Speaker by Various Artists

The election is upon us and given recent events, it’s enough to drive you to drink. Come election night, we’ll all deserve to put away some booze.

For some, it’ll merely be to celebrate that the goddamn campaign is over. For others, it’ll be to celebrate good fortune; the fruits of success will be washed down with a refreshing drop of whatever it is you fancy. Still others will have to face up to the bitter taste of defeat and console themselves with some fortifying grog. Then there’ll be those cynical, worn-out, jaded, disillusioned characters that will simply need to get sloshed in an attempt to alleviate the impending misery of three more years of politicians of all stripes crowding out the media with their inane gobbledegook.

I suspect that regardless of your allegiances, you’ll be take a deep, long sip and give thanks that you’ll never, ever, ever hear the name Colin Craig, ever, ever again. Unless you’re an Aucklander wanting to treat yourself to a new car, possibly.

Between now and election day, we’ll be subjected to politicians, pundits, professors and the public comparing and contrasting parties, policies and personalities. Back in 2006 I wrote a post comparing political parties to bands. This year, in the words of the great Mark E Smith, it’s “time to drink the long draught…” and compare parties to beer. So here’s the 2014 PA election guide to whether a party is flat or fizzy, ale or ail:

National

If the Nats were a beer, they’d be Tui: tasteless, bland, dull, unimaginative and massively, massively, inexplicably popular. Like Tui, the Nats are very reliant on a single, dominating image and appeal factor. On television, it’s those ads with the gormless guys breaking into the brewery. Around the country, it’s those inescapable “Yeah, right” billboards.

As with the PM, plenty of people like them because it’s lowest common denominator, comedy-lite material that has nil intellectual appeal, but is loved by people because it doesn’t take itself too seriously, according to the marketing experts. But what’s going to happen when the public eventually get sick of it ?

Bars in the bigger cities wouldn’t be seen dead stocking Tui, but right now it remains vastly popular in provincial and suburban pubs and commands a major share of the market.

Labour

Her majesty’s loyal opposition are the Montieth’s range. Both originated on the West Coast and have been an established, often popular, product for ages. Both seem to be struggling a bit at the moment, that’s for sure.

As with the furore a few years’ back when the brewery tried to close down the West Coast operation and shift it to Auckland, there’s boisterous comment from some loyal supporters that it’s lost touch with its working class constituency and is having too many of the shots called from trendies in the big smoke. They reckon they’ve taken their eye off what the product is all about. Rather than sticking to the core brews it’s best-known for, it’s trying to be all things to all people, with an extensive range covering all tastes and inclinations, but failing to truly increase overall sales and appeal.

Has always had solid support in the big cities and a decent following in the larger provincial cities, but needs to start re-establishing itself in rural rugby clubs.

The Greens

Clearly they’re Emerson’s. An outstanding product with much depth and made by some very clever, genuine, talented people. They’ve been around for a while now and have steadily increased in popularity, especially in the past five or six years. Their image and marketing has became much, much more slicker, yet it still retains charm and credibility.

There were accusations of ‘selling out” when the brewery was bought-out by a major player a couple of years’ ago, but  it still retains its individuality and has lost none of its unique taste. Same for the Greens. Where once there were braces and dreadlocks, now Russel Norman wears a suit and Meteria Turei dresses flash, but they have a distinct image different to Labour.

But despite better marketing and increased popularity, they’re still a craft beer, only filling a niche market. It sells very steadily in the city bars, bottle stores and supermarkets, but really struggles in the outer suburbs and provinces, where it’s seen as far too pretentious.

United Future

Without question, United Future is Rheineck. Rheineck was vaguely popular ages ago and is still available these days, despite being the most gutless, insipid, weak, mediocre beer in the country, ever.

