In Remembrance: 12:51pm, Tuesday, 22nd February 2011

Two Minutes Silence: For the dead, the injured, the broken and bereaved of New Zealand's second city. Kia Kaha Christchurch!

Reflections on the Christchurch Earthquake: Acts of God and Acts of Man

Does Anyone Know Where The Love Of God Goes?: In the face of the earth's blind indifference to human suffering, it is only our species' instinct to reach out and offer assistance that offers the hope of recovery. When disaster has a human origin, however, our altruistic impulses are often deliberately thwarted. Why is that?

I WONDER if Paula Rebstock will be brave enough to tell the thousands of quake-struck Cantabrians who have just lost their livelihoods to get busy "job-seeking".

She wouldn’t dare.

The heartbreaking events of last Tuesday have disrupted the lives of thousands of Christchurch families. Looking east across the city’s devastated eastern suburbs one is daunted by the massive scale of this disaster.

Most New Zealanders have become uncomfortably familiar with the grim scenes of tragedy in Central Christchurch. But very few Kiwis yet grasp just how many Cantabrians are struggling to survive in ordinary suburban streets much like their own.

In these streets you will not find the wrenching drama of the collapsed CTV and Pyne Gould Group buildings, but do not believe for one moment that the after-effects of Tuesday’s killer quake will be any less crushing.

If someone is trapped in a building, the task is simple: get them out. But what do you do when the tasks looming ahead of you are too numerous and frightening to contemplate?

How do you cope when liquefaction has sunk and twisted the foundations of your home and filled the rooms with raw sewage? How do you keep track of Civil Defence advice when there is no electricity to power your radio – and the bathroom transistor lies in pieces on the floor? How do you keep up your family’s morale when the nearest drinkable water is twenty-minutes walk, and sixty-minutes wait, from your front gate? When the family toilet is a hole in the ground?

How can you plan ahead when your employer’s business lies in ruins on the other side of the police cordon? How is he supposed to even make up last week’s pay? And, if, as you suspect, your job has gone, is the company in any position to offer redundancy? How will you continue to pay the mortgage on a house you can no longer live in, from an income stream that no longer exists?

Multiply these questions a thousand-fold and you begin to get some idea of what lies ahead for the people of Christchurch.

And, naturally, their fellow New Zealanders are responding with generosity. There’s simply no question of WINZ employees grilling quake-afflicted mums and dads about their job-seeking efforts. No one’s going to threaten them with "sanctions" if they can’t produce evidence of positions applied for, and interviews attended. When people’s joblessness, homelessness, acute depression and deteriorating health are attributable to an Act of God, we do not blame them – we do everything within our power to help them.

So why is the Chair of the Welfare Working Group, Paula Rebstock, who wouldn’t dream of denying assistance to the victims of the Christchurch earthquake, so ready to harass and punish the victims of man-made disasters?

When a firm goes belly up. When a Board of Directors decides to shut down their uncompetitive New Zealand factories and relocate the manufacturing side of the business to Thailand. When a public-servant-hating Government throws scores of innocent, hard-working New Zealanders out of their jobs. It’s then that the people on the receiving end, through no fault of their own, are confronted with many of the same questions currently challenging the residents of Christchurch’s eastern suburbs.

They may not have experienced physical liquefaction, but the solid foundations upon which they believed their lives had been built have crumbled and sunk away just the same. The power and the water may still be on in their houses, but how do they keep these utilities flowing with no money coming in? How do they pay the mortgage? And, when in it comes to shame and embarrassment, telling family and friends that you’ve lost your job is right up there with having to squat over a hole in the backyard.

Help will come quickly to the people of the eastern suburbs. It must – or Cantabrian morale will collapse, psychological depression will set in, family violence will soar, and a calamitous natural disaster will be compounded by the effects of a social catastrophe.

Paula Rebstock tells us that the number of New Zealanders on benefits is already a social catastrophe, and her report proposes a series of harsh and uncompromising measures to shrink the welfare rolls. It seems to regard beneficiaries not as the victims of disasters they did not make, but must somehow endure: unemployment; spousal abuse or abandonment; mental illness; physical and/or intellectual disability: but as hopelessly dependent children.

Beneficiaries, according to Ms Rebstock, have become the prisoners of their own, and others’, low expectations – and only paid work can set them free.

I dare her to use that sort of exclusionary and condescending language to describe the struggling families of the eastern suburbs.

What the innocent victims of God’s acts, and Man’s, need most is our help – not our disdain.

This essay was sent for publication in The Press of Tuesday, 1 March 2011.

