This father of three young girls was shot during a botched robbery of his bottle store in Manurewa.

This was not a planned, premeditated crime. It was a hapless, pathetic attempt to get booze and cash.

There is argument about the police response and the time taken before clearance was given for an ambulance to tend to Singh but while issues like this are important, they are dwarfed by the bigger picture.

For a long time now, we have been on a relentless downward spiral of social breakdown.

More than any other developed country we are undergoing nothing less than the transformation of New Zealand into a mini-America, a place where the rewards are great for the few while hopelessness grows for the many.

We tend to think other countries are on the same path but we are well ahead on the road to riches and desperation.

The gap between rich and poor has grown more quickly here than in any developed country over the past 20 years. We have the least regulated economy in the developed world but while we have low unemployment, this merely masks the degree of poverty and alienation associated with the working poor who inhabit our low-income communities.

But still we feign shock and outrage when the social consequences of economic policy repeatedly smack us in the face.

We tend to respond in much the same way as the United States. We want the Government to harden up on crime. Our major political parties, and most of the minor parties, compete to see who can be the toughest on lawbreakers. More and more extreme measures are proposed and then adopted into policy because the greatest political dread is to be seen as soft on crime. The mindless cry of the many is for tougher parole, more prisons and harsher sentences.

So while we worry about underfunded schools, long hospital waiting lists and poor public transport, we never question the amounts spent on the bottomless, dead-end pits which are our prisons. Already in the developed world we rank second only to the US in the proportion of our population in jail. We will surely overtake them if we try just a little bit harder.

The same people who want more in prison also applaud the arming of the police with pepper spray, guns, rifles and Tasers, and are ready to extend police powers at the drop of a hat. Civil liberties are for pansies, they say.

Lobby groups, well funded by the corporate sector, advocate for harsher sentences. Until, of course, someone is charged with the murder of a tagger when suddenly these same people spring to the defence of the man charged and claim the murdered tagger got what he deserved.

All this serves to divert attention from the reasons for rising crime. We need to accept that the increased crime we face goes hand in hand with extreme free-market economic policies.

It’s no coincidence that New Zealand’s economic policies more closely resemble the US market model than other developed countries which have not suffered social breakdown to the extent New Zealand has. The simple truth is there is a strong correlation between the degree of free-market economic policies and the degree of social breakdown. The US and New Zealand have big doses of each. Countries such as Australia have more moderate amounts of each and so it goes through to Scandinavian countries which have much more modest amounts of both.

So while there’s never any excuse for vicious criminal activity, neither is there any excuse for us not to recognise this relationship.

The unregulated free market has seen our low-income communities flooded with pokie machines, loan sharks, bottle stores and the garish glare of fast-food outlets. Community attempts to control these have been ignored by political parties which have been happy for this unregulated market activity to flourish on the backs of poor families and poor communities. Our leafy suburbs are not afflicted by these parasitical services.

Labour is unlikely to form the next government and future historians will point to its failure to deliver policies to build dignity and respect for families and communities. Just this year, Labour reduced business tax by 9.1 per cent while the working poor, facing big increases in the cost of living, will receive around 3%. Beneficiaries have received nothing and the 180,000 New Zealand children living in poverty is the result.

Some applaud New Zealand’s rush to become a US lookalike. The rest of us should ponder the cost.

It says a lot for New Zealand’s commitment to helping solve the world food crisis that we sent Agriculture Minister Jim Anderton with a $7 million cheque to the food crisis summit in Rome last week.

In doing so, New Zealand made only a token gesture to address the enormous problem of one billion people going to bed hungry every day. More worryingly, we are telling the world that we believe the underlying problem is agricultural subsidies and tariffs.

The Government reasons that if all countries dropped agricultural protections then the most efficient food producers would survive and produce more food at a lower price.

New Zealand will benefit because we will have better access to overseas markets for our meat and dairy products. Anderton is right to point to agricultural subsidies in Europe and the United States as part of the problem because they are based on production _ the more production the greater the subsidy.

The lion’s share of these subsidies (as much as 90 per cent in some cases) goes to agricultural businesses rather than small farmers producing for local markets. The outcome is huge quantities of subsidised food from Europe and the US being dumped onto markets in developing countries to undercut and destroy local food production.

