Philip Arps is led into the dock at the Christchurch District Court. Photo / New Zealand Herald
Philip Arps is led into the dock at the Christchurch District Court. Photo / New Zealand Herald
Opinion
Christchurch white supremacist Philip Arps has been returned to the community after serving a jail sentence for distributing video of one of the Christchurch mosque massacres. His imminent release led Corrections to ask for numerous extra conditions.
Officials said they had "ongoing concerns" about Arps' risk to the public, inparticular to the Muslim community. Fears were aroused by his "general behaviour" towards prison staff, along with intercepted letters and phone calls, according to the Otago Daily Times. He is clearly still seen as a threat.
He's a magnificent illustration of a lot that's wrong in our society, and now he's a shining example of what's wrong with prisons. By all accounts he is coming out as bad as if not worse than he was when he went in.
So what was the point of putting us to the expense of sending him to jail? To send a message? Anyone who thinks a couple of months in prison without intensive rehabilitation is going to change the mindset of someone like Arps hasn't met many martyrs. As is often the case, he wasn't sent to jail to fix the problem but to make the community feel a bit better.
Professor Dawn Freshwater is the new vice-chancellor of Auckland University. Photo / Supplied
Auckland University has bought its incoming vice-chancellor, Dawn Freshwater, a $5 million house in Auckland's most ossified suburb, Parnell. Freshwater will rent the four-bedroom house from her employer for an undisclosed amount.
Under her not-at-all-missed predecessor, Stuart McCutcheon, the university cut many jobs and closed three world-class specialist libraries: fine arts, music and architecture. He said at the time that difficult decisions had to be taken. It appears now he was talking about whether to go with the teak or the mahogany in the kitchen renovations.
Attempting to justify the purchase, a university spokesperson said the architecturally undistinguished home "will also be a venue for university-related event hosting". So – party house. The description of the purchase as a "splurge" in one headline was unfair; "waste" or "insult to learning" would have been a perfectly adequate description.
National Party leader Simon Bridges. Photo / Bevan Conley
Connoisseurs of doublespeak are in for a fine old time of it from all directions this election year. You know: something being described as a "life-changing infrastructure commitment" instead of "cynically delayed election-year bribe". That sort of thing.
This will be a fake election straight out of the Trump playbook. Many misspeakings will be misspoken. There are simply not enough media foot soldiers to check and refute every false claim that will be made and many will become lodged in voters' minds as the truth.
But it's unlikely anyone will reach the very high bar set by Simon Bridges attempting to bat away Serious Fraud Office charges connected to a National Party donation. "This was always just a vendetta by a disgruntled former MP," said Bridges. Not when four people are charged with a crime. That is as clear an example of "not just a vendetta" as you will find.
We won't be lied to. But not lying and telling the truth are different things. No one ever actually lies. They just reassemble bits of truth into pleasing shapes.
It's going to be a long year if every time a politician of any persuasion says something, we have to tease out the six possible meanings and decide which one of them to believe.
For instance, when Bridges says "no one in the National Party has been charged" he could well have meant in the National Party office at the time he was speaking. We may never know.
Nor, he was quick to point out, has he been charged with anything. It's a worry when the leader of a party has to cite the fact they haven't been charge with a crime as an achievement.
