The most revealing story you're likely to read today

From the "You Couldn't Make This Stuff Up" file: the latest press release from the Taxpayers' Union. This is a telling snapshot of New Zealand in 2021 and quite possibly the most important story of the day, but don't expect to see it widely publicised.  

7 MAY 2021

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Taxpayers shelled out thousands of dollars transporting a dead turtle from Banks Peninsula to Wellington, storing it in a freezer for 21 months, then sending it back down to where it washed up for a high-powered and fully-catered powhiri, complete with a helicopter ride and a handmade coffin constructed by public servants. No scientific research was performed at any stage.

Based on responses to several Official Information Act requests, plus earlier media reports, the Taxpayers' Union can set out the timeline:

• In March 2019, a dead leatherback turtle is found on the shore in Banks Peninsula. He is never named though he is known at the Taxpayers' Union as Michelangelo.
• DOC advises Te Papa that the local Banks Peninsula marae, Koukourārata, has provided approval for Te Papa to receive turtle.
• A DOC ranger uses a tractor to transfer the turtle to the back of his ute, then commissions a truck belonging to a pet food company to keep the turtle chilled. The ranger warns that transporting the turtle to Wellington will be a "logistical nightmare". The ranger's wage costs are $200.
• The turtle is collected by Te Papa from the Department of Conservation office in Christchurch and driven up to Wellington in Te Papa’s Toyota Hilux, at a reported cost of $475.75.
• The turtle arrives at Te Papa's Tory Street facility, where staff plan to perform a necropsy, check its gut for plastic, gather biological information for "the global turtle research community", and ultimately skeletonise the corpse.
• In an apparent change of heart from the local iwi, Ngāi Tahu representative Matui Payne tells media of "a sense of grief and sadness that we didn't have the opportunity to grieve for our kaitiaki, for our tipuna." Te Papa cites "issues relating to consultation and support" and enters into discussion with Koukourārata "regarding the return and repatriation of the honu [turtle]."
• The late turtle spends 21 months in Te Papa's freezer.
• No scientific research is conducted. Te Papa explains, "To enable scientific research to be undertaken, the turtle would have had to be skeletonised (i.e. processes undertaken to reduce the turtle remains to a skeleton). In conjunction with tikanga, it is usually important that all parts of the taonga or specimen (in this case, the turtle) should be buried, if possible. . .In terms of science objectives, Te Papa has not conducted any research on the turtle during its time at Te Papa so has not gained any research insights."
• At some point, Te Papa staff build a "te honu crate" or turtle coffin, with materials costing $580.85.
• On 11 December 2020, Te Papa staff are joined by a contingent from Koukourārata for a karakia (prayer) in Wellington.
• DOC transports the turtle from Wellington back to Bank Peninsula in a refrigerated truck. The three-day journey includes reported costs of $940 in mileage, $448 for the Cook Strait ferry crossing, and $500 in wage costs. A Koukourārata representative accompanies the turtle during this journey.
• Eight Te Papa staff, including members of the Board and the senior leadership team, fly to Canterbury for the deceased turtle's powhiri.
• Domestic travel, car rental and accommodation: $4,327.77
• Powhiri and kai for 40 people: $880.00
• At the powhiri, the eight Te Papa staff are joined by seven DOC staff.
• Four of the DOC staff are paid by the hour, for a total cost of $600.
• DOC pays a $200 koha to the Koukourārata.
• DOC spends $130 on mileage.
• The turtle arrives at its powhiri, is removed from its coffin, placed on an altar to thaw while speeches are given, and eventually strapped to a crate and flown via helicopter to its burial site: a hilltop on a nearby island. DOC pays $1600 for the helicopter service. Video and photographs from the day capture these events.
• Two DOC staff conduct an archeological survey of the burial site, and three staff dig the hole. Reported wage costs for these activities are $900.

Union spokesperson Louis Houlbrooke says, "The total cost to taxpayers for Michelangelo's eventful afterlife is difficult to quantify, but we would place it in the tens of thousands. Te Papa and DOC's total reported expenses were $11,742.31, but that excludes the time cost for high-level salaried staff."

"Te Papa was prepared to obtain this turtle for research on a rare species. That is valid. Koukourārata, who had expressed no interest when the turtle first washed up, suddenly wanted it back and intact. The result was a truly bizarre odyssey that saw a dead turtle travel by land, sea, and air, before ultimately being buried by public servants on a hilltop."

"After thousands of dollars and 21 months of fuss, the turtle ends up right back where it started, providing no scientific insights. In fact, Te Papa told us over the phone that they couldn't even verify whether the turtle was male or female. What a waste. Such a majestic creature deserved far better than to wait 21 months in a freezer while bureaucrats negotiated a protracted repatriation mission that would make the Ministry of Foreign Affairs blush."

"We have to give some credit to Te Papa and DOC for their thorough answers to our questions. We get the sense they're proud of the enormous time, attention, and staff hours they've devoted to Michelangelo's odyssey. Unfortunately, they've tarnished the turtle's legacy with this epic saga of government waste."

Source documents and photographs are available on the Taxpayers' Union's website here.

We're big enough to look after ourselves

(First published in The Dominion Post and on Stuff.co.nz, October 17.)

A long time ago – 1978, to be precise – I wrote an article for The Listener that began something like this: “A funny thing happened at the Department of Maori Affairs recently. They put a Maori in charge”.

The article was about Kara Puketapu, who had the distinction of being only the second Maori to be appointed as head of the department charged with looking after Maori interests.

Today it would be unthinkable for Te Puni Kokiri, as it’s now known, to have a non-Maori in the top job. To appoint a Pakeha would be seen as an intolerable affront to Maori and a throwback to the days of patronising colonialism.

It would be argued that only a Maori could properly understand Maori needs, advise the government on policies affecting Maori and, perhaps most crucially, identify with the people he or she was supposed to represent.

You might well wonder, then, why New Zealanders continue to meekly accept the appointment of non-New Zealanders to the highest levels of both the public and corporate sectors. Surely the same arguments apply.

We haven’t had a British governor-general since the 1960s and we abandoned the right of appeal to the Privy Council 15 years ago. This suggests we feel capable of looking after ourselves. Yet we continue to see a stream of overseas appointees to powerful positions – a notable recent example being the naming of an Australian, Caralee McLiesh, as the secretary to the Treasury, a job that places her at the very heart of economic policy-making.

McLiesh replaced another outsider, the Englishman Gabriel Makhlouf, who left under a cloud after being roundly criticised by the State Services Commission for his handling of an embarrassing Budget leak earlier this year.

The appointment of a virtually unknown Australian raised eyebrows around Wellington. Blogger Michael Reddell, a former top official of the Reserve Bank, found it disturbing that twice in succession, an outsider with no knowledge or experience of New Zealand had been recruited to fill what he described as the premier position in the public service.

Reddell said he didn’t think it was appropriate to recruit foreigners, especially ones with no experience or background knowledge of New Zealand, for such critical roles.

Even more disturbing was the appointment of the British academic and left-wing activist Paul Hunt as Chief Human Rights Commissioner.

The human rights role is a particularly sensitive one because it calls for someone with an intuitive understanding of our unique heritage and values. It’s inconceivable that an English academic, and a highly politicised one at that, was the most suitable candidate.

Similarly, you’d think we might have recruited locally for the position of CEO at Te Papa, an institution that supposedly reflects what it means to be a New Zealander. Yet we’ve now had two British appointees in the job, both of whom have created disruption and resentment by pursuing their own vision of what Te Papa should be.

That leads me to another danger with overseas appointees. Many have no emotional stake in New Zealand or long-standing commitment to the country. They are free to screw things up and move on without so much as a backward glance, leaving whatever damage they have done for someone else to clean up.

This is equally true in the corporate sector, where Fonterra, the ANZ Bank and Fletcher Building have all had to mop up after high-flying but seriously flawed CEOs recruited from the Netherlands, Australia and Scotland respectively.

In academia, too, we have had to suffer the consequences of questionable appointments from overseas. I’m thinking in particular of Massey University’s vice-chancellor Jan Thomas, who deservedly copped a backlash for assuming powers of political censorship on campus. What right did an Australian veterinary scientist have to dictate what opinions New Zealanders should be exposed to?

Another intriguing phenomenon, which I suspect is related, is the high proportion of foreign-born activists at the forefront of radical politics in New Zealand. Examples include the career peace protester Valerie Morse, the abortion rights advocate Terry Bellamak, the anti-poverty campaigner Ricardo Menendez-March and the vociferous Guled Mire, who keeps complaining about our supposedly racist immigration policies.

