The sins and the virtues of the fathers

From all accounts Brian Neeson was a much-admired and thoroughly competent National member of parliament. He represented a number of West Auckland electorates. In 1993 he successfully contested the Waitakere seat and in 1996 was elected MP for Waipareira and then in 1999 the Waitakere seat once again. In the 2002 elections he sought the National Party nomination for the new seat of Helensville, which had absorbed most of the Waitakere electorate.

However he was controversially defeated for selection by a new kid on the block, John Key.

National Party president at the time Michelle Boag, in an effort to rejuvenate the political wing, had cast her eyes worldwide to find a potential prime minister and settled on a high-flying New Zealander who had been appointed on to the Foreign Exchange Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.

It was a stroke of genius that Key had been enticed back to his homeland, but Neeson considered his own non-selection a betrayal and quit National and stood as an Independent. He came in third.

I’ve always found it somewhat amusing that John Key represents Helensville which would have been a more appropriately-named seat for his three-term rival Ms Clark.

Perhaps buoyed by Ms Boag’s success Labour strategists also went looking for a future leader and their search revealed a man who best fitted their ideals. David Shearer wasn’t a millionaire money trader, but more of a compassionate man and to some extent his rise and rise in politics was not too dissimilar to John Key’s.

He had stood as a list-only candidate for Labour in 1999 and in 2002 he unsuccessfully contested the Whangarei electorate. He went back overseas to work for the United Nations and returned in 2009 and was given Helen Clark’s safe Mt Albert seat. There was no betrayal involved; Ms Clark simply moved on to the list.

Mr Shearer was widely tipped to be a future New Zealand Prime Minister.

He certainly had the pedigree. The son of a Presbyterian elder, all in all he spent twenty years working for the United Nations, managing the provision of aid to countries including Somalia, Rwanda, Liberia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Iraq. In 1992 The New Zealand Herald named him New Zealander of the Year and the following year he was awarded an MBE in the British New Year’s Honours list.

When the three David’s vied to lead the Labour Party and then eventually all of us into the promised land, he was undoubtedly the standout candidate. So much so that David Parker left the contest early, leaving David Cunliffe to unsuccessfully fight it out with Mr Shearer.

David Cunliffe was regular attender at Licensing Trust conferences in his various ministerial roles and I remember him telling me once that he loved the Wairarapa and was a regular visitor to Castlepoint where he went fishing. The son of an Anglican minister he is a seasoned politician and would probably have stood the rigours of leadership more stoically than David Shearer.  

Shearer on the other hand appeared to be the politician we had always dreamed of; a gentle, decent man with no hidden agendas.

I’m not sure what hardships he would have had to endure during his career with the United Nations, but they will have been nothing compared to heading a dysfunctional caucus with varying political factions, a number of whom will have been undermining him since his first day in office.

Leadership can only occur when those you lead recognise unequivocally that you are the best person for the job. Helen Clark had no worries on that score and neither has John Key.

And we the public weren’t as sympathetic as we might have been either. We laughed when Shearer stumbled over sentences, we were totally unsupportive when the polls showed a    disturbing downward spiral and we applauded the media when they constantly replayed his phonetic failings.

We want decent people to be politicians, but then we decline to treat them decently.

David Cunliffe will fight for the leadership against Grant Robertson with a wild-card thrown in by Shane Jones. It’s here the pedigree gets blurred. Brought up in middle-class Dunedin, Robertson and his family faced poverty and hardship after his father was jailed for two years for embezzling $120,000 from his employer. If he were to succeed and eventually become our first gay Prime Minister, along with our same sex marriages we will probably be regarded as the most liberal country in the world.

By then Brian Neeson will have faded from memory and David Cunliffe might well have gone fishing. 

“If you’re in politics and you walk into room and you can’t tell who’s for you and who’s against you, then you’re in the wrong line of work.” -  Lyndon Baines Johnson

Read More...