True story: about five years ago, a few weeks before Christmas, a pallet of Rheineck six-packs, going for $6.99 each, mysteriously appeared at my local supermarket. It sat there and it sat there. It sat there some more. I went away for a few weeks over Christmas and New Year and upon returning saw that a grand total of two six-packs out of an entire pallet had been sold. Like Rheineck, United Future is cheap ‘n’ nasty and you’d be a fool to even contemplate drinking it.

New Zealand First

Winston Peters is fairly partial to good quality whisky, but his party is more Lion Brown. It’s only ever bought by people over sixty and more out of habit, than anything else. It’s not flash, but it sure as hell isn’t as bad as some of the others, that’s for sure. It’s the sort of beer that appeals to people that don’t want to drink that trendy craft beer nonsense, but just don’t have the dosh to stump up for green bottle Euro lager.

It doesn’t appeal to me, but I get why it does to some – it’s solid and reliable, can get you a bit merry, but by and large it’s the beer of last resort. But if the PM or the Opposition leader need to buy some beers and nothing else is available, they’ll whip out the plastic quicker than you can say “supply and confidence,” even though they wouldn’t be seen dead drinking it in Remuera or Herne Bay.

ACT

This lot are Budweiser. What they offer is pretty popular in some sections of American, but has close to nil appeal in New Zealand. That’s because it’s imported, tasteless, has an icky flavour and very difficult to stomach. Like the boofheads in America that swear by this, the worst advertisement for it is its adherents. You just look at them and the alarm bells starting clanging like hell. Has a slowly decreasing  handful of hardy, dedicated fans, but freezing workers and plumbers in the provinces wouldn’t be seen dead drinking it.

Internet-Mana

Boundary Rd, all the way. Reasonably new to the market and has a small but solid niche. Likes to portray itself as down-to-earth, but also modern, hip and up to speed with what young people are into. But if you check out who’s actually behind it, you’ll find that it’s set up by a massively-successful business worth millions. Therein lies it’s problem – sure, it means well and tastes good, but at the same time there’s always that nagging feeling that your hard-earned dosh is going to the wealthy, not a genuine small brewery.

But so far it’s held its own in the market; whether it expands its share or fades within a few years remains to be seen. It’s got a foot-hold in the swankier urban bars, but, like the Greens, is seen as a bit weird and dodgy in the provinces.

Maori

Must be DB Draught. At heart a solid, workmanlike product, but nothing beyond that. Compared to newer and bigger brands is basically dull, uninspiring and bland, lacks imagination and should’ve gone through a massive, extensive re-branding campaign long ago. It completely lacks appeal to anyone under 60 who see it as the preserve of fuddy-duddies. Favoured by people that find Internet-Mana a bit too outré, yet don’t have the bottle to try anything else. Has some appeal in truly rural pubs and some of the more needy provinces, but not taken seriously elsewhere.

Conservatives

Steinlager Lite. It’s trying to be a serious player, but has one hell of an image problem. It relies on a successful name, but is taken seriously only by wowsers. Completely lacks any strength and at best only hits 2% potency.

Cheers !

One of the questions raised by Nicky Hager’s new book Dirty Politics is when it’s okay to access or publish confidential information.  Has Hager has acted unlawfully by publishing the emails which he says were leaked to him after someone hacked into Cameron Slater’s Whale Oil site?  On the other side of the coin, have the PM’s advisor, Jason Ede, and Cameron Slater done anything wrong if, as Hager claims, they accessed Labour’s donor and supporter data via a loophole in the party’s website?  What about the hackers of Slater’s emails?  

Publishing Dirty Politics

Let’s start with Hager.  He claims that the book is based on thousands of pages of emails between Slater and others which were leaked to him out of the blue by an unnamed person or persons.  He says the emails were obtained during an attack on the Whale Oil site following Slater’s comment “Feral dies in Greymouth, did world a favour.”  There is no suggestion that Hager was himself involved in the hacking of the emails so the question is: was Hager entitled to publish the emails he published?  

