Registered Charity with the Charities Commission
The Society for Promotion of Community Standards Inc. [SPCS] is registered as a “charitable entity” with the Charities Commission (Reg. no. CC 20268), under the Charities Act 2005. See www.charities.govt.nz
It is a non-profit organisation and all of its seven objects have been constituted with the express intent of serving “charitable purposes”: matters beneficial to the community (see separate homepage entry “Objects”). The Society has a wide range of financial members throughout the country (see separate entry under “Membership”).
Incorporated Society
The Society [SPCS] was registered as an Incorporated Society [No. 217833] on 25 September 1975, under the Incorporated Societies Act 1908. See www.societies.govt.nz
Donee Organisation:
The Society is listed as a donee organisation on the Inland Revenue Department website (http://www.ird.govt.nz).
The achievements of the Society covering the years 1970-1995 are well- documented in the book A Stand for Decency (216 pp.) by Carolyn Moynihan, published by the Society in 1995 (ISBN 0-473-03340-2). A copy of this book can be purchased from the Society for $25.00 + P&P of $5.00. To place an order please contact us (spcs.org@gmail.com) and send us a cheque for $30.00 written out to SPCS (use full organisation name) and send to P.O. Box 13-683 Johnsonville 6440.
The Society was founded in 1970. Patricia Bartlett (1928-2000), Founder and first National Secretary-Director of the Society (1970-1995), was awarded an O.B.E. in 1977 for her services to the Society. Her citation recognised her tireless and dedicated work to the Society in serving “the public good,” a commendation that publicly recognised the charitable purposes for which the Society had been established.
The current leadership of the Society as at 10 December 2014 includes John Mills (President), David Lane (Executive Director), M.Sc. (Hons), Dip.Tchg, Executive Members: David Wilson, M.Sc. (Hons), Dip.Tchg., Tony McCall BEd, M.Ed. Admin. All were last elected to the executive at the Society’s 2015 AGM.
National Patrons of the Society have included:
Right Reverend. E.A. Gowing, MA (Bishop of Auckland) 1971-1980
Professor Emeritus E. Blaiklock, MA, D.Litt, OBE. 1971-1983
Sir Dove Meyer Robinson 1971-1976
Sir Charles Burns, KBE, MD, FRCP, FRACP 1973-1984
Commissioner Sir Dean Goffin, KBE (Salvation Army) 1982-1983
Colonel D.H. Campbell (Salvation Army) 1984-1987
Mr T.J. Young LLB., QSO., 1987 – 1995
Sir Desmond Sullivan, KB, LLB 1987-
Sir John Kennedy-Good, KBE, QSO 1984-2005
Marilyn Pryor until 2005
Professor T.V. O’Donnell, MD, FRACP, CBE 1987 – 21 April 2008
National Presidents have included:
Mr Kevin O’Hagan
Mr H.T. Robinson
Mr Trevor Young, LLB., QSO
Mr Joe Aspell, MBE
Mr J.N.L. Searle AE, B.Com, FCA
Rev, Gordon Dempsey, BA, L.Th., Dip. Tchg. JP
Dr David L. Hutchison, ME, Ph.D., FIPENZ
Mr Nick Thomas
Mr Mike Petrus MA., Dip. Tchg.
Graham Fox BA
John Mills
Presidential Report: AGM 31 January 2011
John Mills – President
Some Reflections on 2010
Achievements:
The year 2010 has been another year of non-stop activity for the executive and our supporting members. The efforts we had hoped to make to achieve growth in membership numbers have had to take a back seat in favour of the furious action required to address a number of critical issues involving attacks on the integrity of the Society. We enjoyed help from friends in strategic professions during these battles which has given us a lot of added potential for achieving our goals, the chief of which is the Promotion and upholding of Community Standards.
We are very proud of our success in raising the finance needed to allow us to place some 900 Pilgrim’s Progress books into prisons throughout New Zealand. In some cases where they have been snapped up and read, prisoners are already requesting the companion volume (part 2) of the book.
