Speaker by Various Artists

The printed programme for this year's Auckland Pride Festival includes a history of gay Auckland, written by David Herkt. What follows is a longer, looser, less well-behaved version of that history adapted by David especially for Public Address. We are pleased and proud to have it.

Cities all have human histories, but the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered stories from the past often remain hidden – and Auckland is no exception, even today.

One night in 1894, two men, after meeting each other in Wellesley Street in the central city, travelled out to Henderson and checked into the Falls Hotel together. The hotelier became suspicious and loitered about their room door. Hearing sounds he described as “oh ah!”, he thought they indicated a “person under pressure”, so he burst into the room…

All sexual relations between men in New Zealand, no matter the type of sexual act, had been criminalised the previous year, so the men were charged and ended up in court.

“We were only kissing each other after waking,” one of the defendants said in his defence.

But who remembers these long ago incidents?

Moving through Auckland City today, there are no public monuments to queer people. There are no books or websites that tell us about our particular past. Time in Auckland City appears to be a very, very straight thing.

Driving by the Ferry Buildings on Quay Street, it is impossible to know that this once was one of Auckland’s great gay cruising grounds in the late 19th and early 20th Century, used by gay men and male sex-workers alike, gathering after the evening commuters had streamed through the turnstiles to catch ferries to Devonport and the North Shore in that pre-Harbour Bridge era.

“It interested him, after nightfall, to see two boys with painted flaring lips and limpid eyes, hanging about the Ferry Buildings…” wrote Robin Hyde in her 1938 novel, Nor The Years Condemn. “Place is lousy with them,” explained a labourer, tapping his pipe on the heel of a well-worn boot. “We call ’em the bitches.”’

In the 1970s, a drab car-park off Grey’s Avenue once led to the discreet entrance to Backstage, an illegal club, where after being scrutinised through a peep-hole, hundreds of men and women would dance behind locked doors to Donna Summer and Boney M until 5am.

And who remembers the KG Club – the Karangahape Road Girl’s Club or the Kamp Girls Club? It was New Zealand’s first ever lesbian social club, founded by Raukura Te Aroha “Bubs” Hetet, in late 1971. It met in a variety of private homes before opening in Beach Road and then moving to the corner of Karangahape Road and Hereford Street, where it had a sterling reputation for boisterous parties.

We also have forgotten the long and proud history of Auckland drag and transgendered performance, with stars like Noel Mackay in the late 1950s and 60s, and venues like Mojo’s on the corner of Queen and Wakefield Streets in the 70s, whose performers like Diana, Sheila and Jackie were memorialised in the images of Taranaki photographer Fiona Clark, and where sailors from ships would queue on the back stairs for other ‘entertainment’ purposes…

And if we do not know these places, people and events, how can we say that we know our city?

The history of same-sex relations in pre-European New Zealand has seldom received much attention. It was not valued or recorded by early observers, and more lately political and ‘moral’ decisions have meant that it has not been explored. 

Despite the Tāmaki isthmus being a centre of Māori settlement for centuries, we have no knowledge of the diversity of sexual behaviours of its people, beyond the presumption that these may have mirrored the better recorded sexual lives of the Pacific Islands, where same-sex relations were barely worthy of comment and there were gender-roles available that did not reflect physical attributes.

The activities of the early missionary William Yate with Māori males in the 1820s and 30s in Northland indicate that same-sex relations were not regarded as an issue by Māori, and they were fully familiar with homosexual acts before the arrival of Europeans. The significance of these encounters, however, remains unknown to us.

Located on the glittering Waitemata, with its signature volcanic cones, Auckland has always been a port city, founded on its access to the sea. Henry Winkelmann, an avid sailor, was one of the first photographers to record the early life of the harbour and the changing urban landscape in the late 19thand early 20th centuries.

He also left behind more intimate photographs of his male friends posing together or swimming nude. In one of these, Winkelmann photographed himself in a “full passionate lingering kiss on the mouth” with a friend, Charley Horton, in 1900, while the pair sprawled in the shadow of a yacht’s sail.

Later, this photo was stolen from Auckland Museum, then eventually returned, and controversially used on the cover of Peter Well’s 1997 anthology of New Zealand gay writing, Best Mates.

Auckland is also a city of shores and beaches. Near-forgotten homosexual writer, Hector Bolitho, in his 1927 novel, Solemn Boy, recorded the confusions of a gay male encounter between two naked men on the black sand of a West Auckland beach: “We hadn’t the courage of gulls, swooping down and deliberately taking what we wanted. We fumbled and compromised with ourselves… we were cowards to ourselves.”

Auckland pubs and hotels begin appearing in court documents and newspaper reports as places where men could meet and bed each other. Walter Smith reported his lover Albert Elworthy to the police after a heated argument in 1921. The couple had often shared a bed at the Waitemata Hotel in Lower Queen Street, which appears to have been a place where gay men felt comfortable, to judge by its appearance in another trial which featured upstairs rooms, drinking, singing and sexual contact. The hotel porter would run messages between couples and the owner of the hotel testified, “At Christmas time our double beds were full of men together.”

Another man who recorded early gay life in Auckland was the writer Frank Sargeson, who lived in a bach on Esmonde Road in Takapuna from the 1930s until his death in 1982. Sargeson changed his name from Norris Davie after being arrested in Wellington in 1929, when his sexual relationship with another man was discovered.

He wrote a number of his famous short stories in the 1930s and 40s in Takapuna, including That Summer and A Great Day, where gay relationships stir just beneath the surface of male friendships, and sexuality erupts in strange and inarticulate ways.

Sargeson’s recording of transient gay life, and an Auckland of rooming houses, trams and sun-struck streets in his short-stories remains one of the most accomplished achievements of New Zealand literature.