POSTSCRIPT: The Government’s assistance package, announced on Monday, 28 February, further highlights the curious distinction our political leaders continue to draw between Acts of God and Acts of Man. If you’ve lost your job because of the earthquake you’re immediately entitled to receive $500.00 per week (close to the minimum wage). But, if you’ve lost your job because your employer has just been bought out by a multinational company, you’re entitled (after a stand-down period of 12 weeks) to an unemployment benefit of just $294.00 per week (56 percent of the minimum wage). Nothing could better illustrate the punitive assumptions built into our welfare system.

The Spirit Of The Phoenix

Resurgam! (I Shall Rise Again!): The Phoenix should become the emblem of Christchurch's rebirth.

THE LEGEND of the Phoenix bears retelling at this awful time. Consumed by fire, this mythical bird rises up, reborn, from the debris of its own demise. From Greece to China, Russia to India, the symbol of the immortal firebird has given hope and comfort to humanity for three millennia. It’s promise of resurrection and renewal speaks to us persuasively as we contemplate the tragic devastation of Christchurch.

The image of the Phoenix, rising triumphantly from the flames, should be the emblem of Christchurch’s reconstruction. Most of the logos and brands we encounter in our daily lives are little more than pleasing shapes, but this ancient symbol is rich with meaning.

It reminds us that many of the world’s great cities have fallen victim to disasters of one kind or another. Rome and Constantinople were sacked. London burned. Berlin was reduced to rubble by bombs and shells.

But these cities did not die. Like the Phoenix they were reborn. From the ruins of Rome rose St Peter’s Basilica: from Constantinople, the beautiful Blue Mosque. Without London’s Great Fire, Sir Christopher Wren could not have given us St Paul’s Cathedral. Without the bombs and shells, there’d be no magnificently reconstructed Reichstag at the heart of Berlin.

For more than a century, the City of Christchurch has been represented by its magnificent cathedral. That the damage inflicted by this latest, deadly, earthquake may prove to be irreparable, and that the whole building may have to be demolished, is truly heartbreaking. And, of course, the Cathedral is but one among scores of historic structures reduced to rubble by the earth’s murderous fury.

There will be calls for the exact replication of these familiar and beloved landmarks. They should be resisted. This is not a moment for clinging to the past, but for embracing the future. Our vision should be of a new, 21st Century Christchurch, with buildings to catch our breath and dazzle our eyes. Let the word go forth to the world’s finest architects; to its most imaginative and radical urban planners: "Come to Christchurch, clear away the debris – astonish us!"

Because we need to be astonished. We need to be amazed. We need to rediscover the pride that comes from building on a grand scale.

Professor James Belich, in his history of the "Anglo World", Replenishing the Earth, pays particular attention to the extraordinary speed of urban development in 19th Century North America and Australasia. "From zero permanent inhabitants in 1835, Marvellous Melbourne grew to 471,000 in 1891." Founded thirteen years later, in 1848, Christchurch expanded at a similar breakneck speed.

That same impatient energy is needed now, not only from the people of Christchurch, but from all New Zealanders. We need to ask ourselves how men and women living in the steam age were able to conjure a graceful and splendidly organised city out of the Canterbury Plains in just eight years. What became of the can-do collective spirit of our great-great-grandparents? How did we lose it? And, most importantly – how do we get it back?

This is no time to engage in petty politicking, but hasn’t the ideological conditioning of the past quarter-century rendered the whole notion of collective energy and collective competence vaguely ridiculous? Haven’t we been encouraged to simply take care of ourselves, and let the "invisible hand" of the market take care of everything else?

But, were they invisible hands that reached into the rubble to rescue the living and reclaim the dead? Or were they the hands of living, flesh-and-blood Cantabrians? Did invisible hands build Christchurch’s iconic Cathedral? Will invisible hands erect its replacement?

This is why the spirit of the Phoenix is so crucial. Because the story of the firebird is the story of humanity itself: of human-beings’ unique ability to conceive of, and plan for, the future. Yes, we are mortal, but it is our very mortality that makes the hopes and dreams we pass on to our children so important. Because as we dream, so shall we build.

The Christchurch that eventually rises from the ruins of Tuesday’s devastating earthquake will be no better – and no worse – than the material we human firebirds bring to the process of its resurrection. For the sake of the city: for the sake of our country; let’s make sure it’s as enduring as it is astonishing.

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 25 February 2011.

A New News?

A New Kind of News?: The sheer scale of the Christchurch tragedy, and the myriad calls upon officials' time and energy, leaves little or no room for the public relations specialists to present their client's version of reality. The resulting, searingly honest, coverage is what real (i.e. unmediated) journalism looks like.

