Speaker by Various Artists

Welcome to our Rugby World Cup 2007 feature, Some Foreign Field, which will run for the duration of the tournament. We'll work alongside Haka and The Dropkicks, and you can expect to see the Dropkicks geezers blog here, if only to mercilessly plug their podcasts. There will also be some surprise contributors as we go along.

I'm pleased to confirm that Some Foreign Field will be sponsored throughout by our friends at Whisky Galore, enabling me to offer a good bottle of whisky each week for the best reader comment. You may feel free to click through and order up your own dram, of course.

We'll keep you up with news and blog comment from elsewhere too. Like, for instance, Justin Marshall's venting in The Times. We just don't appreciate him, apparently:

Today, he wants to exhume his frustrations with the treatment that former All Blacks receive back home. If Henry’s side do win the Webb Ellis Cup they should not, it seems, expect their fans to cherish the achievement for long.

“New Zealand has a problem,” says the 34-year-old, who played with Leeds Tykes for a season before moving to Swansea last summer. “They’re very, very negative towards former All Blacks. I was the second most capped All Black ever and I received a plaque saying ‘thank you very much’ and that’s it. We never recognise the achievements of the great All Blacks.

“I’ve really noticed the difference since being in the UK. They’re very receptive of their players, particularly in Wales. They’re always having functions, they have a Hall of Fame and players are inducted every year. They’re very good with past international stars.

"Yet I know my comments will make their way back to New Zealand and people will be ‘why can’t he just shut up?’ Giving your opinion, you’re deemed out of your depth, which is weird.”

Uh, right. Whatever. Marshall also sounded a doomy note on selection policy:

“I didn’t agree with the rotational policy, neither do a lot of my compatriots and neither do a lot of the players. I know that because I still speak to them,” says the All Blacks' most capped scrum-half, who now plays for Ospreys.

“They don’t know where they stand. One week they could be man of the match, the next they might not be in the squad. That’s the reason that they’re stuttering. Players are getting anxious about whether they’re going to be selected for the World Cup or not.”

Actually, as others have pointed out, in most positions there is little doubt about who the core of the present All Black side is, and that has been the case for the past two years.

Meanwhile, over at Dropkicks HQ, they've already been busy, with a meditation on the All Black campaign, a look at the Australians and a plea to see less of Byron Kelleher on the telly.

Inevitably, there are also lolblacks and a drinking game.

Haka, meanwhile, has a crew on the ground in France, led by the highly capable Tracey Nelson, who before she flew out offered some thoughts on what is really our best XV and the likely quality of the refereeing.

I haven't bothered to sign up for any virtual or fantasy rugby comps -- they just seem so trivial at a time like this -- but readers who are in are warmly welcomed to keep the rest of us up to date. Choice excerpts from the shouting matches on Usenet are also welcome.

But, for now, I'm just waiting for 11.45 tomorrow night. Finally, this thing starts. There is nothing to keep in reserve now. I'm not nervous yet, but this is going to be a long six weeks.

The Electoral Finance Bill is a creature of the 2005 election – without it, and all its controversies and rancour, we probably wouldn't be looking to amend the law. The election showed our electoral laws were crying out for reform, and in assessing the Electoral Finance Bill and considering changes that ought to be made to it, it's sensible to measure it against the problems of the last election.

1. Anonymous Donations and Secret Trusts

Our law already requires parties to declare every donations they receive over $10,000 – but it doesn't work. Donations can be given anonymously, or can given to someone (or something) else to give to the party. We don't know the names of the big donors to our political parties – we only know the names of the intermediaries they use to funnel their cash to our politicians.

It's not good enough. And after months of promising action, and Labour's repeated derision of National as filled with hollow men, the crackdown on secret trusts and anonymous donations was missing in action. The glass isn't half full – it's empty.

There is one real improvement – it's proposed that donations over $20,000 will have to be declared individually within 10 days of receipt – throughout the electoral cycle. We'll know who the big funders of the political parties are before we vote. This could be a major advance over the current law – which currently only provides for an annual return, months after the election. But unless our lobbying and your submissions force a government back-down, it's likely those big funders will be anonymous or secret trusts. Hard questions can be asked during the campaign, however.

