I'd like to apologise to the person who read the paper after me; it was spattered with incredulous half-chewed cornflakes.
Australia, as the paper pointed out, doesn't seem to have progressed since the first 1995 survey. Normally at this point I'd sigh, roll my eyes and wave an emphatic piece of toast saying, "this would never happen in New Zealand".
But I don't think I can.
The situation has eerie echoes of Willie Jackson and John Tamihere's infamous interview in 2013. Where again, whether the girls were drinking was of crucial importance in the popular dispensing of guilt.
Startlingly, in 2002, Dr Jan Jordan of Victoria University found a significant group of victims who, when reporting their rape, altered their stories. Victims were found to disguise how much they had been drinking, for fear the police would dismiss them if they were honest. This suggests that, even at a subconscious level, women too internalise the drinking-guilt relationship.
I even understand it on a personal level. I make a point of being the rational one out of my friends; I'm the pretentious one sighing, "look at it logically ..." But when I was sexually harassed, I remember sobbing on the phone to my Mum in a coffee shop, "was it my fault, Mum? Did I do something?"
It wasn't. But it took the insistence of my mum, dad, brother and one older, kick-arse friend to convince me of that. So I don't think we can say we're much different from Australia.
The striking issue is the lack of change. These are attitudes that belong in the 19th century. They are the reasons we fume about rape culture in New Zealand.
But what's happening about it? Well, the term "rape culture" has entered the public vocabulary, which is at least a small victory. But at the top levels there seems a marked indifference to actually addressing the issue. And on an everyday level, there are the times you go out and have some random lady sniff, "she'll get what's coming to her, dressing like that, humph."
What it appears we have to do is wait for these attitudes to "organically reform". The new generation will sweep in, full of their sparkly modernity and compassion, and will expunge any festering remains. A bit like my Dad doing his post-dinner pre-bedtime kitchen wipe down.
Except we've been waiting rather a long time.
Nothing seems to have changed in the past decade. And just have a conversation with working women from the 70s - they've been waiting for the "organic change" since nylon was fashionable.
In a way, I understand that it's hard for policy makers to understand the desperate need for change. They're still on average white, old and male. They don't know what it's like to be female and 16-24, statistically the people most likely to experience sexual assault.
How many times has your average Cabinet minister had to tell a guy, "I have a boyfriend," because if he's honest and says, "I'm not interested" he knows he won't be taken seriously? I've lost count of the times I've said that.
My girlfriends and I don't go for walks alone at night. We don't even leave the bar alone, let alone walk home. We buy nail polish to tell us if our drink's spiked. We take self-defence classes just in case. We walk with our keys through our fingers.
I'm not trying to whine, I'm trying to explain the state we live in while we wait for "organic developments".
I can't help think that if those in power lived liked this, we'd probably see a much faster change in our rape culture.