A NEW NEWS? Tim Watkin, over at Pundit, is trumpeting the free-to-air networks’ continuous, advertising-free coverage of the Christchurch Earthquake as a "game-changing" journalistic adventure.

"Rather than a journalist doing the thinking for the viewers and the carefully condensed report presented," says Tim, "the thinking (and feeling) is done live in front of you, and sometimes is exposed as shallow or headline-driven. It's real, for better or worse."

To say this was overstating the case would be an understatement.

New Zealanders are quite used to journalists reporting live from the scenes of natural and man-made tragedies. And when there is actually something to report – as there undoubtedly is in the devastated city of Christchurch – New Zealand’s television journalists generally do a very good job.

What the earthquake coverage has revealed, however, is how spurious and trivialising most of TVNZ’s and TV3’s "live crosses" really are. The sequence usually involves an embarrassed journalist, positioned well away from any action, telling us what the presenter has already told us (if we’re lucky, in slightly more detail).

What is truly unusual about the free-to-air networks earthquake coverage is the extreme fluidity of the events their journalists are being asked to report. The sheer scale of the tragedy, and the myriad calls upon officials’ time and energy, leaves little or no room for the public relations specialists to present their client’s version of reality.

For what may be the first time in their brief careers (so many of these journalists are barely out of journalism school) young reporters are free to present us with information and images that have not been carefully prepared, edited and slanted – either by the "official sources" on the spot, or back in their own newsrooms.

This is what real journalism looks like and sounds like. Trained observers and communicators, unencumbered by all the usual editorial and political shackles, giving their audience accurate, up-to-date information to the very best of their professional ability.

Tim’s effusive posting is also quite likely a reflection of the sheer novelty of being able to work outside the rigid constraints of a fixed advertising schedule. As he rather breathlessly explains: "The news crashes on through 6pm, Close Up doesn't wait for 7pm for a Mike Hosking interview, Breakfast starts at 5.30am and runs until noon; even Coronation St is sacrificed."

If he but knew it, what Tim is actually celebrating is not some sort of quantum-leap into CNN-land, but the enormous flexibility and freedom which flows from broadcasting undertaken not for profit, but for the public good.

The camaraderie and un-self-conscious display of professional expertise, which Tim describes in the TVNZ control-room, is what happens in any workplace where the workers themselves, rather than their bosses, are given responsibility for production.

It will, of course, all come to an end in a few days time. TVNZ and TV3 cannot afford to keep their broadcasts advertising-free indefinitely. All-too-soon the economic realities of for-profit broadcasting will assert themselves and Tim and his colleagues will go back to their usual job of delivering eyeballs to advertisers.

Still, I’m glad the young producer of Q+A drew our attention to the quality of the work the networks’ staff are currently delivering to their fellow citizens. The tragedy, of course, is that it requires a national crisis of these proportions to shatter the normal templates of broadcasting practice.

Just for a moment we are being given a glimpse of an alternative broadcasting universe. One in which the workers in the control room, the workers operating the cameras, and the journalists delivering the story, are free to communicate with their fellow citizens about things that really matter.

By showing us human-beings helping one another, comforting one another, risking their lives for one another, they have given the lie to the twisted version of human nature transmitted to viewers during "normal" programming.

In this awful – but genuine – "reality show", the survivors of the Christchurch earthquake do not lie or back-stab, manoeuvre or compete. Instead, they tell each other the truth, they put their arms around perfect strangers, and they co-operate heroically for the common good.

What we’ve been given, Tim, isn’t just a rare opportunity to see what real journalism looks like, but a chance to learn how very, very far from the vicious depiction of humanity, typically delivered by commercial television, our fellow New Zealanders truly are.

Christchurch's Agony

Christchurch, New Zealand. Tuesday, 22 February 2011.

MY OWN HEART, and I’m sure the hearts of all Bowalley Road’s readers, goes out to the people of Christchurch this afternoon.

The images broadcast live by Television New Zealand have been deeply disturbing. Clearly there have been fatalities and many, many people are injured.

Much that was old and beautiful, like the stately Christchurch Cathedral, has been damaged or destroyed.

The implications for the New Zealand economy are daunting.

Rebuilding Christchurch cannot now be left to the Market’s invisible hand. It will take all our hands, working through the public instruments of our common purpose, to make good this tragedy.

If we learn nothing else from today's disaster, let us learn that we are frail and wholly contingent beings, whose only solace in a vast and unheeding universe – is each other.

