-contemporary (West) Germanic issues, Herzog’s films have touched every continent, and explored peoples from all sorts of different backgrounds right from the beginning of his filmic career (everywhere from Alaska to Antarctica) – an almost universal conception of humankind, beyond what, to Herzog’s mind, are the silly conceptions of ideology and nationalism. This has led to the occasional criticism of Herzog of aesthetics trumping politics, most notably in films like Lessons of Darkness and Ballad of the Little Soldier.

Herzog’s individuals try to stake their puny claims against something much, much bigger – nature, space, history, and in his films invariably fail. He is even willing to acknowledge when he himself comes up short – e.g. like his inability to discover what really drove Timothy Treadwell in Grizzly Man. But in Cave of Forgotten Dreams, far more so than in his previous characters, the ecstasy for both Herzog and the audience comes from the fact that these individuals, unknown and forgotten in an historical sense, have managed to do something so simple, but something so spectacular – they simply communicated, and as a result, they left a thing of beauty behind.

ENDS

by Gordon Campbell

- “How fortuitous Grampaw, that you turned 22 right when music peaked” – William Bowers, Pitchfork, August 2011

There’s a natural tendency to put the music of one’s glory days up on a pedestal. On rare occasions, nostalgia can even inspire fresh works of genius, as with the Rob Tyner clip below. That said, the angst over the retro state of popular music nowadays is fast becoming a pretty irritating meme. Supposedly, we’re living in a cultural moment where everything echoes what’s been done (better) before, and no-one consequently feels any emotional stake in the transient, totally hermetic experiences offered by their Ipod shuffle.

For starters…. when has popular music ever not been conceivable in retro terms? Not when the hallowed 1956 Elvis was being inspired by Hank Williams, Dean Martin, the Carter Family and Junior Parker…or when the Rolling Stones and every British bar band were echo-ing Muddy Waters and Elmore James, or when the Ramones were referencing Phil Spector’s heyday, or when 1980s hip hop was referencing Kraftwerk, or when J. Dilla was sampling Raymond Scott etc etc The only difference being that audiences in the past often didn’t recognise the tradition being tapped, and took the music as sui generis acts of genius.

Now we’re all on the same level playing field, access wise. It may seem cynical, but the loss of that prior sense of privilege seems to be a big part of what’s being lamented by critics like Simon Reynolds in his book Retromania. Oh for the days when punk was new and so were its best and brightest fans, and only a handful of people had the inside running on genius. Yet the fact everyone is now privy to history’s treasures is a really good thing isn’t it? Beforehand, access to the musical past called for fair lashings of fanaticism, the money to import the stuff, and/or the good fortune of being friends with someone who had a terrific record collection. Not many people would want to go back to those days.

Today’s abundance doesn’t mean the end of tragic musical geekery. Nor does it mean the past is always being ripped out of context and treated as mere curiosity or pastiche, as Carl Wilson suggested in his recent NYT blog post. Speaking personally, unlimited access to the past has enabled the discovery of rockabilly acts of genius like “The Raging Sea” by Gene Maltais, and I’m not sure that people would have been any more sensitive to the context for that sort of thing back in the day, either. Almost everyone in the 1950s would have written off rockabilly musicians as a bunch of redneck Elvis wannabes from a tragically limited gene pool – and they’d have been half right. (Wilson discounts such discoveries as mere search-and-rescue missions, carried out among the detritus of disposable capitalism.)

Nowadays. we can all be our own Pitchfork.. That’s good.

Still, as Carl Wilson says, the 1990s revival in particular does pose a few problems in retro style, given that a defining quality of Generation X was its bitter, sarcastic rejection of nostalgia. As usual, it is worth quoting Wilson at length on this :

Long before we had much life to look back on, North Americans my age knew that nostalgia was a sickness…..[Being] in our teens and 20s in the early 1990s, we had grown up in the penumbra of the great eclipsing nostalgia of the baby boomers, with their 1950s “Happy Days”; their 1960s (the Greatest Decade Ever Told); and their serial losses of innocence, via the Kennedys’ assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate, etc. — a record of re-virginization to rival any evangelical chastity-pledge campaign…..

