The old man and I were walking along Mayoral Drive in the Auckland CBD one afternoon back in the '90s. Another even older man had just walked out of the Pan Pacific Hotel and headed towards us. My father, aged sixty-mumble, did something I'd never see him do before.
He lost the expression of a man wearied by sixty-odd years on the clock, and reverted to a mumbling child as he praised former child actor Mickey Rooney in person. This crinkly polite Yank - accosted on the streets in a strange land by some quixotic stranger in the three piece armour of an attorney - had brightened my Dad's day considerably.
Needless to say, Mickey Rooney's golden days of Hollywood were a bit before my time. Growing up two generations prior to my existence, the old man grew up on tales of conquest by proxies of the British Empire in books, as well as the pulp fiction churned out by Hollywood, leeched as it was of reality by the censors and purveyors of moral rectitude.
The Ten Commandments of Hollywood back then, summed up in one picture, were:
In contrast to the old man, all my heroes were outlaws. I grew up with '70s cinema and early '80s auteurs, the golden era of the film director. Years before the blockbuster killed the independent studios' diversity with superheroes and cloned plots, it was all Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Bugsy Malone, the Blondini gang from Goodbye Pork Pie, Bruno Lawrence, Sam Lowry in Brazil, Buckaroo Banzai, David Lynch, etc.
Moral ambiguity, anti-heroes, irony and pathos were main ingredients. Ultra-violence was used as allegory or hyperbole (A Clockwork Orange, The Evil Dead), as opposed to today's serious yet CGI carnage purely for the sake of it.
But I digress. The Mickey Rooney intersection came into mind on Thursday, as John Banks walked out of court a guilty man. My old man shared airtime with Banks on Radio Pacific. Of all the things Banks could have said as Michelle Boag quietly photobombed away in the background, Banks had to come out with an esoteric 1930's song about standing in puddles. A man so pole-axed, the child came out.
Three days later, John Banks announces he is exiting the political stage once more. Up until this afternoon, it looked like he was blithely looking at hanging around in Parliament, upstaging the election theatre cast from Jamie Whyte to John Key, before crashing through the footlights head first into the orchestra pit.
Farewell then, John Banks. You will be forgotten. Cannabis will be legalised. Look who's stupid then. Auckland will one day reverse your rates poll tax (aka the Uniform Annual General Charge), as well as your puritanical Brothel and Commercial Sex Premises bylaw. Charter schools will be folded back into the integrated schools system, where state accountability sits in judgement over religious schools.
April was one of those months. Vanilla skies with no news, followed by a vanilla religious holiday, concluding with a vanilla hailstorm of moral panic complete with pitchforked lightning and a flood of recanting politicians.
The Easter shopping anomaly went to 11 this year, with everything open in Wanaka over the mandated religious period except the pubs. Apparently the town was tipped off that there would be no enforcement of the archaic law against Easter trading (unless you were a pub or an unsuccessful special event applicant, in which case there would be). This fickle absence of enforcement gave Wanaka an excemption reserved in legislation only for Taupo and other listed 'tourist towns'.
Alcohol was still available at the traditionally excempted premises. If you were middle class enough to afford to dine in licensed premises, you could drink booze uninterrupted over Easter. This exclusion is an artifact from before the Sale of Liquor Act 1989, when every Sunday was Easter Sunday and all the pubs were closed. Churches could still serve booze (to minors!) in the Eucharist, Synagogues could still serve booze (to babies!) at circumcisions / genital mutilations. For the secular Gentile others, we had to stockpile booze at home over Easter like a survivalist.
Survivalism sounds like what is increasingly a pastime for the residents of the Flockton sinkhole. The recent rains have washed away more hope from them, with the balance between fight and flight swinging inexorably towards the latter. Winter is coming, and there may be more once-in-a-century floods on their way. There's no sign of help from King Gerry, who has kicked the problem firmly into the city council's realm to deal with.
Not entirely dissimilar to the buck-passing bug in last year's visionary Psychoactive Substances Act, which led to hicksville mayors around NZ landed with responsibility for a new and complex regime they knew absolutely nothing about. The upshot of this led to the government siding with vigilante arsonists in banning legal highs outright last week.
