Speaker by Various Artists

On Friday, Stuff published an opinion piece about the Trans Pacific Partnership by Pattrick Smellie headed Ten things TPP critics do not want you to grasp. I was appalled by it it and felt it warranted a rebuttal. This is that rebuttal.

1. The secrecy surrounding TPP negotiations is typical of any such exercise.

While bilateral trade agreements are generally held quietly between the negotiating teams, multi-lateral agreements that will impact the sovereignty of nations, require changes to legal structures and change the way international business is undertaken are not done secretly. The negotiations to set up the World Trade Organisation itself is the classic example, not to mention the various agreements that have been conducted under its aegis. Indeed, one has to ask why the WTO is not the place for this treaty process to be conducted. Perhaps the very openness of its processes is anathema to the country driving this treaty, the USA, as it was for its failed predecessor, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement - not so much a "trade agreement" as an attempt to push US "intellectual property" laws on other nations.

In addition, by this stage of the negotiations, many parts of the treaty should be agreed and concluded, while the remaining time is spent on the points of difference. Why aren't we being told the details of the stuff that is not under contention? Perhaps because of former US Trade Representative Ron Kirk's words “If people knew what was in the TPP it would be impossible to get it passed.” It's also important to note that even Obama's own party in the US Senate is concerned and refusing to give the President the "fast-track" authority he needs to approve this treaty without their oversight, traditionally required for international treaties.

2. The bogey of corporations being able to sue governments is not only overblown, but corporations can do that now, without a TPP.

No, they can't, unless a country has signed a trade agreement that allows it, such as the one that Australia signed with the US, or the NAFTA agreement, or the U.S.-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty by which Chevron Oil was awarded a payment of $US96.4 million by one of these private tribunals. Without such an agreement in place, corporations cannot sue for lost profits or any other thing, except under the laws of the country concerned.

3. Corporations might try to sue but they'll be whistling if the government is acting in the public interest. Raising new taxes, protecting the environment, or regulating for public-health reasons won't be excuses to mount court action.

See number 2. There is no activity, as far as we are aware, that is exempt from this. If there is, why won't they tell us about it. If they have nothing to hide, surely they have nothing to fear. That's the excuse that governments are using to apply more surveillance to civil society - it's just as validly applied to them.

4. United States corporate interests are obviously among those seeking influence on the TPP agenda, but that doesn't mean the US Senate and Congress are on board. That's why US President Barack Obama is having such trouble getting "fast-track" authority to negotiate TPP.

I'm pleased, if surprised, to find at least one point I can agree with. But Smellie doesn't bother to analyse this point in any detail. WHY is the US Senate against this "fast-track" authority? Because it's very much NOT how these processes are undertaken in the US. Obama and the USTR do not want the treaty to be properly analysed by the Legislature because they know that, if the Legislature disagrees with a single clause, the treaty is nullified, and negotiations have to start again. This is why you have open processes from the start, so that the approval is only technical at the end of the game, because everyone knows what has gone before.

5. US politicians know less about what's in the TPP negotiating documents than US corporate lobbies.

This is absolutely correct, though Smellie tries to dismiss it as irrelevant. It is telling that the USTR, in calling an emergency meeting to discuss issues with the "fast-track" approval process in January, only called in the US corporate advisors, not the elected representatives of the people and not (as far as we know) any non-US-based corporates -- if anyone from Fonterra was asked to the meeting, please let me know.

"So it must be a plot, right? Well, actually, no."

Well, actually, yes. From the beginning, ACTA and the TPP have been driven by the corporate interests and not by the governing structures. They have been attempting to enact treaties that would require legislative change signatory nations in order to comply with 'international obligations", that is to force nations to change their laws to allow the corporations to make more profit. While that may be "business as usual" in the US, it's also pretty much a definition of a plot.

Smellie can't (or won't) tell us how many NZ politicians have agreed to silence themselves to get a peek at something they can't do anything about, but he's sure they can, and somewhere along the line he's missed the fact that the party in the House is a subset of the party at large, which may or may not agree with this, and that the members in the House are representatives of the population at large.

6. No-one knows what the TPP could be worth to the New Zealand economy, so the Sustainability Council is right to question the $5.16 billion figure the Government has used.

