The Politics of Small Green Fences

43 comments on “The Politics of Small Green Fences ”

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1. Bill 1

   1 April 2014 at 12:57 pm

   Oh fck, there’s no ‘satire’ or ‘April Fool’ tag on this! I mean, I actually did check. I checked because I thought this post might have been one of the most well constructed farces I’ve read on ‘the standard’….or anywhere else for that matter. But no. And now I’m stuck between the bit of me that wants to laugh and the bit of me that wants to cry.
2. Draco T Bastard 2

   1 April 2014 at 12:59 pm

   Just another use of Free Speech Zones. We should be getting very angry about this.
   • weka 2.1

     1 April 2014 at 5:27 pm

     +1
3. greywarbler 3

   1 April 2014 at 1:26 pm

   How was the Rent a Crowd asked John vaguely, his mind on more important matters. Well behaved and no litter near to parliament. All went to plan. Oh good, now we have a few things to tie up or sell before the election said John. Get the team together will you, we have work to do.
4. Not a PS Staffer 4

   1 April 2014 at 1:54 pm

   Wouldn’t have happened in Auckland.
5. fambo 5

   1 April 2014 at 1:56 pm

   The government is attacking on all fronts to force the oppostion to spread its energy as thinly as possible.The best thing people can do if they want to fight this government is not only join one of the opposition parties but actively participate in it. By committing a small amount of your time, energy and money to your party of choice you are using it as effectively as possible. The more MPs in parliament, the more votes you have, and the more your arguments will be heard through the mainstream media.
6. karol 6

   1 April 2014 at 2:02 pm

   While I dislike this whittling down of public protest sites, i also think, Trotter especially, ignores the communication factor of protests.

   A presence on the streets may not have an immediate and/or noticeable impact. But it is something that passers by have their attention drawn to. Demos also have more of an impact if they get widely reported, and positively reported, in a range of media.

   In contrast to many other demos, I thought the 6pm news on TV3 & One gave a pretty good public airing of the TPPA issues last weekend.
7. thechangeling 7

   1 April 2014 at 2:46 pm

   In Palmerston North it was very disappointing to hear Labour Party MP Iain Lees Galloway declare that he thinks Free Trade Agreements have been good for New Zealand, which as most of us here at thestandard know is not true. FTA’s are instead responsible for our permanently high unemployment and under employment levels in New Zealand and around the western world, largely because we don’t make very much of what we consume anymore and instead import it, largely at the expense of dairy farmers who are all singing in the rain.
   Massey University academic Jeff Sluka however nailed it on the head when he declared that FTA’s have been directly responsible for the growing inequality in New Zealand.
   • Draco T Bastard 7.1

     1 April 2014 at 3:39 pm

     Massey University academic Jeff Sluka however nailed it on the head when he declared that FTA’s have been directly responsible for the growing inequality in New Zealand.

     That is their purpose so it really shouldn’t be a surprise that that’s what they achieve.
   • lprent 7.2

     1 April 2014 at 4:11 pm

     ..Labour Party MP Iain Lees Galloway declare that he thinks Free Trade Agreements have been good for New Zealand, which as most of us here at thestandard know is not true.

     Not me. It’d be bloody hard to be able to point to a FTA that NZ that has been a party to that caused significiant economic issues. The last one I can think of was the one we made with the Britian back in the empire days that kept us as an under developed farming economy.

     I suspect that you are confusing FTAs with the dropping of tariff barriers. That happened unilaterally without any international agreements in the 1980s. It also happened too fast.

     My opposition to the TPP is because I see it as a restraint of trade agreement, and as we are already a free trading nation, we’re heavily on the downward side of any benefits. It will cost us a hell of a lot because about the only sector that may (but probably not) get any benefits is the farming sector. Every other sector of the economy looks like it will either not get anything or it will cost us.