“I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what it was, and couldn’t say it.

Terry, I’d say.

And he’d sort of grin. And sometimes I’d take his hand and hold it tight, and he’d let it stay in my hand, and there’d be a faint grin on his face.”

In counter distinction to these muffled gay lives, the career of the stage performer, Freda Stark, gives us a glittering glimpse into Auckland’s lesbian and Bohemian life.

In the 1930s, Freda had had fallen in love with Thelma Trott, who was married to an orchestra conductor, Eric Mareo. The relationship between the trio came to its climax when Thelma died from an overdose of a sleeping drug.

Mareo was charged with Thelma’s murder and convicted, but Freda was outed as a lesbian during the trial when nude photographs of her were sensationally produced by the prosecution.

Later, during the Second World War, Freda became notorious for performing her ‘Ritual Fire-Dance’, near-naked and covered in gold paint, on the Wintergarden stage of the Civic Theatre, for audiences of American servicemen.

The arrival of these American troops brought a whole new ambience to Auckland. There was chewing-gum, bourbon and swing music, but some soldiers were also gay. It has been suggested that these troops introduced New Zealand gay men to the blow-job, something that had never previously been a particular feature of gay sexual relations in New Zealand.

A 1941 trial in the Auckland Supreme Court testified to the availability of American servicemen. Grocer’s assistant Victor Andrews described shop-assistant Bruce Millar’s preference for navy men and reported that ‘there are others round town doing the air-force.’

The same trial revealed the Cargen Hotel on Short Street, and the Commercial on the corner of High and Shortland Streets, as places where it was possible to pick up like-minded men, and described private drag parties on the North Shore and Mount Eden. 

Andrews also told of meeting Millar, catching the night-ferry to Devonport and drinking beer and having sex in the Devonport Domain.

Another group of gay men who changed the social life of Auckland, were the stewards who worked on passenger ships and shipping lines. Generally homosexual men, shipping stewards provided international contact and added a whole new element to New Zealand gay life –campness.

These men even used a whole gay language, Polari, which meant they could talk intimately without being understood by the wider world: “As feely ommes...we would zhoosh our riah, powder our eeks, climb into our bona new drag, don our batts and troll off to some bona bijou bar”. Polari words like ‘naff’, ‘nance’, ‘butch’, ‘drag’, ‘mince’ and ‘trade’ still survive in general New Zealand gay usage today.

By 1955, an Auckland University magazine was publishing photographs of all-male weddings in Parnell and Point Chevalier, and coffee bars including Blake’s Inn on Vulcan Lane were patronised by the ‘artistic and temperamental’. 

A number of city hotels of the 1950s and 60s had firm reputations as gay venues. The back bar of the Great Northern in Customs Street East was nicknamed ‘The Lilypond’ and pianist Billy Farnell was notorious for driving around the city in his red MG sports car, in full make-up, pulling up in front of the Occidental Hotel on Vulcan Lane for a late-afternoon drink. There was also the Shakespeare, on the corner of Wyndham and Albert Streets, where the upstairs bar was a watering hole for both journalists and gay men.

Drag stars of that time, like Noel Mackay, occupied a curious place between public acceptance and illegality. For men, wearing woman’s clothing in a public place could be construed as being against New Zealand law, and drag queens and trannies were often arrested.

MacKay performed at clubs like the Montmartre in Lorne Street and the Peter Pan Cabaret in Upper Queen Street. He released a series of surprisingly successful record albums filled with smutty innuendo and camp classic songs like A Good Man is Hard To Find. Other entertainers like Diamond Lil (Marcus Craig) would follow his lead.

It was also an era of gay men meeting and having sex in public toilets, which were frequently located underground, like those in Wellesley Street or Durham Street West. The long stairs down in many of these venues were sufficient to give a warning of any new arrival. There was a developed system of social roles, including that of a ‘look-out’ or ‘pegger’, as it was known, often taken by the voyeuristically inclined.

Men could also have discreet sexual intimacy in bath-houses and saunas like the Gladiator on Queen Street, with its owner with his brylcreemed hair and its wall décor of record covers, the Jeunesse Doree in Mt Albert, or the Victoria Spa in the city.

But the 1960s brought a new radicalism. The old rules were about to be challenged.

Gay Liberation had its first meetings at Auckland University in 1972. Led by Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, Nigel Baumber, Dick Morrison and Malcolm McAllister, this group demanded repeal of the anti-homosexual laws and complete equality for all New Zealanders, no matter their sexual preference. Meetings established a core-group and regular Gay Liberation dances in the University café provided a new type of social interaction and represented a new visibility.

For the first time, the New Zealand television audience also began to see acknowledged homosexual, lesbian and transgendered people in current affairs programs, calling for law-change and an end to discrimination. The first public demonstrations for equal rights marched up Queen Street.

This sense of freedom was responsible for the creation of Auckland’s biggest and most successful gay club to that date. Backstage, just behind the Auckland Town Hall, was opened in 1976 by Stan Gordon and Lew Pryme, a popular and successful singer, who would later become Executive Director of the Auckland Rugby Union.

Backstage covered two stories and worked on a system where an entry fee of $7 covered the night’s drinking. It was the height of the disco era and the dance floor hustled with over 200 people a night. It was also an illegal venue and its opening hours, until 5am in the morning, were a novelty for Auckland. Backstage can be glimpsed in New Zealand’s first gay feature movie, Squeeze, directed by Richard Turner, which was partially filmed in the club in 1979.

