Public Address - Island Life (Home)

A date with Rachel | Dec 16, 2004 19:55

If you haven't had a go yet at winning an iPod, you still have a shot. I've carefully considered the requests for more time, looked at the size of the database so far, and decided that keeping the contest open until the end of January would be a good idea.

To recap: you just have to click here, nominate a memorable moment from New Zealand's history, and you're in the draw. The full details are in the post immediately below this one.

The response has been excellent, thanks, but if it's going to grow into a groaning database, we'll need a lot more yet. I'd also like to maintain the momentum, so here's what I'm going to do to keep it interesting. Everyone's in the draw to win the iPod at the end of January, but you can also go on winning after that. From February on, until people get sick of it, or the judge decides it's all got to be too much of a hassle, there'll be a prize for the best contribution of the week.

In the meantime, let's have a look at some of the good ones so far.

Blair Mulholland has boldly, but nevertheless correctly, assumed that the judge is a good sort who harbours no ill feelings, and offers the breaking of enemy lines by New Zealand troops in Operation Supercharge at El Alamein.

Chris Hobbs nominates Hillary conquering Everest because

It's a first. It can't be topped. And he also fu*ked over the Brits to do it, which is definately worth brownie points in my book

Henry Hollis suggests the visit by Mary Leavitt in 1885

She was a delegate from the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the USA, to New Zealand influencing Kate Sheppard to became a founding member of the New Zealand Women's Christian Temperance Union. Ultimately this led to Women receiving the vote decades before the US or Britain.

Stephen Walker likes Split Enz' last gig in Auckland at the Logan Campbell Centre because it was the

End of an era, really. It was great, we got stoned. What more can I say?

Anton Allen nominates, perhaps with a slight absence of respect, Two students killed drunkenly riding down Baldwin St in a wheelie bin, and speaking of absence of respect, Richie Dyer thinks we should record the day Paul Holmes called Kofi Annan a "cheeky darkie."

Matt McPhail (no relation?) points out that on Thursday, July 07, 1977 the first episode of A Week of it was broadcast on South Pacific Television.

Peter Johnston and Mike Stead clearly expect the judge to suspend his prejudice and seething contempt for a swaggering monopoly and, well, fair enough too, by nominating, respectively:
Telecom launches its Internet service, Xtra and Telecom's Launch of Mobile Broadband

All good stuff, and just a hint of the rich variety to the contributions. Well-known or obscure, they're equally welcome, and I thank you for them all.

But there's one aspect of our history that hasn't yet been mentioned in the contributions, and I'd like to make an express invitation to a lonely soul who is a regular visitor to our pages.

Web statistics can tell you only so much, but here's what we know. Each day somewhere in New Zealand - Otago perhaps - someone fires up his PC and surfs over to Google.

Who knows what's been happening in his day. He - if indeed it is a he - may be looking for a little light relief after a hard day of work at, I don't know: his abalone farm perhaps? I can't tell you for certain. It's all surmise.

What I can tell you is that with hands perhaps a little trembling and palms perhaps a little sweaty he taps the same phrase each day into Google and waits for the answer. 250 times this month alone, he has selected one particular search result, and surfed on in to Public Address. 250 times he has probably been disappointed.

I don't think we really have what he's looking for. The words he enters again and again, and the words which sit perpetually near the top of our log of search terms for Public Address, alongside "Russell" and "Brown" and "Hard" and "News", are: "Rachel" and "Hunter".

How disappointing it must be to come up, if I might put it that way, empty handed.

Well, perhaps at last we can offer some return on the investment. What's a database of memorable New Zealand moments without mention of Glenfield's most celebrated citizen? Where were you when you first saw her in that Trumpet ad? Were you at Swenson's the day she scooped her first ice cream? What was the first time - and stand by for a blatant Google pitch here - a magazine was published offering pictures of a nude Rachel Hunter?

