SILENCING THE OUTCAST

     What’s in a name?  Everything

Credit:  British Vogue

In the applause showered on Jacinda Ardern at the close of her term there’s one credit missing: The NZ PM swore to never mention the name of the 2019 Christchurch mass murderer.

After High Court Judge Cameron Mander’s sentencing to life imprisonment without parole she added the harshest of punishments: The Biblical curse of casting-out.

When Ardern struck the Islamophobe’s name off her register of humans the Australian killer was no longer a proud boy, oath-keeper or a bro to be worshipped by other twisted men. He became a castrate, a nothing, a nonentity.

Not an influencer but a loser, a number in a Paremoremo prison cell where he’ll die.

George Orwell understood the potency of erasure.  His hero in 1984 is reduced to ‘6079, Smith, W’.  Staff at the vile English public school I attended only used surnames and slurs. Forenames would diminish the boys’ manhood, make them softies.

They also taught teens to bayonet sacks of straw swinging from gibbets and twist the blade so the blood could run down its gutter, let air rush into the wound and speed death.  That was to make us upright citizens fit to civilise the colonies, though it turned some into brutes.

Ardern’s pledge has been maintained by her government and the serious media. That doesn’t stop commenting on the crime, but it sucks out the oxygen of notoriety that the vainglorious so clearly seek.

The paths to worthy fame and remembrance are hard and long, those to infamy short and easy. For the killer of 51 Muslims at prayer in the Al Noor mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre  craved attention.  He wanted his name to be etched on a granite plinth, a celebration of evil like the Marquis of Sade.

The loner imagined it set in dictionaries, an inspiration to other white supremacists desperate to make hate a virtue.

In another time and place he might have been dealt with by the device of two other names embedded in the language: Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the French physician who ignored the Hippocratic oath to do no harm, and the 18^th century US judge Charles Lynch.

Either would have guaranteed his rapid departure.  Instead the terrorist escaped those fates by slaughtering in civilised Aotearoa led by a woman who preached kindness but recognised its limits.

His road not taken would have been a tougher test of Kipling masculinity than buying guns and plotting a massacre of women, men and kiddies on their knees.  That’s the work of cowards, the gutless.

Taking the other road in the yellow wood would have demanded years of study, hard work, determination, nurturing gifts and refining ideas.  It would have meant using failure to keep exploring in the quest to create something marvellous, to motivate others to make all lives better.  

The eponym models he might have copied and so be forever remembered with thanks include Louis Braille and Samuel Morse. Had he chosen science he could have read about Rudolf Diesel or James Watt or Andre-Marie Ampere, maybe Jean Nicot.

To be fair when the French diplomat presented tobacco to his king in 1560, the weed was thought to have curative powers. Like Alfred Nobel his discovery has killed millions, though that was not the intent.  

But there was no benign motive, no intellectual inquiry required in scrawling obscenities on gun butts in a scruffy flat ahead of a drive through green Otautahi on a mission to massacre.

In medicine we’ve long forgotten the full monikers of Alois Alzheime, Bernard Crohn and James Parkinson though we know the diseases they identified so they can be understood and treated.  We should call X rays (Marie) Curies, which is how radioactivity units are measured.

Thank you all. Peering down microscopes, not gunsights, is the work  of warriors fighting germs.  They are heroes.

The Bard asked: ‘What’s in a name?’  It can be everything or nothing. Ardern has ensured that while the monster’s crime will be remembered his name will not.

Even her most malicious detractors must concede that’s a legacy to be admired and an example to be followed.

First published in Pearls & Irritations, 30 January 2023: 

https://johnmenadue.com/whats-in-a-name-arderns-pledge/

WILL A CGT GET TO NZ AT LAST?

                           Should Kiwi values fly north?

           

New Zealand’s image has always been less coarse than Australia’s.

Both nations claim to be egalitarian. They salute the ‘fair go’, sharpen scythes to slash tall poppies and assert Jack and Jill are as good as their masters and mistresses. (The NZ Governor General and PM jobs are held by women).

Though the differences have been good for barbie banter, they lack protein. Kiwis have problems with vowels, though not with rugby.  They reckon it’s Godzone but half-a-million prefer life across The Ditch where the weather and wages are hotter and higher. There are seven sheep for every human in one place, and fewer than three in the other.

The hard rock has always been equality.  No longer. The top ten per cent of the NZ population holds 60 per cent of the wealth while the bottom half has four per cent. How to fix? Look north for an idea.

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Seeking a house? Don’t venture across the Tasman.  While values in Australia are tumbling, those in NZ are whooshing ever upwards.

In Auckland, the nation’s biggest city, prices have doubled since 2010.  Other North Island centres are not far behind.  The government is now pondering a rare move, importing a policy from next door: A capital gains tax on windfalls from trading property. 