Such people bring with them an ideological fervour that is alien to New Zealanders, who are essentially a complacent and contented lot. Because we tend to be passive and polite, we make it easy for shouty, highly motivated outsiders to push their way to the top. But they don't speak for us.

Contemporary architects have failed us

(First published in The Dominion Post and on Stuff.co.nz, June 27.)

Earlier this year, France mourned when fire partially destroyed the Cathedral of Notre-Dame.

It was striking to see Parisians on their knees in the streets, praying and singing hymns – this in a country that was generally thought to have largely renounced Catholicism.

But it wasn’t just the French, or Catholics, who grieved. The world shared their pain, because Notre- Dame is acknowledged as one of Western civilisation’s architectural gems. Something about the sight of this ancient and glorious building in flames clearly touched even irreligious people.

The worldwide reaction to the Notre-Dame fire reminded us that buildings are important. Great architecture, like great music and great literature, has the power to inspire us. It’s also capable of making powerful statements about our history and culture.

So what great New Zealand buildings deserve to be celebrated? Er, not very many.

Of course we have no Notre-Dame, St Paul’s or Hagia Sophia, for the obvious reason that we’re one of the youngest countries in the world, in terms of human settlement.

But even allowing for that, our architectural heritage is pretty thin. Taking Wellington as an example, it’s hard to think of any building erected in my lifetime that evokes feelings of pride, still less awe. Lambton Quay, The Terrace and Molesworth Street are lined with monuments to dreary, functional conformity. There is no sense of vision or daring.

At best, Wellington has a handful of modern buildings that could be described as quirky. The Beehive – originally sketched on the back of a table napkin – arouses curiosity purely because of its novelty. It has minimal aesthetic appeal and must be cursed daily by the unfortunate occupants forced to work within its strictures.

Another famous oddball edifice is Roger Walker’s whimsical 1970s Park Mews in Hataitai – but again, it earned its fame as a conversation piece rather than for aesthetic merit.

On the rare occasions when an architect has created a modern building of enduring appeal, as John Scott did in the 1960s with Karori’s Futuna Chapel, it hasn’t always been treated with respect. Futuna was allowed to fall into disrepair (since rectified) and ended up hemmed in on all sides by town houses and barely able to breathe.

As for the significant public buildings that might be expected to make a statement about our values and aspirations, our architects have failed us.Te Papa, in its prime site beside the harbour, remains a slabby monstrosity that makes little sense inside or out.

And our supposedly “iconic” Supreme Court building, enclosed in a bronze thicket that’s intended to represent wind-blown pohutukawa and rata trees but looks more like tortured matagouri or a crown of thorns, is poorly served by its proximity to the elegant 19^th century building that preceded it. The juxtaposition serves only to highlight the folly of contemporary architects straining for symbolism.

In fact look almost anywhere in the capital, and you can’t help but be struck by the contrast between buildings constructed in the latter half of the 20^th century and those of earlier eras.

Sadly, some of those older buildings – among them the characterful Spanish Mission-style Midland Hotel – are long gone, but it remains true that the buildings which command our admiration today are mostly older ones. Perhaps even more remarkably, they have withstood earthquakes that rendered much newer structures uninhabitable.

St Gerard’s Monastery and Weir House are handsome buildings that make the most of their commanding locations. The latter bears the distinctive imprint of William Gray Young, who designed it in collaboration with Charles Lawrence.

Young left his mark all over the city, having also designed Wellington Railway Station, the Wellesley Club and the two-storeyed neo-Georgian gem in Kent Tce known as Elliott House.

Another architect who made an enduring contribution to Wellington’s architectural heritage was Frederick de Jersey Clere, who designed St Mary of the Angels and the lovely Wellington Harbour Board buildings that line Customhouse and Jervois quays.

Those who appreciate architectural aesthetics still admire these buildings. Will the same be true of structures such as the Michael Fowler Centre in 100 years’ time? I doubt it. The MFC looked outdated 10 years after it was built.  

And now it seems Wellington’s character homes may be at risk too, as the city council looks at ways of squeezing more people into a limited area of land. High-rise apartment buildings occupy a smaller footprint than old houses – but at what aesthetic price?

Just as the historic inner-city suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney give those cities much of their distinctive character, so Wellington’s older homes have a personality that its commercial and public buildings conspicuously lack. But with the city’s record of architectural vandalism, no one should assume their future is secure.

