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Empowering
Men:
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Sex, Lies &
Feminism by Peter Zohrab
Notes
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1999 Version
CHAPTER ONE
1 Matthias
Matussek (1998):
"The Women Are At Fault" MS. Translated from German by Walter H.
Schneider.
2 In
Wellington, New Zealand, in November 1997.
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
1
At The Correspondence School, Thorndon, Wellington, New Zealand, on
Thursday 12 March 1998. The Facilitator was Hilary Sinclair.
2 Moir,
Anne and Jessel, David (1991): "Brain Sex: The Real Difference between
Men and Women" New York:Delta.
" ... Dr Meryl McKay is a Senior Psychologist with the Department
of Justice Psychological Services Division (Palmerston North). The
following article gives an overview of her PhD thesis which examined
what offenders see as the causes of their own offending, and also
discusses practical applications for providing treatment programmes
for offenders....
Dr McKay interviewed 200 offenders in prison -- 50 sex offenders
against children, 50 rapists, 50 violent offenders, and 50 offenders
against property. The offenders were all being assessed by her as
part of her usual clinical work and were given the option of also
being involved in the study....
Rapists reported urges for sex with an adult woman as a major
cause of offending. ... Other researchers have identified power and
anger as being major causes of rape behaviour. However these causes
were of minor importance in the present study. Rather, the important
conclusion of this study in regard to rape is that in future it may
be necessary to address other issues, and avoid preoccupation with
anger management solutions."
CHAPTER FOUR
1 from
the Evening Post newspaper (Wellington, New Zealand) of June 3rd 1997.
2 Robert
Sheaffer (robert@patriarchy.com) in the New Zealand Men's Rights Association
Newsletter Vol. 2, No. 1, 1997.
3The
New Zealand Department For Courts leaflet "Standing Up to Domestic Violence"
4
"Females are most often the perpetrators of domestic violence
in all cultures that have been studied so far. That leads many professionals
to conclude that there is something biological about violent females
in family situations. Researchers are now exploring the role of the
'territorial imperative' as a factor in women's violence against men.
Women see the home as their territory." (Sewell & Sewell 1997,
pp. 20-21)
5
Excerpts from Letter
"I am writing with respect to the recently-released 'New Zealand
National Survey of Crime Victims 1996'. <snip> Although it was
interesting to see that the survey stated that 'about the same proportion
of women as men were subject to some form of violent or sexual offending
on one or more occasions,' I have to raise an issue, relating to the
questionnaires <snip>:
The issue is that the questions dealing with (non-sexual)
Domestic Violence were grossly weighted in a way that would minimise
positive responses from males, so that the statistics resulting from
these questions are of no value at all.
Of the four questions (5a-d) on non-sexual Family Violence
(commonly called 'Domestic Violence'), two specify that positive responses
must be to events 'that actually frightened' the person at the receiving
end. As soon as I saw that, it was obvious to me that women are more
likely to feel, or admit to feeling, fear -- so that this wording
would exclude a lot of men who had been victims of Domestic Violence.
Indeed, the Survey itself points out (on page 81) that only 31.4%
of male victims of violent offences report experiencing fear -- as
compared with 50.5% of female victims.
In addition, there is no mention, in these questions, of the
need to report someone throwing something at you. Anecdotal
evidence has it that this is a much more common female than male behaviour
in domestic disputes.
Thirdly, the question referring to the actual or threatened
damage of a victim's property (5a) emphasises the word 'deliberately',
which would rule out a positive response in doubtful cases where the
damage was done in a devious manner and not owned up to -- a more
typically female behaviour, in my view.
Fourthly, the question referring to the use of actual force
or violence (5b) restricts responses to incidents that 'could have
hurt' the victim. Because men are more used to contact sports and
generally have more upper-body strength, they are both less likely
to report actual or potential hurt to themselves, and also more likely
to inflict hurt than a woman is. I don't see why a man's experience
of, say, being repeatedly pushed by his female partner should not
be reported, just because he did not feel likely to be hurt by that
behaviour.
Overseas studies (e.g. Strauss, M., Gelles, R., and Steinmetz,
S.K. (1980): 'Behind Closed Doors: Violence in American Families.'
New York: Doubleday) have shown that men and women are about equally
at the receiving end of Domestic Violence, but this Survey seems to
have been designed to produce a more politically correct outcome than
that...."
6 in
the New Zealand Domestic Violence Act 1995
7
"Family Violence is a crime
Serious reported assaults on children (under 14 years) have
increased 437.50% from 1985 to 1994. Serious reported assaults by
males on females have increased 636.40% from 1985 to 1994.
Family violence is a community problem that requires a community
solution.
The Police Managers Guild which represents senior managers and
leaders in the Police have taken a positive step forward in the combatting
this (sic) ever increasing crime in the community.
The Guild will be funding local community policing initiatives
in your area through the production of a 'Family Violence' booklet.
The Police Managers Guild encourage the community to support
the booklet which will be distributed early next year. Help prevent
this crime." (the Evening Post, Wellington, New Zealand, Saturday
9th December 1995.)
8
"As the Assistant Prosecutor in the Weekley case, I would like
to add some information to your report. I believe your article distorted
this case by simply rehashing the defense arguments, which the jury
rejected. The relationship between Kay Weekley and her ex- husband
Jackie was a violent one. Kay admitted that previous to Jackie's murder,
she had shot up his car with him in it. The jury also heard evidence
that on an earlier occasion she had maced him and beaten him with
a frying pan while he slept. Her version of the knife fight that preceded
Jackie's murder was not believable. Kay was not the only one hurt;
Jackie went to hospital cut up too. The physical evidence presented
at the murder trial was consistent with Kay's having shot Jackie from
outside the trailer, where she admitted having earlier lain in wait
to kill him. Kay Weekley ended this relationship by committing the
ultimate act of domestic violence."
9
(Evening Post, Wellington, New Zealand, Saturday, August 24, 1996, page
40) for a stage show called "Full Marx" quoted a review of the show
by one Ralph McAllister
10
in New Zealand
CHAPTER FIVE
1 New
Zealand's Television One
2
in New Zealand
3 from
the Accident Compensation Corporation, in the case of New Zealand
4 In
the New Zealand Listener magazine, for the week December 10th - 16th
1994, the cover story was entitled: "When Mother Love Turns Lethal".
