The buzz and bitchiness of local government politics

(First published in The Manawatu Standard and on Stuff.co.nz, September 18).

I switched on Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report one day last week to hear a babble of raised voices all trying to talk across each other. It was the sort of cacophony you might hear when a rat appears in a chookhouse.

I realised instantly that it must have something to do with the local government elections. Sure enough, it turned out to be a debate – a euphemistic term in this instance – between the three main rivals for the mayoralty of Christchurch.

It’s always a febrile time, this period leading up to council elections. There’s a peculiarly bitchy quality to local government: a propensity for petty squabbles and personality clashes that can make national politics look almost mature and sophisticated by comparison. It may be a far smaller stage, but there’s certainly no shortage of ego or ambition.  

What motivates people to stand for office? The answer, you’d like to think, is a desire to enhance community wellbeing and contribute to sound local governance, and no doubt that’s true for many candidates. They’re certainly not in it for glamour, money or prestige.

But with some local politicians, it’s hard to escape the feeling that they become addicted to the buzz of power. There’s a hint of that in Auckland’s mayoral election, where two former Labour cabinet ministers, Phil Goff and John Tamihere, are slugging it out in an ill-tempered contest tinged with personal venom.

Admittedly things could have been worse. Former mayor John Banks, another ex-cabinet minister, threatened to have another run but mercifully changed his mind. There are too many political retreads in local government already.

Should we care what happens in Auckland? Too right we should. For better or for worse, it’s the economic engine room of the whole country, with a GDP that exceeds those of Wellington, Canterbury and Waikato combined. How well it’s managed ultimately affects all of us.

Auckland isn’t the only arena where things have turned heated. In Wellington, filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson has waded into a fractious dispute over a murky development deal involving former Defence Force land and local iwi interests.

Jackson, who seems motivated by a sincere commitment to Wellington, is backing a mayoral challenge by veteran city councillor Andy Foster. It will be interesting to see which side has the greater pull – the earnest but colourless Foster, backed by Jackson’s money, or sitting mayor Justin Lester with the formidable support of the local Labour Party machine.

Meanwhile, in Invercargill, Sir Tim Shadbolt – famous for once saying “I don’t care where as long as I’m mayor” – is chasing his eighth term, and I assume he’ll romp back in. Southlanders love him because he’s given their province something it never used to have: a profile.

Shadbolt cultivates a buffoonish image, but there’s a calculating politician behind the goofy grin. He knows he can get away with self-aggrandising behaviour - such as spending ratepayers’ money on “I met the mayor” wristbands - because he’s trained the voters of Invercargill to expect that sort of stunt from him.

Christchurch illustrates another quirk of local government. Contenders who must realise they don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell nonetheless keep putting themselves forward. Their optimism, or perhaps it’s idealistic zeal, is inextinguishable.

John Minto, one of the Christchurch hopefuls, is a case in point. New Zealand voters have an admirable history of rejecting extremists from both the Left and Right of politics, but Minto - a tireless campaigner for radical causes - is undeterred.  Like Mr Wobbly Man in the Noddy stories, he keeps getting knocked down but bounces back up again.

In Christchurch three years ago he won 13,117 votes, or 14 per cent of the total – not an embarrassing result, and certainly a lot better than the 3 per cent he managed when he contested the Auckland mayoralty in 2013. The Left is good at organising, and my guess is that Minto benefited from the highly motivated activist vote. But he was still more than 62,000 shy of Lianne Dalziell’s winning total.

Speaking of Christchurch, mayoral candidate Michael “Tubby” Hansen deserves a special mention. He has contested every election since 1971 and had his best-ever result in 2013, when he attracted 1.57 per cent of the vote.

What makes him stand time after time? That’s a question only he can answer. If Minto represents one type of local government candidate – the committed activist – then Hansen is another: the quixotic oddball. Every city seems to have one.

The depressing thing is that when all the election drama has subsided and the votes have been counted, what difference will it make? In most councils, real power is exercised by bureaucrats over whom elected councillors wield very limited influence and who sometimes treat their nominal bosses with contempt.

This is especially true in Auckland, where so-called council-controlled organisations have turned out to be anything but. The phrase "grassroots democracy" has a nice ring to it, but it has never sounded more hollow.

People who stare at quarries

(First published in The Dominion Post, November 14.)

The world is in the grip of an epidemic of infantilism. How else can anyone account for tour parties travelling around the world to gasp in awe at the Weta Cave or the newly unveiled model of Smaug the dragon at Wellington Airport?