Well mystery surfer, welcome back, and yes, it's true, you could win an iPod. Just click here, fill out a memorable moment in New Zealand history - featuring, or not - as you prefer, Rachel Hunter, and stand by. We hate to see anyone leaving here unsatisfied. Let's hope we can share the love a little wider this Christmas.

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Don't Look Back | Dec 09, 2004 21:27

In my experience, if you have a promotion, the last thing you should be is subtle. So let me see how blunt I can get. In this blog you will find out how you can win an iPod for Christmas from your pals at Public Address. There are also CDs involved. Really. There's even a photo of the iPod to prove it, just in case you're still waiting for the punchline.

Why? Because it's Christmas, and it would be nice to offer a present to our readers because, well, I love you, man. Secondly, there's a database needs filling up.

You can thank Linda Clark's producer Amber for this. She emailed earlier this week with a question: was there a New Zealand website that listed noteworthy anniversaries and the like? Not that I could see. There's been a book or two - Max Cryer did one, apparently - and there was that TV One carry-on just before the millennium with little potted 60-second memories of simpler days when we didn't have to fret about the fridge and the microwave strangling on their chips and pegging out for the lack of two zeroes.

That brings an anniversary to mind: 2am January 1st 2000. I'm at home with our six month old baby, Karren's at work at Ports of Auckland with most of the other executive officers, all strapped to satellite mobile phones, waiting to see what the canary will do. Scenic Auckland has turned on a lovely morning for the momentous occasion. It's pouring.

So many memories. And that's the point of this exercise. I think the collective memory of our Public Address readers, and - assuming we get around to discussing this on Nine to Noon next week - Linda Clark's audience should be rich with suggestions for a list of noteworthy anniversaries.

For example: New Zealand's best day.

New Zealand's worst.

The day that saw one of us doing the smartest thing a New Zealander ever did. And the day someone (else - presumably, but not necessarily) did the dumbest.

The day the greatest outrage took place.

Most inspirational moment. Most hilarious. Most instructive. Most exciting.

Most discouraging, most moving, most staggering.

You get the idea. I think it would be good to make on online resource that pulls this together in a calendar. It's full of possibilities, but it will be nothing without a database groaning with dates and comments and recollections and insights.

I have a name for it, and I've made a little web page to enable this database to be compiled. It's called The Anniversary Project, with the subtitle, How many memorable New Zealand moments can you fit in database?

So what's in it for you? Firstly, the fun of sharing your thoughts. Secondly, and this is where I make good on the advertisement at the top of this blog, there's an iPod up for grabs. Also CDs.

I'll ask our glamorous assistant Mary-Margaret to bring it out for us.

It's mint-fresh from Dick Smith's today, and it's yours if you come up with the best suggestion. Just fill out the simple form with the memorable moment, the date it took place, and your reasons for nominating it.

And yes, there's more. If you're a student type with a bit of time on your hands right now, you could turn those research skills into hours of CD pleasure. There are ten CD vouchers from Real Groovy on offer as well, and they'll go to the ten people who contribute the most entries.

So how can you get in on this action? Click the link at the bottom of the page.

We're rewarding quantity as well as quality, so there's an opportunity for everyone here. Got to put that lefty perspective into practice whenever you can. Ulterior motives aside, this is a nice chance to say thank you. We don't have a comments thread on these pages because, as Russell has explained elsewhere, it's just too big a job to monitor. But we encourage feedback and I know we all enjoy getting it.

One of the nice things about this off-stage form of inviting blog feedback is that we get some very thoughtful email, typically with less of the glibness and sneering you get on some of the blog comments threads.

It takes me back to the earlier, more civil, days on the .nz newsgroups. People like John Shears and Andrew Llewellyn and Bart Janssen and Chris McKay regularly send me really interesting mail, and I don't imagine we'd have met up any other way than through this forum.

They'll no doubt have suggestions on useful ways to make something interesting of the the database. Some anniversaries would never be overlooked - the 25th Erebus Anniversary would have been significant, I'd say, with or without the - at times over-wrought - encouragement of the media.

