Speaker by Various Artists

John Key has announced the adoption of yet another flagship Labour policy – having a female leader. In a one-page policy briefing released today he stated that under a National government he would undergo gender realignment to have what it takes to lead the Country.

“I’ve been up and down the country talking to people and it kept being said to me that one of Labour’s biggest strengths is that their leader is a woman. Having already adopted most of their policy platform it was a no-brainer that I should seek to become a woman.”

How National planned to fund the procedure was not immediately apparent and with Labour having left so little room for new spending on the Government books, Prime Minister Helen Clark was quick to seize on this.

"I think this is getting a bit ridiculous," Miss Clark responded.

"Where does money for this procedure come from? Either you've got to borrow for the cut - which we've always said is crazy - or you are heavily pruning existing Labour Government spending."

It is quite a turnaround for Mr Key, who has previously not been known to favour becoming a woman, but seasoned political commentator Bill Ralston could see electoral gain in such a concession.

“Winning elections is about swallowing the occasional dead rat, sometimes you have to man-up, or, in this case, man-down, in order to please everyone”.

But the move has not silenced critics who have accused the National leader of trying to be all things to all people. One such critic is NZ First leader Winston Peters:

“It is a ridiculous situation and it speaks to what I’ve been saying for a long time, and you in the media have not been listening: this man will tell you black is white if that will benefit his well-funded backers. I ask you, why stop there? What is to stop him keeping both the male apparatus and the female parts and therefore truly representing something for everyone?"

ACT leader Rodney Hide could not be reached for comment having lost his cellphone while attempting to jump a shark on a jetski.

Green Party co-leader Russell Norman welcomed the move:

“In our party we have for a long time believed that a person’s sex was an important consideration when selecting an able leader. Our constitution requires it. We are glad that National are starting to adopt our sound policies also.”

The Maori Party are to conduct a series of hui throughout the Country to find out what their position is. Whatever the outcome, it will be communicated by staging a very long walk.

No one cared what United Future Leader Peter Dunne or Gordon Whatshisname had to say.

Simon Pound

“Are you gunna go with my Gran?”

Jesus kid, you’re breaking my heart here. You don’t even know who I am, but you’re looking at me like I’m the same old same old, aren’t ya?

You’re breaking my heart.

There was a time once when I thought well of people, you know? When I thought that good intentions would overwhelm all the evil shit that happens to people like yourself. A time when I thought that someone like me might actually make a difference. So to respect that younger, foolish me, I’ll answer your question.

Am I gunna go with your Gran? Well, let’s look at this reasonably. Let’s ignore that your Gran is well, a gran. Let’s ignore that she’s probably 50 but looks 70. Let’s ignore that’s she’s lost most of her teeth, and she’s pissed at 11.30am, on a Saturday. And let’s face it, she’s a bit worse for wear. Even ignoring all these things, the answer is still, undoubtably, no.

Now this isn’t to say that no-one I know wouldn’t go with your Gran. Because your question, asked by you who is obviously no older than 7, reveals two interesting things. First, people going with your Gran isn’t outside the boundaries of your everyday reckoning. Second, blokes who look like me are obviously the type of bloke who do drive up that long out-of-the-way road to go with women who live up here.

So Gran, you’re breaking my heart.

Why I’m here is something I undertook even before you were born. Your sister here might have been perhaps two or three years old when I first same here to speak with your family, and the people who live round here. And she’s giving me this look like, “if not my Gran, then who?”, and I’m looking at her like, “love, if you were a boy, you’d barely be shaving.”

So the three of you, you’re breaking my heart.

But here I am, all the same, a bloke who’s seeing something he’s seen before, when he came up here the last time, acted out all over again. And the sadness it laid on me then was burnt out in the kitchens of the big city while I slaved to finish this, a book I brought up here to give back to your people. And you look at me with the eagerness of a group of people somehow conditioned into thinking that blokes like me come up here for one real reason, to lay with a woman old enough to have birthed me, and or a girl still with the flush of innocence on her cheeks.

And you’re breaking my heart, again, while I stand with book in hand, trying to fulfill a promise, one I made long ago to people who aren’t even living here anymore. A promise that’s dug into my conscience for three years now, while I grow fat and content off the Degree I made out of knowledge I took from here. And I know that once I ditch this copy I’ll get back into that rented car and drive that 4 hours back into the big city to a cushy hotel room and sleep comfortably while out here the cycles we all hear about, and all hear about needing to be broken, are repeated endlessly.

