1[The Detail] One door opens, another remains closed for blood donors | Fresh blood for our donor service Around 10,000 new donors could flood into the New Zealand Blood Service after a long-standing restriction is lifted. But if another ban is re-visited that number could rise further… As our blood service lifts a restriction that could see an influx of thousands of new donors, it's being urged to have a look at another aspect of its rules that would change things for the gay community. The New Zealand Blood Service has made changes that could bring another 10,000 donors to its doors, but it's stopping short of lifting another ban that would potentially bring many more. People deemed possibly exposed to 'mad cow disease' - or vCJD - will be able to donate from later this year, but a contentious ban remains around men who have sex with men. Today's episode of The Detail looks at both these issues, and a new study that recommends changes. 'Unfair, discriminatory and pretty outdated' Today marks the release of SPOTS (Sex and Prevention of Transmission Study), a new report by the University of Auckland and other organisations. Co-author Associate Professor Peter Saxton tells The Detail it's the largest ever survey of gay and bisexual men in New Zealand. "Over 3200 took part in this particular report and they told us really frank things about their safe-sex behaviours, but also their relationship to blood donation." Saxton explains the current blood donation rules cut out a lot of gay men, because they have to remain abstinent for three months if they want to donate. "Many gay and bisexual men are really interested in donating blood, they feel that the current policy is unfair, it's discriminatory and pretty outdated. "Under the current policy, only 13 per cent or 1 in 8 gay men can donate. But then we looked at other policies overseas - particularly the UK and Canada, they've got slightly different policies - they changed in 2021 and 2022 - they're more liberal." In 2021, the UK changed its rules so everyone who goes to donate blood (not just men who have sex with men) is asked if they've had anal intercourse with more than one partner or with a new partner in the past three months. If they have, they can't donate. Canada's policy is very similar, but has fewer restrictions than the UK. "If we compared the behavioural responses that our participants gave us with those policies - if we were to adopt the UK policy for example - 37 per cent of Kiwis who are gay and bisexual could donate," Saxton says. "I think it's time that New Zealand made its blood donation policy more inclusive. Importantly we can do that and we can do it safely. We urge the Blood Service, and they're a partner in this research, to act swiftly on these results. We know that they want to, they are obviously precautionary and want to make sure that doing so will be safe." The "mad cow" epidemic The Detail also talks to Professor Dave Hayman, an infectious disease ecologist at Massey University, about the risk of mad-cow disease and its impact on blood donations. He co-wrote a piece in the New Zealand Medical Journal about the risk of the human disease from mad-cow, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), being transmitted through blood transfusions. "It causes a very unpleasant, always fatal degenerative brain disease in people. Actually about 10 years after the epidemic in cattle, there was a peak of cases of vCJD in people that probably came because people were eating infected beef from when there was the epidemic in beef." Hayward says there have only ever been three cases linked to blood transfusions and there are currently no known cases in the world - plus he's found the risk in New Zealand would be about one in a billion. "We don't think there's a reliable risk - we can't say there's none." He says New Zealand lost about 10 per cent of its donors after it put this restriction in and believes there could be up to 10,000 more donors when it goes. "It won't necessarily fill their gap, but it will help, and I know about this time last year .... the New Zealand Blood Service urgently needed blood." The Detail asked to speak to the New Zealand Blood Service for this episode, but our request was declined. [Thursday 08 February 2024, 05:00]

2[Sporting Witness] Lamine Gueye: Senegalese skiier The story of the first black African to compete at the Winter Olympics. In 1984, Lamine Gueye of Senegal became the first black African skier to take part in the Winter Olympics. The grandson of a prominent Senegalese politician, Gueye founded his country's ski federation and for a long time was the only member. In 2017, he spoke to Tayo Popoola. A Whistledown Production for BBC World Service. Released on: Saturday 03 February 2024

