SHVC Spies Column

There’s just so much wrong with the fact that Thompson and Clark Limited, a private investigation firm, has AGAIN been caught trying to spy on activist group, The Save Happy Valley Coalition (SHVC). It’s almost hard to know where the start.

Last year, I wrote a series of articles on the subject after a Canterbury University Student, Ryan Patterson-Rouse, was revealed to have been employed by Thompson and Clark, on behalf of the state owned enterprise Solid Energy, to act as an informant inside the SHVC. Patterson-Rouse was paid hundreds of dollars to report to Thompson and Clark, and by proxy Solid Energy, on the plans and meetings of SHVC members. When an email malfunction revealed Ryan’s role as a spy, the SHVC went to Nicky Hager with the information, who turned it into a front page article for the Sunday Star Times.

The scandal that followed the outing of Thompson and Clark’s first spy saw a whole bunch of negative publicity for Solid Energy, and rightly so. In employing a private investigator to spy on private citizens (many of the meetings Patterson-Rouse attended took place within SHVC member’s homes) the company had clearly failed to be “An organisation that exhibits a sense of social responsibility by having regard to the interests of the community in which it operates”, as it is legally required to be under the State Owned Enterprises Act 1986.

When Thompson and Clark’s actions came to light, the Government was VERY unhappy. Spying on community groups is blatantly undemocratic and not something we expect out of a company owned by the people of New Zealand. State Owned Enterprises minister Trevor Mallard clearly instructed Solid Energy CEO Don Eldar that this was never to happen again. According to a press release from 28th May last year, Mallard “made it clear that while I understood Solid Energy’s frustration at the appalling behaviour of Happy Valley protestors, the use of paid informants was not acceptable, and a step too far for a State Owned Enterprise”.

So with the public outraged, Government Ministers leaning on them, you would think Solid Energy would make it perfectly clear to Thompson and Clark that under no circumstances were they to try and get anyone else to spy for them on the SHVC.

You would think that.

But you’d be wrong.

Once again, it was Nicky Hager (apparently SHVC’s go-to guy) who broke the story that Gavin Clark had tried to hire activist Rob Gilchrist to spy on the SHVC and give up passwords to the group’s internal communications. Unfortunately for Clark, Gilchrist was having none of it, and took a tape recorder along to their future meetings, where he caught Clark on tape trying to recruit him. The excerpts from the tape that Hager put in his article are very revealing, including Clark saying things such as “”If you could give me your log-on … I mean, like, you could give it to me now. I’ll give you a couple of hundred bucks… And then I’ll have a look at it and we can work out a price based on that.” Clark is clearly caught trying to recruit someone to spy on Save Happy Valley, again.

Both Clark and Solid Energy have gone into “plausible deniability” mode, with both denying that the information was being gathered for Solid Energy. Since (it seems based on Hager’s article) Clark never explicitly said the information was to be given to Solid Energy, Hager hasn’t quite managed to get the sort of “Someone forwarded this email on” type of damning evidence he would have preferred. So Thompson and Clark are able to say they were gathering information on the SHVC for other groups.
Only problem with this? It’s clearly a lie.

See the SHVC is a single issue group, they want to stop Solid Energy’s open cast coal mine in Happy Valley, which they claim will do irrecoverable damage to the ecology of the area, and produce large amounts of coal to be sold offshore, to nations like China, who do not follow the Kyoto protocol. The SHVC’s activity’s only target Solid Energy. That’s it. There is no other group with an axe to grind against the SHVC, let alone anyone willing to pay for an expensive Private Investigator. Who else is likely to want to benefit from knowing the SHVC’s plans in advance than the company SHVC is protesting?

Beyond that, Clark isn’t exactly the most trustworthy person on earth. When asked last year about the spying he replied “”It’s a pretty outrageous suggestion…I don’t know these two individuals… I don’t know what you are talking about… It is nothing to do with Thompson and Clark.”, yet when talking to Gilchrist this year he said “The situation with Ryan was his own fault really…He should have kept his mouth shut.”

What this shows is that Clark did know about the spying all along, and lied about it. And now the public is meant to take him at his word the spying wasn’t for Solid Energy? Of course, for a Private Investigator who gets caught TWICE trying the same thing, Clark perhaps isn’t the guy we should be turning to expecting intelligent thinking. In fact, it’s a wonder Solid Energy has hired him at all, a private investigator who TWICE gets his name and activities splashed across the front page of a major paper is pretty clearly not that great at his job.

When asked for comment on this issue, Save Happy Valley spokesperson Graham Jury said that “The government has a responsibility to bring its SOE back under control.  CEO Don Elder has clearly disobeyed orders from the government to discontinue this practice.  Accordingly he must be stripped of his position.  TCIL have once again shown their willingness to use unlicensed informants, this time illegally offering such an informant a clearly specified working relationship. They have breached their license to operate as private investigators in NZ, and therefore this license needs to be revoked.“

Any way you look at it, this latest scandal is bad news for Solid Energy. It’s more negative publicity for a company already with serious image problems due to last year’s spying. It shows them flouting a government directive, and again disregarding their legal obligations to social responsibility. This whole issue has become a black eye on a company which is otherwise a leader in its field, being praised in a recent Press editorial for “its entry into the biodiesel market and its involvement in the first Southern Hemisphere carbon storage project”.

The company needs to find out who is responsible for this PR disaster, and they need to be removed. Then the Government needs to take a serious look at getting some stronger legislation in to control overzealous and dishonest PI’s like Gavin Clark. If the SHVC is planning anything illegal in secret, the Police will deal with them. We have the SIS for a reason. Allowing Private Investigators, who answer to no one but their corporate clients, to spy on community groups is completely unacceptable. That it has happened for a second time shows the Government has completely mishandled this issue. That needs to be corrected. And fast.

Poster Censorship

An article that ran in today’s Canta. The update, thanks to my sleep deprived editor, was attatched to the wrong article in print, but this is the correct article. It’s a very interesting story, and we will definitely be doing more on it.
By Ben Ross and Hayden Munro

A group of Post Graduate Students are accusing the University of Censorship, after posters protesting the proposed changes to the College of Arts were surreptitiously removed from their offices in the dead of the night. According to the students, who didn’t want to be named in Canta but who have been in contact with University management, the posters were put up after other posters protesting the change were removed from the bollards around the University. The students claim the removal of the posters is an example of UC trying to quell legitimate dissent over the direction of the university.

According to the students, the posters were there one day, gone the next, and they allege that UC cleaning staff are responsible for removing the posters from their locked offices. Only a University Staff member would have access to those offices. The students told Canta they are upset at having their private space invaded, especially considering that no notification was given. The university did not ask them to take the posters down, but instead the order was given to simply enter their offices in the middle of the night and remove them without permission or discussion.