The Society has directly raised $7,232 over just three months in 2010, for this project. $4,950 was paid out in 2010 year to purchase and supply about 500 copies of The Pilgrim’s Progress to prisoners in every prison throughout the country. Another $1,000 was paid out in early January to supply 100 more copies and the remaining $1,252 will be used shortly to supply additional copies.
The Pilgrim’s Progress is a powerful tool to influence and inspire those who have transgressed the law and are serving time where they are given the opportunity to make choices for change in their lives, choices that could result in them eventually becoming productive and valued members of the community and the upholders of good Community Standards.
Much effort has been expended in our on-going inquiries into the effects, promotion, and funding of pornography in New Zealand, as we reported on concerning our intentions at the last AGM. We exchanged information as we had expected to, with many officials who have helped us in our efforts to shine the spotlight on non-compliance issues and these officials were surprised and grateful for our input and support. This has enhanced their effectiveness in enforcing the regulatory statutes and is ongoing. However, we still feel that we have only just touched the tip of the iceberg in unravelling a tangled web of deceit. Officials are also obligated to respond to complaints made against us and as a result of our actions and successes a number of retaliatory complaints have indeed been laid against SPCS involving allegations that have had to be responded to.
The SPCS executive was involved in providing critical research information to the leadership of the New Plymouth RSA which assisted them in an all-stops- out battle to gain back control of their clubrooms, part of which had been ear-marked by developers for conversion into an in-house brothel.
What’s happening now?
The remits for this AGM, which have all been overwhelmingly supported in postal vote responses by our members, involve proposed changes to our current objectives, as listed in our current Society’s Constitution. These changes are needed, we believe, because battles fought previously on moral grounds, have been largely lost over recent years. These defeats are due in part to social engineering and adaptations to legislation brought in over the years, legalising and removing restraints from practices which were then and still are now, considered to be destructive to good community standards. To more effectively uphold these standards we need to adjust and broaden the scope of our definition of the moral disorder and collapse so prevalent in society.
We are learning to adapt to the new environment by turning the search light on some entrepreneurial business profiteers of vice and the fallen state of our increasingly morally corrupt society. In researching the funding of the porn industry we made a number of public record searches into businesses and practices. We discovered that a number of these entrepreneurs appear to be attempting to stay hidden and do so by throwing up ‘smoke screens and false trails’ Relating to non-compliance matters.
We believe that society at large is still morally conservative, as evidenced by the massive opposition vote against the decriminalisation of prostitution. We have found that most people are uncomfortable with being linked with prostitution for example, despite the recently introduced legislative changes.
In making official complaints to enforcement agencies and publishing of our findings on the SPCS website, a number of people with connections to the hardcore porn industry scurried for cover. As such agencies focus their spot light on the ‘industry’ its key players and their business practices are brought into sharp relief. They are exposed as those who turn a blind eye to moral concerns and community standards. Their claimed ‘defence’ is that porn is a “perfectly legal business” and “harms no-one”.
Those who claim to be involved in porn merely as “investors” find it embarrassing to be connected with those, who blatantly strut their stuff in our streets and televisions, foisting hardcore porn onto the public at large, and all the while benefiting from the bravado, infamy and reputation they achieve through this showmanship. Having been exposed to public view, we found some of those investors are prepared to resort to slander, malice, false accusations, and defamation – using such tactics against the SPCS because of the threat they perceive that we have become to their business empires.
What can we do?
The measures available to us to promote good community standards are those that the law still upholds. I am speaking of truth and accurate reporting. We are fortunate in New Zealand to still have laws in place that are not so watered down and politically correct that the enforcement officers can say like Pontius Pilate “what is truth?” or “truth is as you behold it to be”. In contrast other societies have become so corrupt that without resorting to a bribe or being connected to someone on the inside, there is no hope for justice whatsoever. And while we still retain the benefits of a Judeo-Christian ethical framework in our country, one that recognizes “ultimate truth” – as represented in the Law – we therefore still possess the means to hold morally corrupt members of our community to truthful account when they transgress that law.