We’re told that Hobbit pilgrims from overseas burst into tears on arriving at Hobbiton. Perhaps someone should have gently explained that it wasn’t really where Bilbo Baggins lived. It was a farm in the Waikato.

It reminded me of the time I was driving over Haywards Hill and noticed a group of people standing beside a tourist bus gazing misty-eyed at the hillside quarry where the Helm’s Deep battle sequence was filmed for Sir Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I felt like shouting, “It’s just a bloody quarry, for God’s sake”, but I probably would have risked arrest. Given the national reverence for Jackson and the contribution his fantasy epics have made to the country’s GDP, there could well be laws prohibiting such heresy. 

Thirty years ago I read The Hobbit for my children. They were enthralled, but the story struck me as rather slight – certainly compared with The Lord of the Rings.

How Jackson could stretch it into three films, with a cumulative length of nearly eight hours, almost defies belief. I can only assume each film in the trilogy is padded out by the same interminable battle scenes that, to me, made the Lord of the Rings films indistinguishable from each other.

Interchangeable sequences seem to be a common feature of fantasy films. I’ve tried to watch several of the Harry Potter movies on television, but after the first 30 minutes or so I can never tell which one it is. They all ultimately morph into one super-long, generic Harry Potter film in which the plots and mumbo-jumbo dialogue (another feature in common with the Lord of the Rings movies) hardly seem to vary.

Now here’s the question. Why, at a point in history when people are arguably better-educated than ever before, and therefore presumably less susceptible to myth and superstition, has Western civilisation produced a generation so seduced by make-believe?

It’s not just The Hobbit and Harry Potter. Look at the international media frenzy over the announcement that a new Star Wars instalment is imminent. You can be sure this news was trending big-time on Twitter, which is now the ultimate measurement of how important anything is.

Look at the excited reaction by film critics when a new Spider-Man or Batman movie hits the screens. These escapist trifles are treated as if they were as profound as something by Shakespeare or Tolstoy.

Look at the phenomenal success of 2009’s Avatar – surely one of the silliest films ever made – and the hype surrounding the promised release of a sequel in 2016.

Look at the tens of thousands of people who attend sci-fi and fantasy conventions such as San Diego’s famous Comi-Con, where they dress up as Darth Vader or Dumbledore and queue patiently for a glimpse of people called actors, who are revered for pretending to be someone else.

What’s going on here? My Oxford dictionary gives a clue. It defines infantilism as childish behaviour or the persistence of infantile characteristics or behaviour in adult life. Think The Big Bang Theory, which gently satirises four highly educated men who refuse to grow up.

That definition seems, to me, a pretty good description of the Hobbit fan syndrome. But it only gets us halfway toward understanding the phenomenon, because putting a word to it doesn’t really explain how or why it happens.

What’s clear is that the so-called millennial generation – which means, roughly, those born after 1980 – includes a large cohort that is affluent, easily bored and eager for new sources of distraction and gratification.

They seem to find it in escapist fantasy. This is harmless enough, except that the line between fantasy and reality has a tendency to become blurred – witness the Hobbit fans who shed tears of ecstatic joy at being shown a farm near Matamata.

Here’s one possible explanation. There is ample research to support the theory that humanity is hard-wired to believe in something bigger than ourselves. Conventional religious belief has largely fallen out of favour; we’re too sophisticated and sceptical for that. But perhaps the need to believe remains.

Maybe hobbits, superheroes, wizards and Jedi knights have filled the vacuum. Unlike religion, they demand nothing in return – surely an irresistible advantage.

 

Sound and fury, signifying nothing

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, January 16.)

The two most-hyped films showing on New Zealand screens this summer were Skyfall and The Hobbit. I can’t muster the stamina to sit through all two hours 50 minutes of Peter Jackson’s latest epic (more on that later), but I did see the new James Bond movie.

I admit I went with an ulterior motive. Several years ago I had seen Casino Royale, the first Bond film starring Daniel Craig, and thought it was a stinker. I walked out, as I often do these days if a film hasn’t hooked me within the first 30 minutes.

I couldn’t understand why so many critics were hailing Craig as the greatest Bond since Sean Connery. His acting style, if it could be dignified with that description, was so wooden it would have made a plank look animated.

I was similarly unimpressed with his one-dimensional performance in the only other film I have seen him in, a World War II action drama called Defiance, in which he played a Jewish resistance fighter.

