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The Mystery Road | Mar 12, 2004 11:44
The more I look at John Banks' massive Eastern Transport Corridor, the more I think that it's not actually going to happen. For a start, it seems less clear with each passing day where the money is going to come from.
The project got a very enthusiastic thumbs up in a Herald editorial yesterday, but in the same paper the mystery was deepening. Approached for comment on the consultants' prediction that 80% of the cost will fall on Auckland City ratepayers (that is, the people who get least economic benefit from it all), John Banks chirpily declared that ratepayers would barely have to open their purses at all.
There would be a toll of, um, er, $5 - no, make that $2.50. But anyway, the government would come sailing in to pick up the tab - on top of the $6.5 billion it's already budgeted for new roading work in the Auckland region. Somehow, I don't think so. There was a little discussion of this on our rugby mailing list yesterday, and a certain Southern belle ventured what I strongly suspect will be the attitude of most taxpayers outside Auckland: piss off.
South Islanders will be thinking, she pointed out, of all those single-lane bridges on the state highways to the West Coast and Nelson, which have to be negotiated by big logging trucks. Wellingtonians will be thinking about Transmission Gully. And North Shore residents have not yet begun to get up in arms about Banks' proposal to reintroduce tolls to the Auckland Harbour Bridge after 20 years. Any government will confront that lot at its own peril.
So while I think there will be some sort of expressway built along the proposed route some day, this grandiose proposal, with its half-billion dollar tunnel to ease the nerves of the wealthy folk of Parnell, won't be it.
That's not Banks' problem of course. This, and his unexpected offer to buy the $400 million stretch of waterfront being thoughtlessly flicked off by Ports of Auckland (meaning, as things stand, a bidding war with the Royal Yacht Squadron's syndicate) are chiefly about Banks' raging ego and his desire to be re-elected as mayor. His astonishing comparison of himself with Sir John Logan Campbell (who gifted land that he owned to the people of Auckland, rather than spending their money on it) was testament to that. I do think the waterfront land has to be saved in some way, but I don't think the mayor's motives for doing so are as pure as he likes to pretend.
According to last week's NBR, Bill Ralston declared Mediawatch's interviews on TVNZ's coverage of the departed Sri Lankan girl a "disgrace", and questioned the credentials of the programme's hosts - that'll be - to comment on the media. How odd. Last time I saw Bill he told me how well the programme was going and enquired as to whether I was currently doing any TV work. Guess that's my big shot at a guest slot on Tonight gone then …
Anyway, the interview with Sri Lankan Community spokesman Dr Upali Manu and Parliamentary press officer Ted Sheehan is here. Stuff has since quoted Sri Lankan child protection authorities, who have accused the New Zealand media of exploiting the girl's case for commercial gain.
There's also a transcript of last week's interview with Hugh Rennie QC about his old friend, the late Warren Berryman.
A Hard News reader returning to New Zealand asked me a couple of weeks ago about the availability of TiVo here. Officially, it's not available. But if you simply must have a DVR, it can be done. I wrote about New Zealand's TiVo pioneers in my Listener column this week. They're a small but helpful bunch, and there's a lot of useful information on the NZ TiVo site. I'm hoping to have a dabble in my own home in the next couple of weeks, so I'll let you know how it goes.
Out of the cart? | Mar 11, 2004 11:55
It has gone curiously unremarked in the media that the Business Roundtable has warmly praised the submission from the Treaty Tribes Coalition on the foreshore and seabed issue. To its credit, the BRT is being consistent. Whatever its faults, it is founded in a bedrock of respect for property rights.
In its release on the issue, Roger Kerr even has an unsubtle poke at National, concluding: "Parties which support one rule of law for all New Zealanders ought to be particularly sympathetic to the Coalition's approach."
Stephen Franks also praised the Coalition's submission as an "inspiring document". So what's it say? I couldn't find a full copy online, but the gist of it appears to be: let it go to the courts. Kerr sums it up thus:
In a submission on the issue in October 2003, the Business Roundtable said that the court process should be allowed to run because "[i]t is the proper role of the courts to establish the nature and extent of Maori customary rights". The submission argued that "existing private rights to the foreshore and seabed, including legitimate Maori customary rights to title (if any) and lesser common law rights" should be upheld. If the court process resulted in outcomes which the government judged were not in the public interest, it should intervene at that point and consider compensation for any takings of established property rights.
So there would still, in the end, need to be a political solution (and I don't think the political solution currently proposed is actually that bad) but it would be one made in a more informed and, one would hope, less political context. There are no doubt a few people in government wishing that they could start over and take this very path, but whether it is now politically possible is another matter.
It's a bit rich for Franks to be doling out the warm fuzzies now, though. Although Act appears to have settled on a policy not that far from what the Coalition proposes, the party had a significant role in the panic-mongering that followed the original Court of Appeal decision.
Back in August, I noted the various and conflicting policies Act MPs appeared to be simultaneously advancing. At the time, Franks' position could hardly have been further from what it is now. He was offering Act's votes to the government if it would legislate to confirm the foreshores in Crown ownership.
As recently as December, he was demanding a government rethink to the effect that: "All seabed and foreshore not under existing private title, Maori and Pakeha, will be confirmed in Crown ownership, and the Court of Appeal's activist decision will be reversed, to restore the law that had applied for the previous hundred years."