We bristled when we heard them wax self-congratulatory about ending segregation and war, even as they voted for politicians who would de-regulate banks and invade Iraq (the first time). We resented their monopoly on cultural space….And when they did briefly notice us, in the Generation X media frenzy of the mid-1990s, it was only to reduce diverse people and experiences to catchwords like “slackers” and “grunge” and dismiss paralyzing economic and ecological anxiety as privileged extended-adolescent angst….
Privileged angst certainly was part of it, as Wilson concedes. Ironically though, even those despised 1960s hippies had once faced the same dilemma. The boomers too, had initially resented having their own culture marketed back at them, via say, the Broadway musical Hair. How they sneered at the time at the CBS marketing campaign that claimed “The Man Can’t Bust Our Music !”…Some time afterwards though, the hippie survivors and fellow travelers underwent a conversion experience, and became the salesmen for their own cultural significance and all round generational awesomeness. To date, as Wilson explains, Gen X has only got as far as the resentment stage.

If my generation had anything in common as a group….I would say we were marked by two traits: our dislike of nostalgia and our irritation whenever our barely formed narratives were appropriated and marketed back at us. So it brings on something of an identity crisis to see Gen X’s formative years become part of the cycle of retro revivalism. How does an anti-nostalgic generation deal with the human reflex to sentimentalize its youth?

Wilson’s answer? First, he thinks that Gen X really should retain its reflexive, almost pathological sarcasm. Beyond that, Wilson and Simon Reynolds have been filtering the past through what they (and others) have chosen to describe as ‘hauntology’. Again, best to leave Wilson – easily the most perceptive person currently writing about popular music – to make the case for this so-called ‘hauntology’ himself, :

The melodies and rhythms are reminiscent of catchy pop songs of previous decades, but recorded in a way that simulates the effects of age — fuzzy and staticky — as if worn out or heard at a great distance through a grimy haze. It is music that’s discernible, but less than fully present.
Wilson doesn’t give any examples of what he’s talking about. Yet to my mind, hauntology’s most accomplished practitioner would have to be Tom Krell, who performs under the name How to Dress Well. (Ironically, Krell is only 23 years old, and is not some grizzled, bitter Gen-X veteran.) On his beautiful video for “Decisions” and on other tracks from the debut HTDW album Love Remains. Krell weaves his way from memory to desire, and back again. Here’s how I described it a few months ago :

The best way I can describe How To Dress Well is that it sounds like a lament for the ghost of Keith Sweat, or for mid 80s Michael Jackson. Krell hollow outs and gives spooky spatial resonance to old school r&b, his falsetto vocal rising and falling in distorted fragments throughout the [deliberately blown out] mix. In contrast to r&b’s usual lubricious celebration of the booty call, How To Dress Well seems more about the memory of desire, doing justice to beauty only after it has taken its leave.
Here’s the ‘ Decisions’ video, and – in a triple shot of retro-magnificence – a Boards of Canada soundtrack tribute to the French actor Jean Pierre-Leaud, who managed, in the 1973 film The Mother and the Whore to settle a few scores of his own with any easy nostalgia for the rebellious spirit of Paris 1968.

In his recent Kim Hill interview on RNZ – Simon Reynolds exemplified hauntology via Ariel Pink and those Brit bands (he cited Boards of Canada) who have been busily reworking the sound FX created by the BBC sonic workshop for old British children’s TV shows. To Carl Wilson, such use of the past provides a political escape route from Gen X ‘s moral dilemma – essentially, by enabling the past to be celebrated, while explicitly conceding it be a facsimile, distorted by current needs and knowledge :
There’s a model here for nostalgia that doesn’t wish away the distance between past and present; doesn’t romanticize the past as tragic and heroic; and doesn’t simply trivialize it (as so much 1980s nostalgia did) as trite and silly. Instead, it highlights our compulsion to interrogate our ghosts in search of meaning — and the inexorable way they slip our grasp. That seems like one way for a ’90s rewind to amount to more than a mess of pastel scrunchies and rock-rap reunions. As we know from remix culture, zombie movies and Heraclitus, what’s revived is never truly faithful to the original; it consists of the productive distortion the present permits. But it can remind us that memory is material and nostalgia is never transparent; the past doesn’t truly come back, and the future never really arrives.
Very occasionally, those boundaries between the past and the future can be dissolved altogether, as in this lovely [and subsequently hand coloured] piece of creative dance from 1897.