There is no point giving seeds to farmers in developing countries, as suggested at the Rome gathering, when their efforts will be undercut by subsidised imports from corporate farm owners in Europe and the US.

If Europe and the US regeared their subsidies so they were provided only for small farmers producing for local markets there would be benefits all around. Rural communities, lifestyles and environments would be protected while agribusinesses would not be able to undercut and destroy food production in developing countries.

New Zealand should take the same approach to agricultural production for our local market. Rather than paying inflated world prices we would have the cheapest dairy and meat products in the world. And why not?

But it is tariffs which are New Zealand’s main target and here Anderton comes unstuck. By arguing for their removal, Anderton is trying to screw the scrum in our favour. It’s a one-eyed, opportunistic view of a human catastrophe delivered in a self-righteously smug manner.

The developing countries which are faring best in the current crisis are those who have protected and nurtured their local food production with tariffs to keep imported food in the background.

Uganda is a good example. Tariffs on imported rice have stimulated local rice production by 2.5 times since 2004, so that local rice prices are similar to what they were a year ago while prices elsewhere have more than doubled.

Most people in developing countries typically spend up to 80% of their income on food, so they are much more vulnerable to price increases than the rest of humanity. So when food prices are set in Anderton’s global free market the 3.5 million children who die from malnutrition each year can’t afford the prices paid by businesses wanting grain for animal feed or biofuel production.

Like Anderton, our Minister of Trade, Phil Goff, also saw the Rome gathering as an opportunity to push a partisan policy on behalf of Fonterra. Fresh from an Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation meeting in Peru, Goff said importantly that the food crisis is putting pressure on governments to move ahead with free-trade discussions in the so-called Doha round of World Trade Organisation talks.

This translates as extending the very policies which have deepened the food crisis in the first place. Capitalist growth based on corporate agriculture will never be the answer to food security for the world’s poor.

The solutions will always be around policies which stimulate local food production. These include tariffs on imported food in developing countries, assistance to small farmers producing for local consumption and abandoning subsidies for exported food from the US, Europe and Asia.

Also trying to divert attention from the real problems is the US. Some 100 million tons of US grain, subsidised to the tune of $7 billion, will be diverted from food to biofuel production this year. Trying to get off the hook the US argues that biofuels are responsible for just 3% of the rise in grain prices, but more credible estimates put the figure at 30%.

Let’s put starving kids ahead of SUV drivers suffering climate guilt and abandon this eco-myth.

In her book Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein describes how the corporate world and their political allies use crises to extend their control of economic resources and economic policies for their own benefit.

It’s a disgrace to see Anderton and Goff using the suffering of the world’s poorest citizens to do the same thing.

Some have suggested Crown prosecutors are to blame because they decided to proceed with murder trials while others have suggested the police botched the investigations by building cases against the accused before gathering all the relevant evidence. There may well be some truth in this with closed minds delivering self-fulfilling prophecies.

Setting up a public prosecutions office independent of the police as other countries have has been suggested. This would help and deserves serious consideration. However it seems each case was largely based on circumstantial evidence and the prosecution failure rate in such cases will always be higher.

Of more concern should be the announcement 10 days ago of the police intention to use the Bushmaster rifle as their preferred weapon (in place of the Glock pistol) in response to possible armed situations, golf clubs and hammers included. Previously this weapon was available to the Armed Offenders Squad but now all frontline police are to be trained to use these high-powered semi-automatic weapons. 

This decision has had no independent, democratic oversight. There has been no public discussion nor obvious political involvement. No submissions were requested, no other opinions sought. It was an in-house decision.

The timing of the announcement tells the same story. It was dropped into the dead-news time of 2.30pm on a Friday afternoon to avoid the glare of the public spotlight. The release itself was made to look innocuous with the focus on training needed to implement the decision. The police didn’t want media scrutiny. Their focus was to manage public perception rather than encourage public input or public debate on a sensitive topic.

However decisions to escalate the arming of the police are decisions in which we all have a big stake. They are not simply operational decisions for the police alone. They go to the very heart of the relationship between the police and the community and yet we are politely being told to butt out by the top brass.