The tune is quite different now. But everyone made their mistakes - remember that the-sky-is-falling Herald editorial in the wake of the Appeal Court decision? The coverage given to the ignorant bluster of the Marlborough mayor? Certainly, governments aren't supposed to hyperventilate the way Labour did, but it was under enormous pressure to reassure a public that, as we now quite clearly know, was about to go off the scale of antsiness.
With National apparently happy to pour away its intellectual honesty, I think Act has a useful role to play here. It should rein in its idiot fringe (you know who I mean), make a genuine, public, good-faith offer to support the government if it was to explore a path similar to that endorsed by Treaty Tribes and the BRT (perhaps even keeping the key elements of its current proposal, but as a matter for negotiation after the courts have clarified matters). Then Act should defend the government from the backlash, and encourage the BRT and similar groups to do the same. Would that get Labour out of the cart? Possibly. It might also get the country out of the cart. Just a thought.
Anyway, I continue to be reassured by the quality of thought from Hard News readers on the Treaty scare. A source who preferred not to be named had some comment on the participation of Maori in Institutional Biological Safety Committee, raised by Bart Janssen yesterday. The aim isn't, this person said, simply to have a Maori rubber stamp for research, but to actually develop knowledge and understanding of science in the Maori community. They also claimed that before the new IBSC system was developed, there had been some worryingly loose practices around research into native flora and fauna.
Reader Danny Butt also took issue with Bart:
As someone who has spent a fair bit of time on institutional research committees, I have to disagree strongly with Bart Janssen, while admiring his typically scientific way of confidently presenting perspectives as "facts".
Bart sees research in a framework that science historians call positivism. It sees research as about solving problems in science, and takes the benefit for society as something which is either self-evident, or at least something which scientists should be able to decide because of their scientific knowledge.
There is a longer argument that I won't bore you with about how science isn't as disinterested as it makes out (look for the work of Bruno Latour if you want to follow that up). But more importantly, at some unspecified time (commonly linked to nuclear physics :7), it became clear even to governments that scientists weren't the only people affected by scientific research. So there are a wider range of stakeholders in the benefits of scientific research, and that ethics always includes more than what happens in the lab.
Maori are included in the research ethics process, as they are in most other publicly-supported processes, because the government is legally bound under the Treaty to uphold Maori governance (the Pakeha version) or sovereignty (the Maori version) over any resources which are not specifically sold to the Crown. Even ignoring the legality, which I'll do because I'm not a lawyer, the Treaty is about two people with separate cultures who are stakeholders in what happens in New Zealand. The obvious argument for Maori representation on ethics committees is that they promote consideration of what research means for Maori development and Maori culture in a way which can't happen when they are not present.
The impact of not taking Maori perspectives into account is particularly crucial in the contemporary science environment where increasingly complex intellectual property agreements surround research results and their dissemination. Both institutions and private companies make a lot of money off these, and if it's to the exclusion of Maori development then it's wrong and probably illegal in the larger scheme of things, and likely to come back and bite researchers on the arse down the track. Researchers need to stop thinking about Maori as people they need to "consult" with to "gain consent" and start realising that Maori have a hell of a lot of knowledge about what it means to live here and that knowledge is at least as important as the stuff we circulate in our European scientific journals. Working with Maori isn't doing the housework, it's an opportunity.
Further feedback also on Welly: I am assured by a number of readers that Petone is indeed trendy.
And the best of the foreign press: on Salon, a high-ranking military officer spills, big-time, on what it was really like in US Department of Defense before the Iraq war. Everything you thought, but worse.
The Corridor | Mar 10, 2004 10:05
I find it a little difficult to consider the proposed $4 billion Eastern Transport Corridor for Auckland without wondering what's in it for me, as an Auckland City ratepayer. The project seems likely to deliver vastly increased traffic volumes to a part of greater Auckland where I do go, and economic benefits to parts where I don't.
Certainly, major new roads do tend eventually to go from the protest phase to being indispensable. They're easy to oppose before they exist, and easy to use when they do. And there is, in the set of options presented yesterday, a new and substantial public transport component (John Banks' fantasy tunnel under the harbour appears to have disappeared back into his fevered imagination).
But, even assuming that the budget holds through years of consent and construction (and it's already eight times greater then when the plan was launched 18 months ago), this thing is unprecedented in scale. It will account for more than half of the future transport spending for the entire region. When Wellington still can't get $260 million for Transmission Gully, it does seem bizarre.
I do wish Auckland regional authorities could think about putting even a fraction of the billions proposed here into perhaps actually reducing the number of daily journeys required to keep the economy turning over. Where's a matching vision for Auckland's telecommunications infrastructure? I can't help but think of the kind of network $4 billion would buy.
Still, at least people from Howick will find it easier to get to the forthcoming downtown indoor stadium. Which is, of course, being wholly funded out of my rates, and not theirs ...
Don Brash last Thursday: the general public was "relieved that at last this issue was being put back on the table for debate." Don Brash yesterday: the public "[doesn't] want to debate that". So we had the debate? Crikey! Who won? Will it be on TV later?
Matters arising from Brash II: Kim Griggs, the author of the story on the kaumatua and the frogs that I linked to on Monday (and also a respected science and technology writer for Wired, among others) got in touch with some further comment:
At the time, I found McCully's comments outrageous given that many government organisations pay for the travel of key stakeholders when they consider it is warranted. You, no doubt, have your own examples, but one I always use is this.