In only one case was a poster taped to the window. In all the other offices, posters were displayed on placards leaning up against the windowsill. In these cases, the University not only took the posters but the placards, which were owned by the students, and has not returned them, despite the student’s requests.

In an email to Canta, one of the students told us that “We are always here during the day and,
as far as we’re concerned, could have been talked to instead of someone coming into our offices – unannounced, unasked and without apology – when we are not here and taking our things away”

The students emailed the university, complaining about what had happened and asking for answers. The section of the email below illustrates their concerns

“If there is a policy that forbids protest in these buildings, it should have
been communicated to us.  Further, if there is a requirement to take down
these posters and placards, we should have been asked to take them down
ourselves, instead of someone – and we do not know who, but evidently
someone with a key and authorisation – invading our offices at night or
early in the morning and simply taking away our property.

We also note that various flyers and posters from the general student
community expressing opposition to the College of Arts Change Proposal, both
inside of the History building and outside on the poster bollards, have been
taken down regularly for quite some time now, with one case of someone going
to the trouble of scratching out every individual slogan on posters prior to
their removal the next day, whilst other, unrelated posters and flyers
(non-UC advertising, etc.) have stayed up.  Evidently, it is not a question
of simply ‘cleaning up’.

Oddly enough, we note that the items removed on a daily basis also include
some specific advertising for American Studies courses, which, it appears,
someone deems ‘too subversive’ (bright orange stickers on the official
posters that say “Still here!”). We are concerned that freedom of expression
is impeded in this manner at a University, where it must be possible to
voice criticism – or, indeed, put up legitimate advertising for a University
programme, even if it is under threat’.

The students received a reply from Facilities Management Director Peter Molony, who told them the posters had been removed as part of the university’s policy against advertising in the windows of buildings.

According to Molony’s email, “It is not acceptable to have our building’s windows …used as billboards. There are a number of poster bollards on campus. These are managed on our behalf by your students association and you should contact them about your poster requirements and any concerns you have regarding posters being removed.”

So according to Molony, the University is not at all interested in suppressing opposition to the Arts change proposal, it just wants to stop its windows being used as billboards.

However, Molony’s excuse does not stand up to closer inspection. While posters protesting the arts change have indeed been removed from windows, bollards and notice boards, there are many posters still up around campus. Obviously the subject of these posters are more important to the success of the University than the dissent of its students. So let us examine some of the posters still clearly visible in windows around campus, which the University has allowed to stay up.

1.    An advertisement for “That Comedy Show”

2.    An advertisement for a student selling a car.

3.    An advertisement for IBM

4.    A poster for the movie “Borat” depicting a man in an especially tight green thong.

5.    An old, weather beaten and sun damaged poster for Student Job Search which appears to have been there since the building was constructed.

All of these were left up AFTER the posters protesting the arts change were removed. In fact, to see the Borat poster, one need only look to the right when standing in front of the history building where the posters were removed from.
So if the University is so committed to removing all posters that it would enter student’s offices in the middle of the night, remove them and the placards they were on, without consultation, why then were these other posters not removed? In fact, as shown in the pictures accompanying this article, many of the posters university management thought did not need to be removed were not even in people’s offices, but on ground floor windows, where they could easily have been removed. Instead these posters were left up. Presumably because these posters were not protesting The Arts Change.
If the University was truly just trying to enforce a no-posters-in-windows policy, yet failed so badly, their motivation has to be brought into question. More importantly, just who gave the order to have these voices of dissent removed? It seems that the posters were removed in the middle of the night and without consultation because the students who put them up were voicing disagreement with the policies of the University. What is worse is that the students still have no idea who it was that went into their office and removed the posters and their belongings. The University needs to come clean with the exact details of what happened, and who made the decision to remove the posters in the middle of the night. In addition, why was that decision made, and most of all why were the students not told? Until these questions are answered, this incident looks remarkably like censorship.

Update: Minutes before this article went to print, one of the students contacted us, and informed us that they had been told by a university staff member that the cleaners had been ordered specifically to remove any posters protesting the arts change. The student was also informed that this directive came from “very high up” in the university. Obviously this completely contradicts the explanation offered by Peter Molony.

Save Happy Valley Article

The third repost from last year, the first article I did on Solid Energy and the Save Happy Valley campaign. Good fun.

 

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The Solid Energy Spying Scandal: From Bad to Worse
On Sunday night, May 27th, the national media was buzzing with the news that a private security firm hired by Solid Energy had employed a Canterbury University student to act as a spy inside the Save Happy Valley protest campaign. Solid Energy and the SHVC have been engaged in a long running dispute regarding plans by the state owned enterprise to open a coal mine at Happy Valley 2 kilometres inland from greymouth. The dispute started peacefully enough I 2004, then escalated into an indefinite occupation of the site by environmental activists in May 2005, and then escalated further until now both sides are accusing the other of acting illegally. Both sides of the dispute allege the other has violated their rights. SHVC claims their right to democratic protest has been violated by the spying, while Solid Energy maintains it has a right to run a legal enterprise, which is being damaged by the illegal protests of the SHVC. So how did things get this far? How did what at first appeared to be a run of the mill environmental protest, escalate into such a heated issue?
The dispute started back in 2004, when the environment court granted resource consent for Solid Energy to start open cast coal mining in Happy Valley. The proposed mine, now completely legal, was very controversial for a number of reasons. The first of these was the contribution to climate change, due to the burning of the coal produced. This was an area of special concern, given the fact that the coal produced at the mine is sold to countries that burn it outside the Kyoto protocol. In effect, Solid Energy would be indirectly violating the Kyoto protocol, despite being a state owned enterprise. The second reason the mine was so strongly opposed was the effect it would have on the area around it. Happy Valley is (or was) one of the most ecologically and visually rich areas of the south island, serving as habitat for a number of endangered native species. Most importantly, it provided some of the only remaining habitat for the critically endangered Powelliphanta ‘Augustus’, a species of giant snail. According to Save Happy Valley spokeswoman Frances Mountier, the mining of Happy Valley is responsible for the destruction of “94 percent of Augustus’ habitat”. The SHVC’s website calling the mining company’s actions “the first state-sponsored species extinction this country has seen.” For those who oppose the mining at Happy Valley, the stakes are high. They see Solid Energy as a clear and present threat to the fragile local ecosystem and as New Zealand’s leading contributor to global warming.

The SHVC have certainly been active in their opposition. Their actions have ranged from simple hunger strikes, to digging up the lawn of Solid Energy HQ, to having its members chain themselves to train tracks, in order to stop Solid Energy from transporting coal from Westport to Lyttleton. On many occasions, the group has broken the law in order to complete their protests. Be it trespassing at Solid Energy HQ, or the obviously illegal train stoppages. Of course, SHVC and their supporters firmly believe that the ends justify the means. After all, what are a few broken trespass laws compared to the survival of an entire species, and the potential ruin of our planet?