In retrospect, all the signs were there. Nationwide protests that looked like a working class Sensible Sentencing Trust lynch mob took place. Associate Minister of Health (and temporary drug czar while Dunne was in the naughty corner last year) Todd McClay agreed with a Rotorua crowd that legal highs were bad. Labour party shadow drug czar Iain Lees-Galloway appeared in Palmy saying legal highs were bad. Only Peter Dunne was singing the Act's positives until last Sunday night, when Dunne finally capitulated and agreed that legal highs were, as they say, bad.
Blame for this vanilla victory rests firmly with National and Labour. National for under-funding the project to the point of sabotage, and its ignorance of what was at stake beyond "The focus group said no." Labour for the inane local government authority bug they inserted into the Psychoactive Substances Act, demonstrating that they have learned precisely nothing from the local government fallout over the Prostitution Reform Act. Secondly, Labour's populist crusade ran counter to their support for the original bill.
It shows bad faith from both main parties. A lack of imagination from the Nats is to be expected, but Labour's faults are unforgivable. Thank Dagg for MMP and third party software, because there's too much salt sown in the fallow fields of Team Blue and Team Red.
The NZ Problem Gambling Foundation has been effectively defunded after a Ministry of Health review recommended dumping Gambling Foundation services in favour of the Salvation Army. The membrane between state and religion grows ever thinner, and there's a weird funk in the air.
Let's get this clear at the get go. It's not that I wish to pick a fight with the Salvation Army. I have had their Bell Gully law jockeys pissing in my ear on a Friday afternoon when I'm getting my drunk on before. Captain Buzzkills, for sure.
I'd just like to know why the Problem Gambling Foundation was dropped after a long and respectable history, and whether it was the Sallies' tax exempt status that helped undercut the tender for rehab and support services. Unfortunately, the only evidence being presented so far is a series of black boxes.
When casinos were first legalised in NZ, the Casino Control Authority set many conditions on licences. One of those was a gambling levy, which would be funnelled directly towards NGOs funded to be the casinos' nemeses. Some kind of watchmen duality would keep the system in check for the public good.
The NZ Problem Gambling Foundation was a product of this levy. Over the next 20 years, it provided a secular national service for problem addicts, and provided the Problem Gambling literature that casinos must by law have visibly displayed in their premises. The advocacy was separately funded through donations, and worked to minimise problem gambling at the source, through supply control of the gambler crack of pokie machines.
In contrast, the Salvation Army is a more generalised provider of government welfare services; a bit like Serco, the private company behind the Auckland Remand Centre and new Wiri prison, but tax exempt through religious status (The Seventh Day Adventists do the same thing with Sanitarium. Don't get me started on Jesus Freaks and breakfast communions. Suffice it to say, coffee and cigarettes is my rite).
So, after twenty years of internationally recognised excellence in treatment, research and lobbying (Sinking Lid? That was them), why have the NZ Problem Gambling Foundation lost their meal ticket? Well, no-one's saying.
The independent report by the Ministry of Health hasn't popped up. Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne did, on Checkpoint, where he failed to illuminate the why of it either. Nor did the Sallies, who weren't going into specifics. There was unfinished contract haggling to be had yet, and the whole deal was commercially sensitive (My paraphrase, not a quote, m'lud). Unfinished business indeed.
The Ministry of Health is feeling pretty damn sure that the God botherers can improve on the precedents set by the Problem Gambling Foundation. Faith-based even. And which secular NGO is the next to get gobbled up by the Salvation Army's market share and scales of economy?
1) Drinking on Wellington's Waterfront at 3am. In the parlance of The Wire, on a hot summer night, the corner is the poor man's lounge. There are few things more memorable than getting drunk in the small hours with a beautiful woman on Wellington's waterfront, the best lounge in the world (weather permitting).
Unfortunately, an unholy alliance between local government busy bodies and national government police goons have produced liquor-free zones that would make alcohol prohibitionist Kate Sheppard proud. Soon, every part of NZ will be highchair-friendly 24/7 , and no-one will witness those Yayoi Kusama-like infinity moments on the Wellington harbour again. Not without a private patch of Oriental Bay real estate, at least.
2) Dancing til dawn at an NZ nightclub. The party may never end at John Key's house, but due to new alcohol laws which came into force this week, all bars must now close at 4am. It's like a puritan mash-up of 6 o'clock closing and daylight saving. Patricia Bartlett must be genuflecting in her grave. Her vision of a bland NZ mindset has come true.