Fixing anonymous donations isn't something that's “too hard”. The Electoral Finance Bill has brilliant disclosure and donation rules for third parties – all some enterprising politician or select committee needs to do is copy and paste.

2. The Campaign by Members of the Exclusive Brethren Church

For the most part, this was perfectly legal, but there are some good reasons why a campaign of this magnitude shouldn't be allowed to happen in the future (least of all so anonymously, and so late in the campaign). Third party campaigns of this type (and much smaller ones too) are the one thing the Electoral Finance Bill really gets stuck into – the limit is too low, definitions are too broad, and many of the effects of the bill as currently written are perverse. Whatever you think about the idea of regulating third party speech in election year, you've got to agree that the Government's bill would curb it substantially – the cure, as currently drafted, may be worse than the disease, but it's undoubtedly a cure.

The limits on free speech are excessive, but with them toned down substantially, we'll get to see who's behind and who's funding any third party advertising in election year – which is a very good thing.

3. Misuse of the Parliamentary Leaders' Funds

This wasn't just the pledge card, but spending from just about every political party in Parliament. Indeed, we found out some time after the election that this has been going on for years. The Auditor-General found a number of parties had spent money given to them for Parliamentary purposes on things that weren't Parliamentary purposes. It's not dealt with at all in this legislation, but that's neither surprising nor disappointing – this actually had nothing to do with the election, and nothing to do with electoral law. It was about the proper and lawful scope of parliamentary appropriations, and could have arisen at any time. We'd like it looked at, but this bill isn't the place for it.

4. Labour's Breach of the Election Spending Cap

The 2005 election saw Labour release a pledge card and some brochures – it was authorised by Heather Simpson (from the PM's office) rather than Mike Smith (who as secretary of the Labour Party was required to authorise all Labour Party election advertising), and Mike Smith didn't want it included in Labour's spending calculation. The Chief Electoral Officer told him they had to be included and it pushed Labour more than $400,000 over their $2.38m limit. There can be very little doubt that this was an accurate assessment of the legal situation, but Labour tried to argue that the Parliamentary rules (which they said allowed the pledge card) overrode the Electoral Act.

The law won't really change. That argument was bunkum in the past, and remains so. The problem wasn't the law, it was enforcement – the police didn't know what they were doing, and didn't particularly care. The law will be clarified to make legislatively certain that something can be a party advertisement even if it doesn't expressly seek votes, although that was the understanding anyway.

5. National's “American Bag-man”

It turns out there was no American bag-man arranging secret funding for National at the last election, but if you'd listened to Labour before the election you'd be forgiven for thinking they think there's something wrong in foreigners influencing our elections.

We certainly thought that: Cabinet even agreed to end donations from foreigners. But this too is missing. It's not as big a disappointment as the absence of transparency in donations, but given this is the best opportunity to clean up our lax election finance laws in the last 15 years, and will probably be the best opportunity for at least another 10, it is a glaring omission.

6. National's Broadcasting Limit Breach

Our political parties have separate limits for spending on broadcasting, and someone involved in National's campaign failed to make perfectly clear to someone else that their $900,000 limit included GST. They ended up getting more than $110,000 broadcast advertising than they were allocated (still around $80,000 less than Labour, which didn't break this law) and potentially faced a $100,000 fine. No-one was charged (the police couldn't decide whether someone in National, or within their advertising agency was actually at fault), and National had some trouble trying to paying its debts.

The Broadcasting Act is left largely untouched by this legislation – the political representatives are removed from the body that distributes the cash, which is good, and the process for filing complaints under Broadcasting Standards is simplified, but that's it. There's not even a change to the law to allow a party in National's post-election predicament to pay up – although that may be because those in officialdom finally realised that the law doesn't actually prohibit it.