     I forgot, it will also enhance the bloated egos of some useless politicians…
     • Disraeli Gladstone 7.2.1

       1 April 2014 at 5:33 pm

       Well said.
     • thechangeling 7.2.2

       1 April 2014 at 7:28 pm

       The restricted trade agreement model allows for policies such as full employment to be enacted. We must make an increasing proportion of what we consume or an employment imbalance will be permanent such as we have now. The primary amd service sectors have demonstrated that they can not soak up the unemployed caused by ‘economic restructuring aka FTA’s’. There’s a lot of products here (almost everything in fact) that NZ used to produce that now comes from China and various other places.
       Labour’s value added wood policy for example, is destined to be a flop because once processed, the completed product then has to compete on price both in the domestic market and globally with countries that produce the same or similar product such as China which can always compete favourably on cost of labour, as well as fixed currency advantages. A national procurement policy that favours the local supplier could however mitigate this to a large extent if implemented systemically.
       Tariff reductions are always ambiguous as far as FTA’s are concerned.
       • Draco T Bastard 7.2.2.1

         1 April 2014 at 8:47 pm

         The primary amd service sectors have demonstrated that they can not soak up the unemployed caused by ‘economic restructuring aka FTA’s’.

         They’re not supposed to. In the present economic paradigm unemployment is purposefully kept high (Greater than 6%) so as to keep wages down. That’s what john Key meant when he said he wanted lower wages. National must have been over the moon about coming in to power with the GFC as they could lower employment and wages while blaming it on Labour and the GFC.
         • lprent 7.2.2.1.1

           1 April 2014 at 9:17 pm

           That was frigging annoying. Labour had been pushing a long-overdue economic diversification after they got elected in 1999. It’d been pretty successful by the mid-noughties and was doing a pretty credible job of soaking up unemployment in the provincial and main centres.

           Then the dumbarse economic nitwits known as National threw all of the diversification support efforts away and started using the remaining money to support their cronies mostly in the farming economy and we stopped getting new companies forming. The parts of our economy that were vulnerable shed employees and started shutting down. And as you say, unemployment went up and is still persistently rising at a household level.

           I don’t know know of any new tech companies formed since 2009 so the basic manufacturing export growth is just running on what Labour started without replacements as companies move closer to their markets.

           Dairy provides fuckall employment and nothing much else is going to provide jobs at anything like even our existing population growth…

           Welcome to the economic stupidity that characterises National governments.

           I guess we just have to turf the useless munters..
       • lprent 7.2.2.2

         1 April 2014 at 9:21 pm

         Both major left parties have statements and even policies about local procurement. Labour hasn’t been particularly noticeable at doing it.

         In almost every FTA I’ve looked at for NZ, there really isn’t anything to stop that as a general policy. It is certainly the policy on the other side in countries we have signed FTA with.

         The thing you realise after being in manufacturing and even services businesses here is that that 4 and bit million people is a market that simply isn’t worth chasing for anything. It is too small to build a business on and will always get the overflow from larger economies offshore with economies of scale. The only things that work well inside the market are things that are hard to transport and those that are localised or cater to local tastes. Increasingly even those are owned an run from offshore.

         So all manufacturing and increasingly most services go directly offshore to vertical segment markets. That way you can leverage high levels of knowledge and skills in a small market segment directly to a very small but large number of customers in an international market. That provides employment here directly and indirectly as amassive multiplier. Basically we are increasingly exporting smarts from people that can’t see a point on moving from NZ if they have the net to work over.

         I’ve been doing that since 1996 in my code segments. I didn’t move from NZ in 1991 purely because I saw the net arriving.
         • thechangeling 7.2.2.2.1

           1 April 2014 at 10:55 pm

           So what the hell are 150,000+ unemployed and 350,000+ under-employed people supposed to do with their lives while a few ‘high tech,’ ‘smart,’ ‘innovative’ and ‘niche’ manufacturing businesses make plenty of dosh and splash out on products imported into New Zealand that could of been made here and employed addtional New Zealanders?
           Looking after the local labour market should come first when it comes to production and consumption paradigms, after which the surplus production can be offloaded offshore where there’s sufficient demand.
           • lprent 7.2.2.2.1.1

             3 April 2014 at 7:42 am

             sigh Those people in tech industries live and buy goods and services locally. That creates local employment providing those goods and services. This is exactly the same as has happened with exports from farming and forestry for the last hundred years or so. What we need to do is to widen the base of the competitive export industries that allow us as a economy to pay for our imports. We are too small an economy to try to close off an internal economy because we will always require imports.

             The problem with NZ is that our internal economy is too small to be efficient for producing many goods, so like all smaller economies we import them from economies that do have the economies of scale. The problem is that we have to pay for them, so we export goods and services to pay for them.