Solid Energy of course doesn’t see it like that. To them SHVC is an overzealous and unreasonable group, to quote CEO Don Elder “They have made it clear their ultimate aim is to damage us economically and try to shut the company down totally.” Solid Energy also has quite a different position on just how endangered Powelliphanta ‘Augustus’ actually is. When the SHVC started its campaign, Department of Conservation scientists estimated there where around 700 snails left in existence, which would all be wiped out if the mining went ahead. Solid Energy agreed to the massive undertaking of relocating all of the snails. However, once the relocation began, it soon became apparent that the initial estimate as to the number of snails had been embarrassingly inaccurate. Instead of a mere 700 snails, Solid Energy, as of June 2007, had relocated well over 7000 snails, more than enough for the species to no longer be considered critically endangered based on numbers alone.
In fact, Mark Pizey of Solid Energy speculates that, surprisingly, the species may actually be better off now, than when construction began. Poweliphanti Augustus, he says, is a small population, living at an altitude where they are safe from predators. With the new predator control program that Solid Energy has put in place around their current habitat, the snails will now find themselves with a greater area in which they can live free of predators. “I think you could speculate with in reason” he says “that had the mining not occurred, and the population restricted to just the top of that hill and predation pressure had continued, the species would have become essentially extinct anyway”. This, he says, is not something opponents of the mining want brought to the publics attention, as the prospect of a species becoming extinct due to the mining is such a powerful weapon in the battle for public opinion.
As well as this debate, Solid Energy has criticized the SHVC for being overzealous in their tactics. According to Pizey “The direct action that Save Happy Valley has undertaken has included the picketing, graffiti and disturbance of the home of a member of our board of directors. Personally, I think that’s taking things too far.” This illustrates, perhaps better than anything, how personal this issue has become. When a person’s home, their family, becomes involved, its hard to think of the issue as a purely environmental disagreement.

Mountier disagrees with this. “For a long time, Solid Energy have been destroying the habitat of Augustus, they extract over 4 million tonnes of coal per annum, with out any responsibility being taken by the board of directors. And clearly now they are going to have to start taking responsibility. One protest at their house is nothing compared to the biodivirsity damage caused by the Stockton mine each year”
The SHVC further antagonized Solid Energy by their production of a parody of Solid Energy’s annual environment report. The ensuring argument and legal battle over this report is the best indicator of just how uncompromising both sides of this issue have become. According to Pizey, while a parody of the environment report would have been no problem “Where they went too far was where they used our company logo on the document. That is of course false representation and in our eyes, defamation”. When asked to remove the logo and threatened with court action if they didn’t comply, the SHVC told Solid Energy to “Bring it on”. The case, over nothing more than the use of a logo, is currently going to court. When asked why the SHVC would allow it to go this far, Mark Pizey speculated that “Part of the Modus Operandi of Save Happy Valley, is to maintain a high public profile. So the fact that they may be going to court, for a case they may have no hope of winning, may not matter to them, in the face of increased public and media attention.” If Pizey is right, it could help explain why the SHVC has been as aggressive as they are. Strong, aggressive protests such as the train stoppages are no doubt news worthy.
With things so personal, with one side seeing the other as either a critical threat to the environment or a overzealous ruthless fundamentalist protest group, it becomes easier to understand how the issue has gone has it has. Yet for many people, Save Happy Valley included, the revelation that a member of the group, hired by security firm Thompson and Clark on behalf of Solid Energy, was a spy, came as a complete shock. The infiltrator, Canterbury University student Ryan Patterson-Rouse, was outed in an issue of the Sunday Star times 27th May 2007. Ryan wrote regular reports on the plans of the SHVC, as well as forwarding all their internal emails to Thompson and Clark. Francis Mountier says his actions go much further than this, including being asked by Thompson and Clark for information on what plea would be entered by members of the campaign being prosecuted for their role in the train stoppages. “So much of a court of law is based on the fact that the information between a client and a lawyer doesn’t get back to the oppositions table”

On a legal level, by hiring Patterson-Rouse and other students like him, Thompson and Clark have broken the law. Francis Mountier says that according to the law “All people operating as private investigators must be registered, which Ryan Paterson-Rouse and Somali Young were not”. Irregardless of the legality of hiring spies at all, by hiring non registered private investigators, Thompson and Clark, and by proxy Solid Energy are in clear breach of the law. Of course, to see Save Happy Valley, a group that has openly and publicly flouted the law in their protest actions, bemoaning what amounts to an illegal hiring, may seem a little hypocritical. The issue however, is much greater than merely breaking the law. Mountier sees the actions of solid Energy as a violation of her groups democratic right to protest “The use of investigators and infiltrators, and the lies and subterfuge, are nothing but tactics to intimidate opposition, and to close down public debate on the activities of New Zealand’s most environmentally destructive SOE”
Solid Energy’s actions have also drawn widespread political condemnation. When asked about the use of spies, Russel Norman, co-leader of the Green Party, said “We think its wrong, and shouldn’t be allowed. If there’s something criminal going on in the group, then the Police can infiltrate, and if they have to do it, ok that’s just life, but the Police should do it, not private corporations”. Even further condemnation has come over the lack of a strong response from the government. Mountier is unhappy with the fact that no commitment to change has been shown. “No assurances have been provided for the future, No assurances have been provided that SOEs, CRIs and other state funded entities aren’t subcontracting spies”.

Pizey however, has a different view on the subject. “When we hire a security firm like that, we do it for a couple of reasons. One is that we want to make sure our site is secure. Thompson and Clark provide security to our sites, to stop people having unfettered access to them, when for reasons if only of health and safety, they shouldn’t. Secondly, we also seek information about people who have an interest in our business. As long as they go about getting that information in a legal manner, we are happy to have that information come back to us.” There is also very little evidence to suggest that Solid Energy knew the extent to which Thompson and Clark where breaking the law. According to Pizey “We received reports from the supplier, but that was all, they are a licensed private investigator, and their process is their process. For us, it was like going to a financial institution and asking for advice on exchange rates”.

Save Happy Valley does not accept this, and continues to call for the resignation of Don Elder, as it believes he must have known what was being done on his companies behalf. According to Mountier, Solid Energy’s tactics can be explained by the fact that there are “significant monetary interests tied up in the production of coal. So a challenge to these is posed when the opposite view comes out. That’s why these debates wind up so heated across the board”. In this light, Elder is seen as someone ruthless protecting a product that is severely damaging the planet, and doing so out of a desire for profit.  
 

Elder was not forced to resign at Solid Energy’s June board members meeting. Nor did the board in reprimand him anyway. In fact, Solid Energy, despite how heated this issue had become, still intends to complete its projects in Happy Valley. In light of this it seems this issue will only intensify. 
 