The particular problem the police faced in sheeting home culpability to a particular person should be solved by a requirement that all election advertisements be approved a single individual appointed by each party, but most of the other more minor advances in the Electoral Finance Bill sadly don't extend to the Broadcasting regime. Parties will still have differing spending limits, and politicians who breach these rules won't risk their seats in Parliament (unlike politicians who breach some of the rules in the Electoral Finance Bill). Many opportunities have been missed in this lacklustre tidy-up of our broadcasting rules.

7. Police Incompetence in Electoral Law

Any proposal to move the responsibility for enforcing New Zealand's electoral laws into a single independent body has been shunted (along with public funding and, if the Government gets its way, disclosure) to a review that will report after the next election. Unfortunately, any prospect that enforcement of electoral law might be placed with a single body that actually knows what it's doing around electoral law seems fraught, with the Attorney-General saying in question time last week:

The New Zealand Police is the appropriate agency to enforce the law in any circumstance. That is absolutely clear.

There's clearly still work to be done on this one, but one positive is that search warrants will be available in relation to illegal practices, which isn't currently the case.

8. Time for laying prosecutions

Months after the last election, as the police investigation into the various irregularities in the election was nearing an end, the suggestion arose that they might be too late to charge anyone with any breaches.

In the end, I don't believe the Police would have been out of time to charge someone in Labour for its overspending (the clock for that breach starts from when the last bill is paid, not from the date of the election), but they were almost certainly out of time if they'd wanted to charge either Heather Simpson or a member of the Exclusive Brethren church for issuing advertising without a correct authorisation (that clock starts when the advertising is released), and also out of time had they found someone to charge over National's broadcasting breach (that clock started when the advertising was “arranged”).

There's currently a six month time limit for laying prosecutions – with the six months starting at different times for different offences. But given any investigation of overspending offences is only likely to begin after a party files it expense return months after the election, time can be tight.

This sees a good change too – the six-month time limit for bringing prosecutions under the Electoral Finance Bill will only begin once a prosecutor has enough evidence to lay charges (with an overall maximum of three years).

9. Peters v Clarkson

As the cost for their support of the Electoral Finance Bill, New Zealand First got agreement to overturn some of the findings in the Peters v Clarkson electoral petition. Now Bob Clarkson didn't do too much wrong – indeed, when he was told that some things he hadn't thought would have to be counted toward his $20,000 limit might have to be, he stopped spending (as Labour should have) – but the race for Tauranga in 2005 did raise some issues.

Bob Clarkson is a pretty big businessman in Tauranga, and has done lots of printing and advertising in the electorate for years – so he gets it done cheaper than someone who only advertises a little or for a few months every three years. He wasn't given mates' rates – he paid as much as he would have paid to have advertisements about construction – but that was still less than his opponents could get their advertising for.

It's not the biggest deal, but it levels the playing field a little bit, and is a positive move.

It's not even a mixed bag.

The 2005 election raised substantial concerns over the robustness of our electoral laws and our democracy. Only one of the major concerns has been dealt with: so incompetently that it threatens to overshadow other areas in great need of reform. The Electoral Finance Bill is an important start – it's the vehicle through which we can impress upon politicians the need for a hard look and urgent action on the raft of issues raised at the last election – and problems raised worldwide we shouldn't have to experience first-hand before we insulate our democracy.

But this will only happen if our politicians get the message that we take our democracy very seriously. You may have some ideas about what's needed; the Coalition for Open Government does, and recommends you look at its primer on the five most important things to discuss in any submission.

A submission needn't be long -- it can say as little as “We encourage you to ensure the law bans secret contributions to political parties”, and can even be made on-line.

Don't wait – you can only have your say until 7 September.

Graeme Edgeler
Coalition for Open Government

Russell Brown and I are launching, respectively, a new autism-related website and new book about autism at a special charity function that our friends at Pead PR and Random House have helped us organise in Wellington tonight. Sounds cool. Here are seven other good reasons why you should be hustling with us at the San Francisco Bathhouse:

Autism is everywhere. While reliable figures are not available for New Zealand, it's a fair bet that virtually every Public Address reader has at least heard of autism, a neurological disorder affecting language, behaviour and social skills. Many readers will know somebody — leaving aside this forum's most famously prolific contributor — whose family is affected by the condition. In fact, autism turns up so frequently in IT circles that, in its milder form, it's sometimes known as the geek syndrome.

