Abridgement or Censorship? You decide.
On 23 November, I wrote this letter to the Dominion Post”
‘Every few years, we hear the tragic tale of four or five teenagers killed in a car crash. If one of them has a licence, it will be a Learner grade, at best. A few months later we read about the Coroner explaining to bereft parents, how the adolescent brain isn’t capable of making good decisions – especially under peer pressure. ‘Alcohol may have been a factor’ is a normal subtext to the Coroner’s remarks. How many judges on the Supreme Court, which told us voting age restrictions were discriminatory, have ever sat as Coroner in one of these devastating episodes?
The Green Bill to lower the voting age to sixteen, is nothing less than voter-trafficking. Not people across a state border to get an electoral advantage like Blair and now Biden, but similar. The Green’s tactic is cynical and confirms why they field photogenic young List candidates. It’s against the possibility that one day the voters will come. Our print media seem incapable of publishing anything that even remotely touches on the Green Party, without featuring Chloe Swarbrick at her winsome best. Teenagers automatically gravitate to the ‘glamour factor’.
I will not vote for any party that is prepared to support this monstrosity’.
It was published the next morning, but with the bolded section deleted and a substitution made. The printed version is as follows with the substitution in bold.
‘Every few years, we hear the tragic tale of four or five teenagers killed in a car crash. If one of them has a licence, it will be a Learner grade, at best. A few months later we read about the Coroner explaining to bereft parents, how the adolescent brain isn’t capable of making good decisions – especially under peer pressure. ‘Alcohol may have been a factor’ is a normal subtext to the Coroner’s remarks. How many judges on the Supreme Court, which told us voting age restrictions were discriminatory, have ever sat as Coroner in one of these devastating episodes?
The Electoral Strengthening Democracy Bill sponsored by Green MP Golriz Gharaman to lower the voting age to 16 is nothing less than voter trafficking.
I will not vote for any party that is prepared to support this monstrosity (abridged)’.
You will note the ‘abridged’ note at the end of the published version.
To my mind abridging a text is a process whereby the length is reduced, possibly by summarising, or by inserting a neutral precis. What the Dominion Post letters editor has done, is insert her/his own agenda into the text and dismissed any criticism of the paper’s editorial approach towards the Greens and Chloe Swarbrick in particular.
Referring to the Green’s Bill is unnecessary as the furore around the voting age and the Supreme Court ruling, is common knowledge, not to mention considerable disquiet about the Court overtly involving itself in the Parliamentary Process. Will the Bill be referred to the Select Committee with the rider: ‘The Court approves of this measure?’
Twitter/Trump
Does the print media not get the huge message in recent events around President and Twitter? Elon Musk, foolishly in my view, put the question of Trump’s return to the Twitter platform to a vote of users and he effectively said: ‘Free speech is not and absolute right, but subject to the opinion of those consulted’.
Trump’s response was ‘Meh! I’ve got alternatives’. So have I and that is exactly why you are reading this piece on ‘The Rob Report’.