It was an interesting article, written by Denis Welch. The part that
interested me most was on page 21. It was a half-page box, headed, "Do
women get away with murder?" The answer to that question turned out
to be "Yes", though he was careful not to say that in so many words.
5 New
Zealand Crimes Act
6 Auckland
Herald newspaper, New Zealand
7 In
New Zealand
8 In
a 1993 open letter to the United Nations Secretary General, Neil
Foord writes:
"New Zealand has known for several years, but failed to stop,
a system that encourages and rewards false complaints of rape. Lives
are being ruined, men are being jailed falsely, and women who have
actually been attacked are afraid to speak because of the scepticism
prevalent in this contentious area. In the years since the dangers
of our system were recognised, nothing has been done to prevent false
complaints, indeed much has been done to encourage and excuse them.
Among the judiciary, the legal profession, the Police, Members
of Parliament, the media and the general public it is well known that
the statistics have been and are distorted by false complaints.
International attention is now necessary to embarrass those
responsible into taking actions that should have been taken as a matter
of urgency several years ago. New Zealand has a good official record
in human rights, but the separate components of this system have been
promoted as advances and reforms, without consideration of their combined
effect.
. . .
The factors that have created this situation are:
(a) Lump sum payments of typically $10,000 per case, available
since 1974 and payable after satisfying our Accident Compensation
and Rehabilitation Corporation's own criteria, rather than any legal
test. Women are paid even if those they accuse are not charged or
are acquitted. Despite publicity stating that lump sums ceased from
March 1993, they do in fact continue under another guise as Independence
Allowances, which can be capitalised for up to five years and continue
to provide lump sums.
And ACC pays 98% of claimants, according to recent articles.
(b) A 1986 change in the law of evidence that removed the need
for corroboration of a complainant's evidence.
(c) increasing poverty in New Zealand with a reduction in Social
Welfare benefits in 1991, and changes in labour laws bringing lower
wages and increased unemployment."
CHAPTER SIX
1 It
was popular in New Zealand, where it was considered very successful.
Whether it was also used in other countries, I do not know.
2 Here
is the text (minus appendices) of my submission on behalf of the New
Zealand Men's Rights Association to the New Zealand equivalent:
'SUBMISSION TO THE LAW COMMISSION ON WOMEN'S ACCESS TO JUSTICE
by Peter Zohrab, Secretary of the New Zealand Men's
Rights Association
28.03.1996
1. The Title of this Study
The title of this study by the Law Commission is highly sexist
and discriminatory. It disenfranchises men. It disenfranchises men,
because it denies men their natural right to information which presents
their side of the story. A person does not have a meaningful franchise
if they, and the public at large, are systematically denied information
that presents their side of the story, and are consistently provided
with official information which presents only the other side of the
story....
The title "Women's Access to Justice", in the context of the
status and mana of the Law Commission, is equivalent to an authoritative
assertion to the effect that men have no significant problems with
access to justice. That would be fine if the Law Commission had evidence
to that effect -- but it has not, as I will show in the second section
of my Submission.
I complained to the Human Rights Commission about this issue,
but was informed that research does not fall within the categories
over which they have jurisdiction. They advised my Association to
carry out its own research. I assume that the Law Commission receives
public funding, so I would urge it to commission me to carry out a
study of Men's Access to Justice. Feminists get masses of funding
from various sources to carry out Feminist research -- but Masculists
get virtually none. So that advice from the Human Rights Commission
-- if not actually sarcastic and hypocritical in intent -- was at
least equivalent to Marie Antoinette asking beggars to go and eat
cake if they had no bread.
Society, in terms of information, legislation, and regulation,
is a huge Court. Society acquires an impression of the true state
of affairs on any issue from the information that is available to
it. Having formed an impression, Society (in the guise of pressure
groups, parliamentarians, and government officials) proceeds to produce
laws and regulations in accordance with that impression.
(Not only that, but the Judiciary themselves at times give
the impression that they are prepared to enforce the notion that the
Executive and Legislature are bound to follow current intellectual
fashions -- even if these fashions are current only among a minority
of the population. For example we have this quotation from New Zealand
Maori Council v A-G (Cooke P) 1 NZLR, page 664:
"Yet it is equally clear that the Government ... cannot
fail to give weight to the 'philosophies and urgings' currently
and, it seems, increasingly prevailing."
This opinion from the bench was not supported by any pretence
of statistics as to the prevalence of the relevant "philosophies and
urgings" in the population at large. These "philosophies and urgings"
pertain to a very small, but activist, minority of the population
as a whole who have access to the media and are nurtured by taxpayer-subsidised
institutional backers.
But this sort of activist minority, like Feminists, has almost
exclusive access to the media on the relevant issues, and use the
Ministries of Women's Affairs/Maori development and university Maori/Women's
Studies to propagate their one-sided viewpoint. This viewpoint then
gets taken up by the Establishment as being the currently fashionable
one -- or even the only POSSIBLE one.
I am not putting Maori and Feminist issues on the same moral
footing here -- just pointing out the parallel in terms of information
manipulation. I consider some of the actual arguments put forward
by some Maori activists to be much more justified than are the parallel
arguments put forward by Feminists. This is because Maoris are an
actual minority, rather than a pseudo-minority (as women are), and
there is an actual treaty in place, in the case of Maori rights, whose
implementation is at issue.
This process of totalitarian manipulation of information is
mutually reinforcing. Western Society sees and hears the Feminist
point of view constantly and ubiquitously. Feminism, in western Establishments,
has the status of God's Truth for this reason. Universities commonly
have Women's Studies Departments, but few have Men's Studies Departments.
These Women's Studies Departments are the Feminist equivalents of
theological seminaries, i.e. sources of one-sided Feminist propaganda,
rather than being analogous to quasi-objective Philosophy Departments.
Similarly, Governments have Ministries of Women's Affairs, but I doubt
that a single government in the whole world has a Ministry of Men's
Affairs.
The Law Commission obviously assumes some version of Feminism
to be God's Truth. Only thus would it have the unmitigated gall and
vicious misandrist bias to call for public submissions on *WOMEN'S*
Access to Justice, as if men could not possibly have a problem with
that (or with anything else, I assume).