             The problem is that there is an issue with that in providing the gateway for wealth from exports to filter through to the rest of the economy. Both farming and forestry and for that matter most resource extraction industries here and overseas are increasingly automated. So the ‘gateway’ for that wealth dispersal are increasingly constrained.

             For instance, the entire dairy and dairy processing industry (our single largest export industry) directly employs something like 60k people out of an economy of close to 3 million people. This is roughly the same as the tech industry directly employs, but for about a tenth of the export value.

             So rather than the wealth from dairy exports going into wages and thereby out into the local economy as purchases, it has been increasingly being tied up paying for capital on the speculative bubble of property. Effectively it increasingly never really hits the local economy, but instead leaks out of the country in the form of interest payments. (I’m over simplifying like hell – but that is the nett effect over time).

             Whereas the wealth for IP based industries is far more expressed as wages, which then largely gets spent in the local economy and disperses in creating and maintaining local jobs.

             Sure we could put up some kind of tariff barriers to produce local industries that are inherently inefficient and charge that cost through to everyone in the country. We had that back in the late 70’s and 80’s when I first started working.

             However it effectively means that all of our export industries also carry that cost as well and therefore become relatively inefficient in a world market. That is exactly what happened in the 1980s. Our local protected industries couldn ‘t export worth a damn. They just overcharged local purchasers and killed the local cost structures. It meant that the corporate I worked for back then had a larger office of lobbyists in Wellington trying to keep tariff barriers than its entire head office. And we didn’t export anything because our production prices were such that we weren’t and never could be competitive in the world economy.

             Eventually the local costs override the export income, and the country goes into a spiral of debt when its external import costs (like oil) rise. That was why the tariff barriers were dropped decades late in the 1980s, and it is why they should stay dropped. It is a bad idea to try to create a artificial economy to charge exporters to run the economy while ensuring that their ability to export gets screwed by the

             Basically we aren’t the US or Europe or China where the economies are big enough to make the internal economy many times larger than the export/import trade, and therefore the internal economies of scale for local production work.

             What we need to encourage is alternative export industries that preferably directly employ more people than automated farming, and who therefore provide much higher levels of indirect employment.
             • RedBaronCV …

               3 April 2014 at 10:15 am

               The trouble is we are also offshoring services for some of which we are charged a higher price than those doing the same thing locally. Rationally those services should be provided onshore but some one’s offshore ego trip takes precedence.

               The second thing about offshoring services is, while it may be cheaper for the provider, the customer wears an increased cost. Call centres used to be an epic example of this, one could spend an entire work afternoon spelling Opotiki or similar and trying to extract information or documents from someone somewhere who didn’t have a clue what you were actually talking about. A local would have sorted it in 5.

               Lastly part of the cheaper price is that we are taking goods made with lower health and safety standards – child labour anyone? Some tax/tariff reinstatement might not be a bad idea.
               It’s a subject on which we could take lessons fom Australia. We need to stop being so “nice” and giving away our goods and productivity to off shore multinationals.
               It’ss probabaly no coincidence that software exports are growing. Where there are peopel involved not goods they can’t be offshored, bought and sold in the same way.
               • lprent …

                 3 April 2014 at 12:27 pm

                 The trouble is we are also offshoring services for some of which we are charged a higher price than those doing the same thing locally.

                 Oh I’d entirely agree. This site’s active servers for instance are entirely offshore these days.

                 I’ve had it local and I’ve had it offshore.

                 Anytime it is local, the site is always susceptible to vexatious actions. Local hosting firms tend to want to take the site down or offending content removed if a lawyer makes a threat against them – regardless of if it is a valid threat or not. Running it from offshore makes the cost of being vexatious a lot higher then merely getting a lawyer mate to send a letter to a hosting company.

                 Not to mention what the bloody stupid net laws that are steadily coming into play here (there are some supremely dfat anti-bullying laws going through at present for instance) where the presumption of guilt on complaint appears to be the basis of any operation. They also appear to want to bypass the system operators and go directly to the hosting companies.

                 Needless to say, I’ve set the system so that ANY action must go through me or possibly Mike. People would have to convince one of the other of us that there is an actual problem – which seldom is the case.