Meanwhile on state-funded television, Auckland gay couple Peter Hudson and David Halls were creating a cooking series that became one of New Zealand’s highest rating programmes. Hudson & Halls would run from 1976 to 1986 and would create a new visibility for gay men in middle New Zealand, despite the TV publicity answer to the obvious question: “We’re not sure if they are gay, but they certainly are merry.”

Following the canning of the Hudson & Halls series by TVNZ, the couple tried a UK version of the show but were dogged by immigration restrictions. Halls died of cancer in 1992 and Hudson committed suicide eighteen months later.

The campaign for law change still continued and was extensively financially and organisationally backed by Tony Katavich and Brett Sheppard, the owners of Out! magazine, Alfies nightclub (which featured Nicole Duval and a young Georgina Beyer, amidst other performers), and a chain of gay saunas in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

Katavich and Sheppard publicised the campaign, working alongside men like Bruce Kilmister and groups like the Auckland Gay Task Force.

It wasn’t until 1986 that the anti-homosexual laws were repealed – but not before more than a third of New Zealand’s population had signed a petition asking for the old laws to be retained. It was an issue that divided the nation and the final knife-edge parliamentary vote on the bill was followed intently by the gay community.

The victory was ushered in by a “party to end all parties” at Alfies, the club located under Imperial Arcade, off High Street, where a packed venue, disco-whistles, streamers and a countdown signalled the moment of change.

But HIV/AIDS had also arrived. The next ten years would be a period of trial and distress.

Bruce Burnett led the community’s first response to the virus and, in the face of government inaction, founded the grassroots AIDS Support Network inaction to give gay men the vital health information they needed in order to protect themselves. This group would change its name to the New Zealand AIDS Foundation in 1985, and is now based in its own building on Hargreaves Street, St Mary’s Bay.

Auckland would lose a number of its most prominent gay men to the epidemic, including Lew Pryme, the co-owner of Backstage, who featured in an explicit and moving television documentary screened just after his death; bodybuilder and photographer Neil Truhubovich; and John Draper, a designer and agent-provocateur who had established Room Service, one of Auckland’s most radical art galleries, and founded the glossy GLO magazine.

These deaths and many, many others are memorialised by panels in the AIDS Memorial Quilt, now at Te Papa.

Eventually, the effects of HIV/AIDS would be partially contained by new medications. Risky sexual behaviours would be changed by public campaigns. The virus, however, still remains a threat.

The first HERO Party was organised in 1991 to celebrate and reinforce the bonds of a community that had been severely battered. The inaugural party was held in the Rail Shed on Beach Road. The second party on Princes Wharf was attended by 3,000 people and artists like Mika performed in a series of spectacular shows which would become a HERO tradition.

The Hero Parade in 1995 moved up Queen Street, the second was along Ponsonby Road. By 1998, around 150,000 people would crowd the Ponsonby Road route to watch a spectacle which would be televised and promoted as a tourism feature of Auckland City.

However, lack of civic support and financial issues meant that the original Hero organisation was forced to wind up in 2002.

Following law-reform, the most notable trend was the fact that the queer communities gained many formal organisational structures and attributes.  It was time to come in from the cold. Businesses grew, service groups were created, and social life began to reflect broader concerns.

New nightclubs like Aquarius, Staircase, Legend, Don’t Tell Mama, Midnight Club, Klamp Klub, Queen’s Ferry, Flesh, G.A.Y. and Family opened, giving gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people a wide variety of entertainment venues.

Staircase would come to be regarded as one of Auckland’s most iconic gay clubs, and was the home of influential Pacific drag divas Bertha, Buckwheat, Tess Tickle and the late Bust-Op. It had three distinct incarnations – first Fort Street, with its black sunken dance floor; then Albert Street, with its beige rag-rolled walls; and finally as a superclub on Karangahape Road.

Queen’s Ferry, G.A.Y. and Family were part of an entertainment empire run by Wayne Clark, with Miss Ribena as the trademark host of their comprehensive entertainment programme, running the gamut from Mr Gay Auckland and karaoke to show nights and drag competitions. It was pub-culture made gay and, despite its critics, remains an essential and profitable part of present-day Auckland.

Different niches within the gay community also started to grow their individual strengths. Urge Bar, opened by Peter Taylor, Larry Quickenden and Phillip Stack in 1997, began as a leather bar but has now evolved into a practical and relaxed men’s space. Urge is presently New Zealand’s longest-running gay men’s bar.

Sex-on-site venues like Lateshift in Dundonald Street, with its blue-collar décor of oil-drums and pool-tables, and the Countryman’s Institute on Beach Road, with its chain-link and corrugated iron, became new features of Auckland life in the 1990s, and fostered a unique local sexual culture. For a small price men could guarantee a sexual encounter with another in safe and discreet surrounds.

Meanwhile, the lesbian community was following its own individual trajectory. Lesbian social groups became abundant, from softball teams to walking groups, with frequent women’s dances and drag king events in a variety of venues including Kamo on Karangahape Road. The Charlotte Museum in Western Springs was also created to preserve and remember New Zealand’s lesbian history.

Auckland developed a thriving gay and lesbian media. The monthly Tamaki Makaurau Lesbian Newsletter was first published in 1990, and a fortnightly gay newspaper, Man to Man, later renamed Express, was founded by Lateshift owner Jay Bennie in 1991. JACK magazine was a glossy feature magazine of the early 21^st Century, with original photographic features, high production values, and an acute awareness of gay culture and sensibility.

There were gay radio programmes on stations like bFM and Planet FM, and television programmes like the long-running, Queer Nation, produced by Johnny Givins. Jay Bennie’s GayNZ.com would be the first step into an internet age, followed by Express Online and any number of small service websites.