But the release of Skyfall saw Craig again being lauded by the critics, some of whom even suggested he had now seized Connery’s mantle as the greatest Bond ever.  So I went along to check him out again, expecting to be as unimpressed as I had been with Casino Royale. After all, there are few things more satisfying than having one’s prejudices confirmed.

I wasn’t prepared for what began to unfold on screen. The first half-hour of Skyfall is a cinematic tour de force. From the spellbinding title credits (featuring Adele’s theme song, arguably the best Bond tune since Nancy Sinatra sang You Only Live Twice in 1967) through the obligatory opening high-speed chase, I was swept along on an exhilarating ride that reminded me of those memorable action sequences in the original Indiana Jones films.

It was superbly filmed and brilliantly edited. If any Bond film has produced a better opening pursuit, I haven’t seen it.

What’s more, I found myself warming to Craig, who seemed less of an automaton than in his first outing in the role. He even showed traces of the trademark humour familiar from earlier Bonds.

But sadly (and you must have known there was a “but” coming), that first 30 minutes or so represented the best of the film. What followed was formulaic Bond stuff – much of it highly implausible, as you’d expect, but entertaining enough: exotic locations, beautiful but untrustworthy women and, of course, an evil and fiendishly clever mastermind (played by Javier Bardem, whom many will recall as the icily efficient assassin in the Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men). 

Had the director of Skyfall (Englishman Sam Mendes) called it quits after, say, 110 minutes, he might have had a respectable film – not a great film, but a respectable one, given the limitations of the genre. The action scenes were done well enough to take your mind off the plot, which grew sillier as it went on.

But just when I expected the film to neatly resolve itself, it lurched into a ludicrous, drawn-out climactic sequence that gave the impression of having been tacked on as an afterthought. If the first half-hour of Skyfall is as good as Bond films get, the last half-hour is preposterously, tediously bad.

It sees Bond and his boss, M, implausibly lead the villain and his gang of cardboard-cutout henchmen to a remote, abandoned Scottish mansion – the Skyfall of the title – where Bond had spent his childhood. There Bond is reunited with the faithful old family gamekeeper, played by Albert Finney, and together the three of them make a stand against the bad guys (although why they didn’t just call in British security forces to do the job isn’t explained).

I was going to describe Finney as a distinguished actor but it should really be “formerly distinguished”, since the 70-something thespian may not live long enough for his reputation to recover from this load of hokum. His performance is risibly bad and you can only wonder what possessed him to accept the part. He surely doesn’t need the moolah.

Bardem too will have some way to go to regain the respect he previously enjoyed as a serious actor, but at least he has time on his side. In Skyfall he plays a pantomime villain, more comical than scary.

Having said all that, I accept that if I had a chosen a career as a film director, I would have been a wretched failure. Films that I think are absurd show how out of touch I am with public taste. Skyfall is already one of the most successful releases ever.

Avatar, which I considered laughably bad, was the highest-grossing film of all time. Peter Jackson’s King Kong, which was just as silly, made $550 million and was one of the top five films of 2005.

Speaking of Jackson, I had intended to see The Hobbit but was put off after watching bits of his overblown trilogy The Lord of the Rings on television during the Christmas-New Year period. I don’t think I can bring myself to sit through another in the same mould.

Jackson is a clever man who has done great things for the New Zealand film industry, but his films are simply noisy spectacles – all sound and fury, signifying nothing, to quote Shakespeare. But clearly that’s what appeals to modern cinema audiences, judging by the list of the all-time top 20 box office earners.

Movie fans don’t want believable, human stories and nuanced characters; they demand action, noise, fantasy and special effects by the truckload. And directors oblige, making films that not only insult the intelligence but are overlong and undisciplined because the directors can’t bring themselves to leave anything out.

The best two films I saw in 2012 were the American black comedy Bernie, starring Jack Black (which surprised me, because I’d never been a fan of his), and a German Cold War-era drama entitled Barbara, featuring a very good actress you’ve never heard of.

Both were low-budget, character-driven stories that used no special effects and didn’t bombard their audiences with cringe-inducing noise. Both were immensely satisfying and needless to say, went virtually unnoticed.

2012: year of the buffoon?

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, January 2.)

In the week before Christmas I was invited to take part in a radio programme where we were to discuss, among other things, the good and bad of 2012.

Worryingly, I had to scratch my head to think of anything that had happened in 2012. I put this down to my many years as a daily newspaper journalist, a career which revolves around the event of the moment. Once a story has been written and published, it’s expunged from the memory bank to make room for the next one.