It needs to be noted that Islamic Sharia Law, which is gaining a foothold in western countries and is heavily influenced by the prophet Mohammed – requires its adherents, as instructed by the Prophet, to “deceive the enemy (infidels) until you become powerful enough to destroy them”.
The more that legislation deviates from the framework derived from “ultimate truth”, the less ability western societies possess to hold violators to truthful account. And I believe that if society’s moral standards are allowed to continue to decline, the loudest and shrillest voices of the morally corrupt will force us down a path to no law at all which will then set the stage for a diabolical regime to emerge and impose on all citizens it’s “own truth”.
The Cost:
In the past few months, members of the executive have experienced a backlash from those the SPCS would hold to account. This has involved public slander, theft of personal documents, threatening letters and false complaints to official entities.
Some have argued that this backlash is self-inflicted. However, such explanations generally come from those who have never felt called to challenge corrupt practices, or from officials who have become hardened and so discouraged because of the overwhelming odds against their effective intervention, that they have just given up.
Turning back the tide:
Those who seek to build financial empires by feeding off moral corruption, which because of it’s very nature must keep pushing the moral boundaries further and further to achieve the shock value that lures vulnerable recruits into moral vices; seek to guarantee saleability based on behaviour that has proved to be unwholesome and widely recognised as “injurious to the public good” Many examples can be given of moral vices that lead to sexual addictions, unfaithfulness in marriage and the consequent destruction of loving relationships built on trust.
Our ‘fight’ is with those who are perpetually engaged in forcing back the moral boundaries, never satisfied with the freedoms they have gained and who seek to profit from their activities at the expense of the communities’ right not to be intimidated by offensive content foisted on them in public places. Whether on street parades, via images of hardcore porn in the local dairy, or via live sex shows broadcast on television during family viewing times; porn entrepreneurs, some with multiple convictions for distributing objectionable content, don’t give a toss for public sensibilities.
Last year the ‘justification’ one such leading pornographer gave in his media release for his highly publicised public giveaways of free hardcore sex DVD vouchers was based on his spurious claim that “it provides an antidote to rape”. Such absurd ‘arguments’ renders such persons virtually impossible to reason with.
Up to this point in dealing with these entrepreneur businessmen, we have not offered a ‘way out’ to them nor even attempted to strike a compromise position. I do not see this as our permanent position and hope someday to work with those who may be adversaries now, in the hope of negotiating behaviour more respectful of the conservative majority.
Let’s not lose hope:
The challenge to us is to behave in a way that focuses on the issues and not be personally outraged by the retaliatory actions perpetrated against us such as the use of pornography as a weapon, but to handle the business in a calm and professional manner that helps all who witness our activities to view us as having credibility.
All our correspondence, spoken or otherwise, must be marked by grace, so that we never lose sight of the fact that “those things which are whispered in the inner rooms shall be shouted from the housetops”. Additionally, we must not forget that the members of our opposition, at the end of the day, do possess the same humanity as ourselves and therefore are deserving of the opportunity to turn onto a more moderate pathway in their lives. ——- Let’s stick to the issues and play the ball, not the man unless of course the man has possession of the ball!
For the Society to achieve its objectives and complete the challenging work it has embarked on, there is an urgent need for fresh and significant funding from both members and new sources. We are on the verge of a number of significant breakthroughs in our investigations as outlined and we believe that our “valuable witness for community standards”, as one recent elderly donor put it, must be maintained and expanded. To do this we need your help urgently.
Finally, I wish to thank all our members, supporters and executive members for their valiant efforts during 2010 to advance the cause and mission of the Society. Your financial support, time investment and prayers have been greatly appreciated. We have a great team.
Again let’s play the ball hard, not the man.