3[The House] Parliament's new bible Parliament's Clerk has just published a new edition of Parliament's own bible, a vast and fascinating compendium of our democracy - Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand. In Parliament’s debating chamber, sitting at a desk in front of the Speaker presiding, there is always a clerk – a member of Parliament’s secretariat. They are the team that administer the House and its many committees, the brainy worker elves of democracy’s legislature. They are also the experts on all things Parliament. They attend the chamber to take official note of everything that occurs and is agreed, but also to offer expert advice on the many and complex mysteries of parliamenting. Thankfully this knowledge is not part of a hermetic mystery cult, known only to the initiates. It is freely available. The Clerk of the House of Representatives and his staff regularly update Parliament’s very own bible, explaining all the many rules, practices and precedents, in a volume called Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand (PP). More than 700 pages of information about everything from how MPs are chosen (e.g. did you know the Clerk still has your physical election ballots under lock-and-key); through to how MPs can lose their jobs again (yes, MPs can be sacked for a variety of reasons). And everything in between. Without Parliamentary Practice and the clerks’ help MPs would be lost in the byzantine ways of democracy, doomed to blindly stumble through their parliamentary careers making endless mistakes. You might think some do that regardless. Parliament’s bible, Parliamentary Practice has now been updated, with a new 2024 edition published. It is available as a physical volume but can also be found on the Parliament website: in its entirety here (good for searching), or by browsing its many sections here. Last week the new edition had the kind of glitzy launch party that one might only dream about in a cash-crunch – i.e. there was a brief comms email to announce its existence. Heady with imaginary champagne I sat down to chat with its editor, the Clerk of the House of Representatives, David Wilson. He calls Parliament Practice “a really comprehensive guide to how Parliament works” and it is. It’s a weighty tome, but without bumf. It fills a necessary troika with its sister volumes: Standing Orders (Parliament’s procedural rules), and Speakers’ Rulings (Parliament’s compendium of precedent). “[Those volumes] can't incorporate [the] accepted ways of doing things which are not necessarily rules, but might be conventions. They can't give you context either because they simply set things out as they are, whereas the bigger volume can. It can give you context and explanation. And the other really key thing for clerks is the reference back to where the original decision, or convention, or rule came from. So that we can look at that context as well.” David Wilson points out that a ruling made by a Speaker might appear to be relevant to the current need until you note it in its original context and realise “it may or may not apply to the new circumstances you're looking at, it may or may have been very specific to a particular set of circumstances”. That extra information is only possible “in a book that's got a bit more space to, you know, to devote to discussing those things”. One reason that Parliamentary Practice needs to be rewritten regularly is that New Zealand’s Parliament is unusually relaxed about toying with its own rules. David Wilson describes it as “dynamic”. The previous edition was released in 2017 and there have been two momentous sets of changes to how Parliament does things since then. Typically senior MPs sit down and rethink the rules every three years (before each election), but they can also change tack in between those triennial reviews. It’s a lot to keep on top of. “During the term of Parliament, the parliament is willing to change its rules through sessional orders or temporary rules, either to experiment and try something new, or to adapt to changing circumstances as we had to during Covid-19.” In my job as a journalist at Parliament I have needed to refer (sometimes daily) to three different editions of this book. When I began it was still referred to as McGee (for its first editor), and was a densely written tome that, while full of fascinating detail, was also a tough read occasionally in need of hermeneutic teasing. I understand that edition was a huge improvement on its predecessor that I never had inflicted on me. David Wilson and his team rewrote it entirely for the 2017 edition which managed to be both incredibly useful and somehow, surprisingly, also a good read. The 2024 edition is that and more, with much wider information on the workings of Parliament including a lot of new detail on the mysterious ways of Select Committees. The text is more digestible and referenceable, having been sieved into hundreds of usefully numbered subheadings. And it is still a fascinating read. How could it not be, Parliament is interestingly strange. Thankfully there is still an extensive contents section (seven dense pages), a vast index (40 pages worth), a list of referenced court decisions (5 pages), and of statutes and instruments (11 pages). That’s all on top of many hundreds of footnotes. You can tell it is a working volume for clerks who need to be able to quickly find and cross-reference details about the workings of this living organism. But it is also an incredibly useful reference volume for everyone wondering or needing to know how Parliament functions, from students to public service workers. It’s well worth a deep browse. So grab a glass of port; pull up a deeply uncomfortable parliamentary Chesterfield and settle in for a read. A warning though: there's no fireside denouement at the end. It's not really a mystery. We already know it was the Clerk what did it. [Sunday 11 February 2024, 07:30]