                 But also I can get flexible servers with a lot of functionality at a reasonable price offshore that I simply can’t get here. LIterally the number of servers running this site drops dramatically overnight (usually to 3) and increases during the day (so far the peak has been about 12). Basically that means that we’re not paying for capacity we don’t need AND we have the CPU power when we need it. There are a lot of other services in a large scale operation that make this possible. It is exactly the same reason why wordpress.com and blogger.com have the majority of smaller blog sites. Economies of scale by serving a worldwide system.

                 But then of course there are the local system economic inanities that push you offshore as you site scales up. For instance the cost of overseas traffic. Now maybe 10% of our audience are offshore. Mostly overseas kiwis. But if we were running servers here, then the Southern Cross would mean that we’d be paying at least twice our current costs mostly servicing robots.

                 We’re pumping about 300GB-700GB out per month of non-static data (the static data caches on the client side and is about an additional 100GB per month). The human readers are almost entirely in NZ. The robots are almost entirely offshore and account for the increase – mostly heading into xmas. But we pay for all of that at a pretty low costs at a offshore site. The traffic is a minor proportion of our costs.

                 But inside NZ our cost structure is dominated by the costs of providing even a relatively small amount of data to the robots from offshore. That is because everything that goes from OUR servers via the Southern Cross cables and they cost like it was gold. Data internal to the NZ network is essentially free.

                 By siting offshore we don’t have to pay for that indeterminate amount of very expensive offshore traffic.

                 I can’t think of a good reason to site in-country because of those two reasons.

                 But what is abnormal about our situation compared to a tech company is that we have no paid employees doing development, sales, and distribution and our cost structure is dominated by our server costs.

                 An actual exporting tech company like the one I work for has server costs that are miniscule compared to wages, and almost all support is done via email. We also spend quite a lot of development effort making sure that we don’t get support calls or emails (something that I find is notably lacking amongst any company that offshores its call support)..
   • Wayne 7.3

     2 April 2014 at 5:09 pm

     If you want to vote for a party against free trade, you have to vote Green or Mana. After all Labour pioneered the China FTA (and a good thing too).

     Anyway you already know this.

     By the way, it does seem that The Standard has become very de-spirited over the last few weeks. The only thing that has really excited commenters was Kim Dotcom.

     Sign of the election result?
     • Tautoko Viper 7.3.1

       2 April 2014 at 5:37 pm

       No way, Wayne.
     • One Anonymous Bloke 7.3.2

       2 April 2014 at 5:50 pm

       I like your spirit Dr. Mapp. You’ve been awful quiet about corruption Collins, especially the way her personal corruption lends credence to Simon Lusk’s evidence that the National Party is nothing but a vehicle but the personal enrichment of its MPs and donors.

       Plenty of spirit in the left old boy, but I fear your party has been taken over by toadies and shills.
     • lprent 7.3.3

       3 April 2014 at 8:23 am

       By the way, it does seem that The Standard has become very de-spirited over the last few weeks. The only thing that has really excited commenters was Kim Dotcom.

       Don’t know about anyone else. But I’ve been far too busy at work to spend much time hanging out or writing here. Also haven’t had time to chase people up to write on the site (especially guest posts) which is why we have been having some variation in the numbers of daily posts. However than is also part of the annual pattern which sinks markedly on the onset of the reduced daylight hours every year.

       Basically we have a drop over xmas and a slow increase up to March/April, a drop through the dark months, and then a rise through August to the end of the year. It gets extreme towards the second half of general election years. We get major growth increases in election year which then persists and slightly grows in off-election years.

       Ummm try this public summary …
       http://statcounter.com/p6805620/summary/?guest=1

       Set to Monthly Or Quarterly, All Data, Area Graph. Look mostly at the Unique visits to see the trend. The pageviews peaks in May 2011, March 2012, August 2012-November 2012 were exaggerated by issues from facebook.

       The statcounter data set is a bit too small to see pronounced repeating election year growth pattern. I can see that in wordpress stats and google analytics

       
       • Ad 7.3.3.1

         3 April 2014 at 8:31 am

         Same. Flooded with stabilising next Financial’s budgets.
         Back engaging properly after Easter.
         • Colonial Viper 7.3.3.1.1

           3 April 2014 at 8:37 am

           Yep, have work and pet projects going on stream, it’s a busy time of year.
           • karol 7.3.3.1.1.1

             3 April 2014 at 8:41 am

             Yep.
8. Tracey 8

   1 April 2014 at 4:00 pm

   wait til the chines premier comes here if key is in power. i suspectt key will make shipley look like a softie in this regard
9. vto 9

