Saturday, 7 November 2009
Friday, 18 September 2009
SCAMPERING ACROSS THE SKYLINE
Joy to hikers, ban the bikers Duncan Graham
If Robert Frost had written about Wellington instead of New Hampshire he’d have re-composed his evocative verse to celebrate hills that are lovely, dark and deep
The finest place to view them is from the Skyline Walk, whose promoters claim it takes less than six hours to tramp from South Karori to Johnsonville. Nonsense. The small print, so tiny it’s invisible, would reveal you’d need to be Valerie Vili fit and determined not to stop, whatever the lure.
That would be impossible for the temptations are overwhelming. Because the track winds and wends its way up crests, around spurs, between outcrops and over saddles, every turn presents a vista new.
These are Rita Angus hillscapes, bosomy and beautiful, mysterious dark cleavages separating the lusty swellings, the colors constantly changing as the sun flashes Morse between the racing clouds.
It’s below the snow line but not the clouds, so it’s unwise to traverse the tops when the weather turns Wellingtonian. The winds can be ferocious, the rain horizontal for this is the first high ground hit by the Roaring Forties as they funnel through Cook Strait.
Fortunately there are plenty of exit points. If you want to call off your tramp there are easy escapes into the comforting tarseal of Karori, Wilton, Crofton Downs, Ngaio and Khandallah.
On a clear day to the west you can see forever, or at least to the South Island, so close it’s a wonder no one has built a bridge. If this was China or Taiwan where they do, not debate, we’d be able to drive to Picton.
To the east there’s a God’s-eye view of a sparkling toy city, with seagull planes gliding silently into Kilbirnie and dinky liners cutting their wakes across a mirror sea. It’s a sight so magnificent it should be pasteurised by Fonterra and exported by the gigalitre
If you’re walking north the TV antenna on top of Mt Kaukau at 445 metres is a handy landmark. But because the track is so serpentine one minute the mast is on the left, the next on the right and then behind. Frequently it disappears.
It’s the same if you’re heading south and use the Brooklyn wind turbine to get your bearings. This can lead the unwary to fear they’re lost. That happens even though there are plenty of signs, because some users have made their own tracks.
These deceivers and despoilers are mountain bikers and it’s in keeping with their character. These are the hoons of the hills, the terror of trampers, silently bursting round bends along a track little wider than a footprint, cut deep by racing wheels then scoured by running water during every downpour.
Apart from those who leave their pooch poo on the pathways, the trainee Mongrel Mob is the major hazard. More pedestrian types mutter greetings, some even exchange banalities about the weather, but the thugs on wheels don’t even acknowledge the presence of others sharing their space.
The Wellington City Council has put up signs urging cyclists to show courtesy, to obey the simple and obvious rules. It’s a total waste of time – these morons move too fast to read.
The other tactic now underway is the installation of narrow cattle stops so the cyclists don’t have to cut the fences to keep going, for the track also passes through private land where off-white Corriedales and black Angus rule.
They’re also great eroders, using their cloven hooves to claw out sheltering caves, exposing crumbling greywacke slabs like Picasso cubes and scattering the tracks with rubble.
Slip on these loose stones or skid on cowpats and if you don’t twist an ankle you’ll take a tumble. Choose your accident spots with care; some slopes are close to vertical.
The early settlers felled everything that stood still and sooled sabre-toothed mastoids and marsupials on the rest. But thanks to saturating the area with brodifacoum the birds are returning; many are exotics like European skylarks and finches, and Australian magpies.
There are a few locals, including secretive pipits, the raucous paradise ducks whose courtship sounds like corrugated iron being ripped and joyful tui, though they tend to stay close to the suburbs.
Soft-steppers may surprise feral goats before they dash for cover, and at one location someone released a chook and a cock. These pioneering fowl have raised a clutch and there’s now much incestuous behaviour underway in the undergrowth. Best keep the location secret lest WCC’s assassins move in with guns and toxins on this charming extended family.
If only they would slaughter the other invaders, the powerful H G Wells monsters who stride in columns across the hills. No problems with the new Makara turbines, they’re elegant. Transpower’s towers are crude, though their cables sing symphonies for strings.
The other imprints are acceptable; a brick chimney place where the Kilmister kids once sheltered and watched their flocks by night. Collapsing stockyards with rails held up not by Number 8 wire but pink and blue plastic baler twine ensuring impermanence. A tunnel full of weta comfy in their dank, mossy-walled bunker.
In spring the russet tauhinu and golden gorse sprinkle the hills with fresh colours. Council workers try to keep it at bay by slashing with heavy-duty mowers on long reach hydraulic arms.
But the gorse is the Taleban of New Zealand. It stays just clear of the whirring blades, waits till the machines retreat, then moves back from its guerrilla strongholds, reoccupying the cleared areas, terrorising the local flora.
The obvious stopping place is Mt Kaukau with picnic tables (though no toilets or rubbish bins), but if you’ve taken to the hills to avoid humans then find another spot.
There’s no shortage. Such is the vastness of this lovely land that all Wellington could flee here should the big tsunami drown the airport and turn Miramar into an island.
This so easily accessible area is where civil defence should set its headquarters. Like hobbits we could just dig into the hills, distil gorse flower gin and stone the placid livestock to maintain a supply of lamb chops.
Only one group would be banned from this commune of refugees from the coast; the mountain bikers.
(First published in The Dominion Post 5 / 6 September 2009
##
If Robert Frost had written about Wellington instead of New Hampshire he’d have re-composed his evocative verse to celebrate hills that are lovely, dark and deep
The finest place to view them is from the Skyline Walk, whose promoters claim it takes less than six hours to tramp from South Karori to Johnsonville. Nonsense. The small print, so tiny it’s invisible, would reveal you’d need to be Valerie Vili fit and determined not to stop, whatever the lure.
That would be impossible for the temptations are overwhelming. Because the track winds and wends its way up crests, around spurs, between outcrops and over saddles, every turn presents a vista new.
These are Rita Angus hillscapes, bosomy and beautiful, mysterious dark cleavages separating the lusty swellings, the colors constantly changing as the sun flashes Morse between the racing clouds.
It’s below the snow line but not the clouds, so it’s unwise to traverse the tops when the weather turns Wellingtonian. The winds can be ferocious, the rain horizontal for this is the first high ground hit by the Roaring Forties as they funnel through Cook Strait.
Fortunately there are plenty of exit points. If you want to call off your tramp there are easy escapes into the comforting tarseal of Karori, Wilton, Crofton Downs, Ngaio and Khandallah.
