Speaker by Various Artists

Friday was the annual madness that is the bNet Music Awards, the alternative to the official NZ Music Awards, or the Tuis. Having attended a few of these loose affairs (the bNets, I mean), I was curious to see what they came up with this year.

Last year's event was hosted by Otis and Slave, who were great, but had the unfortunate handicap of an onstage minibar that slowed them down significantly as the night wore on. Drinking spirits will do that to you.

This year's host was dapper young man about town Hugh Sundae (or as one talent agency lists him, Huge Sundae). Hugh arrived by being lowered onto the stage from the rafters of the Bruce Mason Theatre, holding a guitar and miming to 'God Defend New Zealand' in a Hendrix-anthem style. How tasteful.

Then straight into the first live act Shapeshifter, with guest vocals from Warren Maxwell (Trinity Roots / Fat Freddys).

The quality of the live performances during the night was exceptional. You get the sense that the bands chosen to play at this event know that they're playing to their peers and pull out all the stops to get themselves noticed. The Mint Chicks leapt around with punk rock fury that was charming. Dimmer battled with gear problems that nearly defeated them but Shayne Carter rose above it, delivering a blistering guitar attack on 'Seed' as soon as his guitar roared back to life.

Scribe and P-Money blasted into their tunes, including 'Stand up', the number one single in the country last week. Sola Rosa noodled away and the D4 tore through two songs before pausing for breath - just long enough for Dion to blurt out "we're the D4 - thanks for coming - good night" and BANG: straight into 'Get Loose', absolutely ferocious. I'm lukewarm to the D4 on record but live there's no denying that they kick serious ass.

There was a live cross to John Peel, a fan of the bNet. Someone described this as very CNN but it didn't really work due to poor audio. Hugh's MC battle with the Decepticonz (sitting at a table down the front) was hilarious. After being heckled by Savage of the Decepticonz, Hugh took to him, getting DJ Logikal to give him a beat and going off in most impressive form, rapping something about "Think you know more than me? Bet you don't know Scribe's out the back with the chick from Lucid Three." Then Hugh passed the mike to Mareko (NZ's best freestyle MC) and it was all on. Mareko dropped a line about "Hugh Sundae, who you tryin to fool? You probably think I named my album after you" (Hugh was wearing a White Sunday T-shirt). Hugh grabbed the mike back and said "You wanna see how white this Sundae is?" and turned to face the back of the stage and started to drop his trousers! Thankfully, he spared us the full glory of his naked butt. I mean, people were eating, after all.

So, some people won some awards and Concord Dawn's Matt made a terrible joke: "How do you turn a triangle into a straight line? Shave it." Oh, very nice. Still they get 'mad crazy props' for showing off Evan's Shore boy tattoo - MSA tattooed in large gothic letters across his back - Shore boys representing, apparently. MSA stands for something like Milford Society of Alcoholics.

Rhombus won lots of awards, proving that Welli dub is taking over the country. The Datsuns won a few too and - oh, I don't remember it all, but it was bloody good fun. Aussie Michael Gudinski of Mushroom Records presented the International Achiever Award and told the assembled musos to "get off your asses and get out there" - good advice. Michael loses points however for mentioning his own company twice while presenting the award. Nice to see Karen Hay up there too, presenting. The presence of Brent Hansen from MTV Europe also lent some prestige to the event, not that anyone there really cared about that - they were more concerned with where the next drink was coming from. Fair enough.

As I headed off to the car I ended up following the Mint Chicks loading out their gear. One of them was singing something, going la la la la - it sounded like 'Clav Dub' by Rhombus - while one of the other members suggested that maybe they should change their name to the Dub Chicks. Smart marketing move boys, but Punk rock is coming back into fashion any day now. Honest. It's really big with hairdressers.

The boyfriend used the enticing words “You’re allowed to say ‘pussy’!”, so really it’s a no-brainer. How could I resist? Pussy, pussy, pussy.

I suppose now that means this blog won’t make it through some spam filters, or perhaps will even become spam, but the freedom to say pussy was one I was not afforded in a recent TV preview for the New Zealand Herald. The subbed story is here.

