Six of the Best and Worst of Napier

I've been living in Napier a month. Here's six thoughts either way on the town so far:

Six of the Best

#1: Cycling. Apart from the waterfront paving that the local Rotary Club had installed, most arterial streets have cycle lanes. Sure, it's only paint, but the drivers are generally courteous enough to compensate. The cops are also not arseholes on people riding on the footpaths where practicable, nor on cyclists not wearing helmets.

#2: Climate. The weather is not half as shit as the Greater Wellington region. The Southerly still bites, but rarely with such gusto as the Wellington ones. Nor does it get smacked with sub-tropical downpours from the prevailing Westerly, as Auckland does.

#3: Landscape view. Combine #1 and #2 and you get stunning views across the Hawke's Bay as well as egalitarian public commons. The view is for everyone.

#4: Dense. Napier only became a city in 1950, a lifetime after Palmy was licenced as one, and it shows. The CBD is contained in a 4x2 block riddled with For Lease signs. Two Countdown supermarkets sit side by side across the road from a Pak n Save. Stand on Carlyle and Tennyson, you're a stone's throw from around a dozen fast food franchises. What nightlife is to be had has shuffled off to the wharves of Ahuriri, which reminds me of early days Courtenay Place after the '87 sharemarket crash freed up some land. The GFC of 2008 still weighs heavily here.

#5: Bus Service. Monday to Friday, the buses linking Napier to Hastings and everything in between runs time spans similar to Wellington, 6:30 am to last run at 11:30pm. GoBus also offers discounts for tertiary students and Community Services card holders, as well as the SuperGold Card set.

#6: He Tangata. The people. I haven't been mugged once, but have met a tolerant and kind cross-section of people.

Six of the Worst

#1: The Vanilla People. The other he tangata. Churchiness looms large on Napier's landscape. Art Deco is still a marketing buzzword. The RSA is the busiest place in town on a Tuesday night. Like Christchurch, all the power-brokers are conservatives living in the past.

#2: The Invisible Inequalities. The Christchurch vibe lingers. The pearls and twin set gentry live on the hills, the poor on the flats. Never the twain shall meet. At least, not in person.

#3: Unemployment. Napier appears on the cusp of recession. It isn't so reliant on dairy, and its pip-fruit industry is apparently going gangbusters, but it's essentially a rural support town for farmers. Seasonal work at minimum wage for commodity produce. Judging from the building signage, the thrivers are lawyers, accountants, land valuers, insurers, banks and other forms of dodgier lending.

#4: The second most hateful WINZ office in NZ, narrowly beaten by Auckland's Queen Street branch for the title.

#5: The statue dedicated to Len Snee next to the NZ Police building. Don't get get me started on the Molenaar tragedy. It didn't have to happen. Same old same old.

#6: There is no Number Six. On balance of probabilities, Napier isn't quite as shit as it could be.

LOKI Awards 2013

What a year it has been, this foul year of our Borg 2013, bogged as it was with evidence of widespread perversions of justice, rule of law breaches and abuse of public office. It could easily be called Year of the Misanthropist, due to the usual benefit of the doubt being aborted in favour of universal suspicions and thinking the worst of everyone.

So take heart that it's time for the LOKI (League of Kiwi Intellectuals) Awards, which celebrate NZ shit-stirring above and beyond the call of duty.

The joint winners of the Long Form Forensic Journalism Award goes jointly to Rebecca Macfie and David Fisher for their books Tragedy at Pike River Mine: How and Why 29 Men Died and the Secret Life of Kim Dotcom: Spies, Lies and the War for the Internet respectively. Necessary narratives for our times.

The Benjamin Franklin Kite Flying in a Lightning Storm Award goes to Colin Espiner, for being the most outspoken MSM commenter on public matters. He may not always be on the money, but as far as getting digressing policy points across, he's streets ahead of the self-aggrandising Three Stooges of brother Guyon, Duncan Garner and Paddy Gower.

The Aaron Gilmore "Do You Know Who I Am?" Award goes to Andrea Vance, for no other reason than being challenged by a protestor during the Million Mask March that she hadn't done her bit to fight oppressive state surveillance.

You don't have to commit the perfect crime in NZ to get away with it. Sloppy or negligent criminality will do fine too. Therefore, the "Someone's Got to Do It" Award goes to Graham McCready, who has found a niche in privately prosecuting people the Crown can't or won't. First scalp was John Banks, now he's gunning for Pike River.

But the Big LOKI 2013 Award goes to Mihirangi Forbes and the team at Native Affairs for exposing Kohanga Reo financial irregularities. Brave, sometimes thankless, investigative journalism at its finest. Onya.

Kiwi Grundnorm

Waitangi Day seems a fitting time to share some conclusions from my summer study of How Things Change in New Zealand.

It is already well understood how things don't change around here. Colin Espiner's welcome return to blogging highlights the Kiwi mantra of "She'll be right". This laconic, laid-back philosophy has a nasty duality which can be summed up thusly: If we ignore a grave injustice for long enough, it will inevitably resolve itself to everyone's general satisfaction.

Your choice whether this is fantastic naivete or helpless optimism. As a philosophy though, it has more plot holes than a Scientology chapter. As a security blanket however, it has provided New Zealanders with a warm glow of smugness from inertia.

So, how do things change in NZ? Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first. Everything always changes. Hate it or loathe it, we are glued to the arrow of time. History doesn't repeat, although it may be fractal with self-similar blobs.

Political reform must also be continuous, as that PriceWaterhouseCoopers wonk said last year. Otherwise, as Malcolm Tucker said in the final episode of the Thick of It, "Dark shit builds up." And then you get a Rogernomics enema.

Unfortunately, the law is usually the last thing to change. Take, for example, our alleged national symbols. Our current cobbled together official national flag was officially endorsed after over thirty years of informal use by the public and military. The dreadful dirge that is our current national anthem was written by an Irish Australian in 1876, and recognised officially only in 1977.

Lewis Holden makes a good point along these lines in today's NZ Herald. The Silver Fern is used by an increasing number of NZers to represent them instead of the old defaced ensign. Never mind that the Silver Fern was first hoisted during the Boer War, around the same time the blue ensign was adopted as de facto flag of convenience. The people are deciding to adapt the Silver Fern for themselves, and damn whatever the law says.

Similar cultural adaptation has been replicated in Deaf culture. Official government policy outlawed sign language for 99 years. That didn't stop the underground proliferation of NZSL, which evolved from a BSL, ASL mash-up into its own linguistic space.

Although it was illegal for many years not to report deaf people to the government, at least they didn't ruin their lives by locking them up in prison. The same cannot be said for the substantial proportion of the NZ population arrested and persecuted to this day for using cannabis.

Happy Bob Marley's birthday. Get up, stand up. Live free or die Kiwi.

Thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi Boy

Well life in New Zealand is kinda laid back
Ain't much a New Zealand boy like me can't hack
It's sure to rise, let's give it a crack
I thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi boy

Well I got me a fine pipe, I got me ol' kitty
When the sun's comin' up things ain't so shitty
And life ain't nothin' but a funny funny ditty
Thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi boy

Well a Kiwi kinda life is better than some
Never bumped off a plane for a fashion pun
I mean seriously Qantas, was it hurting anyone?
Thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi boy

Mind you, isn't this the same bunch of Ozzies
Who didn't want men sitting next to kiddies?
And sold Fred Dagg out with boxed sheep prezzies?
Thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi boy

The cops won't arrest you for swearing in public
Or calling for reform or wanting a Republic
But not so all-out nutty as that Yankee Doodle rubric
Thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi boy

The judges here won't sentence you to death
For any crime, by public or private request
Let alone for muling coke or dealing meth
Thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi boy

Here we strive to treat women the same
Gave them the vote, gave them dignity not shame
We don't gang rape them on buses or arrest driving dames
Thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi boy

There's no snakes here at all, and the spiders mostly harmless
The scenery is chewable, although some towns remain charmless
The cost of living also might leave you leg and armless
Thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi boy

When the work's all done and the sun's settlin' low
I pull out the pipe and I goin' with the flow
The cat's asleep and everything's, like, mellow.
Thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi boy

Give Seven Sharp a Chance

I may live to regret it, but I'm trying real hard not to pre-loathe Seven Sharp too much. Sure, the promo is try-hard, contrived and ill-timed, but I'm glad this level of scrutiny wasn't applied to Back Benchers, Media 7/3, or the Court Report when they went through the usual birth pangs of a new format. It's either this or more bloody repeats or reality TV for the Free to Air set, so fair go or else, eh.