3) Cycling without a helmet, another National party crime. Jim Bolger's car-happy used car salesmen constituents got a fuel injection in the 1990's. Not only was a new line in cheap Jap imports flooding in after import restrictions were lifted, cycling was actively discouraged as an alternative form of transport by making it illegal to cycle without wearing a polystyrene tit on one's head.
Even rotan-happy Singapore, which cruelly and unusally punishes people for smoking, long hair and chewing gum (among many many other fickle deviances) has no laws mandating bike helmets. New news everyone, legally required bike helmets may cause more harm than good.
4) Smoking in an adult environment (i.e. bar). One of the great joys I used to look forward to after a hard day of dealing with other people was sitting down at the local bar with a pint of ale, a blank pad of paper, a pen, and a pack of cigarettes. Alas, this is now considered a crime against humanity. This just in, a longitudinal study has shown that second-hand smoke cancer does not fucking exist .
5) Cannabis. First grown in NZ by a nun, popularised by visiting US soldiers during WWII, blamed by the vanilla people for the Bassett Road murders. The Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 gave police increasing powers, to the point where dope fiends are now treated more harshly than murderers and fraudsters. Persecution on this level hasn't been seen since the Anglicans tried to wipe out the Catholics.
Had to switch off NatRad earlier than usual
The host was whipping Joe Bennett for his
Defence of the pursuit of happiness
In the future we will all die of boredom
Rain on corrogated iron
A superior form of white noise
Filtered through red wine
Squeezed into something new
The random hits the sine wave
Chaos and order clash with wild harmony
Much more tolerance for deviation
In nature than nurture
Just as Sky City gets permission to buy out the last small player in the casino market in Queenstown and become the monopoly casino provider in NZ, details over the Shon Kee Convention Centre haggling process spill out into the open.
The voodoo economists in Treasury failed to see the merits of either convention centre or Sky City concessions. Clearly, logic and reason had nothing to do with it. More likely Keynesian economics, corrupted by tender favoritism.
This is conviction politics at its most cynical. If the government must throw money away to create temporary jobs to juke the stats, and minimum slave wage temp jobs to suck up the aftermath, there are no whiter elephants than a Mega Convention Centre. Especially seeing how the financial hub brainfart was stillborn and all.
# Sky City didn't ask for an expansion of table games to include Russian Roulette or Cock Fighting, hosted by Mike Hosking.
# They didn't ask for a Juice Bank, where punters could exchange blood, sperm, or DNA copyright for printed gambling tickets.
# They didn't ask for an on-site pawn shop, where punters could hand over house and car keys for credit.
# They only got TVNZ land. They could have asked for first right of refusal to purchase Auckland CBD land in perpetuity, in fitting with the thousand year plan to take over the entire city. The gutters would be lined with pokie machines, while a Skywalk above conveyed important people to yet another meeting.
# They didn't ask for $40 million from the government each year to fund a 24 hour carpark childcare centre and library.
Looking back as a burnt-out hospo droid, I had to put up with a lot of shit in my time. Oh, the stories I could tell, but my lips are zipped. What goes on in hospo stays in hospo.
However, these are not the old days. Waitrons and bar managers can get hefty fines (for a waitron, if not a National Party tit sucker) or lose their licence for serving drunk arseholes.
But what really grinds my gears is that these Bachanalian bastard lawmakers refuse to stop arresting and jailing less surly behaviour from the cannabis hippies.
And call me a dope fiend, but aren't all these Nats beginning to look the same whiter shade of pale?
As has been noted elsewhere in popular culture, it is better to be born a rich cripple than a poor one. My lucky draw didn't result so much in prosthetics, and the speech therapy was state funded, but my advantage came from books.
The old man's library was my treasure. There was everything a precocious Deaf kid could want, including many books that have been banned or burned in other parts of the world. Consequently, I have always found censorship more ridiculous than the Easter Bunny.
So it was with some surprise to discover today that Manga is a crime. Farrar is squeamish, so I recommend him not to watch such Manga classics as Urotsukidōji, which is widely available and has more tentacle sex than a tankful of octopuses on octopus Viagra.
First they came for the Hentai. Surely, it's only a matter of time before Internal Affairs will come banging on my door for my stash of Marshall Law comics. Nuke Me Slowly indeed.
As far as George Orwell was concerned, the hallmarks of a totalitarian society can be summed up by bad cigarettes and compulsory fitness. The opening chapter of 1984 came to mind as I watched the first segment of TV3 ambitious new current affairs show The Vote.