I recall that the Feminist Department of Justice's report on
Male-On-Female domestic violence "Hitting Home" (1995) was supposed
to be followed up by studies on Female-On-Male and same-sex domestic
violence, according to press reports. But when I wrote to the Minister
of Justice about these planned studies, he replied:
"... there will be no decision on further research on this
matter until the findings of 'Hitting Home" have been fully considered."
(personal communication, 9 October 1995)
It is my considered opinion that there will be *no* such follow-up
studies, until the Feminist Department of Justice ceases to be the
Feminist Department of Justice and starts to be the People's Department
of Justice. This is because the relevant people in the Feminist Department
of Justice have the misandrist agenda of vilifying men, and therefore
to carry out studies of violence where men are not the only villains,
and where women are not the only victims, would be a distraction of
the gullible public's attention from this primary agenda, in their
view.
2. The Background to the Law Commission's Study
The evidence which has led the Law Commission to call for public
submissions on "Women's Access to Justice" is itself biased against
men. This misandrist evidence has led to the appointment of an obvious
Feminist, Michelle Vaughan, to manage the project, which is bound
(in my view) to involve a dedicated effort to ignore submissions such
as mine, in favour of the preferred submissions which present the
Feminist God's Truth point of view.
Upon my requesting it, Michelle Vaughan on 8 September 1995
provided me with a 21-item list of relevant overseas publications.
Of these, 19 indicate from their titles that they result from Task
Forces, Committees, Studies, or Commissions on gender bias in the
Courts. Not all of these included dates of publication, but the earliest
date of publication listed was 1989. Of the 21 items, 14 were from
the USA -- the rest being from Australia and Canada. The forerunner
of all these reports, dated 1986, was *not* on the list that Ms. Vaughan
supplied to me. I consider that to have been a deliberate omission.
In the Men's Rights struggle, we almost invariably come across pseudo-mistakes
of this kind on the part of establishment Feminists when we have dealings
with them.
This forerunner was "The First Year Report of the New Jersey
Supreme Court Task Force on Women in the Courts -- June 1984" -- published
in 1986 in the Women's Rights Law Reporter, Volume 9, Number 2. This
deeply flawed study was an inspiration to most, if not all of the
14 US studies that appeared on Ms Vaughan's list. Key Feminists involved
in the New Jersey Task Force went on to act as advisers to the later
Task Forces in other states of the USA. It is possible
to find such studies harking back to the New Jersey study as having
allegedly established the presence of anti-Female bias in US Courts.
In Appendix II you will find a different view of gender bias
in the US court system.
But the New Jersey study was deeply flawed at all levels --
starting with its name, which refers solely to "women". Paradoxically,
the introduction to the published report refers, not to "bias against
women", but to "gender bias" (op.cit., 129). If we had just landed
on Earth for the first time, as visitors from Mars or somewhere, then
we would doubtless have assumed that anyone investigating "gender
bias" would have to look at bias against both men and women -- so
why did the title refer only to "women", we would wonder.
But we don't come from Mars, of course. We know that "gender
bias" is a politically correct code-term for "bias against women".
Nevertheless, the Task Force did use the phrases "treatment of men
and women" and "equality for women and men" in its initial phrasing
of the issues that it would focus on (op. cit., 135).
So I have to ask myself how lawyers and judges, who one would
normally expect to be clear-thinking, managed to convince themselves
that a Task Force on "Women" had a brief to examine both men and women.
The answer is quite clear. The answer is that this study arose out
of the culture of one-sided Feminist polemic, with its rhetoric of
"oppression", "patriarchy", and so on. This culture takes it for granted
that men run Society for their own benefit, and that Feminists, and
only Feminists have the motivation to institute "gender equality"
in any aspect or part of Society.
This model is false. Instead of arguing against it here, however,
I append my article "The Frontman Fallacy"
(Appendix I).
This Feminist culture is the explanation for the paradox that
the Task Force, which had twice as many women as men in it, saw nothing
wrong in preferring to accept the views of women over those of men,
when their views differed on the issue of gender bias:
"The perceptions and experiences reported by female attorneys
... differed markedly from those of male attorneys in most categories
of questions.... Because gender bias impacts most directly on women,
it should not be surprising that female attorneys are more aware
of it than are males" (op. cit., 136).
This is an extraordinary viewpoint, for two reasons:
-
It assumes, without a shred of proof, that gender bias affects
women more than men (even though the Task Force itself discovered
bias against men in the Courts which it never claimed explicitly
to be less important than the bias against women that it also uncovered).
-
If the gender of the observers affects their judgement as
to the prevalence of gender bias, then the unequal numbers of men
and women in the Task Force itself must surely, by the Task Force's
own logic, condemn the Task Force's findings as inevitably biased
against men.
As indeed they are !
The topic of gender bias in the courts is obviously a very
broad one. Courts involve people with a large number of different
roles: judge, jury, prosecutor, defense lawyer, police, defendant,
witness, spectator, and so on. So gender bias, if it exists, will
manifest itself in many different ways, and with different degrees
of seriousness in each case.
It seems to me obvious that the defendant is most at risk in
a Court. He (and it is usally "he") stands to lose money, liberty,
or even his life as a result of the proceedings -- yet the New Jersey
study relegated the issue of gender bias against defendants in criminal
cases to sections of a mere 7 pages in the 49-page report. Though
evidence was found of gender bias in sentencing, it was only against
men -- and so the female-dominated Task Force decided that further
study was needed before any action needed to be taken.
Contrast this with the Task Force's attitude to the treatment
of women lawyers by male judges and lawyers! You will recall that
I claimed that "gender bias", in western societies, is just a politically
correct code-term for "bias against women". Here is the proof: this
is the quotation from the man (New Jersey Chief Justice Wilentz) who
set up the New Jersey Task Force, which appears as the Preface to
the Report:
"There's no room for gender bias in our system .... There's
no room for the funny joke and the not-so-funny joke, there's no
room for conscious, inadvertent, sophisticated, clumsy, or any other
kind of gender bias, and certainly no room for gender bias that
affects substantive rights.
There's no room because it hurts and it insults. It hurts
female (my emphasis) lawyers psychologically and
economically, litigants psychologically and economically, and witnesses,
jurors, law clerks and judges who are women. It will not be tolerated
in any form whatsoever."
Chief Justice Wilentz made these remarks in the course of the
Task Force's operations, so it is not as if he was setting down guidelines
for its work. But his remarks deserve their prominent place in the
Report, because they highlight the issue that the Task Force did in
fact concentrate a lot of its energies upon. And yet the Report itself
indicates that most attorneys surveyed by the Task Force thought that
this kind of bias did not even affect case outcomes!