In 2001, when I went to Antarctica (yes, a taxpayer-funded media trip) one of the DVs (distinguished visitors) on that trip was Stephen Tindall. (I'd posit that his 5-day journey to Antarctica cost the taxpayer far more than $2500; in fact the helicopter trip he and his group took, like the one my group took, probably cost more than that.)
Now I'm definitely not knocking Antarctica New Zealand's programme - as I think all DVs (and everyone else who goes there) - become important ambassadors for New Zealand's work in Antarctica and I'm sure that includes Stephen Tindall.
But of course there was no great business reason for Stephen to go there - he's not about to cut open a Red Shed near Scott Base.
Rather, the invitation from Antarctica New Zealand was to garner the support of a senior member of the business community for New Zealand's efforts in one of the most vulnerable and isolated spots in the world.
Rather like, I'm sure, that DOC wanted to garner the support of the senior members of the local Maori community for New Zealand's efforts in saving one of the most vulnerable and isolated amphibians in the world.
Aside from the size of the bill, and the ethnicity of those involved, I really can't see much difference in the practice.
Kim also points out that Tindall put on a very good shout at the Scott Base bar. On the other hand, research scientist Bart Janssen (speaking, he emphasises, personally) had some comment on research and consultation:
For the most part I agree with your comments about Brash's rabble-rousing. More importantly I'm very much in favour of special health care to keep Maori out of hospitals and special education initiatives to get Maori into Universities (as scientists not lawyers, please).
I agree ethics guidelines and more importantly the HSNO act and ERMA guidelines require most researchers to consult with local iwi. Where such research intimately involves Maori I can understand why that is so. But why were Maori given special rights of approval over the rest of the scientific research that goes on?
Where research specifically impacts on any group of the population in particular of course that group must be involved in the ethical decisions but Maori are involved (by regulation) in nearly every ethics panel for every decision. That's not reasonable nor sensible.
The Maori representatives on our panels are nice folks mostly struggling to understand science that is the life's work of the researchers involved and for most part there is simply nothing for them to do but turn up. That's silly. Fortunately, those representatives we've had do their duty well, they've tried to get some understanding of what's going on and they've asked honest and reasonable questions. But really, they are doing nothing more than a lay member of the panel could or should do. So why are they given that special position?
Personally I can't see anything in the copy of the treaty that is on the wall in our foyer that implies a special approval of scientific research in the country, but I'm not a lawyer.
BTW if you think those guidelines have no affect on research in New Zealand you are very wrong. Because of Maori guardianship of New Zealand native species most of us won't even start to do research on a native plant. It's just too much of a cultural and political minefield to bother with. There are plenty of interesting and valuable (to NZ) scientific questions to answer in exotic species. This leads to the bizarre situation where it's easier to do research on a NZ native species in England, using plants in Kew gardens, than it is in NZ.
Fair enough: on the face of it, that does sound counterproductive, even tokenistic. Ladies and gentlemen, we may have a fact. We appear to be getting somewhere. Further comment from the scientific community is welcomed.
Mel ventured a point of view on the taniwha's swamp near Mercer:
There's only about 2% left of the kahikatea swamp forest that used to cover the Waikato. Another reason that Transit should've compromised. Their lack of willingness to ever use flyovers for wetlands (roads ruin the hydrology) really irks me. Doesn't meet their myopic cost-benefit analysis.
An "indignant orc" named Tim pointed out I got the wrong quarry yesterday:
Helms Deep set was at Dry Creek Quarry, by the bogan lands of Upper Hutt and Taita, NOT at the Horokiwi quarry, near trendy Petone and environs.
I blame the locals. But Petone is "trendy"?
Brent galloped to the defence of the Galloping Gourmet:
Yeah, I was dubious about Kerr's steamed squid thing too. But I found that 20 minutes of steaming before frying or stuffing it turns out beautifully textured squid by getting rid of the rubberiness Try it yourself sometime.
Thanks. I will.
Very Wellington | Mar 09, 2004 11:00
We emerge from Wellington Airport into a southerly scooting up from Lyall Bay. The sky is blue and clear above, but the sharp, chill wind is a shock after Auckland's muckier atmosphere.
Wellingtonians have been worn down by their weather this summer, but it's on the mend for autumn. Sort of. I'm glad I brought my Strangely Normal jacket.
We're in town - Joe Cotton, John O'Leary, the producers Ryan and Jarrod, and me - to record a couple of episodes of Off the Wire, the comedy news quiz. It's among a bunch of shows National Radio has been touring to promote the 101FM rollout. In Wellington, it's a part of the Fringe Festival. I am a Fringe performer.
We roll up to the Quest apartments on The Terrace. It's an office conversion, devoid of aesthetic appeal. O'Leary has his bed remade after he detects unusual stains on the covers. I sit down to read the news and make a few notes.
There's no minibar, which is bad, because I forgot to eat lunch, which is not like me. I figure I'd better save the "in-room continental breakfast" for tomorrow. There's no time to eat before we go up to Radio New Zealand, then Ryan forgets my sandwich. I have a beer for the calories, then two glasses of wine while we're recording the shows, and begin to feel quite light-headed.
It goes well - a full room of 45 people for both shows. Judith Tizard and Metiria Turei do really well considering they have both pretty much walked in the door and onto the panel. (Peters and Prebble have both held their own in the past too - without naming names, middling Tories seem to be the least funny.) Jermaine from Flight of the Conchords totally wings it and gets the best of the review, the jammy bugger. Mike Loder comes in for the second show and does his inimitable thing.
After, we hook up with some RNZ people and go to Burrito Brothers in Cuba St, where, finally, I can eat. Afterwards, while Joe is rounding everyone up for karaoke (and Mermaids afterwards, she reckons), I make a bolt for it and head back to Quest, where some scruffy folk are negotiating entry.
"You're Russell Brown," they say.
"You're Elemenop," I say.
Everyone's a genius after 11.
They're down for a VUW Orientation gig. Steriogram came down on our flight for the same show. They've been in America, where they had a video made by Michel Gondry and got a personal phone call from Steve Jobs after they sent him a nice letter. I like Elemenop better.
The following morning, I'm writing questions for two Mediawatch pre-records and listening to Gerry Brownlee debating "race-based" health policies with two health researchers on Morning Report. They're serious and apparently well-informed and he's off his rocker. When Dr Paparangi Reid takes him up on a sweeping claim that policies targeting Maori health deficits have failed with the words "That's not true actually," Brownlee starts ranting about how he'll just jolly well hang up now if he's going to be called a liar. I can't decide whether it's deliberate or he's just out of his depth.
The first of the Mediawatch interviews is a phoner with English dramatist Hugh Whitemore. We begin the interview and it is soon apparent that he's not interested in talking about reality TV, which he discussed as part of a recent lecture series, and which we had somehow thought he would further opine on. I pull some new questions out of my ass and he talks quite happily about TV drama.
Hugh Rennie, QC, arrives, for an interview about his friend, Warren Berryman, who died this week, narrowly making The Independent's deadline (the front-page headline is 'Berryman dies'). We've just had a programme element drop out, so we can talk for 14 minutes. We talk for 20, and it's great, more through Rennie's lucidity than anything else.
"That was a bit like addressing a jury," he says afterwards.
I walk over to an interview in Tory St, stopping for coffee and a muffin at Felix. The interview is with Murray Milner at Telecom, for a telecommunications story I'm doing for Unlimited. He says a couple of interesting things, but you'll have to read the story.
There's time to kill now: I wander around the usual places, and spend about half an hour at the crazy second-hand shop at the bottom of Cuba St. They have a half-price sale on books, and a surprising variety of New Zealand non-fiction and comedy, which is what I buy.
I get Ian F. Grant's The Unauthorised Version: A Cartoon History of New Zealand 1840-1987, a couple of Fred Dagg cheapies in that booklet format they used to publish Christmas quickies in, in the 1970s. And for my friend Kerry, I spy The Graham Kerr Cookbook. The recipes are a bit of a fat festival (and I'm sorry, but cooking squid by steaming it for three quarters of an hour?) but the book itself, with its heavy spiral binding, is a top piece of Kiwiana.
But the most interesting find is Right Out, the "inside story" of the Labour Party's 1972 election victory, edited by Brian Edwards. That election was a totemic time for the baby-boomers: not only in the Kirk victory, but the sudden and striking emergence of the Values Party. The book also contains a prophetic chapter by Rob Muldoon, headed 'We'll Be Back'.
I turn up to see Paul Swain at 3.30pm sharp, for another telecommunications interview, and don't have to wait too long. Swain's a good chap, apparently knows his turf well, but can't give a brief answer, even when he's running late. Michael Barnett waits patiently in reception.
Afterwards, Kerry collects me by the Cenotaph. We're heading for Moore Wilson. Goody. We pick up her daughter Jesse from the library on the way.
Moore Wilson Fresh rocks. Quality, choice (five specialist bakeries!) and not too expensive. You can't get that free-range corn-fed chicken fresh up north, which is a bugger. Organic chooks are really expensive these days. I bump into Jonty King, who has a movie project on the go, a horror. We duck over to Moore Wilson Variety for some Royal Porcelain bowls and wine.
Back in Melrose, I cook dinner, we drink the wine and Simon and I talk about the SCO Unix case. And stuff.
On Friday morning, I come in to record the Mediawatch script, and then have a coffee with our reporter Colin Peacock. Then it's around the corner for an interview with broadband hero Richard Naylor at Citylink, then a good lunch with Tom Frewen and Natasha Utting at Leuven, then a couple of glasses of Sleeping Dogs chardonnay with Mark Cubey at the Nikau, out in the sun. Mark's still mad in a good way. He's heavily involved with the Fringe, which seems to be going very well.
That night there's a barbecue in Melrose, and we finish up with a little of the Longmorn single malt, which is, as Kingsley Amis used to say, a good glass: sherry, vanilla, candied peel. Only $66 at Whisky Galore, which seems a bargain.
Saturday is a brilliant dawn, and Kerry and I go fossicking in Newtown and Upper Cuba Street, which is a riot of bohemians and people with dogs on a string. "People go on about the community that'll be destroyed by the bypass," says Kerry. "But they forget that their community's only here because of the bypass. Otherwise there'd be fancy apartments."