Hospitals are not always havens

According to an article in Time magazine nearly twenty per cent of people admitted to US hospitals acquire an infection while they are there and most of these infections are transmitted from one patient to another by doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers. These infections cause nearly 90,000 deaths a year and cost about $4.5 billion to treat. Lack of hand-washing by medical staff is a major cause of this calamity claimed the prestigious publication.

Now when I was a kid in the primers at Lansdowne School there was a sign above the blackboard that said: “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” This piece of advice was invariably pointed out to us by our rather stern teacher, an elderly spinster named Miss McKenzie, whenever we used the toilet or got muddied hands or knees from pursuits in the playground. I assume there will be similar information offered today’s tiny tots, though in this agnostic-tending society, no doubt Godliness will have been replaced with something more temporal.

Some years ago I spent a night in a well-regarded Wellington hospital after minor surgery. A couple of weeks after my internment I had a phone call from a pleasant lady from the infirmary who wanted to know how I had enjoyed my visit. I wanted to tell her that I would rather have been in my own bed in the far reaches of the region but being the essence of politeness and good manners I allowed that I had enjoyed myself immensely.

Obviously this wasn’t true. There was, for instance, the embarrassing occasion when an attractive nurse took to an unmentionable part of my anatomy with a razor and casually chatted away as though this was a normal everyday occurrence; which it may well have been for her. But I assured my caller that the service was excellent, the nurses almost too attentive and that on a scale of one to ten, Solway Park being a ten, the hospital registered a 9.5.

Well, they say that God took the rib of Adam and fashioned it into the world’s greatest lie detector, whatever, the lady on the phone did not believe my story and reckoned she perceived a degree of hesitancy in my voice. I restated my satisfaction, but my heart wasn’t in it and so I eventually conceded that there were some problems; in the area of cleanliness.

You see my wife and my daughter spent a good deal of the time at my bedside and after conversation ran out they turned their attention to the state of my room, which I was paying about four times the Solway Park rate for. They ascertained that within the four walls there was dust and dirt aplenty and they naturally felt that it was their bounden duty to point this out to me.

I was eternally grateful for the information of course. They reckon that the airlines recognise the importance of having the passenger section of the aircraft spotlessly clean so their customers will assume that the same attention to detail has occurred up in the cockpit where the plane is controlled, reducing nervousness about flying to a bare minimum.

And so just minutes before I was to be wheeled in my bed down the interminably long corridor for surgery I had now found out that my room was a host to dirt and presumably attendant bacteria. I therefore reasoned that it was entirely possible the operating theatre would be full of rodents and I subsequently agonised over whether the surgeon had been taught in the primers to wash his hands after going to the toilet.

Inevitably then, I confessed to the phone surveyor that there were some downsides to the visit.

I’m going to digress slightly here. There’s a surprising story, quite possibly an urban myth, which has been doing the rounds for some time about an intensive care unit in a large American hospital where patients always died in the same bed, on a Sunday morning, at about 11:00 a.m. regardless of their medical condition.

This puzzled doctors and some even thought it might have had something to do with the supernatural. No one could solve the mystery as to why the deaths occurred around 11:00 a. m. on Sunday so a worldwide team of experts was assembled to investigate the cause of the incidents.

The following Sunday morning, a few minutes before 11:00 a.m. all of the doctors and nurses waited nervously outside the ward to see for themselves what the terrible phenomenon was all about. Some were holding wooden crosses, prayer books and other holy objects to ward off the evil spirits.

Just when the clock struck eleven, Pookie Johnson, the part time Sunday sweeper, entered the ward and unplugged the life support system, so he could use the vacuum cleaner.

Actually I didn’t digress that far. At least old Pookie Johnson had been employed to sweep the hospital which indicates that they recognised that cleanliness was important.

Time headlined their story: “Wash Those Hands!” in their claim that healthcare workers were making their patients sick by not paying enough attention to personal hygiene.

