Category Archives: News & Current Events

NZ’s Tampa and a week of political and media spin

Posted on by Brad Heap

On Monday night news broke that a boat of asylum seekers supposedly destined for New Zealand had been detained in Indonesian waters. Immediately the NZ Prime Minister, John Key, came out with a hard-line ‘we won’t take illegal boat people’ stance. Since then the continuing news stories on both sides of the Tasman has left me convinced that the majority of this story is spin and the group of asylum seekers currently being used as political prawns by both politicians and the media.

Over the last week I have been collecting some of the news stories to piece together the bigger picture, starting with Tuesday:

‘No evidence’ asylum seekers heading to NZ (stuff.co.nz)

New Zealand Immigration Minister Jonathon Coleman said there was “no concrete evidence” that the Sri Lankan people were actually trying to reach New Zealand.

“When they had a look at the boat, there was no evidence that they were truly intending to come here, so I’m sure there is a range of things that the people on that boat are trying to do to leverage their position,” Coleman said.

“While there is obviously the capacity for them to come to New Zealand, we feel in this case it was pretty unlikely that that was their intended destination.”

“The reality is that you would expect there to be things like maps on board, charts that would indicate that that was their true destination and I haven’t had any information that any of that material has been found on that boat.”

Asked why they had been holding signs indicating they wanted to come to New Zealand, Coleman said: “Obviously, if they could create a wave of political pressure to come here, I’m sure they would be pretty keen to get to somewhere but look, they won’t be coming to New Zealand.”

So on Monday night we had Key telling us these people were definitely coming, however, on Tuesday morning we have the immigration minister telling us they weren’t. What is most interesting is the last line where Coleman even suggests these people were set up to create a political storm.

Of course Key wasn’t happy about his hard-line stance being undermined by the truth so he came out with this gem (via nzherald on Wednesday):

“He hasn’t had an intelligence briefing, he’s had a briefing from his officials, there’s a difference.”

One wonders if his intelligence briefing was run by his political and media advisors… anyway… this hardline approach by Key then saw all the vested interest groups and individuals (Amnesty International, Kiwiblog, Helen Clark, etc) come out to add their 2c into the debate.

The most interesting of these comments came from the United Sri Lanka Association who claimed Sri Lanka was “as peaceful as Wellington” and “There’s no violence there right now, the violence there caused by Tamil terrorism has been quelled, it’s been put to rest two years ago.”

Well if this was the case then you would expect Sri Lanka to be somewhere near NZ in the Global Peace Index right? Last year NZ ranked 2nd most peaceful country in the world, Sri Lanka ranked 126th, and as for their argument it has improved, sure the year before they ranked 133rd, but the year before that they ranked 125th so their peace ranking isn’t improving, and it is certainly nowhere near the same as NZ.

Also by this time the Australian media commentators had picked up on the NZ asylum boat story claiming it as proof that the Gillard Government’s Malaysia Solution was working. The best of these stories was the SMH with “Message received: asylum seekers give Australia a wide berth” which claimed that the boat supposedly headed to NZ may have also tried to go to Canada!

Then yesterday the nzherald had an article about how a person who came from the Tampa has been caught up in a car rebirthing ring.  A story that was worded in such a way that it clearly made out that this guy was bad because of the country he had came from – not because bad apples can occur in any country or situation.

And now a week after the story first broke, the Sunday Star Times is claiming they have got a reporter onboard and reporting there is a stalemate going on about where these people should go… the saga continues…

Right now there is a conspiracy filled cynic in me saying the Nats and the media is feeding us bullshit. Yes there is a refugee boat in Indonesia, yes these people are in need – and we should help them!

But instead there is a whole lot of media and political spin going on to make it look like these people are evil zombies out to destroy everything we hold dear. Of course that is crap, but if you read enough stories about how these people will steal your cars, are secretly violent terrorists, and are so lazy they will use all your taxpayers’ dollars on welfare you’ll believe it right?

NZ’s Asylum Seeker Media Beat Up

Posted on by Brad Heap

The lead story on both nzherald.co.nz and stuff.co.nz tonight is that apparently an asylum seeker boat has been detained in Indonesia that is ‘apparently’ destined for New Zealand. My immediate thought was someone just stuffed up and gave the people the flag of the wrong country! However, it gets even better than that with both articles are riddled with errors.

Indonesia has become a major transit point for people from Afghanistan, Iraq and other war-torn countries trying to illegally enter New Zealand and Australia.

How many times does it have to be repeated that it is not illegal to seek asylum… in fact it is a guaranteed human right!

Reuters photographs show the refugees holding up signs that read: “We need New Zealand”.

Really? Cause the photo attached to the stuff article says “Newsland”. Sure it could be a spelling mistake, but I am feeling that I am not being fed the full story and instead either these few photos are from a select few people from the boat… or even worse they have been staged.

Then comes the comment from John Key:

“It confirms what I’ve been saying for some time; it’s only a matter of time before large vessels, steel hulled vessels capable of navigating their way to New Zealand or Canberra or far away parts of the world, would try and make their way here.”

I would love to see any boat make it to Canberra. It is quite a distance inland from the coast!

I remember about a year ago Key making a similar bizarre comment from Key about asylum boats… one thinks he is still getting his media advice from the same people who advise Australia’s Liberal Party.

Maybe Go Back To Where You Came From should be shown on TV in New Zealand too.

Sydney Domestic Security Meltdown – The Day Paranoia Reigned

Posted on by Brad Heap

About 3.30pm yesterday one of the security scanners at Sydney’s Domestic Terminal lost power resulting in 16 passengers passing through security without being correctly screened. Out of the many thousands of passengers who pass through Sydney Domestic every day this is a very minor problem.

However, the paranoia that has strangled the airline industry since the September 11 attacks saw what was a minor security machine malfunction turn into a farce that affected flights and travellers across Australia. All passengers in the terminal, and on flights that were still boarding at Sydney Domestic were forced to leave the air-side area of the terminal and planes landing at the airport were made to queue for hours on the tarmac until every passenger was re-screened.

In other words the failure to correctly screen 16 passengers resulted in thousands of people being stuffed about by overbearing and unnecessary security regulations which see public freedom curtailed in the name of fighting an invisible and mostly physiological enemy.

This paranoia and curtailing of public freedom has sees us live in a society where you are many times more likely to be killed in a plane accident than a terrorist attack. Yet in the United States $8.1 billion is spent on the TSA to enforce compulsory child molestation air-line security while only $77 million is spent on investigating airline accidents.

It is all a bit ridiculous isn’t it? Which reminds me of this infographic:

Terrorist Attack Infographic

My hope is one day we will wake to the realisation that the biggest threat to our safety and freedom is not a few men who live in dusty caves in the middle-east but instead our own governments curtailing our freedoms in a manner akin to that of Orwell’s 1984.

Some quick statistical analysis of Moon Quakes #eqnz

Posted on by Brad Heap

Tonight Ken Ring was on Campbell Live talking about the “link” between the moon phases and earthquakes. Now a lot can be said for Ken Ring’s scientific (or lack thereof), and there is a good post on stuff.co.nz about how “the theory” is not at all scientifically based. But this is not the point of this post. Instead I have done some very quick and dirty statistical analysis of the phase of the moon and the number of earthquakes in Christchurch, Darfield and Lyttelton of the six month period from September 2010 to February 2011.

What I have tabled and plotted below is the date of the moon phases against the number of earthquakes that day. I got the earthquake data from the Geonet archives and the phases of the moon from the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand. The counts are for only the single day of the moon phase, however, if someone has time they could plot them for instance a day either side as well. However, this simple analysis shows one thing. There is no clear correlation between the extreme phase of the moon and the number of earthquakes.

1 Day Quakes
8 September New Moon 26
15 September First Quarter 10
23 September Full Moon 7
1 October Last Quarter 6
8 October New Moon 5
15 October First Quarter 2
23 October Full Moon 6
31 October Last Quarter 3
6 November New Moon 10
14 November First Quarter 10
22 November Full Moon 4
29 November Last Quarter 4
6 December New Moon 3
14 December First Quarter 2
21 December Full Moon 0
28 December Last Quarter 0
4 January New Moon 1
13 January First Quarter 0
20 January Full Moon 9
27 January Last Quarter 1
3 February New Moon 0
11 February First Quarter 1
18 February Full Moon 2
25 February Last Quarter 18

1 Day Quakes
8 September New Moon 26
15 September First Quarter 10
23 September Full Moon 7
1 October Last Quarter 6
8 October New Moon 5
15 October First Quarter 2
23 October Full Moon 6
31 October Last Quarter 3
6 November New Moon 10
14 November First Quarter 10
22 November Full Moon 4
29 November Last Quarter 4
6 December New Moon 3
14 December First Quarter 2
21 December Full Moon 0
28 December Last Quarter 0
4 January New Moon 1
13 January First Quarter 0
20 January Full Moon 9
27 January Last Quarter 1
3 February New Moon 0
11 February First Quarter 1
18 February Full Moon 2
25 February Last Quarter 18

Now the only interesting spin on the data I can get out of quick analysis is the table below. What I have done is totalled the number of earthquakes for each phase. I have then removed the September data from three of the phases, and the February data from the Last Quarter phase to stop it being polluted by many aftershocks after a big event.