The answer is yes, as long as the public interest in the emails outweighs the competing rights of those who wrote them.  So how do we work that out?  There is a pretty good argument that material in Dirty Politics is in the public interest.  The public interest is particularly strong where information relates to the behaviour of elected politicians.  Dirty Politics is making some serious allegations about that behaviour and it’s arguable that the public should hear them.

People also have no right to keep secret communications which reveal wrongdoing.  This “iniquity” defence could justify many of Hager’s disclosures including, for example, the alleged exchange in which Slater and political commentator, Matthew Hooton, provide details of Hager’s address to lawyer, Cathy Ogders, who wants it made available to “vicious” individuals whom she appears to believe will have it in for him.

On the other side, though, are the emailers’ rights to privacy and confidentiality.  There can be little question that the emails were confidential and that anyone reading them would have known that.  Slater, Collins etc would probably also have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in respect of the emails’ contents.

But how heavily does that weigh in the balance?  The breach of privacy/confidentiality here is significant – the need to protect correspondence is widely recognised – but it is not at the worst end of the scale.  Hager has not published information about the emailers’ health, sex lives, family lives, or financial position.  And the emails disclosed were written by the parties in their professional capacity.  This is not as serious as disclosing emails between, say, John Key and his wife or between David Cunliffe and his kids.  In light of that, my money would be on the public interest prevailing. 

Accessing Labour Party donor lists and supporters

So what about Hager’s allegation that, following a tip-off, Slater, Ede and others accessed sensitive information about Labour donors and supporters via a loophole in their website?  Does that account, if accurate, reveal wrongdoing?

Accessing a computer without authorisation is a crime under section 252 of the Crimes Act 1961.  It says:

(1) Every one is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years who intentionally accesses, directly or indirectly, any computer system without authorisation, knowing that he or she is not authorised to access that computer system, or being reckless as to whether or not he or she is authorised to access that computer system.

“Access” and “computer system” are defined pretty broadly and so the provision would seem to catch the activity allegedly undertaken by Ede and Slater.  The question is whether Ede and Slater knew or were reckless about whether their access was unauthorised.  Slater and Ede might be able to claim that they assumed that their access was “authorised” because they got the information via a publicly available website.

But there are lots of ways such an argument could be refuted.  Its success might depend, for example, on how easily Slater and Ede got hold of the information – if a person needed a tip off and/or sophisticated computer skills to get at the donor and supporter lists, it would be hard to argue they thought they were for general consumption.

And what about other indications that the information was not intended for Ede and Slater’s eyes?  Might the structure of the website have made this clear?  Or the nature of the information itself – a court might say it is obvious, for example, that members of the public weren’t meant to be seeing donors’ credit card details.

Ede and Slater’s subsequent comments are relevant here too.  According to Hager, Ede writes an email expressing relief that Labour didn’t realise he’d accessed their material.  And Slater wrote a blog post talking about “Labour’s Leaks”.  These comments could undermine any argument that they thought they were allowed the material all along. 

Labour might also have a claim for damages against the hackers.  The strongest claim here is in breach of confidence.  Recent English case law (Tchenguiz v Imerman) says that it is a breach of confidence simply to access confidential information which is stored on a computer, even if you don’t publish it.  It is not clear yet whether New Zealand will follow that decision but if they do, the two key questions would be: was the donor and supporter information confidential, and if it was, should Ede and Slater have known that?

The answer to the second question is probably yes – for the reasons set out above.  The first question is trickier.  Information can’t be confidential if it is widely available.  So Ede and Slater could argue that, given it could be obtained via a public website, the donor and supporter information is not confidential.  This argument could run into trouble though if the information was not easy to get.  Again, if individuals needed inside knowledge and/or sophisticated computer skills to obtain donor and supporter lists then they probably remained confidential.  

The Whale Oil hackers

That leaves the question of the conduct of the hackers who obtained Slater’s emails.  It seems pretty likely that their behaviour was both criminal and a breach of Slater, Collins, Ede etc’s confidence and privacy.  However, since we don’t know exactly what they did or how they did it, it is difficult to comment further.