And it’s not guilt that twangs on my heart-strings, it’s anger. Anger that’s breaking my heart because I know that years of work amount to nothing out here in the wilds. A place where 7 year-old Aboriginal boys find it usual that blokes are coming up here to treat their women like a convenience. A place where all my work amounts to nothing but an avenue for a bloke to take a step ahead, while you take the step backwards. A place where the word 'sorry' is a meaningless nothing spoken by well-meaning liberals.

So I’m looking at your sister, and I can see the intelligence in her eyes, and I pleading with her, gently, to read it. Just read these pages... Please. Not the whole thing I’m saying, just this bit here, because this is your history. The history of this place that’s been scattered to the winds over the years because blokes like me can’t see any worth in writing it down. A history that makes blokes like me get fat off the proceeds of books and talking tours while up here you have a life like your Gran’s to look forward to. Abuse. Alcoholism.

So I’m looking in her eyes and I know that once I leave that that big ugly dog in the corner will eat this book, and I’m trying to hide my desperation, because I know that education and knowledge is the way out, and I know that this thing making the difference to just one person would make all those years worthwhile.

But you’re breaking my heart, because I know, in the end, it’s futile. Blokes like me never make a difference. We take what we need, the way we always have. And people like you three keep living on these mission stations, the remnants of a once proud people destroyed under the genocidal policies of the blokes who now come up here, for fun.

And the anger, it will always break my heart. But I tried. And I cared. Which is something I need never regret.

Warning: this column contains reference to sexual material which some people may find disgusting or distressing. Reader common sense is advised.

A couple of years back, I remember hearing a news story that the FBI had set up a special task-force charged with getting porn off the internet. I made a flip 'good luck with that' blog post and didn't think much more about it. I'm really hoping this doesn't come back to bite me on the arse, because writing about getting your arse bitten could now get you arrested.

In October 2003, Karen Fletcher, the operator of the Red Rose Stories website, was raided by the FBI and charged with obscenity. In May this year she announced that she would be pleading guilty to six counts of online distribution of obscenity. She will be sentenced next month. The charges related to material on the site which depicted the assault, rape and murder of children.

So far so 'happens all the time'. What makes this case different is that Fletcher was charged with obscenity - because the U.S.'s child pornography legislation covers images, not text. These were stories. At no point were any real children harmed in the writing of these stories, nor is there any indication that the authors do anything more than write. They are works of imaginative fiction.

Now, like me you might well be thinking, surely this would be covered by freedom of speech, right? Well, no. If speech can be labelled obscene, it's not protected by the First Amendment. The Miller Test determines whether or not a work is obscene:

• Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest

• Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law

• Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value (the SLAPS test)

The thing about the Miller Test is that it shifts the burden of proof onto the defence. Rather than the prosecution having to prove that Fletcher's material was obscene, Fletcher would
have had to prove that it had SLAPS value.

It was a fight she might well have won, had she been prepared to fight it. Fletcher, however, suffers from acute agoraphobia, the result of sexual abuse she suffered as a child. According to Fletcher, she wrote the stories partially as therapy:

"The monsters in my life had always been real; for too long they were always there with unlimited access to me, and I was helpless to do anything about it," she wrote. "In my stories, I have created new monsters... Somehow, making these monsters so much worse makes me feel better, and makes my life seem more bearable."

Despite the dubiousness of its legal strength, the case has had a profound effect on the on-line erotica community. In September 2005, the Washington Post published a leaked internal FBI memo which stated: "based on a review of past successful cases in a variety of jurisdictions [the best odds of conviction come with pornography that] includes bestiality, urination, defecation, as well as sadistic and masochistic behavior." (These are the same areas of focus as the new British Extreme Pornography law.) From TrueTales.org (a leatherman site):

Beginning in late September 2005, a number of Websites containing SM material chose to delete that material or shut down, in response to the information in the Washington Post article. Among the Websites to censor themselves have been atruerose.com, kinkygurl.com, leatherquest.com, suicidegirls.com, UnderMySkirt.org, and three related Websites, houseofdesade.org, grandpadesade.com, and realbdsm.com.

The U.S. government didn't have to win the case to generate a wave of self-censorship. Sites did this out of fear of being prosecuted, successfully or not.

Personally, bestiality, urination, defecation and child porn all cross my squick thresh-hold. The inclusion of BDSM gob-smacks me, however. BDSM is the vanilla of kink. If kink were piercings, BDSM would be the earlobe. Despite appearing to depict torture, humiliation and non-consensual sex, BDSM has a codified consent process that would put the R.M.A. to shame.