Ah well, it’s a family newspaper and I didn’t mind (you can’t say “shag” either), although if you’d seen the first episode of The Real Strip, about The White House on Queen Street, you’d have taken my point. Almost everyone in it chanted like a mantra, “don’t touch the pussy”, evoking visions of bad customers (called “pussy-touchers”), at home repeating “don’t touch the pussy” until it was okay to venture out to The White House again.

The White House may now have to take its non-pussy-touching customers elsewhere, however, due to new regulations on strip joints and brothels brought in under the prostitution reform bill.

What a shame, after owner Brian Le Gros has spent five million smackers on all those classy decorations and new poles in what was formerly a hall for religious contemplation and spiritual ecstasy. Is it a sign of the times that spiritual ecstasy has been swapped for the physical kind? I don’t know, but The White House doesn’t look like that much fun.

Hardly anyone’s mentioning the special place that John Ritter, who died last week, has in the hearts of Buffy fans, although www.slayage.com has a link. For us, he’ll always be the evil robot Ted, who chose the wrong divorced mom to make the moves on in season two. The show could never afford flash guest stars and John really got it: enjoying bewitching everyone with his cursed cookies and then having his ass kicked by Buffy. Lessons learned: if a guy seems too perfect to be true, he probably is; and never call Buffy “missy”.

I dare say the creator of Ritter’s new show, 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter is regretting his comments in Entertainment Weekly: “I would like our characters to become more real and bleed more.”

I’m still getting used to the hard, brutal fact that there are no new episodes of Buffy being made, although the fact that Spike will now appear in Angel’s fifth season goes some way to alleviating the pain (this means something to us, believe me).

There was an exhalation of relief among fans when the WB network decided, after some dithering, that it would make a fifth series of Angel. After the end of Sunnydale, and Firefly, Joss Whedon’s space Western, was canned, it was too cruel that there might be no Angel either. (New Zealand fans, there must be some, will have to wait a while for season five of Angel; season four won’t arrive until next year on TV3.)

It does mean that Whedon, who’d been stretched thin juggling three shows and a new baby, has been working on Angel. He’s under pressure to bring in new viewers though – that’s the trouble with the Buffyverse and the Angelverse, it can seem like a closed society. Or maybe fans like to think it is. Newsflash: Whedon is going to make a motion picture version of Firefly.

Buffy will always have an influence however: a whole phalanx of Action Women are being touted for movie ideas, such as Wonder Woman, Modesty Blaise and The Bionic Woman. I read some movie executive saying they’re trying to “get the Buffy factor”, ie someone believable – someone who’s not just kicking ass as a lifestyle choice or because they mutated that way.

Crumb are quite possibly the least self-conscious band this country - or at least Wellington - has ever produced. Last night's King's Arms gig was as if four kids posing in front of their bedroom mirrors had been magically transported on to a real stage, their hair brushes morphed into microphones and tennis rackets into Gibson Firebirds.

Crumb: they're a cartoon alright, and a genius one. In this age when even the most poisonous, unoriginal and lame acts (Eminem, 50 Cent, Slipknot...) have their ugliness expensively packaged up for the suckers, Crumb are anti-fashion as if the phrase still meant something. In their 70s rock warp, guys in bands really are weirdo outsiders who can't get chicks any other conceivable way - not buff photo-opportunists who travel with their personal tattoo artist. Fatboy frontman Carter really does look like his mother dressed him - maybe even cut his hair too. He's glorious: a rolling, panting glob of sweat and sebum who nonetheless sings and moves like the Rock God of his dreams. It's like watching Robert Plant trapped in the body of a teenage Meatloaf. And the crowd love it. At a Crumb gig, they don't throw panties, they throw asthma inhalers.

Carter is a showbiz natural and a pop culture Rolodex. He whips out an impromptu rendition of "Against All Odds" that makes the crowd scream with delight, and the band vamp the intro of "Detroit Rock City" just in case you wanted to check their credentials. Like a certain other chubby former metalhead, Carter may well turn out to be spokesman-for-a-generation material.