There's nothing wrong with Te Papa that a large bomb won't fix

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, January 5.)

ASSUMING the government ever gets around to announcing an appointment, I have some advice for whoever succeeds the late Seddon Bennington as chief executive of Te Papa.

Blow the place up and start again.

The problem with Te Papa is not simply that the architects missed an opportunity to make a dramatic statement – something to rival the Sydney Opera House – on its prime waterfront site. You could excuse that failure if the building worked internally, but it doesn’t.

It’s a haphazard, chaotic jumble, so poorly signposted and lacking in cohesion that every time I leave the building, I have an unsettling feeling that there must be things I have missed.

As if to confirm this, I read last year that Te Papa had decided to close its library because only 5 percent of visitors bothered going there. I’m hardly surprised. Despite having been to Te Papa many times, I didn’t realise there was a library.

As for the art gallery, I heard the artist Grahame Sydney comment recently that you needed to be a bloodhound to find it.

Admittedly it must be challenging for museum designers to create a coherent, sequential flow that guides the visitor past most of the important exhibits, but some manage it.

Te Papa misses by a country mile. There’s no sense of order or logic in the way things have been arranged.

Moreover, Te Papa makes things worse by trying too hard to be clever with the use of gimmicky signage and captions full of laboured puns that get in the way of clarity. Bizarrely, many captions and explanatory signs are hidden in semi-darkness where they are almost impossible to read.

Interesting exhibits are easily missed. On a recent visit I noticed for the first time, high on the wall in the entry foyer, a massive iron anchor left behind in a Northland harbour by the French explorer de Surville. Despite its size it’s easy to overlook because the attention of people coming and going through the doors is focused elsewhere.

When you do spot it, and wonder what story lies behind it, you have to search to find a tiny, obscure plaque explaining the anchor’s significance.

A good museum leads visitors on a voyage of discovery. Te Papa leaves them to stumble about and hope that with time and luck, they’ll find their way all around the interesting bits. Not good enough.

* * *

THE cumbersomely titled Capital Markets Development Task Force, which delivered its recommendations to the government last month, wants faith in the sharemarket restored so that more people are encouraged to invest in productive enterprises rather than ploughing their savings into property.

It’s a worthy goal, but you can hardly blame people for being cynical about the way the market treats small investors.

Take my own case. I wanted to invest in a New Zealand company that produced something useful, drew on New Zealand technological expertise and was export-focused, because ultimately that’s what New Zealand depends on for growth. I also looked for a company that had solid names behind it – not flash Harrys, but people with a proven track record. I didn’t want big dividends and was happy to park my money long term.

I bought shares in Provenco, which ticked all the necessary boxes. The presence on the share register of names like Peter Maire, Sir Stephen Tindall and Todd family interests was reassuring.

Alas, the rest is history. Provenco merged with a company called Cadmus – they were both in the business of providing eftpos equipment – and eventually it all came crashing down.

Well, them’s the breaks. Every investment has a risk attached.

What irks me, though, is that in the five months since ProvencoCadmus went into receivership, I haven’t heard a word from the company or the receivers. Not a word. It seems that in such situations, there’s no obligation on anyone to advise shareholders of the fate of their investment.

This is surely a simple matter of courtesy, if not of law. If the ProvencoCadmus experience is typical of the contempt with which small investors are treated, it’s scarcely surprising that people don’t trust the markets.

* * *

I SINCERELY hope Labour leader Phil Goff has a better year than he did in 2009, when he was barely more than a spectator. But I wonder whether his party has learned anything from the last election.

Labour recently distributed a glossy pamphlet in which Mr Goff talks about his grandmother being widowed with three kids and struggling to make ends meet, then goes on: “My story is like that of a lot of New Zealanders. I raised a family. I spent seven seasons in freezing works. I joined Labour because it stands alongside New Zealanders’ values.”

Freezing works? Widowed mothers? This is pure “old” Labour. It will resonate with those who remember Mickey Savage, Walter Nash and Norm Kirk: voters who will go to their graves voting Labour anyway, out of sheer habit. But it completely fails to connect with the vital voters of Generations X and Y whom Labour must capture, and for whom nostalgic evocations of the party's proud working-class history must seem quaint and irrelevant.

One of the lessons of the last election was that there has been a generational changing of the guard. If Labour still hasn’t grasped that, it’s stuffed.