Auckland was also gaining broader cultural influences. Fa’afafine joined Fakaleiti and Takataapui in becoming an increasingly prominent element in Auckland’s queer life. The socio-sexual cultures of the Pacific Islands created a unique ambience in Auckland following the great migrations of Pacific Islanders to New Zealand in the 1970s and 80s, and it was often manifested in particular suburbs. Many drag stars of the 1990s, for instance, received their first public exposure in the Miss South Auckland Drag Competition in Papatoetoe. Winners, including the late Bambi Slut, went on to establish a large audience in inner city clubs.

By the end of the 20th Century, the Queen City had come of age as the queer capital of New Zealand.

The Gay Auckland Business Association held regular social meetings and raised funds to support other gay, lesbian and transgendered organisations through an annual auction. Whole teams of gay, lesbian and transgendered sportspeople travelled to international events, like the 2002 Sydney Gay Games. The Pride Centre, and then Rainbow Youth, opened offices on Karangahape Road, which had become the cultural centre of Auckland gay life.

These communities were they also coming to terms with the fact that they were no longer a reviled minority and realised that, if they wished to keep an identity that had been created through legal and social oppression over the course of two centuries, they needed to work to maintain their unique culture and to remember its long history.

Could a community whose attitudes were created in opposition against a prevailing and dominant homophobia, survive in a world where gay weddings are not an aberrant spectacle but a socially-accepted feature of human relations? Is queer culture relevant in a world where sexual customs are tending towards a homogenised melting-pot? What happens to sexual minorities when there is no longer an oppressive majority? If there is no homophobia, is there a queer community?

These are the questions the new millennium in New Zealand must answer.

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See image gallery for photo credits and captions.

I’m not a hacker. I know very little about the technical ins and outs of what they do. Put a system in front of me and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a 1 and a 0. Let alone what either may mean.

But I’ve grown up with one. I’ve watched my brother go from borderline obsessive teenager to world-renowned security expert. I’ve looked on with a combination of awe and fear and what he’s done, from hacking ATMs to insulin pumps and pacemakers. I’ve watched how he’s been painted by the media. He’s been both a genius and a super villain. I’ve watched him teeter between fame and infamy. I’ve seen journalists take a phrase like “mass murder” out of context and run with it.

I’ve also known him long enough to know that he’s generous to a fault. That he barely has a malicious bone in his body. That what he does stems from a genuine concern about the threats that he finds.

It’s why I took particular interest in Keith Ng’s recent story and the plethora of mainstream stories that evolved. Again, I don’t know a lot, but I know enough to know that, in terms of the hacking side of things, some people were getting it wrong.

So I got inspired to write a story about hackers. From a completely non-technical point of view. I got in touch with “Pipes”, a security consultant who also organises thr New Zealand “hacker conference”, Kiwicon, every year.

For reasons of timing and circumstance the story didn’t happen, but I found the hour-long conversation with Pipes really interesting. It was a conversation that, given the timing, inevitably involved a lot of talk about the MSD security breach and how it was handled. It’s those parts of the conversation that are here.

I feel that it’s important to note that Pipes, like many in the industry, avoids talking to the media. He agreed to speak to me as a favour to my brother.

I also want to note that while Pipes is a paid professional, the thoughts, ideas and comments are his. They don’t belong to any other person or company.

I first “met” Pipes via Skype about a month ago. He was dressed casually, in jeans and a t-shirt. There was no elusive hoody in sight. He was friendly, articulate, open and honest. If he was auditioning for the part of a villain in a movie he definitely wouldn’t be shortlisted. There’s one stereotype busted already.

“That stereotype was definitely there when I grew up,” he tells me. Laughing.

“But it’s certainly being smashed lately. Though there is still that element of anti-authority, fuck the police, attitude around.”

As someone that’s paid to “break things” to “fix things” do you consider yourself a “hacker”?

In a previous life, absolutely. In the current job not so much. It’s one of those things where there’s never really been a clear definition.

Once the difference between a hacker and a cracker; a hacker being the guys at MIT who played with systems with crackers being the bad guys that broke into systems.

Then it becomes the white hat, black hat thing. With the white hat hackers being those who do what I do for a living now, the black hats being those that break into systems.

In a former life I was a hacker, in my current life, it’s just a job.

Would you say there’s a bad public reputation for hackers and the whole security industry?

It can be the case. It’s definitely changing. A large chunk of it is that the computer science industry is relatively new. Security in itself; this whole problem of attack and defence is reasonably immature. We’re talking 25 years.

Also our industry, on the offensive side, hasn’t done a big PR push. It’s gone through periods where people, like the FBI, did publicly push the point that it’s all bad. That concept that if nobody was hacking we wouldn’t have a security problem.

That’s all changing. From a criminal point of view it’s become a monetised industry. When we were growing up if you broke into a system there was “no harm no foul” basically. Now if you break into a system, nine times out of ten it’s for money.

But as an industry there never has really been good handling of PR or visibility of what we do. A large chunk of that comes from fear of talking to the media. Also a lot of the time when you have "the geeks" doing what they do, they’re not used to talking to CEOs or CIOs. There’s always been a big gap there in terms of those two parties communicating. It’s evolved very chaotically. It’s changing again at the moment.

What’s behind the fear of talking to the media?

I think traditionally [our job] has been very difficult to explain. From an industry point of view it’s been very difficult to explain the benefits of it.

Historically, when hackers were hacking just for fun, it was from an extremely anti-authoritive point of view so the dialogue never happened.

As far as the media goes, nothing good historically has come from talking to the media. That got proven just recently with Keith Ng and all the pieces.

In what sense?

Part of the main problem was that MSD came out and blatantly lied on the first day. And then they corrected themselves and when they did they did so vaguely. And now we’ve had the Deloitte report which is pretty bad.