Half of Wellington seems to be out in the sun. We hook up with the rest of the family and go and visit our friends Paul and Sue at their new house in Horokiwi, up a one-way road that sprouts from the motorway just before Petone, past the quarry where they filmed the Helm's Deep scenes.
The house will need plenty of work, but there's an old stable where Paul can eventually build robots, and a acre and a half of paddock. Sue's thinking of water buffalo - for the mozzarella - or possibly "miniature cows".
(Later on, I Google it, and find there are in fact many sorts of miniature cattle. Some people get them as a more manageable option for growing beef on lifestyle farms. I don't know why people get those Mini Panda cows, though. They looked completely munted in every picture. Something about them just screams "genetic corruption".)
That evening, we make our way to Linton Kwesi Johnson at Bodega. As we near the venue, we glimpse a silhouette of the man himself, through the front door of his hotel. It's an amazing image - pork pie hat and all. LKJ has great presence, but I'd rather have heard a poetry reading at a theatre than a bar. He's a bit bleak for a while, but finishes on an upbeat note with a very funny poem about being a "top-notch poet". On the blackboard in the toilet, someone has scrawled "Don Brash - racist trash".
Down the road, we run into Murray Cammick, who has brought Graham Brazier down to play some songs and talk to Kim Hill. Murray wishes Kim hadn't kept harping on about the drugs. We assure him that the interview was actually great.
We pass Cosmic Corner in Cuba Street, where people are queuing to buy party pills through a slot in the door. It's convenient for the punters, but I can't help feeling that this is exactly the kind of thing that's going to get party pills banned.
Our friend Richard procures us entry to a great little bar at the Havana Coffee HQ. The funky DJ is cool, but it's moving a bit fast for us, and we have one drink and head for the hills.
Sunday is fine yet again; a major stroke of luck for the organisers of the Newtown Festival, which is exuberantly multicultural. I buy a present for Fiona - a glass mosaic tile - and then it's time to go to the airport. I check in at one of the new kiosks, which is sweet - especially given that most people don't seem to know how to use them. In Auckland, the atmosphere on the airbridge is immediately closer, and warmer. It feels a little strange. But comfortable.
The long campaign | Mar 08, 2004 12:07
Clearly, it is going to be a very long election campaign. Helen Clark has made her "bring it on" speech, Richard Prebble has outlined the case for Act, and Don Brash has sounded the horn of triumph. Already.
I got an email about Brash's speech from someone who, rather self-consciously, declared his intention to remain anonymous "for now":
Brash's second speech simply demolishes - destroys - the case of his opponents. So little of intellectual weight has yet been advanced by Brash's opponents that I concede this does not take much.
Brash's "challenge" at the end of his speech is a straw man - things so ridiculous that no one could seriously support them. But all these things actually occurred - and that is why people are having the collective sigh of relief to which Brash refers. It is these incredibly foolish fringe activities that have prepared the fertile ground Brashy is now exploiting.
And it *is* madness - a special kind of left wing bigotry that us on the left MUST confront. The right's foolish economic and social policies are out of vogue because they don't work. Don't let it be said that our own ideology equally blinds us to life's realities.
As it happens, I do think it is a crisper speech than that delivered, with its carefully burnished generalisations and selective history, at Orewa. More of it actually sounds like Brash.
Brash does make a clear argument against "the whole bi-lingual, bi-partisan, partnership framework", in favour of an interpretation of the Treaty as "fundamentally … the launching pad for the creation of one sovereign nation". He rejects the broader findings of the courts as mere judicial activism and briskly disowns the philosophy pursued by National through the 1990s, when ministers frequently spoke of partnership under the Treaty. He's well within his rights to mock Labour's policy panic attack. That's all fine.
But to decry the attention focused "on two sentences in a 5000 word speech" (it was actually more than that) regarding so-called race-based funding in health and education is just a bit rich. It was precisely those angles that struck a chord with the public, and Brash himself who wound the dial further with his ill-advised comments about the lesser value of qualifications earned by Maori. How many times did he tell the story of the Otago lad and his undeserved scholarship? If he didn't want those issues to dominate the headlines, perhaps he shouldn't have talked about them so much.
The fact is that it is not the drier arguments that have captured the public mood, but the murky generalisations, a number of which feature in the "challenge" with which he concludes his speech. "Life's realities" certainly deserve a look in here. A few of the challenges:
Should we pay for three kaumatua to accompany frogs from the Waikato to Christchurch so the frogs can be given a powhiri when they arrive?
Ah, the frogs. This is clearly a McCully contribution. Last year, 49 rare native frogs, in danger of extinction from a fungal disease, were gathered from a Waikato forest and taken to a captive facility at Canterbury university. Three kaumatua from the local iwi accompanied them, at an expense to DoC of just under $2500, including $41 for food. McCully decried this variously as "political correctness gone mad" and "political correctness out of control". National's Judith Collins joined in the sneering: "Nowhere in the Treaty did it say that the New Zealand taxpayer would fund kaumatua to accompany the travels of native frogs from the North to the South Islands - and then have them die anyway."
Only three out of 49 frogs died, but let's not let that get in a way of a good story, eh? To anyone who cares about the science, they were actually extraordinarily important frogs, part of a genuinely valuable biological heritage. But what none of the detractors ever manage to say is that the iwi was part of the project, and members went out into the forest helped gather the frogs. It sounds rather less preposterous that representatives should accompany the transfer in that light.