We might very well pay attention to some lesser anniversaries only because someone in the media has, on occasion, found it useful to create a topic out of one, but even if it's a pretext, I still think it can be worthwhile. Perspective helps us to make sense of things. We don't seem to be especially familiar with our history, and we could do with looking back a little more.

So pull out the books, cast your mind back, and click here to get in on the action.

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And I'd put Lange ahead of Kirk | Dec 06, 2004 09:37

I don't know how ready we are to become a republic when we're still prepared to rate a King as our most successful Prime Minister of the last century. These exercises are a bit daft, really. Every Prime Minister is a creature of their time. Still, you read the list, and raise your eyebrow at the odd ranking. Number 4 seems perhaps a little bullish for the incumbent, or at the least a little early. On the other hand I'm much less inclined than David Farrar to dispute the ranking of Muldoon.

Red rag, bull. I try to avoid being reflexive about the man, but I thought he was bad at the job when he had it, and I still think so today. I remember watching the election night coverage in 1975. He told us he hoped to leave New Zealand no worse off than he found it. Bet you don't, I thought.

Nine years followed of a style of leadership that was, by turns, belligerent, divisive, cynical and vaguely desperate. In my opinion.

Boy, did he ever polarise opinion. Around our area, where I grew up, he had plenty of admirers. I don't know how many times I heard a grown-up - a farmer type typically - declare that they would only be happy to be a politician if they could be a dictator. I'd tell the buggers what to do. Unions, students, commies, bludgers - stroppy academics, nit-picking journalists. They just loved the way Muldoon put everyone in their place.

I had a fair idea that some of the teachers at our high school thought he was alright too. A couple of them threatened to resign if I were to go ahead with the speech I'd prepared for the 1977 Anzac day service that took issue with the anti-democratic direction the Prime Minister was taking. There may have been one or two personal issues involved, to be fair.

I wasn't wrong about the anti-democratic spirit though. It was a command economy, and he had both hands on the levers - PM and Finance Minister. It seems odd today that any one person could loom so large in the nation's life. For one thing, the market economy diminishes the influence; for another we have recoiled from the concentration of power in one place.

And we have less reverence for the office. I daresay you were always going to get that as the mass media brought politicians into our living rooms. Muldoon lead the charge. Even as he used the medium to dominate, he was laying the foundation for a degree of contempt that would flourish in the familiarity.

Rob's mob cheered him on as he demonised individuals, hounded others, intimidated the media and generally imposed an air that chilled dissent. Others of us were appalled. Here's just one example.

The sheer dominance of the man was reflected in the culture of the times. Brian Easton has an interesting exploration of this in a paper MULDOON IN FICTION: Politicians and Intellectuals. He writes:

This image of Muldoon as dictator is one of the icons of literature in the 1970s and early 1980s. Arguably there are at least ten contemporary novels and four plays in which a Muldoon-like character appears.

....

The burst of the political oriented writing which appears in the early eighties, tells us that something was happening about that time. The precipitating factor was surely Muldoon, perhaps magnified by the events surrounding The Tour.

In a more fundamental way the rise of the political novel in the 1970s reflects a changing national perception of politics.

With the passing of Muldoon, he asks, will there be a passing of the political despot?

Already there are politicians who have been marked as Muldoon's successor - no doubt there are more to come. One might argue that they are much less likely to become prime minister in the future. The Germans adopted MMP to prevent the rise of another Hitler. Moreover there are now examples of other styles of successful New Zealand premiers: Holyoake and Jim Bolger, since he deposed Ruth Richardson, have both been consensus, rather than populist, driven. But even if the despot cannot practice so easily, the image is unlikely to easily disappear, especially as long as "Rob's Mob" continues in some form, seeking a populist leader.

The country he left was in poor shape, and not only in an economic sense. The politics of division he practiced were bad for us all. The contempt for dissent was ugly. Rob's Mob might rank the man as a successful Prime Minister, but I like the look of the list better the way it is.

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