INVESTIGATE
THE ANZACS
THE REASON FOR GALLIPOLI
If they’d succeeded,
NEW ZEALAND’S BEST NEWS MAGAZINE
they could have saved millions of lives
AUCKLAND’S 175th
LOOK HOW FAR NZ’S BIGGEST CITY HAS COME
VOYAGE TO NEW ZEALAND
WHAT IT WAS REALLY LIKE ON THE PIONEER SHIPS Apr/May 2015, $8.60
MARK STEYN AMY BROOKE & MORE
Contents Apr/May 2015
14
THE ANZACS
For a century we have lamented Gallipoli as a monumental error, but it might be better viewed as a tragic gamble which, if they’d pulled it off, could have shortened the First World War and saved millions of lives. IAN WISHART reviews newspaper coverage of the time
22 YOUNG AUCKLAND
22
A hundred and seventy-five years after its establishment, we revisit the city as it used to be
28 PIONEER VOYAGES
What was it like coming to New Zealand as a migrant in the 1840s? JOHN MCLEAN describes life on the ships that brought out the pioneers
IN HERS
ABSOLUTE POWER
28
MICHAEL MORRISSEY examines the track record of monarchies against other forms of government
Contents
36 38
06 Editor
Speaks for itself, really
08 Communiques Your say
46
10 Steynpost Mark Steyn
12 Right & Wrong David Garrett
32 Gadgets & Mall The latest toys
34 Tech
40 Bookcase
36 Online
46 Movies
38 Science
48 Consider This
A sweet update Internet of Things New autism research
Michael Morrissey Queen & Country, Chappie Amy Brooke
32
rugged smartphones for the Beach, Boat, Bush, mountains, forestrY, farm, Building site, rescue serVices, hunters, hiKers, fishers, campers...
$579 PHONE - SPARK, 546NZ MODEL Android 4.2 Rugged Phone, 3G, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, PTT IP68 Waterproof, Dustproof and Shock Resistant 4.5 Inch Display Dual sim (Spark in Sim 1, Voda/2Deg in Sim 2) Powerful 1.2GHz Quad Core CPU 1GB RAM 8MP Camera Specifically tuned to NZ mobile frequencies; 3G service is Spark 12 month warranty against manufacturing defects
$349 ENTRY-LEVEL PHONE - SPARK, 637NZ MODEL Android 4.2 Rugged Phone, 3G, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth IP68 Waterproof, Dustproof and Shock Resistant 4 Inch Display Dual sim (Spark in Sim 1, Voda/2Deg in Sim 2) 1.3GHz Dual Core CPU 512MB RAM 5MP Camera Specifically tuned to NZ mobile frequencies; 3G service is Spark 12 month warranty against manufacturing defects
$449 PHONE - VODAFONE, 675NZ MODEL Android 4.3 Rugged Phone, WiFi, 3G, GPS, Bluetooth IP68 Waterproof, Dustproof and Shock Resistant 4 Inch Display Dual sim (Can run Vodafone & 2Degrees) Powerful 1.2 GHz Quad Core CPU 1GB RAM 5MP Camera Specifically tuned to NZ mobile frequencies; 3G service is Vodafone or 2Degrees 12 month warranty against manufacturing defects
when the Apr/May going gets tough, the tough 4 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 2015
NEED A PHONE THAT WORKS WHERE OTHERS CAN’T? Our rugged smartphones are waterproof, dustproof and highly shock resistant, and with dual-sim technology you get more cellphone coverage in more places than any phone on offer from any of New Zealand’s three big mobile network providers.