Should we allow the supposed home of a Taniwha to hold up a roading project?
The taniwha and the road have become emblematic of the whole argument - remarkably so, given what actually happened. Local iwi representatives complained that the new bypass near Mercer would destroy a swamp that was home to a taniwha (or, if you prefer the secular version, a place of great historical importance to people who had lived in the area a very long time). It took a month to work out a compromise: Transit offered to build a steeper embankment that would preserve the swamp. Thing is, the project itself will be five years late when it finally arrives in 2006, thanks to problems with budgets and land subsidence. Presumably, many of those who drive past that odd "bridge to nowhere" by State Highway One believe it is still that way because a taniwha got in the road. It simply isn't true.
Should we allow the supposed nearby home of a taniwha to halt the construction of a new prison?
We didn't. The presence of a nearby taniwha was cited, among other grounds, by a fringe group as among the grounds for the scrapping of plans for a prison at Ngawha Springs in Northland, but their appeal was rejected by the Environment Court, despite the support of Act MP Muriel Newman and the Green Party (the established local iwi, Ngati Rangi, had already worked with the Corrections Department and approved of the project). The prison project has meanwhile been plagued by the same problems as the Mercer road: budget and subsidence. Maybe there's something in this taniwha business after all …
Should universities have to check with iwi before doing routine research? Should medical research have to be checked against the Treaty?
There has certainly been some airy stuff written and said about this, but the actual ethics guidelines for health research published by the Human Rights Commission ("All issues relating to Maori cultural and ethical values should be resolved in discussion with the whanau, hapu or iwi concerned. The ownership rights of participants to personal data must be respected") seem reasonable and unexceptional.
I could go on, but I'd better do some work (I'll try and write a Wellington travelogue tomorrow). The more you look at these things, the more they look like a matter of decent people seeking solutions - and the solutions might not always be amenable to absolute logic or the loftiest principle, as Trevor Mallard discovered last week with his foolish outburst against the Muslim prayer room at Hagley College.
Conclusion: Don Brash is welcome to demolish what he sees as myths about the Treaty. I'm increasingly inclined to the view that we ought to have a big, formal, public discussion about what the Treaty means to us. The trouble arises when he propagates myths of his own.
Silly season | Mar 03, 2004 09:02
Since Don Brash's Orewa speech, there has been a lot of huffing and puffing from his supporters about name-calling and playing the man, not the ball, and, y'know, having the debate. They would seem to have hurtled down from the high ground with Gerry Brownlee's latest outburst.
A group of Catholic and Anglican bishops has released what appears to be a sincere and concerned open letter calling for a Treaty debate, rather than a race debate, and expressing the view that special programmes for Maori were needs-based, not race-based. For their trouble they got this:
Mr Brownlee, a Catholic, accused the group of Anglican and Catholic bishops of "weak thinking" and said they were like something out of the television satire Blackadder.
He also accused the bishops of failing as the "moral leaders" of society.
"Where were they on the prostitution bill? Not a whisper. Where were they on the lowering of the drinking age? Not a whisper. Where are they on the civil union bill?
"Their silence is the reason there are child prostitutes on the streets of Christchurch," he said.
Apart from being insulting - and quite irrelevant to the "debate" we're supposed to be having - this is ludicrous. For a start, six National MPs voted for the Prostitution Law Reform Bill. Had they not done so, the bill would have failed. Even if you accept Brownlee's highly dubious assertion that the bill (which has barely taken effect) is responsible for there being child prostitution in Christchurch, aren't they rather more to blame than people who had no vote at all?
It's sillier still when you consider that the churches were actually all over the Prostitution Law Reform Bill. The Catholic church opposed it, as did a group of Catholic and Anglican bishops who - ironically - released an open letter outlining their concerns. On the other hand, the multi-denominational Churches Agency on Social Issues supported the bill in principle, but sought changes to it. In the midst of it, the Anglican assistant bishop of Auckland, Richard Randerson, gave a thoughtful sermon in which he expressed doubts about the bill, and offered a sympathetic view of committed gay relationships.
Speaking of which, what on earth is Brownlee doing comparing child prostitution with a move to create a form of civil union that offers same-sex couples basic rights? Would he care to expand on that for public consumption? Brownlee as deputy leader has been a real find for National - sticking with Nick Smith while he battles a contempt charge would have been disastrous - but if he carries on in this vein he is surely going to come a cropper.
By the same token, government members are behaving almost as oddly. Helen Clark has swapped her LOTR chain-mail outfit for a nifty little number in Teflon. Turns out she never really thought closing all those schools was a good idea, and Trevor never took the idea to Cabinet so how could it be her fault? I assume it's true that Mallard didn't present detailed proposals to Cabinet. I find it rather harder to believe that the Prime Minister remained somehow unaware of what he's been doing for the past year and a half. Labour MPs who used up valuable political capital backing the school reviews - such as Invercargill's Mark Peck - might now be feeling a bit confused.
Meanwhile, Steve Maharey has published a thinkpiece in which he muses that, hey, maybe a deadline on Treaty claims wouldn't be a bad idea after all. But he does so by way of an aside, rather than a conclusion. Is he running a new policy up the flagpole, thinking out loud, or what? The unfortunate thing for the government is that no one really seems to know. What on earth is going on?