Footnote : Part of what I’ve been getting at here is that for better or worse, journalistic fashion is also as transient as any catwalk moment, or as the heyday of any musical genre that you care to name. ( How quaintly dated Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson already seem.) In the 1960s, it was Time magazine style that ruled the roost, and this hilarious cover story on Joan Baez (from November 23, 1962) manages to unwittingly convey a cultural cluelessness worthy of Don Draper himself :

Mercurial, subject to quickly shifting moods, gentle, suspicious, wild and frightened as a deer, worried about the bugs she kills….Actually, friends insist, she is honest and sincere to a fault, sensitive, kind and confused. She once worked to near exhaustion at the Perkins School for the Blind near Boston.

Like many folk singers, she is earnestly political. She has taken part in peace marches and ban-the-bomb campaigns. Once in Texas she broke off singing in the middle of a concert to tell the audience that even at the risk of embarrassing a few of them, she wanted to say that it made her feel good to see some colored people in the room. “They all clapped and cheered,” she says. “I was so surprised and happy.”

She is a lovely girl who has always attracted numerous boys, but her wardrobe would not fill a hatbox. She wears almost no jewelry, but she has one material bauble. When a Jaguar auto salesman looked down his nose at the scruffily dressed customer as she peered at a bucket-seat XKE sports model, she sat down, wrote a giant check, and bought it on the spot. Wildly, she dashes across the desert in her Jaguar, as unsecured as a grain of flying sand.

“I have no real roots,” she says. “Sometimes, when I walk through a suburb with all its tidy houses and lawns, I get a real feeling of nostalgia. I want to live there and hear the screen door slam. And when I’m in New York, it sometimes smells like when I was nine, and I love it. I look back with great nostalgia on every place I’ve ever lived. I’m a sentimental kind of a goof…”

Those kids! They’re confused and – underneath – every bit as materialistic as we are, and just as keen to own a nice house in the suburbs. No threat to the social order here, Middle America….

ENDS

by Mark P. Williams

The representation of conflict in fiction raises an important ethical problem – what terms are appropriate to representing warfare through fiction? Representing conflict is arguably one of the most continuous challenges to understanding the nature of literature, or artistic expression in general. It is often seen as the very limit of literary expression.

An important part of this question is whether fictions ought to be treated as a form of immediate, visceral engagement – or as a meditative, intellectualised and more considered form of engagement. Key here is the question of whether it is valid for literature to address recent, real events—9/11, Israel/Palestine, Afghanistan-Iraq—through de-familiarised, non-realist terms, or even through fiction at all. Or should such ground be ceded solely to journalism as its natural (realist) province?

Attendant upon it is the issue of emotional and/or ideological proximity of fictional representations to recent, actual conflicts. Non-realist representation is implicitly a fantasy, a visceral, subjective investment, which might be construed as wish fulfilment or whimsy, or exploitation. Such a stance is always context dependent, always fraught and always needs to be reconsidered in light of specific instances; I argue that any attempt at representing a conflict realistically is as implicitly ideological and no less visceral or subjective – and no more or less proximate to wish fulfilment or whimsy than more (explicitly) fantastical approaches.

The notion of realism is already questionable when it comes to the representation of present conflicts not only because of the vast departure from the norm involved in describing extreme events but also because the narrative position, readerly position and authorial position are already in dispute. If realism implies third person omniscient narration or a clear narrative of causes and effects, then we need to consider that in a present conflict there can be neither omnipresent knowledge of the reasons for all events and their consequences, nor a fully subjective exploration of causes and effects – if only because the causes may appear to be so radically distanced from the effects as to be functionally invisible.

Equally, if we consider realism in terms of its proximity to objectivity then even a ‘realistic’ portrayal of a present conflict may be so ideologically overdetermined that attributing primacy to any particular cause is already to take a position on the conflict as a whole that could be perceived from another perspective as being biased or misinformed. Can we escape or negate this situation? I want to consider a number of fictions recently published (or recently published in English), ranging from allegory to genre fantasy, to science fiction, to graphic novels, to surrealist fictions, which seem to be addressing the same central problems.

Necessary Distance, Uncomfortable Proximity

African conflict is perhaps one of the greatest embarrassments to the West’s collective claims to have progressed beyond colonialist exploitation under postmodernity. I aim to focus briefly on two very different fictions which take partially estranged approaches to the realities of contemporary African conflict, such as child soldiers, while otherwise maintaining an apparently strong commitment to realism: Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation and the graphic novel series Unknown Soldier by Joshua Dysart, illustrated variously by Alberto Ponticelli, Rick Veitch and Pat Masioni.