WATERPROOF DUSTPROOF SHOCK RESISTANT HUGE BATTERY LIFE DUAL SIM GPS
0800 747 007 www.ianwishart.com for full range and specs
reach for a rugged smartphone Apr/May 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM
5
EDITORIAL
By Ian Wishart
The witch-sniffers in TV news
I
cannot believe how much moral outrage has been generated by my erstwhile colleagues in the big TV newsrooms over the issue of tourists involved in car smashes. One cannot turn on a news bulletin or read a paper these days without some holier-than-thou, 22 year old High Priestess of Dumb (masquerading as a reporter) lecturing us on foreign drivers being involved in fatalities on the road. So much angst has been whipped up that equally-dumb motorists are taking it upon themselves to seize the keys of drivers whose traffic manners they don’t like. Newsflash: when you actually look at the crash rate, most of them are caused by people from countries where – like us – they drive on the left hand side of the road and follow the same road rules. Tragedies like the recent one that killed three American Mormons in the Waikato are less common, but more genuine as examples of foreign driver error. From 1971 to 1974, annual road fatalities in New Zealand averaged 727 a year.1
For the equivalent period forty years later (2011 to 2014), annualised average road deaths were 285. But even that incredibly low figure doesn’t tell the whole story. In 1971, New Zealand’s population was only 2.8 million. Today, it is nearly five million. In other words, if our traffic death rate was as bad as 1971 today, our road crash fatalities should be somewhere in the region of 1235 a year, not 285. Why has it gone down? The answer is not speed. Our road toll was higher in the years when we had an 80km/h open road speed limit, than it is under the 100km/h speed limit. A developing culture against drink-driving has certainly helped, but the biggest impact on the road toll actually had nothing to do with enforcement campaigns. Instead, technology has introduced much safer cars, and an ongoing programme to re-engineer what were originally wagon trails into modern roads has had a big impact. There’s still much more to be done. Aussies who are used to sweeping highways still manage to kill themselves on dodgy
Our road toll is one fifth of what it used to be in real terms. Yelling at tourists is misplaced anger. Yell at the road designers instead 6 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Apr/May 2015
New Zealand corners and narrow lanes. If you’ve ever driven on American roads you’ll recall their lanes are much wider, allowing greater margin to accommodate errors, than the New Zealand equivalents. There’s another reason foreigners seem to be having more accidents here. There are more of them on the roads. In 1970, a total of 155,000 foreigners visited New Zealand. In the year to January 2015, nearly 2.9 million foreigners visited, and that doesn’t include the foreign students on long term-stay. On any given day, around 8,000 foreign tourists will be travelling on a road somewhere in New Zealand, and most of those journeys will be on the open road where the bulk of the fatalities happen. Unlike California’s 1000 km Pacific Coast Highway, New Zealand’s equivalent State Highway 1 through the North Island has few median barriers, and much narrower lanes. Unlike overseas equivalents, most NZ highways are single lane, not dual carriageways. Our road toll is one fifth of what it used to be in real terms. Yelling at tourists is misplaced anger. Yell at the road designers instead. Oh, and if you want a foreign driver to see you before they pull out, drive with your headlights on during the day. Makes a big difference. References: 1. www.transport.govt.nz/research/roadtoll/ annualroadtollhistoricalinformation/
www.epson.co.nz/precisioncore
COMMUNIQUES
Volume 11, Issue 149, ISSN 1175-1290 [Print] Chief Executive Officer Heidi Wishart Group Managing Editor Ian Wishart NZ EDITION Advertising Josephine Martin 09 373-3676 sales@investigatemagazine.com Contributing Writers: Hal Colebatch, Amy Brooke, Chris Forster, Mark Steyn, Chris Philpott, Michael Morrissey, Miranda Devine, Richard Prosser, Claire Morrow, James Morrow, Len Restall, Laura Wilson, and the worldwide resources of MCTribune Group, UPI and Newscom Art Direction Heidi Wishart Design & Layout Bozidar Jokanovic Tel: +64 9 373 3676 Fax: +64 9 373 3667 Investigate Magazine, PO Box 188, Kaukapakapa, Auckland 0843, NEW ZEALAND AUSTRALIAN EDITION Editor Ian Wishart Advertising sales@investigatemagazine.com Tel/Fax: 1-800 123 983 SUBSCRIPTIONS Online: www.investigatemagazine.com By Phone: Australia 1-800 123 983 NZ 09 373 3676 By Post: To the PO Box NZ Edition: $85 AU Edition: A$96 Email: editorial@investigatemagazine.com, ian@investigatemagazine.com, australia@investigatemagazine.com, sales@investigatemagazine.com, helpdesk@investigatemagazine.tv All content in this magazine is copyright, and may not be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher. The opinions of advertisers or contributors are not necessarily those of the magazine, and no liability is accepted. We take no responsibility for unsolicited material sent to us. Please enclose a stamped, SAE envelope. Inquiries in the first instance should be made via email or fax. Investigate magazine Australasia is published by HATM Magazines Ltd