On a clear day to the west you can see forever, or at least to the South Island, so close it’s a wonder no one has built a bridge. If this was China or Taiwan where they do, not debate, we’d be able to drive to Picton.
To the east there’s a God’s-eye view of a sparkling toy city, with seagull planes gliding silently into Kilbirnie and dinky liners cutting their wakes across a mirror sea. It’s a sight so magnificent it should be pasteurised by Fonterra and exported by the gigalitre
If you’re walking north the TV antenna on top of Mt Kaukau at 445 metres is a handy landmark. But because the track is so serpentine one minute the mast is on the left, the next on the right and then behind. Frequently it disappears.
It’s the same if you’re heading south and use the Brooklyn wind turbine to get your bearings. This can lead the unwary to fear they’re lost. That happens even though there are plenty of signs, because some users have made their own tracks.
These deceivers and despoilers are mountain bikers and it’s in keeping with their character. These are the hoons of the hills, the terror of trampers, silently bursting round bends along a track little wider than a footprint, cut deep by racing wheels then scoured by running water during every downpour.
Apart from those who leave their pooch poo on the pathways, the trainee Mongrel Mob is the major hazard. More pedestrian types mutter greetings, some even exchange banalities about the weather, but the thugs on wheels don’t even acknowledge the presence of others sharing their space.
The Wellington City Council has put up signs urging cyclists to show courtesy, to obey the simple and obvious rules. It’s a total waste of time – these morons move too fast to read.
The other tactic now underway is the installation of narrow cattle stops so the cyclists don’t have to cut the fences to keep going, for the track also passes through private land where off-white Corriedales and black Angus rule.
They’re also great eroders, using their cloven hooves to claw out sheltering caves, exposing crumbling greywacke slabs like Picasso cubes and scattering the tracks with rubble.
Slip on these loose stones or skid on cowpats and if you don’t twist an ankle you’ll take a tumble. Choose your accident spots with care; some slopes are close to vertical.
The early settlers felled everything that stood still and sooled sabre-toothed mastoids and marsupials on the rest. But thanks to saturating the area with brodifacoum the birds are returning; many are exotics like European skylarks and finches, and Australian magpies.
There are a few locals, including secretive pipits, the raucous paradise ducks whose courtship sounds like corrugated iron being ripped and joyful tui, though they tend to stay close to the suburbs.
Soft-steppers may surprise feral goats before they dash for cover, and at one location someone released a chook and a cock. These pioneering fowl have raised a clutch and there’s now much incestuous behaviour underway in the undergrowth. Best keep the location secret lest WCC’s assassins move in with guns and toxins on this charming extended family.
If only they would slaughter the other invaders, the powerful H G Wells monsters who stride in columns across the hills. No problems with the new Makara turbines, they’re elegant. Transpower’s towers are crude, though their cables sing symphonies for strings.
The other imprints are acceptable; a brick chimney place where the Kilmister kids once sheltered and watched their flocks by night. Collapsing stockyards with rails held up not by Number 8 wire but pink and blue plastic baler twine ensuring impermanence. A tunnel full of weta comfy in their dank, mossy-walled bunker.
In spring the russet tauhinu and golden gorse sprinkle the hills with fresh colours. Council workers try to keep it at bay by slashing with heavy-duty mowers on long reach hydraulic arms.
But the gorse is the Taleban of New Zealand. It stays just clear of the whirring blades, waits till the machines retreat, then moves back from its guerrilla strongholds, reoccupying the cleared areas, terrorising the local flora.
The obvious stopping place is Mt Kaukau with picnic tables (though no toilets or rubbish bins), but if you’ve taken to the hills to avoid humans then find another spot.
There’s no shortage. Such is the vastness of this lovely land that all Wellington could flee here should the big tsunami drown the airport and turn Miramar into an island.
This so easily accessible area is where civil defence should set its headquarters. Like hobbits we could just dig into the hills, distil gorse flower gin and stone the placid livestock to maintain a supply of lamb chops.
Only one group would be banned from this commune of refugees from the coast; the mountain bikers.
(First published in The Dominion Post 5 / 6 September 2009
##
Sunday, 26 July 2009
TEN GOOD REASONS FOR LIVING IN NZ
Welcome to Key Country Duncan Graham
Every time I go into Woolies to collect the fortnight’s supply of rotgut I cringe at the price, the packaging and the choice.
Back in my once beloved Oz, chateau cardboard comes in four litre boxes around $AUD 10. Here it’s $NZ 20 for three litres.
Whingeing about supermarket prices defines the newcomer, comparing and contrasting local offerings with the imagined good stuff left behind. After a while the assimilation process kicks in and migrants realise all wasn’t so great back in the home state.
What’s good about NZ? Here’s a well-researched list worthy of an honorary PhD:
Rain: Never, ever complain about the rain – someone might hear and turn it off. Where I came from people pray, dance, plead and ask the government for the stuff. Usually to no effect.
There ain’t no flies on us: Well, not too many. Making the great Australian salute here means you’re greeting a mate. With no window screens you get a clear outlook, not a pixelated insect-eye view of the world.
Key and Goff: How to tell them apart? Politicians so bland, free of noxious ideologies and Rudd-Turnbull gladiatorial combativeness it’s no wonder sport and crime make page one. Oz-style compulsory voting will be needed to waken the electorate and maintain the myth of democracy.
White ants: How come they never got into NZ? Or have possums licked them all up? Anyone who’s been eaten out of house and home – literally – will bless the absence of termites. Talking about possums, NZ is the only place to see these cuddlesome creatures. In their homeland they’re so rare they’re protected. Instead of feeding them 1080 let’s promote them as a tourist attraction.
The Senate: NZ has a plague of politicians but at least there’s no federal system duplicating services and playing bureaucratic tennis, batting issues to and fro. Let’s have a national holiday to commemorate Julius Vogel who abolished provincial government in 1876.
Bumble bees: NZ seems to get along fine with these happy creatures that brighten the beauty of any garden, yet bio-security across the ditch reckons they’re the insect version of apple fire blight.
Cameras in courtrooms: The truth revealed - the judicial process is no Hollywood drama. Lawyers are boring overpriced gits, often inarticulate and the process is glacial. But name suppression is a Kiwi curse – identify the bastards so we can shun them.
Bill of Rights: Oz Tories and socialists agree – this is the swine flu of constitutional law and will destroy the nation. How come Kiwis survive?
Subsidised medicines: To know the real cost of prescription drugs take a script into a chemist over the ditch – but first mortgage your home. However the $3 fee here is offset by doctors’ charges. Medicare bulk billing is an Oz product worth importing along with a lower tax regime and higher wages.