CGT came to Australia in 1985 via a Labor government; to widespread astonishment the nation didn’t turn into the Venezuela of the Pacific. However that’s what will happen if NZ follows suit, according to doom-mongers.

Opposition Leader Simon Bridges heads National – NZ’s tamer version of Australia’s Liberal Party. His concern is for ‘people who work hard, who save, who invest, who take risks deserve the fruits of their labour …there is nothing fair about a CGT that fundamentally gets in the way of that.’ He has four houses.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson urged Bridges ‘to turn the hyperbole volume down a little bit … I think the Kiwi way of life is about giving people a fair go, I think it's about making sure that everyone is treated fairly ... that's what New Zealanders look for.’
Maybe, for their politics are as exhilarating as a warm beer on a hot day. Compared with its giant neighbour’s fire-and-flood rhetoric on issues like asylum seekers, NZ is a high-country lake of tranquillity. 

Listeners knew they were in totally 100 per cent pure und fentestic jandal (thong) and judder bar (speed bump) territory when they tuned into Radio National NZ in February.

Suddenly a breaking news-alert:  Stop everything:  Trump shot?  Brexit solved? Morrison seeking asylum?  Just the discovery of one fruit fly. From Queensland. Shock, horror. The furious search for his mates lit up bulletins for a week.

Rental cars carry a dashboard sticker reading KEEP LEFT – which isn’t just about road use. Although Labour leads the present coalition, its National predecessor, which lasted three 3-year terms, was so close to the centre it would put Bill Shorten and Tony Abbott comfy on the same bench. 

Led by the jovial John Key, National was hard to hate.  He even ran a flag-change referendum; though the people said no, the millionaire former banker’s reputation didn’t, well, flag. When he found the job boring he quit.

His perpetually smiling Labour successor Jacinda Ardern, 38, is using the same ‘box of fluffies’ (Kiwispeak for ‘stay calm and carry on’) approach to crises. In many countries being a young unmarried agnostic Mum would make her unacceptable - in NZ it adds to her lustre.

The lunar right seldom gets treated seriously.  NZ is usually ranked as the world’s least corrupt state according to Transparency International. (Australia is 13^th). The left has found discipline. It could all turn to custard tomorrow, but these facts are on the menu today.

There are plenty of silly decisions and stupid statements.  There’s been an eruption of committees and working parties examining every problem, including house prices.  Much is more talk than walk.

Overall public debates seldom get to the gladiatorial contests staged in the Canberra colosseum. For this thank some smart decisions made long ago that Australia might consider.

NZ has a Bill of Rights (1990) – Australia is still hesitating. Aotearoa isn’t cursed with a federal system. No State governments thwarting change.  Since 1951 there’s been no upper house to revise / stuff up lower house legislation. 

NZ has the mixed-member proportional (MMP) system also used in Germany and Scotland. MPs are either elected by their constituency, or appointed from the party list. It’s complex, but two years ago 80 per cent of registered electors voluntarily voted. Seven seats are reserved for Maori on a separate roll.

Australia is still chewing over a treaty with its indigenous citizens.  NZ’s was signed in 1840 and although friction over interpretations sometimes sparks scrub fires, most seem proud of the document, preserved as a national icon in Wellington.

There’s no contest that Waitangi Day (6 February) marks the nation’s foundation.  It’s an elaborate, drawn-out event involving Maori custom, religion, pakeha (European) rituals and fun on the treaty grounds. It’s sometimes been a forum for Maori rotten tomato protests, but this year Ardern was treated with respect and given the breakfast tomato sauce duty.

Like most leaders she uses Te Reo (Maori); scores of words are being stirred into English and used in the mainstream media confusing or delighting visitors. 

So some Australians are going to find it even more difficult to understand what’s going on next door.  If they can they might reckon there’s a thung or two to learn from Kiwis in exchange for the CGT.

Australasian journalist Duncan Graham, who usually reports from Indonesia, is briefly back in NZ.

(First published in Pearls and Irritations 12 March 2019: http://johnmenadue.com/duncan-graham-could-kiwi-values-fly-north/

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KIWIS NOW HAVE CHOICE

Change ahead for Godzone?                                                       

A new dawn for Wellington?

The Radio New Zealand website headline seemed a must-read:  Myrtle Rust Found In Waikato.

Yet another overseas tourist lost in a snowstorm?  Anticipate tales of heroic search-and-rescue. Or maybe she’s a notorious bank robber on the run in the North Island region named after the longest river (425 kilometers).

Neither.  Myrtle Rust is a plant disease discovered on two trees now legally cordoned and rapidly felled.  That this yawn was deemed national news reveals much about the small South Pacific nation now considered a safe retreat should nuclear warheads explode in North Korea.