My curiosity is piqued with the prospective Espiner/Garner/Watkins bake-off on TV3, the Vote. I'm hoping that drug law reform will be one of the needful issues that the show addresses. If so, I'd be mortally offended if I wasn't invited along to bear witness in person (unsubtle hint).

And then there's the beloved Back Benches, with Sky/Prime holding the purse strings as well as the premier date close to its chest. I'll be there with bells on, guys.

Magnificent 7 go to Deadwoodville

In a little under two hours, TVNZ7 will be dead; buried before its time like a certain HBO historical drama. The imperfect five year experiment boldly went where no talking head had gone before, and probably won't go to again. I've already mourned one last stand with Back Benches. The final showdown can be seen here. There's other colourful characters from TVNZ7 worthy of literary tombstones. Here's two more of 'em.

At least one character has survived the massacre, with Russell Brown's Media 7 transmogrifying into Media 3. The closest NZ had to a show anything like this was Ian Templeton's Fourth Estate from back in the day. But Russell's show is/was a quantum leap ahead, featuring everything from Afghanistan to the Zeitgeist.

The final episode of Media 7 is here. The last one looks at the future of media, what with Oz oligarch Gina Rinehart stomping through Fairfax with all the subtlety of a rhinoceros trying to text on an iPhone.

The Court Report surpassed what could have easily been a dry, jargonistic audio-visual newsletter for the Law Society into a riveting look at aspects of justice and law for all. About the only way the public would ever have the opportunity to pick a QC's brain without picking up the tab is on a show like this. You won't see the Walrus or the Unicorn dissecting terrorism laws and suchlike with such a sharp scalpel.

The final episode of The Court Report is here. It features Tony Bouchier and Robert Lithgow starkly describing the bitter stand-off between lawyers and MiniJust over Legal Aid. Linda Clark also interviews original host Greg King, who is visibly animated by the humane court system he witnessed in the US (of all places) compared to NZ's punitive puritanical Whiteadder Lynch Mob justice system.

Television Man

A fine piece of Landmark Television appeared on public service television earlier in the week. Maori Television's Native Affairs held a special one hour show on the Tuhoe Terror Raids and subsequent trials, by media and in the courts. You can watch it here, or read some excellent reviews here, here and here.

Julian Wilcox led an informative hour. The Urewera 4 had their say. Police mouth Greg O'Connor's Angry Dick monologue warmed things up nicely and the panel's four talking heads had enough time to say their respective piece.

Unlike, for example, this from Q&A the other week:

PAUL  Well, look, I can remember sitting over there on the other side of the studio having debate after debate after debate when Helen Clark was trying to get rid of the cigarette sponsorship on the racing cars, when she was trying to get the smoking out of the offices, and to a lot of people it seemed kooky, nanny state.  Out of the bars nanny state.
BOB  Yeah, drugs is one.
BRYCE  And I'm not sure that were going down the opposite
RON  And, Bob
PAUL  Well, the war on
RON  You're probably one who would like Don Brash, would advocate decriminalising
BOB  No, I'm not Don Brash.
RON  Decriminalising dope.  Well, dope is
BOB  Don't go there. I'm not talking about
RON  No, but its the same you're talking smoking and you're talking about social well-being of our populace.
BOB  Uh-huh.
RON  You can't
BOB  And the health of the country.

Jesus, Paul, Bob and Ron.  You don't have to be stoned to be a rude bastard. That wasn't Landmark so much as Landfill TV. Will someone put that dithering Holmes out to pasture and get someone who can generate content other than Kafka?

The imminent death of TVNZ7 was marked early in the week at an Auckland meeting with a mock funeral. The coffin was a nice touch, but the dreary hymns were laying it on a bit thick. The people at TVNZ7 aren't going out with a dirge. No sirree, they're going out guns blazing. As Brit butter patsie John Lyndon once noted long ago, anger is an energy.