COVER: NEWSCOM/MAXPPP
Your say
THE FACTS The world peak price of oil in July 2013 was US$98 per barrel. At that time the retail price of regular petrol was NZ$2.29 per litre at peak. The current world price of oil is just US$ 44.84 per barrel. The current retail price of Regular has slunk back up to NZ $1.96 per litre in Wellington. The Government’s fuel tax is still 67.7 cents per litre, as it was last year. Do the maths, NZ! Citizens are being ripped off, big time, and just meekly taking it. Why are politicians and the media so afraid of the oil companies who are gouging huge profits in this country? It’s money that is needed in other sectors of our economy. B.A. Newth, Wellington
TOTALITARIA ROLLING OUT “ This is the Uber City — the new ‘progressive’ globalist corporate Auckland. ” The recent apparent ongoing subversion by Auckland Transport of the 2013 virtual no chemical sprays policy of Auckland Council, leaves many people fearing for their well being, and confused at how this could be happening in a democracy. Numerous community action groups in the Auckland area have been finding that their efforts to see hard won Auckland Council policies implemented, are being undermined by the bureaucracies and Boards that exist under Council. Groups as disparate as community gardeners, and yacht squadrons on the sparkling Waitemata, are finding they have one thing in common. They are all being trampled on by the noxious weed of a new global Feudal Corporate Order which is causing the observable death pangs of democracies destruction. (People claim worse may come with the TPP.) This is because certain hidden faceless bureaucrats, and the politicians in Wellington (both left and right) — who plotted over successive Governments for the establishment of the Super City, modelled much of their thinking on the undemocratic aspects of the history of Singapore’s city— state scheme, combined with some UN ultra vision of a futuristic cockroach derived (I kid
8 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Apr/May 2015
you not) artificial food eating utopia – more like Star Trek’s make believe society, than a realistic loving humanity. A model Honduras is presently taking ‘forward’ in establishing business corporate owned cities, where the people existing in them are no longer citizens protected by Honduran laws, but Godlessly are only to function as work units in the equation of a new regime more attuned to efficient high profit extraction — than life in all its fullness. Are we being herded there degree by degree as well? — Note the remarks below of the Chinese Government appointed governor of Hong Kong, this is widespread. Our politicians positively salivated over the opportunity to make a new local government corporate setup which would run more along the lines of, and be favourable to, big corporate business and just their political parties hierarchies behind–the–scenes, with certain political parties “useful idiots” sometimes heading things up and others working away in the woodwork. Both sides of Parliament pushed the Auckland Uber City through with all of its anti Democratic provisions. Neither small nor medium sized New Zealand businesses, nor even just us New Zealanders, matter at all in this new “Super” set up. We are all ultimately destined to be no more than units to be statistically modelled, mathematically played with, computer digested and regurgitated into high density accommodation containers and effectively and efficiently delivered daily by Auckland Transport to our profit extraction locations. It is after all only logical and efficient, many selected peer reviewed papers written by academia’s priesthood say so. We all know the planet will rotate all the better for it. Who are you to demur? You don’t matter any more, you are only but one of billions of humans, whales, dolphins, 150 year old Kauris, and other things that really matter much more to the cosmos. A human is no longer the measure of our society, a dollar on a computer screen is worth more to some. This is not a Super City, but the UN’s future-frightening Uber City—and your doorstep has been wrangled into it – right here and now.