It follows that casting one’s mind back over an entire year was a tall order. But I duly went back through my files and slowly, little by little, it all came back to me.

Here, then, is my highly selective resume of 2012.

It was a year in which, bizarrely, a large and buffoonish-looking German named Kim Dotcom became a national celebrity and caused enormous political embarrassment.

Buffoonish-looking he may be, but Herr Dotcom is a very shrewd customer with a natural flair for public relations. He cleverly turned the controversy arising from an over-the-top police raid on his home near Auckland to his advantage, in the process becoming something of a folk hero.

Public support for Herr Dotcom (even his adopted name sounds like something created by a Hollywood scriptwriter) arose largely from the perception, not entirely unjustified, that America, determined to put him on the mat for alleged copyright infringement on a massive scale, had told the New Zealand government to jump and the response had been, “how high”?

Public unease at this perceived grovelling to the Americans would have been accentuated by controversy over the government’s sweetheart deal with the Sky City casino company and, going back further, to the furore over The Hobbit, which saw prime minister John Key swiftly moving to placate Warner Brothers to ensure production remained in New Zealand.

In each of these instances, the government’s opponents were able to portray the National Party as a pushover, ready to sell New Zealand’s soul.

There was a time, decades ago, when many New Zealanders accepted that we had no choice but to bow to powerful outside interests (usually British, in those days), but all that has changed. Since Britain abandoned us for the EU and we fell out with the Americans over Anzus, we have acquired a taste for asserting our autonomy.

The problem is that we are a small, vulnerable economy, often at the mercy of external forces. The government must seize what opportunities it can without appearing to compromise our sovereignty. Getting that balance right will present a continuing challenge for the government’s political management skills, which looked distinctly ragged in 2012.

It was a year in which Mr Key seemed to forget the words of the magic incantation that protected him against political damage during his first term, but whether he has learned anything is a moot point. His final act of the political year was to indulge in juvenile clowning on a radio station – not a good look when the education sector was in turmoil. 

Herr Dotcom’s other significant achievement was that he effectively destroyed the Act party, although not without a great deal of help from the pathetic John Banks and the man who unwisely installed him in Epsom, erstwhile Act leader Don Brash.

Mr Banks had been happy to accept Herr Dotcom’s generous help when he ran unsuccessfully for the Auckland mayoralty, but ungraciously disowned the German the moment he looked like becoming a political embarrassment. Herr Dotcom took his revenge by publicly exposing Mr Banks’ duplicity, and fair enough. Now Mr Banks’ reputation is in tatters and so is Act’s. (In fact the more I think about it, the more I'm forced to conclude that, given Mr Key's radio antics and Mr Banks' embarrassing attempts to wriggle out of his predicament, buffoonery may have been the defining quality of 2012.)

Many people will rejoice at the prospect of Act being obliterated at the 2014 general election, but I’m not one of them. It was a bold, radical and idealistic party – as idealistic as any party on the left – but like many idealistic parties, it suffered from a surfeit of talented but idiosyncratic and often undisciplined personalities.  Dr Brash’s ill-conceived takeover of the party sealed its fate.

But back to 2012. There was ACC and the Bronwyn Pullar fiasco, which claimed more victims than a cluster bomb. Yet I still refuse to buy Ms Pullar’s portrayal of herself (with a huge amount of help from TV3’s disgracefully partisan Sixty Minutes) as an heroic whistle blower. It’s my opinion she was driven from the start by pure, undiluted self-interest and adopted the mantle of crusader only after her attempt to exploit her highly-placed connections failed.

There was a sensational murder trial that resulted in an equally sensational acquittal. Ewen Macdonald, who was accused of murdering Scott Guy, shows every sign of becoming another cause celebre in the tradition of Arthur Allan Thomas, David Bain, David Tamihere and Scott Watson, with the obvious difference that those cases resulted in convictions whereas Macdonald will walk free. It’s as if New Zealand has developed a craving for murder cases that fail to produce, at least in the public mind, a satisfactory and definitive conclusion.

There was The Hobbit: all two hours and 50 minutes of it, and there are still (spare us!) two films to go. Sir Peter Jackson is the new Ed Hillary. Whatever one thinks of his films, he has done more than anyone since Hillary to put the country on the world map and make New Zealanders feel good about themselves. Even the late Sir Peter Blake was never this big.