Iweala’s novel is set in an unnamed African nation which is split by war, where children are taken from their families and forced to fight. It follows the narrative of one child named Agu, whose attempt to escape from the destruction around him leads him directly into the midst of the soldiers laying waste to his world. The story is told in a terse present tense from Agu’s limited perspective as he is forced to commit acts of violence: ‘I am not a bad boy. I am not a bad boy. I am a soldier and soldier is not bad if he is killing. I am telling this to myself because soldier is supposed to be killing, killing, killing’. ^[1] Brutality is rendered into short, staccato bursts of prose which emulate the essential simplicity of gestures but force the reader to consider what lies beyond this limit in more detail as Agu constantly returns, attempting again and again to think the unthinkable about his own actions and finally get beyond them.

Agu’s subjectivity is constantly strained by the imposition of violent forces, driving him into patterns that he finds repellent but is unable to fully articulate: ‘If they are ordering me KILL, I am killing, SHOOT, I am shooting, ENTER WOMAN, I am entering woman and not even saying anything even if I am not liking it’ (Iweala: 168). Throughout the text, his articulacy grows, and he returns to the unrepresentable site of his own complicity, struggling against it, he attempts to confront the full horror of his situation. Iweala’s prose is tightly controlled, using understated repetitions of ‘thinking thinking thinking’ to convey Agu’s straining mental state: ‘I am killing everybody, mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, soldier [….] I am thinking thinking. I am thinking that I cannot be doing this anymore.’ (Iweala, ibid.).

The story is a kind of bildungsroman where personal growth has been stunted by the force of the violence exploding around Agu but nevertheless, his desire to be free of his circumstances continues to push against them, to attempt to find a path towards renewal, redemption and development. The narrative as a whole works towards an optimistic ideal: Agu is finally saved from his situation because he is presented with a moment when he has an opportunity to escape and he chooses to walk away when the soldiers move on. His position as a subject has progressed to the point where he is no longer as constrained by the restrictions of the violence around him and he moves towards saving himself. Accordingly the prose begins to change as well and Agu enters a space which is like heaven compared to the hell/purgatory he has lived through. In being largely geographically and historically nonspecific, the narrative gestures towards allegory here: Agu has passed through a space which may be as close to hellishness as can be conceived in a material world.

Similar in its use of defamiliarisation but otherwise much more politically specific, Josh Dysart’s graphic novel series Unknown Soldier, illustrated variously by Alberto Ponticelli, Rick Veitch and Pat Masioni, is set in Uganda in 2002. Its central character, Moses Lwanga, is a pacifist doctor who returns from America and finds himself caught up in the conflict between extremist Christians the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Ugandan Army in Acholiland. Dysart’s narrative is a re-imagining of an earlier version of the Unknown Soldier from the 1960s, which has been modified to address contemporary conflicts and published by DC’s Vertigo imprint.

Lwanga has been doubly transformed. Not only has he seen his Ugandan home devastated by warfare and his personal relationships shattered by the conflict – but his own mind has been radically transfigured. The intrusion into his life of conflict reveals that somewhere along the way he has undergone a process that has made him into a super-soldier. This recovery of a hidden, violent personality makes him into a Jekyll and Hyde figure, alternately healing and killing, and also allows us to plunge into more subjective modes of representation. To the society around him he has become an avatar which fuses contemporary conflict with the enraged spirits of traditional myth. As a character he is literally divided, suffering memory lapses and not only demonstrating contrary personality traits but actively struggling against a war-driven persona that seems increasingly to have been imposed upon him from without. Despite this, Lwanga is never an unsympathetic character. The extremes of his personality and the fact that he conceals his face beneath bandages serve to render the proximity between internal and external conflict more understandable even where they remain mysterious: he is an Everyman figure, his actions might be those of anyone faced with such extremes.

The Everyman figure is a popular and suggestive means for linking the representation of conflict with the apparent antinomies which it invokes, of the historical and the mythic or fantastical. In an Everyman narrative, a realist worldview finds itself haunted by a persistent symbolism, where every action reflects or reflects upon multiple histories of similar or related actions; here reality is permeable, and the fantastic slips through the membrane.