"The Task Force asked whether attorneys thought that appropriate
forms of address, comments on appearance and sexist remarks affect
case outcome. Sixteen percent (16%) of women and three percent (3%)
of men thought that they did" (op. cit., 141).
I am not in favour of condoning such behaviour, but I make
two points here:
-
These issues are trivial compared to the penalties suffered
by mainly male defendants, and a high proportion of these penalties
are the result of Feminist-inspired anti-male bias all the way
down the chain from funding for research, to funding for pressure-groups,
to framing of legislation, to enforcement of legislation, to rules
of evidence, to conviction-rates, to sentencing practices -- all
the way down to prison conditions and rehabilitation, and beyond.
-
The Task Force (op. cit., 137) cited statistics which
showed that bias in favour of women was just as prevalent in courtrooms
as bias against women. Even the Task Force's assumption that women
were more aware of bias against women than men were does not excuse
it for virtually ignoring this point:
"Seventy-one percent (71%) of female respondents but only
thirty percent (30%) of male respondents reported having observed
incidents where it appeared that judges treated women litigants
or witnesses disadvantageously because they were women.... Are women
litigants and witnesses ever treated advantageously because they
are women ? Sixty-eight percent (68%) of female attorneys and sixty-five
percent (65%) of male attorneys observed such incidents on the part
of judges" (op.cit., 137-8).
Adding the male and female responses together, it is clear
that many more attorneys had experienced bias in favour of (133%),
than against (101%) female litigants or witnesses. Even if you assume
that female respondents were more reliable on this issue than male
respondents (which assumption is itself an example of gender bias
on the part of the Task Force), you will see that there is only a
three percent difference between the 71% of female respondents who
who had observed bias against female litigants or witnesses, and the
68% of female respondents who had observed bias in favour of female
litigants or witnesses.
Yet the Report mentioned only ways that bias against women
could be diminished -- no mention was made of any possible measures
to diminish bias in favour of women (i.e. against men).
There are many other criticisms I could (and will, if required)
make of the New Jersey Report -- and I am sure I could make similar
ones of the others on Michelle Vaughan's list. I have not had time
to read most of them. But I believe that my remarks above are sufficient
to show that there are serious doubts as to the validity of the conclusions
that such reports have drawn in the past in other countries.
I am concerned to stop the Law Commission's Feminist steamroller
from proceeding on the basis of the "obvious" bias against women "revealed"
by so many (in fact very deeply flawed) overseas studies, towards
its obvious goal of mimicking their findings in the New Zealand context.
3. The Substantive issue: Women's Access to the Law.
Women have far too much access to the Law !
One example is the Law Commission's present show trial of men
by women, this kangaroo court, intent on peddling lies and half-truths,
which is what the present study on "Women's Access to Justice" amounts
to.
In the last couple of centuries since Feminism first arose,
and even before the enactment of female adult suffrage in New Zealand
last century, Feminist pressure groups have been consistently getting
progressively more pro-women and anti-male legislation passed by parliament.
At the same time, they have been conning the public by pointing to
the straw man of the largely male nature of the actual parliamentarians
who took these anti-male, pro-women decisions.
Most defendants in Court are male, and mostly they are in Court
as a result of Feminist-inspired anti-male bias all the way down the
chain from funding for research, to funding for pressure-groups, to
framing of legislation, to enforcement of legislation, to rules of
evidence, to conviction-rates, to sentencing practices -- all the
way down to prison conditions and rehabilitation, and beyond.
Women have far too much access to justice....'
3 in
"Conviction and Sentencing of Offenders in New Zealand: 1986 to 1995"
(Wellington: Ministry of Justice 1996)
4 in
the New Zealand Sunday Star-Times of October 27, 1996.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1 From
the Liberator newsletter, October 1996, p. 4.
2 A
New Zealand Ministry of Education leaflet, (Boulton, Amohia and Fiona
Sturrock: "Women in the Teaching Service". Education Trends Report Vol.
8 No. 1 July 1996, Data Management and Analysis Section, Ministry of
Education, Wellington, New Zealand. ISSN 0113-681X)
CHAPTER EIGHT
1 The
number of male primary teachers has also been dropping in New Zealand,
according to the lead article of the Education Weekly Vol. 8 No. 311,
Monday 15th September 1997.
2"Teacher
evaluations of the performance of Boys and Girls" by D.M. Fergusson,
M. Lloyd, & L.J. Horwood (New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies,
Vol. 26, No. 2, 1991)
3 In
New Zealand
4 for
example, with the introduction of Registered Standards in New Zealand
CHAPTER NINE
1 Reported
in "Condition Masculine" No.4, 1997, p.5, citing "Le Quotidien du médecin,
25-11-1997.
CHAPTER TEN
1 On
National Radio in New Zealand.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1 In
New Zealand in 1990, 10,887 of the 11,173 abortions carried out in that
year were authorised in order to avert "serious damage to the mental
health" of the mother.
CHAPTER TWELVE
1 Definition
by Mr. M. Archer, reported in "Male View" magazine, January/March 1998,
p.2.
2 New
Zealand State Services Commission 1990
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1 in
New Zealand
2002 Version
NOTES
Chapter 1
1.Matthias Matussek (1998): "The Women are at Fault," Der
Spiegel, 1998. Translated from German by Walter H. Schneider.
2.In Wellington, New Zealand, in November 1997.
Chapter 3
1.The number of male primary teachers has also been dropping in New
Zealand, according to the lead article of the Education Weekly Vol.
8 No. 311, Monday 15th September 1997.
2.The Peter Ellis case, involving the Christchurch Civic Creche.
At time of writing, this case was going through its second appeal, having
received one-sided, anti-male media coverage, until a campaign by the
New Zealand Listener magazine forced the other media to take a more
balanced stance. Peter Ellis refused an offer of parole, which would
have involved an admission of guilt. The police officer investigating
the case had an affair with the mother of one of the children making
the allegations, and one woman on the jury had a lesbian relationship
with someone involved with the case. Some of the children were questioned
repeatedly by police (a fact which possibly allowed them to pick up
suggestions from the police, with which to embellish their testimony),
and used vocabulary (such as "clitoris") in court that they
could only have picked up from an adult.