With more powerful weapons more readily available they inevitably come to be used as the first response rather than as a later response. We have seen this with the police use of pepper-spray where the original guidelines have gone out the window and it is now used liberally by front line police.

Safeguarding the police and community is best served by careful, independent oversight of decisions about the arms police carry and wide public discussion.

Many overseas police forces are a law unto themselves and there are plenty of danger signs our police force feels similarly. For example as well as the latest announcement the decision to trial taser stun guns was made by the police who then announced they would consult with the community – yeah right!

Anti-democratic tendencies such as these are never far from the surface in policing. The lack of respect for democratic protest has been well documented in cases such as the police abuse of the rights of demonstrators protesting against Chinese President Jiang Zemin in 1999.

Similarly their dramatic overreaction in the so-called anti-terror raids last October should give us all pause for thought.

Meanwhile Labour and National politicians work hard to outdo each other in ever more extreme policies to curb crime.

Labour has a Criminal Proceeds Recovery Bill before parliament which would allow police to seize property allegedly from the proceeds of crime. They won’t require proof, just probabilities. Government Minister Phil Goff has said the new law “targets people who have not been convicted because the police have not been able to reach the standard of proof in a criminal court”. This should be a huge concern to us all. It extends police power to work outside the court system and would allow them to impose their own sentence on top of a court imposed punishment on the basis of suspicion alone.

National Party leader John Key spoke recently to the misnamed Sensible Sentencing Trust and proposed another round of even more extreme policies to widen police powers which include allowing surveillance without warrants and the forcible taking of DNA samples from people charged with offences punishable by imprisonment. Almost any offence in other words.

Given their recent track record the police are lucky they won’t have to prove anything to use these proposed new powers but we should all be concerned at any extension to unfettered state power over our lives.

The joke repertoire should be expanded as a result but unfortunately reports of his work were largely lost in last week’s pre-budget media fog. This is a pity because his research and conclusions should be widely read and discussed, not because they are enlightening but because of the stupid, irresponsible assumptions he uses in his analysis.

Greg Clydesdale’s research uses a wide range of undisputed government data to claim Pacific Island migrants are creating an underclass and a drain on the New Zealand economy. He says they have poor education, poor health and higher unemployment than any other group. He went on to say Pacific people had “significant and enduring under-achievement” and that migration from the Pacific is making the problem worse.

Not content to stop there he said they are less productive and less likely to contribute to economic growth. They are less likely to start businesses and have lower rates of self-employment. They are over-represented in crime statistics and have higher rates of convictions and prosecutions. They are also more likely to be victims of violent crime and more likely to need Government assistance for housing and income.

He reached the nadir of his presentation saying that for him “of particular concern is the large Polynesian subculture whose educational achievements mean they will contribute very poorly in this regard and because of high fertility and current immigration levels, New Zealand will have a significant population that can contribute little to economic growth.”

It was a remarkable broadside against the Pacific community in New Zealand, delivered without qualification or reservation.

I have no doubt his figures are correct. He presumably knows how to use a calculator but at this level it tells us nothing new. We are all aware the majority of Pacific families are in the lowest socio economic groups in New Zealand and therefore share the negative statistics of all low-income communities. The important thing is that Pacific people are no different in this regard from other families on low incomes be they Pakeha, Maori, Asian or Pacific. 

This raises the more important question of why Pacific people are over-represented in low-income communities. The answers here are more complex and this is where Clydesdale could have made a useful contribution to public discussion. Instead he has confused issues of class and ethnic background. Armed with a pile of statistics, his trusty calculator and a big dose of lazy stupidity he lambasted an entire ethnic group. In the process he overlooked several elephants in the room.

A key assumption he makes is that a person’s contribution to the community can be judged by their income. This is particularly nauseating. The work done by those on or close to the minimum wage is always undervalued. Workers in cleaning, security and general labouring make as great a contribution to the community as anyone else and this can’t be measured by the wage they receive. Why would it?

Clydesdale’s insult adds to injury for these low-paid workers who are so often forced to sacrifice family life and social stability to work long, poorly-paid hours just to bring in enough money to keep their families above the breadline.

The natural follow-on is the assumption that well-paid people contribute more to the community than the lower paid. This is an equally stupid notion. Does anyone really believe that a shareholder who has never picked up a mop actually earns the dividend they are paid by the company which employs a cleaner on the minimum wage? Or that the Telecom Chief Executive contributes more to the economy than the technician who services the phone simply because the CEO has a multi-million dollar income?

It turns out Clydesdale is concerned about immigration and population growth. He says New Zealanders need to debate these areas without the fear of being labelled racist. Fair comment but how does his pathetic attempt to create some sort of ethnic hierarchy in economics help this debate? Instead he lazily skimmed the surface of an important issue and arrived at deeply offensive, completely erroneous conclusions. Instead of interviewing his calculator Greg Clydesdale would have done better had he started some vigorous debate about the value of work compared to the value of shareholder bludging.

Universities are charged under the law with the role of being the “critic and conscience” of society. Greg Clydesdale has dramatically failed in this role. He apparently plans to take his research to present at a conference in Brazil in July. He’d do better to stay home and save us the embarrassment with the added benefit of stopping economists becoming the butt of even more jokes.

It’s a celebration of independence, statehood and national identity after a 50-year campaign for a Jewish state.

But for Palestinians it’s known as Al Nakba _ the catastrophe. For them it’s the anniversary of their transition from indigenous people to refugees. They grieve for their lost homeland and lost sovereignty.

More than 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed or abandoned as Israel was born after a campaign of terror waged across Palestine by Jewish paramilitary groups such as the Stern Gang and Irgun.

These terrorists weren’t fringe extremists.

They included many prominent individuals, including two who rose to become prime ministers of Israel: Menachim Begin, who headed the Irgun, and Yitzhak Shamir, who was active in the Stern gang.

Millions of Palestinians were driven from their houses and villages to refugee camps around the Mediterranean and around the world.

They have been refused the right to return to their homes or land.

Even today these Palestinian refugee families have keys their parents or grandparents took with them as they locked their homes and fled for their lives.

In Gaza this week young Palestinians created a 10m mock-up of a key as their potent symbol of loss and dispossession.

The local people living in Palestine before 1948, both Jews and Arabs, were never asked what they thought of a segregated land.

Many Jewish groups vehemently opposed the split, as did the local Arab population.

However Britain, which was the colonial power responsible for Palestine, gave in to the terror campaign which culminated in the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem that killed 91, including 28 British bureaucrats.

The US and UK drove the partition of Palestine through the newly formed United Nations and the scene was set for a 60-year cycle of violence and death.

Arabs who remained behind in the new state have Israeli citizenship which entitles them to a restricted, second-class existence.

They don’t enjoy the same rights to land, marriage or family reunification.

Arab dispossession within Israel continues today, as many are forced to move from neighbourhoods set aside exclusively for Jewish families.

A Jewish person, or someone converting to Judaism, living anywhere in the world, whose family has no connection to the Middle East, is welcomed in Israel and easily gains Israeli citizenship.

An Arab family whose ancestors lived there for thousands of years is denied the same right. Their keys have no currency under Israel’s racially derived laws.

Palestinians have lost 78% of the original Palestine and four million refugees now live on separated, dislocated segments of land on the West Bank of the Jordan River and in the Gaza strip.

Their remaining portions of land are still being carved up for Jewish homes and settlements with the backing of the overwhelming might of the Israeli army.

Israel has become a prosperous, powerful, nuclear-armed country with the unquestioned backing of the US and other countries who see their own global interests tied to a friendly, dependent state in the Middle East.

This has enabled Israel to defy numerous UN resolutions, World Court rulings and international condemnation of its many illegal actions.

Among these are the building of settlements on occupied land, detaining thousands of Palestinians without charge or trial, and of an 8m-high wall which has further annexed sections of Palestinian land. Israel is the new Berlin.

Small wonder neighbouring Arab countries have been in conflict with Israel these past 60 years. Likewise Palestinians continue to struggle for the rights stripped from them.

So what for the next 60 years?

It’s clear to rational observers that the proposal to establish an independent Palestinian state on their broken pieces of land is not possible. No such state could ever be viable.

The Palestinian struggle will continue, but now there is an emphasis on a fight for democratic rights in a secular, unitary state which respects all peoples, races and religions.

It worked for thousands of years before and can do so again.

In 1948 another government came to power with similar ideas of separation, segregation and second- class citizenship.

This was the apartheid government of South Africa, where whites enjoyed full rights but blacks’ rights were restricted to impoverished areas of land called Bantustans, in a similar way to the restrictions of the rights of Palestinians to non-viable enclaves within the West Bank and Gaza strip.

The apartheid regime and its policies were overcome eventually, as must be the policies pursued by Israel.

An international campaign is needed.

New Zealand was once in the forefront of struggles against discrimination. It’s time we were again.

So with food prices rising, there must be a shortage, right? Surely it means more people competing for the same amount of food. This is the conventional view from the market but it’s not true. There is no shortage of food in the world. The problem is the price. The world’s poorest cannot afford to pay for food which is why every night 850 million humans go to bed hungry, with this number rising rapidly.

Last year, the grain harvest worldwide was 2.1 billion tonnes. It was 5 per cent higher than the previous year so with more food surely the price should be falling. But no. Less than half of this bumper harvest is available as food for human need. Most of the rest goes to feeding animals for meat production (760 million tonnes) and providing the growing demand for biofuels (100 million tonnes)

So there is plenty of food but the poor can’t afford it. Hungry kids in developing countries can’t compete with SUV drivers in countries like New Zealand or the appetite for meat in developed countries spurred by the growing middle class in India and China. We are all surely now aware that the grain needed to produce a single tankful of biodiesel for an SUV would feed a family in a developing country for a year.

There have been the predictable calls for genetic engineering to improve food production but just as with the so-called green revolution in the 1960s this is a facade. The food is there but we’ll all die waiting if we leave it to the amorality of the market to sort the problem.

Other calls for countries to open their markets to free trade are just as predictable and just as self-serving and futile. It is the free-market policies demanded of developing countries which go to the very heart of the problem. Pricing food on a world market favours those who can pay more to sustain a higher standard of living with the non-food use of food.

But there are good-news stories amid the gloom and suffering. We are in the middle of Fairtrade fortnight promoted by Trade Aid. It should be an encouragement to all of us to do even the small things we can as individuals to promote a better world in defiance of traditional market forces.

What makes Fairtrade products different is that they are imported from certified producers, usually co-operatives, which ensure a better return direct to the growers. For example, coffee growers in Guatemala and Ethiopia typically receive 10% to 15% more for their products from Fairtrade buyers. In some cases, depending on the world price for coffee, growers have gained up to three times what they otherwise would have received via local markets. Likewise, buying Fairtrade olive oil, dates and almonds from Palestine supports local communities under oppressive occupation.

The benefits go much further. More local schools and medical clinics being built. Sustainable development is taking a big step forward in areas where Fairtrade products are sourced at fairer prices.

These products are now widely available but our supermarket chains are reluctant to stock them. Next time you are in the supermarket look for the Fairtrade logo and ask the staff what fair trade products are stocked. A small dig in the market ribs of those addicted to profit-based economics will help lots of people get a fairer go.

Another good news story is Uganda. Amid the world-food crisis, this country in central Africa, which has had such a bloody, turbulent transition from colonial rule, is largely riding out the food crisis by ignoring years of bad advice. Uganda’s rice output has increased 2 1/2 times since 2004 and is expected to reach up to 180,000 tonnes this year. Amid rising food prices globally, the cost of rice in Uganda is much the same as it was before the food crisis.

The reason is tariffs. Against the neo-liberal advice from the likes of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, tariffs have increased the price of imported rice and dramatically stimulated local food production.

The country is much closer to self-sufficiency and food security and points the way forward for developing countries. There’s an important lesson here for New Zealand, as well.

These are the questions that should have been put to Associate Minister of Social Security and Employment Ruth Dyson last week when the Child Poverty Action Group released its report revealing 180,000 of our children living in poverty.

Instead, the minister simply said the Government had already done a great deal by lifting more than 100,000 children out of poverty through Working For Families but they appreciated more needed to be done. She said she respected the report and its authors and the Government would need time to consider the recommendations. End of story. It was out of the news within 24 hours with no hard questions. The minister got away with just a few comments to assure us the Government was concerned about poverty. And there will be some moves in the Budget but they will amount to nothing more than tinkering at the edges of the issue.