Symbolic Violence and Haunting

In Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows’ graphic narrative 303 (2007), realism is haunted by a fantasy which uncovers the layers of historical circumstance that have brought this particular historical moment to fruition. ^[2] Ennis’s central character is a Russian Colonel in Afghanistan who has seemingly seen every conflict of the late twentieth century. Through his felt connection to his past and to the conflicts that have shaped the world around him one century’s imperialist history becomes a weapon to bring down another century’s covert foreign policy expansionism.

A lone Russian spetznaz (special forces) veteran in contemporary Afghanistan finds evidence directly linking the brutality of warfare that surrounds him to the socio-political powers that govern the world from comfortable office desks elsewhere. Crossing into the heartlands of America, he sets out on an impossible quest to use a single bullet from a British 303 rifle, left over from British Imperialist ventures into Afghanistan, to bring down the governing forces in the 2003 Afghan conflict with a single shot.

The whole narrative is permeated with fantasies, from the possibility of doing the impossible (changing history with a single shot, crossing the world to do it), to the historical spectres of each landscape he passes through: the Imperialist ghosts of Afghanistan’s ‘Great Game’ to the ghosts of gunfighters, natives and pioneers in the Old West. The Russian is haunted by all the personal ghosts of his career asking ‘why’: his Nazi-killer father demanding to know what he died for; to the British SAS man who reveals to him the evidence of money underpinning political callousness, before dying of his wounds; to an American sheriff attempting to deal with the local crimes of a rapacious neo-liberal capitalism working its illegal immigrants to death up close, while condemning them from a comfortable distance.

As a character, the Russian Colonel is an agent of loss: representing Soviet Russia’s own failed venture in Afghanistan and the fall of old political systems. Each side, each group or faction, representing its own complex history phantomatically, through echoing fragments rather than complete stories attempts to speak their losses through him, to demand to know if their deaths have made the world a better place. History is personified as the multitude of phantoms which surround this lost figure, protesting that the present has never respected the past. It is a harsh vision of cycles of warfare governed by cynical politics, which create monstrous and fantastical entities turning human lives into fodder for their self-perpetuation. In this brief but brutal narrative, war is a predatory organism which politicians ride into power, a combination of machine and beast that is all appetite and production of further appetites, while people are either the voluntary and involuntary parts of that machine or the food for the beast.

Beasts and machines appear prominently in Brian K. Vaughn and Niko Henrichon’s Pride of Baghdad (2006). ^[3] This graphic novel takes on the Iraq war from the perspective of a pride of lions who have escaped from the city zoo during one of the US airstrikes against the city. The talking animals face the deserted city as a larger zoo for containing still larger animals than themselves and narrowly avoid a ‘stampede’ of tanks, observing that creatures so large and aggressive cannot possibly have predators. They meet an embittered turtle which can remember the last time the two-legged creatures tore up their environment looking for black liquid.

The lions themselves are ambivalent towards their status both in captivity and at liberty. They muse repeatedly on the nature of their situation; they speak to one another as once proud beings reduced to imprisonment, and in being ‘liberated’ from one prison only to find themselves in a still larger one. One lioness argues passionately that the only freedom worth having is that which is worked for and earned, not that which is given, and speculates that the power that has freed them may not hold good things for them. With ultimate irony, the external powers which free them from their imprisonment in the zoo actually destroy them. They narrowly escape from a corrupt and decadent bear – which has been fighting and killing other lions for the sport of its human masters in a palatial building – when a squad of US troops shoots them down.

These two stories are meditations on present contemporary conflicts from strongly critical perspectives which employ distinctly non-realist techniques of estrangement within overarching worlds which are strongly realist in their approach to modern warfare. Without the visible, physical presence of history’s ghosts to the Russian soldier the narrative would seem one-sided or anti-American, but he is also haunted by the ghost of the Sheriff and thereby by the Sheriff’s own narrative of loss, both personal and ideological. Similarly, without the musings of the lions on their own nature and on whether the intentions of their relative captors and liberators are significant to their actual situation, and how much they have changed by their circumstances, it might operate more didactically as a narrative. It is helped in this by the authors observing that it is based on true events about lions being found loose in Baghdad, so that its fantastical beast-fable aspects are located against the ambivalent realities of a present conflict which already seems to test the boundaries of realist representation.

Rupture and Representation

While these fictions are openly contentious, they do not rupture the literary form of representation being employed in the process of engaging with conflict. Rupture and the transgression of form are the province of surrealist and avant-garde texts, and their appropriateness for representing conflict is a vexed question.