I find it rather strange that 160 years after Florence Nightingale revolutionised nursing by recognising the importance of hospital sanitation and eons since I was told in the primers that cleanliness was next to

Godliness that the civilised world has to be taught the same logical lessons all over again.

“Physicians of all men are most happy; what good success soever they have, the world proclaimeth, and what faults they commit, the earth covereth.”
- Francis Quarles.

Read More...

Fonterra have got it all sorted

Last Thursday I went down to Wellington and got stuck behind a logging truck on the Rimutakas. On the way home, I got stuck behind a logging truck on the Rimutakas. Sounds a bit like Ground Hog Day only this was on the same day and on each occasion I was traveling in a different direction.

The worst trucks you can get behind are the logging trucks, particularly since statistics show that they have an alarming propensity to topple over, though as far as I am aware, this has never happened on the hill road. But the fact that you can encounter them daily going in both directions seems like a huge waste of resources somehow. The logs all look the same so why not leave them in their state of origin and do whatever needs doing to them in their own backyard, and save on the haulage?

It reminded of me of an address I heard some years back given by a wealthy Australian businessman. His vocation took him to all parts of the globe, but his most regular travel was between Wellington and Sydney. He told his audience that in his sojourns he noticed that every government in the world regularly gave its citizen the same piece of advice: they must export goods to increase the national wealth. Each government tells it’s populous that exporting is the panacea to all economic woes. Just as property developers say: “location, location, location,” so governments believe in the edict: “export, export, export.”

Our man never doubted that this was good counsel and one day in a Wellington hotel over breakfast he read in The Dominion that the NZ Dairy Board had announced what they considered to be an important breakthrough. According to the news item the Board was ecstatic that they were now exporting condensed milk to Australia. This development was something they had apparently been working on for years against stiff opposition from the Australian dairy industry.

The Dairy Board was the precursor to Fonterra. It was run by civil servant types on modest salaries who never forgot to keep their pipes clean.

When he flew home to Sydney he thought he would check the validity of the claims and visited the dairy section in his local supermarket. Sure enough, there on the shelves were cans of Nestles Highlander condensed milk. The brand name confused him a little because he understood Nestles was a Swiss company, but on the label it clearly said in modest letters: “Made in Auckland.”

But a few weeks later he saw a rather surprising news item in The Sydney Morning Herald. The Australian Dairy Industry announced that they were now exporting condensed milk to New Zealand. This was an important development, the newspaper said, because New Zealand was a major manufacturer of condensed milk and had vigorously fought off all foreign imports. On his next trip to Wellington our erstwhile businessman checked out a supermarket in that city and, as reported, there on the display stands were copious cans of Carnation condensed milk, proudly proclaiming: “Made in Australia.”

Try as he might the entertaining speaker failed to see just how this benefited our respective countries. He said that he had this enduring picture of two container ships, both loaded to the gunwales with condensed milk, passing in the Tasman Sea, heading for their hard fought markets. It occurred to him that to save thousands of litres of fuel they could stop midway and swap cargoes.

Further along this line of thought brought him to the conclusion that it might be easier to swap labels and simply re-label each others cans. Finally he decided the most prudent thing to do, and the greatest money saver of all, would be for them to leave the cans in their country of manufacture and airmail the labels.

Linking this story with the logging trucks going both ways over the Rimutakas may be tenuous, but you probably get my drift. Those trees felled in the Wairarapa are likely to be going to the port of Wellington to be exported, while trees chopped down on the other side of the great divide are coming over to processors in our neck of the woods or beyond. There’s a message here somewhere, which I’m sure is self evident and it will be exacerbated somewhat if a logging truck falls over on a carload of people.

But there’s a footnote. The Australian businessman’s speech was delivered at least twenty years ago. Today “Carnation” is a brand name owned by the Nestle Company just like “Highlander” and Nestles and Fonterra are in strict opposition to each other. I went looking for condensed milk in my local supermarket at the weekend. There were just two options: Highlander Condensed Milk, which is now made in Australia and the supermarket’s home brand, made in Singapore.