Another factor was dollars.  Apart from tourism NZ leans heavily on agricultural exports. So an alien bug should be feared by all, even one with a benign forename.

Myrtle aside there’s an even bigger event underway and getting international coverage– an election which looks increasingly likely to be lost by the incumbent National Party headed by Bill English, 55, a competent economist but a bland politician.

His Labour Party challenger is Jacinda Ardern, 37, fun, young but untested. Straw-grabbers have compared her to French President Emmanuel Macron, 40, another fresh contender from behind.  

Ardern has been in Parliament for less than a decade and before that in backroom politics – including the UK where she was on the staff of Labour PM Tony Blair.

That a woman might become PM without the sky falling shows the cultural gap with the US. NZ was the first nation to give women the vote in 1893; two decades ago voters put National’s Jenny Shipley into the top job. 

She was succeeded by Labour’s Helen Clark.  She held on for three terms (each of three years) till unseated by banker John Key in 2008.

Clark then joined the United Nations in New York as head of its development program.  Last year she stood unsuccessfully for the secretary general’s job.

Kiwis believe a woman’s place is everywhere so few journalists dare ask gender-based questions. Voters may want to know Ardern’s marriage plans and dress tips; she accepts the reality but prefers policy talk. 

For the record her father Ross is NZ High Commissioner to the Pacific Island of Niue. She lives with her radio presenter boyfriend. No kids.  Though raised a Mormon she’s now an agnostic. In NZ these traits are no handicap, though her opponent is a married Catholic with six children.

Two months ago middle-road National looked certain to win based on its record of economic stability and few major political crises. Yet housing problems caused by rising migration, high prices and few new builds have forced families to rent, not buy, putting pressure on social services. 

There’s been some resentment towards cashed-up arrivals from China (12 per cent) followed by the UK (many said to be Brexit refugees) and Australia at ten per cent each.  The rest are Indians, Pacific Islanders and returning Kiwis according to Statistics NZ.

About 74,000 immigrants a year is an entree in Europe but a main course in a nation with only 4.7 million people - and 30 million sheep.

National’s fortunes collapsed followed Ardern’s sudden leap to Opposition leader last month when her boss, charisma-free Andrew Little, accepted he’d been ineffectual.

Overseas Aotearoa (the Maori name for NZ) is known as a milk-and-honey progressive state. However not all is clean and green. Although crime is falling the jail rate of 212 for every 100,000 citizens puts NZ alongside Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

More than 40 per cent of those behind bars are Maori, yet the original occupiers represent just a seventh of the population; this suggests many ethnic, education and employment issues still resist resolution.

NZ was a global pioneer in welfare for all; hospital care is free, medicines subsidised and pensions not means tested as they are in Australia where wages are higher and taxes lower.

Yet by comparison with its big northern neighbor NZ is doing well; economic growth is three per cent and the budget balanced. The Great South Land is being ravaged by a mining slump, factional fights over global warming, and moral storms about same sex marriage.

 NZ passed that law four years ago.  Visitors expecting Sodom and Gomorrah will be disappointed; last year just 465 local same-sex couples got hitched while almost 20,000 opposite sex pairs followed suit.

The change was easier because NZ is a unicameral state so no upper house to reject laws.  It uses the Mixed-Member Proportional representation voting system.

Electors get two votes, party and candidate. The Electoral Commission says MMP’s ‘defining characteristics are a mix of MPs from single-member electorates and those elected from a party list.’  A party's portion of the 120 seats ‘roughly mirrors its share of the overall nationwide party vote.’ This gives the five minors more clout.  The Greens dominate but this year imploded over welfare policies.

Unlike Australia there’s no compulsory voting.  The Saturday 23 September election is in spring but NZ’s fickle weather could keep voters indoors.

Traditionally the elderly exercise their democratic duty. In the last election 22 per cent of electors couldn’t bother. Labour strategists hope Ardern’s feisty independence and bright countenance will stir youngsters to vote.

The issues have been largely domestic and so far the debates generally civilised. National is free market, but not US extreme. Labour is socialist, but not UK radical.

The country has a small defence force and relies on the ANZUS Treaty with Australia and the US. Having a massive arid continent between Godzone (God’s own country) and the world’s trouble spots helps calm nerves.

NZ has been pushing into Southeast Asia to boost trade and opening new consulates in Indonesia. However NZ harbors a small but vocal group supported by seven Pacific Island states alleging human-rights abuses in West Papua.

Their campaign has been annoying Indonesia.  Should Labour win on 23 September their calls for greater transparency could find a more supportive government.  * Disclosure: The author is a registered NZ elector.

(First published in Strategic Review, 14 September 2017: