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(Photo: Dylan Cook/ Additional design: Tina Tiller)
(Photo: Dylan Cook/ Additional design: Tina Tiller)

SocietyAugust 17, 2022

The promoters using RATs to help protect the dance floor

(Photo: Dylan Cook/ Additional design: Tina Tiller)
(Photo: Dylan Cook/ Additional design: Tina Tiller)

Despite being an effective way to minimise risk, requiring a negative Covid test as a condition of entry hasn’t been widely adopted at local events. The group behind some of Auckland’s best parties hopes to change that.

Making the rave safer has always been central to the way Friendly Potential operates. 

For the last eight years, the DJ collective has created some of the most-highly regarded dance parties and festivals in Auckland, luring some of the world’s most iconic dance music acts to Aotearoa – names like electronic pioneer Richie Hawtin, Detroit treasure Marcellus Pittman, and Siberian techno queen Nina Kraviz – all while producing popular weekly radio shows on Auckland’s bFM and Dunedin’s Radio One. 

Their live events are also dependably some of the safest and most inclusive parties in the city. Since their inception, Friendly Potential have been known for their firm focus on safer spaces through a no compromise policy on violence or harassment.

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“The most important thing at our shows is the music and the quality of that music,” says Friendly Potential’s Scarlett Lauren. “The quality of the experience is going to be hampered by someone feeling unsafe.”

And in the midst of the pandemic, the group has also had to grapple with how to make dance parties, an inherently high-risk environment for transmission, Covid-safe. 

Since the start of the year, the group has hosted three club nights. The latter of the two, at Auckland venues Galatos and Neck of the Woods, made negative rapid antigen tests (RATs) a condition of entry. They’re potentially the only high-profile local dance organisers with such a requirement.

An antigen test (rapid test device) showing a negative result (Photo: Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images)

London-based Friendly Potential member Tom McGuinness was the main driver behind the decision to require negative tests. “Obviously, the UK was a fucking mess with [Covid-19] for a long time,” he says. But that situation meant it became normal for negative tests as a condition of entry to clubs and events. After discussions, the group agreed to introduce the pre-testing system at their events, and despite initial concerns around logistics, they say so far it’s run smoothly.

So how does the system work? At the time of ticket sale, the terms and conditions state that a negative RAT, taken less than 48 hours prior to the event, will be needed on entry. Ahead of the event, the group sends emails and advertises on social media to remind people of the testing requirement. At the door, attendees show a time-stamped photo on their phone of their negative RAT beside their photo ID. If you end up testing positive and can’t attend, the group will refund your tickets. 

“This is the way it worked for a lot of clubs in London too,” McGuinness says. “It’s not foolproof, but it’s at least a harm minimisation.” There are plenty of ways attendees could cheat the system, but the group trusts the people who attend their shows to do the right thing. “With our crowd, and the values that we’ve instilled, we would like to think that people would be honest,” says Lauren.

Hours of dancing inside a subterranean space with hundreds of others poses a pretty real risk of Covid-19 transmission, so both McGuinness and Lauren view testing as a pragmatic means to mitigate that for themselves, their guests, their community and the artists they host. “These artists have had two years of no income,” says McGuinness, “so we don’t want them to come to our party at the start of an eight gig run, where they’re making their first income in months, and then suddenly they get sick and can’t play.”

Catacombs, the Friendly Potential event in the Wintergarden. (Photo: Dylan Cook)

At their first party with the testing as a condition of entry, one guest tested positive at the door. It underscored the importance of the requirement for the group. “This is why we do what we do, because we’d just prevented a person from entering our venue with Covid-19,” says Lauren.

They’re not worried about being the odd ones out on the scene with their mandatory testing. “It doesn’t really matter,” says Lauren. “We should be ahead of the game and that’s always transpired in a lot of our policies, we often do things slightly earlier than others, and other people tend to adopt them”. What they do hope is that by seeing a small and relatively underground group like themselves successfully manage the testing requirements, it might encourage other promoters and event organisers to do the same. 

Professor of public health at the University of Otago Michael Baker says that even with lower numbers of Covid-19 in the community, “if you’ve got a gathering of 100 people, you’ve got about a 40% chance that someone will have [Covid].” And the risk of transmission is heightened if the event is confined, crowded, and close contact, “which is pretty much the desired arrangement for social events,” he adds.

Knowing this, testing requirements are a helpful tool for club environments, especially if ventilation and masking are less viable options. Emphasising testing ahead of events is especially useful for two reasons, Baker explains. The first is that testing “reduces the probability that the people in the room are infectious”, and the second is that it “raises awareness that you shouldn’t go to things if you have symptoms”.

While we seem to be in a period of abating Covid-19 infections, likely due to temporary post-infection immunity, “the more that people do this, the more that we’ll keep a lid on transmission and we’ll keep numbers down,” he says. “That’s a service to people [going to the event] and it’s a service to the wider community.” 

Friendly Potential’s Covid-19 protocol information for their upcoming September event. (Image: Supplied)

Friendly Potential’s next dance party is in September, with three more planned for the rest of the year, and they plan to keep the testing requirements up. “It will be an interesting one, when it comes to festival season,” says McGuinness. Next year, in March, their open-air dance festival Beacon will return to the Auckland waterfront. Although McGuinness reckons they’ll still be able to manage with the thousands that turn up, their decision to continue testing will depend largely on “where New Zealand’s at with this stuff – it’s one of those things that we have to constantly reassess”.