It seems that twenty years on we export contaminated whey powder for other countries to manufacture baby formula and import all our condensed milk.

I shouldn’t be the least bit surprised if one day I’m driving back from Wellington and get stuck behind a logging truck heading north with logs all stamped: “Made in China.”

“Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?”  - Baron Edward Thurlow                                                                  
 

Read More...

At last - a final solution

There was a degree of irony when on about the same day that an inebriated Invercargill man made some despicable racist comments to a Pakistani taxi-driver the embattled leader of the Labour Party, David Shearer, announced his party’s housing policy which precluded anyone who wasn’t either a New Zealander or an Australian from buying a home in “Godzone.”

Although ethnic groups were not spelt out specifically, it was pretty clear that the Invercargill taxi driver had better already own his own home or face renting a property for life. There was a hint of the much maligned Don Brash Orewa speech in the xenophobic policy and it will have resonated well with those people who are convinced that wealthy Asians are pushing up house prices to an extent that local first home buyers are being squeezed out of the market.

There is no doubt that television images of house auctions in Auckland seem to exhibit a predominance of Asian people in the audience, but statistics show that their actual home ownership figures are not nearly as bad as they look. Tony Alexander, chief economist of the BNZ concluded that only 4 per cent of properties sold in New Zealand are bought by foreigners who have no intention of living here.

The real problem for first home buyers is that since the 2008 recession evolved the number of new homes being built has dropped dramatically and the issue is the shortage of housing stock rather than one ethnic group raising the barrier.

Blogger Cameron Slater, in a mischievous effort to expose what he calls the ‘sinister nature’ of the Labour Party policy, published Shearer’s press release and substituted the words “overseas speculators”, “non-resident”, “international speculators”’ with the words “Jew” or “Jewish.”

Here’s how it subsequently read:

Labour to restrict Jewish purchase of homes

Labour will restrict the ability of Jews to purchase New Zealand houses, as part of its comprehensive package of policies to help New Zealanders get into their first home.

“I will restore the Kiwi dream of home ownership that has slipped out of reach for tens of thousands of Kiwis. I don’t want to see our kids become a generation of renters,” says Labour leader David Shearer.

“House prices in Auckland have risen by 28 per cent since June 2009. The problem is clear – there are not enough affordable homes. And Jews are adding to the problem. That’s why the next Labour government will introduce restrictions so that Jews will not be allowed to buy any existing house, flat or apartment. Many other countries including Australia, China, Singapore, the UK and Switzerland target Jews investing in housing. New Zealand’s lack of regulation leaves the door wide open for Jew speculators.

“IRD records show that more than 11,000 Jews own property here that they don’t live in. An estimated 2600 were bought last year by Jewish speculators that had no intention of living here. That’s a big chunk, given that just 4700 new homes were built in Auckland last year.

“The policy will reduce demand and help take some of the heat out of the market. It will put Kiwi buyers at the front of the queue.
 
“By itself this is not a silver bullet for housing affordability – but it is part of the solution.

“It sits alongside Labour’s KiwiBuild policy to build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 years for first time buyers, and our plan to tax property speculation. Together these policies will increase the supply of entry-level housing and reduce Jew-driven demand.
 
“Labours comprehensive housing affordability plan will mean first home buyers will get a fair crack at getting into the housing market,” says David Shearer.

An extreme interpretation perhaps, but you can see that in an only slightly abbreviated form, the policy tends to look insidious.

Invercargill man Greg Shuttleworth’s drunken rant will have exposed a view that sits not too far below the surface of an indeterminable number of New Zealander’s who will feel threatened by non-European immigrants.

It should give us an understanding of how Maori will have felt 150 years ago when the Europeans arrived and forced them to adopt their way of life. The indigenous people are still anxious about the cultural differences and to some extent tensions still bubble below the surface on both sides.