   1 April 2014 at 4:16 pm

   why didn’t someone just pick the fence up at one end and swing it out of the way?
   • framu 9.1

     1 April 2014 at 4:28 pm

     exactly – who actually own the grounds around parliament?

     i would like to think its public land but you never know
     • McFlock 9.1.1

       1 April 2014 at 5:09 pm

       public, but it’s the Speaker who acts as the delegated property supervisor, for want of a better term.
   • s y d 9.2

     1 April 2014 at 4:32 pm

     Why? No one dared to step out of line. Shall we? Is it allowed? What did the security guy say? Oh that’s terrible. We always get to go to the top step. They should do something….

     Like Karol says don’t discount the communication factor of protest. I’ve always felt the best protests annoy people, incovenience them, jolt them out of the stupor, make them angry, spitting and venomous. They allow passers-by to see, feel, experience the hate and bile of the reaction against you. It’s amazing how such a simple thing can lift the edge of the carpet.

     However our local TPPA march went on the footpath….as if a random mob of shoppers had got loose. I know Mr Bragg advised against being cynical but I’m with Bill above.
10. Tautoko Viper 10

    1 April 2014 at 5:02 pm

    The green fencing of Parliament grounds brought to mind the Tony Robinson series in which enclosure, including Parliamentary enclosure, reduced the common land available to the people. A similar stripping of publicly owned land (and services) is taking place here.
    Landcorp CEO now saying that Land management and not ownership is its core business ( because of Treasury review no doubt). http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/rural/238654/landcorp-moving-more-into-farm-management

    Public Schools and Hospitals are under threat as this article shows the Treasury pushing the same thinking.
    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11226941
    We are being too nice about respecting green fences while being mocked by politicians who are stealing our assets.
11. Colonial Viper 11

    1 April 2014 at 5:09 pm

    Where is the spirit of defiance and dissent amongst the 99%. Peaceful civil resistance may sometimes have to go further than politely observing stay off the grass signs.

    In the US they have effectively closed off all public spaces in big cities to being available for significant protest actions. An example is setting a closing time for a park or square at 9pm or 10pm which is only ever enforced if a protest is occurring.

    Significant protests and strikes of any duration require significant logistical support and logistical bases. In the old days union halls and the like would fulfill this role.

    Today many of these things are no longer available.
12. weka 12

    1 April 2014 at 5:29 pm

    Thanks for writing this guest poster. These meta issues are the really crucial ones. We can’t win the others without sorting these ones out.
13. freedom 13

    1 April 2014 at 7:28 pm

    The post is a fair summation of the wider issue, but things were not completely passive and options were considered.

    It is no revelation to anyone with real world experience of organizing actions at Parliament that any openly aggressive actions during a protest potentially harm the conditions laid down for further protest action at Parliament. This is always (quietly) made clear during ‘negotiations’ for protest actions at Parliament. Remember there were maybe three hundred people gathered. Not a huge crowd, and it was not a highly co-ordinated group, but they were there to listen, and stand together. That still counts for something in this world. Maybe more so now than ever.

    Upon arrival at the forecourt steps, the organising team were busy getting the P.A. sorted as it had been interfered with in some manner since the earlier event.

    Whilst that was being sorted, myself and one of the organisers began attaching the main banners to the barrier fence. We did seriously consider getting the crowd to assist in lifting the fence up to the forecourt but a quick appraisal of the situation means we rejected the idea without much debate. The crowd’s own behaviour showed it really was not much of an issue.

    “I attempted to convince a few of the people I recognised at the march to get together and move the fence. However, I was told we “didn’t have enough people” – I did hear a few people voicing similar ideas but don’t recall many stepping forward. When looked at objectively, the situational reality dictated not to respond to the obvious manipulation of the barrier fence with too much aggression. The crowd was not “corralled” by the fence, it was a single line, there were no sides to the barrier fence.

    If we had wanted, the entire rally could just as easily have walked around the fence up onto the forecourt. This is probably what we should have done. Everyone sitting on the forecourt steps with their back to parliament listening to the speakers down on the lawn. A lost opportunity, maybe. A plan to consider for next time, definitely. The obviousness of the deliberate placement of the fence at the base of the forecourt steps was more an admission by the Government that petty is the preferred play.