Still, at least Winston Peters is enjoying himself.
Anyway, OtherPundit is all fizzed up at the sight of another conservative Maori - Ngai Tahu's Te Maire Tau, who is interviewed by Bruce Ansley in The Listener this week. The image of Ngai Tahu as a very businesslike tribe is not inaccurate. Many iwi have sought to redefine themselves as corporate entities: Ngai Tahu, for a range of reasons, is better at it than anyone else. While Tainui, bogged down in governance wars and prone to poor decisions, has lost a big chunk of its Treaty settlement, Ngai Tahu has nearly doubled its money. As Ansley points out, it doesn't need handouts. But the impression that Ngai Tahu's view of the world is somehow in sync with that of Don Brash is misleading.
Tau unabashedly makes a distinction between the rights of Maori organisations and the question of ethnicity. He has the law on his side. But the grumpy public, at least so far as the polls show, is not making the same distinction, and since the Orewa speech National has been happy - keen, even - to blur the two.
It's very strange that the foreshore debate isn't mentioned at all in the story, because it's there that the impression of a sympathy with the the present political centre-right would collapse. Read Tahu Potiki's unflinching speech on the issue to the Act Party's foreshore conference last October. It is about property rights, and on past form Ngai Tahu won't be shy about asserting its own. (Potiki also warns off any move on the Maori broadcast funding agency, Te Mangai Paho.)
Ngai Tahu's attitude to ethnicity, in so far as it is represented by Tau, ought not be a surprise either. It carried such a view through, for example, the endless Maori fisheries wrangle, insisting always that it wasn't about population, but property. It simply suits Ngai Tahu to decline to recognise a broader Maori identity. Its perspective is closer in many ways to that of iwi fundamentalists like Tariana Turia than it is to that of John Tamihere.
There's another irony here, in that Ngai Tahu, a rich organisation getting richer (and admirably so) would defend its right to continue to receive what Brash depicts as "special" treatment, while poor urban Maori - those in need - would be left to fend for themselves because they have been unfortunate enough to have lost their tribal affiliations.
Tau can brag that his tribe would never let a taniwha get in the way of a road. Yet it vigorously defends its right to govern use of and access to its sacred mountain, Aoraki Mt Cook, and demand, as this site puts it, "a degree of protection that transcends all other protected natural areas". I don't see a fundamental difference there.
One more thing. The guilt-ridden Otago student Brash keeps talking about appears, so far as I can tell, to have gained his $1000 scholarship from Ngai Tahu, and not the taxpayer. (I can't see why, if he thought it was so wrong for him to get money he didn't need, the young man went to the trouble of applying for the scholarship in the first place.)
Anyway, happier things: I was struck by the fact that almost all the feedback about yesterday's consideration of The Lord of the Rings came from expatriate New Zealanders (many of them at American universities). Perhaps national pride is more keenly felt at a distance.
Closer to home, Andrew Llewellyn remembers going to school with Best Sound Oscar-winner Mike Hedges: "Even then he was always tinkering with amps and stuff. An Oscar-winning geek."
Yep. That's the point, to me. People like that, who always had something special going on, getting a chance to show it.
Anyway, I'm off to Wellington today, to record a couple of episodes of Off the Wire, do some interviews for a story on telecommunications infrastructure and buy a bit of tableware at Moore Wilson. See you up Courtenay Place later on, hey?
Six years on | Mar 02, 2004 10:53
About six years ago, I was at an old friend's birthday party in Wellington. Another old buddy excused himself after only an hour. "Gotta go," he explained. "We need to finish some R&D before the boss flies out to LA tomorrow." The boss was Peter Jackson.
The R&D was, of course, the 35-minute FX reel that Jackson used to convince New Line's Bob Shaye that he and his people were capable of pulling off a stupidly ambitious three-film version of The Lord of the Rings.
My old buddy, who was a building maintenance guy and a cycle courier when I first met him, worked for Weta Digital throughout the project. Actually - and this sounds like one of those OE Kiwi jokes where everyone in New Zealand knows each other, except it's not a joke because they sort of do - Return of the King's sweeping success at the Oscars is all the more pleasing because it's so close to home.
I know quite a few people who played their part in this bit of cinematic history: my cousin Luke, who built models at Weta; my neighbour's brother, who worked on the second unit; Adam the educated dustman, whose chest-length beard helped him into a variety of extra roles.
And then of course, there was Ngila Dickson, the costume designer, finally getting her Oscar. As I have explained before, she is a remarkably kind and talented woman, and we go way back to when Muldoon was Prime Minister. I am so pleased for her.
I don't think there's any point now in quibbling over whether Lord of the Rings was a proper New Zealand movie or not; not after hearing so many bluff New Zealand accents in those acceptance speeches; not after an Australian cinematographer has been obliged to make clear that, for once, he is not a New Zealander. (The Australians are actually being very gracious about it all.)
I took issue with Peter Calder on this matter a little while ago, and I've thought about it since. He held that we ought really celebrate "our own stories", such as Whale Rider, and not an imported epic. I know what he means: Whale Rider made me cry, Lord of the Rings never did. But the Rings trilogy is different - it's different from anything. And it's a New Zealand film because so many New Zealanders gave what they had to it. It is entirely possible that it could not have been pulled off anywhere else.