Even without their inflatable superstar, Crumb are a killer band - deceptively simple and almost psychically connected. Their music is risky in the sense that it might be mistaken by cynics for yet more '70s recycling. But to dismiss them as "fun" or a "party band" is to miss the shrewdness and sophistication of Crumb's quotations, recharged by a real joy of discovery. The Datsuns had to leave the country to get appreciated, after all. And in a basically Protestant music culture where incandescent talents like Shayne Carter (no relation) are encouraged to dim themselves down to a tasteful drone, Crumb's day-glo will undoubtedly be seen by some as being beyond the pale. But that's OK. As their artistic namesake knew all too well, the chief enemy of art is good taste. Keep on truckin'.

I'm surrounded by 2000 hairdressers. How did this happen? A late afternoon phone message from local comedian Radar, who is hosting the TV coverage for ETV at the L'Oreal Colour Trophy Awards 2003. He's got some spare tickets to this do. Lots of free alcohol and food, how bad can it be? Well...

We arrive and search out the alcohol. No worries there - they're handing out the bubbly as soon as you walk through the door. But as for food... there's a few waiters walking round with baskets of tiny bread sticks, and that's it. Are these people afraid of food or something?

Anyway, the stage looks fabulous, and out strolls Helen Clark to make the opening speech, praising the high calibre of our hair stylists - well, look what they did for her!

Then the fun begins. A young woman dressed as a 1930s dancer comes out lip-synching to a song out of Chicago - then Bang! Gunshots and oh, lookee, she's dead. A silhouetted figure walks down the stairs behind her; there's some strange orchestral music whining away... Oh dear, they've re-created the video of 'My Way' as performed by that famous pop crooner Mr Sid Vicious, complete with impersonator with perfectly spiked hair, as you'd expect from a hairdressing event. He lipsynchs the entire song, then shoots the woman but the gun doesn't fire so he throws it away and kicks her instead; does the fingers at the crowd and walks back up the stairs. I think it might be post-modern - or just really naff.

(Turns out he was actually singing it - the video screen behind him had a delay which made it look like he was lip synching. The talented chap in question was Clint Sharplin.)

Then the awards begin, hosted by Simon Praast and Danielle Cormack. As each of the first group of finalists paraded along the catwalk with their hair models the music blasted out piercingly loud: more punk rock, this time the opening bars of the Sex Pistols doing the Who's old clunker 'Substitute'. This music is repeated again and again and again. Later the finalists in another section are paraded to the Buzzcocks 'Autonomy' played over and over. I'm not sure what the connection with punk is here - this whole event is about celebrating the exterior, how you look. It's about artifice and the superficial, which is the opposite of punk.

The energy of the audience was great. Each time someone got up onto the catwalk with their model a small but vocal team of supporters / friends / workmates would leap up and cheer and holler for all they were worth. It was very cool. One winner even managed to fit in a happy birthday mum on behalf of a friend, very nice. Next it's David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, courtesy of our impersonator. He's back later for another burst of wierdness as Marilyn Manson doing that old chestnut 'Tainted Love'.

The other entertainment during the evening consists of two fashion shows from the Spring collections of Nicholas Blanchet, Karen Walker, Natalia Kucija and Trelise Cooper. There were some wonderful garments but mostly appalling music. Special points to the models for Natalia Kucija, who were subjected to the sound of a CD skipping through multiple CDs. After listening closely I could make out that someone had very cleverly edited it to sound like a CD skipping or a radio dial surfing - but making those poor girls trying to walk to it was just cruel.

When the Supreme Award NZ Hairdresser of the Year is announced the title goes to Penny Ainsley of Bettjeman's Orakei. She's so bubbly and excited that it's truly delightful. Her supporters in the balcony go absolutely nuts. After thanking half the planet, she holds up the trophy, and says 'let's party!'. The music roars - the Undertones' 'Teenage Kicks' - and Penny and her model walk the catwalk a few more times before figuring out which way to exit. British DJ John Peel listens to this tune once a week - it's his benchmark for judging every pile of new releases he receives. Listening to the song blast around the town hall as it empties out it's not hard to see why. Such a glorious guitar sound!

