(First published in The Dominion Post and on Stuff.co.nz, November 14.)
I keep having nightmarish visions of Wellington in 2030.
In my nightmare, Civic Square has been cordoned off for more
than a decade and is covered with gorse and thistles. At night it’s taken over
by homeless people who gather there to smoke P – which prime minister Shane
Jones has promised to legalise as a condition of his coalition deal with the
Greens – and to dance naked around bonfires in scenes vaguely reminiscent of Mad Max.
The ghostly buildings around the square remain empty.
Reports on various restoration options fill a rusty shipping container on the
weed-infested site where the five-star Amora Hotel used to be.
The once-celebrated Ferns orb sculpture that hung over the
square, having been taken down in 2015, re-installed in 2018 and then removed
again, has been broken up for scrap after engineers couldn’t agree on whether
the cables holding it were safe. Bits of it were recently dredged out of the
lagoon near the Star Boating Club.
The City to Sea bridge, long closed because of structural
defects, collapsed onto Jervois Quay years ago. Efforts to clear the wreckage
were halted because of health and safety concerns.
The central library is located in a tattered marquee on
Newtown Park. How long it will stay there is uncertain, since the park is the
subject of a Treaty claim which has itself been before the courts for several
years because of a dispute between rival claimants. The library’s collections
are housed in a disused shirt factory in Levin.
In Johnsonville, residents are still waiting for work to
start on the redevelopment of the local shopping mall, first proposed 23 years
ago. In the meantime, the vacant site is occupied by a Mr Whippy van, a pop-up 24-hour discount liquor outlet and a bouncy castle that can't be used most of the time because of the howling wind.
In my dream there has been some progress. Tracks for a light
rail line from the station to the airport made it as far as Taranaki St before
being stopped short by appeals lodged by feuding groups of public transport
obsessives. The project is now at a standstill.
The Greater Wellington Regional Council is no more – ousted
by a citizens’ action front which stormed the GWRC offices after the council
CEO, a former Swansea parking meter warden who got the job with a falsified CV that no one thought to check, was paid a half-million-dollar
performance bonus even though the buses still weren’t running on time.
Work has yet to commence on the second Mt Victoria tunnel.
Officials are still working on a business case, now in its 73rd iteration, while the government and city
council argue over how it’s going to be paid for.
At Shelly Bay, several buildings have collapsed from rot while
mediators continue to seek a compromise between developer Ian Cassels – now
living in a retirement village – and Sir Peter Jackson, who is working on his seventh
Hobbit movie. In the meantime a tent
city, erected by protesters inspired by Ihumatao (which recently celebrated its 11th anniversary), occupies the site.
All over town, high-rise apartments have been abandoned by
owners who could no longer afford the insurance premiums. They have been taken
over by squatters.
In my nightmare, the vice-chancellor of Victoria University
has finally got the change of name he wanted. It's now Te Wananga o Te
Whanganui-a-Tara, colloquially known as Twot.
The university has taken over most of the buildings on The
Terrace that it didn’t already own. These have been converted into halls of
residence, but only overseas students can afford the fees.
The Supreme Court now sits in a converted motel in Tawa, its
showpiece building in Lambton Quay having been flattened because of weather
tightness issues and replaced by a Wilsons parking building.
The former St Gerard’s monastery is gone from its commanding
position above Oriental Bay – demolished because the owners couldn’t afford the
one-in-2500-year earthquake standard that bureaucrats demanded. The site is now
occupied by a Ryman rest home.
Down at the port, cruise ships stopped coming long ago
because Extinction Rebellion activists harassed any passengers trying to
disembark. The entire waterfront is now occupied by logs from the Wairarapa,
where forestry has displaced all but one sheep and beef farm – kept functioning
as an historical curiosity – in order to meet New Zealand’s carbon credit
commitments.
But there’s a note of nostalgia in my nightmare, too. On
warm summer evenings, old-timers gather in Pigeon Park to reminisce about a
fabled time when mayors named Wilde, Blumsky and Prendergast made exciting
things happen and Wellington was celebrated as the world’s coolest little
capital.
I should add that in my dream, the city's mayoralty remained unresolved after the disputed election result of 2019. I was relieved to wake up one morning recently to the news that this part of my vision, at least, hadn't played out in reality. As for the rest, I'm not so sure.
Shane Jones Prime Minister - no wonder you are having nightmares Karl.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely brilliant Karl, so close to reality. Wellington is a premonition of the coming Leftist dystopia.
ReplyDeleteGreat Karl. That is a brilliant sketch of a possible future scenario. Reminds me greatly of the dystopian visions of that brilliant author J G Ballard. You are right up there with him. Unfortunately you may be right.
ReplyDeleteHow is this for an addition:-
"Greta Thunberg, after four unsuccessful suicide attempts is now under permanent sedation and 24 hour suicide/self harm watch in a California sanatorium.
After recanting her climate change catastrophic rantings of years ago, Thunberg now has found a greater threat to protest about - global 'flu epidemic.
Meanwhile, Sydney and Brisbane global warming activists were rescued from sub zero blizzards in NSW and Queensland for the twelfth time this summer.
Wellington Harbour has also frozen over for the third time this January."