Broadcast

Paul Casserly has highlights of the Tim Shadbolt talkathon, where he set a new world record for the longest interview. Congrats Mayor Tim!

And no hard feelings to Paul Casserly for accidental defamation in this post (Wallace put it right). You can't hold a grudge against the guy who gave us Eating Media Lunch and Strawpeople.

The Lame Seagull

It's coming up to that time of year when the Christians force all the garden centres to close. It looks like there's next to no news to report, unless the government does some dirt dumping on the sly. So why not enjoy this episode of The Governor courtesy of NZ on Screen:



The Lame Seagull tells the tale of George Grey's inauspicious second term as The Guv. Duncan Cameron rarks him up before taking on Gate Pa.

Management is a cow

Reading Owen Glenn's Opinion piece in today's Herald reminds me just how much apologising and sucking up the Labour Party have ahead of them to get this man back on their side.

The column was partly a response to Federated Farmers' new talking head lamenting the over-taxation of farmers. Glenn reckons you can't throw out the colostrum with the calves, and that NZ's future lies in embracing both new tech as well as old McDonald's farm.

Since the farmers aren't investing in R&D, it'll have to be funded through taxation. If that means cow belches are carbon taxed, so be it. That'll help pay for Massey Uni and the CRIs doing the farmers' hard yakka looking for less gaseous-inducing clover and feeds.

The farming sector is a good example of a more endemic problem in NZ. It was highlighted by the blow-up a couple of years ago with NZ's biggest dairy farmer at the time, Crafar Farms. Allan Crafar led the serial polluting, animal abusing pack with his novelty cow calculator helping him keep on top of his crumbling empire.

No-one connected to Crafar Farms came out looking good; Federated Farmers, Fonterra, the banks. Allan Crafar remains the poster boy for the NZ tradition of shitty management.

NZers are poor resource managers, be it animal, vegetable or mineral. As Tim Watkin points out in this Q&A blog on innovation, NZers have great ideas but hopeless follow-through. NZ managers are generally shit staff retainers or trainers and have utterly shitty people skills.

I don't mean we should suddenly embrace American Management Theory wholesale. That's a crock of shit too, just sweeter smelling shit. I don't mean we should go all out to entice all those good ex-pat Kiwi managers back here. They'll come home when they're good and ready. Besides, there's enough good ex-pats back here already who can't make headway as it is.

There's a whole class of NZ managers who realise their underlings have a better handle on things than them. Rather than reward that potential, these younger ones are seen as threats to the existing manager's position. So they are buried. I call it Crafar's Confidence. Or Hubbard's Hubris. Take your pick.

The main uplift in NZ's export fortunes lies not in cutting the peasants' wages further or excluding farmers or other businesses from taxation. It lies in making the most of your domestic herd of human capital. That means getting smarter in  the area that makes or breaks a business; those decision-makers in management.

Maori Internet

Just got a text from 2 Degrees:

Time flies. It's 2yrs since you joined us & our quest for better mobile. You were one of our early birds so thank you for your loyalty. The quest continues.

Call me kiwi, but I'm an early adopter of underdogs. I joined Clear the weekend they opened back in the early 1990's, Michael Aspell ads and all. One of the reasons I lived in Wellington was for Saturn's cable network. Alas, Telstraclear dumped this loyal customer a few years ago. Dumped like a Filipino mail order bride.

So I'm giving 2 Degrees a bit of time to sort their shit out on their alleged mobile broadband:

Putting aside the slight variance between kilobytes and KiloBits, you can mask the download speed on your Huawei software, but you can't fool me. Yes, I'm downloading. I have to in order to watch any video without getting dropped off.

Mobile dial-up might be a more accurate name for it. Still, as far as Maori assets go, they're doing a hell of a lot better than Sealord. And don't make me laugh by saying Telecom. They're about as funny as thousands of black cock rings and Sean Fitzpatrick sitting in a pink fist.

NZ cannabis culture old and new

Click image to embiggen:

Good old Burton Silver's Bogor from back in the day.

