THE CORRUPT CUP

Until last week I hadn’t watched a single moment of the current America’s Cup regatta.  But being with my parents in Pawarenga for the past ten days has made me a captive audience to it, because they are avid watchers; or at least they were before I arrived.  More on that later. 

I can’t swallow the baited lie that this is a race between nations, with little old NZ playing David to America’s Goliath.  No.  This isn’t so much a race as a cynical marketing exercise by billionaires selling goods and products that 99% of us either will never own, use or need.  So, given the behaviour of the so-called American team in particular, I’ve personally renamed this event the Corrupt Cup. 

To understand why, take a look at the lead up to this regatta when Larry Ellison and his rich cronies tried to perpetrate a real estate scam on San Francisco. Even though San Franciscans were able to scale back that swindle, Ellison and Oracle still evicted Teatro ZinZanni from Pier 27 so they could profit from overpriced waterfront concerts at the spot they supposedly needed for their boat race; lying, cheating and corrupting the system all along the way.

Then Ellison, the world's fifth richest man, and the other 1-percenters on the Corrupt Cup Organizing Committee, stuck San Francisco taxpayers with a $20 million bill for their race because they were all too greedy and selfish to honour their private fundraising commitments – which they could have covered by simply writing cheques for amounts they would barely have noticed, and which they'd have been able to write off their taxes anyway.

On top of all that, Ellison and his team forced a true sporting event – the venerable Escape from Alcatraz triathlon – to be moved up from the warm-ish summer months to the frigid winter because the yachts were apparently unable to share San Francisco Bay for a few hours one morning.  As a result one man died of a heart attack and 150 participants had to be rescued (three times the normal number) because the water was so dangerously cold.

But the worst thing about the Corrupt Cup is how long it’s taking to finish.  I started watching on Friday 13th September when Team Emirates NZ only needed two more races to clinch the Cup.  Ten days later, they still haven’t done it. 

I’m with the facebook poster who wrote, “come on billionaire boat raceowners, who I will never meet...hurry and win your silly cup, so you can go back to your flash yacht club and stop distracting my people from the real life issues that surround us…Feed the billion starving children in the world and then I'll be impressed!”  Indeed. 

The only comfort I have in all this is that my parents are no longer watching with bated breath, and the odds are improving that New Zealand won’t have to host the next round of the Corrupt Cup.

STRAIGHT FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH

On 19th August a letter from Mr Rangitane Marsden (co-chair of the self-appointed Better Local Government Working Group – BLG) was sent to all whānau, hapū and iwi regarding local government reform in Northland.  It was later published in the Northland Age and included several claims about Ngāti Kahu and local government that are complete kaka. 

At their hui-a-marama on 24th July 2013 Te Runanga-a-Iwi o Ngāti Kahu instructed me to republish the truth about their position on local government. 

First, the hapū of Ngāti Kahu either represent themselves or instruct their mandated iwi authority to do so, and neither the BLG nor its Māori co-chair have sought or been given that mandate with regard to local government or any other matter. 

Second, Te Taitokerau Iwi Leaders Forum is an informal collective with absolutely no legal standing or representative capacity in its own right.  What’s more, it too still hasn’t sought nor gotten a mandate to represent Ngāti Kahu on local government or any other matter. 

Third, Mr Marsden concedes in his letter that the unanimous support of iwi for two Unitary Authorities in Taitokerau doesn’t include Ngāti Kahu.  But in the same paragraph he claims to speak for a list of iwi that includes Ngāti Kahu.  Even a dead horse should’ve gotten the message by now; he doesn’t.  

Fourth, Mr Marsden asserts in his letter that Ngāti Kahu reject any form of local government.    Wrong again.  Ngāti Kahu hapū are clear that local government has a number of Crown-delegated roles and responsibilties in their respective rohe.  They’re equally clear that local government authority does not supersede their own hapū rangatiratanga under He Hakaputanga and Te Tiriti.  As such they are less concerned with the legislated structure of local government and more focused on its legislated mandate to properly engage with them.

Finally, Mr Marsden’s letter was written on a miscellaneous letterhead of Taitokerau Iwi Leaders Forum – Te Hiku o Te Ika – Te Waka o Taonui.  Regardless of whether or not such a hotch-potch organisation exists, the fact remains that neither he nor it speak for Ngāti Kahu. 

And that is the truth about Ngāti Kahu and local government, based on the facts and straight ... 