The format seems robust enough, but the subject matter gave me reflux. Taxing 'bad' food is a mind-numbingly stupid idea, up there with Labour's aborted policy of exempting 'fresh' fruit and vegetables from GST.
But New Zealand has no shortage of bashers. Everybody needs somebody to hate, after all. The smokers are sufficiently marginalised, so now the puritans are after the drinkers and eaters. Can you spot the epicurean persecution yet?
No drinking in bars after midnight tonight. Blame the Christians.
[And lest you think I've dodged the 'Obesity Epidemic' argument, I put the temporary rise in fattery down to a combination of anti-smoking hatred (besides bulimia and cocaine, cigarettes are a model's best friend), Soccer Mum protectionism (e.g. stranger danger), the rise of imported cars in the '90s (especially in Auckland), the corresponding decline in cycling (especially when helmets were made compulsory), as well as added time pressures of modern life (e.g. fewer housewives chained to the stove). Access to fast food is at best a contributory factor.]
Once again, there is no news. Nothing is new today. Instead, I will share with you my recipe for vodka mojito, a perfect aperitif for these unusually consistent hot summer nights we're having.
First, make the sugar syrup. Dissolve 500 grams of sugar into 500 mls of hot water and bring to a slow simmer, stirring with a metal spoon. Let it cool and pour into an empty wine bottle and store in the fridge.
Second, make lemonade. Put 50 mls of sugar syrup and 50 mls of lemon juice into a 1 litre jug and top up with water. Chill.
Thirdly, put some mint leaves and ice into a tumbler and add a slosh of vodka. Crush the mint into the ice and vodka with the butt of a small knife and top up with lemonade.
There is no clean and tidy way to dispose of a dead whale. Everyone from Greenpeace to Norway knows that. The old man of the sea that washed up at the Pram Boat Club was always going to be a mission to inter.
I'm glad my hunter/gatherer mate went for a rubberneck so I didn't have to. The crowds of gawpers, the tang of cordite and intestines fugging the air that does nasty things to my memory. Ta but na. Even he was stunned by the amateurism and gore that went into digging out the jawbone. He reckoned they should have used a chainsaw and be done with it.
A funny fact about whaling; the Law Commission's Alcohol in Our Lives Report never mentioned it, but the Maori who worked on the whaling stations didn't drink with their European workmates. They socialised, they smoked tobacco, but kept away from the demon drink.
It was only in the 1860's, when converted Christian Maori started preaching to their own, that alcohol became an accepted part of Maori habit. Even then, places like Parihaka sprang up as oasis of socialisation without inebriation. Later on, the same quantum effect of culture occurred in the 1950's with the urbanisation of Maori. The generational fallout from that continues today.
Anyways, the remains of the whale passed by my rented whenua sometime yesterday and is now interred somewhere in Raumati South. The jawbone is getting picked clean by sea leeches or whatever. And I'm finally going to sit down and read Moby Dick for the first time.
Just when you start to lose hope in Representative Democracy and write the lot of them off as a bunch of out-of-touch buzzword-infested den of compromised sluts, along comes a couple of old-fashioned conscience bills to clear the air. For once, you actually hear what MPs think on things, beyond the fortessed paddocks of usual party politics. Not bad, considering neither bill would have impacted on me in the slightest way.
The first reading vote for Same Sex Marriage was a curious beast indeed. Reluctant plaudits must be given to John Banks. He might have had more strings attached to him than a Thunderbirds puppet, but he did better in the liberal stakes than the appalling Act munsters who were the only party to vote against the NZSL Bill in the last parliament. I witnessed that news broadcast at Wellington's Deaf Club, and the hands flew blue in disgust.
As others have also noted, I tip my hat at the eloquent and reasonable explanation National MP Paul Hutchison gave in support of the bill. I hope in future to draw on that holistic pragmatism on other matters. Labour MP David Clark, who previously seemed to come from the same Steve Maharey batch of clones as Ian Lees-Galloway, demonstrated that faith and reason are not mutually exclusive concepts, even if the God delusion spins your dial.
I've only skipped through a few of the speeches on the Alcohol Reform vote on the purchase age for alcohol so far. Once I see the tally of who voted where, I might might check out more of the whys. But I'm happy that at least NZers can be treated as adults at 18 years old, across the board. All we have to do now is train them for it as best we can.