Mr Oram's Revolution

Must Try Harder: Business commentators like Rod Oram (above) are constantly berating New Zealanders for their failure to grasp the nettle of neoliberal "reform". Mr Oram is now demanding a "cultural revolution" to "help us build a business one". But New Zealanders have been living through a Rogernomics-inspired cultural revolution for twenty-seven years - yet still the Neoliberal cry is for more of the same. Perhaps its time to stop criticising the patient's failure to improve - and start questioning the cure.

A CULTURAL REVOLUTION? Rod Oram wants one. Writing in The Sunday Star-Times of 20 February, the respected business commentator laments the state of our nation. "We are locked into a low-growth trajectory thanks to misdiagnosing our challenges, misjudging our opportunities and poor execution of our few good ideas."

Mr Oram attributes these failures to five crucial deficiencies in our national character: Complacency, Delusion, Distrust, Distraction and Frustration. His prescription: "We need a cultural revolution to help us build a business one."

Angry denunciations of Kiwis’ manifold deficiencies by business leaders and commentators have become something of a fixture on the business pages of this country’s newspapers. Clearly we are a bitter disappointment to the arbiters of change – so much so that nothing less than a cultural revolution is required to correct the errors of our ways.

I thinks it’s a little late (and more than a little cheeky) to demand a cultural revolution from a nation which has spent the past quarter-century passing through one.

The economic and social reforms unleashed by the Fourth Labour Government in 1984 have not only transformed New Zealand, they have profoundly altered New Zealanders.

For those born and raised in the dark cavern of Rogernomics there can, of course, be no memories of the sun. The deeper tragedy, perhaps, is that those New Zealanders fortunate enough to grow up in a country bathed in sunshine have somehow convinced themselves that the magic lanterns responsible for Neoliberalism’s deceptive shadows are a preferable alternative.

We have forgotten so much – and swallowed so many extraordinary lies.

Foremost among these being the lies about public ownership and the inefficiencies of the State.

How many times, over the past 25 years, have we been fed the image of the lazy employee of the "Ministry of Jerks", leaning on his shovel at the side of the road? Who now remembers the elite Ministry of Works construction teams who built New Zealand’s world-beating hydro-power schemes on time and under-budget?

Did anyone pause to wonder why the huge snowstorm that cut the power supply to so many thousands of Cantabrians a few years back didn’t wreak more havoc on the region’s energy infrastructure? No. Because we take the excellence of its engineering and the gold-standard quality of its construction completely for granted. It never occurs to us that a privately owned construction company – mandated to provide a healthy rate of return to its shareholders – would never have provided this nation with such a robust and reliable system.

The Rogernomes couldn’t get rid of the Ministry of Works fast enough – and for very good reason. Far from being a fiscally draining make-work scheme for New Zealand’s most indolent and unintelligent drones, the Ministry of Works, from its inception, had been home to some of this country’s most innovative and creative civil engineers, architects, town planners and designers. Indeed, it’s probably not drawing too long a bow to suggest that the Ministry of Works highly-motivated public servants embodied the practical wisdom, quiet self-confidence and understated patriotism, for which New Zealanders are so universally admired.

That’s what made it so dangerous. In the eyes of the Neoliberal revolutionaries the Ministry constituted that most dangerous of threats – an alternative source of ideas and explanations. For a regime whose slogan was: "There is NO alternative" the Ministry was anathema. It not only had to be destroyed, it had to be defamed.

So, perhaps Mr Oram is right. Perhaps we do need a cultural revolution. A revolution dedicated to rooting out the five deforming "character" deficiencies Neoliberalism transmits to the populations it infects.

Complacency: The complacent ideological assumption that the market knows best.

Delusion: The delusion that a nation of isolated and disconnected individuals (the Internet does not equal intimacy) will ever summon-up the collective energy to identify (let alone pursue) the public good.

Distrust: The distrust of the past as a source of solace, strength and inspiration; of intellectuals, artists and anybody else who dares suggest that a more generous existence lies beyond Neoliberalism’s cave; and of the scientific method - with its power to expose the fads and fallacies of dogmatic ideologues.

Distraction: The need for constant and socially divisive distraction – to prevent the population from ever accurately identifying the true source of its insecurity and despondency.

Frustration: The creation of massive levels of personal frustration in order to maintain the social tension required to keep Neoliberalism’s victims angry and divided.

Since the premiership of Julius Vogel (1873-76) wise New Zealanders have understood that their country is only viable as a national economy if its best and its brightest, rather than being dispersed by the anarchy of the market, are concentrated and empowered under the protection of an active and innovative state.

Executing that "good idea" really would require a revolution.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 22 February, 2011.