Pedestrian kids: In my suburb littlies still walk to school alone. In a previous abode scaremongers successfully created images of children running a gauntlet of paedophiles to get to class. Grand business for security guards and school bus operators.
The outdoor lifestyle: Greatly encouraged by the lack of a commercial-free national telecaster and puddle-depth programmes of breathtaking banality. How does Coronation Street and CSI Miami reflect ‘our stories, our songs, ourselves’? Thank God we’ve got Nat Geo on the doorstep. Turn off and turn out.
(First published in Scoop 27 July 09)
##
Every time I go into Woolies to collect the fortnight’s supply of rotgut I cringe at the price, the packaging and the choice.
Back in my once beloved Oz, chateau cardboard comes in four litre boxes around $AUD 10. Here it’s $NZ 20 for three litres.
Whingeing about supermarket prices defines the newcomer, comparing and contrasting local offerings with the imagined good stuff left behind. After a while the assimilation process kicks in and migrants realise all wasn’t so great back in the home state.
What’s good about NZ? Here’s a well-researched list worthy of an honorary PhD:
Rain: Never, ever complain about the rain – someone might hear and turn it off. Where I came from people pray, dance, plead and ask the government for the stuff. Usually to no effect.
There ain’t no flies on us: Well, not too many. Making the great Australian salute here means you’re greeting a mate. With no window screens you get a clear outlook, not a pixelated insect-eye view of the world.
Key and Goff: How to tell them apart? Politicians so bland, free of noxious ideologies and Rudd-Turnbull gladiatorial combativeness it’s no wonder sport and crime make page one. Oz-style compulsory voting will be needed to waken the electorate and maintain the myth of democracy.
White ants: How come they never got into NZ? Or have possums licked them all up? Anyone who’s been eaten out of house and home – literally – will bless the absence of termites. Talking about possums, NZ is the only place to see these cuddlesome creatures. In their homeland they’re so rare they’re protected. Instead of feeding them 1080 let’s promote them as a tourist attraction.
The Senate: NZ has a plague of politicians but at least there’s no federal system duplicating services and playing bureaucratic tennis, batting issues to and fro. Let’s have a national holiday to commemorate Julius Vogel who abolished provincial government in 1876.
Bumble bees: NZ seems to get along fine with these happy creatures that brighten the beauty of any garden, yet bio-security across the ditch reckons they’re the insect version of apple fire blight.
Cameras in courtrooms: The truth revealed - the judicial process is no Hollywood drama. Lawyers are boring overpriced gits, often inarticulate and the process is glacial. But name suppression is a Kiwi curse – identify the bastards so we can shun them.
Bill of Rights: Oz Tories and socialists agree – this is the swine flu of constitutional law and will destroy the nation. How come Kiwis survive?
Subsidised medicines: To know the real cost of prescription drugs take a script into a chemist over the ditch – but first mortgage your home. However the $3 fee here is offset by doctors’ charges. Medicare bulk billing is an Oz product worth importing along with a lower tax regime and higher wages.
Pedestrian kids: In my suburb littlies still walk to school alone. In a previous abode scaremongers successfully created images of children running a gauntlet of paedophiles to get to class. Grand business for security guards and school bus operators.
The outdoor lifestyle: Greatly encouraged by the lack of a commercial-free national telecaster and puddle-depth programmes of breathtaking banality. How does Coronation Street and CSI Miami reflect ‘our stories, our songs, ourselves’? Thank God we’ve got Nat Geo on the doorstep. Turn off and turn out.
(First published in Scoop 27 July 09)
##
Monday, 22 June 2009
TAKING A KIWI REALITY CHECK
Deluding ourselves Duncan Graham
There’s a certain mantra chanted by overseas visitors interviewed on Radio National. It requires the newcomer to congratulate us on the beauty of our land, the friendly folk, and the quality of the lifestyle.
Clearly they fear visa cancellation unless they declare they’re carrying the right complement of clichés.
Their compliments are easy on the ear, leaving us who live here feeling balmy and content, even a little smug. If these grand world travellers who’ve been everywhere anoint us little cringers with their praise, then things aren’t that crook.
We dissemble that there’s the odd blemish. Nowhere is 100 per cent perfect. Or pure. Let’s face it, by comparison with the sleaze of Sydney, the slums of Manila and the pollution of Jakarta we’re really not that bad. When we find an underbelly we shear it. Ha, ha.
There are 60 cities in the world with a population larger than the whole of NZ. Yet we’re governed by 122 parliamentarians, 16 city councils and 66 district councils all creating their own laws, rules and regulations. With all this management then surely we exercise the world’s best practice on the way the environment is used and how we behave.
Time for a reality check: Let’s sneak a closer look before we get seduced by the smarmy words of visitors who know us not.
Crime statistics stretch and shrink because no nations agree on definitions, but we’re proportionately jailing more people here than in the UK, most European countries, China and Australia – the catchments for our tourists.
Corrections Minister Judith Collins isn’t proposing to use shipping containers just to house parking ticket defaulters. The courts even give home detention and community service orders to burglars, druggies, and other assorted hoons.
Read them whatever way you like, but the figures seem to show NZ is not the calm, quiet place of our visitors’ imaginings.
Our murder rate is higher than Indonesia, Ireland and Hong Kong. When the figures are teased apart we do more harm to women than men, even when compared with Australia.
A fine place to raise the kids? Statistically it’s the best place to brutalise. UNICEF says NZ had the world’s third highest child maltreatment death rate.
Clean and green? Try the rail line between Auckland and Wellington for the most ghastly graffiti. Our trash doesn’t get recycled – its retrained. Our rivers are overloading with nitrogen and a thousand toxins bloom. Don’t swim in the Hutt River if you value your health.
Beautiful land? Despite chopping, clearing, flooding and filling the space with sharp-tooth ferals, enough scenery remains to charm. Pity about the native birds.
Friendly folk? Visit Flaxmere or chat to boy racers in Christchurch.
Good sporting nation? Ask the French rugby team.
We want others to think Ed Hillary and Willie Apiata aren’t extraordinary exceptions, just a bit above the normal run of rugged and courageous Kiwis. Yet Graham Burton, Antoine Dixon and all the other brutes and bastards are aberrations, unrepresentative of our tolerant and moderate nation.
Thugs reportedly thump a dreadlocked French centre and Shock! Horror!
Wellington mayor Kerry Prendergast says the alleged bashing of Mathieu Bastareaud was a “one-off”. If only. The 30 arrests after the All Blacks game in Wellington weren’t all for jaywalking.
