New Zealand's quarterly magazine for and by HIV positive people has been returned to HIV-positive people's support and advocacy groups by its previous publishers, the NZ AIDS Foundation. In recent years Collective Thinking had become a bone of contention with HIV positive people increasingly considering it to be too much under the influence of the NZAF's corporate messages and oversight. The publication came into being in the late 1980s as a way for gay men with HIV, many of whom were dying from the efects of the disease, to share information and support. Its publication, supported by funding from the Ministry of Health, passed to the NZAF when fewer HIV-positive people were available to be involved and its future seemed highly uncertain. In recent times CT became a bone of contention between HIV Positive peoples' support and advocacy groups, which had been strengthened by government grants to help ensure their financial viability and felt capable of assuming responsibility for it, and the NZAF which had seemed reluctant to release it. Body Positive says Colllective Thinking will have complete editorial independence from all HIV-related organisations and entities. The organisations which represent HIV positive people, such as Body Positive itself, will have the right to publish a statement in each issue but content will otherwise be decided by an editor, says BP's general manager Bruce Kilmister. During the last two years the NZAF had made moves towards halting the physical publication of CT and re-creating it into an online entity. Considerable work was understood to have been done in this direction until that project appeared to stall some eighteen months ago. Kilmister says HIV positive people have expressed a "strong desire" for CT to remain a printed periodical and there are now no plans to convert it into a web-based publication. Collective Thinking's transfer back to positive people follows the prior transfer of adminstration and operation of the HIV Positive speakers' Bureau and the Wellness Fund from the NZAF.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Tuesday, 29th May 2012 - 8:18pm