It is exactly this problem of the application of surrealism (particularly to on-going conflict) which the authors Etgar Keret and Samir El-Youssef place at the centre of their book Gaza Blues. ^[4] The pair uses widely differing approaches in representation of the relative sides of Israel/Palestine, working through the mundane and the aberrant to question the underlying nature of the division. Gaza Blues’ narrative strategies and its means of addressing a thorny subject are often confrontational, while the book as a whole presents itself as a problematic debate where characters discuss means of representation.

The use of surrealism versus realism is played out in fictions from both Palestinian and Israeli perspectives with wry black humour and a quiet self-subversion. Samir El-Youssef’s writer narrator has a brief argument with his friend about the inappropriateness of using surrealism to address the present era of the Palestinian cause where he is told in no uncertain terms that realism is the essential mode for dramatizing political struggle.

In attempting to find a representational language appropriate to such a divisive subject matter, and such a contentious topic – a conflict which entails enacting conflict in the very attempt to represent it (can representing this conflict avoid being either pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian?) – the text demonstrates how it is impossible for the reader to escape complicity on either one level or another. Ultimately, the dialectic of Keret’s narratives and El Youssef’s narrative, calls attention to the apparitional split in representing conflict: a single narrative, no matter how ‘unbiased’, or how meticulously it dramatizes the sides of a conflict, can still be understood as consisting of one specific representation (and side) of the conflict.

Gaza Blues employs literary representation as both a reflection of and comment upon the conditions of its own production which necessarily strives towards becoming something more: a critique of the discourse it will generate among its readers. This is a practice akin to that undertaken by the seven authors of Seaton Point (see last month’s Werewolf) but here the split is the important aspect of the mechanics of textual production which is being highlighted. To blend their styles and produce a text which was a unity of plot and structure would be to negate the disunity that both authors are attempting to highlight through their very different approaches. Similarly, it might have entailed a degree of stylistic compromise between the ironies of textual surrealism and those of textual realism as opposing poles which would have taken something away from the power of either writer’s work. The divided and unified text of Gaza Blues serves as a multiply-coded metaphor for the conflict that both writers are addressing.

The novels of Pierre Guyotat constitute a more transgressive attack on the validity of realist representation for dealing with conflict. Guyotat’s Eden Eden Eden and Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers are dense narratives of repetitive violence, rape and murder acted out against the bleak background of a militarised and counter-realist worldview. They are Guyotat’s attempt to address the brutalising environment of the French colonial conflict in Algeria, which he took part in as a young man, and are a particularly strong instance of transgressive narrative strategies being employed to navigate the exchanges between real and fictional violence.

Guyotat’s novel is an essentially fantastic fiction which uses surrealism to address the historical reality of conflict. Eden Eden Eden is a single-sentence novel whose repetitions and rhythms cycle the reader through a seemingly unending round of exploitation violence and abuse, while his most directly autobiographical text, Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers is – like the Chants du Maldoror – divided into seven ‘chants’ of successive bleakness where realist details are governed by an apparent dream logic.

Guyotat (pictured left) draws on Lautréamont’s Maldoror to estrange the French Algerian conflict from its original historical contexts and make it something trans-historical, attached to contemporary modernity itself. The intellectual traditions that Guyotat draws upon are those of the avant-garde anti-art movements which attack all modes of life within a conflict setting as complicit with that conflict. This is a critical position close to that of what we tend to think of now as the 1968 generation, but Guyotat’s texts are harsher and in certain respects somewhat closer to the critical demolitions of the ’68 generation by Michel Houellebecq: they attack the social values which emerge from war as well as those which initiate war; Guyotat’s novels are assaults on the reader as a historically complicit actor in the action being represented to them.

As a literary tactic, this approach is brutal and alienating in an entirely different way. The reader is confronted by a mode of representation so completely at odds with the literary tastes of the moment that they undergo an agonistic relationship with the material which is presumably intended to function as a kind of vernacular modernism: the language for expressing the horrors of conflict is a stylistic ‘horror’ which produces an internal conflict of responses in its readership. (One of Guyotat’s English translators is supposed to have had such emotional difficulty with his prose and the actions it describes that they destroyed the manuscript they were working on.) For a surrealist assault on standards of representation, non-linear plotting, surrealism, the coining of dense neologism and the use of disturbing language and description become tools for confronting the reader’s passivity, forcing it to become an active response to the text—the logic runs: the real horrors of war are worse than these words, so these words will be the worst words you can imagine. From this perspective, the more repellent the language employed to describe contemporary conflict, the more effective the representation of conflict to the reader. Both Eden Eden Eden and Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers are difficult, unpleasant reading experiences.