Abortion Article

Another article from last year, on abortion. This was liked so much by one of the sources that it’s now up on the Voice for Life website. Wooo

 

 

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Meet Jenny. Jenny is 24, in the middle of a law degree, and showing considerable talent. Her uncle thinks he can get her an internship at one of the big law firms over the summer, and she’s awfully excited about it. Only problem is, after an exceptionally drunk one-night stand with that dour looking guy who was checking her out from the other side of Shooters: Jenny is pregnant. Now this throws a pretty impressive spanner into her plans to become a hotshot lawyer who can work 80 hours a week. She forgot to get dour looking guys number (Don’t blame Suzie, blame the empty bottle of vodka) and now faces the prospect of single motherhood. So what does Jenny do? She decides not to keep the baby. She decides to get an abortion.

Only here’s the problem: technically under New Zealand law, Jenny isn’t allowed one. New Zealand law does not grant what is known as “Abortion on Demand”, which means that any women can have an abortion for any reason if she should choose to do so. Under New Zealand Law, not wanting to give up her dreams of becoming a lawyer and having to raise a child alone are not considered good enough reasons for an abortion to be performed. According to the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act 1977 a women in New Zealand can only legally have an abortion if the baby is a threat to her physical or mental health, a threat to her life, there is a chance of the fetus being impaired, or in the case of rape or incest. Even then, the decision isn’t to be made by her but by two doctors, called “certifying consultants” After seeing the laws, Jenny is certain she will be unable to get an abortion. Luckily for her, her doctor reveals that she is eligible for an abortion on mental health grounds. Jenny is able to join the ranks of 17,930 abortions preformed in 2006. Abortions were especially common amongst students, with those aged 20-24 the most likely to receive an abortion.  The problem is, almost 99% of those were preformed for the same reasons as Jenny, using the mental health clause as justification.

It is the use of this mental health clause, to essentially grant Abortion on Demand, that is creating considerable controversy, and even a high court action by the New Zealand group Right to Life. Opposition to abortion is wide spread, with many people still considering it murder. At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are those who believe we should have abortion on demand. That the decision whether or not to have an abortion should be left to the women. What’s interesting is that neither of the two sides of the issue seem especially happy with the current Laws.

I spoke to Bernard Morgan, of prominent campaign group Voice for Life, who as their name suggests, are opposed to abortion, especially Abortion on Demand, and the way the mental health clause is being used. To him, abortion is wrong because even at the fetal stage, a zygote is still human.
“Medical textbooks state that an individual human life begins from conception. I know it seems hard to regard “just a bunch of cells” as a new human person, but scientific advances and certainly imaging techniques confirm our being “someone”, not a “thing” – right from the start.

The key discovery illustrating our status as human beings is DNA, our incredible genetic code present soon after conception. The code is our individual blueprint, hardwiring how we will look: our talents (think of your choice of studies at Canterbury), our sporting prowess, or lack of prowess, and whether we are fortunate to have a natural rhythm and musical talents and so on.

Think of who you are now. You were that same person at conception and on through the natural stages of human development.”

This is a viewpoint shared by a large number of people, and as Morgan says, supported by the study of DNA. However not everyone agrees with it. Current thinking on abortion says that for at least the first 12 weeks, it is safe to perform an abortion on what is essentially nothing more than a collection of cells, unable to feel pain, or perceive its own existence. With such doubt existing over where life begins, over whether we should consider a fetus “human”, many argue that the issue should be left up to personal choice.

Margaret Sparrow, of the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand (ALRANZ) is one such person. ALRANZ is a group that supports Abortion on Demand, and is especially opposed to the fact that abortion is governed by the Crimes act, essentially making having an abortion performed for any reason not given in the 1977 act a crime, one that bears a possible penalty of 7 years in jail. According to Sparrow:

“Our principle goal is to make abortion a matter of choice for the woman. We want any woman to be able to choose either to continue the pregnancy or obtain an abortion.”

If it were up to ALRANZ, any women at any time, for any reason would be able to have an abortion. Aborting a foetus would be no different, legally, to having your tonsils removed, or having a face-lift. Sparrow maintains that:

“Abortion is a medical matter, it should just be between the women and any medical attendants, and the fact that it’s in the crimes act it quite wrong”

To people like Voice to Life, the thought of this is troubling. If current medical knowledge suggests we are human from the moment of conception (as they argue it does) then reforms like the ones ALRANZ endorse would be nothing more than large-scale government sponsored murder. According to Morgan, the best argument from a medical perspective comes in the story of one of the founding fathers of the abortion movement.

“In America, Dr Bernard Nathanson, teamed up with Lawrence Lader, as the pioneers of the modern abortion rights movement. They devised the popular slogans (“A woman’s right to choose”, etc) and ran a brilliant public relations campaign. In New York, Nathanson operated the largest abortion clinic in the world, personally participating in 15,000 abortions.

After many years, Nathanson needed a break and took a sabbatical catching up on developments in foetology. What he found amazed him and the evidence led to a gradual rethink on abortion. He later wrote a commentary for a major US medical journal and concluded: “I am now haunted by the knowledge that those 15,000 abortions, were in fact the murder of 15,000 individual human beings.”

As well as disagreeing with the idea of Abortion as simply another medical procedure, Morgan disputes the need for a mental health clause in the legislation.

“The mental health clause goes back to the landmark Bourne decision in Britain in 1935. The judge accepted that Dr Bourne performed the illegal abortion in good faith, because he believed she might commit suicide otherwise.

The case set a legal precedent and became the main ground for legal abortion in the British Abortion Act of 1967, and later throughout the western world.

With advances in medical and psychiatric knowledge and care, the mental health clause is no longer tenable, particularly as there is no attempt to question or examine the woman allegedly at risk.

Canterbury University Health and Development Study team’s research, published in the January 2006 edition of The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, revealed:

 Women who had abortions have twice the level of psychological problems and three times the level of depression as women who have given birth, or have never been pregnant.

 The evidence showed a clear link between abortion and mental health problems in women who previously had no history of mental illness.

The Canterbury University team’s findings received international coverage, prompting 15 leading British obstetricians and psychiatrists to write to The Times on 27th October 2006. They said the research showed that women considering an abortion need to be advised of the serious risks to their mental health.

In New Zealand, the research has been ignored by both the official medical bodies and the Ministry of Health. The Abortion Supervisory Committee declined to commission further research on the issue.

The official stance is that any mental health problems experienced by post-abortion women, are due to “pre-existing mental conditions.” In other words, they had undiagnosed mental problems beforehand and not because of the abortion.

So was the mental health clause meant to be used as it has been? Was it a deliberate loophole, to grant abortion on demand? Or are doctors using it to take the law into their own hands, reflecting the change in society’s views on abortion since 1977? Margaret Sparrow thinks she knows

“I think it’s the latter. I think if you read the report of the parliamentary debate when the abortion law went through, I think people at that time were concerned to reduce the number of abortions, to make it more difficult for women. I think a lot of changes have happened in society in the last 30 years”.