There was an unholy mess in education – the result of an inexperienced but headstrong minister pushing too hard? – and mounting unease about child poverty and income disparity, with no shortage of suggested solutions (increased welfare payments, a higher minimum wage, meals in schools, more cheap rental housing) but a conspicuous failure to explain how a struggling economy could afford them.

There was noisy agitation for alcohol law reform and same-sex marriage. Parliament emphatically rebuffed campaigners on the first issue – not that that will silence the taxpayer-funded wowser lobby for long – but it remains to be seen how much traction the marriage reformers will get.

And then there’s potentially the most troubling and divisive issue of all: race, biculturalism and the Treaty. Of all the issues that bubbled away in 2012, this is the one most likely to change the face of New Zealand fundamentally and permanently. And it’s one on which the political consensus in Parliament seems entirely out of step with the mood of the electorate.

Hobbit mania: where reality and fantasy converge

(First published in The Dominion Post, November 30.)

IN HIS WILDEST imaginings, J R R Tolkien could hardly have envisaged a world stranger than the real one.

The weirdness takes multiple forms. Busloads of overseas tourists descend on a dairy farm near Matamata to gasp in awe at a few holes in the ground; Tolkien obsessives from around the world travel to Wellington so they can they dress up in Hobbit costumes and hairy feet to attend a Hobbit party; and not least, star-struck reporters abandon all semblance of journalistic detachment – not to mention all sense of proportion – in their gushing coverage of the Hobbit premiere.

Somewhere along the line, reality and fantasy have converged to such an extent that it’s hard to know where one stops and the other begins.

Someone should have gently explained to the awe-struck fans pressing in on actor Elijah Woods at Monday night’s party that Woods isn’t really Frodo Baggins. He’s just an unusual-looking bloke pretending to be Frodo Baggins. This point sometimes seems lost on them.

Similarly, you have to wonder whether the tragic tourists gawking at the Hobbiton film set realise that Bilbo Baggins doesn’t actually live there.

It’s all harmless, and a handy boost for a beleaguered economy, but mystifying to anyone not gripped by Hobbit mania.

No doubt the experts can explain the popular obsession with fantasy as evidenced by the popularity of Tolkien, Harry Potter and the infantile comic strips that Hollywood has inflated into big-screen epics.

One theory is that they fill the belief void created by the decline of religion (something of an irony, given that Tolkien was a devout Catholic). Another is that people are so disenchanted with the real world that they seek refuge in an alternative universe.

Whatever the explanation, you have to hand it to Sir Peter Jackson and his associates. They have taken the work of a bookish Oxford don and built it into a billion-dollar franchise – although whether Tolkien would recognise his work, or feel comfortable with what has been done to it, is another matter entirely.

* * *

 

THE MOST important two hours on television are between 8am and 10am on Sunday mornings. That’s when TV3 screens The Nation and TV One follows it up with Q&A.

No other programmes take the time to illuminate important political and economic issues or expose politicians to in-depth examination.  

Sometimes the result is that you find yourself forced to revise previously held views. A recent interview with John Key on The Nation, for example, may have come as a revelation to anyone who previously dismissed him as a lightweight with limited command of policy detail.

On the other hand, existing prejudices can be reinforced – as when David Cunliffe, ahead of his thinly disguised play for the Labour Party leadership, came across on the same show as smug and evasive.

A diminishing segment of the population can remember when TV channels showed programmes like these in prime time. There was no competitive pressure then; viewers watched because they didn’t have dozens of other channels jostling for their attention with foodie porn, talent quests and home renovation shows.

Virtually everyone in the country saw the famous 1970 Gallery programme in which Brian Edwards mediated in the resolution of a long-running Post Office industrial dispute. Similarly, the exchange between prime minister Robert Muldoon and the fearless young upstart Simon Walker on Tonight in 1976 (“You’re not going to set the rules, my friend”) was a talking point for days.

We were probably a better-informed democracy then. These days, serious current affairs attracts a pitifully small audience. The ratings-driven networks have succeeded in their long-term mission to turn viewers’ brains to mush. Most people probably don’t even know the Sunday morning programmes exist.

Of the two, my preference is TV3’s The Nation. It’s less flashy and production-driven than Q+A, and all the better for it. Presenter Rachel Smalley manages the unusual feat of being a sharp interviewer while also looking elegant and cool.  