And now, here's the pilot episode of The Daktory's new webshow The Dak Show with Jazz fresh off the presses:

Black Paua

Atlantic. Caltex. Mobil. Shell. Bit by bit, the oil companies are deserting the NZ backwaters for easier ways to make a dollar. Lloyd Morrison's Infratil picked up Shell, the front for its Greenstone Energy group. It's good that someone else local apart from the Todd family is getting into the energy market. I'd rather be buggered by a local than BP.

News of a possible rebrand for their petrol stations is in the news. Expensive at it is to change the shop fronts and branding, I think it wise for Greenstone to drop the Shell brand. The IP cost of $10 million a year to maintain the Shell branding isn't the half of it. I don't know about the general population, but say Shell to me and I think Nigeria.

I see green and black in the future, maybe a paua shell logo as a compromise.

Adios Magnificent 7

The writing is on the wall for TVNZ 6 and 7, with funding set to end in June next year. I usually find Bomber's polemic bulimic, but he's not half wrong with this post on the subject. NBR sez TVNZ6 will become a youth oriented station:

And TVNZ7 will replace Back Benches, Media7, Court Report and other local shows with preschool programming.

And now, here's the Montana Public Broadcasting Service with the documentary Clearing the Smoke; The Science of Cannabis:

Watch the full episode. See more MontanaPBS Presents.

I read the news today, oh boy

Pardon, dear readers, for my absence. I have been occupied with more pressing matters, of which there will be more detail in a later post. In the meantime, here's Constable Peter Marks with the Police Report from the Ruapehu Press:

Over the last week there were 30 incidents reported to police - an average week.

Monday started with the report of a burglary where yoghurts were taken from a fridge; the person was known to the occupier and was subsequently spoken to by police.

There was a domestic incident on Hakiaha Street, and a male turned himself into the police station on a warrant to arrest.

The day ended with the report of theft of dogs.

On Tuesday a person reported that they had someone knocking on their door at different hours of the day and night. Two sisters had a fight and a door was smashed at a Ward Street address. Police assisted the fire brigade with a bush fire beside the camp ground. It is believed to have been lit by juveniles. Finally a New Rd address was burgled and items taken included a Husqvarna chainsaw, a Sharpe stereo and an old laptop.

Another five incidents were reported on Wednesday. A missing person was found. A person reported having money taken off him and a male was assaulted by four others. The day ended with two domestic incidents.

Thursday was the quietest day with a breach of bail the only incident.

Murphy's Law: Thursday quiet, Friday busy. A hole was kicked in the wall of the Bailey Ingham premises and a search was done of a house after police smelt cannabis. A person claimed that he had clothing taken from a clothesline and an insecure building was reported.

There was a domestic incident outside the hotel and police dealt with two vehicle incidents.

Saturday it slowed down a bit. A concrete fence had been pushed over sometime during the night. Police were called to intervene in a civil dispute after threats were made and as a result a person was trespassed from the premises.

On Sunday police were called to a domestic incident at 8am where one of the people had been drinking.

A traffic incident was reported and two people were arrested for separate incidents earlier in the week.

Police were targeting vehicles that are not roadworthy and drivers who are outside their licence conditions. Unfortunately, there are a few drivers around town who think they can drive any vehicle - roadworthy or not. The laws are to protect the many motorists who are responsible. It is a little bit ironic that it is the police's "fault" that motorists get stopped for doing something stupid!

Recently there was a motorcycle crash where the rider tried to avoid stock being moved onto the road. If you are moving stock along the road then at the barest safety minimum there should be warning cones or signs out. The safest method of all (including stock) is to have a front vehicle, a back vehicle and someone else controlling the stock.

Clowns of the week (and this is not an uncommon theme) the two brothers fighting because after breaking up with his partner the other brother is now seeing her.

Outrageous Outrage

It seems you can't say cunt on TV3 at 8:42pm on Outrageous Fortune. The producers of the show can claim innocence based on the assumption of a usual 9:30 timeslot. Calling Draska a cunt saves a lot of time of needless flashbacks of why Cheryl would call her that. And it's not as if the word hasn't been thrown around before at judicious moments.