As far as that piece from Heather [du Plessis-Allan] in regard to Paul Craig … I don’t know. Maybe it was good TV for the 6pm news; maybe that’s why she took that approach.

Anyone who spent more than 5 minutes looking at what he does for a living wouldn’t draw that picture of Paul. And she must have spent more than five minutes looking at it. So it must have simply been taking a sensationalist angle because of the political stuff involved.

Traditionally, there have been a couple of really classic examples of people that have talked to the media with the best intentions and they’ve just been smashed. I think it’s just because it’s one of those mysterious things. Hackers and hacking are seen as a mysterious black art. We’re seen as sort of, let the doves fly out of your hand, and all of a sudden you’ve compromised a server and stolen data.

When you look at it though it’s just science.

I think a lot of journalists have taken that approach. “These guys with the hoody on have done this crazy thing. It’s black magic.” It’s not necessarily the case.

Is it simply a matter of reporters tackling these stories who aren’t tech reporters?

There have definitely been a number of publications who have security-centric journalists who are doing good things. These guys can really work as the great equalisers on calling bullshit when other journalists get it wrong.

We’ve only just started seeing that come through. The majority of reporting that comes through, especially since Anonymous came on the scene, is ridiculous.

But we are seeing some of the mainstream media try. Which is good. Hopefully it’s a trend.

But then you see some stuff, like Heather’s piece and some of the print articles that came out about the kiosk stuff, it was really hard to tell whether they legitimately did not understand what happened, or whether they were finding better ratings by taking the twist. I suspect it was the latter.

It’s why I tend to avoid talking to the media.

And the comments from the general public on the mainstream articles didn’t seem to help matters …

Well everyone is an expert. The classic example is someone asks you what you do, you tell them and it’s like, “I had a virus the other day …” All of a sudden they’re a security expert.

Everyone is an expert about computers. That’s one thing that stood out in those comments. Everyone had expert commentary on how the Ministry should have better engaged security assessment or how they mishandled the case.

There’s also no real equalising rebuttal. Someone [who actually is an expert] can’t jump on the Herald site and be all, “Well as a security consultant I worked on this case and this is actually what happened.”

I just don’t read them anymore.

One of the things that came out was the concept of a rewards scheme. How common is that?

It’s on the increase, but it’s one of those new hip things. The Facebooks do it and the Googles do it. Microsoft refuse to do it because they think it encourages bad behaviour. That’s good and well. But a lot of these places spend a lot of money on security. Someone like us can only do 2 percent of the job. So you can hire someone like us but that doesn’t help the other 98 percent. We do what we can but there’s no way of measuring whether we’ve been successful.

So in cases like Facebook they crowdsource that out effectively. For a small amount of cash.

I haven’t seen it adopted by anyone outside of those Silicon Valley companies.

I think that’s because they’re not yet at a scale where they need to crowd-source. If did what he [Ira Bailey] allegedly did, I don’t know any organisation in New Zealand that would say yeah, we’ll give you money. Not one.

There’s been a trend over the years by organised crime syndicates using extortion.

There’d be a fine line between making a living and extortion wouldn’t there?

Yeah, I mean all the work we do, our customers call us. A few people have tried the route of, “I’ll scan everyone and if I find bugs I’ll ring them up and give them a sample. But if you want the full thing you’ll have to hire me.” Every single time that’s been tried it’s crashed and burned.

It’s not a model that works. It’s a very fine line.

There was a classic example in Australia with a guy who’s in a similar line of work to me. His superannuation fund sent him an email and, occupational habit, he clicked the link and found he could look at others’ superannuation details.

He rings them up and tells them and the next thing the AFP is knocking on his door. He wasn’t asking for money he just told them. It was still taken as him being a bad hacker.

It’s hard to know how organisations will respond if you could call them. A lot of people like myself just won’t bother. You just don’t say anything. It’s not worth the hassle.

So will that change over time? I think so. But who knows.

A lot of the research I see seems a little too ‘movie-like’. Are there real-life implications to security breaches that the average Joe should even worry about?

Yeah. It’s a hard one. Should they be concerned? No.

Most situations where you’d worry about such systems – Water, power suppliers etc – they get them tested.

What the concern should be is that MSD is not alone in filing that report into a cabinet, or changing the criticality of the findings, and putting it in the too hard basket. There are a lot of systems we’ve tested over the years and you come back three years later and the original issues are still there.

The risk in New Zealand is not so much that companies are not doing the right thing. The risk is that you can come back to these places and nothing has been done since the initial report.

MSD is the first to have publicly done that. But they are the norm. They are not the exception. The only difference in the way they handled that security report and the majority of other companies is that Ira walked in and told a journalist.

MSD has everyone testing their kiosks at the moment. Every CIO in the country thought, “Do we have kiosks? Shit, we better get them tested.”

But the CIOs didn’t think to check if they’ve had their kiosks tested in the past. And fixing the stuff that was in the report. It’s interesting how the knee-jerk does happen.

But complacency does come back in.

It’s easy to see why it would be tempting to go public then.

Yeah, but people like myself don’t want Heather on our doorstep with a microphone in our face asking, “Are you malicious?”

When you see [an organisation] hurt publicly then privately a lot of people get their shit together, but unfortunately it takes that public failure. High visibility injects fear, and fear induces a response.

In New Zealand we don’t have a lot of high-profile breaches. Significant breaches have happened that have never reached the paper. Because a lot of these places come out of these breaches privately, often without their staff even knowing, a lot of these places haven’t changed their culture either.

One of the things about what Ira and Keith did is it triggered a response. Unfortunately it’s probably just a knee-jerk. Not a consistent change.

There’s not much we can do about that.

