TV Review

My TV review is posted up over at The Daily Blog.  This week on Border Patrol: No-one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

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It seems – thanks to the evidence uncovered by TVNZ’s Border Patrol programme – that the molestation, profiling and general humiliation and harassment of travellers is what is to be expected at New Zealand’s border. The dignity of the person – once a cornerstone of international travel treaties has long since been submerged in the water-boarding tank of security paranoia. The traveller is expected to tolerate dogs randomly lunging and sniffing them and customs officers wantonly conducting intrusive searches and interrogation, and tests. Biosecurity becomes a weapon in the quest for revenue and panic. Infractions are plentiful, fines are punitive, enforcement is inflexible. What a pointlessly bitter, expensive start to so many people’s experience of the country: they haven’t been educated so much as they have been punished.

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