ALRANZ and Voice for Life would both like to see the law changed. ALRANZ obviously wants to see abortion decriminalised, but what does Voice for Life want? A complete ban on abortion? According to Morgan, they want to be realistic about things.

“Thirty years on from the introduction of legal abortion, we know a lot more and the hard truth is that any legal protections can be undermined. We are working for evidence-based cultural change where abortion gradually becomes rare, because encouraging alternative solutions are in place. Such as the gift of the child through Open Adoption to the growing thousands of young couples who find they can’t have children of their own, even with IVF.

Our ideal law? Well for a start it could be mandatory to have pre-abortion counseling away from the abortion clinics using 4WD-ultrasound technology to show the mother her baby moving in the womb. In the USA, where this “truth in counseling” is available, around 70-80% of the women choose to continue their pregnancy.

It could also be mandatory that they receive generous medical and financial support, funded from the current sums spent on abortion services.”

For Morgan, the problem with the current law is the mental health clause.

“The ASC admits that 98% of abortions are carried out on mental health grounds. The pre-supposition is that if a woman is refused an abortion, she will suffer severe mental damage and possibly kill herself. Even the ASC has called these grounds “spurious” because with proper care and support, any initial fear and insecurity eases as the pregnancy continues.

So what constitutes a “legal” abortion is based on a cynical lie. The certifying consultants sign the form testifying that the woman’s mental health is at stake, without having to see her, and collect their fee.”
 
No matter which side of the issue you are on, the current law seems unsatisfactory. If you believe Abortion is wrong, you won’t be happy with the loophole granting abortion on demand. If you believe it isn’t wrong, you won’t like the idea of the choice resting in the hands of someone who doesn’t even have to meet the women. So what are the chances of seeing a change in the law? Margaret Sparrow is hopeful.

“I think if you look at the world, look to Australia there is certainly been some changes there. Canberra has decriminalised, there’s quite a strong discussion going on in Victorian parliament at the present time. It’s very different in the States though, where things are not going that way. In European countries however, the trend is towards very liberal abortion laws.”

It would seem that surprisingly enough, it is possible to compromise between the two sides of the issue. If the government were to decriminalise, while bringing in the counselling and support proposed by Voice for Life we would have a system where women are better informed to make the choice, while still being the ones to make the decision. Such a compromise would hopefully be more acceptable to both sides than the current system, which seems to be an out of date compromise that pleases no one. Hardly the sort of law we want in a country like New Zealand, which has always prided itself on being ahead of the rest of the world on human rights issues like this.

 

 

Article from last year.

A repost of an article I did last year, in light of Hager’s story in the Sunday Star Times today.

 

 

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Is anyone watching the Watchmen?

By Hayden Munro

New Zealand has a proud history of student activism. From the anti war movement of the 1960’s, to the anti-aparthied springbok tour of 1981, to the nuclear free issue, positive social change has often resulted from student protests. Activism sheds light on issues that would otherwise be kept out of the public eye, and serves as a social conscience, constantly questioning what should be acceptable to society. On a more personal level, activism is a sign that students are engaged in the world around them, allowing them to flex their democratic muscles for the first time in their lives. It can also serve as a training ground for future leaders, with Helen Clark a prominent student activist in her day. Recently however, it has come to light that student activism may be under threat. The threat? The use of private investigators by corporations to damage student protest groups. Critics of such practices say they are undemocratic, unfair and show how dangerously unregulated the private investigator industry is.

One of these critics is Nicky Hagar, investigative journalist, and a man with a strong interest in activism, having been involved in the early stages of the Nuclear Free movement. In May of this year, it was Hagar who broke the story that a Private Investigator firm named Thompson and Clark Investigations Limited, had been hired by Solid Energy to spy on anti-coal activist group The Save Happy Valley Coalition (SHVC). Thompson and Clark then paid Canterbury University student Ryan Patterson-Rouse to infiltrate the SHVC, and send back confidential information on the group. This information even included whether a member of SHVC being prosecuted for their role in an anti coal protest would plead guilty or not in their upcoming court case.

I sat down with Hagar and asked him about The Private Investigator industry, and how he had found out what Thompson and Clark were doing.

“Several months ago, when something suspicious happened in an animal rights group in wellington, The Wellington Animal Rights Network, I was the one that got the phone call.” He told me.

“What had happened was this guy had had some thing funny go on with his computer, where an email had bounced back, that looked like it was from Private Investigators. What I realised was, if I knew about one, if there had been this malfunction in the private investigators computer, that bounced this message back and showed us what was going on, then this was a once ever opportunity to see where they were operating. So I went round all these different groups, different organisations, unions. Most of them hadn’t sent an email at that particular time to their own members, so it wasn’t it the works. Some of them had already deleted their emails, but a couple of others turned up, one of them Save Happy Valley, here in Christchurch.”

 

When the story broke, it caused a national scandal, with Minister For State Owned Enterprises Trevor Mallard personally chastising the board of Solid Energy, making it clear that using Private Investigators to spy on protest groups was not how a government owned company should be conducting business. More importantly. The article also made it clear how frequent this sort of spying was, and that it had been going on for a long time, with no one ever knowing. In fact, if it wasn’t for the computer error, the spying would never have come to light. Now that is has, Hagar thinks New Zealanders needs to start asking some serious questions about the Private Investigator Industry.

 

“The real issue that emerges from this is how unregulated the private investigator scene is. There are a lot of former cops and other people who are doing some pretty serious work around the country, but in terms of developing ethics codes, and sanctions for doing dodgy things, its almost completely wild west country. There’s a never been a complaint that’s gone anywhere under the current legislation, in fact there’s never really been a proper complaint since the legislation was passed in the 70’s. Its really slack legislation, no one’s thought about it. The nature of covert operations is that even if someone is lucky enough to know something’s been going on, which they might not, they won’t know who to complain about, they won’t know who the private investigators are. Which is why, if your going to unleash these kinds of people on society, a democratic society that believes in peoples rights and freedoms like ours does, you should have suitable protections, and we’ve got none”.

That “slack legislation” that Hagar refers to is the Private Investigators and Security Guards Act 1974. What worries Hagar and others like him, is that under the act, spying on student protest groups isn’t actually illegal. That’s understandable of course, this sort of thing hasn’t really happened in New Zealand before, so there’s been no reason to make laws about it. As Russell Norman, Green Co-leader told me, “We never thought we’d need a law against it, because we never thought this sort of thing would happen”. According to Hagar, the government needs to take a strong look into what they are allowing Private Investigators to do.