And then it's off in search of more food. Did I mention we hadn't had dinner before this thing? Slight oversight there. No time. Silly boy.

In the Concert Chamber is the party, a crammed room of people listening to what the programme describes as "renowned DJ and entertainer" Mikey Havoc. Goodshirt continue the retro theme later on.

In the foyer downstairs we locate the food: more insubstantial nibbly things. Finally we source the real goodies - cute cardboard boxes of cold soba noodles with chicken. The video screen is playing a documentary about The Doors and in the corner is Radar and Entertainment TV shooting interviews with the important people. Before we entered the screen was showing a doco about the Clash with some amazing footage of the band playing live in some dingy club back in 1977, hurtling through 'I Fought The Law', which was electric. That's what I just don't get. Punk rock and hairdressing in 2003? They don't even go together in the same sentence, let alone in a room with several thousand hairdressers. Can anyone explain this to me? (It's as strange as Bill Ralston being told to chop $5 million out of his budget by TVNZ's board so the Government can get a dividend while that same Government gives TVNZ $12 million to help it meet its charter obligations.)

Still, we scammed another box of noodles as we were leaving. All in all a highly entertaining evening. Thanks, Radar.

Marianne Elliott is a Wellington-based human rights activist and lawyer who, having spent two years working with the Palestinian Human Rights Centre in the Gaza Strip, realised she didn’t seem to be helping much and came home to work on the New Zealand Action Plan for Human Rights.

When I tell people that my job is to develop the New Zealand Action Plan for Human Rights, the response is often one of scepticism. Few people can think of any significant human rights issues in New Zealand, and of those who can, many wonder what good an ‘action plan’ is going to do to improve things.

Given my own experience of two years living in the Gaza Strip and working for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, I am not about to suggest that New Zealand is languishing near the bottom of the heap in a global sense when it comes to human rights. But I am convinced that we could and should do much better at ensuring the basic rights of all people in New Zealand are protected. I also believe that human rights offer a useful framework for ensuring economic and social development is truly sustainable and shared by all.

The idea for developing national action plans for human rights was originally Australia’s. They raised the concept at the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights a decade ago. The Vienna Conference was something of a watershed moment for human rights internationally. It was the site of significant debate between Western and other nations over whether human rights were, in fact, universal or whether they were instead culturally relative.

At the time I was studying human rights at the University of Waikato School of Law, writing a paper on that very debate. I thought it was terribly important to resolve for myself the complex questions around human rights and cultural difference. I struggled to find a simple way forward which would justify my plans to make a life of working to promote and protect human rights (Whose rights? Defined by whom?).

Years later, when I was working as a human rights lawyer in the Gaza Strip, my boss and friend Raji Sourani suggested to me that those who rely on the defence of cultural relativism when arguing against the universal application of human rights principles are, more often than not, the same people who hold power within the system that they claim needs to be protected from outside interference. Those who are vulnerable, those without power or protection in that system, he argued, will not be the ones raising the cultural relativism argument. His assertions were of course debatable, except perhaps as the broadest generalisations, but they served my purpose at the time and offered a simple and practical way out of the maze, so I was happy to accept them.

In Vienna, the debate also found at least one quite practical exit route. The Australian concept of national action plans for human rights fits well with the concept that each nation, in light of its own particular social, cultural, economic and political environment, is in the best position to determine its own human rights priorities. The national plan of action was also an integrated approach to monitoring and promoting human rights, which fits nicely with the other key outcome of the Vienna consensus, namely, that human rights means all rights as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – economic, social and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights.

Much has happened since Vienna in 1993. Things continued to look promising for human rights as the new millennium opened and government leaders pledged to find effective strategies for implementing economic, social and cultural rights as part of the Millennium Declaration goal to make globalisation a positive force for all the world’s people.

But the past two years have brought significant changes in priorities and perceptions at an international level. Recently Arundahti Roy spoke at Riverside Church in New York about the challenges facing human rights and democracy in the current international climate. In March 2002, when she was still the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson told a meeting in Beirut of human rights institutions from the Asia-Pacific region:

If human rights are respected, if basic education, housing and health care are secure, if there is freedom from personal violence and freedom for men and women to earn their living and raise their families, not only are human rights violations prevented, but conflict, terrorism and war can be prevented.”