And isn’t it the capital’s First Lady who’s under 24-hour guard following threats of physical violence?
The Dutch issued travel warnings after two holidaymakers were assaulted and one raped. It’s surprising that the governments of Britain, Ireland, Korea, China and other countries whose nationals have also been mugged and sometimes murdered haven’t done the same thing.
The truth is we’re a violent people and all the evidence shows it’s usually fuelled by grog and other drugs. Until we confront our culture of preferring to have a fight than a feed, just for a laugh ya know, then we’ll continue to stage surprise every time it happens.
(First published in Scoop 23 June 09)
##
There’s a certain mantra chanted by overseas visitors interviewed on Radio National. It requires the newcomer to congratulate us on the beauty of our land, the friendly folk, and the quality of the lifestyle.
Clearly they fear visa cancellation unless they declare they’re carrying the right complement of clichés.
Their compliments are easy on the ear, leaving us who live here feeling balmy and content, even a little smug. If these grand world travellers who’ve been everywhere anoint us little cringers with their praise, then things aren’t that crook.
We dissemble that there’s the odd blemish. Nowhere is 100 per cent perfect. Or pure. Let’s face it, by comparison with the sleaze of Sydney, the slums of Manila and the pollution of Jakarta we’re really not that bad. When we find an underbelly we shear it. Ha, ha.
There are 60 cities in the world with a population larger than the whole of NZ. Yet we’re governed by 122 parliamentarians, 16 city councils and 66 district councils all creating their own laws, rules and regulations. With all this management then surely we exercise the world’s best practice on the way the environment is used and how we behave.
Time for a reality check: Let’s sneak a closer look before we get seduced by the smarmy words of visitors who know us not.
Crime statistics stretch and shrink because no nations agree on definitions, but we’re proportionately jailing more people here than in the UK, most European countries, China and Australia – the catchments for our tourists.
Corrections Minister Judith Collins isn’t proposing to use shipping containers just to house parking ticket defaulters. The courts even give home detention and community service orders to burglars, druggies, and other assorted hoons.
Read them whatever way you like, but the figures seem to show NZ is not the calm, quiet place of our visitors’ imaginings.
Our murder rate is higher than Indonesia, Ireland and Hong Kong. When the figures are teased apart we do more harm to women than men, even when compared with Australia.
A fine place to raise the kids? Statistically it’s the best place to brutalise. UNICEF says NZ had the world’s third highest child maltreatment death rate.
Clean and green? Try the rail line between Auckland and Wellington for the most ghastly graffiti. Our trash doesn’t get recycled – its retrained. Our rivers are overloading with nitrogen and a thousand toxins bloom. Don’t swim in the Hutt River if you value your health.
Beautiful land? Despite chopping, clearing, flooding and filling the space with sharp-tooth ferals, enough scenery remains to charm. Pity about the native birds.
Friendly folk? Visit Flaxmere or chat to boy racers in Christchurch.
Good sporting nation? Ask the French rugby team.
We want others to think Ed Hillary and Willie Apiata aren’t extraordinary exceptions, just a bit above the normal run of rugged and courageous Kiwis. Yet Graham Burton, Antoine Dixon and all the other brutes and bastards are aberrations, unrepresentative of our tolerant and moderate nation.
Thugs reportedly thump a dreadlocked French centre and Shock! Horror!
Wellington mayor Kerry Prendergast says the alleged bashing of Mathieu Bastareaud was a “one-off”. If only. The 30 arrests after the All Blacks game in Wellington weren’t all for jaywalking.
And isn’t it the capital’s First Lady who’s under 24-hour guard following threats of physical violence?
The Dutch issued travel warnings after two holidaymakers were assaulted and one raped. It’s surprising that the governments of Britain, Ireland, Korea, China and other countries whose nationals have also been mugged and sometimes murdered haven’t done the same thing.
The truth is we’re a violent people and all the evidence shows it’s usually fuelled by grog and other drugs. Until we confront our culture of preferring to have a fight than a feed, just for a laugh ya know, then we’ll continue to stage surprise every time it happens.
(First published in Scoop 23 June 09)
##
Monday, 1 June 2009
NZ RECESSION: TRUE OR FALSE?
Six point proof: We are in the poo Duncan Graham
We’re in a recession, but not because Bill English says so.
What would he know? He’s got a six-figure salary and little chance of being downsized. He doesn’t drive a last century Japanese clunker with an expired WOF. Neither does his ‘purchasing adviser’ on $2,000 (plus GST) a day.
Statisticians say unemployment is at five per cent and heading for eight next year. They’re among the 95 per cent with jobs. From their open-plan offices with whispering heat pumps these screen jockeys can’t see the depressed souls staggering through factory gates into the sleet clutching tear-stained envelopes, only their mates’ yachts cruising Port Nicholson.
I haven’t seen these sad folk either; they don’t live on our gorsey Wellington hillside. But I still know the economy is sick, though I don’t trust the two consecutive quarters of negative growth indices cooked on computers from out-of-date figures.
However I do trust my instincts based on what I see and sense. Here’s the DG six-point recession test:
1) No more Open Homes to visit. Once as common as sparrows in suburbia, the jolly For Sale signs and jaunty bunting are now as rare as kereru. The mass disappearance of the ubiquitous estate agent (Smoothus talkus) with its distinctive sober-suit plumage should be investigated by DOC. Remnant populations need to be trapped and released on Kapiti Island in the hope that they’ll breed back, though not to the plague numbers of before.
2) Friendly bankers. In 2007 we asked for a credit card and were given an unequivocal NO. This was during a stand-up conversation at the counter with a staffer more concerned with her lunch than customers who wanted to deposit, not borrow. Now we have two cards and last week were offered coffee or hot chocolate and seats in a warm office to discuss our plans.
3) Hardware hassles. Once it wasn’t worth visiting Mitre 10 or Bunnings at weekends; queuing at the checkouts with the other DIYs took longer than finding a cheap Chinese knick-knack to fix a minor problem. Now the staff outnumber customers and cause delays by asking if they can help.
4) Op Shop boom. By contrast with the hardware stores, the Salvos and Vinnies are doing great business, though stock quality has slumped. Two years ago I bought a splendid fault-free $250 jacket for $5 that must have been tried once before being discarded. There were many others. Now the clothes look as worn out as the customers. It’s the same at the garage sales; the cast-offs in Karori are like those in Porirua.
5) A good keen builder. Last year we pleaded with a carpenter to do some extra work after he’d finished building our deck. Total disinterest – the jobs were too small to bother uncoiling the power lead for his electric drill. A few days ago he phoned to say he’d like to quote. Seldom has rejection been so sweet.