Absolutely correct. But again, Smellie does not inquire into the relevance of this small fact -- the Government has used that figure to justify its involvement even while Groser admits it may bear no resemblance to reality. There may be a huge windfall, but we may just as easily be reduced to economic vassalage. Without the detail of the treaty before experienced and independent economists there is no way to know what we are getting into. It's the equivalent of buying a car from a salesman who insists that the 0000001 odometer reading is because it's just been driven off the boat but no, you can't lift the bonnet to look at the engine.

Groser and others are holding out the promise of untold potential wealth at having trade barriers whisked away, but they don't mention that NZ already has an export meat quota to the US, for example, that we have never come within a bull's roar of meeting, let alone exceeding, or that Fonterra is already exporting to and marketing in the US for cheese and other products. Just what are we going to be exporting there that's going to make so much money?

Crickets ...

7. The US is railroading its agenda because it's just a big bully. [...]]Wikileaks versions [...] show the US on the back-foot on many of the most contentious issues.

The fact that there's so much pushback shows that the US have indeed been the bullies pushing things along and shaping the agenda. The USTR is the driver for this process, and for the secrecy, and the conduit to the US corporate interests behind it, just as it was for ACTA. What little has become public knowledge leaves no doubt on this matter.

8. This is the end of Pharmac. Balderdash.

Without seeing what's in the treaty document, it is simply not possible to say what the impact on Pharmac will be. We've recently seen India criticised by Bayer for allowing a generic drug that mimics one of its own to be produced, threatening to take the Indian Intellectual Property Appellate Board to court, while Bayer's CEO was quoted (and controversially mis-quoted) as saying "we did not develop this product for the Indian market, let’s be honest. We developed this product for Western patients who can afford this product, quite honestly. It is an expensive product, being an oncology product." John Key has stated, more than once, that "everything is on the table". As Key outranks Groser, it's a little naive of Smellie to think that Groser's protestations will be the last word. It's also instructive to note that Pharmac has been quietly restructured in recent months, with many of the people experienced in managing the Schedule no longer having jobs.

However, points for style in using "balderdash" in an article, though it would gain more gravitas with an exclamation mark or two. Definitely two.

9. The deal will be done behind closed doors. It can't be. Every Parliament of every country involved will have to ratify any deal signed by leaders. That could take years. It will ensure public scrutiny of the detail.

This really is the big error (I use the word advisedly) in the piece and shows that either Smellie doesn't know how to read the legislative requirements for ratifying treaties, or he's been told to spout this line precisely.

I quote Steven Joyce from the House on 11 December 2013:

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Acting Minister of Trade) : The Minister for Economic Development, as Acting Minister of Trade yesterday, may have been a little imprecise in his phraseology on behalf of the said Minister of Trade. As a result, the Minister of Trade has asked the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment to act on his behalf and make the following clarification today: it was not, strictly speaking, correct to speak of Parliament ratifying the agreement per se. In fact, Parliament examines the treaty and then considers any subsequent legislation that may arise from the treaty, but it is the Government that finally ratifies the treaty once Parliament has given its consideration on the treaty and on treaty-related legislative matters.

(Note for the punctilious: Joyce was also the errant "acting Minister for Trade" referred to and has used the practice of multiple "hats" to avoid being accused of misleading the House, in my opinion).

Further, from Werewolf:

"Treaty making is a heritage, believe it or not, of the royal prerogative,” says Auckland University constitutional law expert law professor Bill Hodge.

“Indeed in the American Constitution it is expressly given to the President to sign treaties and declare war, but there is a check and balance and they have to be ratified [by Congress]. ” That’s not the case here. “It is a direct lineage of unfettered, totally discretionary royal prerogative to exercise treaty making power overseas, because that’s something the executive does, historically.” Ultimately that ability is based on holding a majority in Parliament. Parliament’s main role will be to subsequently bring laws into alignment with such treaties – whose provisions, Hodge adds, are increasingly being recognised by the courts as forming a part of the notional, common law, even without those provisions being explicitly embedded in domestic law. The level of degree of secrecy surrounding the TPP text and negotiations would….render any informed debate on the TPP in Parliament impossible. "

Other Parliaments will indeed be able to scrutinise the detail - ours will not. For Smellie not to understand this vital point is, quite simply, astounding.