The Autism Intervention Trust is a great cause. The Wellington-based organisation we will be raising money for is a registered charity that assists member-families — and any family may join — in paying for the intensive intervention-therapy thesechildren need if they are to have the best shot at a happy life. The trust also runs holiday programmes for autistic children. Another of its ongoing projects is organising training workshops to help teacher aides work better with these kids. (Popular demand has seen more than 150 educators turned away from the group's latest workshop, scheduled for later this month.)

Long speeches have been banned. Don't know about you, but most of us involved in organising the evening are heartily fed up with listening to long, worthy orations at events like these. So everybody slated to speak has been warned to keep it short — seven minutes apiece, tops — or risk being summarily frogmarched off stage. That includes Billy Glish, an old school chum of this writer who has kindly agreed to launch the new book and whose speaking style will, we're sure, strike many attendees as hauntingly familiar.

The Bonnie Scarlets are not a maypole dancing ensemble. No offence to Caledonian readers, but a evening of traditional Scottish folk songs would probably not be to the typical Public Address reader's taste. Och aye, but the Bonnies are a straight-ahead rock and roll act.

The auction items look amazing. Believe us, the line-up of items for the evening's charity auction include some real eye-poppers:

• Wine from Vavasour
• Beauty Hampers from Garnier/Maybelline and L'Oreal valued at $500 apiece
• PC Games
• Homecare packs
• Babylicious voucher
• Personal care products
• Mounted photographs from the Flickr Group
• Paul Holmes Leccino and Frantoio olive oil — signed by Mr Holmes, natch
• Framed, signed and mounted collector's items, including those of Sir Edmund Hillary and Russell Brown's last-ever Hard News radio script
• Accommodation vouchers for a weekend away in a serviced luxury Auckland apartment
• More wine
• Fructis Friday Makeover, valued at $1,500 and involving a team who will visit your Wellington office where you, and 10 of your co-workers, will be treated to styling makeovers, hair consultations, neck and should massages, drinks & fruit platters and Garnier Fructis goodie bags
• Did we mention the wine?

And that's not all. In the spirit of bipartisanship, bidders get to choose between vouchers entitling the holder to Morning Tea With John Key or Dinner At Bellamys With Marian Hobbs, Wellington Central's retiring — but definitely not shy — MP.

Finally ... in a nod to the venue's splendidly decadent history, we have organised a special revue performance featuring some of the city's leading exotic dancers ... actually, we haven't, sorry, that was just a little joke.

But hey, if the spirit moves — and the bid is right — the two ex rock crits putting this together might be convinced to perform a joint-stage dive for old times' sake!

See you there.

Hustle For Autism:

Monday, 6 August at SFBH (San Francisco Bathhouse),

171 Cuba Street, Wellington, from 6.30pm

Get your tickets from:

Working Style Wellington, 8 Woodward Street, 04 472 2194

Millwood Gallery, 291b Tinakori Road, Thorndon, Wellington 04 473 5178

Or email [email protected] to reserve tickets at the door.

Contributors to this site seem to be having some kind of public love affair with the L.e.d.s, so I thought it would behove me to contribute to the collective embrace. David Haywood made the first move, eulogising here over the band's first album, We are the L.e.d.s, and then Russell Brown snuck in a plug for them during this interview, describing them as "the summer's best-kept musical secret, the L.e.d.s." That soundbite now appears at the beginning of the band's forthcoming album, tentatively titled, yes, We are Still the L.e.d.s.

Now, maybe Public Address writers are a bunch of old crusties (y'know, just hypothetically), but the kids bopping along to the L.e.d.s' magic at the Dux recently were barely out of high school. Surely such young hipsters can be regarded as reliable arbiters of musical cool, even if Haywood and Brown are -- let's be brutally honest -- more likely to perform the inverse function.