The speech that has stuck out the most so far has been Grant Robertson's, where he acknowledged under Parliamentary privilege his underage escapades when the purchase age was 20.
Robertson's honesty resonated for me. As someone who has been drinking alcohol for as long as I can remember (the first one I do remember was when I was given a beer on Xmas Day when I was five and ran away to home. Story for another day, but they supposedly had the cops out looking for me and everything).
The purchase age for alcohol was 20 almost up until I was 20. Even so, I was a casual drinker at the age of nine, a regular drinker at 15, and a regular nightclubber at 17. All of this occurred when the age limit was 20.
A few less nonsensical unenforceable laws would be good, a few more rational and realistic approaches would be better. Being honest is a start.
So why trust me on the subject? Well, apart from having some experience
in drug driving from all sorts of angles, I helped put together NORML
New Zealand's select committee submission on drugged driving some years
ago. Short story, we cautiously favoured a 10ng/mL limit, while
acknowledging the wildly subjective nature of doing so. You can view it here. I have also read P.J. O'Rourke's classic How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Having Your Wing Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink.
The Herald's headline is wrong. The study did not find the most crash drivers had taken drugs. 546 of the 1046 drivers (52 percent) whose blood was analysed were found to be unimpaired by drugs or alcohol.
All sorts of other true yet sensational headlines were possible for the NZ Herald, given the contents of the report (it's here, not that the Herald wants to disclose its publicly available sources or anything); "Females appear more likely to drive on sedatives, as opposed to alcohol or cannabis" would be one. "Maori over-represented in alcohol and cannabis driver deaths" might be another. "Straight people five times more likely to kill than cannabis only drivers" is getting warmer, but "Everyone's on drugs in Auckland, yet few people die on the roads there" would probably be the angle I'd go with.
The study in question polled two groups. The main group of 1046 dead drivers, a census of NZ road deaths spanning a five year period between 1st July 2004 and 30th September 2009, was by far the most interesting. In pleb-speak, the ESR could go all CSI on these dead drivers' blood samples.
The basic PR is mainly true:
Of the 1,046 deceased drivers tested for the presence of both alcohol and drugs:
546 (52%) of drivers were not impaired by alcohol or other drugs.
500 (48%) of drivers tested positive for the presence of alcohol and/or drugs.
Of these 500 drivers who tested positive:
135 (27%) recorded the presence of alcohol only;
96 (19%) recorded the presence of cannabis only;
142 (28%) recorded the presence of both alcohol and cannabis (but no other drug), and;
127 (25%) recorded a combination of drugs, including the combination of alcohol and/or cannabis.
Of the 127 deceased drivers who recorded a combination of drugs (other than alcohol or cannabis):
23% recorded the presence of opioids (such as codeine or morphine);
31% recorded the presence of sedatives (such as diazepam), and;
42% recorded the presence of stimulants (such as methamphetamine).
But the detail is so much more fun. Let's see now... 42 percent of 127 is 53.3. Over those five years, ten people a year died with stims in their blood. That's far less of a bad stat than drownings or suicide, for sure.
No, when you're talking about drugged driving, they're talking about cannabis. If they were thinking of alcohol, they'd say drink driving. And that universal problem solvent of alcohol is still most of the problem. Even Auckland MASH wonk Dr Tim Parke couldn't ignore that pink elephant in the waiting room on Nine to Noon today.
The report has this to say about driving under the influence of cannabis (page 18):
There is not a strong correlation between THC blood levels and impairment.
The report goes on to note that single vehicles accidents are more common in alcohol and alcohol with cannabis deaths (tree, power pole), however cannabis only deaths occurred more frequently in multiple vehicle crashes (trucks, and lots of motorbikes hitting cars).
The report looks at odds ratios, drilling right down to how the 18 (of 96, out of 1046) non-culpable cannabis only drivers and how they died. The comfortably numb motorcyclist (18ng/mL) getting killed by a car who failed to give way was sobering enough, but this poor bastard wins the Milan Kundera Award for this ending:
Car hit another then crossed centre line into path of van driven by deceased
Dodge that one, possum.
I do not support Farrar or AA's call for random drug driving testing. Alcohol is still by far the biggest problem. What I would really appreciate is a mature an honest approach to driving and to drugs. To coin Hunter S. Thompson, you can turn your back on a person, back never turn your back on a drug, especially when that drug is steering a ute home from the pub.