The Nation also benefits from its regular media panel consisting of the aforementioned Edwards, who is nearly always witty and insightful, and Bill Ralston – although I’m amused at how Ralston, an absolute bodgie in his heyday, has reinvented himself as some sort of elder statesman of journalism. 

* * *

 

IN MY last column I feigned indignation at the ageing BBC correspondents reporting on television from world trouble spots, and asked why the illustrious Beeb didn’t follow the example of our own TV networks by employing attractive young women.

I had hoped it would be obvious that I was writing tongue-in-cheek, but no – I have been condemned by some readers as ageist and sexist.

My apologies to anyone whose sensibilities were offended. Clearly such items should come with a warning that they are not to be taken seriously.

Has the popular obsession with fantasy got out of hand?

(First published in The Dominion Post, July 31.)

WHEN a presumably deranged young man sprayed a crowded cinema with gunfire, killing 12 people and wounding dozens of others, there followed the usual anguished self-examination in the American media.

As when similar terrible events have happened in the past, attention focussed on America’s permissive gun laws. But is there another aspect to this tragedy that was overlooked?

It seemed significant that the shooter, James Holmes, chose to embark on his murderous spree at the premiere of the latest Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises. It was reported later that Batman posters and a Batman mask were found in his apartment, suggesting some sort of infantile fixation with the caped crusader. Other reports suggested Holmes identified with Batman’s nemesis, the Joker.

In the circumstances, you have to wonder whether the popular obsession with fantasy has got out of hand.

Why any adult would take a comic-book character like Batman seriously is a mystery. In the 1960s, television quite rightly treated him as a subject of camp satire. Yet film critics solemnly analyse Batman films (and other equally ridiculous “superhero” films such as the Spiderman series) as if they had the weight of works by Shakespeare or Chekhov.

Fans certainly take Batman far too seriously, as was evident from the furious response that was triggered when negative reviews of the new film started appearing online. Movie websites were swamped with messages so toxic and malicious that some sites had to be shut down.

If fans can be so emotionally attached to Batman that they respond to mildly critical reviews with rabid threats and vicious abuse, is it any wonder that Holmes should be so obsessed that he chose the screening of the film to play out his own lethal, overheated fantasy?

It may defy rational understanding, but it can’t be ruled out.

Fantasy movies are now a Hollywood staple. Many are dark and violent and depict a dystopian society.  The same is true of many video games, which are so important to some men that they will pulverise their partners’ crying babies into silence so that they can continue playing uninterrupted.

Obsession with fantasy is the new norm. TV series about vampires rate their socks off. In the top-rating comedy series The Big Bang Theory, the main characters frequent comic-book stores and imagine themselves as characters from Star Trek or Doctor Who. This is presented as endearing rather than absurd.

Comic-Con conventions such as the one recently held in San Diego attract more than 100,000 fans, all of them immersed in fantasy of one sort or another, whether it’s science-fiction, horror or vampirism. They seem locked in a strange, perpetual adolescence.

No doubt for most of the people who attend events like Comic-Con, it’s harmless fun. But we shouldn’t be surprised if occasionally, someone totally loses the ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality, with tragic consequences.

* * *

SPEAKING of fantasies, director Sir Peter Jackson, director of The Hobbit, recently revealed that the Tolkien estate doesn’t like his movies. I’m not surprised.

I don’t believe Jackson has treated J R R Tolkien’s stories with the respect they deserve. He has taken Tolkien’s profound fables and turned them into noisy, pointless action spectacles.  

Jackson is an immensely talented man but it seems a common characteristic of the films he’s involved in – whether it’s The Adventures of Tintin, The Lord of the Rings or District 9 – that no matter how promisingly they start, they eventually degenerate into ridiculous extravaganzas in which any trace of nuance or subtlety is buried under layers of furious action and special effects.

* * *

ANOTHER Maori Language Week has come and gone, and with it the now-familiar lamentations that te reo is in decline and must be resuscitated. But as someone commented on the Stuff website: “If a language needs rescuing, it’s already too late.”

Maori will survive as a language if there is a compelling economic or cultural reason for it. But if it’s still struggling after 37 years of Maori language weeks, 31 years of kohanga reo and eight years of Maori TV, perhaps it should be taken off life support and left to cope as best it can.

Black American linguist John McWhorter has argued that most languages ultimately outlive their usefulness and cannot be sustained by artificial means.

Perhaps more importantly, McWhorter makes the point that a multiplicity of languages encourages segregation and apartness.  As he says: “The prospect we are taught to dread – that one day all the world’s people will speak one language – is one I would welcome.”

