Fortunate Son

How do New Zealand’s talkback “shock-jock” wannabes and their enablers honestly think this divisive “us” verses “them” / “the left” Trumpian, Fox News cant could hold any credibility in New Zealand?

Our nation’s “tyranny of distance” used to be a nice, safe vantage point from where we could see this mindless crap coming!

But not any more.

Words start and stop wars.

Books have stopped bullets.

So to weaponize words, to turn terminology toxic is a very dangerous and stupid thing to do.

In the wrong hands Aware/astute becomes “Woke“.

Polite and caring becomes “PC gone mad!”

And only “Snowflakes” show Empathy.

To say “(“The Left”) want to tell you what is right and what isn’t” is rich coming from someone whose high-paying job is to tell people across a nation via multimedia platforms how their opinion is superior to anyone elses, or how the likes of:

Cyclists,

The unemployed,

Public transport proponents,

And even members of parliament,

Are all wrong!

I consider myself on “the left” politically, but I don’t think I’m superior to, or know more than anyone else.

Mainly because I’ve been told so, or that feeling has been reinforced for decades upon me by the likes of this opinionist – Richer, whiter, more entitled people than I could ever be.

I don’t think I’m better than anyone. But I’m more fortunate than many.

I’m fortunate that I have a home and loving family.

I’m fortunate to be able to provide for that family.

I’m fortunate to have communication skills and access to platforms like Twitter and this site to share my views & opinions.

And I’m fortunate to realise mine is not the only opinion.

Others have different views to mine and they are allowed to express them.

I may not be as highly paid or widely broadcast as many of these malefic media mouthpieces, but I am more fortunate than they are.

Problematic Pacific Plastic

I entered the following in a Sea Week poetry competition last month.
I never heard anything back, so obviously didn’t get anywhere (which is a bit odd..) but thought it was worth sharing nonetheless:

Problematic Pacific Plastic

Our oceans are dying!
That’s not iconoclastic.
You would be too,
If you were that clogged up with plastic!

We’ve got lagoons of balloons,
Whale swimming speed’s off the throttles,
‘Cause it had to get ocean motion,
When you’re chock-full of fizz bottles!

Sea turtles are choking,
When they spy their favourite dish.
Because turtles can’t define
Between plastic bags and jelly fish!

There’s so much plastic pollution
Floating around the Pacific,
They’ve named it “The Great Garbage Patch”!
Y’know, just to be specific!

We need to do something!
All this ocean pollution must end!
For the sake of our existence,
And for our planet to mend!

It’s too much a problem
For us just to park it –
Start by taking canvas bags
To your supermarket!

Reduce, reuse,
Recycle the lot!
Sea levels are rising,
But our future ain’t looking too hot!

So as my poem ends,
I’m begging you, Please!
“Tiakina o Tātou Mōana”
“Care for our Seas”!

Shine a Light

As you may know I’m BIG supporter of my home & region, Hawke’s Bay.

And, as you may also know, I’ve been pretty vocal about how little media exposure (other than disasters & crime) regional New Zealand has gotten over the past two decades in favour of an Auckland-centric focus.

In the last 5 years we saw the rise of smaller news websites like Spinoff & Newsroom, intended to take on the likes of TVNZ, Mediaworks & Herald/NZME.

I had high hopes for these new sites, given how little the main players cared about places like Hawke’s Bay.

I was disappointed.

Early on it seemed Spinoff had more articles about NZME’s Jane Hastings than the actual city of Hastings.

To them apparently one media person > City of 80600+

And if not for the wonderful, award-winning autobiographical writing of the late Peter Wells, Napier would have hardly featured at all.

Hardly inspiring for this regional reader and writer.

Not to be out done, Newsroom’s Mark Jennings essentially declared NZ’s regions don’t matter:

“Viewers in Invercargill don’t give a toss about Whanganui’s sewage problems.

There are simply not enough stories of national significance in Nelson or Queenstown or Tauranga to justify a full-time TV reporter in those areas.”

That understandably pissed me off.

The new wunderkind websites had the same mentality as the old media dinosaurs they were meant to be superior to.

It felt like they were blowing the biggest opportunity New Zealand media had had in years – Wherever there was internet access they could have had reporters!

Within the last month the New Zealand government recognized the country has a serious lack of local-body news coverage – particularly in regional NZ and announced a scheme to put several specially focused, government-funded reporters in established newsrooms around the country.

Then last week a story with major public reaction & national implications broke about state carers taking newborn babies from their parents.

The story wasn’t broken by a mainstream media outlet.

It was broken by Newsroom.

And the story wasn’t based in Auckland. It came from Hawke’s Bay.

My region.

So I’ve been right all along?!

NZ regional news DOES matter!?

This should feel like vindication for me, but it doesn’t.

How many issues have been missed because they were “regional/provincial” and “didn’t matter”?

How many wrongdoings could have been stopped?

Jennings’ hypothetical Whanganui sewerage problems?

Homelessness?

Inequality?

This is just the tip of an iceberg New Zealand media SHOULD have started melting years ago!

Heck, in the 80s we had regional news in print and on national TV every weeknight that stopped these bergs from forming in the first place, let alone making it out into the shipping lanes and causing casualties.

We have regional stories that deserve coverage, as many have national implications; A specialized regional local government reporter program in the works, and a Provincial Growth Fund to assist NZ’s growing regions.

Isn’t it time NZ’s commerical media refocused back on the regions, too?

There’s a saying goes:

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant”.

Regional New Zealand has a whole lot of growth going on. Not all of that growth is going to be good.

It’s going to need a lot more solar energy from traditional & digital NZ national media to keep regional growth rot-free!