And if that doesn't sway you, consider this. The twisted nature of the polydrug damage this report sought to consider, can easily be replicated within the alcohol only group alone. Anyone who has ever mixed their grains and grapes will agree.
Thanks for reading. You've earned a bit of Suzanne Vega:
According to the World Health Organisation, New Zealand drinks around 9.62 litres of alcohol per capita. In the international drinking tables, that puts us 49th= with Namibia. (Hat Tip Boing Boing).
It's not what we're drinking. It's where we're drinking it. And it's certainly not in this country, at least comparatively.
NZ drinks slightly more than the Mormontastic USA (9.44 litres), and slightly more than half the consumption of Moldova, which tops the chart with 18.22 litres per person per year. NZ's consumption rate is lower than our peers in Australia, the Netherlands and Palau (which is one of the few countries who smoke more cannabis per capita than NZ), although way below tight Old Blighty and the Emerald Isles.
1. Moldova 18.22
2. Czech Rep. 16.45
3. Hungary 16.27
4. Russia 15.76
5. Ukraine 15.60
6. Estonia 15.57
7. Andorra 15.48
8. Romania 15.30
9. Slovenia 15.19
10. Belarus 15.13
11. Croatia 15.11
12. Lithuania 15.03
13. South Korea 14.80
14. Portugal 14.55
15. Ireland 14.41
16. France 13.66
17= United Kingdom 13.37
17= Denmark 13.37
19. Slovakia 13.33
20. Poland 13.25
21. Austria 13.24
22. Luxembourg 13.01
23. Germany 12.81
24. Finland 12.52
25. Latvia 12.50
26. Bulgaria 12.44
27. Uganda 11.93
28. Saint Lucia 11.85
29. Spain 11.62
30. Armenia 11.35
31. Serbia 11.09
32. Switzerland 11.06
33. Kazakhstan 10.96
34. Belgium 10.77
35. Greece 10.75
36. Italy 10.68
37. Azerbaijan 10.60
38. Seychelles 10.59
39. Granada 10.35
40. Sweden 10.30
41. Palau 10.10
42. Netherlands 10.05
43 Australia 10.02
44. Argentina 10
45. Rwanda 9.80
46. Canada 9.77
47. Sierra Leone 9.72
48. Bosnia / Herzegovina 9.63
49= Namibia 9.62
We're over the hump of winter. Not only are the days getting longer, calendar mid-winter has been and gone. So has the rain, thank Dagg. That's the thing about NZ. The weather might be pluvial, even inclement at times. But it does pass. Suck on that, Blighty Summer.
The break in the weather couldn't come soon enough. These wild swings experienced at the ends of the earth require heavy defences. A creative drug regimen only goes so far, when was is really needed is some sun and a mild breeze in the hair.
As opposed to the gales that blew my bastard goNZo flag right off the flagpole, sending it somewhere south-east one howling night, or the banshee blast that knocked the neighbour's big bastard tree onto the front lawn. The frosts that fridged my flat, forcing the cat to seek refuge in the bed next to the hot water bottle.
But back to the drugs. It's good to see Labour's drug guy, Iain Lees-Galloway, backing off minimum pricing of alcohol and considering more rational options. There's no need to infantilise the country and sterilise it of all possible harms. Especially when so many Labour activists are advertising their epicurean pursuits so wantonly on Facebook. The trivial pursuits of the middle classes more closely match those of the working classes than those of the rarefied golf, bridge and Northern Club gentry, so a ceasefire on that hypocritical front seems wise.
However, there's still a hint of naivete and puritanism in there. Take the clean zones around schools, for example. Booze is not the issue around these areas. It's the brand recognition of other, more relevant, drugs which concern kids; fat, sugar, salt. Nana's nagging the wrong niche here.
On the other side of the House, drug tzar Peter Dunne has announced the 'world first' regulated artificial cannabis market, which I presume will be as meaningful as the Schedule D component of the Misuse of Drugs Act, which currently sits with a vacant schedule, just waiting for a single legal high to be approved.
What the flying buggery Jesus does "Mostly Harmless" mean exactly? Does the artificial cannabis have to be more or less harmful than tobacco, alcohol, Prozac, Coke or Viagra before it is permitted to be sold? Ever tried a bottle of low-risk alcohol or a pill of placebo-strength paracetamol? It's rubbish.
Can't they just bring back BZP and go back to the devil they know? Of course they won't. Dunne has just announced a more creative way to just say no to substitutes of the incumbent medicine men in beer, wine and spirits.
It's enough to make you want to clutch all the wine, coffee, cigarettes and herbiage all the much closer to the chest. If the wowsers don't get them, the control freaks will.
The NZ Herald continues its look at the festering corruption within the gaming machine swindle. David Fisher reports on a former gaming chief executive:
Mr Wevers said attempts to reform the industry failed as those involved
"reverted to behaviour to maximise returns to venues" and trusts. "There
were a whole of lot of people and lawyers assisting them who were
looking at ways to avoid the law."
Counties Manukau Bowls Inc (now in liquidation) became the beneficiary
of an ever-increasing level of grants once Gibbons worked out how to get
into the pub business, care of investment structure devised by people
he knew in trotting circles.
You'd have thought reform would have begun after the great Gold Times court case way back in 2005, which highlighted the broad grey areas where fraud might flourish. Te Ururoa Flavell's Bill is a belated start, drawing much needed scrutiny on the industry. But larger reform is needed to tidy up this Pleasantville Mafia family.
There is a ton of money in pokies. Wherever there is that much money at
stake, corruption and special interests take a strong interest. I've known about this rort since its inception. The old man crowed how the Palmy Cozzie Club paid for its new building and refurbishment from a single year's worth of taking from their pokies. You can see his influence to this day, in the way rugby, racing and beer gets most of the pokie dividend.
I'm pretty confident that more money is poured into rugby, racing and beer every year than what the country spends on Crown Research Institutes, Apprenticeship Training and Special Needs Education combined. Something is terribly wrong with this picture. If you think throwing money into pokies is a waste of money, there must be better things to do with their proceeds than line the pockets of the fat incumbents.
Only the Maori Party has the misguided thickery to impose a tax increase on half of its constituency. But their plan to plain package tobacco products has set a new record in flogging a dead horse.
I got fed up with the montage of government health warnings on the packaging a long time ago. Here's my tobacco wallet, complete with Maryjane the Cannabus sticker:
I know the risks of my hobby, and the last thing I need is a stomach stapled diabetic to preach to me about lifestyle choices.
I know a thing or two about gambling. I was conceived to save a dying marriage, a bad gamble if ever there was one. Around the time of my birth, my father was enjoying a winning streak at the racecourse with a horse called Breathalyser. The purchase of said thoroughbred was the result of Dad's lawyer's cut as part of a spectacular payout at the law courts over a drink driving accident lawsuit (This being before ACC removed personal liability, but that's a whole other kind of recursive coincidences which won't be discussed for the moment).
Breathalyser's luck ran out with a broken leg and was buried somewhere behind Awapuni racecourse, near Mt Cleese. Her daughter, Once Eliza, never recaptured her Mum's glorious run. Many childhood weekends were spent at the races as Dad fruitlessly tried to recapture that original thrill. My brother was so well versed with the form from hanging around the Members' Stand, jockeys and trainers, if 12 year olds could place bets at the trackside tote, he'd have made a fortune.
As a teenager, I accompanied the old man to Cambridge when he was invited to open a Stud Farm. He described horse racing then as the sport that can turn paupers into kings and kings into paupers. I stood there inhaling the horse shit and expensive scents of the peacocks preening and strutting around the concourse.
Dad took me over to Oz in 1986 with his mates Len and Dawn, in what turned out to be a hellish casino road trip from Burleigh Heads to Melbourne in two weeks. We went to the Rugby Club pokie halls, Jupiters' Casino, and every type of gaming house in between. Although the age of entry was 18, and I was a young looking 16, I never was turned away from a game or pokie while I was there.
In yet another bout of staggeringly amazing coincidences, Dad was inspired to do this jaunt by a daring man called Ken Morgan, who had gained notoriety for opening a casino outside New Zealand's territorial waters on a boat called the Gulf Explorer. You'll know Ken as Dakta Green:
Ken Morgan had ruffled a lot of feathers among the public, the unions and even within the Labour party caucus. The Golden Kiwi ticket was in the process of being upgraded to Instant Kiwi, the stupidity tax of Lotto was forming, helped no end by witnessing the Keno board at Jupiter's first hand. The Casino Control Authority (now the Gambling Commission) was but a glint in Dad's eye.