6) The tarnished Golden Mile. A walk from Wellington railway station to Te Papa via Lambton Quay was once a great stroll just to stare at the cruise ship tourists in their funny clothes and enjoy the window displays. Now there are toothy gaps in the shop fronts with TO LET signs and graffiti on the architraves along the most prestigious street in the nation’s capital. And no liners parked at the overstocked Pinus radiata export log wharf.
So how’ll we know when it’s all over? Forget the predictions of a road to recovery. Bill English can’t give us the GPS fix on this track, or tell us whether we’ll need chains and a four-wheel drive. Like Transmission Gully it’s more hot air than highway.
Cheery John Key is the sort of optimist promising a heat wave in Gore when Metservice is forecasting icebergs in Lake Taupo – he and his millionaire mates will be OK, rain or shine. These people think the dole is a senator from Kansas.
Our criminal justice system relies on juries of ordinary knockabout citizens using their life experience, personal observation and common sense to judge guilt or otherwise on the evidence, not the rhetoric of experts.
Let’s apply the same reasoning to the economy. Only when bankers return to being feral and builders treat modest renovation needs with contempt will I know that we’re back to the good old Open Days.
(First published in Scoop 2 June 09)
##
We’re in a recession, but not because Bill English says so.
What would he know? He’s got a six-figure salary and little chance of being downsized. He doesn’t drive a last century Japanese clunker with an expired WOF. Neither does his ‘purchasing adviser’ on $2,000 (plus GST) a day.
Statisticians say unemployment is at five per cent and heading for eight next year. They’re among the 95 per cent with jobs. From their open-plan offices with whispering heat pumps these screen jockeys can’t see the depressed souls staggering through factory gates into the sleet clutching tear-stained envelopes, only their mates’ yachts cruising Port Nicholson.
I haven’t seen these sad folk either; they don’t live on our gorsey Wellington hillside. But I still know the economy is sick, though I don’t trust the two consecutive quarters of negative growth indices cooked on computers from out-of-date figures.
However I do trust my instincts based on what I see and sense. Here’s the DG six-point recession test:
1) No more Open Homes to visit. Once as common as sparrows in suburbia, the jolly For Sale signs and jaunty bunting are now as rare as kereru. The mass disappearance of the ubiquitous estate agent (Smoothus talkus) with its distinctive sober-suit plumage should be investigated by DOC. Remnant populations need to be trapped and released on Kapiti Island in the hope that they’ll breed back, though not to the plague numbers of before.
2) Friendly bankers. In 2007 we asked for a credit card and were given an unequivocal NO. This was during a stand-up conversation at the counter with a staffer more concerned with her lunch than customers who wanted to deposit, not borrow. Now we have two cards and last week were offered coffee or hot chocolate and seats in a warm office to discuss our plans.
3) Hardware hassles. Once it wasn’t worth visiting Mitre 10 or Bunnings at weekends; queuing at the checkouts with the other DIYs took longer than finding a cheap Chinese knick-knack to fix a minor problem. Now the staff outnumber customers and cause delays by asking if they can help.
4) Op Shop boom. By contrast with the hardware stores, the Salvos and Vinnies are doing great business, though stock quality has slumped. Two years ago I bought a splendid fault-free $250 jacket for $5 that must have been tried once before being discarded. There were many others. Now the clothes look as worn out as the customers. It’s the same at the garage sales; the cast-offs in Karori are like those in Porirua.
5) A good keen builder. Last year we pleaded with a carpenter to do some extra work after he’d finished building our deck. Total disinterest – the jobs were too small to bother uncoiling the power lead for his electric drill. A few days ago he phoned to say he’d like to quote. Seldom has rejection been so sweet.
6) The tarnished Golden Mile. A walk from Wellington railway station to Te Papa via Lambton Quay was once a great stroll just to stare at the cruise ship tourists in their funny clothes and enjoy the window displays. Now there are toothy gaps in the shop fronts with TO LET signs and graffiti on the architraves along the most prestigious street in the nation’s capital. And no liners parked at the overstocked Pinus radiata export log wharf.
So how’ll we know when it’s all over? Forget the predictions of a road to recovery. Bill English can’t give us the GPS fix on this track, or tell us whether we’ll need chains and a four-wheel drive. Like Transmission Gully it’s more hot air than highway.
Cheery John Key is the sort of optimist promising a heat wave in Gore when Metservice is forecasting icebergs in Lake Taupo – he and his millionaire mates will be OK, rain or shine. These people think the dole is a senator from Kansas.
Our criminal justice system relies on juries of ordinary knockabout citizens using their life experience, personal observation and common sense to judge guilt or otherwise on the evidence, not the rhetoric of experts.
Let’s apply the same reasoning to the economy. Only when bankers return to being feral and builders treat modest renovation needs with contempt will I know that we’re back to the good old Open Days.
(First published in Scoop 2 June 09)
##
Saturday, 30 May 2009
UNDERSTANDING INDONESIAN POLITICS
Indonesia’s Mr Try-Hard gets voters’ nod Duncan Graham
Out of the chaos of Indonesian politics has come forth clarity. More than half the voters in the world’s most populous Muslim nation prefer moderate secular parties rather than those sheltering under the crescent of Islam.
On the surface this looks like good news for the West, particularly Australia which has long had an edgy relationship with its northern neighbour. About 240 million people are squashed into the archipelago that straddles the equator. More than 40 million live below the poverty line, earning less than $US 2 a day.
The election results are also warming for New Zealand. Indonesia remains our biggest market in South-East Asia. Our exports are worth about $NZ I billion and growing fast, so the stability of our big customer is of great importance. A free trade agreement between the nations was signed in February.
The just released official results of the 9 April election have closely followed informal exit polls. They’ve shown the Democratic Party of the incumbent president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (widely known as SBY) ahead of all 38 parties seeking power, winning 21.04 per cent of the vote.
Second was the Democratic Party of Struggle led by the former president Megawati Soekarnoputri with 14.52 per cent, a whisker ahead of Golkar mustering 14.23 per cent.
Golkar is the political vehicle designed and driven by the late president Soeharto to hold absolute power for 32 years. More recently it’s been steered by the vice-president Jusuf Kalla.
Fourth with 8.16 per cent was the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) that has kept its Islamic credentials in the background while campaigning hard against corruption. This has caused a frisson of fear among those who suspect the party has another agenda.
In New Zealand most Indonesian voters backed SBY.