Regional Rugby’s Lament

Listening to the talk of NZRU CEO, Steve Tew’s, resignation annocement on Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report the other morning I was irked by how much his / NZRU’s focus was on the international game & stage under his tenure, while it’s felt, like with so many other big New Zealand corporate organisations, regional / grassroots rugby has been ignored under his tenure.

How many Super Rugby, or even All Blacks games (Napier has hosted only two in 20yrs!) could have been played in sold-out, 15,000-20,000 capacity regional stadiums like McLean Park, rather than the regularly 1/2 – 3/4 empty Eden Parks, or (Wellington’s Westpac Trust Stadium) “Caketins”?

Main centre Super Rugby fixture crowds have been pitiful and/or declining for some time, and the whining about low attendances from rugby bosses has only gotten louder, yet do they change tack and spread the games around?

Hell no!

HOW MUCH??!!

Hawke’s Bay and their NPC team, The Magpies have been fortunate to have the local support, income and success over recent seasons to weather the storms Tew bemoaned.

Hawke’s Bay, its team and its fans have been regularly providing the talent, the turnout and the income for Tew’s organisation for years, so why haven’t NZRU returned the favor?

Or, under Mr Tew’s reign, has rugby in New Zealand become more about the money than the mana?

Rocket, Man!

“Three, two, one, blast-off!” A screen-grab of Rocketlab’s most excellent live stream service just a few moments before I courl see it with my own eyes!

Note: This piece appeared as a “Talking Point” in Hawke’s Bay Today on May 7 2019.
It is a combination of two posts I wrote on this site over the previous months, but I felt they worked even better when moulded together.
It proved very popular – I even received an email from Rocket Lab thanking me for writing it and they sent me a goody bag to show their appreciation.
I was just stoked that my own region has joined the likes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina and Bozeman, Montana (for you Trekkies out there) in pioneering aeronautics!

When I was younger my Mum and Dad would often sit outside at night, looking at the stars and watching for satellites.

I always thought it was a bit odd.

I remember seeing Halley’s Comet in 1986 and wondering if I’d still be alive the next time it came by in 2061.

Heavy stuff for a 9-year-old.

In the early 2000s I watched a documentary series, Space, hosted by Sam Neill.

The first episode showed just how small and insignificant we were in the universe and the second showed how easily we could be wiped off the face of aforementioned astronomical plane.

The 23-year-old me felt insignificant enough as it was without the whole universe chiming in. I didn’t bother watching beyond those first two instalments.

So the night sky filled with stars became a bit of a stranger to me – a passive aggressive bully, if you will.

I tried to ignore it.

Then I became a dad, my own dad passed away, I had my own medical drama three years ago and then mum died last February.

I started looking at the night sky again – going outside when the International Space Station was due to silently streak high over New Zealand.

Admiring just how bright and red Mars is as it rises in the eastern sky.

I even started taking my daughter out each night to “wish upon a star” (she usually chooses what is actually the planet Venus, but whatever).

And maybe I was even thinking, hoping, a couple of those twinkles in the night sky might just be my parents looking down on us.

And so it was I found myself staring skyward twice on Sunday, May 5.

It started with a cold, dark, 5am start and me standing out in my back yard catching a dozen glimpses of “shooting stars” – as the annual Eta-Aquarids Meteor Shower was at its most visible in the eastern sky.

We spent our daylight hours out and about around Hawke’s Bay going to Anderson Park playground and Ahuriri beach in Napier, and Keirunga Park Railway in Havelock North under stunningly clear blue, autumnal Hawke’s Bay skies.

As we drove back to Napier from Havelock North along Marine Parade there was a clear view north and east across Hawke Bay towards Wairoa and Mahia and we remembered there was to be a Rocket Lab launch that evening.

Sure enough, as 6pm rolled around we watched the live-stream of the launch countdown and lift-off on YouTube, then headed outside to where I had seen the meteor shower 13 hours before and with the benefit of a darkened evening sky we, along with hundreds, maybe even thousands of people around Hawke’s Bay saw a very bright red-yellow light slowly rising in the eastern sky – Hawke’s Bay reaching for the stars!

As little as 10 years ago I couldn’t have imagined that I would be standing in my back yard watching rockets being launched from a Hawke’s Bay site, but here we were.

This was very cool and I must admit to even shedding a proud tear or two, because this has long been the sort of thing I have written about, expected and hoped for from my Hawke’s Bay home.

For my 5-year-old daughter this is hopefully her new, very spectacular, normal.

It may not have been the first Rocket Lab launch, but it was certainly the most visible and symbolic for our region.

Just as The Spirit of Napier reaches for the rising morning sun on Marine Parade, here was Hawke’s Bay launching satellites into space.

In 2014 National government finance minister Bill English had the audacity to say, while on a visit to Napier:

“Hawke’s Bay’s seasonal low-wage economy isn’t going to change in a hurry, so let’s get good at it”.

How wrong he was.

While New Zealand’s Auckland-centric commercial media networks still obsess over surreal estate prices, traffic issues and radio announcer reckons, Hawke’s Bay has been quietly thriving, growing and reaching for the stars!

No longer the butt of that snide Auckland slight “A visitor from Hawke’s Bay” at Metro Magazine-covered parties – With tech hubs, call centres, as well as a rocket launch facility, “A Visitor TO Hawke’s Bay” is becoming something people aspire to as our region becomes an even more attractive place to live, raise a family or open a high-tech, or web-based business.

I’m looking forward to watching more Rocket Lab launches on clear winter evenings and New Zealand being reminded of just how astronomical Hawke’s Bay’s future will be!