Dame Anne Salmond, a prominent historian from Gisborne who has been part of conversations about the deaths with Turanga iwi, said the truth was there was uncertainty about what had happened and that direct witnesses to the events had disagreed. Read more

In the time of Trump, it means we might worry that when America gets a little crazy, the rest of the world might go mad.

In years past, New Zealand's geographical isolation provided a measure of natural immunity to foreign viruses.

Today, however, Aotearoa is wired into the 24/7-365 news cycle of traditional and social media.

For better and for worse, the vices of the polemical back-and-forth take-no-prisoners rhetoric of the fact-check versus fake-news culture wars are always a click away.

Earlier this month, the tides of incivility washed up on our shores with the arrival of Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux.

In their wake came a series of storms in Auckland and at Massey University over Don Brash, and at Otago over the student magazine Critic Te Arohi.

From top to bottom, New Zealand has been drenched in torrents of indignation and recrimination.

In a perverse irony, the rhetoric of both sides plunges down the self-righteously slippery slopes of reductio ad fascism arguments.

Whether you or I want to prohibit or permit such speech, we're all "Nazis" now.

Of course, we are not all Nazis in the literal sense. Even if we were all Nazis in the rhetorical sense, none of us would be.

If this sneer applies to everyone, it loses its polemical force.

Even so, resort to such arguments forces us to pause and reflect.

Reductio ad fascism arguments are in bad taste and bad faith. They trivialise the experience of those who suffered under real Nazis. They demonise the existence of those whose differences we suffer only because we have to.

Worse still, they neutralise legitimate criticism of genuine authoritarianism and bona fide racism.

Corrosive attitudes

Now, my aim is not to litigate these specific events, or to adjudicate these particular speakers.

My concern lies with two corrosive attitudes lurking beneath and behind these stormy controversies.

The first is a seething form of selfishness that goes something like this. "I can say whatever the hell I want. And damn the consequences."

This attitude is non-partisan and non-sectarian. It is in evidence across the ideological and religious spectrum.

No group is immune from having members and moments that indulge in free speech absent any concern for the accuracy of its content or the hostility of its form.

Such self-indulgence divorces liberty from responsibility.

It ignores basic political and legal frameworks of free speech, all of which admit reasonable restrictions on public expression.

We need not wade into the legal minutiae of documents like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The spirit of these laws is more relevant than their letter.

Sucker punch or sparring speech

One emergent principle in these frameworks is the "right" of reply.

I place "right" in quotation marks, because, strictly speaking, reply is more of a guiding principle than a binding precept.

The idea, roughly, is this.

In cases of potentially offensive or inflammatory public speech, one test for permissibility is whether or not there is opportunity for response.

If there is, then there is a modest presumption in favour of permission.

If not, there is a slight presumption in favour of prohibition.

Whether or not this principle becomes the law of the land, it seems to me to be a reliable rule for our conduct especially in universities where freedom of inquiry and pursuit of knowledge are prized.

We can rephrase this principle as a simple question: "Is my speech a sucker punch, or is it sparring?"

To ask this question is neither dumbing down on vigorous debate nor chickening out from righteous dispute. (I, for one, will resist and protest racism in all its bullhorn and dog-whistle forms.)

This question asks not less of us but more.

It asks that even when we remain unpersuaded by our opponents, we remain engaged in the perhaps futile effort to persuade them.

It asks that we aspire not to knock them out but to draw them in.

This brings me to the second worrisome attitude that often comes packaged with the first.

It is a scathing form of rage that goes something like this: "I not only rebut your opinion or action as deplorable. I rebuke your person as despicable."

Such rebukes have their place. Certain persons merit this response.

But those who do are the honest-to-God Nazis of the world. In a society like ours, they, thankfully, are few and far between.

Liberty - responsibility

Whatever we think of Southern, Molyneux, and Brash - or those who would silence them - surely we should think better of them than we do of Hitler, Himmler, and Eichmann.

Self-indulgent contempt may win us followers 140 characters at a time, but it will taint the character of our leadership each and every time.