No 10: It's a done deal.

The only reason it's not a done deal at this time is the reluctance of the US Legislature to hand over their constitutional authority to the President to commit the US to this treaty. If that had been possible, this would have been completed by Christmas 2013 as anticipated. Once other countries became aware that the US faced difficulties domestically, they stood firmer on the points of difference they had and it seems it is now the US who faces having to backtrack just to get the deal done. But that won't be the end of the process. There will be clauses allowing changes and adjustments to this matter and that and, in the end, the US will get the deal it wants and, more importantly, the control over the global economy that its corporations want.

Smellie notes the Doha failure to come to agreement as the rationale for the emergence of this type of secretive agreement. What happened at Doha is that the undeveloped world said "we want a share of the pie, too!" and the developed world didn't and doesn't want to give them one. It has nothing to do with global vs regional, because there are a number of countries in or bordering the Pacific that are not included in this "regional" agreement.

MFAT have been convinced of the "free trade" argument for years, holding it as holy writ, and have actively pursued any avenue that appears to lead there, under both National and Labour. On paper there's a good argument, but NZ opened its doors from the 80s on, and it hasn't served us well because our trading partners haven't opened theirs as wide. Free trade needs to be fair to both parties and a mouse is at a disadvantage "negotiating" with a gorilla.

There is no guarantee that this treaty will do anything to change that. I'm privately aware of the efforts of our non-political negotiators trying their hardest, and I applaud them for it, but ultimately it's a rigged game they're playing.

We don't have a manufacturing base anymore -- decades of government neglect in pursuit of the free trade kool-aid have ensured that we can't make enough of anything worth exporting, apart from electronics, which is quite a portable industry, and not one actively encouraged or assisted by government. Deliberate policy (I hesitate to call it planning) has ensured the only thing we produce enough of to sell overseas is stuff we grow and, really, we just are not big enough in land mass or people to do that sustainably into the future.

It is also intensely and increasingly risky to put all our eggs in Fonterra's milk crate, as the last 12-18 months have shown. To go blindly into a treaty that may or may not change that is insanity. The US, particularly, and the other parties involved are not doing this for NZ's benefit.

I'm pleased that Fairfax decided to label Smellie's piece as opinion, because it most definitely doesn't stack up as journalism.

If you have ever been to Splore it’s inevitable you would have had an encounter with what has become an art programme of some reputation: a passive experience that soothed, a chance encounter that surprised, or a moment of humour, wonder or nostalgia.

I’ve experienced all of that and more. I’ve also had the opportunity to see a range of audience responses to my own work that would never happen within a gallery, or even within the city perhaps. This year, I'm Splore Arts Coordinator.

The art of Splore is a feature of the festival for an 8000-strong audience that has come to terms with the experiential, tactile and often interactive nature of the projects that are exhibited in a stunning natural setting.

The site, located in the Firth Of Thames looking across to the Coromandel Peninsula and featuring rolling grass fields, classic east coast pohutakawas, a sandy beach and a fresh water lagoon, offers much in the way of a environment that wants to witness the remarkable.

But while it lends a hand to making the work look good, and provides the potential for more profound moments, it presents its own set of challenges. It's an hour from Auckland City, essentially on a beach, exposed to the elements and has no existing infrastructure. But that desn't stop the production of works that at times would be scarily tech heavy within a well resourced  gallery environment.

This contrast between bare feet and bits is evident in the work TV Tree, a collaborative media work making use of MIDI and physical triggers to feed six monitors and 12 speakers the work of video artists, musicians, designers, illustrators and animators. All of this is embedded into one of the rather grand pohutakawas overlooking the beach.

The integration of technology and art continues in Love Creatures, a work by Kim Newall and AUT’s COLAB that has been designed for the Splore community. An augmented reality project, it gives the audience an opportunity to interact with one another through art, digital technology, and smartphones. If you're heading to Splore you can attend their Pecha Kucha talk and roll straight in to their digital marker-making workshop at the Living Lounge on Saturday afternoon.

There is something inherently interesting about employing the devices often touted as causes of social fragmentation, within a work that is about shared intimate experiences within a physical space. And it’s an idea expanded by the piece Relatives of Long Ago Lovers.