It occurs to me that few people would argue with Ms Robinson’s sentiment, but many, like me, would wonder how we are going to secure these simple but fundamental rights to all the men, women and children of New Zealand, let alone of the world. There is no simple answer. The international framework of human rights offers a set of minimum standards for protecting human dignity and ensuring human security as well as an excellent platform for negotiating difficult choices about resource allocation. It does not, however, offer one simple or standard formula for applying that framework in any given nation. The application of the international standards in New Zealand needs to suit our own specific environment and to address our current human rights priorities.

So I agreed to take on the New Zealand Action Plan for Human Rights. The approach is to undertake a comprehensive review of New Zealand’s current performance against key international human rights standards, identify priority areas for improvement, and then develop a set of realistic, practical actions to help make those improvements. We have until December 2004 to put this plan together.

But to mean anything at all this plan needs to be about the things that actually matter to people in New Zealand, and for that to be the case, a lot of people need to have their say on how it should be developed.

In a nationwide survey conducted by UMR Research for the Human Rights Commission in April 2003, 83% of respondents declared interest in the issue of ‘human rights in New Zealand’ (combined ‘very interested’ and ‘fairly interested’). 65% of respondents declared that they had a good level of knowledge about the issue of ‘human rights in New Zealand’ (combined ‘a lot’ and ‘a fair amount’).

However in a series of focus groups conducted by UMR Research in March 2003, findings indicated a lack of concrete knowledge of what basic human rights were. Knowledge on human rights issues had either been gleaned from media stories or personal experiences. Some struggled to identify human rights issues specific to New Zealand and introduced issues that were overseas-based. It was evident that “human rights”, is currently a “catch all” for a wide range of perceived injustices.

A significant amount of the focus group discussion on human rights issues in New Zealand centred on blurred understandings of where the rights of one group impacted on the rights of another group and confusion over where the line should be drawn. For some participants “human rights” was seen as a framework for conflict or tension between the competing claims of different groups.

Meanwhile, a human rights-based approach is being applied to an increasing number of fields of endeavour as the full extent of human rights obligations is becoming clear (good examples include the emergence of a rights-based approach to development programming and the excellent recent report on human rights and biotechnology). Put very simply, a human rights-based approach:

a) Places emphasis on participation of people in decision-making;

b) Introduces accountability for actions and decisions, which can allow people to complain about decisions affecting them adversely;

c) Seeks non-discrimination through the equal enjoyment of rights and obligations by all people;

d) Empowers people by allowing them to use rights as a leverage for action and legitimising their “voice” in decision-making; and

e) Links decision-making at every level to the agreed human rights norms at the international level as set out in the various human rights covenants and treaties.

A human rights approach will not provide all the solutions to the complex issues facing New Zealand today. As Paul Hunt and his collaborators point out in their excellent discussion document on taking a rights-based approach to poverty reduction:

“The application of [the international human rights] normative framework helps to ensure that essential elements of [policies], such as accountability, equality and non-discrimination, participation and empowerment, receive the sustained attention they deserve. But, for the most part, international human rights law does not, and cannot, provide detailed prescriptions for action. Building on the normative framework established by international human rights, detailed [policies and programmes] must be developed, through participatory processes, at the national and local levels.”

This brings me nicely back to my own work - the development of the New Zealand Action Plan for Human Rights. Very soon an online questionnaire will be available for you to make your contribution to the process of developing a detailed, appropriate programme of action to implement international human rights standards here in New Zealand.

We are also developing some specific discussion documents to stimulate dialogue on particular human rights issues. Some examples of the issues on which we are seeking input include the right to freedom of expression and what the justifiable limits on that right might be, the effectiveness of ‘special measures to ensure equality’ or ‘affirmative action’ programmes, and the current status of the right to education in New Zealand.

I suspect many of you will have views on these subjects, and I hope I’ll get to hear them somewhere along the journey to develop the New Zealand Action Plan for Human Rights.

Marianne Elliott can be contacted at