“It’s a really important issue that we need to face as a society, because there are people that say “well, its not illegal, what’s your problem? And we need to review the democratic and the ethical sides of these activities, and decide if they should be made illegal or not. If someone is seriously interfering with normal democratic behaviour, then that’s a crime just as much as punching someone in the face or stealing their letter box “.

However, there are those that feel that the current laws are enough when it comes to the actions of Private Investigators. Chief amongst them is Trevor A. Morley. Morley is the head of the New Zealand Private Investigator’s Institute, of which Thompson and Clark limited is a member. Morley is a former member of the New Zealand Police Department and since leaving the NZPD has been extensively involved in the private investigating and security industry both here in New Zealand and overseas. He feels the government is doing enough when it comes to his industry

 

“it must be remembered that licensed private investigators have no more rights, nor authority, than a private citizen – and this is quite clearly spelled out in the above Act.

 

Consequently, licensed private investigators are subject to all the other laws that govern every citizen of this country, and that includes – need I mention – the likes of the Human Rights Act and the Privacy Act, not to mention such other legislation as the Summary Offences Act and the Crimes Act.

 

The Private Investigators and Security Guards Act 1974 is currently under review by the Ministry of Justice, and officials in the Ministry report that they hope to bring a draft Bill amending the Act into Parliament before the end of the year.” Morley says.

 

It is not clear what amendments will be made to the Bill, and it remains to be seen if use of P.I’s against protest groups will be addressed. Hagar believes that extensive moves will have to be taken in the Amendment if what he perceives as the under regulation of the P.I Industry is to be fixed.

 

“What needs to be done, its like the Police or anyone else, you’ve got to build up ethical codes. For example its fair enough that if someone can’t get protection from the police, if there’s theft going on, fraud going on in their company, they can effectively hire their own police detective. That’s what a private investigator is, they find out the crime, they report it to the police, a person can hire a private detective and by virtue of spending money they get police attention that they might not other wise have got, and I think there’s a legitimate place for that in society.

 

But when people are interfering with other peoples true privacy, whether its justified privacy or interfering in legitimate democratic activity because someone paid them to, that should be defined as dodgy. We should draw the line and say, its fair enough to do this, its not fair enough to do that. Its fair enough to sit in the back of a public meeting and collect information, anyone’s allowed to do that, you are allowed to see what goes on in public. Is it fair enough to infiltrate people’s groups, to bring suspicion and doubt, to know about what their legal strategies are when you’re fighting them in court? I don’t think it is. If you draw those lines clearly, when something happens, then people have got some reasonable recourse. If there’s no recourse, well then anything goes”.

 

The small number of complaints under the current legislation would definitely support Hagar’s point about a lack of recourse for people who feel they have been wronged by P.I’s. Morely however isn’t sure that such a code of ethics would be a helpful thing to put into the legislation

 

“it is difficult – if not impossible – to legislate effectively for both morality and ethics” He says . “Something that one individual might consider to be unethical another person might consider ethical. Something that one individual might consider to be immoral another person might well consider to be moral

No legislation could ever be enacted which will stop students rioting. In a similar vein, no statute could ever be enacted which would ensure that every business person, whether they be a licensed private investigator or not, always behaved in a manner that all members of the public considered to be either ethical and/or moral.”

Beyond merely the ethical considerations, there are democratic reasons to be worried about the way P.I’s are being used. So much of why Protest Groups are important to democracy is their ability to bring issues to the public eye, to foster support for an issue that would otherwise be ignored. The Most famous examples of this are Mohandas Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr, who through their protest actions, were able to create large scale public support, that lead to positive social change. When going up against a large company which has more resources, more money and more man power, the ability to rally public support can be an activist’s best, and often times, only weapon. According to Frances Mountier, of the infiltrated anti coal group Save Happy Valley, the use of private investigators by corporations is designed to lessen protest groups ability to bring issues to the public’s attention.

“Private investigators are being used by large corporations – or in Solid Energy’s case, a state owned enterprise, seriously misusing public funds – to send spies in to activist and advocacy groups to collect information on strategy, campaign plans, fundraising, legal advice and actions. These details are then fed back to the corporate so they can continue their publicly contested practices (be they increasing coal extraction, vivisection, arms dealing, or so on) and try to manipulate the public debate to suit their vested interests. In the case of Solid Energy, to stop coal being seen as the outdated, uneconomic, dirty fossil fuel that it is. The climate change debate must not be reduced to a state owned enterprise-scooping information from the organizations that oppose their practices.”

How is the information gained from spying used to keep issues like climate change out of the public eye? An example of this in the Solid Energy case, according to Nicky Hagar, surrounded protests by the SHVC, in which protesters tied themselves to train tracks, stopping a coal transport train.

“Three days before the protest, seemingly out of the blue, (Solid Energy CEO, Don) Elder gained national media attention saying that delays caused by environmental work (such as removing native snails from mine sites) and protests had been costing the company millions of dollars. When the protest occurred, he stayed away from issues of coal use and climate change and responded that the group was less concerned with protecting the environment and more concerned with disrupting Solid Energy and costing it money.

The protesters “don’t give a second thought about tying up the time and resources of the emergency services as well as the courts”, he said. Christchurch police, fire service and railway staff chimed in with this line.

All this sounds understandable until we know that Solid Energy knew the time and place of the protest in advance and did nothing to stop it. “

Essentially what Hagar is saying is that using their foreknowledge of the protest, Solid Energy sent a press release to the media painting the SHVC as dangerous extremists. So when the protest happened, the media puppeted Solid Energy’s views back to the public, instead of giving attention to the issue of coal use and its effects on climate change. Through the use of its spies, Solid Energy was able to use the media to spin an event to their favour, before it even happened. The public was never given a chance to judge the issues on their own merit, being told only of the damage SHVC was doing to Solid Energy. Damage that Hagar alleges Solid Energy allowed them to do.

Mark Pizey, of Solid Energy, when asked for a comment about the spying for a previous article on the subject, maintained that Solid Energy simply paid Thompson and Clark for information on how best to deal with protesters. He maintained that Solid energy never asked where the information was coming from, and was unaware of the spying. They didn’t ask Thompson and Clark how they got their information anymore than they would ask a financial advisor how they got theirs. To be blunt however, there is no way we can know who is telling the truth. However, the notion that Thompson and Clark neglected to tell Solid Energy of the upcoming train stoppages, which was a clear security threat, and that Eldar just happened to go to the media three days before the protest seems unlikely.

There are people that ask of course, how much damage is really done to Protest Groups by the spying. Its not as if Solid Energy physically stop the groups protests because of the information their spy gave them. Morely agrees with this point of view.

“The use of informants and/or undercover agents by either Government law enforcement agencies, and/or private sector investigators has never, to my knowledge, prevented any protest organisation from legitimately protesting in furtherance of its cause.”