One clause of the Miller Test interests me in particular: the one that relates to 'contemporary community standards'. When it comes to a website, what's the community? Websites don't have geographical location. Their community is their user base, that's why it's called the 'community'. Legally, however, the community is based on the physical location of the server. That's probably not the reason our own web-hosting service has just set up a new server in Nevada. Unless it is.

People who write kink erotica do it for all kinds of reasons. They don't want people who'll be offended to read it: that's why it's usually protected by a paywall or only available to site members. This was the case at RedRose, and it didn't help. Erotica often comes with little coded warnings for each story describing the content, so that people can choose what they want to read.

(Tip: you may be curious as to what 'crime scene' is. Don't be.)

Text has always been treated differently. You can walk into Borders and pick up Jacqueline Carey's latest Kushiel book no matter how old you are. There will be no warnings on the cover about the explicit BDSM content. Pictures can ambush you: they can be seared into your cerebrum before you have time to react. Text creeps up on you, and when it starts creeping you out, you can stop reading. At Bardic Web, our 'what do I do if I find some content disturbing' section contains detailed instructions on how to shut a browser tab. Or at least it did until last week, when we closed the Erotica section.

Livejournal has banned over 500 users for having squicky things listed as interests, even if they were rape or incest survivor support groups. I lost two interests myself to the subsequent 'strikethrough' bout: BDSM and Bisexuality. Livejournal and Facebook both decided breasts were obscene, even if there was a baby's head blocking your view. This new moralism has no hope of getting pron off the internet: I was right about that. What I hadn't realised was how much damage could be done trying.

Emma Hart

With more pointless, personal violence in the media than I can quite tolerate, all I can say is, thank god for the film festival. Actually, thank Bill Gosden.

On Sunday night, Lou Reed’s Berlin was the perfect end to the first sunny weekend that wasn’t completely freezing.

Julian Schnabel’s cut away-reveries aren’t to everyone’s taste, but I thought locating all the emotional themes within the body of a SWF gave the film-concert hybrid just the unity it required. Musical highlights abound, but the big surprise was Antony Hegarty (he of the Johnsons website) delivering a sublime vocal counterpoint against the godfather’s more spoken word technique.

The choir, the horns and the band stylistically traversed Lou’s solo career via the one album, from the delicate orchestrations of Transformer to the massive choruses of his wild man live stuff. Rock’n’roll never meant so much.

In Rain of the Children, Vincent Ward weaves a world of Tuhoe context around his post-student documentary, In Spring One Plants Alone. They’re completely opposite films. The new film combines actors, doco interviews, sets, digital effects and Vince-to-camera pieces, revealing all the tragedies and miracles in the wake of the old film’s central characters, Puhi and Nicki. By contrast, the old film was as stripped back, vulnerable and hypnotic as … well … as Vigil, which he made next.

Just two comments on this. First, this kind of tribal history is something we need more of, and the more and the sooner, the better. It’s still too easy to consign New Zealand history to a single story of colonial exploitation. The truth is, it’s lots of stories of exploitation. It’s not until we get into the specifics of these people, on that land, with thisbattle, and thesespecific outcomes, that we can form real opinions about any of it. And In Spring shows, in Nicki and Puhi, a very, very specific outcome.

So it was a revelation to learn in such tragic detail the full meaning of what it meant to be one of the prophet Rua’s chosen ones. In fact, it was a revelation simply to get a portrait of the Old Testament-inspired Rua.

Towards the end, Tama Iti emerges as one Tuhoe who knew Nicki, and was nearby at the time of his death. Without breathing a word of treaties signed or not, guns, flags, buttocks or anti-terror legislation, he nevertheless provided a vital link with more recent chapters of the Tuhoe story, which so fully deserves further exploration.

Secondly, I love all of Ward’s films, even the nutty Hollywood ones. They’re poetic – like Cocteau’s – in a way that few New Zealand films even attempt (exceptions include Florian Habicht and Greg King). That said, looking at the 30-years old In Spring One Plants Alone sutured into a modern, large-scale, fully crewed and resourced project, I couldn’t help feel that to date, his greatest work has been achieved with the greatest risk, and the least resource. In Spring and Vigil are beautiful in a way that is purely, and dedicatedly cinematic. In those films, you feel as if you’re sitting right next to the film maker, right there, behind the lens. In fact, you sort of feel like he’s in your head.

People argue around the baroque magnificence of What Dreams May Come. But I think the loss they really feel is the sheer, honest, intimacy of Ward’s early New Zealand works.

