Kerre Woodham: Bigotry button pressed again

During World War I, a chap called Howard Elliott toured the length and breadth of New Zealand, attempting to gather support for his fledgling group, the Protestant Political Association.

The group had no policies as such. What its members sought to do was whip up the fear and uncertainty that existed during wartime into prejudice against Catholics which the group would then translate into political power.

Elliott's speeches seldom varied. At each meeting the crowd was told Catholics were pro-German, the Pope was in league with the Kaiser, Catholic teaching clergy were getting preferential treatment while state-school teachers were being sent to the front, and that all Irish immigrants were Fenians and anti-British who simply couldn't be trusted.

Spice up the speech with some near-pornographic tales of the goings-on in convents, and you can see why the Reverend Elliott drew a crowd.

The bigotry and intolerance of the PPA appalled most New Zealanders but enough were attracted to the message to ensure that Elliott and his group stuttered on for several more years.

I can't help but think how Elliott would admire Winston Peters. Peters has achieved everything Elliott ever dreamed of - a real live political party with real live political power and a blindly loyal fan base.

Peters is much more of a politician than Elliott ever was - the man is in a different league when it comes to campaigning.

But the two men are very much the same when it comes to manipulating popular fears and prejudices. Last election, Winston Peters did a variant of the Yellow Peril theme which ensured he got back into Parliament for another three years, and this time round it's the serpent in the Mosque - the updated version of reds under the bed.

This is a winner for Peters. There's a real fear among some people that we're letting terrorists into the country - and what's worse, we're giving them benefits and free housing. These people genuinely believe that New Zealanders' naive gullibility will be repaid with a bomb on the Harbour Bridge or under the Sky Tower, and no amount of reasoning or argument will convince them otherwise.

In one way, Peters is bringing the country together.

The pity and contempt the Peters acolytes feel for those who refuse to believe New Zealand's Muslims will blow up the country is reciprocated by my pity and contempt for them.

Why would you possibly choose to live in fear, quaking every time you saw a young mum in a burqa, ringing the police every time you overheard two Muslim men in a dairy?

The Muslim community should try not to take these attacks personally. As members of the Asian population will tell you, they were Peters' targets last time round, and they're still here.

Prejudice and bigotry among a minority of the population are nothing new in this country; it's just that Muslims happen to be flavour of the month right now.

A sullen stare is my bit in the war against terror

Need to update your passport? Allow yourself plenty of time. You'll know by now there are new rules and regulations regarding passport photos: no grinning inanely, no mouth open, no hair covering the face - it's like being back at school.

But that's fair enough and in these troubled times, you understand there will be odd requirements. If doing my bit in the war against terror means staring sullenly at the camera, then sullenly I shall stare. I checked with the chemist that they understood all the new do's and don'ts, and the nice man pointed to the wall chart handed out by the Department of Internal Affairs and assured me he knew what was needed to process my passport in time for my work trip. So I sent off my application and my photos and waited for my nice new passport to arrive in the post. And two weeks later, a letter arrived saying my photos had been rejected and I had to go through the whole photo-taking, JP-authorising process again, plus pay extra to get the passport processed in time. And there's no guarantee these photos will be accepted either, because the whole process seems incredibly arbitrary.

The girl at Internal Affairs in Auckland had no idea why the photos were turned down - she had to refer to the computer. Too much light, apparently.

As I drove around town yesterday, repeating the whole time-consuming process, a few things occurred to me:

Why does the Department of Internal Affairs process payments before it processes applications?

If, for some reason the application is rejected, why can they not pick it up where they left off, rather than begin the whole process again?

If standards for photos are so stringent, and it's so difficult to work out what's acceptable and what's not, why doesn't Internal Affairs have approved photo-taking outlets which have managed to work out the secret of success? Wouldn't that save everyone, including Internal Affairs, a whole lot of time and bother?