If I had any complaints about this last season of Outrageous Fortune, dropping the c bomb is not the biggest of my complaints. Aaron Spiller's airtime and the times Robyn Malcolm literally phoned home her lead status are bigger crimes.

Sam and Nummy go to New Zealand

I am loathe to revisit the story of NZ's most highly paid twelve year old, especially while he is still in the naughty corner. However, out of bullshit springs daisies. I have been enjoying the thread of this post of Russell Brown's over the affair, which has morphed into an exposition on what it means to be One of Us in the forum. It all brings to mind a couple of tales; the story of Sam and the story of Nummy.

I bumped into both characters in my chequered restaurant career. Sam was the best cold larder chef I ever met. Hailing from Indonesia, he was a demon at appetisers and desserts, part of an award winning team of gastronomes. One of this team still works Courtenay Place, but not Sam. Sam is now offshore.

Sam had been in NZ ten years and had working himself into a respectable position in the Wellington culinary scene. Worked hard, paid his taxes. He had been at Restaurant X for well over two years when he was locked up and deported in short summary.

Sam had done two things wrong. Firstly, he had overstayed his workers permit by some years, and had never faced the outlaw status before it was forced upon him. The immigration service was informed of his whereabouts by his then-NZ girlfriend, who had feigned contraception during their relationship in order to go on the DPB. One day they locked him up in Wellington police station. Within three days he was deported to Indonesia.

Nummy escaped from Mugabe's Zimbabwe, selling up his middle class assets as the currency devalued by the minute. Gone was the land, the boat, the job at the supermarket. His cashed up savings a tenth of what it was worth before Mugabe lost the plot in the late Nineties and the family emigrated to NZ.

I met Nummy in Auckland in the early 2000's. He was managing a central city restaurant near Sky City. He ended up not long afterwards, like me, scrounging a living at that temple of Mammon itself. We didn't have much chance to talk on the floor there, but he confided in me that his NZ residency was merely a means to ends, the endgame being Oz. Sure enough, that's where he is now.

NZ is not an easy place to live. I reckon that if anyone makes it 10 years in this place and wants to stay, good on them. And their kids.

The Great Entertainer

Paul Henry might be a preening, vain, self-important dwarf who might have fallen on something sharp as a baby resulting in a partial lobotomy. His head may look like it has been dipped in something carcinogenic. But the man has timing.



And fucksakes MSM, grow up.

Satellite of love

If NZ has learned any lesson over the weekend, it is that the story of the Three Little Pigs is arse-backwards. Brick houses might keep the wolf from the door, but they are completely shagged in earthquakes. A House of Sticks would bend sufficiently to accommodate the vicious birth of new land, but a House of Straw would absorb even more shock.

In spite of early media reports of looting after the Christchurch Quake, there are no wolves in NZ. To date, reports of "looting" amount to two separate incidents of sole opportunists, and maybe a house burglary, which is par for the course in Christchurch anyway. Hell, it is probably the plot of this week's Outrageous Fortune episode. It's not beyond the skills of the kiwi Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of Falani and Eric.

On the contrary, NZ pulled together to help where they could. Twitter was spewing out news like a telegraph wire. Photos, status reports, severity indications, flood notifications. NatRad had Kim Hill giving advice on how to poo in plastic bags.

The impact of it all was apparent on Q&A. It was landmark television, along the lines of the Walker-Muldoon interview or Campbell's Corngate interview with Helen Clark. It was utterly devoid of PR spin and media office platitudes alike. It was a show made in NZ.

Therese Arseneau was visibly upset, raw with stress and fairly bruised. She had been at the Reconstituting the Constitution conference in Wellington the two days prior to Saturday morning's earthquake, and still managed to fly up to Auckland for Q&A while her family remained down south with the aftershocks. Paul Holmes and Bob Harvey rightly got an earful from her over the Bollard interview later on and fair go. Today of all days, she was not going to listen to their complete bullshit.

Tim Watkin best summed up Bob Parker's commentary over at Pundit. And yes, Parker (not Harvey) deserves all the credit for getting out there and daring the sky to fall on his head.