But it seems both Maori and Pakeha are united against the perceived threat of the Asian invasion and David Shearer unashamedly seizes the opportunity to tap into those fears.

Often used by Winston Peters, it is arguably the most despicable form of political posturing.

“Purity of race does not exist. Europe is a continent of energetic mongrels” - H. A. L. Fisher

Read More...

A complex parable for our times

I once got into a scrap in the school playground. I was actually coming to the aid of a friend who was being attacked by three bullies. This was quite out of character for me. I am not the aggressive type and my puny primary schoolboy frame was hardly conducive to defending someone who, as it happened, was as puny as I was. Death or at least severe maiming for us both was imminent, when out of left field came a man on a white horse in the form of a fellow pupil, more robust than we were, who helped us fight off our attackers. We all came away bruised but unbeaten.

Our rescuer’s name was Sam and we became firm friends. We played marbles, knucklebones, swam in the

river and went to the “pictures” on a Saturday afternoon together. He was bigger and more outgoing than me, but he seemed to enjoy my friendship which endured right through to standard six. But we parted company when we went on to different secondary schools and saw less of each other as we grew into our teens.

One day he turned up at home on a motorbike. We were both about sixteen years of age and my parents were not impressed. It wasn’t the motorbike so much, although they were not enamoured with the noise and the smell of the diesel-powered engine, but the real problem was that Sam smoked. We were a family of non-smokers and mum and dad wanted to keep it that way. The potential health problems associated with smoking were not well documented back then, but among other things my parents were fearful of the house catching fire from a stray butt and the conflagration that might follow.

Sam soon sensed that he was not welcome and sadly we lost touch.

Sam moved on to greener pastures and has made a real success of his life. He became involved in a variety of business ventures and not surprisingly a cigarette factory was one of them. He exports his products to the world and has become exceedingly wealthy though recently I’ve heard that his expenditure may be exceeding his income. I run into him from time to time and he is always courteous and welcoming and we often reminisce over “the days in the old schoolyard” - as Cat Stevens would have expressed it.

He has never lost his interest in motor bikes and his ports of calls are numerous.

In later life he has become philanthropic; a veritable do-gooder, he genuinely thinks that he can solve the world’s problems by throwing money at them. He means well, but often doesn’t understand other people’s cultures and actually gets into altercations that are a little larger than the one that first forged our friendship. He has a particular philosophy on life which has stood him in good stead and he is extremely frustrated if others can’t see his point of view. I personally believe he is on the right track, but his motives are often misunderstood and he suffers greatly from the outcome.

On one occasion a few years back some malcontents invaded his backyard and did irreparable damage to one of his premises. He perhaps overreacted, but his hurt was understandable.

To be fair he has come to recognise the harm that cigarette smoking causes. He still has the odd cigar himself while he passionately encourages others to give up the deadly habit. I notice though that his own factories still keep making cigarettes while others close as a direct result of his sterling efforts to discourage the addiction.

So he is not easy to categorise and from time to time his senior staff members turn up unexpectedly with warm greetings and messages which my extended family inevitably repel.

In fact they are embarrassingly inhospitable.

Sam has always wanted to rekindle our friendship. He owns a Harley-Davidson now and he frequently wants to pop in and perhaps stay overnight. My family won’t even countenance the request. Non-smokers all, they shout down any overtures and refuse to listen.

It’s no good me reminding them of the background for the lifelong bond, and mischievously his agents will neither confirm nor deny if the Harley runs on diesel rather than petrol or if there are any cigarettes in the saddle bags.

I am always at a loss for words and don’t know how I should apologise.

Sam won’t lose any sleep. He has other friends, far more important than us, though perhaps not as longstanding. He never married, but I gather he has lots of nieces and nephews.

They all call him “Uncle.”

“Friendships that are acquired with money, and not through greatness and nobility of character, are paid for but not secured, and prove unreliable just when they are needed.” - Machiavelli 

Read More...