Bomber's "To Do" List

So Much to Do: If Martyn "Bomber" Bradbury is genuinely convinced a New Left Party has a Snowball-in-Hell's chance of putting six MPs into the House of Representatives, he needs to get started right now.

OKAY, BOMBER, let’s cut to the chase. You reckon I’ve convinced you that a New Left Party is an electorally viable proposition. Fine. So, what are you waiting for? The General Election is just nine months away – time’s a-wasting!

Get that application off to the Electoral Commission, send a message to everyone on your e-mail address list that you’re in the market for 500 names to register a new political party.

Oh, wait a minute, you’ll need a name. What are you going to call this New Left Party? Ah, I see. Well, how about "The Aotearoa Party"? Okay, you like that? Done!

Now what’s the problem? Hmmm. Well, I have to say that was predictable. You’re a highly political person, and highly political people tend to have highly political friends and acquaintances. So, it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that most of the people on your address-list are already committed to a political party or movement.

Nor should you be surprised, Bomber, that even the ones who aren’t already card-carrying members of the Labour Party, the Greens, the Maori Party, the Progressives, the Alliance, the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party, RAM or the Workers Party, are going to want to see some sort of manifesto setting forth your new party’s political vision and its basic programme.

You have got a manifesto, Bomber? Sigh. Now, why on earth would people sign up to a political party if they’re given no clear idea as to what it stands for, or what it intends to do? Be careful how you do this, though, because the Left is notoriously hard to please when it comes to drafting a programme that somebody other than a hard-core socialist might want to vote for.

What about a constitution? Please tell you’ve drafted a basic set of rules and procedures. Not as such. Well, you’re going to need one in order to be registered (and, don’t forget, full democratic accountability to the party membership is mandatory under the Electoral Act).

I don’t suppose you know any progressive constitutional lawyers who might be willing to help you out with this pro bono? Pity. And, no, you can’t just bash something out. A robust set of rules is absolutely essential – especially for a new organisation that's yet to establish its operational norms and party traditions.

Political parties are very fractious beasts, Bomber, and, as the Maori Party’s current constitutional shenanigans vividly demonstrate, they cannot operate effectively without a robust and transparent set of rules.

Meanwhile, you need to make a start on acquiring all the paraphernalia of party-building. This includes a party logo, a fully-functional party website, the requisite party bank accounts, party stationery, membership-books, rosettes, badges, bumper-stickers and a handbook of basic party signage protocols to ensure brand uniformity throughout the country. The new party will also need a grand public launch and an inaugural conference. I’d allow a minimum budget for all these elements of not less than $50,000. (You have got $50,000 – haven’t you?)

You’ll also need to know (roughly) who is going to emerge from that conference as your principal officers and allies. The last thing you want is to find yourself surrounded by a bunch of unelectable weirdoes. Ditto for the party’s basic policy platform.

Get all that done, Bomber, and you can start thinking about how you’re going to attract the attention, interest and, finally, the political commitment of those 598,000 low-paid workers and beneficiaries.

A good start would be to send them all an introductory letter – a direct mail-shot.

How do you get their names and addresses? Easy. As a registered political party you’re now entitled to access all the data stored on the electoral roll. Of course to manipulate the roll data effectively you’ll need to lay your hands on some pretty specialised software. The main political parties have spent years developing their IT (and, no, I don’t think they’ll be willing to share).

So, yes, of course you’ll have to pay for your direct mail shots. As a party outside of Parliament you’re not entitled to the hundreds-of-thousands of taxpayer dollars made available to the political parties with representation in the House of Representatives.

The cost of a direct mail-shot to 598,000 electors? Well, NZ Post will almost certainly give you a hefty discount, but I wouldn’t expect to get away with anything less than $250,000. (You do have $250,000 – don’t you Bomber?)

And, of course, you will need to make several more direct mail-shots over the next few months. Allowing for all the pamphlets, billboards, placards and posters you’re going to need; the print advertising costs; and a minimal travel and accommodation allocation; I think you should budget on spending at least $1 million (that’s not including the state-funding you’ll receive for campaign broadcasting).

So, I hope you know the left-wing equivalents of Craig Heatley, Alan Gibbs and Owen Glenn, Bomber. Otherwise the Aotearoa Party’s founder-member contribution is going to be a hefty $2,000 a-piece.

Of course there’s more – so much more – involved in establishing a political party than these basic "to-do" tasks.

Expect to work 18-hour days. Expect to lose friends. Expect to lose partners. Expect to see your ideals trampled-on; your hopes dashed; and the dirtiest of dirty deals done dirt-cheap.

But most of all, Bomber, and hardest of all to bear:

Expect to fail.