Change the law and safeguard the children

Willie Jackson and John Tamihere are not laughing now.

When those two blowhards John Tamihere and Willie Jackson weighed in on the Roast Busters, they might have anticipated a little angry denunciation at their typical antics, but I doubt they expected this call for their heads.

After all, besides calling into question the morals of the victims, they only defended the masculine imperative towards sexual adventure, calling the actions of the two lead boys - now 17 and 18 - as "mischief". Some mischief.

The two Roasters, Joseph Parker and Beraiah Hales, bragged that they had got underage girls - some as young as 13 - drunk and then had sex with them before putting their names on Facebook.

Willie and John, whose names fortuitously lend themselves to low humour, were simply expressing the prevailing ethos in which boys will do whatever they choose and the girls they choose to do it with will face the consequences.

Which is why, when interviewing the 18-year-old friend of the girls, W & J asked: "How free and easy are you kids these days?" And they also asked Amy when she lost her virginity - as if that was anyone's business but her own.

Amy believed the boys involved were rapists. The talkback hosts reportedly laughed and said: "Well, if some of the girls have consented, that doesn't make them rapists, right?"

Then the sky fell in on Willie and John as a boycott was quickly organised by blogger Giovanni Tiso.

Telecom and ANZ bank pulled their ads from the station following a half-hearted apology from the two former MPs. Now they've both been suspended.

Done and dusted, right? Not exactly.

I'm no fan of these two - far from it - but there are problems here. Ugly speech, despised speech - but short of incitement - is the price we have to be willing to pay for our common right to legitimate political dissent.

While their takedown is not exactly governmental censorship, the power and political embeddedness of Telecom and ANZ amounts to the same thing.

More importantly, silencing these two prats for expressing what many within this culture actually believe about rape and alleged consent by young girls will do nothing to repair what has already happened to some 13-year-olds nor prevent the further predation of little girls - or of boys.

What may help is a change in the law. As it stands, the law has it that anyone charged with sexual connection with a young person (anyone under 16 years of age) is liable (if convicted) for up to10 years' imprisonment for rape.

Unless, that is, they can prove that the young person consented. (Sec. 134,( 1), and 134A (1) (C), Crimes Act Amendment 2005 (as at August 17,. 2011.)

There's the rub. Consent.

We have laws that say a 13-year-old doesn't have the capacity to buy a beer, or a cigarette or attend some movies with an R-16 rating but yet that same young person has the capacity to appreciate the nature and consequences of an act of sexual connection.

Further, that same young person - whom we keep from legally smoking, drinking or viewing certain movies - has the requisite judgment to make a decision about engaging in a act of physical intimacy complicated enough that many adults have trouble navigating that same terrain.

By the way, that same set of amendments also says that a 12-year-old is a child and a child can't consent.

It's this kind of legal inconsistency, based on meaningless distinctions, that fuels the nonsense spouted by Willie and John. It's old cultural stereotypes and outmoded thinking and it shouldn't be enshrined in our laws.

We've come a ways since Dickens, when 7-year-olds could be hanged for stealing.

It's time for the ANZ and Telecom to use their clout to modernise the law, and Willie and John and their old-fashioned chauvinism can be left for the dustbins of history.