Civil liberty requires civic responsibility.

Freedom of expression must be freed from expressions of contempt. Or, in the words of Christian scripture, "Speak the truth in love".

• Derek Alan Woodard-Lehman is a lecturer in theology and public issues at the University of Otago.
• First published in the ODT. Republished with permission.
• Image: YouTube

I follow his case with interest. Nobody who was at university at the same time as Rick could forget him, in part because he was a top English literature student, in part because of his vocals in local bands, and partly because he was there in the great late 60s rush into dope, which back then was a novelty.

I'm not breaking confidence here, since Rick has admitted to a long-standing use of cannabis.

He has now been jailed twice for drug crimes, has 14 previous drug convictions, and is three months into a two-year sentence for having cannabis to sell, along with having small amounts of cannabis oil, ecstasy and cocaine at his place.

My point is not about him in particular - I'm sorry to see he's in this position - but about the attitudes among middle-class people of that era that surface when they run into difficulties with the police.

They adopt a posture that's part aristocratic disdain, and part disbelief: police exist to hassle other people, surely, not people who've read Dostoevsky and know how to hold a knife and fork. You get this, too, with fraudsters who are suddenly called to account, and with bad drivers.

Perhaps it was this instinctive understanding that made ACT leader Don Brash, keen to slash Government spending, moot legalising cannabis and making dope-dealing OK.

That might be the one politically appealing idea Brash will ever come up with that could attract old stoners, though unfortunately they're the last people who would vote for him.

Rick wants home detention, and who can blame him? He has a music room at home, and creature comforts, and could easily pretend the whole darn court thing had never happened. Prison is not a nice place: he knew that already: its unpleasantness is meant to be its point.

But his arguments could only have been dreamed up by a white middle-class offender who'd woken from a bad dream only to discover he was living it.

No Maori, let's say, the 12 per cent of the population who make up half this country's prison population, would dream of appealing on the grounds - among other things - of not belonging there because you don't get enough sunshine, and you don't like air conditioning.

What made me think about this is Hone Harawira, who snarled about the appalling Maori rate of imprisonment on TV7 the other night. I wonder how successful Maori are at getting home detention.

Harawira is hard to take, but often right.

Read the full article

• Source: Rosemary McLeod in The Press
• Image: topnews.net.nz

The former marketing manager says he is not a racist and that those who speak "the truth" - like sacked Employers and Manufacturers Association boss Alasdair Thompson - are punished.

In an open letter to Brash, Pita Sharples said "How sad and disturbing to read your negative ACT party advertisement in the NZ Herald's Weekender - July 9, as you once again bring the Maori people's aspirations into contempt and ridicule. Your views are not only inaccurate and ill-founded, but are totally out of tune with middle New Zealand's ideals and aspirations for our country."

Source

• DomPost
• Source: Scoop

The editorial goes on to describe the Act Party as a "clique of fanatics and plutocrats who want the rich man back in his castle and the poor man at his gate". "Brash wants to smash the welfare state, give tax breaks to the rich, get rid of minium wages and let the market take the hindmost".

In his Encyclical Caritas in Vertiate Pope Benedict says that justice requires economic choices which do not cause disparities in wealth to increase in an excessive and morally unacceptable manner and that we must prioritize the goal of access to steady employment for everyone. He says the systemic increase of social inequality, both within a single country and between countries not only harms social cohesion but also places democracy at risk.

Inequality is measured using the Gini coefficient, which is imperfect, but a good indicator of inequality within countries. The larger the Gini coefficient, the more unequal a country is. In New Zealand the Gini Coefficient increased most rapidly in late 80s and early 90s. It declined between 2001 and 2007.

While it is not true that New Zealand has one of greatest income inequalities in the world, it is true is that since the 1980s, countries like New Zealand, Israel and the United States have seen their populations become less equal, based upon rapid income growth for those countries' richest inhabitants. Others like Turkey and Chile have become more equal as a result rapid development.

Source
Sunday Star Times: Editorial not available online

Image: Otago Daily Times