I'm sure the youthful Dux audience was unimpressed by, if they noticed at all, Brown's pre-recorded line opening the gig, and they were no doubt equally nonplussed by the ever-laconic Blair Parkes's contradictory greeting: "Hi, we're The Fall." In fact, despite the band's getting a fair amount of airplay on RDU, I'd guess this audience barely knew what they were in for at all.

But then the music started.

'Infectious' has got to be the most over-used word in writing on pop music, but seriously folks, this stuff is just made to get you moving. It's uncanny.

If you're familiar with the Dux, and with the essential Reuben-Thorne-icity of all things Christchurch, you'll know that the mandatory stance at this venue is old-school leather-jacket posing -- statue-like, preferably against the bar, holding grimly to that protective pairing for the critically uncertain: a beer and a look of studied seriousness.

So it was a real revelation to see, firstly, the undergraduate contingent dancing through the entire set; and then, even more astonishing, the hard-core punters at least twitching a shoulder or two. This band is so undeniably cool, and they are so clearly having such a good time, that it's impossible for even the most hardened dickhead to sneer.

We are the L.e.d.s.

Who are the L.e.d.s? What do they want? And what are they going to do now that they've got our attention?

In a nutshell, they are Blair Parkes, Marcus Thomas, Helen Greenfield and Dan Batkin-Smith.

And they're creators of funky, poppy, synthy beats, as well as catchy, unpretentious, grunty pop, and witty, clever, cruisey tunes. To prove my solid grounding on New Zealand soil, I'd say their music has more than just snap, crackle and pop; it has that X-factor; like Andre Adams on an unrolled green-top, it makes things happen; it's a high-performance, fuel-injected, mallow-puffing musical manifesto.

And what they're going to do is make more of it. Rock on.

The band really began life as a duo: Thomas and Parkes, who both come from a background of jangly guitar-pop. This was Thomas:Parkes, with Marcus Thomas on bass, voice and percussion duties, while Blair Parkes controlled the synth, vocals and guitar. Finding that this was not quite enough for what they wanted to achieve, they invited the lusciously-voiced Greenfield to join them. She now sings, plays cello and does her share of synth work. Batkin-Smith on electronic drums is the latest addition to the band. Parkes, Greenfield and Batkin-Smith live in or around Christchurch, while Thomas lives in Wellington, meaning rehearsals are more conceptual than actual affairs, while the composition process owes a lot to the efficiency of NZ Post -- still living in the Cretaceous period of dial-up, Parkes explained to me, snail-mail remains his preferred method of sharing material.

I've been following Blair's music since the early nineties, when he was part of Christchurch band Creeley, and he's always written great pop tunes. But this recent move away from guitars, with increasing emphasis on computers, synths and pre-recorded backing tracks for the live shows, has been a major watershed for him. He is thriving on a new kind of creativity that is all about the production process, collaborative composition and testing the possibilities of electronic media within a musical aesthetic that successfully combines the kinds of sounds and attitudes we'd associate with a less drum-heavy New Order, a more relaxed and approachable Kraftwerk, Gary Newman with a healthy dose of valium, all inflected with a DIY Flying-Nunishness that's quite happy about not being high art.

And, it would seem, everyone just loves it.

For God's sake, those children at the Dux yelled for an encore. At the Dux. The band was so taken aback they had to admit apologetically that they'd used all their backing tracks and it'd have to be a repeat. No worries. They swung into 'What I See,' a definite hit-pick from the forthcoming album, and it got us all back on our feet, savouring this moment of unselfconscious good-times.

So I made a trip out to New Brighton to chat with Parkes and find out what he and the band think they're doing. He ushered me out of a perfectly warm lounge, into a freezing studio-shed, sat me on the floor, and thoroughly impressed me with his total inability to articulate what he's doing with his music.

Nonetheless, among the ramblings of a man who clearly thinks far too much about everything, there were some real gems of insight and passion.