Disjunctive or surrealist narrative engagements with conflict insist on the totalising negation of the actual world and the exploration of a radical alternative space. Where disjunctive or surrealist texts subvert realism it is in order to create a critical distance from the politics of realist representation, to thereby launch an attack on the values that would conserve the social status quo, i.e. that validate the conflict that they are addressing. This is a critical characteristic which science fiction and fantasy share with surrealism.

SF-Fantasy: Constructing from the Ruins

War can is a device in science fiction and fantasy fiction which enables a writer to explore all social strata of their fictional society at its extremes, where its habits have to justify themselves because they are at a moment of crisis and confrontation; conflict in SF-Fantasy can be useful for exploring values, something common to classic texts such as Samuel R. Delany’s Neveryona and Tales of Neveryon, which make this point fairly explicitly, to more recent innovations on SF-Fantasy such as novels identified with the ‘New Weird’ such as Steph Swainston’s Fourlands novels which are thematically centred around conflict and stasis.

Swainston’s Fourlands novels The Year of Our War, No Present Like Time and The Modern World explore the developments of a society at war, attempting to come to terms with its own history as an imperial power and with the fact that it is governed by immortals. Social stasis and social change are visibly challenging forces which are both energised and imperilled by the threat of alien invaders, The Insects, who come from another world entirely. The Insects have stripped other worlds, or other universes, entirely of their resources and are a faceless, numberless threat to the stability of the Fourlands. Yet that threat to stability only serves to demonstrate that there are already existing tensions within the society, much of which are focalised around the life of the newest recruit to the circle of immortals, Jant, the messenger, who, because of his unique physiognomy and genetics, is also the only immortal who can fly.

We could consider Swainston’s central novum the immortals, and Jant’s unique status among them, and the threat of the Insects, and the revealing of the alternate universes, as a colossal metaphorical treatment of the subject of modernity. The summary I have given suggests that we read her novels allegorically as some development on Walter Benjamin’s famous image of the Angelus Novum being blown backwards by the winds rising over the catastrophic broil of modernity, but although they may invite such reading they are not written as allegories. Swainston’s novels take very seriously the mechanics, social and military, of the idea of conflict. Flight, to the extent that it is a metaphor here, functions on the level of its visceral appeal as the liberation from the ground; Jant exhausts himself with his flying, to the point where we get a strong sense of the necessity of effort to flight. As Swainston said at a bookshop Q&A in Coventry in 2003 when promoting her debut novel, much of the details about flight came from her own experiences hang-gliding, but it is also a realistically useful device to give a perspective from which a narrative of conflict can gain a (literal) birds’ eye view. The attention to ‘realism’ in portraying the effects and necessities of conflict (armed and ideological) provides its own forms of estrangement which lend themselves very well not only to metaphor but to the central forces of fantasy: a world turned upside down creating a new perspective; the ideological construction of oppositional forces, and the distance (or proximity) between them; and the commingling of reality and imagination.

Adam Roberts deals with war and representation very suggestively in his novel Swiftly (2008) which is set in a nineteenth-century England where the voyages of Swift’s Lemuel Gulliver were historical documents. This has had a number of important effects but the main narrative ones are that the English used the Lilliputians as slave labour to produce ever more finely crafted mechanical devices, the Yahoos as guerrilla war units and even recruit some Houyhnhnms to the cavalry, while the French employ the superior size of the Brobdingnagians to drag an invasion fleet across the Channel. The novel charts the French and Brobdingnagian invasion of England from the perspectives of the former wife of an industrialist overthrown by his Lilliputian workers and an English sympathiser with the ‘pacificans’ (Lilliputians, Blefuscadians, Brobdingnagians and others) who helped the French invaders.

