60 Minutes SUX!

I am so disgusted at the 60 Minutes interview of Kirstin Dunne-Powell that I can hardly form a coherent sentence…

We should be ashamed that, as a country, we have pushed this survivor of violence to defend herself on national TV.

A deliberately stony-faced Paula Penfold started the interview by asking “Why are you speaking out now when that might only serve to aggravate the situation further.”

Excuse me!! WTF??

Right from the outset, Dunne-Powell is being accused of “aggravating the situation further”.

What follows are shots of Dunne-Powell’s property, of Veitch excusing himself (“we had a major disagreement… we argued for a very long time etc) and large words scrolling over the screen e.g. “I apologise”, “confidentiality agreement”, “$150000” etc.

She then asks Dunne-Powell, “This was already a broken man – why try to break him more?”

It doesn’t get any better after that, either.

Penfold confronts Dunne-Powell about the situation which “played out for 9 months before he [Veitch] got his day in court.”

To me that sounds a whole heap like blame.

Penfold then says, about the Police investigation, that it was partly to “question Kristin’s motives”.

And in relation to the payout, “Wasn’t it having your cake and eating it too – you had your money.”

I think there’s a difference between playing devil’s advocate and being a deliberately hurtful bully – this interview definitely crossed that line.

Who the hell are these apologists for violence? 60 Minutes and Paula Penfold have denied Dunne-Powell a voice, and they have used her pain to cast Veitch in a sympathetic light – again.

Grumblings about farmers

I recently read a speech made by Federated Farmers CEO Conor English at the Large Herds Conference, held in Ashburton in March.

I found the whole speech pretty terrifying: there’s talk of “water storage” (read ownership, trade-ability, water as a hostage), climate change (“We know there is a problem with climate change, because fashion tells us there is one!”) but the thing that has stayed with me is a comment Mr English makes about the voice of farmers:

“We need to think about this for a bit. It's important to realise that by number, farmers are about the same size as the gay community (my emphasis). With MMP and the increasingly urban dominated political environment, we have challenges in bringing the country with us and winning the numbers game. We need to punch above our weight to get our voice heard and to win the debates. And that is exactly what we are doing.”

(I’ve never heard Conor English speak and I don’t know anything about him, but in my head, the tone of that second sentence is not inclusive.)

Unfortunately I think he’s right. Farmers do punch above their weight, their voices are heard, and they do “win the debates”.

That a group of farmers has so much political sway and the gay community has so little really pisses me off!

This is not a level playing paddock, I don’t know how to play the number’s game and I don’t see how we can ever achieve any kind of equity of “voice”.

Grrr! What are your thoughts?