 

Mountier doesn’t see it this way,

“For Solid Energy to spend over $1 million on a contract with Thompson and Clark, they have to be receiving information the company deems ‘valuable’! Further more, no one actually knows just what Solid Energy did with the information. “It is impossible to know how much damage was done by Solid Energy knowing campaign strategy details, because Solid Energy do not have to disclose what information was gained and what they did with it.

In addition to the strategic disadvantage that you are placed in when your (large, corporate, powerful) opposition can ’see your cards,’ the very foundation of collective work for social change – trust, shared passion and dedication, group work – experiences a few shock waves when a person in your midst turns out to be working for the corporate who is trying to stop you! However, this is, unfortunately, not a new experience for activist groups throughout history!

Saying “Oh, it doesnt matter, what harm did it do?” is concerning simply because it adds to the legitimacy of corporates sending private investigators out to gather information. As Barry Wilson, Auckland Council of Civil Liberties president, has said: “In the same way as it is undesirable to plant corporate spies in a board room, it is equally undesirable to plant corporate spies in community groups.”

Mountier has her own views on what should be in the upcoming Ammendmant to the Private Investigators Act

“Infiltration into community groups needs to be illegal. (It is already, if the spy is unregistered). This needs to be enforced. All private investigators should provide publicly accessible reviews of the areas they are working in, including income and expenditure. But first and foremost, the Government must do more than condemn spying; they must prevent it happening again.

Spying on activist groups in order to dampen dissent has to be totally unacceptable. “

 

Mountier is also very unhappy with the lack of action from the government after the spying against her group was revealed.

“Nothing has been done! Solid Energy’s board commended their CEO, Don Elder. TCIL continue to operate unabated. Meanwhile, Massey Uni, AgResearch and the Pork Board have all confirmed that they have hired TCIL to monitor protest groups. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) have refused to confirm or deny they hired TCIL! There is no sign any of this spying, or the subterfuge surrounding it, will stop.”

The case of Massey University is an especially interesting one. A follow up story in the Sunday Star Times revealed that as Mountier said, they too had hired Thompson and Clark to monitor protest groups. Massey has since said that all they did was hire Thompson and Clark for “a security review and to help tender guard services for its Palmerston North campus”. It should be noted however that Massey University has a history of trouble with protest groups, especially in Palmerston North. Given this history, and their ongoing troubles, their hiring of Thompson and Clark seems more and more likely to be for the purpose of spying on activist groups. There are hundreds of PI firms in New Zealand, and Massey just happened to hire the one firm who has built its reputation on infiltrating activist groups? Unlikely. Its also worth noticing the use of the words “Security Review” which for a long time was what Solid Energy refereed to the services (IE: Spying) that Thompson and Clark were providing them as. There is of course, no way of knowing if Massey is telling the truth, or if Thompson and Clark is doing more. As Hagar said, part of the problem for people worried they may be being spied on is they have no way of knowing.

On the other hand, not all student protest groups are peaceful, and not every protest group stays inside the law. Save Happy Valley for example, illegally stopped trains transporting coal from X to Y, as well as trespassing on private property and disturbing the Auckland home of a Solid Energy executive. It is understandable why Solid Energy would view them as a threat to their business, one that would justify hiring a firm like Thompson and Clark. Solid Energy CEO Don Eldar said the SHVC “have made it clear their ultimate aim is to damage us economically and try to shut the company down totally”.

Morely agrees with this

“We live in a democracy and I would absolutely defend the right of any individual, or organization, to protest. But with that “right” comes responsibility, and that is the responsibility to protest within the law.

However, many “protest” organisations do not protest within the law, and indeed many very quickly seem to adopt tunnel vision as regards the supposed “righteousness” of their cause and the fact that this should give them the “right” to break the law in the pursuit of their aims.”

The problem with Morely’s reasoning, is that protest organizations like the SHVC or the Wellington Animal Rights Network do not break the law in secret. They break the law in full public view, in an attempt to gain public attention. Mountier feels that this key difference is one that Morely has over looked

“Groups protest in full public view and allow the public access to their ideas and tactics. Surveillance is probably illegal, secret and done with the covert appreciation of the state (who are either hiring or paying for the informants).

Private investigators should not have this assumed ‘right’ to secrecy. Judging by our tiny experience of two informants, we could safely assume that state and private surveillance breaks the law constantly, but as there is little or no scrutiny of their actions, people don’t know about it.

Before making unsubstantiated claims about the legitimacy of private investigators, perhaps their defenders should hold their operations up to the light and then the public can decide for ourselves if it is acceptable behavior or not.”

While Mountier raises a good point, it seems a bit silly to demand that Private Investigators make information about who they are monitoring available to the public. Surveillance is less effective when everyone knows if they are being watched or not. However it does bring us to another important point. When asked his views on the spying, Morley told me that

 

“Given my law enforcement background – and let’s not forget that the use of informants and undercover agents (“spies” if you will) by Government policing agencies are an accepted method of crime investigation – I do not see anything unethical, immoral nor, and more importantly, illegal, as regards the use of informants and/or undercover agents by private sector investigators.”

Morely is effectively defending spying by P.I’s by way of an analogy with spying by the government. If its ok for them to do it, why shouldn’t it be ok for Private Investigators, many of whom are ex-policemen? As a society, we all accept (and in a world where terrorism is a growing problem, are probably thankful for) the existence of Government intelligence agencies like the Security Intelligence Service and other groups. We all acknowledge that sometimes to prevent a crime, or even stop a terrorist attack, the government may spy on citizens and sometimes even infiltrate protest groups.

However there are some definite problems with Morely’s analogy. The first is obvious: We voted the Government in, they are accountable to us, the voting public. A Private Investigator has no such legal responsibility to the wider community. Secondly, for a Government Agency to initiate surveillance they must do so only in the interests of the wider community. A Private Investigator is beholden only to the interests of their paying customers. Government agencies also have checks and balances they must go through, to ensure surveillance or infiltration is justified. People higher up in the Government will know who is under surveillance, and any agency that goes too far can be reprimanded and punished. The same checks and balances do not exist for Private Investigators.

To use the Solid Energy case as an example, no one in the Government was aware of the spying until the Sunday Star Times Article. When it was brought to their attention, they tried to put a stop to it, but if not for the computer fault Hagar spoke of, they would never have known. How often does this happen? New Zealand citizens being monitored with out the authority’s knowledge? We have no way of knowing. And that’s the problem. While expecting the general public to be able to be told who is being monitored may be unrealistic, expecting the Government to know is not.

The ability of corporations to use spies to manipulate public debate, while hiding this fact from the government, is frankly undemocratic. The idea of a democracy is that the will of the people decides what happens in society. By limiting the public debate, corporations are able to hide their secrets away from the public, and get away with things the public would never allow if they knew. That is not to say all corporations are evil of course, simply that if someone is trying to hide something, it is usually for good reason. A healthy democracy is an open one, where people are held accountable for their actions. As it stands now, there are serious issues of accountability within the Private Investigator Industry.