Clearly with these results a coalition will have to run the 560-seat Parliament, known as the DPR. How that’s going to be engineered is the critical question, though this time round SBY can bargain from a position of strength.
Under the Indonesian system the people directly elect the president and vice president for a five-year term. In the 2004 election the Democratic Party was a tiny player with less than eight per cent of the vote. But the electorate wanted SBY, not his principal rival Megawati, by a margin of three to two.
Optimists say all this shows Indonesians have embraced democracy and are making it work. Those who don’t use rose-coloured glasses note only 61 per cent of the nation’s 171 million eligible electors bothered to vote and millions were disenfranchised through registration stuff-ups.
Critics of SBY’s administration during the past five years often overlook the huge problems he faced and give insufficient weight to his skills in keeping the political system intact and the economy on course.
For a Kiwi comparison, imagine Jeanette Fitzsimons being elected PM by popular vote while the Greens bump along the bottom in Parliament.
In 2004 SBY campaigned for the nation’s top job with businessman Jusuf Kalla, thereby binding Golkar into the government. SBY still hasn’t chosen his running mate for this year’s election. Golkar gave SBY the numbers on the floor of Parliament, but the compromises required eroded much of his authority.
Unless SBY picks a mightily unpopular running mate, or someone considered corrupt, the man with a public approval rating of 70 per cent looks set in the job. Megawati will challenge but she’s a lacklustre candidate famous for being aloof and believing she deserves the job just because her dad was the country’s first president.
Westerners dealing with Indonesia have been barracking for SBY, not because he’s been an outstanding leader but because the alternatives look so scary.
During the authoritarian and corrupt rule of General Soeharto that ended in 1998 with the Asian economic crisis, the military ran the country and just about everything else. The army had seats in Parliament, controlled many businesses, had a major internal security role, oversaw the police and were considered untouchable.
Although the army’s influence is no longer so blatant it’s still a major force behind the scenes. Boosters for SBY highlight his academic qualifications (he has a doctorate in agriculture), his urbanity and English skills learned while studying in the US, and his middle ground, ultra-cautious politics. He appears to genuinely believe in democracy and has gravitas on the international stage.
Supporters play down the fact that he was a four-star general before entering politics and comes from a military family. His father, father-in-law and one son are, or were, soldiers.
Two former generals with questionable human-rights records were major party candidates in this year’s election and Megawati is largely regarded as a tool of the military.
SBY has been unable to stop the imposition of some aspects of Islamic Sharia law in the provinces. These include forcing female bureaucrats and students to wear headscarves, banning alcohol, enforcing prayers and setting up community patrols to sniff out sexual naughtiness, though the Constitution appears to prohibit such local initiatives.
By contrast, and after decades of oppression, the media in Indonesia is now the freest in South-East Asia, robustly pushing the old barriers on a wide range of social and political issues.
Despite doomsayers claiming Indonesia would become another Pakistan as fundamentalism flourished, that hasn’t happened. The battle against terrorism, with significant help from the Australian Federal Police, has notched up many wins against the bombers.
SBY’s push against corruption has had limited success; pulling out the wallet remains the standard way to bypass stalling bureaucrats at all levels. The arrest this month of the Corruption Commission boss Antasari Azhar on charges of being involved in the murder of a businessman has crippled the clean-up campaign.
The judiciary is still a mess, continuing to use colonial Dutch law from early last century, and the over-staffed public service a dinosaur sturdily resisting extinction. Outsiders trying to do business need to tread warily.
The economy has slumped, though not as much as expected and less than other Asian nations. Poverty and poor quality education remain major concerns, although there have been patchwork successes in improving the lives of those on Struggle Street.
The consensus, both inside and outside the Republic seems to be that Mr Try-Hard has made a reasonable fist of handling one of the world’s toughest tasks – and given the line-up against him is clearly the best bloke around.
There are two standout dangers: If he wants to divorce Golkar and get a workable majority in the Parliament, SBY may be forced to cohabit with the PKS and other minor Islamic parties. This could let the extremist tail wag the reformist dog.
The other concern is that the opposition parties frustrated at their inability to find candidates with popular appeal may combine to spoil SBY’s legislative program out of spite. Success here seems less likely; though the emotion is real they’ll find it hard to bury differences because so many are single-issue or policy-free parties.
The election for the president will be held on 8 July, with a run off on 8 September if no candidate gets above 50 per cent of the vote.
##
Out of the chaos of Indonesian politics has come forth clarity. More than half the voters in the world’s most populous Muslim nation prefer moderate secular parties rather than those sheltering under the crescent of Islam.
On the surface this looks like good news for the West, particularly Australia which has long had an edgy relationship with its northern neighbour. About 240 million people are squashed into the archipelago that straddles the equator. More than 40 million live below the poverty line, earning less than $US 2 a day.
The election results are also warming for New Zealand. Indonesia remains our biggest market in South-East Asia. Our exports are worth about $NZ I billion and growing fast, so the stability of our big customer is of great importance. A free trade agreement between the nations was signed in February.
The just released official results of the 9 April election have closely followed informal exit polls. They’ve shown the Democratic Party of the incumbent president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (widely known as SBY) ahead of all 38 parties seeking power, winning 21.04 per cent of the vote.
Second was the Democratic Party of Struggle led by the former president Megawati Soekarnoputri with 14.52 per cent, a whisker ahead of Golkar mustering 14.23 per cent.
Golkar is the political vehicle designed and driven by the late president Soeharto to hold absolute power for 32 years. More recently it’s been steered by the vice-president Jusuf Kalla.
Fourth with 8.16 per cent was the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) that has kept its Islamic credentials in the background while campaigning hard against corruption. This has caused a frisson of fear among those who suspect the party has another agenda.
In New Zealand most Indonesian voters backed SBY.
Clearly with these results a coalition will have to run the 560-seat Parliament, known as the DPR. How that’s going to be engineered is the critical question, though this time round SBY can bargain from a position of strength.
Under the Indonesian system the people directly elect the president and vice president for a five-year term. In the 2004 election the Democratic Party was a tiny player with less than eight per cent of the vote. But the electorate wanted SBY, not his principal rival Megawati, by a margin of three to two.
Optimists say all this shows Indonesians have embraced democracy and are making it work. Those who don’t use rose-coloured glasses note only 61 per cent of the nation’s 171 million eligible electors bothered to vote and millions were disenfranchised through registration stuff-ups.
Critics of SBY’s administration during the past five years often overlook the huge problems he faced and give insufficient weight to his skills in keeping the political system intact and the economy on course.
For a Kiwi comparison, imagine Jeanette Fitzsimons being elected PM by popular vote while the Greens bump along the bottom in Parliament.