Total Less September
New Moon 45 19
First Quarter 25 15
Full Moon 28 21
Last Quarter 32 14

So what does this show? Well nothing much. If you remove the immediate aftershock data it shows that there are more aftershocks on a New or Full Moon. However, this is an average of one extra per day per month. It is not for one second statistically significant.

If someone wants to do deeper statistical analysis go ahead. This took me about 30 minutes to construct when I got bored.

Pray for Australia

Posted on by Brad Heap

As I write this tonight the State of Queensland and parts of northern New South Wales are facing some of the worst flooding in almost 40 years. Currently the death toll stands at 9 and there are at least 66 people missing, upwards of 50,000 people from around 100 towns have been evacuated and around 200,000 people in total have been evacuated. An area the size of Germany and France combined, or 3-4 times the size of New Zealand is affected. In the coming days it is expected that more people will be affected, more towns flooded, and the death toll to rise.

There are many dramatic photos, stories and videos being played out in the media of the current crises in Queensland. And while it is fascinating to get caught up in the media frenzy can it also be asked of you to take time out to pray for those caught up the disaster that people will be found alive, that lives can be rebuilt, and that the levies and dams will hold.

$32 million has already been raised in donations towards flood relief, but much more is needed and if you can donate please do so here: http://www.qld.gov.au/floods/donate.html

Update: If you are in Brisbane the police need volunteers to help to urgently fill sandbags. There is more information here.

There is a song about Australia, written 20 years ago, called “The Great Southland” and some of the lyrics seem quite appropriate tonight.

This is the Great South-land
Of the Holy Spirit
A land of red dust plains
And summer rains
To this sunburnt land
We will see a flood
And to this Great South-land
His Spirit comes.

Mourning the self-inflicted death of NZ unions

Posted on by Brad Heap

The core purpose of workers unions is to band together as a group of individuals to create a collective entity to negotiate with employers in industrial relations. However, in the recent decades union membership has fallen as people become more individually competitive and the unions become more about political bias and ideology than actually representing workers.

Sure this may be a very broad generalisation but the actions of the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) in the dispute regarding The Hobbit has done more damage to the reputation of unions in NZ than any government policy could dream of.

If NZ loses The Hobbit much more than $500 million in production costs and 2,500 immediate jobs will be lost. The flow on effects of tourism and related jobs and money will also be lost and the value of this cannot be measured. All of this because an Australian union with 80 members in NZ tries to hold an entire nation to ransom.

The reality is NZ is small economically and this dispute is already having an impact on the currency markets. NZ’s reputation in Australia is being trashed with the story front page on Friday’s newspapers. And even the actual actors are fed up with the stupidity of the unions. The NZ Herald reports:

… at the Armageddon Expo, Stargate Atlantis actor Torri Higginson told the crowd it would be “insane” if The Hobbit was not filmed in New Zealand. “If anyone knows him [Peter Jackson] tell him I’ll work for free,” said Higginson. “F*** the unions.”

Personally, I am ideologically pro-union. However, the actions of the CTU have put me off ever joining a CTU affiliated union, and I think many people in NZ would feel the same way. I except in the coming year union membership in NZ to drop even more.

Kiwiblog sums up the feeling of the nation well:

I suspect many actors would work for free on the film. But Jackson will not only be paying good weekly rates, he is the first Producer to offer residuals to NZ actors. How the fuck the CTU ever decided to make him public enemy number one I don’t know.

Paul Henry resigns… or was he pushed?

Posted on by Brad Heap

Dan News has statements from both Paul Henry and TVNZ.

Henry states:

I do not want to continue to be used as a lightning rod for racial disharmony in this country.

Rick Ellis, CEO TVNZ states:

I believe Paul has done the right thing.

The reality is that his comments have split the community and damaged New Zealand’s international relationships, and there is no going back from that.

Paul is not the first broadcaster to step over the line, and I expect he won’t be the last – but there are factors at play here that have taken things to a unique level.

I think the TVNZ statement suggests he was pushed.