We are their latest experimental implementation. Isn’t it fun to be a lab rat? A strange and weird fusion of the globalists’ political dream and a corporate profit taking Shangrilah where nothing can stop them. The Tower of Babel undone. But what Auckland Council paper has been written to defend, protect, and then enhance our God given human spirit’s aspirations, hopes and dreams? Instead, this Uber City administration extends right down to smallest’ suburban cafés having to pay apparent racketeering style fees to Auckland Transport to have chairs outside for people to relax on, while sipping their hot drinks. It cancels Santa parades. Why should businesses who pay both taxes and rates have to pay Council so that citizens of the Uber City who pay taxes and
important than protecting the main harbour for future generations. Nothing will be left untouched, for there are none of Western democracy’s historic checks and balances currently. Their town planning throws out all we have learnt in New Zealand, suitable to our region and lifestyles, and replaces it with a UN treaty derived — new false globalist vision for humanity, a new kind of Holy Grail with many smaller chalices of new, wisdom– lacking, absurdity. In their quest for their illusive perfect “holey rail”, they desire a 2,400,000,000 dollar hole in the ground (plus yet to happen but foreseeable overruns) at Britomart Train Station, reaching uptown to Mt. Eden. (Yet a visiting Indian internationally renowned professor recently warned that other cities have found
Boards are always to be deferred to in any and all matters by bodies democratically beneath them – that must always remain our distinctive as the heritage of our people which empowers our measure of freedom. Lets not be complacent about the democracy our ancestors fought hard to achieve, it is equally a gift from God, to be preserved and enhanced for future generations. Work hard to keep it and make it work for all. Make an appointment and go and talk to your local member of Parliament personally about it. Paul Norman, Community worker
rates directly or through their rent, can have chairs that sit on the pavement—that all of their rates together have already paid for? Paying fees way beyond anything needed to cover inspections? The cities public assets are for rent and sale — we can even raise loans and pay for them again as happened to electricity supply in New Zealand. We went from the nation owning electricity production, and distributing it through locally elected non profit boards — to now a multi level wholesaling and retailing profit extracting extravaganza — that doesn’t even have to guarantee to deliver the overpriced electricity to your door. Isn’t being “progressive” really just so much fun, and now Auckland is set up for being sold off as well. Just get the Council so in debt that it can’t avoid selling the ports, the airport, even the very roads and parks off to toll collecting fee charging companies, so that you can pay for all the assets all over again, just as we are doing for electricity, through inflated fees and charges ++plus profit. What a wonderful future! This one tiny café thing alone, highlights the wrong money policies and lack of Democratic respect for the citizens—the Public of Auckland and this nation. Beware, Wellington and Hawkes Bay! “They” want to Uber City you as well! In so many ways the Uber City destroys joyful spontaneous natural culture and replaces it with ersatz political correctness, fireworks at Aotea Square for this or that, but squashes genuinely “folksie” things. And potential shortsighted profit is more
that their tunnel investment would not give the returns being guessed at, and that there is a cheaper better and more effective way.) To squeeze the money out to dig the hole, the new Auckland ten year budget will use a term new to local government, their bureaucrats are calling:— “sweating the assets” – i.e. for ten years abandon core functions and don’t even really properly plan repairs and fixing of current things in the City. A new world leading local government strategy — close your eyes and just let things fall apart. Just so brilliant! Why has no one else spearheaded it before? True democracy provides the mechanisms to balance executive power and Technocracy with the hearts and minds of the people. And it starts by the professionals – with a servant heart attitude, always finding out what the likes of what Local Community Boards and citizens are trying to say, and achieving and facilitating whatever is worthy in it. To recognizing that in the bigger picture, the elected Council, and under that, its officers and affiliates are the democratic ruling body of Auckland, and honestly making the full essence of that work for the long term benefits that it reaps. Fragmentation between AT, other Council enterprises and the ruling Council, destroys public confidence in how the City is running, and their hard won, and for some, scarce money, is being used. “A house divided against itself will fall.” It undergirds all our laws, explicitly stated in each of them or otherwise, that in a democracy, the elected Council and the elected
against the assets of ratepayers are turning supercities into quasi City-states, run along Agenda 21 lines, which is why Auckland is now seeking the power to impose income taxes as well.
