Mazengarb Report Documentary - Transcriptions

Bob Jones on clothing

The fear of anything that was different, you know, any..you see, the bodgie outfit, the teddie boy outfit this sort of thing — it was simply different. There was an absolute male uniform that was worn — you wore grey slacks that were about 24 inches around the bottom. Always with cuffs of course around the bottom. You wore black shoes, grey socks and you wore a jacket or a blazer — West Coast Ballroom Championship 1938 on the thing. And that was the uniform in New Zealand.

And I mean everything was absolutely regimented from clothing and that. And so if anyone did anything different, it was a scandal, it was questions in parliament it was expressions of concern from the pulpit and so on, editorials and that. So all the bodgies and widgies and that, widgies was of course the term for the girl, were in different clothing. I can remember the first pair of stovepipe trousers in Lower Hutt and being in a group of perhaps 50 or 60 kids as we followed this fellow down the street -on High Street on a Friday night, gazing in awe at stovepipe trousers, pointing and laughing and mocking and so on - we were all wearing them of course a few years later and another ten years past and the public servants were wearing them.

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Les Bailey on State Housing and teenagers in the Hutt Valley

Interviewer: Even as late as 1958 when Les Baily was seconded by the Department of Education to begin organising recreational activities for the children of the Hutt Valley, conditions and attitudes had not greatly changed.

Les Bailey: I was looking around that area, I always felt sorry for them in some ways with the predominance of state housing that was put into the district. All you saw was bare lawns, there wasn't a tree growing anywhere, no shrubs, no gardens, no places where kids could play freely, you know? — and there certainly was a lack of playground space. It wasn't a very attractive area at that time.

Sure they had the riverbank, the riverbank in those days wasn't the playing fields that are all there now, there weren't the stop banks in and so on.

Interviewer: This is the Hutt River?

Les Bailey: The Hutt River, yeah, and there was a lot of these pretty scrubby sort of areas down there and I imagine that perhaps that is where some of the Mazengarb report activities — as reported by them — took place.

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Bob Jones on sexual attitudes

The general culture of course was that any sexual activity — or even thinking about it — before marriage was just untenable, and there was certainly never any suggestion of contraception. And of course these were the pre-pill days as well, our sexual activity in those days was more wishful thinking. Oh look, I tell you it was Stalinist! I can recall very vividly sort of hordes of police moving in on the school. And I can recall a couple of pupils were ejected, were expelled and disappeared off the scene.

I subsequently met Australians who had read about this in Australia and had come over here — I'm talking about chaps of about 19 and that — coming over to this sort of sexual festival — this great Mecca, rather like Bangkok, with the plane loads, the jumbo plane loads of Germans coming in there that's been going on in recent years — and of course they probably were bitterly disappointed I imagine.

Nigel Stace on the Mazengarb commission's attitudes to adolescent literature and music

Interviewer: The youngest member of the committee was Nigel Stace, at that time president of the Junior Chamber of Commerce

Nigel Stace: Right from the start of the hearings there was a fairly strong view, from the religious elements in particular, that the problem was wholly caused by salacious books, indecent publications, sexy films, this sort of thing was wholly responsible for all the sexual delinquency. Now that view was adamantly held by that group, represented on the committee.

On the other hand of course all the if you like, the educational, and medical authorities almost ridiculed that view. They pointed out that there was no evidence whatsoever to say that books and films caused sexual depravity.

An incredible number of letters and — simply described as pulp literature — were sent in, I could say in the hundreds. They were piled on the table and members of the committee were invited as far as the books, pamphlets and things, advertisements were concerned, were invited to have a look at them some time. As it fell in my particular sphere I was asked to go through the whole lot and they ranged from newspaper advertisements for corsetry — which incidentally I might add we ruled were not offensive (but some of the people sending them in thought they were) — to just general junk literature, which was badly written, a waste of time — certainly not helpful for people, but I wouldn't have said very harmful�.I think it would be fair to say the covers were the most salacious part of the magazines, the rest you might even say was disappointing...

Interviewer: I understand also that some of the music of the day was causing offence to members of the public?

Nigel Stace: Yes, yes much to the concern of Jack Somerville, the Minister, who found that one of the songs he used to sing in the bath or the shower was considered particularly offensive and sexy — it was called if I remember 'I'll see you in my dreams' — and Jack was horrified to hear that this was a suggestive ditty!

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