Dr Nicole Moreham is Associate Professor of Law at Victoria University of Wellington

I’ve spent most of my life being kind of unsure about why I should vote.

To the readers of this publication, that might seem unusual, or absurd, or irresponsible.

But I’m fairly normal. I’m like most New Zealanders. I’m not a very politically knowledgeable person. I’m not naturally inclined to pay attention to politics. It looks like people criticising each other most of the time, and talking in convoluted ways about things I don’t really understand the rest of the time.

When you don’t really understand politics, your ideas about voting tend to centre around two simplistic and inaccurate beliefs:

1. You vote for the person or party that you want to be in charge.

2. If it appears fait accompli that a particular party or PM candidate is going to win, then the point of voting is greatly diminished, because your one little vote doesn’t really make any difference.

Because of this, I didn’t vote much.

Then somebody explained it to me.

And I thought ‘why has nobody explained it before’?

Our campaigns to get people to vote are depressingly benign. The current campaign message is ‘vote because you have the right to’.

That campaign doesn’t even begin to explain why you should care about exercising that right.

It doesn’t address those beliefs that people have about voting, that make them unlikely to vote.

I can’t understand how it has any chance of changing peoples’ behaviour.

I can’t understand why we’re not explaining it like I had it explained to me.

It’s pretty simple:

We have this special system in our country where somebody gets to be the leader, but they get guided by a whole bunch of other people to do the right thing.

Whoever ends up the leader of our country for the next three years is going to have a group of people around them who we vote in. People who stand up for what we believe in.

Our special system means that our leader has to listen to these people. But only if we vote them in.

When you vote in New Zealand, you are not voting for the leader. You are voting for the people that will constantly remind that leader about what’s important.

If you think that our leader needs to be reminded about environmental issues and kept from making environmental blunders, then vote for the party that you believe cares most about the environment.

If you think our leader needs to be reminded about economic growth, and kept from making economic blunders, then vote for the party that you believe cares most about the economy.

If you think our leader needs to be reminded about Maori issues and kept from ignoring Maori issues, then vote for the party that you believe cares most about Maori people.

If we don’t vote them in, then there isn’t anyone keeping our leader honest. Our leader will have free reign to do whatever they please.

So whatever we do, we should never not vote because we don’t think our favourite party has any hope of winning the election.

We should vote because we want our leader to have to listen to what we think is important.

We don’t need to give those other parties many votes for them to stand up for what we believe in.

But if we don’t give them any votes, then nothing we believe in will be stood up for.

That’s why you should vote.

James Hurman is the founder and Principal of Previously Unavailable, a strategic agency focused on innovation, and author of the report AK2: The Coming Age of a New Auckland.

As he did last year, Jimmy Rae Brown has been ushering and assisting at the New Zealand International Film Festival. This means he gets to see quite a few films -- the ones he works at and the ones he chooses as payment for his work. This year, he's also been reviewing them in his pithy, inimitable style. Here's his list so far. They're all a minute or two long ...

Patema Inverted, The Congress

Enemy

Under the Skin

Kung Fu Elliot

Animation Now, Fish and Cat

The Tale Of Princess Kaguya

Feel free to add your own. And no, you don't have to make a video ...

In recent weeks, the Government has come out in support of a push for strangulation to become its own offence. One of a number of recommendations by an independent committee into family violence deaths, the Family Violence Death Review Committee (FVDRC), it would see what’s called “non-fatal strangulation” become a separate offence under the Crimes Act 1961.

In the context of domestic violence, non-fatal strangulation is currently dealt with under s 194 of the Crimes Act, what’s commonly known as “male assaults female”. Essentially, the FVDRC argues that the current way in which we deal with non-fatal strangulation fails to recognise the both physical and psychological damage caused, and its seriousness as an offence. Further, as Catriona McLennan wrote this week, non-fatal strangulation serves as a “red flag for future serious abuse and possible death of the victim”. The futility of the move, however, was raised by Warren Brookbanks, who rightly questions the deterrent effect of such a change.