In 2004 SBY campaigned for the nation’s top job with businessman Jusuf Kalla, thereby binding Golkar into the government. SBY still hasn’t chosen his running mate for this year’s election. Golkar gave SBY the numbers on the floor of Parliament, but the compromises required eroded much of his authority.
Unless SBY picks a mightily unpopular running mate, or someone considered corrupt, the man with a public approval rating of 70 per cent looks set in the job. Megawati will challenge but she’s a lacklustre candidate famous for being aloof and believing she deserves the job just because her dad was the country’s first president.
Westerners dealing with Indonesia have been barracking for SBY, not because he’s been an outstanding leader but because the alternatives look so scary.
During the authoritarian and corrupt rule of General Soeharto that ended in 1998 with the Asian economic crisis, the military ran the country and just about everything else. The army had seats in Parliament, controlled many businesses, had a major internal security role, oversaw the police and were considered untouchable.
Although the army’s influence is no longer so blatant it’s still a major force behind the scenes. Boosters for SBY highlight his academic qualifications (he has a doctorate in agriculture), his urbanity and English skills learned while studying in the US, and his middle ground, ultra-cautious politics. He appears to genuinely believe in democracy and has gravitas on the international stage.
Supporters play down the fact that he was a four-star general before entering politics and comes from a military family. His father, father-in-law and one son are, or were, soldiers.
Two former generals with questionable human-rights records were major party candidates in this year’s election and Megawati is largely regarded as a tool of the military.
SBY has been unable to stop the imposition of some aspects of Islamic Sharia law in the provinces. These include forcing female bureaucrats and students to wear headscarves, banning alcohol, enforcing prayers and setting up community patrols to sniff out sexual naughtiness, though the Constitution appears to prohibit such local initiatives.
By contrast, and after decades of oppression, the media in Indonesia is now the freest in South-East Asia, robustly pushing the old barriers on a wide range of social and political issues.
Despite doomsayers claiming Indonesia would become another Pakistan as fundamentalism flourished, that hasn’t happened. The battle against terrorism, with significant help from the Australian Federal Police, has notched up many wins against the bombers.
SBY’s push against corruption has had limited success; pulling out the wallet remains the standard way to bypass stalling bureaucrats at all levels. The arrest this month of the Corruption Commission boss Antasari Azhar on charges of being involved in the murder of a businessman has crippled the clean-up campaign.
The judiciary is still a mess, continuing to use colonial Dutch law from early last century, and the over-staffed public service a dinosaur sturdily resisting extinction. Outsiders trying to do business need to tread warily.
The economy has slumped, though not as much as expected and less than other Asian nations. Poverty and poor quality education remain major concerns, although there have been patchwork successes in improving the lives of those on Struggle Street.
The consensus, both inside and outside the Republic seems to be that Mr Try-Hard has made a reasonable fist of handling one of the world’s toughest tasks – and given the line-up against him is clearly the best bloke around.
There are two standout dangers: If he wants to divorce Golkar and get a workable majority in the Parliament, SBY may be forced to cohabit with the PKS and other minor Islamic parties. This could let the extremist tail wag the reformist dog.
The other concern is that the opposition parties frustrated at their inability to find candidates with popular appeal may combine to spoil SBY’s legislative program out of spite. Success here seems less likely; though the emotion is real they’ll find it hard to bury differences because so many are single-issue or policy-free parties.
The election for the president will be held on 8 July, with a run off on 8 September if no candidate gets above 50 per cent of the vote.
##
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
INDONESIA: THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN FRIGHT
There’s a group of 17 Indonesian academics currently studying English at Massey University. Five of the seven women in the group wear jilbab, the Islamic headscarf.
Before leaving their homeland they worried about discrimination. Their fears were based on reports of attacks on Muslims in Australia. Though sporadic these assaults get a good run in the Indonesian media.
The women, who have been in Wellington for more than a month, report no hostility. Like the 3,000 Indonesians now living in NZ they are discovering that although this country does have pockets of racism it doesn’t have the Australian hang-ups about Indonesia and Islam.
It would be warming to think we are a more tolerant society, but the reason for our acceptance may have more to do with geography and history than a generosity of spirit.
Indonesia is Australia’s big nation next door, 240 million people in an overcrowded archipelago with porous borders where democracy is still struggling after more than three decades of repressive military rule.
Australians have long considered Hindu Bali their backyard cheap exotic holiday destination, like Kiwis favor the Pacific islands. But few tourists venture into adjacent Java where Islam dominates, and where they might learn more about their neighbours. The Bali bombers, who killed 88 Australians in 2002, were Muslim fanatics from Java and their crimes have not been forgotten. Three Kiwis also died in the blasts but we’ve moved on.
Deep in the psyche of Australia is the fear of the ‘yellow peril’, millions tumbling out of Asia into the vast empty and loosely defended resource-rich continent below. ‘They’ were up there and it was obvious that gravity, if not poverty and envy, would force them Down Under.
This simpleton’s view was nurtured during the late 19th and early 20th century by a virulent anti-Chinese media campaign. The ‘White Australia’ immigration policy didn’t officially end till 1973; some Asians think it’s still in place..
The demons are no longer Chinese, but Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and others, particularly ethnic Hazaras who follow the minority Shi’ite branch of Islam. Many have been genuine asylum seekers fleeing conflict and persecution – a few have been economic refugees seeking a better life.
After paying people smugglers huge amounts they’ve been shepherded through the Indonesian islands where poor fishermen will ferry cargoes of humans across the Timor Sea. People smuggling is not a crime in Indonesia; it is in Australia.
Losing their boats and freedom is no great deterrent to the fishermen. Their families already have the up-front fees from the smugglers, and life in an Australian prison with good health care and wholesome meals is often better than the breadline existence in a coarse-life coastal village.
Until the authorities woke up, many fishermen were getting a free flight home at the end of their discounted sentences with their wallets stuffed with cash garnered in gaol. Though only a few dollars a day were given to buy necessities in return for doing basic jobs, the sums were vast when compared with earnings in their heavily plundered seas.
The previous Liberal government claimed its tough line against people smugglers reduced the flow, but changes in the law under Labor are said by the Opposition to be encouraging the risk-takers.
Previously the asylum seekers, (‘illegals’ in the tabloid press, ‘unlawful non-citizens’ to the bureaucrats), were sent to Nauru under the so-called ‘Pacific Solution’.