3."Teacher evaluations of the performance of Boys and Girls"
by D.M. Fergusson, M. Lloyd, & L.J. Horwood (New Zealand Journal
of Educational Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2, 1991).
4.Unfortunately, I don't have the precise reference for this study.
5.For example, with the introduction of Registered Standards in New
Zealand, which system has recently been watered down, after (but not
provably because of) input by people such as myself, who argued that
it was anti-male.
Chapter 4
1.Reported in Condition Masculine No.4, 1997, p.5, citing "Le
Quotidien du medecin, 25-11-1997.
Chapter 5
1.From the Liberator newsletter, October 1996, p. 4.
2.It was popular in New Zealand, where it was considered very successful.
3.A New Zealand Ministry of Education leaflet, (Boulton, Amohia and
Fiona Sturrock: "Women in the Teaching Service," Education
Trends Report Vol. 8 No. 1 July 1996, Data Management and Analysis Section,
Ministry of Education, Wellington, New Zealand. ISSN 0113-681X)
Chapter 6
1.New Zealand's Television One
2.In New Zealand
3.From the Accident Compensation Corporation, in the case of New
Zealand
4.In the New Zealand Listener magazine, for the week December 10th
– 16th 1994, the cover story was entitled: "When Mother Love
Turns Lethal". It was an interesting article, written by Denis
Welch. The part that interested me most was on page 21. It was a half-page
box, headed, "Do women get away with murder?" The answer to
that question turned out to be "Yes", though he was careful
not to say that in so many words.
5.New Zealand Crimes Act
6.Auckland Herald newspaper, New Zealand
7.In New Zealand
8.In a 1993 open letter to the United Nations Secretary General,
Neil Foord writes:
"New Zealand has known for several years, but failed to stop,
a system that encourages and rewards false complaints of rape. Lives
are being ruined, men are being jailed falsely, and women who have
actually been attacked are afraid to speak because of the scepticism
prevalent in this contentious area. In the years since the dangers
of our system were recognised, nothing has been done to prevent false
complaints, indeed much has been done to encourage and excuse them.
Among the judiciary, the legal profession, the Police, Members
of Parliament, the media and the general public it is well known that
the statistics have been and are distorted by false complaints.
International attention is now necessary to embarass those responsible
into taking actions that should have been taken as a matter of urgency
several years ago. New Zealand has a good official record in human
rights, but the separate components of this system have been promoted
as advances and reforms, without consideration of their combined effect.
...
The factors that have created this situation are:
(a) Lump sum payments of typically $10,000 per case, available
since 1974 and payable after satisfying our Accident Compensation
and Rehabilitation Corporation's own criteria, rather than any legal
test. Women are paid even if those they accuse are not charged or
are acquitted. Despite publicity stating that lump sums ceased from
March 1993, they do in fact continue under another guise as Independence
Alowances, which can be capitalised for up to five years and continue
to provide lump sums.
And ACC pays 98% of claimants, according to recent articles.
(b) A 1986 change in the law of evidence that removed the need
for corroboration of a
complainant's evidence.
...
(c) increasing poverty in New Zealand with a reduction in Social
Welfare benefits in 1991, and changes in labour laws bringing lower
wages and increased unemployment."
Chapter 7
1.Evening Post newspaper (Wellington, New Zealand) of June 3, 1997
2.Robert Sheaffer (robert@patriarchy.com) in the New Zealand Men's Rights
Association Newsletter Vol. 2, No. 1, 1997 (available on www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/6708/nwslt197.html,
or on homepages.ihug.co.nz/~zohrab/nwslt197.html).
3.The New Zealand Department For Courts leaflet Standing Up to Domestic
Violence.
4."Females are most often the perpetrators of domestic violence
in all cultures that have been studied so far. That leads many professionals
to conclude that there is something biological about violent females
in family situations: "Researchers are now exploring the role of
the 'territorial imperative' as a factor in women's violence against
men. Women see the home as their territory." (Sewell & Sewell
1997, pp. 20-21)
5.Excerpts from Letter:
"I am writing with respect to the recently-released 'New Zealand
National Survey of Crime Victims 1996'...Although it was interesting
to see that the survey stated that 'about the same proportion of women
as men were subject to some form of violent or sexual offending on
one or more occasions,' I have to raise an issue, relating to the
questionnaires:
The issue is that the questions dealing with (non-sexual) Domestic
Violence were grossly weighted in a way that would minimise positive
responses from males, so that the statistics resulting from these
questions are of no value at all.
Of the four questions (5a-d) on non-sexual Family Violence (commonly
called 'Domestic Violence'), two specify that positive responses must
be to events 'that actually frightened' the person at the receiving
end. As soon as I saw that, it was obvious to me that women are more
likely to feel, or admit to feeling, fear – so that this wording
would exclude a lot of men who had been victims of Domestic Violence.
Indeed, the Survey itself points out (on page 81) that only 31.4%
of male victims of violent offences report experiencing fear –
as compared with 50.5% of female victims.
In addition, there is no mention, in these questions, of the need
to report someone throwing something at you. Anecdotal evidence has
it that this is a much more common female than male behaviour in domestic
disputes.
Thirdly, the question referring to the actual or threatened damage
of a victim's property (5a) emphasises the word 'deliberately', which
would rule out a positive response in doubtful cases where the damage
was done in a devious manner and not owned up to -- a more typically
female behaviour, in my view.
Fourthly, the question referring to the use of actual force or
violence (5b) restricts responses to incidents that 'could have hurt'
the victim. Because men are more used to contact sports and generally
have more upper-body strength, they are both less likely to report
actual or potential hurt to themselves, and also more likely to inflict
hurt than a woman is. I don't see why a man's experience of, say,
being repeatedly pushed by his female partner should not be reported,
just because he did not feel likely to be hurt by that behaviour.
Overseas studies (e.g. Strauss, M. and Gelles, R., and Steinmetz,
S.K. (1980): 'Behind Closed Doors: Violence in American Families.'
New York: Doubleday) have shown that men and women are about equally
at the receiving end of Domestic Violence, but this Survey seems to
have been designed to produce a more politically correct outcome than
that...."
6. In the New Zealand Domestic Violence Act 1995
7.
"Family Violence is a crime:
Serious reported assaults on children (under 14 years) have increased
437.50% from 1985 to 1994. Serious reported assaults by males on females
have increased 636.40% from 1985 to 1994.