Roberts’ main narrative devices would seem to point towards a simple follow-on from Swift in terms of allegorical and critical content, but he pursues the Swiftian details for what they can suggest when joined to other concepts, he not only delves further into the history of science fiction to do this but also stretches out the idea of representation of conflict to alternate scales, estranging it and drawing other interesting sources, such as Voltaire and H.G. Wells into this Swiftian background in a way akin to Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neil’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. A central idea of the novel is that what at first appears to be the major threat, the most important conflict, is actually far less significant when viewed on a different scale and that the chains of being which link the scales together are not immediately obvious. A key problem for the reader comes at the point when it becomes apparent that the scale at which the characters themselves operate, the human scale, is ultimately immaterial to whether or not the English or French will even survive until the end of the narrative. After the emphasis on the aftermath of fighting and killing, to learn that the seemingly slow Brobdingnagians—who are unwilling combatants—are closer to being able to prevent a greater coming threat than either human side, the final sections of the text take a distinctive turn into more intriguing SF territories.

The estrangement here operates to emphasise how forces outside of individual and even of social control can dictate the course of events. Conflict and scale become a metaphor for the central human relationship to the universe; what appears as conflict on one scale is actually accord on another, while the successful resolution of conflict between different scales is not necessarily victory but accommodation. Size operates to convey the idea of estrangement or temporal distance where all conflicts seem petty to the hugeness of history (and so it returns again to Swift).

Fighting Through

The representation of conflict in fiction is one of those points of crisis that remind us of its important distinctions from other forms, and its most significant parallels with other forms. Literature is constituted by meetings of forms, thoughts, feelings and impressions through narrative which involves its reader, both while reading and afterwards; to declare that it follows its own logic and must be understood as fully as possible on those terms is not a weak response. The crises of representation caused by attempts to grasp contemporary conflicts in contemporary fiction are not signs of a form at its limits, rather they are a sign of its social status. Like society, literature demands that its rules be re-learned every time they are refreshed or changed— thus, attempting to represent social changes and creating social changes go hand in hand.

Footnotes:
1. Iweala, Uzodinma, Beasts of No Nation (John Murray: London, 2005), p. 29.
2. 303 by Garth Ennis, illustrated by Jacen Burrows (Rentoul, IL: Avatar Press, 2007)
3. Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughn, illustrated by Niko Henrichon (New York: DC Comics, 2006)
4. Etgar Keret and Samir El-Youssef Gaza Blues (London: David Paul Books, 2004).

Mark P. Williams is an academic with interests in contemporary literature and politics who has recently moved to New Zealand. His PhD was entitled ‘Radical Fantasy: A Study of Left Radical Politics in the Fantasy Writing of Michael Moorcock, Angela Carter, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison and China Miéville’.

ENDS

Mike Brown lives in Wellington and is currently writing a PhD thesis on New Zealand vernacular musics. Among the comics he has enjoyed over the years are 2000AD, Love and Rockets, and RAW, and work by Charles Burns, Chester Brown, and Mœbius. Previously having made short films and radio documentaries, and written articles on various subjects, this is his first foray into comic scripting.

These comics depict some our favourite New Zealand folk tales, back-country yarns, ghost stories, urban myths, and other folklore. We have both had a long interest in the folk legends of overseas cultures, but until recently little suspected the existence of New Zealand equivalents, aside from traditional Māori mythology. Then, during academic study a few years back, I (Michael) was surprised to discover how many had been collected here over the years. And that some of these stories were very fine indeed! They also began to awaken memories of urban myths encountered in our own pasts (ever heard of the hitchhiker who flagged rides on the road near Plimmerton, then disappeared leaving the seatbelt still buckled?). Thus was born the idea of translating a select few into the comic medium.

As well as being funny, spooky, or simply cracking yarns, these New Zealand folk tales are interesting for a number of reasons. Some are local variants of an archetypal story or “tale type” found elsewhere in the world; others use motifs that crop up time and again in human narrative. Several could only be set in New Zealand, however, whether for their atmosphere, sense of humour, or for the mingling of Māori and Pākeha elements. Not all are unadulterated folklore, either, but have roots in historical events which have taken on the quality of legend. Each of these stories includes a short précis of such matters.

Since starting work on this idea a few years ago, we have discovered others have already covered similar territory using the comic format. As far back as the 1950s, there was Ross Gore’s It Happened in New Zealand (c.1953, Digest Print), while a fine recent example is Chris Slane’s Maui: Legends of the Outcast (1996, Godwit Publishing). We also plan to eventually collate the comics into a publication. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy our particular take on these New Zealand stories.

Last updated: June 28th, 2011 (Due to small size of original lettering please click to expand pages.)