A Landscape Of Flags

In The Shadow Of The Flag:  Mass outpourings of triumphal emotion are all-too-often accompanied by an underlying consciousness of sacrifice and loss. We should never forget that those sacrifices were made so future generations could enjoy moments of joyous inclusiveness - like New Zealand's victory in the Rugby World Cup 2011 - in peace and freedom.

I WENT WALKING with my daughter last Sunday afternoon – RWC-Final Day. Landscape Road is a dead straight kilometre of bitumen and concrete linking Auckland’s much more famous Mt Eden and Dominion Roads.

Socially, the neighbourhood is what you would probably call “mixed”. To the east rise the tall trees and grand houses of Epsom. In Mt Roskill, to the south-west, the ancient lava-flats are traversed by street after street of state houses – among the first to be constructed by the First Labour Government. Along the length of Landscape Road you can see both sorts of dwellings – and a great many more that are neither grand, nor government-built: the modest bungalows of Middle New Zealand.

As we made our way down Landscape Road, the first things we noticed were the flags. They were everywhere: tied to hedges; affixed to windows; nailed to fences; flying from rooftops. I’d never seen so many. And it wasn’t only the New Zealand Ensign that was on display. Outnumbering our national flag by a margin of 2:1 was the silver-fern-on-a-sable-field that is the “All-Blacks” flag. Ranged alongside these quintessentially Kiwi emblems were the flags of the many nations out of which New Zealand itself has been fashioned: England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Tonga, Samoa, South Africa.

I remarked to my daughter how unusual it was for New Zealanders to indulge in this sort of overt display; how we tended to scoff at the ultra-patriotism of the Americans and their habit of flying “Old Glory” over anything and everything: from the overcrowded trailer parks of the poor; to the quiet suburban streets of the middle class; to the luxurious mansions of the obscenely rich. And yet, right there, fluttering before us, was proof that New Zealanders – no less than Americans – are capable of being swept up in the fierce passions of national pride.

“Can you imagine how upset New Zealand will be if the All-Blacks lose tonight?”, I said.

My daughter stood still, looked around at the multitude of fluttering pennants, and slowly shook her head.

But, as all the world now knows, the All-Blacks didn’t lose. And, with their re-claiming of the Webb-Ellis Cup, all that longing, all that confidence, which the flags down Landscape Road represented, has been vindicated.

And how we celebrated. To see literally hundreds-of-thousands of Aucklanders pour into the heart of their city to share in the elation of this long-anticipated sporting victory put me in mind of the vast crowds thronging Tahrir Square in Cairo or Martyrs’ Square in Tripoli. What a fortunate nation, I thought to myself: that its people can turn out in such numbers for something so innocent, so free of death and misery, as a sporting trophy.

How wonderful that our joy in the All-Blacks’ triumph was so emotionally unalloyed. That, beneath the revels, there ran no deeper sadness; no heart-rending knowledge that the price of victory must be counted in the bodies of the fallen.

Historically-speaking, New Zealand is no stranger to those feelings: following two world wars we were forced to undertake our own, grim, calculation of victory’s cost. And let us remember that it was for the possibility of just such moments of happiness, inclusiveness, unity and pride; moments shared by a free people, living in a tried and tested democracy, that New Zealand “laid upon the altar the dearest and the best” she had to offer.

So, as we once again avail ourselves of those democratic instruments, purchased at such expense by our ancestors, let us strive to preserve, in the allocation of our support, that same happiness, inclusiveness, unity and pride that illuminated the nation last Sunday night. Let us give our support only to those who would use our votes as tools for creation – not as weapons to exclude, threaten or destroy.

What made Sunday’s victory so special was that the joy it brought was available to everyone. That, in the shadow of those flags, we were all New Zealanders – all winners.

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times, The Greymouth Star and The Waikato Times of Friday, 28 October 2011.