Family violence is a community problem that requires a community
solution.
The Police Managers Guild which represents senior managers and
leaders in the Police have taken a positive step forward in the combatting
this (sic) ever increasing crime in the community.
The Guild will be funding local community policing initiatives
in your area through the production of a 'Family Violence' booklet.
The Police Managers Guild encourage the community to support the
booklet which ill be distributed early next year. Help prevent this
crime."
(Evening Post, Wellington, New Zealand, Saturday December 9, 1995.)
8. Handbook of Family Violence, Suzanne K. Steinmetz and Joseph S.
Lucca, p 241
9.
"As the Assistant Prosecutor in the Weekley case, I would
like to add some information to your report. I believe your article
distorted this case by simply rehashing the defense arguments, which
the jury rejected. The relationship between Kay Weekley and her ex-husband
Jackie was a violent one. Kay admitted that previous to Jackie's mirder,
she had shot up his car with him in it. The jury also heard evidence
that on an earlier occasion she had Maced him and beaten him with
a frying pan while he slept. Her version of the knife fight that preceded
Jackie's murder was not believable. Kay was not the only one hurt;
Jackie went to hospital cut up too. The physical evidence presented
at the murder trial was consistent with Kay's having shot Jackie from
outside the trailer, where she admitted having earlier lain in wait
to kill him. Kay Weekley ended this relationship by committing the
ultimate act of domestic violence."
10. (Evening Post, Wellington, New Zealand, Saturday, August 24,
1996, page 40) for a stage show called "Full Marx" quoted
a review of the show by one Ralph McAllister
11.In New Zealand
Chapter 8
1. Here is the text (minus appendices) of my submission on behalf
of the New Zealand Men's Rights Association to the New Zealand equivalent:
SUBMISSION TO THE LAW COMMISSION ON WOMEN'S ACCESS TO JUSTICE
by Peter Zohrab
Secretary of the New Zealand Men's Rights Association
28.03.1996
1. The Title of this Study
The title of this study by the Law Commission is highly sexist
and discriminatory. It disenfranchises men. It disenfranchises men,
because it denies men their natural right to information which presents
their side of the story. A person does not have a meaningful franchise
if they, and the public at large, are systematically denied information
that presents their side of the story, and are consistently provided
with official information which presents only the other side of the
story....
The title "Women's Access to Justice", in the context
of the status and mana of the Law Commission, is equivalent to an
authoritative assertion to the effect that men have no significant
problems with access to justice. That would be fine if the Law Commission
had evidence to that effect -- but it has not, as I will show in the
second section of my Submission.
I complained to the Human Rights Commission about this issue, but
was informed that research does not fall within the categories over
which they have jurisdiction. They advised my Association to carry
out its own research. I assume that the Law Commission receives public
funding, so I would urge it to commission me to carry out a study
of Men's Access to Justice. Feminists get masses of funding from various
sources to carry out Feminist research -- but Masculists get virtually
none. So that advice from the Human Rights Commission -- if not actually
sarcastic and hypocritical in intent -- was at least equivalent to
Marie Antoinette asking beggars to go and eat cake if they had no
bread.
Society, in terms of information, legislation, and regulation,
is a huge Court. Society acquires an impression of the true state
of affairs on any issue from the information that is available to
it. Having formed an impression, Society (in the guise of pressure
groups, parliamentarians, and government officials) proceeds to produce
laws and regulations in accordance with that impression.
(Not only that, but the Judiciary themselves at times give the
impression that they are prepared to enforce the notion that the Executive
and Legislature are bound to follow current intellectual fashions
-- even if these fashions are current only among a minority of the
population. For example we have this quotation from "New Zealand
Maori Council v A-G (Cooke P)" 1 NZLR, page 664:
"Yet it is equally clear that the Government ... cannot fail
to give weight to the 'philosophies and urgings' currently and, it
seems, increasingly prevailing."
This opinion from the bench was not supported by any pretence of
statistics as to the prevalence of the relevant "philosophies
and urgings" in the population at large. These "philosophies
and urgings" pertain to a very small, but activist, minority
of the population as a whole who have access to the media and are
nurtured by taxpayer-subsidised institutional backers.
But this sort of activist minority, like Feminists, has almost exclusive
access to the media on the relevant issues, and use the Ministries
of Women's Affairs/Maori development and university Maori/Women's
Studies to propagate their one-sided viewpoint. This viewpoint then
gets taken up by the Establishment as being the currently fashionable
one -- or even the only POSSIBLE one.
I am not putting Maori and Feminist issues on the same moral footing
here -- just pointing out the parallel in terms of information manipulation.
I consider some of the actual arguments put forward by some Maori
activists to be much more justified than are the parallel arguments
put forward by Feminists. This is because Maoris are an actual minority,
rather than a pseudo-minority (as women are), and there is an actual
treaty in place, in the case of Maori rights, whose implementation
is at issue.
This process of totalitarian manipulation of information is mutually
reinforcing. Western Society sees and hears the Feminist point of
view constantly and ubiquitously. Feminism, in western Establishments,
has the status of God's Truth for this reason. Universities commonly
have Women's Studies Departments, but few have Men's Studies Departments.
These Women's Studies Departments are the Feminist equivalents of
theological seminaries, i.e. sources of one-sided Feminist propaganda,
rather than being analogous to quasi-objective Philosophy Departments.
Similarly, Governments have Ministries of Women's Affairs, but I doubt
that a single government in the whole world has a Ministry of Men's
Affairs.
The Law Commission obviously assumes some version of Feminism to
be God's Truth. Only thus would it have the unmitigated gall and vicious
misandrist bias to call for public submissions on women's Access to
Justice, as if men could not possibly have a problem with that (or
with anything else, I assume).
I recall that the Feminist Department of Justice's report on Male-On-Female
domestic violence "Hitting Home" (1995) was supposed to
be followed up by studies on Female-On-Male and same-sex domestic
violence, according to press reports. But when I wrote to the Minister
of Justice about these planned studies, he replied:
"... there will be no decision on further research on this
matter until the findings of 'Hitting Home" have been fully considered."