I started out asking him about the composition process in this band that is only occasionally in the same room, let alone city:

"Well, realistically I'm writing the same kind of songs I've been writing for 25 years.... I start a rough song, with melody, rhythm, voice; then I send it to Marcus to do whatever he wants to do. Then Helen comes along and does some bits; then I edit, arrange, mix etc. I try to leave a song open enough for the others to approach it and add their take on it.... You're trying to get to the essence of the idea."

This seems like a big thing for Parkes, a certain tension between the idea of a song and the freedom of the song itself:

"The aesthetic of the music is really important; it's like picking your palette of sound without letting that dictate your creative path too much. Having an aesthetic idea is really interesting. You don't want to be trying to do what you're wanting to do; it's like automatic playing within a defined area, you set parameters but try not to dictate what you do.... You might write five similar songs, but there'll be one that you can't have written without the other five.... It's a fuck of a lot of grunt work, so there's a lot of unpleasant work to do to achieve your goal."

I suspect that the L.e.d.s' lyrics are integral to the aura of cool that surrounds their songs. Parkes is one of those writers whose ear is ever-attuned to the nuances of colloquial conversation, and his songs are like collections of phrases that are arbitrarily yet brilliantly pieced together, signifying without meaning, evoking without telling. I asked him about this:

"Lyrically, there are quite a few things that I try not to do. Narrative stuff is what I try not to do, or relationship stuff."

I moved the conversation on to the shift away from guitars and the embracing of synths. I'd been wanting to ask Parkes about this for a while, because it'd come as such a shock to me originally, and because it seemed to me such an outrageous success. The response was candid:

"If you play guitar music for 19 or 20 years, there wasn't much new for me personally. I ended up writing so many songs, I was making music that I wouldn't buy and wouldn't go out to see.... It was getting away from having a rhythm guitar in a song, that was the key thing, because I was repeating myself -- ultimately I was pretty bored by it. Marcus and I tried to set about changing it....We'd been using computers for a couple of years, and realizing some of the things we could do....You don't have to have it terribly worked out beforehand, the recording is part of the compositional process, but the editing is also.... I've got a 48 track studio on my laptop, which is just cool. It's about spontaneity of recording; I can sing straight into the laptop.... Like I might be running [baby son] Nico's bath and I get an idea -- I can just go out to the shed, record it, and then go back to the bath. Yeah, it suits my lifestyle."

Making this kind of music has completely altered the approach to playing live for someone who cut his teeth on the typical guitars and drums bash-it-out technique. The band now plays live with two synths, a bass guitar, Batkin-Smith's electronic drums and the indispensable pre-recorded backing tracks. This latter, particularly, struck me as a major change in direction, and I wanted to know Parkes's take on it:

"When the band was just Marcus and I it was a way of making the recorded sound live. There are definitely pluses and minuses: technically it's more difficult than just playing guitar -- you need to be able to actually hear what you're doing. It's a more disciplined way of playing.... We just made it up as we went along. We didn't really know how we would do it, just bumbled a process as we worked out how to sound okay live."

And why does he think the band is working so well? Why do the kids like it? What are they doing right?

"I've got no idea why the kids like it. It's pop music, we're trying to make songs people like.... We're pretty pleased with it. [Laughs] I'm a New Zealander and don't admit to things being good. I guess it works because we've thought about what we're trying to do.... It's also about having the right people. Bands are totally about that. Marcus is amazingly good. Helen is great. And Dan's a top guy: we wanted to get a drummer. It's an aural and a visual thing. Drummers add a lot to the visual aspect of the group and add heaps to the dynamic aspect of the group."

Finally, I wanted to ask about the band's branding, the distinctive candy-like design that appears on their CD cover, on badges, on cushions, and on the t-shirts they were all wearing at the Dux. Is this a major marketing exercise, or just a laugh? Apparently, it's a bit of both:

"Marcus does the art. It's about having a strong visual identity -- thinking about what things look like ties in with how they sound. Yeah, it's about having a brand, a strong sense of what we're doing and making people want to hear what we're doing, making the art match the music. And wearing the t-shirts on stage is fun."