By 17, I was among a handful of school mates with TAB phone accounts. Even the Head Boy of the school read the Friday Flash in the Common Room. Rugby, racing and beer ruled. I also had my meagre $400 in savings invested in shares. Miami Vice and Miami Wine Coolers also ruled, for a short time. In the end, the TAB account dissipated much more slowly and entertainingly than the shares fared. It was 1987, after all.
I met Judith Collins in the 1990's, when she was the head of the Casino Control Authority. If memory serves, Auckland's Harrah's casino was being issued with a five year license and a 150 kilometre monopoly boundary for the same period. The idea was that competition would be introduced and all Harrah's had was a head start.
Some public functions were part of the initial conditions, such as the Bus Terminal and what is now known as Sky City Theatre. But similar stipulations were made on Christchurch Casino, when it was still independently operated. The playing field was, as they say, level.
On a personal level, I had become hooked on pokies by this time. They proved far less exhausting to concentrate on than people, although they were quite high maintenance. It would take years to realise that all this cash was being thrown away all because I didn't want to go back to the flat.
I was cured of all major gambling habits in my thirties. It was a sure-fire treatment I'd recommend to gambling counsellors everywhere. I became a roulette dealer at Sky City. The job was so demoralising, stressful and repetitive, the mainly immigrant dealers worked hard to save up and leave to become taxi drivers.
By coincidence, the bread and butter punters of Sky City was also Auckland's immigrant population, possibly seeking sanctuary in the one place that will never ostracise them for their visible (and invisible) differences. While they still have a dollar in their pocket at least, unlike most of New Zealand.
There are a thousand examples I could give you. The best one is the depressing recurring memory of standing at a playerless roulette table at 3am on a Sunday morning, hands in sight of the ever-vigilant cameras above, fingers akimbo on the dirty felt cloth. Staring at the rows of expressionless faces lit up by these machines, Slot Sluts umbilically connected to their hosts, their parasites.
Of all the forms of gambling I have witnessed, none robs people quicker and more efficiently than a pokie machine. There's half an hour between races. Lotto is weekly. Even an Instant Kiwi takes half a minute to get the kick (or not). Table games at least have to employ some human capital. Most casino pokie attendants are burned out table games dealers. And you'd be surprised how little labour it takes to service a pokie machine, and how much competition there is for those relatively cushy jobs at the casino.
We all need pressure valves. Gambling, within reasonable limits, is one of these good vices. Wellington should still get a casino, as I said earlier. But they should exist in the spirit of all hospitality, and that is to redistribute money from the rich to the poor (workers) for a reasonable service.
You're asking for trouble if you mercilessly exploit the poor for inflated personal gains. Because it is the taxpayers and citizens who have to pick up the tab when it goes wrong for those who can least afford it.
To bend one of the old man's repetitive quotes, money may not buy happiness, but it does buy you a way to externalise your miseries.
Yet the Prime Minister claims the expansion of pokie numbers will not materially lead to an expansion of problem gambling. He suggests this is because the casino operator is targeting international clients. He surely can't be serious...
Key should go down to the casino for a night or two and take a hard look at just who patronises the pokies. I had a look myself this week (and no, I do not have a "Chairman's Card" and nor am I an ambassador for the company). I simply went down to have a look through the operation and to see who was patronising the 1647 machines that are already at the Victoria St operation.
They are not the kind of "international clients" who fly in to play on the gaming tables or in the VIP rooms, but housewives, solo parents and pensioners, with Maori, Pasifika and migrants over-represented among their ranks.
The whiff of cronyism hangs in the air like stale shrimp too. Every other National party event is held at Sky City. The undisclosed hookings of Mike Hosking, Paul Henry and other slebs moonlighting as Sky City mascots demonstrates how opaque and pervasive Sky City's machinations are. It is entirely likely that Sky City's shady tactics have been used during this latest round of government lobbying too, not that we'll ever hear about it seeing as how commercially sensitive the matter is being treated.
Mai Chen has advised that special pleading doesn't work when lobbying politicians, as their function is to look after the public good. That parliamentary convention seems to have been put aside by this unscrupulous National government, for the sake of John Key's Hokey Pokie convention centre deal.
The new complex will quite literally be built on the ruined lives of gambling addicts. And if Key disputes that, let him engrave his smiling waving visage on the front of every one of the 350 to 500 new pokie machines Sky City will install. Make him record the voice clips for all those armless bandits to tell the mugged muggles that they are a winner.