Work and parenthood are limiting further cine fun. Mates have cajoled me into the Ashes of Time Redux wahoo fun powpow! And The Man From London is by my all time favourite Director, Bela Tar. Never heard of him? Your loss.

Also, greatly looking forward to Warwick and Florian’s Rubbings of a Live Man, break a leg fellas, and also a raise of the wrist to Greg and Matt for A Song of Good. If you want to see these films, go see them in the festival. If you’ve never seen Warwick in full flight at one of his own shows, you’ve missed something beautiful, memorable, if not necessarily comprehensible. And if Florian’s rich visual poetry ain’t your thing, there’s always Greg’s visual viscera.

Say it with me: "It's ok to lose. It's ok to lose. It's ok to lose". That's it, now you keep doing those breathing exercises while I explain why.

First, if you are going to lose, lose by a margin that's small but significant. Two points is the largest number you can lead by such that the opposition can score the smallest possible number of points to defeat you. Which is a convoluted way of saying it's an incredibly small margin.

Second, if the margin is that small make sure you go down with all guns blazing. And this is what happened as Daniel Carter continually belted the ball of his foot attempting to win the game by one point. Some are claiming this is a new era for the All Blacks where "dropgoal"is not a dirty word. Those same people seem to basing these assumptions on a sample of two games, but let it not be for us to fall into the media trap of rampant speculation.

It should also be mentioned that Carter was firing these volleys after having suffered what could be favourably described as a "pre-emptive" defence by the Springboks.

Third, let the last score against you be so spectacular that the rugby gods themselves are caused to utter "Shit! Did you see that bounce?!"Ricky Januarie will go down in the annuls of South African rugby history as the plucky half-back who scored a try that required equal parts skill, moxie and luck and in doing so not only broke the All Blacks (very flat) defence, but also a world record streak of home wins and a 10 year drought of South African victories in Aotearoa.

And finally, it is always ok to lose to "the old foe". We have tussled with Australia often and with varying degrees of success. Against them we played a match that many claim as the greatest rugby test of all time (and it should be noted that we won that test). And yet our greatest rugby nemesis is South Africa.

It was 1956 when we (New Zealand) won our first test series against the Springboks. At that time, as it is now, New Zealand and South Africa were the two greatest rugby teams in the world. However, while we could best any other team, the Springboks had a record of 10 wins from 14 tests over us. Moreover, when we toured in 1949 they had whitewashed us in four tests (making South Africa the only team to ever do so).

While they were here (remembering, this was in the days of "real"tours) South Africa played 15 non-test matches, with losses to Waikato, Canterbury, and the New Zealand Universities team (described by TP McClean as "graduates, non-graduates and never-could-be-graduates"). Interestingly the first test of that series (52 years ago on Monday) was also at Carisbrook and we all know how many games the Springboks have won there: one, and only quite recently too.

South Africa is also the team with the best winning percentage against us, and rather smugly for us, it's 44.59 percent (30-41). Although if you only take matches since the game became professional it slips down to 28.12 percent.

Comparing our rivalry with South Africa to Australia reveals the following (numbers are rounded-up):

Do you know what happened on July 25th 1998? That was the last time we lost to South Africa in New Zealand. Last century. So long ago that Craig Dowd was making his crazy pseudo-political statements from the front row, and Jonah Lomu still only had two kidneys.

The last time we were beaten at home, the last time the bitter taste of defeat was force feed to us was Ö(I'm pausing for those who might want to guess)Öin 2003, when England were on their way to World Cup glory and beat us by two points. Strangely I remember that game as a dark rain soaked affair but the game report says different: "Weather fine and clear, light shower before match, ground firm".

Since then England hasn't come close to beating us (a points-diff of +131), that means that now we must focus on being South Africa's worst rugby nightmare. When South Africa returned to New Zealand in 1999 we beat them 28-0 (although in a bad omen when we travelled to South Africa in 1998 they beat us againÖ).

This weekend we also lost the world number one spot. We had held the spot for 40 months until South Africa knocked us off by winning the World Cup, they then held it for three games, before we took it back, and now it's theirs again.

Interestingly this also harks back to history. When South Africa and New Zealand first started touring to each other in the early part of the 20th century, the games were touted as "The World Championship of Rugby".

So in the coming weeks as the grumblers and Henry-haters start to bemoan our loss (and they will once the rugby news gets slow) just try to remember that a hero is nothing without a foe, and if we have to succumb, then at least losing to South Africa isn't as bad as losing to someone else.