(personal communication, 9 October 1995)
It is my considered opinion that there will be no such follow-up
studies, until the Feminist Department of Justice ceases to be the
Feminist Department of Justice and starts to be the People's Department
of Justice. This is because the relevant people in the Feminist Department
of Justice have the misandrist agenda of vilifying men, and therefore
to carry out studies of violence where men are not the only villains,
and where women are not the only victims, would be a distraction of
the gullible public's attention from this primary agenda, in their
view.
2. The Background to the Law Commission's Study
The evidence which has led the Law Commission to call for public
submissions on "Women's Access to Justice" is itself biased
against men. This misandrist evidence has led to the appointment of
an obvious Feminist, Michelle Vaughan, to manage the project, which
is bound (in my view) to involve a dedicated effort to ignore submissions
such as mine, in favour of the preferred submissions which present
the Feminist God's Truth point of view.
Upon my requesting it, Michelle Vaughan on 8 September 1995 provided
me with a 21-item list of relevant overseas publications. Of these,
19 indicate from their titles that they result from Task Forces, Committees,
Studies, or Commissions on gender bias in the Courts. Not all of these
included dates of publication, but the earliest date of publication
listed was 1989. Of the 21 items, 14 were from the USA -- the rest
being from Australia and Canada. The forerunner of all these reports,
dated 1986, was not on the list that Ms. Vaughan supplied to me. I
consider that to have been a deliberate omission. In the Men's Rights
struggle, we almost invariably come across pseudo-mistakes of this
kind on the part of establishment Feminists when we have dealings
with them.
This forerunner was "The First Year Report of the New Jersey
Supreme Court Task Force on Women in the Courts -- June 1984"
-- published in 1986 in the Women's Rights Law Reporter, Volume 9,
Number 2. This deeply flawed study was an inspiration to most, if
not all of the 14 US studies that appeared on Ms Vaughan's list. Key
Feminists involved in the New Jersey Task Force went on to act as
advisers to the later Task Forces in other states of the USA. It is
possible to find such studies harking back to the New Jersey study
as having allegedly established the presence of anti-Female bias in
US Courts.
In Appendix II you will find a different view of gender bias in
the US court system.
But the New Jersey study was deeply flawed at all levels -- starting
with its name, which refers solely to "women". Paradoxically,
the introduction to the published report refers, not to "bias
against women", but to "gender bias" (op.cit., 129).
If we had just landed on Earth for the first time, as visitors from
Mars or somewhere, then we would doubtless have assumed that anyone
investigating "gender bias" would have to look at bias against
both men and women -- so why did the title refer only to "women",
we would wonder.
But we don't come from Mars, of course. We know that "gender
bias" is a politically correct code-term for "bias against
women". Nevertheless, the Task Force did use the phrases "treatment
of men and women" and "equality for women and men"
in its initial phrasing of the issues that it would focus on (op.
cit., 135).
So I have to ask myself how lawyers and judges, who one would normally
expect to be clear-thinking, managed to convince themselves that a
Task Force on "Women" had a brief to examine both men and
women. The answer is quite clear. The answer is that this study arose
out of the culture of one-sided Feminist polemic, with its rhetoric
of "oppression", "patriarchy", and so on. This
culture takes it for granted that men run Society for their own benefit,
and that Feminists, and only Feminists have the motivation to institute
"gender equality" in any aspect or part of Society.
This model is false. Instead of arguing against it here, however,
I append my article "The Frontman Fallacy" (Appendix I).
This Feminist culture is the explanation for the paradox that the
Task Force, which had twice as many women as men in it, saw nothing
wrong in preferring to accept the views of women over those of men,
when their views differed on the issue of gender bias:
"The perceptions and experiences reported by female attorneys
... differed markedly from those of male attorneys in most categories
of questions.... Because gender bias impacts most directly on women,
it should not be surprising that female attorneys are more aware of
it than are males" (op. cit., 136).
This is an extraordinary viewpoint, for two reasons:
a) It assumes, without a shred of proof, that gender bias affects
women more than men (even though the Task Force itself discovered
bias against men in the Courts which it never claimed explicitly to
be less important than the bias against women that it also uncovered).
b) If the gender of the obervers affects their judgement as to
the prevalence of gender bias, then the unequal numbers of men and
women in the Task Force itself must surely, by the Task Force's own
logic, condemn the Task Force's findings as inevitably biased against
men.
As indeed they are!
The topic of gender bias in the courts is obviously a very broad
one. Courts involve people with a large number of different roles:
judge, jury, prosecutor, defense lawyer, police, defendant, witness,
spectator, and so on. So gender bias, if it exists, will manifest
itself in many different ways, and with different degrees of seriousness
in each case.
It seems to me obvious that the defendant is most at risk in a
Court. He (and it is usally "he") stands to lose money,
liberty, or even his life as a result of the proceedings -- yet the
New Jersey study relegated the issue of gender bias against defendants
in criminal cases to sections of a mere 7 pages in the 49-page report.
Though evidence was found of gender bias in sentencing, it was only
against men -- and so the female-dominated Task Force decided that
further study was needed before any action needed to be taken.
Contrast this with the Task Force's attitude to the treatment of
women lawyers by male judges and lawyers! You will recall that I claimed
that "gender bias", in western societies, is just a politically
correct code-term for "bias against women". Here is the
proof: this is the quotation from the man (New Jersey Chief Justice
Wilentz) who set up the New Jersey Task Force, which appears as the
Preface to the Report:
"There's no room for gender bias in our system .... There's
no room for the funny joke and the not-so-funny joke, there's no
room for conscious, inadvertent, sophisticated, clumsy, or any other
kind of gender bias, and certainly no room for gender bias that
affects substantive rights.
There's no room because it hurts and it insults. It hurts female
(my emphasis) lawyers psychologically and economically, litigants
psychologically and economically, and witnesses, jurors, law clerks
and judges who are women. It will not be tolerated in any form whatsoever."
Chief Justice Wilentz made these remarks in the course of the Task
Force's operations, so it is not as if he was setting down guidelines
for its work. But his remarks deserve their prominent place in the
Report, because they highlight the issue that the Task Force did in
fact concentrate a lot of its energies upon. And yet the Report itself
indicates that most attorneys surveyed by the Task Force thought that
this kind of bias did not even affect case outcomes!
"The Task Force asked whether attorneys thought that appropriate
forms of address, comments on appearance and sexist remarks affect
case outcome. Sixteen percent (16%) of women and three percent (3%)
of men thought that they did" (op. cit., 141).