Editor responds: You are probably aware, although many voters may not be, that new rules allowing the Council to raise loans
POETRY An offering of affection I heard that you were caught up in the grip of a season’s storm, mulled wine in a chipped cup rich like blood and warm. Deep down in the southern lands wind blowing cold and sleet winter days fall at hand nights a long black sheet. Who knows the way of this place... for alone we search our way through with tears a lattice of lace – sacred, like holy writ made new. In the glow of that small light the darkened howl of a hurricane falls like a stone in flight, the sparrow has a name. A shelter for protection, the watch fire low at the hearth offers there affection, a rod, a pilgrim’s staff. Mark Raffills
Apr/May 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 9
STEYNPOST
By Mark Steyn
Ending with a whimper
T
copy of Charlie Hebdo... This is Mother England in 2015: You can still read samizdat literature, but your name will be entered in a state database.
he other day I wrote about a curious British reaction to the Charlie Hebdo massacre:
The other day Wiltshire Police went to a local newsagent and demanded that, in the interests of “community cohesion”, he hand over the names of every customer who bought a
The Daily Mail’s Amanda Williams reports that this was not a one-off idiosyncracy by some bozo coppers in one county, but came from the very top:
National Anti-Terror Unit Handed List Of Charlie Hebdo Stockists To Local Forces Who Then Went Round Demanding To Know Who Bought Copies The man responsible for this decision is Sir Peter Fahy, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, who holds the additional responsibility of “national police lead for preventing extremism”. A Chief Commissar for Preventing Extremism is a title that not so long ago one would have had to go to Eastern Europe or a banana republic to find. But it is now held by a British policeman. Nevertheless, Sir Peter would like us to know that he thinks, somewhere way down the chain of command, some of the lads may have gotten a little carried away: Anti-terror units handed local police officers the names of British newsagents who stocked the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in the wake of the Paris attacks. But the decision by some forces to then visit the outlets and quiz shopkeepers about who bought the publication was ‘overzealous and unnecessary’, Britain’s anti-terror police chief has said. Sir Peter Fahy, chief constable of Greater Manchester Police (GMP) and national police lead for preventing extremism, said he was now urgently clarifying guidance to all UK forces. It comes after police were caught asking British newsagents which sold cop-
10 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Apr/May 2015
ies of the satirical magazine for details of the customers who bought it. Shopkeepers in Wales, Wiltshire and Cheshire reported that police approached them and demanded personal information on readers of the magazine. In a letter to the Guardian, Sir Peter said that the move to provide details of newsagents to local police was intended to ‘provide community reassurance’. This is the same Sir Peter Fahy who, only two months ago, was warning that Britain could “drift into a police state” in which his officers wound up having to act as “thought police”. But why drift into a police state when you can put your foot on the gas and get there in the fast lane? My tireless compatriot Blazing Cat Fur comments: This is how a Police State operates. The same police state that turned a blind eye to Muslim Rape Gangs. I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. The wretched David Cameron was happy to march in Paris under the #JeSuisCharlie banner, but, if he were an honest man, he’d be parading under #JeSuisTheGuyWhoTakesDownTheNamesOfEveryoneWhoBuysACopyOfCharlie. Like most of the European political class, Mr Cameron recognizes he has a problem on his hands – a problem he and the rest of the Euro-elite have created: They have imported a huge population that, even discounting those who wish to join ISIS or slaughter British soldiers on the streets of Woolwich, has no great enthusiasm for English liberties. With the characteristic arrogance of an insulated ruling class, Cameron thinks the solution to the problem is an enhanced security state mediating relations between his fractious citizenry. And, if that means reigning in English liberties, such as the freedom to read a magazine without being monitored by the state, so be it. Because he cannot address the problem honestly, Cameron has to give his security apparatchiks creepy, evasive titles like “national lead for preventing extremism”. But the danger in giving someone an evasively-named job is that he’ll end up doing it evasively. After all,
what’s easier for the lazy, bullying PC Plods of the new security state? Cracking down on Muslim grooming gangs who’ll laugh at them, steal their helmets, file Islamophobia complaints and tie them up in sensitivity-training for the next six months? Or cracking down on those few remaining British subjects in whom the spark of liberty still flickers by monitoring them for reading unapproved jokes? I often describe myself as a 19th-century British imperialist a century past his sell-by date. What do I mean by that? Well, I fleshed it out a bit in America Alone, personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available from the SteynOnline bookstore and go to support my pushback against litigious dweeb Michael E Mann and the other Big Climate enforcers... Where was I? Oh, yeah, England, land of hope and glory, mother of the free. From page 167 of America Alone: In 2003, Tony Blair spoke to the United States Congress. “As Britain knows,” he said, “all predominant power seems for a time invincible but, in fact, it is transient. The question is: What do you leave behind?” An excellent question. Today, threesevenths of the G7 major economies are nations of British descent. Of the 20 economies with the highest GDP per capita, no fewer than 11 are current or former realms of Her Britannic Majesty. And if you protest that most of those are pinprick colonial tax havens – Bermuda, the Caymans – okay, eliminate all territories with populations lower than 20 million and the Top Four is an Anglosphere sweep: the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. The key regional players in almost every corner of the globe are British-derived – South Africa, India – and, even among the lesser players, as a general rule you’re better off for having been exposed to British rule than not: try doing business in Indonesia rather than Malaysia, or Haiti rather than St Lucia. And of course the pre-eminent power of the age derives its political character from 18th century British subjects who took English ideas a little further than the mother country was willing to go.