THE MEASURE OF A MAN

Not “How did he die”? But “How did he live?”
Not “What did he gain?” But “What did he give?”
Not “What was his station?” But “Had he a heart?”
And “How did he play his God-given part?”

Denis Wilmott Hansen (1933 – 2013) was a physically big man.  Even at 80 years of age and slightly stooped he towered over other men.  The papers and TV talk of his mahi from penal reform to health promotion, his fame as both a player for the Kiwis in the 1950s and later as a Māori All Black.  But we who knew him talk about his crack-up humour, his genuine humility and his honest heart.

 

Whenever I hear someone claim to have the common touch, I measure them against Denis.  “I’m a very important man,” he’d say by way of introduction, “Just ask me, and I’ll tell you.”  But the truth is, he was always genuinely amazed when strangers greeted him by name.    

 

Denis had no skeletons in the closet, because he regularly took them out and set them dancing in the middle of the floor for the entertainment of all.  But, if you were capable of seeing deeper than the surface fun to the core truth of one of his stories, then you would also be edified.

 

When my mokopuna first met him he’d had a stroke a few years before and the oldest blurted out, “Your face is crooked.”  He roared with laughter then told them, “God gave me this crooked face to help me see around corners.”  They understood.  Ko nga kokona o te whare ka kitea, ay Papa Den?  Ae, tika tau moko.  Engari ko nga kokona o te ngakau e kore e kitea, haungā ia ki Te Atua.

Not “What was his shrine? Nor “What was his creed?”
But “Had he befriended those really in need?”
Not “What did the piece in the newspaper say?”
But “How many were sorry when he passed away?”

Denis did more than see into the corners of human hearts, he acted.  A barefooted patient would suddenly find a new pair of slippers in their locker, delivered by the world’s biggest elf.  A perpetrator would be kindly told to stop perpetrating, or Papa Den would tickle his bum-bum with his boot.  A complete stranger would be serenaded with an appropriate song prompted by a key word.

 

Was he ever ready with a word or good cheer,
To bring back a smile, to banish a tear?
These are the units to measure the worth
of a man as a man, regardless of birth.

 

Yesterday we laid the body of a big man to rest beside that of his beloved mother in their native soil.  Today his legacy lives on in his uri and all who were blessed to know the measure of the man.  Haere atu ra e te rangatira Denis. He totara nui o tana iwi hapū.  Ka aroha ki te whānau pani.

THE MADNESS OF IT ALL

My youngest mokopuna’s first birthday celebration last weekend was a welcome respite from the madding world.  Awestruck children encircled a towering melon and fruit cake in the faint light of a single flickering candle. 

A boisterous waiata gave way to pin-dropping silence; our collective breaths held to see if baby would actually blow it out: and among the older tamariki the fight broke out to be first at the candle after baby started crying.  Barking dogs and children’s laughter provided the soundtrack to a different, wonderful kind of madness.

But by Monday I’d returned to a world where, on the other side of the globe, the collective breaths of a nation waited in anticipation of their candle being extinguished by the Nobel Peace Prize winning American President who seems intent on a course of action that would have been called a war crime a generation ago.  His predecessor used the key words weapons of mass destruction to trump up support for the war on Iraq.  Western democracies bought and repeated the lie in their droves.  Today Obama’s key words to justify attacking Syria are this heinous crime.  Will Key and co line up eagerly to peddle that message?

But hang on a minute.  Do we really believe that the Syrian government staged a chemical attack days after United Nations Inspectors arrived in Damascus?  And closer to home, do we really believe that Maori Youth Crime is down 32%, as the Herald reported yesterday?  Was it really a misinterpretation of the law that led to 80 New Zealanders having their privacy breached?  And how was it that the botulism scare turned out to be a complete straw man?

Today’s media headlines couldn’t be better designed to intentionally stimulate fear and anxiety in us.  The steady jolts of bad news couldn’t be more carefully timed to keep us in a perpetual state of fight or flight, short–circuit our critical thinking, distract us from what is really important, and render us ngoikore. 

Aeschylus has been credited with saying, “In war, truth is the first casualty.”  If that’s true, then when future historians look back on the last twenty years, much the same way others studied the conditions that preceded The Great Depression and World War II, I wouldn’t be surprised if they dub this the Golden Age of Bulldust. 

We’d do well to remember Aeschylus’ words.  But as I recall the true joy and peace of my mokopuna’s birthday celebrations, I reckon we’d do even better to listen more to barking dogs and laughing children than to the world’s manipulated headlines and the madness of it all.