The truth is that Labour has no intention of lifting these children out of poverty because these 180,000 kids are the children of beneficiaries. The Government counts on the lazy prejudices in the community to keep pressure off itself and keep these children in poverty.

It is well understood that for the past eight years Labour has maintained benefits at the grim levels of the benefit cuts of National’s Ruth Richardson in her 1991 mother of all budgets. But beneficiaries and their children miss out at every stage.

The Working For Families package has lifted many families of the working poor out of poverty but the children of beneficiaries get just a few crumbs.

Instead, middle and even high-income families receive a whole lot more for their children.

Putting it bluntly, Labour prefers to give a 10 per cent cut in business tax rates than lift these children out of poverty. Labour prefers to plan tax-cut handouts to benefit working families than lift these children out of poverty. Labour prefers to allow massive repatriation of profits from the likes of Telecom than lift these children out of poverty. Labour prefers to give generous Kiwisaver tax handouts to middle and high-income earners than lift these children out of poverty. And on and on it goes.

Labour has unofficially designated the children of beneficiaries as the undeserving poor. These kids might get an extra half ladle of gruel in the Budget but like Oliver Twist they will get no more.

The same Labour politicians who hammered National Party governments throughout the 1990s as uncaring and uncompassionate are now wearing the same clothes.

The CPAG report packs a lot of punch. It’s a heavyweight challenge to whoever is in power. Its detailed, thorough analysis explodes the usual anecdotal myths about poverty and sheets the responsibility home to the policymakers.

The links between poverty, poor housing, poor health, educational underachievement and general social deprivation are starkly presented in the report.

Paediatrician Dr Innes Asher who spoke at the report launch was irate. She gets angry at seeing children brought to Starship Children’s Hospital with diseases and infections we usually associate with poverty in the Third World. Here in this rich country of ours, kids are as sick as the government policies which keep them ill.

The effects of poverty cycle on through education. The long tail of underachievement in our schools is the long tail of poverty. Despite this, the Ministry of Education focuses on changing teacher attitudes and introducing personalised learning as the solutions to under achievement. Even today, the Minister of Education, Chris Carter, trots out the meaningless mantra that the differences within schools are greater than the differences between schools. He believes poverty is a side issue and it’s important for the Government to believe this myth because any other interpretation would force dramatic changes in policy.

Instead, Labour has made a conscious, deliberate decision to sacrifice the children of beneficiaries in favour of what Don Brash would have called middle New Zealand.

Interestingly, the CPAG report launch was attended by the National Party’s flinty social welfare spokeswoman, Judith Collins, who listened silently through the presentations. It could be that National, in its attempts to brand itself as compassionate and caring, will develop some policies to outflank Labour on the Left. They have done so several times recently on other issues such as their decision to invest heavily in broadband. They could hardly do worse than Labour in supporting the children of beneficiaries.

Ten days ago, the Chinese ship, the An Yue Jiang, was left stranded outside the South African port of Durban after local workers refused to unload its cargo of arms bound for Zimbabwe’s Mugabe regime.

The cargo included 3080 cases comprising three million rounds of ammunition for AK-47 assault rifles and 69 rocket-propelled grenades, as well as mortar bombs and tubes. These are vital supplies for the campaign of state terror being waged by the mad, megalomaniac Mugabe, the Idi Amin of Zimbabwe.

The South African government had approved the arms transfer across its territory to the land-locked regime without a scruple. South Africa’s Defence Secretary January Masilela said it was a normal transaction between two sovereign states (China and Zimbabwe). “We are doing our legal part and we don’t have to interfere.”

The head of South African government communications Themba Maseko said the country could not stop the shipment from getting to its destination as it had to be seen to be “treading very carefully” in its relations with Zimbabwe as it was helping facilitate talks between the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and Mugabe’s Zanu-PF grouping. The same mealy-mouthed comments have been repeated ad nauseum over the years while Zimbabwe’s agony continues.

Compare that with the plain speaking of the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU). Its general secretary, Randall Howard, said: “SATAWU does not agree with the position of the South African government not to intervene with this shipment of weapons. Our members employed at Durban Container Terminal will not unload this cargo and neither will any of our members in the truck-driving sector move this cargo by road.”

He said the ship should return to China. “South Africa cannot be seen to be facilitating the flow of weapons into Zimbabwe at a time when there is a political dispute and a volatile situation between the Zanu-PF and the MDC.” What a fresh breath of principled common sense.

Alongside the workers, the local Anglican bishop Rubin Phillips applied to the Durban High Court to prevent the arms reaching Zimbabwe. The court upheld the application as the required government permit had not yet been issued.

Banned from Durban, the ship first sailed north towards Mozambique and then back south around the cape and headed towards Namibia and Angola. It had numerous options, according to Lloyd’s Marine Intelligence Unit, because there are 32 ports in Africa south of the Equator where its $R9.88 million cargo could be unloaded. However, once the Durban port workers had highlighted the issue it rapidly became a rallying point for groups across Southern Africa deeply frustrated and embarrassed at the lack of action by their government to deal with their tyrant neighbour.

Angola and Mozambique both said the ship was not welcome in their ports and Zambia called on all countries to stop the arms reaching Zimbabwe. At the time of writing, it appeared the ship was returning to China friendless and isolated.

Meanwhile in Zimbabwe, Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party has prevented the country’s Electoral Commission releasing the results of the March 29 presidential election. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change won the majority of parliamentary seats and by all credible accounts also won the presidency. However, Mugabe has forced a recount in 23 constituencies, most of which were won by the MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai.

And while the election result is officially stalled, the violent crackdown against opposition supporters has been reinvigorated.

Zimbabwe church leaders have issued a joint statement calling for international intervention to help end the country’s election crisis. They reported people being tortured, abducted and even murdered in the crackdown. Random and systematic acts of violence against MDC candidates, activists and supporters have resumed. It’s business as usual for Mugabe and his thugs.

This appeal falls on deaf ears in South Africa where blind loyalty is thicker than blood for South African President Thabo Mbeki. His government is wholly complicit in the crime against humanity being perpetrated in Zimbabwe. Just as South Africa’s own population suffers from a ruling ANC, which has become corporate and comfortable, so the suffering people of Zimbabwe find few friends in South Africa’s corridors of power.

What the South African workers did was probably illegal but it was the right and courageous thing to do. As the saying goes when injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. Theirs was a principled act of international solidarity. Let’s give a big cheer for the wharfies in Durban.

It was the first of many great experiences and whenever I come across former students, the things they remember the best are not the hours in the classroom but the experiences they had on tramps and camps. These trips can deeply enrich and extend their world dramatically in just a few days.

Nowadays, teachers must complete detailed risk assessments before any significant outdoor activity but there was no special training for teachers at the time of my first tramp. The fact I’d done the particular tramp before was seen as a bonus rather than a requirement. Common sense was seen as the best guard against tragedy and it remains so today.

Thankfully, I’ve only had one real scare taking students into the bush. I was with a group tramping up to Lake Waikareiti to stay the night before tramping out the next day. We found a lone possum trapper in the hut whose heart must have sunk into his boots when 20 teenagers and assorted adults descended upon his peace and quiet deep in the Urewera bush.

The following morning, we gathered for a final briefing and counting-off before setting off. At the front was a recently arrived Afghani boy who it turned out had not understood the instructions. He didn’t want to be constrained by the slower pace of the group and took off from the front and disappeared along the track. The first rule with an incident like this is to secure the group before dealing with the problem. We did so and the main group waited while myself and a couple of students dropped our packs and set off at pace to catch up with him. We didn’t. After five minutes it was clear he was still well ahead so we returned and got the main group moving again. The next four hours tramping out were possibly the worst of my time teaching. He could easily have missed the track at any number of places and become lost. It was a mixture of relief and anger to see his grinning face at the road end. He was probably more in danger from me than the bush. I could have throttled him.

Back at school, it became another thing to go on the checklist for future camps but despite the best planning and attention to detail there will be times when combinations of circumstances put students in danger in the outdoors. We can minimise the risks but we will never eliminate them. No matter what we learn from last week’s tragedy where six students and a teacher drowned in a flash flood at Tongariro, we need to remember this. But besides more attention to safety these days. there have been changes which are reducing opportunities for the bulk of students to enjoy the outdoors.