And we should look on the bright side. There may be fewer people able to converse in Maori, but the number of Maori words and phrases in common usage by Pakeha is infinitely greater than it was; and what’s more, many more Pakeha are making an effort to pronounce Maori names correctly.

Cosying up to the big money

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, January 31.)

IF THE National Party has an Achilles heel that makes it vulnerable to attack, it’s a fondness for cosying up to big money.

First there was the unseemly eagerness with which it prostrated itself before emissaries from Warner Bros in the 2010 row over Sir Peter Jackson’s production of The Hobbit. Then came the sweetheart deal with Sky City, whereby Auckland will gain a new convention centre in return for regulatory concessions that will allow the company to install extra gaming tables and 900 more poker machines.

Any competent government will look for ways to promote tourism and create new jobs; but there’s a counter-argument that if it results in more gambling addicts squandering the family grocery budget on pokies, it’s not worth it.

Meanwhile another Sky, Sky TV, has benefited from a hands-off regulatory regime (admittedly adopted by Labour as well as National) that has seen Sky’s audience multiply at the expense of publicly owned broadcasters. Benevolent market conditions enable the pay-TV company to outbid free-to-air rivals for sports broadcasting rights and all the best new drama programmes. As a result, we have witnessed the gradual death by strangulation of public service television.

National has also exposed itself to the accusation that it’s too matey with Australian-owned TV and radio operator MediaWorks, which was the beneficiary last year of a $43 million government loan guarantee. What made that deal look particularly dodgy was that Steven Joyce, then Minister of Communications, is a former managing director of MediaWorks’ radio subsidiary – although to be fair, it was reported that Mr Joyce initially advised against the arrangement.

Now we've learned that the grotesque German known as Kim Dotcom, who is fighting extradition to the United States on charges of internet piracy, purchased New Zealand residency in 2010 by investing $10 million in New Zealand government bonds. Immigration officials knew of his convictions in Germany for insider trading and embezzlement but weighed his criminal record against “potential benefits to New Zealand”.

We don’t know whether political influence was brought to bear in the decision to grant Dotcom residency, but perhaps direct involvement wasn’t necessary. Officials often take their cue from what they know to be the attitudes of their political masters.

Of course everyone expects National to be business-friendly, just as Labour ingratiates itself with trade unions. But it’s one thing for a government to promote a prosperous economic environment, and quite another to roll over for big business or any sleazy entrepreneur waving a cheque book.

* * *

HOW DISPIRITING that a country as dynamic and full of talent as the United States couldn’t produce a more impressive set of Republican challengers for the presidency.

Virtually all the contenders are encumbered with compromising baggage that journalists were bound to unearth. With early frontrunner Herman Cain, it was a history of sexual harassment. For Newt Gingrich, it’s his marital record and apparent predilection for adultery. For Mitt Romney, who tried hard to present himself as Mr Clean, it’s not so much his great wealth – Americans have no problem with that – as his evasiveness over how much he pays in tax.

Rick Santorum has been accused of living in one state while claiming school subsidies for his large family in another; Ron Paul has been embarrassed by bigoted views expressed in a newsletter published under his name. And on it goes.

But it’s not just that. Conspicuously absent from the Republican campaign is any hint of inspirational vision.

Where are the successors to the great American political speechwriters of the past such as Ted Sorensen, who crafted John F Kennedy’s famous inaugural speech with its appeal to Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”? Or Peggy Noonan, who masterfully recycled the poet John Magee’s line about aviators who “slipped the surly bonds of earth ... and touched the face of God” in a speech by Ronald Reagan honouring the astronauts who died in the Challenger space shuttle explosion.

Certainly there’s been no sign of soaring rhetoric so far from the Republican hopefuls. At this rate all Barack Obama has to do is turn up and the White House will be his for another four years.

* * *

VERY FEW men look better with their shirts off than on. (The same is true of women, but I’m not allowed to say that.) So why do Wellington Phoenix fans insist on baring their torsos when their team plays? All that pale, flabby flesh, all those man boobs and scrawny chests … it’s not a pretty sight.

I note with alarm that Gareth Morgan, one of the team’s new owners, demonstrated his solidarity with fans by getting his own top off at a game last year. It’s all very well wanting to prove that you’re one of the boys, but surely this is going too far.

Is modesty at risk of extinction?

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, October 12.)