One of the scary things for us about the MSD case was how quickly the MSD threw the security assessors under the bus. And they were in a shitty situation because of non-disclosure agreements. They can’t even rebut in the media. If they do they’ve breached disclosure agreements.

Is the ‘hacking’ industry still one of an anti-establishment, anti-authority attitude?

It used to be. It absolutely used to be. It’s changed because the growth in the industry has been so dramatic. Conferences were never about the information; they were just about blowing out and catching up with mates.

But the industry has grown so dramatically that the dynamic changed. It’s more of a maturing industry. A lot of these companies have HR managers and investors that want to know what’s happening with their money. It’s just another business now.

And it’s big money too. There’s a lot of money in this industry.

It is still there though.

There have been some awesome cases recently of people like members of Anonymous being arrested and in jail, releasing statements like “We’re going to burn this jail to the ground”.

It’s like, “Dude, you’re how old?”

There’s definitely an aspect of the culture there. But at the same time, you could get paid to do this for a living or you could go to jail. Sure, maybe you’ll burn that motherfucking jail to the ground but I doubt it. I’m pretty sure Bubba who’s in there for grand theft auto has done much worse that what you’ve done.

One last thing, were you a lego fiend as a kid? Apparently it’s a hacker thing.

[Laughs] I certainly was. Hang on …

Pipes turns to a space in the room I can’t see. “Did you guys play with lego as kids?” he yells to people in the background. I hear muffled replies and laughs. “I did,” one replies. “I just bought some for my kid too.” Another affirmative response and another laughs, “I still do!”

“There you go,” Pipes tells me.

There it is. Lego. It’s a hacker thing.

Wait, Unicorns have just hammered the Death Eaters. Hell does freeze over. And yes, though America does believe that Barack Obama is still “the change we need” I know differently. Rupert Murdoch is really our man.

What a difference a day and 303 electoral college votes makes. Suddenly we have Mr. Media tweeting:

Must have sweeping, generous immigration reform, make existing law-abiding Hispanic’s welcome. Most are hard working people.

Wait, Soothsayers, it gets better. Conservative Honey Sean Hannity has apparently “evolved” on his immigration position just two days after the Democratic party took 75% of the Latino vote. He now supports a “pathway to citizenship”.

Bring it on. Welcome to the new face of American political power; Brown, black, young, gay, urban and female. America got it right last night. Not just because they chose the right man, but because they read the tea leaves.  Not Tea Party leaves either. Let me introduce you to her New Establishment. A young, under-employed black student in St. Louis wants the same things as the Cuban American accountant in Miami and the thirty-something woman executive in Boulder.  Who knew?  Obviously, not the Republicans.

Here is this election’s biggest takeaway: The Good Ole’ White Boys aren’t the sure winner anymore.  You’d better believe that feels damned threatening to the white men parked in boardrooms or the now shaky fixtures in the Houses of Congress. Twenty women just marched into the US Senate, 81 in the House, one Senator openly gay. Marriage equality bills passed in three more states. Recreational marijuana use passed in Colorado, whose new license plate will probably now read, “Welcome to the Doobie State”.

No wonder this election felt so ridiculously ugly and contentious.  The older, white, rural and suburban male power base of the last handful of centuries just lost one leg of its stool and it’s fighting hard not to topple over.  It turns out, that was the exact portrait of a Romney voter.

Barak Obama won this election having taken a measly 39 percent of the shrinking white vote.  But just turn your head to the rising tide of what the new balance of American power looks like: Obama took 93 percent of the black vote, 75 percent Latinos, 73 percent Asians, 60 percent of young people [who surprisingly turned out in greater numbers than 2008] and won over women by a whopping 18 points.  The Latino vote alone has grown 22 percent since 2008.

If there is one silver lining to a country that has acted like a Jersey Shore punch up for the last 18 months, it is this; America now has to listen to the wants of its own diversity. Why? It won’t have any other choice.  The power of this new rainbow force is that an entire generation has come of age just assuming they have a right to pull up their chair to the Big Table.  This election just might have proved they collectively captured the throne.

Four years ago, I stood sniffling with the best of us, welcoming in America’s first black president like the Messiah-meets-Black-Power-Ranger.  Yes, Barak Obama quickly morphed back into a real man with dirt on his toes and deficits in his dreams. 

But in four short years, something changed irrevocably. Something no one could ever have dreamed of that inauguration day, as I watched Jesse Jackson cry openly and older black women carrying photos of their ancestors pinned to the inside of their coat pockets to be beside them at that momentous marker in U.S. history.  Just four years later, and not once in over 1 million commercials costing over a billion dollars, did I see Barack Obama’s race become a part of this election.

Sure, Obama and Romney hammered each other on every dirty talking point to infinity and beyond, racking up an astounding 40 percent more ads than just four years ago. To be sure, this was an unashamed, unprecedentedly negative, ugly campaign.

But here is the definitive kicker that history should note: It may have taken almost 50 years since Martin Luther King had a dream, but in 2012 Barak Hussein Obama was re-elected President of the United States solely based on the content of his character—and not the colour of his skin. America finally, finally has come into its own multi-coloured complexion.  This election was utterly colour blind. The proof? Nobody noticed.

What a kick in the face.  Dreams do come true. Last night Barak Obama proved something the entire cynical political world still needs to hear: Hope isn’t a dirty word.

Tracey Barnett is a Kiwi-American citizen and political commentator. Except for this week. She is most definitely an American-Kiwi, at peace with both halves.

 You can read more of her work at her website.

Prime minister John Key has returned from a flying visit to Los Angeles announcing he has negotiated a workable capitulation to the demands of Hollywood moguls in the matter of tax concessions and incentives for American film studios.