 

It remains to be seen what changes will be made to the law in the upcoming Amendment. What is known is that in its current state, the law doesn’t provide enough accountability, and the Government is left in the dark as to who is under surveillance. Will the government take enough action on the issue to solve the problem? If student activism is to continue in the form it has for so long, we should all hope they do

Oh, it is SO on now…

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4489507a11.html

Oh, you better believe there is a column a coming on this one. I’ll also repost the article I did on the issue last year.

Interesting thing to note is  that TCIL just won a court case over their employment of Patterson-Rouse, the court finding he was not paid regulerly enough to count as “employment”. It seems the near escape wasn’t enough…

A quick kudos to……

So one of the hardest parts of being a student journalist commenting on politics is how little clout you wield when it comes to interviews. Someone from TV3 wants an interview, and politicians are crawling over each other to deliver. Someone from Canta? Not so much.

Since roughly this time last year, I’ve been trying to get an interview with Helen Clark, and have been essentially on hold with press secretaries ever since. Hopefully I’ll have that interview by the end of the year, but you never know……

So when I emailed the office of Michael Cullen the other day, and got a reply with in 24 hours, I was very pleasantly surprised. What was even cooler was they apologiesed for the late reply. Hilarious.

So mad props to Christopher Ritchie, if I ever need a press secretary, I’m hiring you. Same goes to Danielle Coe of the office of John Key. Give yourselves a round of applause.

Student Debt hits 10 Billion.

There’s a column to come about this, once I finish interviewing some people involved in the issue, but just thought I’d mark this rather sad occasion with a post here. Student debt is a real problem we are going to have to face soon, and there is a good argument to be made for it contributing dramatically to the brain drain. For those on the left, today is seen as the failure of the process started when tertiary education was privatised. Lockwood Smith is a very unpopular person around Canterbury University today (As opposed to the high regard students normally hold him in). for the right, this is just another problem Labour has failed to solve, and another reason people are fleeing to Australia in droves. Either way, no one I’ve spoken too seems happy about this.

But what can be done?

Column on ACT

This weeks Canta Column. There is an interview with Roger Douglas to come later in the year, I just have to finish the second half of it, am caught up in press advisors and other staff who i have to go through to talk to him at the moment. If I forget to post it along with the interview, I have an anecdote about how painfully smarter than me Roger Douglas is.

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Hide your antiquated protectionist economies, Roger Douglas is back!

With the announcement that the founder of Act has returned to the fray and will be standing for re-election has come a huge wave of public interest. For the first time in years, ACT is in the headlines for something other than Ballroom Dancing. The party faithful are hoping this is the beginning of a shining new era, where the party will rally from its 1% polls and finally get their hands on the government check book. For those on the left, to whom Douglas represents the worst excesses of the free market revolution and all the pain and suffering that went with it, the prospect of a resurgent ACT is terrifying. Overnight, ACT has gone from essentially an afterthought (as they were in 2005) to one of the most interesting factors in this election.

What makes ACT’s role in the election so interesting is the precarious position National finds itself. While they are leading Labour in the polls, they could still have trouble forming a government. When Don Brash was able to turn the party’s electoral fortunes around at the last election, he did so at the expense of the other party’s on the right, especially ACT. Why would anyone vote for a minor free market party, when the major parties are offering the same policies, and have a chance to implement them? What that meant is that Brash’s newer more successful National Party had very little choice when it came to coalition partners. The same problem faces the party today. If National does not gain enough votes to govern alone (something no party has managed since MMP was introduced) they will be forced to form a coalition in order to govern. Of the potential coalition partners, The Greens have almost nothing in common with them, The Maori Party has real problems with a number of National Policies, New Zealand First has a painful history with National, ACT and United Future wield very little power due to pathetic polling figures. As it stands now, National faces a danger that Labour could get fewer votes than National, but be able to form a majority government through a complex coalition, while National is left in the cold.

The return of Douglas and the potential revival of Act offers another scenario. If Act can win over 5% of the vote, or even up into the 6, 7 or 8% then National need only poll in the mid to high 40’s (a much more realistic proposition) and will be able to form a government with ACT, without having to make painful compromises with the NZ First or The Maori Party. This scenario certainly is possible. John Key’s decision to jerk National into the political centre has left fertile ground on the right for ACT and Douglas to exploit. Those hard line, free market, radical right voters who deserted ACT for Brash in 2005 will be turned off by the centrist Key, but who better to draw their vote than Roger Douglas?

How plausible is this scenario? The more rabid supporters of the left would claim it’s highly unlikely. New Zealand, they claim, remembers all too well how horribly wounded the nation was by “Rogernomics” and “Ruthenasia”, which some people estimate put as many as 76,000 people out of work. Douglas was relevant in the mid 80’s, ending the forced socialism of the Muldoon Years. Those sorts of policies were useful, but they are the standard policies of the centre left these days. Douglas is no longer useful, what he represents these days is a slashing of benefits, mass asset sales, privatisation of health, education and the elimination of vital public services. No one will trust him with Government, for fear of just what “unfinished business” we would set about completing. Douglas, it is claimed, has no chance this year, because everybody knows he simply represents the horrors of a continued radical right revolution. Some even claim this could hurt National, as a vote for National becomes a vote for ACT and Douglas.

Key was quick to try and stop this line of attack, promising that Douglas most certainly would not be receiving a cabinet post, in a rare moment of decisiveness. Key promised any National Government would not be pursuing a far right agenda. Still if ACT gets enough votes, and National can ‘t govern alone, Key would find himself in the position where he HAS to “sell New Zealand down the river”, he has to give ACT what they wants, if he wants to be prime minister.

Would a National-ACT coalition hurl the country back into the mid 90’s? Let’s assume that National and Act do form a coalition, what sort of government would it be? Well this opens up a lot of questions about just how strongly (if at all) John Key believes in National’s new centrist path. Still, the more votes ACT gets, the more power they have to force concessions out of Key. And this is where the Right runs into trouble.

If he gives in to too many of ACT’s demands, Key ends up alienating the moderate voter base he needs to win elections. If he doesn’t give in to enough of Act’s demands, he alienates the coalition partners he needs to win elections. This problem has actually been made worse in some ways by the return of Douglas, a man famous for his inability to compromise on what he believes in, and a man totally unaccustomed to the necessary compromise of MMP. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way around that impasse for either Key or Douglas. For two parties that once seemed such easy partners, Key’s centrism has made coalition talks a hell of a lot harder.

If Key hopes to lead a government for longer than one term, he needs to make sure ACT can’t force any unpopular concessions out of him. If he wants to lead a government at all, he needs to ensure ACT gets enough votes to be a viable coalition partner. It’s a tricky situation for the leader of a party which has a poor record dealing with in intricacies of MMP.