The work of UK collective Circumstance looks to provide unexpected experiences and explores the role of site as an integral part of their projects.

Relatives Of Long Ago Lovers is an intimate trilogy of audio works that explore how our understanding of the world and ourselves changes as we age. Each piece is for two people to experience together, and contains a mixture of narrative, an evocative music score and instructions to follow, so that you become the performers creating a miniature cinematic experience. From the 10th of Feb, Splore attendees will be able to download the collection of pieces in mp3 form or do so on site via the Telecom wi-fi hot spots.

In contrast to the tech, Brydee Rood and Indian artist Chiman Dangi present their work Jaan Temple. On the back of a series of collaborative works, their performative piece looks towards the collective establishment of a cumulative tribute dedicated to the concept of Jaan. Jaan is an Indian word meaning love, air, life and energy. In the creation of a Jaan temple the audience is invited to pay an interactive tribute to the dedication of time, energy and object around the idea of love. Starting from scratch and drawing on the natural environment for found objects to establish their temple, it is a work that simply requires the presence and engagement of other people.

And for those who really just want their sense of perception tested, and an opportunity to simply buzz out, the work of Angus Muir and Alexandra Heaney from Out Of The Dark will tick this box.

Fresh from Sydney’s Art & About, their work Field offers hundreds of new perspectives on the truly beautiful site of Tapapakanga. Field is a meditation on the nature of perspective, asking us to reflect on ourselves, those around us, our past, and what is just around the corner. See it at night for special bonuses.

In addition to these works the programme features communal crafting projects like The Street Loves Nana and Sew Some Love. Performance and storytelling form a big part of Marcus McShane’s Nag, Raylene Beals’ Camp Curious and Ka Kitea - Pita Turei and Tracey Tawhiao’s project that incorporates oratory, song, dance and star charts.

With 29 projects in all, the programme covers a lot of territory and even includes a wee bit of painting.

In a location that really does quite well without any enhancement, the sensory and emotional layers that the art programme brings to Tapapakanga really makes for a special experience. If you never have, then make an effort to get along and see for yourself, there happens to be some pretty  good music happening too. And for those who have been before, try visiting when there aren't 8000 people on site and wonder at the magic of how this picturesque coastal retreat could possibly play host to such a party. 

There’s a never-ending surrealism about life in Bangkok – I'd say Thailand but the two are sometimes only marginally the same thing.

In central Bangkok, a city of close to 15 million, where futuristic skytrains zip past at rooftop level, where some 500 skyscraper classed buildings dominate the skyline, and an increasingly advanced and sophisticated economy has doubled the average income in the past two decades, tens of thousands of citizens now sit outside on the road at six intersections every evening chanting and whistling, hoping somehow to reverse the nation into its recently escaped semi-feudal state.

Four years back, in 2010, as we sat in our townhouse, a department store was aflame some 7 short kilometres away and around it a street battle between the army and parts of the population raged. A year later 16 billion litres of water poured south towards the city and we had – pointlessly – 1 metre walls around our ground floor. As with the street battles, it passed, but more than 1300 died.

However rare is the day in Bangkok where I don’t say myself “I love this city”, no matter how much it challenges you not to. And it does.

In 2010 92 people died, allegedly (the courts have yet to decide although charges have been laid) because a guy called Suthep Thaugsuban, then deputy PM, told the army to shoot to kill, to clear the streets after a 4 month occupation. Snipers, under somebody’s orders, were used against sheltering civilians, in a temple …

The history of representative government in Thailand since the 1932 coup that overthrew absolute monarchy, is both fascinating and unbelievably complex (for more I'd recommend this book, although please don’t try to bring it into Thailand). I won’t even try to explain the mix of brutal factional power struggles, heinous US backed totalitarianism during the Cold War, and intrigue that defined the nation’s body politic until the mid 1990s when democracy seemed to finally gain the upper hand, with a guy called Thaksin Shinawatra winning ballots decisively both in 2001 and 2006.