Party Like It's 1949

The Auckland That Never Was: The visionary 1940s urban design of Ernst Plischke would have given birth to an Auckland with a decidedly European feel. Held together by its ultra-modern light-rail system and high-density state-housing, the city would have become the Stockholm of the South Seas. The defeat of the First Labour Government in 1949 put an end to the Ministry of Work's grand plan, and, under successive National Government's, Auckland was transformed into the car-dependent, South Seas version of  Los Angeles we have today.

THE DEBACLE that was Auckland’s public transport system last Friday night was more than sixty years in the making. That’s how long it’s been since a group of brilliant urban planners, based in the Ministry of Works, sent their blueprint for post-war Auckland to Parliament. Had the Labour Party won just 50,000 more votes in the 1949 general election, that blueprint would have become reality, and Auckland would now be a very different city.

But, Labour lost the ’49 election, and the National Party government which replaced the planning-friendly administration of Peter Fraser was not impressed by the MoW’s version of Auckland’s future.

As far as the National Party was concerned, Auckland’s post-war growth was the business of the private sector – not the state. Housing construction, and the infrastructure required to service the new suburbs of the 1950s, would, as far as possible, be the preserve of commercial builders and contractors.

National’s belief in individualism and self-reliance similarly militated against the MoW’s plans for an Auckland woven together by an extensive network of electric railway units on the Hutt Valley model. The government of Sid Holland was convinced that the future belonged to the private automobile. In the nostrils of the Nats, trains always carried the whiff of socialism.

They still do – as anyone who has listened to Transport Minister Steven Joyce’s paeans of praise to the virtues of the motor car can attest.

To be fair, however, the failure to create a modern public transportation network in Auckland is not the National Party’s alone.

One of the largest and most important elements in the import substitution plans drawn up by the Second Labour Government, were the car assembly plants. Not only were these factories intended to save overseas funds, but they were also excellent devices for manufacturing loyal Labour voters. The MoW’s plans for an Auckland that ran on rails continued to gather dust.

It would be another 12 years before Labour was again in office. By the 1970s, the party needed little convincing of the shortcomings of Auckland’s congested car culture. Finally, Labour was ready to back (but not to fund) the plans for a light-rail network that Auckland’s indomitable Mayor, Sir Dove-Myer Robinson, had been advocating for more than a decade.

They had not reckoned on Sir Robert Muldoon.

The monstrous hydra of motorways continued to grow, along with the number of cars crawling along it’s sinuous necks.

Labour’s neoliberal conversion in the 1980s saw the railways ruthlessly downsized and readied for privatisation. Free marketeers drove cars: public transport (especially trains) were for state-subsidised losers.

Not even the election of a Labour-Alliance government in 1999 was enough to halt the madness. And when Prime Minister Helen Clark backed and won New Zealand’s bid for the Rugby World Cup 2011, there was scant understanding of what that would require of Auckland’s public transportation system, and even less enthusiasm for making it happen.

Labour’s finance minister, Dr Michael Cullen, could have left Auckland with a modern, electrified, light-rail network. Egged on by his Treasury advisers, he chose instead to prevaricate and delay. His successor, Bill English, at least had the excuse of a global financial crisis – not to mention the disadvantage of a Transport Minister who never saw motorway plans he didn’t fall in love with at first sight.

And so, when we most needed it to succeed, Auckland’s rail network simply collapsed under the sort of numbers most modern cities move about every day of the week.

Visitors here for the World Cup from Western Europe and North America must have wondered what they’d struck. Gazing incredulously at last Friday’s hopeless snarl of decades-old, diesel-belching locomotives, and SRO carriages lacking effective air-conditioning, a working PA system, and the professional assistance of trained railway-guards; they must have asked themselves if they really were in a first-world city, in the 21^st Century.

Nope – on both counts. In Auckland, if you’re looking for efficient public transport by rail, it’s always 1949.

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times, The Greymouth Star and The Waikato Times of Friday, 16 September 2011.