I am not in favour of condoning such behaviour, but I make two
points here:
a) These issues are trivial compared to the penalties suffered
by mainly male defendants, and a high proportion of these penalties
are the result of Feminist-inspired anti-male bias all the way down
the chain from funding for research, to funding for pressure-groups,
to framing of legislation, to enforcement of legislation, to rules
of evidence, to conviction-rates, to sentencing practices -- all the
way down to prison conditions and rehabilitation, and beyond.
b) The Task Force (op. cit., 137) cited statistics which showed
that bias in favour of women was just as prevalent in courtrooms as
bias against women. Even the Task Force's assumption that women were
more aware of bias against women than men were does not excuse it
for virtually ignoring this point:
"Seventy-one percent (71%) of female respondents but only thirty
percent (30%) of male respondents reported having observed incidents
where it appeared that judges treated women litigants or witnesses
disadvantageously because they were women.... Are women litigants
and witnesses ever treated advantageously because they are women ?
Sixty-eight percent (68%) of female attorneys and sixty-five percent
(65%) of male attorneys observed such incidents on the part of judges"
(op.cit., 137-8).
Adding the male and female responses together, it is clear that many
more attorneys had experienced bias in favour of (133%), than against
(101%) female litigants or witnesses. Even if you assume that female
respondents were more reliable on this issue than male respondents
(which assumption is itself an example of gender bias on the part
of the Task Force), you will see that there is only a three percent
difference between the 71% of female respondents who who had observed
bias against female litigants or witnesses, and the 68% of female
respondents who had observed bias in favour of female litigants or
witnesses.
Yet the Report mentioned only ways that bias against women could be
diminished -- no mention was made of any possible measures to diminish
bias in favour of women (i.e. against men).
There are many other criticisms I could (and will, if required)
make of the New Jersey Report -- and I am sure I could make similar
ones of the others on Michelle Vaughan's list. I have not had time
to read most of them. But I believe that my remarks above are sufficient
to show that there are serious doubts as to the validity of the conclusions
that such reports have drawn in the past in other countries.
I am concerned to stop the Law Commission's Feminist steamroller
from proceeding on the basis of the "obvious" bias against
women "revealed" by so many (in fact very deeply flawed)
overseas studies, towards its obvious goal of mimicking their findings
in the New Zealand context.
3. The Substantive issue: Women's Access to the Law.
Women have far too much access to the Law!
One example is the Law Commission's present show trial of men by
women, this kangaroo court, intent on peddling lies and half-truths,
which is what the present study on "Women's Access to Justice"
amounts to.
In the last couple of centuries since Feminism first arose, and
even before the enactment of female adult suffrage in New Zealand
last century, Feminist pressure groups have been consistently getting
progressively more pro-women and anti-male legislation passed by parliament.
At the same time, they have been conning the public by pointing to
the straw man of the largely male nature of the actual parliamentarians
who took these anti-male, pro-women decisions.
Most defendants in Court are male, and mostly they are in Court
as a result of Feminist-inspired anti-male bias all the way down the
chain from funding for research, to funding for pressure-groups, toframing
of legislation, to enforcement of legislation, to rules of evidence,
to conviction-rates, to sentencing practices -- all the way down to
prison conditions and rehabilitation, and beyond.
Women have far too much access to justice....’
2. In the USA, Black men are incarcerated at a much higher rate than
white men, but primarily for "crimes" against other black
men. Such as murder, assault, battery, etc.. In the Men's/Fathers' Movement,
this is often laid at the door of policies that have contributed to
forcing black men out of the home by creating the welfare incentives
that paid poor women (it started with black women) public assistance
benefits to help support their children but only so long as the father
was not present. Hence the "welfare queen" cycle where a girl
– typically around 16 years old – would get pregnant, move
out into an apartment paid for by welfare, and get a certain dollar
amount to cover the child. It doesn't take long for her to realize that,
the more children she has, the more money she gets. She may not intentionally
seek to get pregnant again for the purpose of getting more money, but
it's an easy trap to fall into.
Nothing settles a man down faster than to have the expectation –
either through socialization, legal requirement, or ethical/religious
reasons – imposed on him to take care of a woman and her children.
When he has no such anchor, in most cases his behavior is focused more
on today than tomorrow, long term plans extend to next week if at all,
and future goals become yesterday's dreams.
The programs that led to this were implemented during the Johnson
administration in the mid 1960s. At that time, Daniel Patrick Moynihan
predicted it would lead to the widespread breakdown of the African American
family. He also predicted that it would eventually spread to affect
Euro American families as well. He was right. Bereft of the expectation
to become fathers, boys become barbarians, rather than men. ( The Negro
Family: The Case For National Action http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Family:_The_Case_For_National_Action
)
3. In the New Zealand Sunday Star-Times of October 27, 1996.
4. "Maori Children – Fact Sheet" (2000). Te Puni Kookiri
(Ministry of Maori Development)
Chapter 9
1. On National Radio in New Zealand.
Chapter 10
1.At The Correspondence School, Thorndon, Wellington, New Zealand,
on Thursday 12 March 1998. The Facilitator was Hilary Sinclair.
2.Anne Moir and David Jessel: Brain Sex: The Real Difference between
Men and Women, New York, Delta, 1991
3.Criminal Justice Quarterly, Department of Justice, New Zealand,
1993, Issue 3, pages 5-7.
" ... Dr Meryl McKay is a Senior Psychologist with the Department
of Justice Psychological Services Division (Palmerston North). The following
article gives an overview of her PhD thesis which examined what offenders
see as the causes of their own offending, and also discusses practical
applications for providing treatment programmes for offenders....
Dr McKay interviewed 200 offenders in prison – 50 sex offenders
against children, 50 rapists, 50 violent offenders, and 50 offenders
against property. The offenders were all being assessed by her as part
of her usual clinical work and were given the option of also being involved
in the study....
Rapists reported urges for sex with an adult woman as a major cause
of offending. ... Other researchers have identified power and anger
as being major causes of rape behaviour. However these causes were of
minor importance in the present study. Rather, the important conclusion
of this study in regard to rape is that in future it may be necessary
to address other issues, and avoid preoccupation with anger management
solutions."
Chapter 12
1.Definition by Mr. M. Archer, reported in Male View magazine, January/March
1998, p.2.
2.New Zealand State Services Commission 1990
Chapter 13
1. In New Zealand
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