Moreover, I find it reassuring. As the Oscars ticked over yesterday, it felt like my New Zealand, creative New Zealand, and not the petty and resentful place it has lately seemed. I love the fact that my kids can lap up these films and know who made them, and where.
I'm not really in the mood for the inevitable jaded, get-over-it commentary: for goodness sake, if we can't go OTT in celebrating what happened yesterday - something orders of magnitude greater than any sporting victory we might aspire to - then there's something wrong with us.
I'm comfortable with this, and proud of it.
Blowing up | Mar 01, 2004 10:45
What's it like to be so powerful that you're a threat to your own structural integrity? You could ask Rupeni Caucaunibuca. The Blues' Fijian winger has had mutually exclusive problems in the past: if he trained, he got injured; if he didn't train, he got fat.
Like that other legendary ball of fast-twitch muscle, Christian Cullen, Caucau beats tacklers at what seems like a glide (actually, I think Caucau has an extra gear that no one else has). Like Cullen, he's only half a player if injury or unfitness breaks that serene, scorching stride: then, he's just running, and maybe not even that fast. (The big Waikato NPC lock Dave Duley will be able to tell his children that in 2003 he chased down the fastest man to ever play international rugby.)
It seemed that Caucau was too prone to simply blowing himself to bits. The solution this year has apparently been to avoid having him run unless it's absolutely necessary - he spends most Blues training sessions on an exercise cycle - and it appears to be working. He scored three tries in a wild-assed replay of last year's Super 12 final on Friday night. No one could touch him.
But boy … we wonder why they hate Aucklanders down there in Canterbury. Carlos Spencer, country-boy-turned-ultimate-Aucklander, takes the ball behind his goal-line, two points up (after the Blues have recklessly declined to kick a penalty at the other end of the field) and one minute to play.
Does he kick the bloody thing out? No. He throws a huge, curling pass - that has to travel around his goalposts - to Joe Rockococo, who breaks a tackle, sparking a sweeping 100-metre movement that sees Spencer canter untouched over the Crusaders' line.
Does he touch the bloody thing down? No. In an apparent bid to run down the clock - or something, God knows, really - Spencer jogs away from the posts and over to the corner flag. His team-mates gather around him and finally he scores it, and then makes a defiant gesture to the crowd that's been bagging him all night. And then, because he can, he kicks his sideline conversion straight as an arrow, depriving the Crusaders of even the solace of a bonus point. Wow. It was crazy, irresponsible and really good to watch.
So the Black Caps, defying my predictions, have won a series against South Africa. For the first time. Yesterday's decider at Eden Park shaped up as a debacle. By rights, they shouldn't have got on the field, such was the nature of Auckland's weather on Saturday. But they did, in a shortened game, and it was mighty entertainment. Magic moment: Chris Harris returns, gets NZ out of a deep hole with an unbeaten 55 and then makes a catch at point for which there are no satisfactory adjectives. Then, needing an improbable 28 runs off the final over bowled by Kyle Mills, the Proteas' batsmen make (thanks to a no-ball that went for six) an improbable but insufficient 25. Woo-hoo! Let us hope our gone-mad weather comes rights for the test series …
Oh, real news, rather than sport? Labour Party overhauls National in new poll, all over, er, page 8 of the Sunday Star Times, halfway down a story on Brash and the unions. It's by the same company, BRC, whose "shock" front-page poll helped get the Brash ball rolling. Has the SST lost faith in its polling company or what? The story's not even online, although the poll gets a mention on Stuff this morning, along with a Marae Digipoll that should, but won't, stop Don Brash claiming that many Maori are backing him. (BTW, yesterday morning's Marae programme did a great job of getting the various voices on the Treaty argument into a room and making them talk.)
I really can't work out how the SST chooses which stories it allows online and which it doesn't. I'd like to point you to the two best pieces of opinion-writing in the paper - Rosemary McLeod on the Sri Lankan business and Finlay Macdonald speculating on Clark turning into Holyoake (that is, a master of consensus but signifying little beyond that) - but I can't. Oh well.
Neil Morrison took mighty exception to my mention of the Iranian elections on Friday, and Hard News reader Steve Parkes wasn't too happy either. Fair enough, actually: "swung in behind" was a poor choice of words on my part.
It would be more correct to say that, even with a record low turnout, the mullahs' support has held enough to allow them to pretend their highly compromised election delivered a mandate. Before the election, reformists, who were calling for a boycott, were hoping for a national turnout of less than 40%. They didn't get it. Some reformist candidates who weren't calling for a boycott - including the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament - failed calamitously in the vote.
The point is that another Middle Eastern country has failed to follow the script. Up until last year, the reformists had made halting progress in Iran, via a democratic process that was inadequate, but better than bloodshed. Now - and it really doesn't matter who you blame - the whole thing has gone into reverse. This is the exact opposite of what was, according to the neocon fantasy, supposed to happen in the wake of war in Iraq. It's not better, it's worse.
But back to the real issues: that picture of Rachel Hunter modelling for her new benefactor, Ultimo. Controversy has stirred overseas as various tabloid papers have pointed out that this is not exactly the real Rachel. Nonsense, say her people: the picture hasn't been touched at all. Pardon? That's one of the most exhaustively Photoshopped pictures I've ever seen in a newspaper - everything has been smoothed over, shaped and perked up. But celebrity means never having to grow old, even when you do.
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