Mr Key said the capitulation will be in the country's best interest when it comes to ensuring major American film projects are developed in New Zealand and he expected at least five thousand new jobs in catering, hospitality and cleaning up-type stuff to come on stream in the next decade.

It is believed a cabal of Hollywood producers have also underwritten the development of New Zealand's cycle trail, a pet project of Mr Key's, to the tune of $2 million or the weekend receipts from the new Adam Sandler comedy Golf Goof, whichever is the lesser.

“This deal with Hollywood has been a major breakthrough,” said Mr Key, “and should create gainful employment for many mum and dad investors currently struggling to find money to invest in the many assets which we intend to  sell to keep the country buoyant, or at least afloat for a little while.”

Mr Key said ceding national sovereignty to the American film industry was a small price to pay for a new cycleway which can now be expanded to take donkey carts to become a crucial part of the country's transport network in the next two decades.

At a dinner in Los Angeles hosted by Herod King of the Screenwriters, Actors, Technical Artists Negotiation Guild, Mr Key was introduced to Hollywood power players such as Sandler, Pauly Shore, Halle Berry and that guy who plays a werewolf on one of these television shows. You know, the guy with the high cheekbones who always speaks in a whisper.

Although Mr Key was not allowed to make eye contact with the stars, his new press secretary Solomon Weintraub (R-Cali) said the meetings had allowed the prime minister to feel the glow of stardom and had given Hollywood and New Zealand a firm platform on which to stand.

Mr Weintraub said that although Hollywood owned that platform Mr Key was told he would be allowed to stand, or kneel on it, any time he liked.

Although there was some speculation the Hollywood power players would be discussing the on-going case of Kiwi folk hero Mr Kim Dotcom, Mr Key said last night his name was mentioned only in passing.

“One of the SATAN Guild, Mr Erhit Lar from Warn-Fox, did bring his name up over dinner but after a half hour free and frank diatribe he didn't pursue the matter.”

Following the dinner at the upmarket Berchtes Garden Restaurant, Mr Key was entertained by Demi Moore who did an exciting dance involving veils. Afterwards she was seen to approach Mr Key and whisper something to him.

“Oh, it was something I'm pretty comfortable with, it was just a small request which we will be looking into in the coming weeks. I didn't quite catch what she said and will be getting clarification in the coming days, but I think all she asked for was something like, what Dotcom said on a platter. I think we can get that engraved for her.”

Mr Key was also photographed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next to the star for Mr Ed, the Talking Horse.

The prime minister disembarked from the Warner-Fox-Langley private jet in Wellington on Saturday enthusiastically waving the contract with Hollywood saying, “It bears Erhit Lar's name and mine.”

It was however a windy night and words from his subsequent sentence were blown away by the strong breeze.

It is believed he said “Prosperity in our time” but this cannot be confirmed.

A visibly tired John Key returns from Los Angeles after successful negotiation in Hollywood

My name is Grant and I am a music geek. If you want me to bang on about Robert Wyatt solo albums, Velvet Underground bootlegs, which is the best album by The Fall or what Straitjacket Fits were like live, feel free to buy me a beer or a coffee, push the start button and wave a white flag when you want me to stop.

Apart from the actual music, a big part, rightly or wrongly, of being a music geek is having a music collection: umpteen hundred vinyl LPs and singles, boxes and piles of CDs, a few boxes of back copies of MOJO, Uncut, The Wire and Real Groove going to seed, a bookcase with Lester Bangs anthologies, John Coltrane biographies, a few of those “1000 Great Albums...” type books and Simon Reynolds’ majestic Rip It Up And Start Again in it. Not to mention the limitless amount of music available on the internet.

Apart from the never-ending thrill of the actual music, part of the appeal is just knowing it’s there, looking at it and being able to say to yourself “Fuck that’s a great collection”.

Having frequented record shops for decades, I gotta say that High Fidelity, both the novel and the rom-com pretty much rings true: my standard line whenever it’s mentioned is “Yes, great documentary…” And while music obviously appeals to both sexes, record-collecting and geekery is pretty much a male domain, more fool us.

I assume it’s genetic: guys go for music crap, women go for shoes / dresses / handbags and the like. To illustrate this, I was in excellent Sydney record shop Red Eye four years go almost to the day when I bumped into a Dunedin musician and his wife. “We go around the shoe shops in the morning and the record shops in the afternoon” he said. We all laughed, knowingly. Also, next time you’re at a school or church fair, you’ll note it’s mostly guys buying books, and women buying clothes.

Which is why last week I did something that would horrify any other music geek. Completely unexpectedly and unnecessarily I coldly, ruthlessly and dispassionately put up for sale over 350 of my records, about 1/3^rd of my collection. I’ve been buying music since 1980, when as a 12-year-old I treated myself to a copy of Kiss’ Unmasked. The last time I had a clear-out was in 1995 when I sold a mere 20 or so.

The funny thing is, I don’t actual need the money – but I just wanted a few things. These things, unsurprisingly, are to do with music as well. Let me explain…

In short, I took up guitar a year ago and I want to get a few effects pedals and an electric guitar. Also, I want to go up to Wellington to a mate’s 50^th, so given that I’m not working full-time at present I couldn’t just rely on a weekly salary and budget for them. So, I figured, why not sell a few records ?

I enquired at Radio One about having a stall at the OUSA market day. I mentioned I’d be selling records and breakfast host and programme director Aaron Hawkins’ ears pricked up like a police dog’s sensing a prowler. “Really ?  - how many ? what sort of stuff? ” he asked, clearly curious. “Not sure, maybe about 50. I’ll know when I get home. I’ll get in touch tomorrow”.