“It’s really important to us that people feel comfortable,” says Lauren. Just as they’ve always done, the group is doing whatever they can to reduce harm and keep the focus on the music. “Life’s hard enough as it is, the least you can do is go to a party, and just dance your ass off, safe from bullshit as much as possible.”

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OPINIONSocietyAugust 17, 2022

Christopher Luxon wants disabled people working – but it will take more than threats

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We have normalised the invisibility of disabled people in New Zealand. Massive disabled unemployment is the result, writes Jonathan Mosen.

For the first time that I can recall, the disability employment crisis headlined the TV news, when Newshub led with it last Saturday evening. I celebrate that, and thank Christopher Luxon. His comments — about disabled being subject to benefit sanctions if they were capable of working but refused to work with a job coach — have started a long overdue conversation.

For disabled people, things are grim. Almost half — 48% of us — are not in employment, education or training. This is an invisible epidemic, largely ignored by all of our country’s decision-makers, which deserves time and attention. Over a million New Zealanders (24% of the population) identify as disabled, this means that almost 500,000 people are not currently employed, being trained or educated.

Disabled people seek the mana, economic independence and sense of participation that comes from having a job, just like everyone else, but there is also a powerful economic argument for addressing this crisis. If we assume a median income of $40,000 and if disabled people had the same unemployment rate as non-disabled people, there would be half a billion dollars in additional tax revenue.

So why aren’t we hearing about this unacceptable statistic in our news bulletins regularly, until every political party has a clear action plan to address it?

I believe it is because we have normalised the invisibility of disabled people. 

New Zealand does not have high hopes or expectations for us. Systemic barriers, medicalised models and negative stereotypes about disability have all contributed to a belief that disabled people have nothing to offer or are a burden on a non-disabled society; you don’t imagine us as your bus drivers, butchers or lawyers, because you’re taught to minimise us. Because of this you’re not surprised when you don’t see us in your offices, lunchrooms or next to you at the meeting room table. Nobody asks where we are. 

As chief executive of Aotearoa’s largest disability employment agency, Workbridge, I understand and am fully connected with the need to get more people into work. I’m disabled myself, so this isn’t just what I do for a living, it’s my passion and my calling.

Workbridge already offers the kind of job coaching it appears National has in mind. We would be delighted to have more flexible funding arrangements, where we can work with disabled people to provide the programmes they need, not the highly prescriptive arrangements the government thinks are best.

There is so much room for National to offer something truly thoughtful and helpful. The government has diluted the self-determination of disabled people by being very specific about what it will and won’t purchase from agencies like Workbridge. Training, for example, is not a valid outcome for our current government contract for disability employment services, despite training being the start of the pipeline and the statistics showing that training is very much needed. 

I believe that everyone who can be should be empowered with the opportunity to meaningfully contribute, which appears to be what National is saying. I agree with Mr Luxon that this doesn’t always look like paid employment; sometimes it looks like studying, training or having your lived experience recognised as part of your qualifications.  

Sadly, the opportunity to have a thoughtful, inclusive conversation about positive social investment has been squandered by the offering up of red (or is it blue?) meat to the base with his comments about benefit sanctions. Are there people who haven’t made any effort to contribute? I doubt there are many. Are there disabled people who are refusing to contribute when they could? Probably, but context is key.

In my work, I regularly hear of people who have applied for literally hundreds of jobs before an employer will give them a break. My team often reminds disabled people that there’s only one thing that’s certain, the job you won’t get is the job you don’t apply for. But even the most resilient of people have their limits. If you’re keen, you’re capable, but you’re still finding it hard to get a fair go, you still get to the point where you just can’t stomach one more rejection. We must address those fundamentals and we must do it urgently.

So looking at this through a right-of-centre lens, where should the priority be for investment? It should be investing in a breaking down of barriers. The first set of these barriers is attitudinal. They can be substantially reduced through a concentrated public education campaign for the country in general, and targeted programmes for hiring managers. Workbridge has sought to be a part of the solution, setting up a new business talking the language of business to business called “Just Say Yes,” which seeks to debunk the myths many employers have about disabled people. I want to be clear that I don’t blame those employers for feeling cautious. Most businesses are small businesses, and their operators have put their heart and soul into their sustainability. It’s going to take patience and education to help many to realise that hiring disabled people isn’t the risk they think it is, in fact there may be advantages.

‘Become a member and help us keep local, independent journalism thriving.’
Alice Neville
— Deputy editor

The next set of barriers is physical and technological. Disabled people face numerous accessibility challenges that are completely fixable, ranging from transportation to poorly designed buildings to inaccessible technology.

It’s little wonder that, faced with these real frustrations while desperate for work, many disabled people are not impressed with the superficial comments on the issue coming from National. How did National score such an avoidable own-goal when they could have made a serious play for the disability vote? We are a quarter of the population after all. It’s in no small part because they, along with every other political party in this country, haven’t done the internal investment necessary. National has been talking a lot lately about the need to diversify their MPs. That must include disabled people. If disabled people aren’t in the caucus room and around the cabinet table, all political parties will remain out of touch, leaving a large constituency feeling alienated and ignored. Our House of Representatives can hardly be said to be representative when it comes to disabled people.

Now that this critical conversation has started, let’s not have it stop. The election is a year away. There is still time for a suite of measures that, in the spirit of social investment, recognises the underlying causes of our disability employment crisis and makes bold plans to fix them. We should expect no less, morally and politically. Acknowledging our ability to work is a great start, but punishing people who may have had one rejection too many and have given up is not a compassionate or fair solution.


Listen to Jonathan Mosen on Business is Boring with Simon Pound:

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