I believe that. I was born in Canada, and just about everything that works in my own deranged Dominion (as Stephen Harper once suggested to his befuddled London hosts) came from the Mother Country. Germany, Italy, France et al gave us better art, music, food, women, but it is the English-speaking world that has seeded and grown liberty on every corner of the earth – property rights, self-government, fair courts, laws of contract, free speech... And through the last century it is the English-speaking world that has defended and fought for those liberties when the rest of the west has turned to dark and crude perversions. So the death of England is not like the death of Sweden or Belgium. It represents the foulest betrayal of a glorious inheritance. I have quoted before my old National Post comrade George Jonas – that things aren’t wrong because they’re illegal, they’re illegal because they’re wrong. If an English policeman no longer knows it’s wrong to ask a newsagent for the names and addresses of those who purchased a particular magazine, no amount of “clarifying” “guidance” from Sir Peter Fahy can help him. And if an English Chief Constable no longer knows it’s wrong to demand the national distributor cough up the names of all the stockists he’s shipped it to, no amount of bland soft-totalitarian blather about “providing community reassurance” can alter the fact that an English public servant is subverting a core liberty – an English liberty. A society can survive losing this or that liberty as they ebb and flow across the centuries, but there are no easy roads back when it loses the spirit of liberty. And that is what Sir Peter Fahy and his ilk are missing. When David Cameron appeared with David Letterman a couple of years back, he knew the date Magna Carta was signed, but didn’t know what it meant.1 In this 800th anniversary year, in the coercive hyper-security state over which he presides, that no longer seems so surprising. References: 1. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9571852/David-Camerons-ignoranceover-Magna-Carta-and-Rule-Britanniaexposed.html © 2015 MArk Steyn
Apr/May 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 11
RIGHT & WRONG
By David Garrett
Name suppression in the internet age
A
t the end of January, Mike Sabin, then National MP for Northland resigned, citing “personal issues best dealt with outside parliament.” At the time of writing, we know that Sabin is facing unspecified charges in an unspecified court for unspecified offences. Is he the same “prominent New Zealander” who faced 14 charges in the High Court in January, all details of which are suppressed? Who knows? And if he was, and I knew, I certainly couldn’t give any details here. People will speculate. I have made no inquiries. I don’t know. The media is in fact so uncertain of what it can and can’t publish about the matter that most outlets have not even published the fact that Sabin is “before the Courts” – despite Speaker of the House David Carter saying so in response to parliamentary questions by the Labour party.
A few months ago, there was considerable media speculation about the “prominent New Zealander” who was convicted of an assault of a sexual nature on a woman in Queenstown. There cannot have been more than a handful of people who wanted to know who he was, but could not find out from 30 minutes on the internet – that is if someone down at the local pub couldn’t tell them. It seemed that everyone in New Zealand who wanted to know his name knew it. The rules surrounding name suppression – including the penalties for breaching it – are ludicrously out of date. Those rules were written at a time when the internet was not even science fiction – even 20 years ago no-one could have foreseen “websites” – we had to invent a new name for them – which existed in a computer server somewhere, perhaps thousands of kilometres away and in a different country from the owner of it, and those able to read and comment on it.