There is now a strong tendency for outdoor education to focus on high-energy, high-adrenalin events rather than the outdoor experience in its own right. Students tackle high ropes courses, canoeing, rock climbing, abseiling, canyoning, white water rafting etc. There is a feeling that unless the experience is seen as exciting and adrenalin pumping it won’t appeal to students used to the instant gratification of video-games, cellphones or digital movies.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with these activities but they require specialist staff which pushes up the cost and they are out of reach of many. Needless to say schools are not funded to provide comprehensive outdoor education and at many schools it is an opportunity restricted to a few senior students.

In coming weeks, there will be many questions asked about the Tongariro tragedy which will focus on the skills of the teachers and supervisory staff, the quality of the equipment and the safety procedures. This is fine to ensure we keep outdoor activities as safe as we can but its likely to bypass the wider issue of why most New Zealand teenagers don’t get these opportunities.

There is a lot of talk about the outdoors being a birthright for every New Zealand student. This is true, but we need to rethink the types of outdoor activities and their funding so that all students get the chance to benefit. Outdoor education doesn’t have to imitate a movie. The best outdoor experiences speak for themselves.

My parents grew up in the 1930s depression and neither had the opportunity for tertiary study. However, their generation voted consistently for governments which made tertiary education free for 50 years. They ensured their children would receive the educational opportunities they were denied. Disaster followed in 1984 as political power transferred from the generation of Prime Minister Rob Muldoon to the post-war generation of Dave Lange, Roger Douglas, Helen Clark and Phil Goff. These Labour politicians set about looting the legacy of their parents and denying free tertiary education to their children.

In their excited neo-liberal rush to user pays, they raised tertiary fees. These were small increases at first, but once governments had forward momentum, they were ramped up to the point where students needed to borrow for polytech or university courses.

The student loan scheme was born, and here we are today with half a million New Zealanders $10 billion in debt. This ignominious milestone was passed last week.

Governments claim they cannot afford to fully fund tertiary education because lots more young people study beyond school these days and it would cost the Government too much. The first part is true but the second is not. It is simply a matter of priorities.

New Zealand can easily afford free tertiary education for everyone. The Government has been running budgets of several billion in surpluses for several years now. These alone could pay tertiary fees and a whole lot more besides.

As if to prove it, Labour and National have lined up for a tax-cut showdown in election year. Each is proposing several billion dollars in election bribes masquerading as tax cuts.

Another practical way to pay for free tertiary education would be to renationalise Telecom. The massive profits from this single company alone would have covered the student fees for everyone these past 20 years had it not been sold by the same politicians who brought us student debt. Somehow, it is more important to the Government for wealthy shareholders to share Telecom’s spoils among themselves rather than return them to the community.

Labour says it has done a lot in recent years to ease the burden on students, most notably by removing interest from student loans. However, in practice, it has allowed tertiary fees to rise at well above the rate of inflation – 5 per cent yearly increases are standard.

At Tangaroa College, in Otara, in 2005, we estimated the tertiary fees for our seventh formers leaving for study at $240,000 for their first year. These were students from low-income areas and the very people needed to receive the opportunities my generation’s parents provided for us.

Its a tragedy that the strongest supporters of tertiary fees still hold sway despite most of the public being on the side of students. These are the likes of the Business Roundtable, which has argued for tertiary fees to treble in size as the Government winds back its contribution from about 75% of the cost to just 25%. They suggest tertiary education is no different to buying a car. Just as we have a choice between a Lada and a BMW, we should enjoy the same choice in education.

But like all choices, how much choice you get depends on how much you can pay. For the wealthy, it is a BMW education for a professional career, while for the poor it is a McEducation for a McJob. There is already ample evidence that young people from low-income communities are turning away from higher-quality tertiary education because of the cost.

It is heartening to see the level of disquiet in the community continuing as it has from the outset. This means each political party will pull some new policy from the bag before the election. Labour will probably write off some debt if students remain in New Zealand and work in their first few years after study, while National proposes to give discounts on debt to students who pay the debts off more quickly. Other parties are suggesting writing off debt for those who have skills which are in short supply.

But none of these policies will do the job. It is reassuring that at least the Green Party and the Maori Party recognise the importance of free tertiary education. The boil must be lanced.