The horror, the horror
Philip Matthews summarises the highs and lows of the week’s news.
Amusement park horror
There is no way to be smart or clever about this. It is simply a horror story. Four people were killed on an amusement park ride at Dreamworld on the Gold Coast, run by a company with the unlikely name of Ardent Leisure. The park intended to re-open just three days after the tragedy but after discussions with police, management has pushed that date back. The Brisbane Times reported that Dreamworld had faced more than half a dozen lawsuits since 2010, including one in 2015 for A$400,000 (NZ$426,000) from a former staffer injured moving equipment that park operators allegedly knew to be defective.
Bobby calf horror
Animal rights group Farmwatch released footage of bobby calves thrown into trucks on farms in Taranaki and Waikato. If you feel some deja vu here, you are not wrong. It is less than a year since SAFE released similar footage of bobby calf abuse that caused the Ministry of Primary Industries to tighten up the rules. Farmwatch spokesman John Darroch said the new footage showed that little had changed and ‘‘in failing to implement better standards, the New Zealand dairy industry is putting our international reputation at risk’’.
Police on my back
Here is an example of the New Zealand police literally acting as the thought police. When a breathtesting stop was set up in Lower Hutt on a Sunday afternoon, those stopped and tested would have naturally assumed the friendly cops were after drunk drivers. Actually, they were compiling a database of people – mostly elderly women – who had attended an Exit International euthanasia meeting. At least 10 of them later received visits from the police, asking questions about their association with the pro-euthanasia group. Inspector Chris Bensemann told
Fairfax Media that police have a ’’responsibility to the community to investigate any situation where we have reasonable grounds to suspect that persons are being assisted in the commission of suicide’’. It’s like the ‘‘precog’’ crime squad out of Minority
Report: we will know when you are even thinking about crime.
PM for a day
Time for something lighter, something from New Zealand politics. For just one day this week, we had our third female prime minister. With John Key on his very slow way to India and back, and understudies Bill English, Steven Joyce and Gerry Brownlee also overseas on political business, it fell to number five in the Cabinet to take charge. Paula Bennett was New Zealand’s prime minister for a day and you may have noticed that the sky did not fall in. While she waited for an appearance on the Paul Henry show on Friday morning, Brownlee texted to say he was back and Bennett was off duty. Labour’s Jacinda Ardern suggested that Bennett could have used her powers to give Max Key a telling off over his trivial Snapchat controversy. ‘‘I thought it was more parental than prime ministerial,’’ Bennett replied, wisely. It’s true she has much bigger things to think about, such as the disgraceful saga of methamphetamine testing in state houses that made so many homeless.