Those who made it to the mainland were sometimes given TPVs – temporary protection visas. These did not allow relatives to join the refugees who could be deported once Australian authorities decided the dangers they faced in their homelands had abated. Some who were rejected by Australia were accepted by NZ.
Now the TPVs have been dumped. The boat people are taken to a detention camp on tiny Christmas Island, Australian territory 500 km south of Jakarta. Here claims for asylum are processed. The island has been excised from Australia’s migration zone.
The boat that last week was allegedly fire bombed killing five and putting scores in hospital, has again roused national ire about Islam and Indonesia – a debate that’s seldom heard in this nation.
There are about 360,000 Muslims in Australia, ten times more than in NZ, and they’ve built mosques in most big cities. Well-reported conflicts with local communities over the establishment of Islamic schools, and occasional extremist comments by radical imam have kept the fire stoked.
Australian politicians claim thousands are mustering in Indonesia waiting to make the perilous sea journey in rickety boats. Some arrested by Indonesian authorities have told reporters they ‘loved Australia’ and its ‘good and kind government which would help them solve all their problems’.
Clearly they hadn’t heard the rabid Australian talkback radio comments where the ‘queue jumpers’ have stirred the old fears about ‘the threat from the north’. The fact that there’s no orderly queue for refugees seeking entry to Australia hasn’t dented the myth.
Not have they hearkened PM Kevin Rudd’s claim that his policy is ‘hardline, tough (and) targeted’.
New Zealand, with the huge barrier of arid Australia to the northwest, the vast Pacific to the north and only penguins below has no such concerns. Even if Fiji Frank becomes more ruthless it’s unlikely that flotillas of little boats crammed with the oppressed will set sail for NZ across 2,000 km of empty ocean.
In short, border protection is not a major public issue in NZ, making this country a more welcoming nation to Muslims refugees, migrants and students. As the Indonesian academics in Wellington are now discovering, Islamophobia has yet to cross the ditch.
(First published in Scoop, 22 April 2009)
##
Before leaving their homeland they worried about discrimination. Their fears were based on reports of attacks on Muslims in Australia. Though sporadic these assaults get a good run in the Indonesian media.
The women, who have been in Wellington for more than a month, report no hostility. Like the 3,000 Indonesians now living in NZ they are discovering that although this country does have pockets of racism it doesn’t have the Australian hang-ups about Indonesia and Islam.
It would be warming to think we are a more tolerant society, but the reason for our acceptance may have more to do with geography and history than a generosity of spirit.
Indonesia is Australia’s big nation next door, 240 million people in an overcrowded archipelago with porous borders where democracy is still struggling after more than three decades of repressive military rule.
Australians have long considered Hindu Bali their backyard cheap exotic holiday destination, like Kiwis favor the Pacific islands. But few tourists venture into adjacent Java where Islam dominates, and where they might learn more about their neighbours. The Bali bombers, who killed 88 Australians in 2002, were Muslim fanatics from Java and their crimes have not been forgotten. Three Kiwis also died in the blasts but we’ve moved on.
Deep in the psyche of Australia is the fear of the ‘yellow peril’, millions tumbling out of Asia into the vast empty and loosely defended resource-rich continent below. ‘They’ were up there and it was obvious that gravity, if not poverty and envy, would force them Down Under.
This simpleton’s view was nurtured during the late 19th and early 20th century by a virulent anti-Chinese media campaign. The ‘White Australia’ immigration policy didn’t officially end till 1973; some Asians think it’s still in place..
The demons are no longer Chinese, but Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and others, particularly ethnic Hazaras who follow the minority Shi’ite branch of Islam. Many have been genuine asylum seekers fleeing conflict and persecution – a few have been economic refugees seeking a better life.
After paying people smugglers huge amounts they’ve been shepherded through the Indonesian islands where poor fishermen will ferry cargoes of humans across the Timor Sea. People smuggling is not a crime in Indonesia; it is in Australia.
Losing their boats and freedom is no great deterrent to the fishermen. Their families already have the up-front fees from the smugglers, and life in an Australian prison with good health care and wholesome meals is often better than the breadline existence in a coarse-life coastal village.
Until the authorities woke up, many fishermen were getting a free flight home at the end of their discounted sentences with their wallets stuffed with cash garnered in gaol. Though only a few dollars a day were given to buy necessities in return for doing basic jobs, the sums were vast when compared with earnings in their heavily plundered seas.
The previous Liberal government claimed its tough line against people smugglers reduced the flow, but changes in the law under Labor are said by the Opposition to be encouraging the risk-takers.
Previously the asylum seekers, (‘illegals’ in the tabloid press, ‘unlawful non-citizens’ to the bureaucrats), were sent to Nauru under the so-called ‘Pacific Solution’.
Those who made it to the mainland were sometimes given TPVs – temporary protection visas. These did not allow relatives to join the refugees who could be deported once Australian authorities decided the dangers they faced in their homelands had abated. Some who were rejected by Australia were accepted by NZ.
Now the TPVs have been dumped. The boat people are taken to a detention camp on tiny Christmas Island, Australian territory 500 km south of Jakarta. Here claims for asylum are processed. The island has been excised from Australia’s migration zone.
The boat that last week was allegedly fire bombed killing five and putting scores in hospital, has again roused national ire about Islam and Indonesia – a debate that’s seldom heard in this nation.
There are about 360,000 Muslims in Australia, ten times more than in NZ, and they’ve built mosques in most big cities. Well-reported conflicts with local communities over the establishment of Islamic schools, and occasional extremist comments by radical imam have kept the fire stoked.
Australian politicians claim thousands are mustering in Indonesia waiting to make the perilous sea journey in rickety boats. Some arrested by Indonesian authorities have told reporters they ‘loved Australia’ and its ‘good and kind government which would help them solve all their problems’.
Clearly they hadn’t heard the rabid Australian talkback radio comments where the ‘queue jumpers’ have stirred the old fears about ‘the threat from the north’. The fact that there’s no orderly queue for refugees seeking entry to Australia hasn’t dented the myth.
Not have they hearkened PM Kevin Rudd’s claim that his policy is ‘hardline, tough (and) targeted’.
New Zealand, with the huge barrier of arid Australia to the northwest, the vast Pacific to the north and only penguins below has no such concerns. Even if Fiji Frank becomes more ruthless it’s unlikely that flotillas of little boats crammed with the oppressed will set sail for NZ across 2,000 km of empty ocean.
In short, border protection is not a major public issue in NZ, making this country a more welcoming nation to Muslims refugees, migrants and students. As the Indonesian academics in Wellington are now discovering, Islamophobia has yet to cross the ditch.
(First published in Scoop, 22 April 2009)
##
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