Thaksin was, and still is, an enigma – a self made multi-billionaire, he’s an odd mix of a self-serving old school despot with serious human rights issues on his slate, and a reforming socialist with policies that gave the long ignored poor but populous north and north eastern regions of the country schools, roads, healthcare and infrastructure. He multiplied expenditure in the regions some 250% in five years and the region is clearly grateful. Much of that gratitude was expressed via the ballot box, and continues to be so. He also treated Thailand as his personal fiefdom, but did so via – however imperfectly – elections.

His power base are loosely called The Red Shirts, or Reds, and their current party is Pheu Thai.

Political power in Thailand has always been centralised around Bangkok and, to a lesser degree, the surrounding southern provinces. It devolves out from the city in feudal manner, descending from the monarchy. Regional governors are appointed and the police and mechanisms of government have little local autonomy. The mind-blowingly wealthy old elite have been joined by a fast growing middle class who number well over 5 million in the city, and an upwardly mobile urban working class of similar size. Bangkok is awash in money and an increasing awareness of its place as one of the world’s great metropolises.

The other major political grouping, which broadly represents this old power elite and much of the Bangkok middle class, especially those over 30, are called the Yellow Shirts, or Yellows, and their party is the Democrats.

This power elite initially had time for Thaksin and tolerated his grand ideas of self, but increasingly balked when he seemed to be both offering up an alternative to the centrist world they had controlled for centuries and – so the meme goes - placed himself in the middle of this alternative as an aspiring “dictator”, although there was little evidence of this. In particular the empowerment he offered the North and North East threatened the Southern establishment and the conservative middle class, a grouping that has traditionally and derisively used the word “buffalos” for the rural and provincial masses who make up 70% of Thailand.

These “buffalos” now have schools, money and fast Internet - and Thaksin gave them more: a political voice.

In 2006 the establishment hit back, and Thaksin was thrown out in a military coup, which eventually saw a rewritten constitution, intended to control the rising red wave, and an appointed administration under Abhisit Vejjajiva and the Democrats. Thaksin – accused of every crime known to humanity by the new junta, with some fairly well substantiated charges of corruption amongst them – fled Thailand, eventually basing himself in Dubai where he still resides.

Following the 2010 blood, a traumatised nation held an election and Pheu Thai stormed into power, taking 48% of the valid votes, in an election hailed by observers and the UN as fair and clean by Thai standards. They were led by Yingluck Shinawatra, a businesswoman with two degrees in Political Science and Business Admin, including a masters from Kentucky State. The problem with this - according to the Democrats who were firmly trounced in the election, and the Bangkok establishment - is that she is Thaksin’s sister.

Fast-forward to mid-2013 (I’m keeping this as uncomplicated at I can) and Pheu Thai, headed by Yingluck, is still the elected government. The demonization of Thaksin by the Thai establishment has accelerated and now includes his sister. Large parts of the south and Bangkok are now convinced that a) Thaksin somehow controls his sister on a day to day basis from Dubai, b) both he and his sister’s parties only received the votes they needed to get in after massively bribing millions of northern voters (they are, after all “buffalos”), c) they have been and are still siphoning billions of dollars out of the country, d) they represent the most evil regime mankind has ever faced, and e) the Pheu Thai voters by and large are too uneducated to be trusted with one-man, one-vote – they need to guided by educated voters, who happen to live in the south. We will call these the “memes”.

History is largely not taught in Thailand, so awareness of past leaders is limited.

The biggest problem the Democrats – and by extension the established elite – now face is that they are simply unable to win an election. They do not have the numbers and they haven’t won an election since the early 1990s. Mild panic sets in, supported by the growing currency of the memes, but everything remains stable (relatively) until Yingluck badly miscalculates: she introduces a bill to create a general amnesty with the stated aim of reconciliation. The net is wide enough to allow Thaksin to walk away from his post-coup politicised convictions and return to Thailand.

Yellow Thailand erupts and the bill is eventually defeated in the upper house and withdrawn, but it's too late. Bangkok - or at least parts of it – is a-frenzied and the previous deputy PM, the aforementioned Suthep, sees his chance. A old school scoundrel with an appalling history of misbehaviour, thuggishness and corrupt practices – plus those hanging murder charges from the 2010 confrontations – he reinvents himself as the champion of reform and democracy and enters the fray.

It gets worse for Yingluck – another bill targets the upper house. 50% elected and 50% appointed (by the elite), she attempts to convert it to fully elected, something that logic steeped in democratic processes would deem to be the right thing to do if the country is to move on, but, supported by the growing currency of the memes, the yellows see it as an attempt to remove the checks and balances that restrain a deeply corrupt red regime.

From there everything has escalated, and if it wasn’t for the sporadic violence and the damage it’s now doing to Thailand’s still robust but threatened economy, it would be easy to paint the marches and so called shutdown as somewhat absurd.

In a city with some 13 million Facebook accounts and about a million twitter accounts, plus a range of hugely popular Thai language sites, social media has gone berserk in every language you can name (Bangkok has a population of expats and foreigners well into six figures) and it dips regularly into the insane and inane, with conspiracy theories whipping around the city at cyber speed. The memes – never questioned by the protesters – have become the tool Suthep and the others controlling this frenzy, use to demand not only Yingluck’s resignation but her and her family’s ‘eradication’ from the nation. The memes have become the Kool-Aid to Suthep’s Jim Jones.

Suthep and his grouping of old rogues, most ethically little better than Thaksin and with far worse democratic credentails, demand an appointed council – who will be appointed to this council is grey – to *reform* Thailand and run the place until such reforms can be enacted. That Suthep had years in parliament to do so and made little effort to do more than enrich himself is never mentioned. Nobody seems quite sure what these reforms look like.

Looking more and more like an ascendant Mussolini, Suthep stands in front of the faithful nightly and rages about Yingluck. Each day he wanders the streets, albeit with shrinking numbers of supporters. Women line up just to touch him and hand him money. He takes vast amounts of cash from the faithful, all of which is stuffed into plastic bags never to be seen again. He’s ringed by dozens of guards more and more reminiscent of an Iron Guard and as he walks he stops periodically, clenches his fists, raising them to the sky – whistles erupt, more women reach out at him and more wads of notes are transferred.

Polling puts his base at around 10% of Bangkok – less outside the city – and yet to the hypnotised he’s the undisputed voice of the people. A complicit media including the yellow’s own TV channel, routinely broadcasts his claims of millions of attendees – physics and independent analysis put the numbers more correctly in the low hundreds of thousands at their peak and now in the tens. The touted Bangkok shutdown is more a minor Bangkok inconvenience in most of the city.

Politically, though, the game is more complicated. The government are heading towards a new easily winnable election on February 2^nd – supported by the mass of the electorate who want to be able to vote – however, with an overhanging fear that the military might stage yet another coup, an increasingly radicalised and violent element in Suthep’s mob doing everything it can to shut the country down and interfere with the electoral process, and an awareness the reds simply won't allow a yellow takeover, there are so many variables that it could go any way, and it could flip violently when it does.

We wait, and as I waited I took some photos.

"If we match other countries’ subsidies we’ll save the film industry we’ve built over decades, keep 10,000+ people employed and allow us to continue tell our own stories on film."

That’s been the rallying for several months now and, as the someone who’s written / co-written or directed four local feature films, I’ve been thinking about the issue – and this proposed solution – a lot. The other day I tweeted about some factors that aren’t mentioned amidst the call for subsidy increases as a cure-all to film biz unemployment and dearth of local production; Russell asked me to expand on those thoughts in a post.

First of all, let me clear: I would love to see an appropriately-sized film industry that fairly and regularly employs its members – working on international productions, if they want to, and NZ ones if that’s their bag; it’s been mine.

A huge number of people are dependent on our industry returning to something like the size it did during the period that ran from Hercules in the 1990s to Spartacus / The Hobbit in the last couple of years. But I would urge caution in seeing increased subsidies as the sole answer to the problems our industry faces. There are, it seems to me, some other significant factors that mean things may never return to how they were, even if subsidies are increased. To that end, I think it’s urgent we have a wider conversation about what our industry is, what it wants to make, and how it’s sustained.

1. Moving image content has become drastically devalued.

There is 100 hours of new footage upload to YouTube every minute. They’re given that material for free. Viewers get to watch that for free. My TV will play me, I dunno, 65 or so channels of stuff for (effectively) free. As moving image content get cheaper to consume (i.e. for free online, on TV, cheap Warehouse DVDs and, yes, via piracy), there’s an expectation from distributors and broadcasters that they can acquire content more cheaply; the amount that anyone will pay to make this content must go down.

2. When once-specialised jobs (like DOP, editor, writer, visual effects -- and director!) can be done by kids at home, the amount that anyone will pay for those jobs crashes.

Operating a 35mm camera or a Steenbeck editing deck was technically difficult and used a hugely expensive raw material: film. There were long apprenticeships and rare, hard-earned opportunities to get hands-on experience. Now that anyone can shoot digital footage and practice filmmaking for, essentially, free, the craft becomes within the reach of anyone, and proficiency in the art follows (not overnight, for sure, but faster and wider than ever before). Add up the existing pros, scores of young people flooding out of film schools every year and talented kids who’ll do it for free and for fun – in NZ and abroad – and you have a collapse in what anyone will get paid for those services.

This, too, applies to once specialised and expensive equipment: you can shoot a (technically) releasable film on a stills camera, you can buy lights, steadicams, audio recorders for a hundreds of dollars; you can cut, grade, mix and do FX for your film on your desktop computer. This has exploded so quickly it’s a disaster for those who invested heavily in what was state of the art equipment only five or so years ago.

For all of us already in the industry, our skills and equipment are simply ‘worth’ less than they were just a few short years ago.

A consistent mantra has been that having crews busy on international productions will assist us to tell our own stories on screen too. I don’t necessarily believe that’s axiomatic.

3. The biggest problem facing local filmmakers is that our domestic audience is so small it can’t support our films. Even ‘hits’ lose money: for our domestic market, our films are already ‘too expensive’.

All of the factors above have crashed the already modest amount NZ films can make back here and abroad. The market tells us New Zealand films have to be made more cheaply than ever. Does subsidised international production help that happen?

When we were making Under the Mountain in Auckland in 2008 there were at least two other big productions going on in the city. We simply couldn’t find studio space to shoot in, so we ended up repurposing a tyre factory. There were some (I repeat only some) crew members who took a very hard-ball, market-forces approach to the rate they wanted to be paid to work on our film, comparing to what they could / would get on the other ‘shows’ in town. We lost an key actor to a longer running gig on a visiting TV show.

One could make the argument that this is a win-win for cast and crew and a market-forces wake-up call for local producers … but it’s those same market forces that are bearing down on us all now.

One could make the argument (I am not making this argument) that the best thing that could happen to boost local production would be for international production to go away, and for our industry to ‘correct itself’ to match the size of our local market.

I would argue that what is good for big Hollywood storytelling (as increased subsidies surely are) is not necessarily good for New Zealand storytelling.

You’d be doing well now to get a budget for a local film that’s a quarter to a half what Under the Mountain was made for five years ago. NZ filmmakers are saying the same things as international filmmakers: “how can we get this for less?”, because that’s what they are hearing down the whole chain from funders to buyers (and the starting point for ‘less’ these days is nothing).

Because of the size of our market we will always lose when market forces shape how or why we make New Zealand moving image content (or books, art, music). I think we need a much broader conversation about how we create, support, value and fund our local content and its creators. What is the natural / appropriate size of our film industry? What do people in that industry want to be working on? What do New Zealander audiences want from our filmmakers? Do New Zealanders want New Zealand films at all? What should people who create local content expect in terms of job security or a living, or should their eyes always be on stepping up into the international content industry? Or only dabbling as hobbyists?

Would increased subsidies bring back some work? I hope – for the sake of many good and talented people I know – it would. But as the rapacious ‘content’ juggernaut continues to devour everything in its path, I wouldn’t set much store in job security or improved remuneration for those making briquettes to shovel into its furnace. The ‘level playing field’ brings us at best on par with what Hollywood sees as a basic raw material it can get from anywhere to consume as it sees fit. Our key talent alone won’t bring them here – if they want a particular person they will (and do already) fly them to wherever the project is happening.

Films I’ve written or directed – with 100% New Zealand content – have spent more than $20 million on local cast, crew and services. I would love to be part of an industry that can continue to do that ... I don’t see it as my right, or as something that’s necessarily likely, but I think it will take something very different from simply increasing the subsidies for international film productions to shoot here for that to happen.