MODESTY is a word rarely heard these days. If it’s mentioned at all, it’s usually in the context of someone’s achievements. We might say, for example, that Ed Hillary was noted for his modesty – in other words, that he wasn’t encumbered by a big ego.

But there are other shades of meaning to the word “modesty”. My dictionary offers the definition “decorous in manner and conduct” or, alternatively, “moderate or restrained”.

These definitions convey a range of nuanced meanings that imply a way of behaving that is dignified and protective of one’s privacy. Modest people don’t draw attention to themselves or volunteer information about their personal life that is no one else’s business. In essence, modesty can be seen as a form of self-respect.

It is in this sense that the word risks becoming extinct, because the old-fashioned concept of modesty collides head-on with the public’s desire to be entertained by revelations about aspects of people’s lives that were once thought better kept to oneself.

We are encouraged to lay bare the most intimate details of our private lives. Popular culture demands it, whether it’s a Hollywood star talking on Oprah about a drug problem, a grossly obese person taking part in a humiliating TV documentary or a former All Black making a grovelling public apology for a sexual indiscretion.

The latest manifestations of modesty’s decline are Facebook – aptly described by a British commentator as the invasion of one’s own privacy – and Twitter, which encourages its followers to broadcast their every thought and action, no matter how banal or personal, to whatever tragic souls might be interested.

In a world where legislators busy themselves devising new privacy laws, it has paradoxically become the fashion to keep nothing secret. We live in a confessional culture in which nothing is concealed, no matter how shameful or degrading.

In the Catholic Church, confession of one’s sins – in private – is followed by repentance and absolution. But in modern, secular society, confession is absolution, provided it’s done in public. As long as the sinner entertains a voyeuristic audience with a full and frank admission of guilt (the more detailed the better), the reward is forgiveness.

The problem is that once modesty has gone, the concept of shame will soon follow. And shame is – or used to be – one of our most effective checks on bad behaviour.

* * *

THERE are people who regard Merepeka Raukawa-Tait, formerly chief executive of Women’s Refuge, as a flake. But Ms Raukawa-Tait was right on the nail recently when she called on Maori leaders to “get out of the Koru Lounge” – what an apt phrase – and do more about child abuse within Maoridom.

Her comment, at an inquest into the violent death of Rotorua toddler Nia Glassie, echoed Social Development Minister Paula Bennett’s blunt message two months ago when she confronted tribal leaders with lists of abused children from each of their iwi and suggested that tribes pay for their care rather than expect the state to continue doing it.

At last, it seems people are starting to put pressure on Maoridom’s elite to take some responsibility for the shamefully high incidence of abuse and violence in Maori families. For too long this issue has been the taniwha in the whare – a baleful presence that the iwi powerbrokers apparently prefer to ignore. They would rather spend their time reminding Pakeha of their record as colonial oppressors and demanding redress for the many historical ills and humiliations, real or imagined, that Maori have suffered.

This is far more rewarding than grappling with the ugly reality of Maori violence (and a lot easier too, given the eagerness of guilt-ridden white politicians to humour their demands).

How much money from the Treaty settlements, I wonder, filters down to grassroots Maori organisations struggling to deal with the epidemic of family abuse? Or do Koru Club membership fees take priority?

I eagerly await the day when Waatea News, the Maori news bulletin on Radio New Zealand, carries as many statements by Maori leaders deploring Maori family violence as it does news items about Treaty grievances. But I’m not holding my breath.

* * *

ONE largely overlooked aspect of the continuing controversy over The Hobbit is that by the time it finally gets made, this film is going to be weighed down by a huge burden of expectation. Even by Hollywood standards, few movies in history have received as much publicity before the first scene was shot.

Endless uncertainty about funding, feverish speculation over casting, the resignation of the exasperated director and the furore over actors’ contracts mean the project has escalated from what should have been a relatively modest undertaking to a magnum opus that the whole world is watching every step of the way.

Will it live up to the attention? The pressure on Peter Jackson to deliver, after all this controversy, must be immense. I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.

Footnote: In the same week this column was published, talkback host and former Wanganui mayor Michael Laws' estranged partner Leonie Brookhammer was revealing (in Woman's Day) explicit details about the breakup of their relationship - details that must be painful and humiliating to both of them. I felt like a voyeur reading excerpts in The New Zealand Herald. While it's gratifying to have my comments about modesty and privacy (or more precisely, the fashionable willingness to relinquish it) confirmed so promptly, I can't think who - other than Woman's Day shareholders - benefits from this sort of exposure.