And fun, friends and neighbours, is what this band is all about.

POSTSCRIPT: YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST

In celebration of the Public Address/L.e.d.s love-fest, the L.e.d.s have graciously allowed us to debut 'Wheel', a song from their forthcoming album.

You can listen to this track by clicking on the 'Play the audio for this post' link at the top of this page or the 'Audio' button at the bottom of this page.

It was the kind of night that reminded me why I used to love going out. It was the kind of night which made me wonder why all I ever do now is go to dinner parties and talk about property prices. It was at the site of the old Windsor Castle pub for a start - brought back memories of seeing Children's Hour, walking on sticky Axminster and drinking jugs of beer. There were the people - such an eclectic bunch - everyone from Ahmed Zaoui to Brent Hansen and lots of old faces. And there was the music. Loud Messy. Glorious. There was even, in my case, the compulsory drunken interlude sitting on a Parnell Road pavement with my shoes off (before going back in for more hijinks) All in all, Hustle for Russell was one of the best nights out I had had in ages. And it was debauchery in a good cause - it raised money to help home school Russell's son Leo who has been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.

Well, now the folks who brought you Hustle for Russell are having another party and this time it's in Wellington. Hustle for Autism is a fundraising event in the style of Hustle for Russell aiming to raise the profile of autism in New Zealand, raise money for a terrific cause, and at the same time launch David Cohen's book A Perfect World (Random House) and Russell Brown's humans.org website for autism.

Hustle for Autism will be at the louche-sounding San Francisco Bathhouse with hot band the Bonnie Scarlets providing the soundtrack and Russell Brown as MC — and the organisers are promising no long speeches. But although it will be a humming night, the reason for the event is a serious one.

Subtitled "A father's quest to unriddle the mysteries of autism", David's book is both a personal memoir and a global investigation. The work traces his journey — physical and mental — to better understand Eliot's autism and collect new information about the condition, meditating as he goes on its scientific, historical, cultural, artistic and existential dimensions.

Autism affects up to one child in 150 and families are largely left to struggle to make sense of the complex and mysterious condition and to try to give their children the best chance of overcoming it. Many parents report that once they get the seemingly grim diagnosis they are left alone to deal with its implications. Unlike other medical conditions affecting children autism has never had that cosy disease-of-the-week status which helps to raise funds and awareness, yet it is everywhere. Once you know someone whose child has been diagnosed you find parents with autistic kids popping up all over the show, like a secret network.

The first few years after diagnosis for children are critical as therapy can help compensate for the communication difficulties which are part of the autism spectrum. ABA (Applied Behaviour Analysis) is one of only a few intensive treatments for autism that has been proven to show results. It teaches social and verbal skills autistic children may not be able to pick up spontaneously through imitation.

The thing is, therapy is bloody expensive. So the families of autistic children who are already at the end of their tether trying to deal with the emotional burdens of an autistic child then have to shoulder the huge financial burden of providing this therapy. And when kids reach school age there are a whole new set of challenges with little support and specialist options for autistic children and no special schools. There is a growing sense of agitation among parents about how the state provides education for their children; someone may have a case to claim under the Human Rights Act that the government is reneging on its constitutional obligations to provide education for all children, not just the easy NT (neurotypical) ones.

Hustle for Autism aims to put the issue on the agenda. It will feature a cool auction with some terrific items to raise funds for the Autism Intervention Trust, a registered charity that helps fund therapy for the autistic children of its member families — and any family may join the group — and it has started running workshops for teacher aides to better understand the challenges of working with these great kids.

Please come along. I can promise you will have a better time than sitting home talking about property prices.

Details are below:

Hustle for Autism
Monday, 6 August at SFBH (San Francisco Bathhouse),
171 Cuba Street, Wellington from 6pm

Tickets $10 each and available from: Working Style Wellington, 8 Woodward Street, 04 472 2194; Millwood Gallery, 291b Tinakori Road.

Plus door sales on the night - book through [email protected]

All proceeds go to the Autism Intervention Trust