The issue of violence against women has become, for this government, a major black mark against its name. On one side, Collins and the National government are pushing the line that crime has reduced under National (although how much of that is attributable to National’s leadership as distinct from increased use of warnings by the Police, dodgy stats, and global trends is highly questionable).

On the other hand, the New Zealand public has become increasingly aware of the damning stats around sexual and domestic violence. Off the back of the shameful Malaysian diplomat saga, National is under pressure to look like it’s serious about tackling violence against women.

So it’s no surprise to see Collins come out in support of the FVDRC recommendation. For the average voter unfamiliar with how the courts operate, Collins will get points for “making strangling a woman a crime”. National will be in no hurry to correct voters that strangling a woman is, of course, already an offence, and a judge has the ability to take into account the serious nature of the offence in weighing up the factors at play in the offending. Collins will bandy this around as an example of how this government is serious about tackling violence against women; an instance of National getting tough on crime.

On the other side of the coin, we have the Minister of Justice mocking another politician’s attempt to address New Zealand’s culture of violence against women – from a boxing match, no less. We have the Prime Minister refusing to apologise for the way his Minister handled an alleged rape claim against a diplomat. We have Collins’ self-described close personal friend and the man she claims to be this country’s best media source, Whale Oil, questioning whether Billingsley “made it all up” because she once went to a Rape Crisis fundraiser. It’s against this backdrop that we must assess the Government’s commitment to truly address violence against women.

So far, that commitment can, at best, be described as superficial tinkering. Support for policies such as the non-fatal strangulation offence relies on the flawed and widely disproved assumption of general deterrence: the idea that every man about to offend against a women is making a rational choice, weighing up his actions against the possible consequences. In almost all offending, this is all but a myth, but even more so where the offender does not even view his actions as criminal, worthy of sanction, or unlikely to be reported. A man does not stop and contemplate strangling his partner because the crime is separately listed under the Crimes Act 1961 and subject to a harsh penalty; he stops because he has been socialised to value and care for his partner.

If we are to address violence against women, we have to accept that surface level, minor change is not where the solutions lie. Gendered violence runs through our country’s veins. It is pervasive, and the issue is vast.

When dealing with an issue of deeply-rooted culture, seemingly small and insignificant actions are where the change starts. Key standing up and saying “I am sorry for the actions of my government and I apologise to Tania Billingsley” would go further to addressing the issue of gendered violence than a change in the Crimes Act. Collins tweeting “Cunliffe may have been clumsy in his wording but he’s right: this is an issue all men need to take ownership of – whether or not they are violent against women” would have sent a loud, resounding message to New Zealanders that this government is committed to tackling violence against women.  Collins, as Minister of Justice, coming out against Whale Oil and saying “I do not support Cameron Slater’s comments on Tania Billingsley and we need to believe women” would’ve shown a true commitment to challenging rape culture and violence against women.

The fact the issue is so pervasive and requires such deep social change does not, of course, preclude a government from taking more immediate, legislative actions. But we should not be fooled into thinking that National’s willingness to tinker is backed up by the deeper, more genuine commitment to addressing the systemic issues that truly underpin violence against women. What we have seen in recent weeks is the complete opposite.

We need to stop talking about violence against women as if it can be “solved” by tweaking an Act or giving the maximum penalty to an offender. The way men offend against women is inextricably tied to the way society perceives women, and when we simply increase the penalty for an offence, we’re not targeting the root of the problem. When the major issue in domestic violence cases is reporting, it may even have the opposite effect, making women more unlikely to report the offending for fear of the impact that could have on their partner and family.

The solution here does not lie in legislative change alone. It lies in the way each individual conducts themselves. And that’s exactly where this government needs to start.