    There were one or two marchers who were considering pulling the fence away. They gave the barrier an enthusiastically symbolic rattling whilst shouting some pretty direct vitriol at the government. Not sure who he was, but there was one young guy who would give Maynard James Keenan a run for his money in a shouting loudly competition.

    Things quickly calmed down and I believe this was the right reaction to the situation. Positioning the fence below the forecourt steps forced a quick decision upon arrival at Parliament, and it was very much a group think decision. If the crowd had been bigger then I believe we would have moved the fence for the symbolic nature alone, but the word from the crowd made it clear the speeches were more important than where they were delivered from.

    That is not apologizing for any apparent lack of anger expressed at the event’s manipulation, I am simply hoping to clarify something about the situational reality.

    For the record: The ‘little green fence’, was a chain of steel barrier sections padlocked together.
    It is in reality an unwieldy heavy and dangerous object. It had been formed and situated so the length of its entirety extended well beyond the stairs’ 20m width and moving its dozen or so padlocked sections would have been a difficult job, even with a well-rehearsed team. Any action to re-locate the barriers would have been time consuming, not likely to have had any real benefit and potentially come at a very real cost to future actions. There were also risks of having the situation become a farce rather than an act of resistance.

    All in all I think the best was made of a crappy situation.

    I would like to add how the main gates of Parliament were locked as well, which now seems to be normal operating procedure facing protest actions entering the grounds of Parliament. This fragments the arrival of a march into Parliament grounds and again is an action best described as petty.
    • weka 13.1

      1 April 2014 at 8:50 pm

      That’s interesting freedom, and adds to the picture. I’m unclear why so much focus on moving the fence though. Surely the issue isn’t the position of the fence but where the protest gets to be. Jumping the fence, or walking around it seem entirely reasonable.
14. bad12 14

    1 April 2014 at 8:26 pm

    That’s progress for you tho, the last time i seen ‘the fence’ on the Parliaments forecourt it was the steel grey of its manufacture,(Parliamentary green now i must hope???),

    Given a ‘Hot issue’ akin to the anti-apartheid protests,(so long ago i glaringly remember them to this day), i am sure that ‘the fence’ would have not remained as an impediment and quite possibly would have been put to good use as a tool,

    It was a question asked by many of us after the head-bashing meted out by the forces of the State on young girls and grandmothers WHY did those who were our leaders on that night march us away from the Parliament where up on the balcony National Government Ministers watched on with what i assume to be amusement, if not glee,

    Never really answered, and pointless to speculate upon,(although i have a theory), nothing much after that was allowed to become a barrier to anyone’s right to protest from barbed wire to the two meter plus gates of Rugby League Park a means was simply found to remove such obstacles,

    i do tho still believe that for all the energy spent, for all the blood spilled, a far greater effect would have been had on the ‘Tour’ if every committed anti-tour protester had of made their way to Wellington and either occupied the grounds of the Parliament for the more faint of heart,or, for those more robust an actual occupation of the Parliament…
    • BM 14.1

      1 April 2014 at 8:29 pm

      You would have been arrested or shot.
      • bad12 14.1.1

        1 April 2014 at 8:37 pm

        i have been arrested,(to times to count), and shot at,(three times), in my short span upon this Earth, so BM what’s new???…
        • BM 14.1.1.1

          1 April 2014 at 8:44 pm

          Could be the reason why the others weren’t so enthusiastic, could have been different though if a hardened bad ass such as yourself was leading the charge and showing the way.
          • bad12 14.1.1.1.1

            1 April 2014 at 9:16 pm

            BM, what exactly are you raving about,could the reason for your latest exhibition be that your drunk again…
      • One Anonymous Bloke 14.1.2

        2 April 2014 at 6:42 pm

        Imagine the scene: Bad12 getting arrested and shot, and BM witnessing the murder, proudly wearing his uniform, but simultaneously worried about when his ability to read and write would mark him as a dangerous subversive.
15. Glenn Cassidy 15

    1 April 2014 at 9:52 pm

    Or they could have walked around them very easily… I think the pressure was actually more malignant than a few security officers..afterall there were a large number of foreign ministers inside at the time being smooched and slobbered over by Hekia.
    Also, the Fijian delegation were just beaming from ear to ear at the unbelievable sight of protesters on parliament grounds full stop… pick your battles.

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