I hope we can find a way forward that isn’t about any one group’s self-interest, that isn’t about short term fixes to a broken or exploitative model and that would make, at least, everyone’s hard work worth more than just a paycheck. Not that there’s anything wrong with a paycheck. 

Getting sick of the kids leaving their clothes behind, I would duly go and put them in the Cancer Society bins.  (The clothes, not the children).  And then, about six months ago, Womens’ Refuge suddenly popped into my mind. I knew there was one around here because some of our mums, in the past, had used it.

So I looked them up online and gave them a ring. A lovely woman came to get the clothes I had for her.  A woman who was weary, and wary, and who, I later found out was the Refuge Co-ordinator.  She was really pleased to get the clothes for the kids at the Refuge, and I told her I would get some more stuff together. I did that, she came and got it, and then suddenly, it blurted out of her mouth, a long list of stuff they had desperate need of, for one of their women in particular.

I put out the call on Facebook, and Twitter, and a few things were dropped off. A trickle rather than a deluge, let’s put it like that.

I thought nothing of it. But the Co-ordinator would ring me, or message me on Facebook, and tell me what was needed urgently. At one point, the Manager of the Refuge said that I was their largest benefactor. This threw me, and appalled me, and I decided that this was bigger than a one woman job.

Because it transpires that this tiny Refuge, Te Whare Marama, is not part of the National Collective. It was started 21 years ago by the Mangere Law Centre because they were getting so many bashed women through their doors. They've only ever been funded by MSD for 2 1/2 staff, -- for 10 yrs, the previous co-ordinator was doing no applications for funding, so there was nothing extra for the women, at all. Much of the time, there still isn't anything extra.

The women don’t just turn up and live there for free – although, actually most of them do. They pay on a sliding scale if and as they can. Even so, the Refuge pays for all their toiletries and other sundries. None of them have clothes or shoes in the main, and are so very grateful for anything they receive.

After a couple of months of this,  during my bereavement leave, having some time on my hands, I started communicating with the Refuge Co-ordinator again about their needs. So having established that this was more than I could take on by myself, I gathered together a group of people – who I have fondly named the Aunty Mafia – to help me.

We talked about what the Refuge required, and how we could make meeting those needs more sustainable. It transpires that there is a big need for this: welcome packs for each family (there are around 36 families a year who use this Refuge), and vouchers for furniture and household purchases when they finally move on. Some funding has been foundfor  a financial freedom course giving one-to-one time to the mums to plan, educate and get them out of debt and started up with better financial decisions.  That will begin next year. But other stuff is going to take a lot of money. So we’re looking at ways of doing that. 

And in the meantime, there’s Christmas, and its attendant difficulties for people who have nothing.  I’ve organized to have this Christmas be one that the folks at the Refuge will remember. I’ve talked to all the women about what their needs might be, and in the process, have discovered that there are some needs that aren’t being met, and won’t be, by throwing a Christmas for them.

If you’ll allow me to, I would like to keep you updated on those needs, and right now, I have some requests I am wondering if any of you would be able to fulfill.

There are six women currently in this small Refuge, and 16 children (with one on the way).  And here is what they have told me they need, and what I have surmised they need:

They need nappies, disposable nappies.

They need baby products of all description.

They need underwear, in all sizes – knickers and bras.

They need bed linen, and duvets, and blankets, and pillows.

There is an enormous need for clothes and shoes. There is always a need for childrens’ clothes and shoes.

They need some technology. At least one more laptop.  Mobile phones and sim cards -- because the women's phones have been broken by their partners, or monitored and controlled.  Phones are a safety factor. The staff themselves currently work with the cheapest phones available.

They need, in my professional opinion, bikes – the big kids currently share one small one, which they zoom around, the very small front yard, on.

They need toiletries – toothpaste, soap, shampoos, conditioner, deodorants.

I could go on. What I will say is this: they need friends. So if you are interested in jumping onboard, and helping me to keep this great little place afloat, just email me. And we’ll sort something out. I’m good like that. And you’ll feel great about it – I promise you that much. 

(If you click the email icon under this post your mail will go through to Russell, who will pass it on to me.)

PS: You can contribute money as well as things via the Refuge's bank account: ASB 12-3076-0489694-00 . Use Jackie as the reference.