In what circumstances should suppression orders be made in the first place? Should perpetrators be allowed to benefit from orders intended to protect their victims? 12 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM Apr/May 2015
We now have the ludicrous situation where a name suppressed in New Zealand can be published on a website domiciled somewhere else, where the orders of a New Zealand Court do not apply – including the laws surrounding contempt of court. And even if they did, how would a New Zealand court bring to book the owner or publisher of a website whose server is in Panama or the Czech Republic? The very idea is absurd. It is not much less absurd to suggest – even if it is theoretically correct – that New Zealanders reading such content on a foreign domiciled website could be prosecuted. How on earth are the authorities going to find out? Only in Green Party fantasy is the government concerned with every e-mail we send, or whether we look at foreign based websites which just might contain information, the publication of which is prohibited in this country. There are of course some very good reasons for name suppression orders being made, the most obvious of course being the protection of young victims of sexual assault. But even in that sensitive area, the blunt instrument of name suppression requires reform. I was recently involved in a case of two adult women who had had their names automatically suppressed because they had been victims of a paedophile when they were children. The case was unusual in that while the offending occurred when they were under age – and unarguably in need of protection – the paedophile was convicted at a trial which took place when the
complainants were adults. They did not seek protection then, and later became outraged when the High Court decreed that the paedophile also had automatic name suppression because of his (then) familial relationship with the victims. The women were forced to go to the District Court in order to get their own names unsuppressed. They wished also to unmask the paedophile who, in their quite understandable view, had hidden behind an order designed to protect the victims, and not a violator of young girls. The women were successful in getting their own names un-suppressed but not that of their attacker; the case continues in the Court of Appeal. But back to the internet. It can only be a matter of time before someone – perhaps a New Zealander resident in Australia or somewhere in the Pacific – sets up a website whose major purpose is to emulate Wikileaks and “name and shame” type websites, and publishes the names of every beneficiary of a suppression order issued by a New Zealand Court. What exactly would or could a New Zealand Court do, other than huff and puff in an appropriately judicial fashion? If said crusader was a New Zealander, I suppose they could be punished in some way, obviously by arrest if they
ever returned here, but perhaps also by – say – cancelling the entitlement to a pension. Aside from the question of whether to take such drastic action would be using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, some law change would be required, and a draconian law change to stop someone publishing the name of convicted paedophiles would not be something any of the parties currently in parliament would warmly embrace. So what can be done? There is little doubt the Courts must confront and respond to technological developments unimaginable when the laws regarding suppression were formulated – but what? In my view the judiciary – and the politicians – have just tried to pretend that things are always as they were, or at the very least, put the whole question in the “too hard” basket. That cannot be allowed to continue; every time someone decides to “publish and be damned” – as Whaleoil’s Cameron Slater did a year or two ago – the public are reminded of the judiciary’s impotence in this regard in the age of the internet. While I am not normally a great fan of Commissions of Enquiry – particularly as they are often set up in New Zealand – it seems to me that there is little choice but to take that road. Any such enquiry
must of necessity be wide ranging in its terms of reference. It must start from first principles: In what circumstances should suppression orders be made in the first place? Should perpetrators – such as the paedophile referred to earlier in this piece – be allowed to benefit from orders intended to protect their victims? What rights should those subject to automatic or statutory suppression orders have to refuse such protection if it is not wanted? Why should adult complainants such as the victims I have referred to need to go to court – with all the expense and uncertainty that entails – in order to “unsuppress” details about them which they may not have wanted in the first place? The enquiry would then have to take evidence from technical experts in the world of the internet – it may be that it is simply impossible to do anything. If that is so, then that reality needs to be recognized by our Courts. As things stand, they are set up for inevitable and ongoing ridicule. Disclosure: The writer was granted permanent name suppression in 2002 after being discharged without conviction for a passport offence committed 27 years earlier.
Apr/May 2015 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 13