I got home and started the cull – and that was when things got really interesting. I was like the great West Indies’ batsman Brian Lara at the crease: once I got going, I couldn’t stop. I started flicking through the large wooden record case and found myself going “Nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh…” and chucking record after record on to the floor.

That was something I never thought I’d do. Never, ever. Not in a million years. Uh-uh, never, never, ever. But I did and it simply didn’t bother me at all. Even more interestingly for myself, it simply didn’t bother me. I felt no loss, sadness or pity. It was just an exercise, a cull.

Before I knew it, there was over 360 on the floor. About a third were albums I’ve since got on CD as well, another third albums and bands I’d simply stopped listening to and being excited by, another third albums I’d bought once and never listened to again. 25 years ago I thought Buzzcocks’ debut Another Music In A Different Kitchen was the greatest album ever made. 25 years later, it was in the sale pile.

I didn’t cull any of the NZ stuff and next to nothing from the krautrock and jazz sections. Anything else had been fair game.

I messaged Aaron on Facebook: “I’ve got 360 albums for sale. I noticed you were wearing a t-shirt of Television’s live album The Blow-Up yesterday. I can do you that for $40.” He replied “Bloody hell, this is going to be expensive”.

I  couldn’t be stuffed with the hassle of putting listing after listing on Trade Me or lugging them up to Too Tone. The only rule I made for myself was that I had to sell them at a competitive price, but cheaper than what they’d be in Too Tone, Penny Lane, Slow Boat or Real Groovy. I wasn’t going to be emotional about what anyone did or didn’t buy. This was a purely utilitarian exercise. Prices ranged from $10 for “bread and butter” albums, $20, $25, $30 for notable indie / cult albums, $40 for fairly rare or doubles.

Aaron came around the next Sunday and left with 26 albums. That alone had exceeded my target figure financially, anything from now on was just going to be gravy. But almost as important as the sale was that they were going to a good home. This was something crucial – they had to now belong to someone who’d appreciate the music, not simply see them as commercial items and flog them on Trade Me a week later. Anyone who listens to Radio One’s breakfast show knows he appreciates music; I chucked him in a copy of Slint’s debut, Tweez, for free.

The next day I bumped into the poet David Howard, who has just been selected as the 2013 Burns Fellow at Otago. He bought eight albums of me and in doing so made a salient point: “If you haven’t listened to it in the past five or 10 years, you’re not going to listen to it in the next five or 10 years”. I know he’ll give them a good home, too – hell, he might even write a poem about it.

I took three boxes of about 60 records each down to the market day on Thursday last week. One box of punk, indie, etc, one of classic rock, singer-songwriters and such, one of bits ‘n’ pieces – soundtracks, country, etc, all $10 each. I’d contemplated taking some of the pricier stuff, but I couldn’t be stuffed haggling.

I sold about 40, mostly from the punk / indie box. Chris Heazlewood (King Loser, etc) had a nosey through them. He didn’t buy any himself, but he very kindly tipped off some young chap about which Buzzcocks and Echo & the Bunnymen albums to buy. Cheers, Chris.

Every now and again I’d get asked for discount, but the one time I gave any was when it wasn’t even asked for. A young woman had spotted four mid-‘80s British indie pop albums, one each by hopelessly obscure even then bands like The Jasmine Minks, the June Brides and the less-obscure Orange Juice. She just about exploded with joy when she saw them. Her name was Sylvie and she was a part-timer at Radio One. Clearly, they were going to go to a very, very, good home, so I gave them to her for $30.

Last Friday morning I bumped into my friend Jeff Ruston, who’s been a scenester since the ‘70s and told him about how I’d put my records up for sale. He was impressed and said he’s been selling some of his on Trade Me, too. “Your mother will probably say you’re finally growing up” he laughed. Two days later my Mum rang from her home in Queensland as I was walking along George St and I told her I’d sold some records. “Good god, that must’ve been like selling your babies” she remarked. “Mmm, I suppose so” I replied before changing the subject and asking her what’d been happening on the Sunshine Coast lately.

That evening two friends came around and bought about 10 albums each. One of them, Bill, has worked in Scribes, Dunedin’s leading second-hand bookshop, for several years and completely understands the nuances of collecting and selling. He’d recently been as dispassionate about selling some books as I had been with records.

“Sometimes, if you want to buy this (holding up left hand), you’ve got to sell that (holds up right hand)”.

The other friend, Tim, was as pleased as Sylvie was at seeing the British indie stuff when he saw Galaxie 500’s On Fire album, which again reiterated to me the importance of them going to a good home.

On Sunday a student that’d bought a few of the $10 albums at the market day popped around and splashed out $50 on Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland double LP – the rare, nude girls cover issue to be exact. It’s going to a good home.

As of today I’ve sold just over 100 of the 360 that were for sale and I have no regrets whatsoever. There’s a nice Fender Strat copy electric guitar now in my name and if any of you Aucklanders see Paul Crowther around, do tell him that Hot Cake 1208/30 really does work a bloody treat, please. Plus, more importantly, I’ll get to go to a mate’s 50^th in Wellington, which’ll be heaps of fun.

The friends I’ve already sold stuff to already might buy one or two more things, but otherwise I’ve shut up shop. Whether I’d sold 10, 50, 100 or 200 records is unimportant, it’s served its purpose and I don’t need to sell the remaining 200. I’m just not interested in being greedy about it.

As I’ve said to a lot of people recently, I’ll love music until I fall into the ground, but these days there are certain aspects of it that I can hold at arm’s length. I suppose one’s music collection is one of those aspects.

Incidentally, apart from music my other main interest is long-distance running. I’ve run several marathons over the years, so if you want anyone to prattle on about running over the Sydney harbour bridge or around Lake Rotorua, you know who to ask…