Stupid Silence (Farewell to 2010)

Perfectly Calm: 2010 was year characterised by the politics of denial.

‘WE HAVE MAINTAINED a silence closely resembling stupidity." Do you remember who said that – and when?

The words belong to Neil Roberts, New Zealand’s only suicide bomber. He spray painted them on a toilet wall shortly before blowing himself to pieces outside the Wanganui Computer Centre on 18 November 1982.

Thirty years ago, when personal computers and cell-phones were still in their infancy, the Wanganui Computer Centre loomed large in New Zealanders’ imagination as the ultimate symbol of the "Big Brother" state.

Fourteen months after the massive upheavals of the Springbok Tour, and just 9 days shy of the first anniversary of Rob Muldoon’s re-election, the 22-year-old anarchist and punk rocker, despairing of his fellow citizens’ commitment to freedom and democracy, detonated a carry-bag-full of high explosive directly outside the Wanganui Computer Centre’s front doors.

While Neil Robert’s acute depression found an extreme form of self-expression, he was by no means the only person alienated from New Zealand society under Rob Muldoon.

Paradoxically, the supreme effort of the preceding year, when tens of thousands of Kiwis rose up against the suffocating conservatism of the Muldoonist regime, had only made things worse. For young idealists like Roberts it seemed as though the country had turned a corner. But, almost as soon as the Springboks boarded their flight to Johannesburg, the great tide of anger and frustration which their visit had occasioned began receding. Far from wanting to carry the revolt against Muldoonism to new heights, most of the anti-tour protesters could not escape fast enough into normalcy.

By November 1982, the National Party’s grip on New Zealand had regained its full strength. A wage and price freeze had reduced the economy’s machinery to a slow grind. Unemployment was rising rapidly. And Labour’s new leader, David Lange, had yet to hit his stride as Opposition leader. The whole country seemed to have retreated into itself.

For thousands of young people the words of Blam Blam Blam’s "There is No Depression in New Zealand" had taken on the ring of prophecy.

But we’re as safe as safe can be,
there’s no unrest in this country

We have no dole queues,
we have no drug addicts,
we have no racism,
we have no sexism, sexism, no, no

It was this: New Zealanders’ wilful political denial; their sullen, self-defeating silence; that Neil Robert’s bomb was intended to shatter.

Today, nearly three decades later, both Neil Robert’s name and the final devastating act of his tragically short life have fallen victim to the collective historical amnesia that allows New Zealanders to repeat their political, economic and social mistakes over and over and over again.

Reviewing 2010, I cannot escape a feeling of déjà vu. The route John Key has chosen may differ markedly from Rob Muldoon’s, but he has led New Zealand back to all the old familiar places.

We are gripped by the same collective urge to deny the evidence of our eyes and ears. As if the dismissal of the Canterbury Regional Council; the creation of Auckland’s "democracy-proof" CCOs; the Canterbury Earthquake Reconstruction and Recovery Act; Simon Power’s and Kate Wilkinson’s relentless stripping away of our civil and workplace rights; and the extraordinary expansion of the State’s search and surveillance powers; are happening in some other country – to some other people.

There’s that same sullen refusal to be moved by the plight of our fellow citizens. Paula Bennett’s hand-picked razor-gang terrorises the sick, the disabled, and the solo mums. Judith Collins privatises the administration of misery. Nick Smith dismantles the world’s most successful no-fault accident compensation system. Sir Peter Jackson (to the frenzied cheers of the news media) pummels Actors Equity to a bloody pulp.

And what do we do? Sod all.

New Zealanders appear to have forgotten how to resist their government. That glorious anti-mining march aside, there’s the same "What’s the point?" fatalism that seized the country following the Springbok Tour and Muldoon’s subsequent, demoralising, success at the polls.

Neil Roberts never got to see what happened after his bomb went off. We are luckier. Looking back, it’s clear that New Zealand’s "silence closely resembling stupidity" was not maintained. In less that two years, change came – and on a scale young Neil could scarcely have imagined.

For me, at least, that’s an encouraging thought to take into 2011.

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 31 December 2010.