Errata

I am compelled to bring to your attention some of a number of factual errors in John McDonald's open letter in the last issue of Salient. This letter contains three issues which affect me directly.

Firstly the matter of the lease of the Kelburn Park Pavilion to the Sports Council. John McDonald in his manifesto promised that student clubs would all be able to use the facilities free of charge, he would instruct the Sports Officer to this affect. An admirable sentiment except that he as President can't issue such instructions; only SRC and the Executive can. Furthermore, as the lease is being taken by Sports Council it is a decision to be also made by Sports Council. It would appear, therefore that John McDonald did not enquire as to the nature of the lease negotiations and the respective powers of the parties involved. Moreover this promise ignores the financial burdens being imposed upon the cricket, hockey and soccer clubs in raising funds for the pavilion.

I was asked by the executive to negotiate the lease of the pavilion and I am still involved in this. When I took an agreement negotiated between myself and the sports clubs involved to the executive for its approval prior to taking this agreement to Sports Committee John McDonald appeared to be not very interested and spent his time perusing other documents. When I pointed out a particular clause which involved other sports clubs sharing the cost of the pavilion McDonald would not discuss the matter but wanted the matter deferred despite the urgency of finalising the matter. The terms of the agreement were not 'a list of half the terms of the lease' as McDonald slated in his letter. This claim is either a deliberate lie or the product of a grossly faulty memory. The executive had before it a list of terms which I had negotiated and I was seeking approval from the executive to incorporate them into the lease. The completed deeds of lease will be seen by the executive before being signed by Sports Council members. Thus the executive will have presented to it a lease the terms of which they had always been aware of and given approval to. John McDonald did not attempt to amend the lease terms at all.

The second issue which affects me is John's correspondence. I proposed a motion at the AGM which criticised the activities of Professor Quentin Baxter in helping to sabotage the Paris Peace Accords in Geneva during March this year. Quentin-Baxter as a New Zealand delegate voted against the PRG's inclusion in a conference to redraft the Geneva Accords on prisoners of war. McDonald's efforts to action this motion was about as unenthusiastic as Quentin-Baxter's support of the PRG. Despite the aid I gave John in providing a Salient article I had written on the matter he wrote an absurd letter comprising almost exclusively disconnected questions and adding such pearls as "students in general feel that it is, unfortunate perhaps, but nevertheless deployable (sic) that a respected academic from the Law Faculty with a deep understanding of international law, compromise or ignore his understanding of the Paris Peace Agreement to the whims of any Government." There were only two other original sentences in the letter, one which churned that New Zealand is a part to the Agreement (which it isn't). I questioned McDonald later on this and he weakly replied that David Tripe must have told him this when he helped him write his last letter on the PRG. John McDonald's problem is that he does try to write his own letters, not that he doesn't.

My third concern is his claiming that I am Dyana Forde. I am not — I did not write those letters. The identity of the writer is unimportant, the charges are not. I would suggest that McDonald is trying to attach me to Dyana Forde's letters in Salient as a crude method of bolstering his rapidly crumbling credibility.

Don Carson

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