New Zealand, like Australia, is home to the black swan. What works in the northern sphere might seem ludicrous down under, and vice versa. It might take guns and Jesus to make USAers be nice to one another, but down this way, all we need is each other. She'll be right.

Missionary Revisionism

I don't normally go out of my way to piss off Christians, each to their own and all that. However, I was listening with increasing grumpiness to Chris Laidlaw's interview with Keith Newman this morning. He's just released a new book called Bible and Treaty: Missionaries among the Maori - a new perspective. If his talk was anything to go by, it sounds like he's convinced himself that these early converters were much better people than they were.

Now, nothing personal against Keith Newman. It's OK, he's from Feilding. Enough IT background to avoid being perceived as some kind of unquestioning evangelical as well. So, why the new glossy varnish on those old virgin missionaries?

Chris Laidlaw introduces the segment thusly:

"Keith Newman suggests that the role of missionaries has been ignored, minimised or demonised by revisionist historians."

Laidlaw calls these priests "good guys" and "impressive people," so any chance of an objective interview was not on the agenda. Which is a shame, because all this priest pampering is the most revisionist crap I've ever come across.

The missionaries did not come to NZ to soften up the Maori for the Crown. The churches had their own agendas. In reality, the missionaries offered peace and literacy to the Maori, and in return they got land and power. They sought to replace the archaic monopoly of power from the tribe to the archaic monopoly of the church.

It didn't take easily, and it was only in the 1860s when the Maori started teaching reading the Bible to their own that Christianity really took off. It took another generation after that before the Maori commonly adopted alcohol, but that's another story.

Maori paid other prices for conversion though, for good and ill alike. The missionaries are credited with the demise of slavery and cannibalism, which is partly true. I gather that Maori were tiring of war and all the old order anyway, but I'll give them that. But the Jesus freaks also stopped a range of other Maori customs though; polygamy, games, songs. Here's Edward Jerningham Wakefield from Adventure in New Zealand. It's 1842 or '43. He's approaching the village of Pipiriki on the way to Taupo:

I was much struck with the severe discipline which this curious specimen of a warlike and influential chief, turned into a stern religious pastor, maintained over his people, who may have amounted to 200 of all sexes and ages. The houses and the pa were cleanly and well kept. Almost perfect silence prevailed during the whole day. Everything was done apparently by some rule. The ovens were made up, the firewood cut, the court-yard swept out, as though by clockwork; and none of that noisy and merry chatter was ever heard, which generally distinguishes the Maori village. Each week-day was kept with the solemnity of Sunday; and jokes, songs, dances, or romping, were entirely banished. The very children seemed prematurely grown into little old men and women. While I was greeting the chief and his family, the rest of the community sat a distance. None of the usual crowding round, and if it were not for its hilarity, almost intrusive rushing to shake hands; no shouts; not even a smile.

Pipiriki no longer exists.

The Treaty of Waitangi was never a Christian document, no matter how much Rev. Bill Williams wanted it to be so. He did his best to confuse matters acting as translator, thereby creating a whole new department of legal billing that charges by the hour to this very day. Williams and Hadfield also had a curious way of convincing Maori chiefs to sign this Treaty. Here's young Wakefield again. It is 1840:

While I was waiting for the return of Kuru and the gathering of the clans, Messrs. Williams and Hadfield arrived by land. They held no communication with me; but I heard from the natives, and also by MacGregor, the skipper, who called upon them in their tent, what had been their proceedings. Turoa and Te Anaua, with several other of the chiefs who had held communication with them, told me that Mr. Williams had asked them to sign a paper (the Treaty paper), and promised them a present of a blanket from the Queen.

I quote extensively because Wakefield was actually there, and his voice is not a form of revisionism some 170 years after the fact.

For my part, I consider the early missionaries to be part megalomaniac, part messiah, a protozoic control freakery that would today look a bit like Michael Laws or Bob McCroskrie. Mad monks and whipping priests. Yes, most went native, causing problems further up the rectoral chains of command. That's the problem with missionaries, eh. There's always the risk they'll break their programming.

But that's just me. I'm biased. You'll find me in the bar, not the pulpit. Such is the power of the self-selecting bias, eh. xkcd is onto it: