A city in the making

Back in the early 1950’s, when I was but a slip of a kid, a group of local Masterton businessmen set up an organisation called the 20,000 Club. Its major aim was to raise money to build a war memorial. The name was chosen because it was expected that the town, with a population of around 12,000 at the time, would soon grow to the magical figure of 20,000 and Masterton could proudly declare itself a city. The figure has no magic anymore. Some years ago the government lifted the threshold for cityhood to 50,000 and there would need to be a massive upsurge in the procreative process’s around the suburbs for us to make the new mark. We know too, of course, that the hospital could never cope if we did.

It was a lively little town back in the 50’s thanks in great part to the efforts of the 20,000 Club to cobble together enough money to build the stadium and pool complex chosen to honour our war dead. There were wonderful carnivals in Queen Elizabeth Park, concerts in the Regent Theatre and most exciting of all, speedway racing every Wednesday night at the Solway Showgrounds.

As a 12 year old third former attendance at the speedway was achieved by riding on Ken Aplin’s suburban bus service that did the rounds of Lansdowne to pick up us kids who loved the thrill of the racing and became mildly addicted to the smell of kerosene.

Local heroes Harry Mangham and Des O’Connor would pit their skills against Wellington and Wembly star Bruce Abernathy. No matter how far back they handicapped Abernathy, he always seemed to win, tearing past the checkered flag with his flowing white silk scarf fluttering behind him in a defiant gesture. Abernathy was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. His father owned the Chukka shirt factory in Lower Hutt and was able to indulge his son in his passion for racing motor bikes with incredible skill and daring. I got to know him in later years when he was a member of the Terawhiti Licensing Trust. I’m sorry to say time had not treated him kindly; the demon drink had taken its toll on his mind and body. He passed away some years ago with little of the family wealth evident. Harry Mangham tragically died at a relatively young age in a top-dressing aircraft crash.

The 20,000 Club brought to town an ex-kiwi concert party producer named Tommy Kirk-Burnand to help them run their stage shows; also a musician named Geoffrey Farrell. Their concerts were superbly crafted and provided great entertainment.

In the park the carnivals resembled some of the Esther William’s films, popular at the time, with speedboats on the lake and water skiers in tow performing gravity defying displays and exhibiting remarkable balance. Basil Bodle’s “Miss Vesta” was the main towing speedboat and rides were also available on Doug Cameron’s launch which was to later die a slow death at the back of his section on the corner of Villa Street and Lincoln Road. The Town Council eventually stopped these excursions as the wake from the boats was eating away at the lake shore.

Later minor miscreants who had been sentenced to community work installed rock walls around the lake, but by then as a member of the Junior Chamber of Commerce (Jaycees) I’d help build a solid concrete bridge over to an island to facilitate access to a miniature train we were installing so water skiing displays could not be reinstated without decapitating the performers.

Meanwhile a Queen carnival was held with Business Queen Maureen McLachlan, Farmer Queen Cathy Douglas, and Sports Queen Josephine Mackley as participants. The Regent Theatre was packed for the entertaining variety concert produced by Kirk-Burnand and featuring Geoffrey Farrell that preceded the crowning.

With all this effort you would have thought that the new complex would open debt free, but in fact the 20,000 Club eventually finished up penniless. It was apparently the high cost of staging the speedway that diminished all their raised cash and ironically the Council was called upon to pay their creditors.

The Masterton Licensing Trust eventually came up with most of the capital cost of the stadium and pools complex, taking out a long term loan on which it paid the principal and the Borough Council paid the interest. The complex was opened in 1958. Total Licensing Trust contribution was around sixty thousand pounds and converted in to 2018 dollars it would seem like they got a very good deal. And so ironically it was the public bar beer drinkers who paid for the recreation center.

The 20,000 Club, despite the impeccable business credentials of the men who established it, failed to raise the money it sought, but sixty-five years after its inception the town now boasts 23,000 inhabitants. Lamentably the target was reached well beyond their lifetimes.

(Footnote:Recently Masterton was named 'New Zealand’s most beautiful city' so somewhere along the line the 50,000 starting point has been forgotten, but no one around here is arguing.)

“If you would be known, but not know, vegetate to a village; if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.” - Charles Caleb Colton

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Let the games commence

Some years ago when Georgina Beyer made her much publicised remark that she couldn’t live on the “five hundred bucks” Michael Hill Jewellers in Masterton were paying her a week, the nations talk-back hosts were inundated with critical callers.

Many solo mums made the point that they were bringing up kids on a more meagre amount and pensioner couples were also scathing, saying their incomes were less than that and there were two adult mouths to feed. Qualified support for Ms Beyer’s comments however came from a budget adviser who said that it would be difficult for someone who was once on an M.Ps salary of $130,000 to adjust.

Ms Beyer's response was to stand for the Masterton mayoralty. However she was unable to attract a backer to pay for the projected advertising budget and reluctantly withdrew from the race.

The spoils for the winner at the time was an annual salary of $69,000, about half of her MPs stipend, but four times what Michael Hill was apparently offering. It was an understandable incentive.

Handsomely paying our locals body politicians is a relatively new phenomenon.

When I was first elected on to the Masterton Licensing Trust back in 1972 we were paid the princely sum of $5 a meeting. We met monthly eleven times a year - taking a break in January - giving us an annual income of $55. I believe the chairman would have received a modest honorarium. I suspect borough councillors at the time would have been similarly recompensed.

By 1980 it was decided that the electorate was being served by only those who could afford to be away from their workplaces therefore giving the voters a restricted choice of candidate. So remuneration levels were set at a much higher level and the long-suffering ratepayer placidly went along with the generous new packages and became even more long-suffering.

But was the old system really that bad? When I joined the Licensing Trust I was a brash young butcher and my fellow trustees included two accountants, a well-to-do retired businessman, a stockbroker and the local MP. We met once a month on a Monday afternoon because that was the MP’s day away from the house.

So I was the only artisan amongst a group of intelligent professional people and the community was scarcely better off because of my inclusion.

The pay packages are now set by statute and today a Masterton district councillor gets somewhere between $25,000 and $30,000 depending on whether he or she chairs a committee. The mayor now gets $92,400, which would have suited Georgina Beyer just fine.

However, the larger the community the larger the largesse and in the big cities being a local body politician has become even more of a career move. You still have to rely on the whim of the electorate and the vocation is not necessarily long term. Every three years you need to convince your fellow citizens that you are worth re-electing and there is no superannuation scheme to keep the wolf from the door if your occupation ends abruptly.

Parliamentarians fare better, particularly if they manage to stay the distance for three terms wherein a generous pension is paid out, plus other perquisites, for the rest of their natural lives. No one has ever explained why Ms Beyer left her safer-than-safe role as a list MP midway through her third term.

The reasoning behind the move to increase local body pay packets was flawed from the outset. Those responsible for the generous legislation pointed at fees paid to directors on boards of companies and considered local body politicians filled the same role and undertook similar responsibilities.

Directors however are appointed from a pool of men and women who have consummate skills and their value to the company is immeasurable. Actually that’s not true, it is quantifiable; their advice to their CEO’s is measured in the company’s results and its subsequent share price. I have worked alongside professional directors and I am in awe of their proficiencies.

The company board of directors then elects its chairman from one of its members whom they consider is best equipped to lead them. This happens in virtually all organisations from school boards of trustees, regional councils, to parliamentary caucuses who elect the prime minister.

The exceptions are the district and city councils. Their chairperson is chosen by the people. The citizen’s vote for their mayor who is often in an uncomfortable position given that some of his or her fellow councillors will have also stood for the position and may well tend to thwart the mayors progress, thinking they should have been elected instead. In most countries in the world the mayor is chosen by the council, after the election, from one of its own.

Over the next couple of weeks the National party will go through the public trauma of electing a new leader of the opposition. It will be an agonising process both for the party and we engaged onlookers who will have made our own choices have the potential to be disappointed at the outcome.

At the time of writing Steven Joyce seems to be well back from the front runners and in fact has not even entered the fray and yet he has been the finance minister of late who according to Grant Roberson has left the country in a sound economic state.

Old and wise is not the flavour of month at the moment and has been well articulated by Ms Adern who is now apparently delighting readers of the American edition of Vogue magazine.

Meanwhile I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion that our District Councils think there’s a ratepayer born every minute.

“If by the people you understand the multitude, the hoi polloi, ‘tis no matter what they think; they are sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong: their judgement is a mere lottery.”- John Dryden

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Change may not be in the wind

It’s a bit like the chicken and egg situation. Bill English runs a flawless campaign, wins the election and then husband and wife team Barry Soper and Heather du Plessis-Allen write separate newspaper columns suggesting there is a move within caucus to remove him.

This starts the conversation of course, but it is unlikely that it originated from within ranks the ranks of National.

The same might be said for constant commentary suggesting meat-eating is on the way out and vegans and vegetarians are increasing markedly in number.

I doubt any of these claims are factual. Setting aside the Bill English persiflage, meat sales may be declining slightly in New Zealand, but I suspect this is due more to price than lack of desirability.

Lamb has had the biggest hit with beef close behind. Sales of chicken and pork however are on the increase. The reason for this is that we don’t export chicken or pork so buoyant overseas prices don’t effect the local market.

We also export our lamb and beef to countries with newly-emerging middle classes where meat is a luxury, and is an enticing option from the rice alternative. Meat in these markets may be unaffordable for much of the proletariat, but the population bases are so high that sales volumes are immense.

Western world meat producers needn’t panic however. In a surprising outcome, a study by the American Humane Research Council found that eventually 84% of vegans and vegetarians return to eating meat.

One of the researchers, Professor Hal Herzog, quoted his daughter who was a vegetarian for 18 years, but has gone back to the consumption of flesh. He asked her why she felt compelled to change her veggie ways.

Her logic for turning anti-carnivore when she was 13 was ostensibly because she cared about animals, but in reality she just wanted to be different.

She said her reason for going back to eating meat at age 31 was that she realised she wasn’t enjoying food the way other people did. “Eating was a chore, like folding laundry or paying bills, but even more annoying was that if I didn’t do it I would die. For nearly 18 years I ate grains, produce, legumes and fake meat products like those Morningstar bacon strips that have lower nutritional value than cat food and it seemed like I was always hungry no matter how large my bowl of beans and rice.”

Meat marketer’s world-wide will applaud the sentiment.

There’s another reason, not generally recognised, as to why we might be going off our animal protein and that is the relatively poor quality of New Zealand meat.

The older generation will remember back when they always bought hogget as opposed to lamb. Hogget, (farmers called them two-tooths) is a year older than lamb and was considered more flavoursome; however our sheepmeat is of such poor grade today you only ever see lamb for sale in the supermarkets.

It’s the same story with beef. Rump steak was once the favourite for frying or grilling and restaurants featured it prominently on their menus. With the dairy strain creeping into our beef herds rump is not suitable for frying anymore.

As my father used to say about any meat of poor quality, “It’s that tough you couldn’t get your fork into the gravy.”

So the chickens and the eggs are still surviving, but it might take some lateral thinking to ensure the future of some of their protein associates.

Meanwhile Bill English’s leadership continues to look remarkably stable.

“If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.” - Paul McCartney

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Perhaps the greatest wordsmith of them all

I first met David Lange in the flesh – and there was a lot of it – when he gave a keynote address at a Licensing Trust Conference at Solway Park in the early 1990s. As the convention host I sat with him at the top table and not surprisingly found his genial company to be exhilarating. So too was his address. The business philosophy of the licensing trusts dovetails perfectly with Labour Party principles and many of the delegates, those from the Auckland region particularly, were party workers who had been rewarded by a strong Labour electorate with trusteeship. Apart from a few crusty old conservatives like me, Lange was preaching to the converted; but I too was swayed by his rhetoric.

So much so that a few months later, when I was asked by a friend in Sydney: “Who is the best speaker in New Zealand?” I unhesitatingly replied “David Lange.”

My friend was organising a large conference in Hong Kong a few months hence for a world professional body over which he presided and wondered if Lange might be persuaded to address his audience. By now Lange had retired as prime minister and was known to be on a speaking circuit, so I was sure he would respond positively to an invitation.

He did, with three conditions: first class air travel, five star accommodation and $3000 as a speaking fee. All provisos were agreed to.

I was surprised therefore to read in the Dominion a few weeks later that during an altercation in parliament an opposition member accused Lange of neglecting his electorate of Mangere and tripping around the world and speaking to a variety of audiences for which he was paid generous fees. Lange readily admitted that he was frequently asked to speak on the world stages, but denied he made any charge for his orations.

I cut the item out and sent it off to Sydney where the Hong Kong conference organiser was as surprised as I was.

In the event, Lange’s Hong Kong speech was a disappointment, poorly researched and badly delivered. Lange told my friend that he was unwell, though there was no suggestion of a discount.

On the trip to the airport next day for his return journey he apologised profusely and told the conventions’ world president that he “owed him one.”

The offer however was never called upon.

My next encounter with this complex man was in the ANZAC hall in Featherston. The Wairarapa Racing Club was holding a celebratory dinner/debate. Lange was to lead one side and TVNZs Ian Fraser the other. I was invited to participate in Langes's team alongside race caller Tony Lee. In the Fraser camp was TV racing personality Des Coppins and rugby commentator John Macbeth. The subject as I recall was “Racing is the root of all evil.”

Lange, Lee and Long were to affirm the proposition.

Before the debate, when my wife and I were having dinner with Lange and his female secretary who had accompanied him, he told us he was going in next day for heart surgery. This was years after the angioplasty incident and the stomach-stapling operation and there was never any mention in the news media of this apparent setback. I suspect this was all a bit of a distraction because although his opening remarks were typically very witty and thrilled the large crowd, halfway through the debate he leaned over to me and asked if I would mind “summing up.”

I politely declined. I reminded him that he was the star of the show and that people had paid good money to come and hear him, not me. Summing up is a real skill and requires a quick wit, more honed than mine, as you adroitly rebut the points made by members of the opposing team. Also Lange was, I understand, being paid $2000 for this cameo appearance in contrast to my fee of gratis and although this discrepancy was justified and appropriate, I thought at least he ought to earn his money.

He reluctantly agreed, but his summation left a lot to be desired. He did not broach the points made by the opposition team, but instead told amusing anecdotes gleaned from his experiences in the corridors of power. To be fair the audience loved it. So too did the judge; Lange, Lee and Long won the debate.

It was a privilege to have known this man, if only fleetingly and I am presently devouring his autobiography My Life with a great deal of interest.

I was surprised to read a passage where he describes his time working in Auckland’s Westfield freezing works while he was studying law. He had little time for the management practices and was hugely critical of the owners, Lord Vesty and his family in the U.K. He was delighted when the company collapsed and the Vesty’s retreated back to England, licking their wounds.

But he also had this to say: “What Westfield also gave me was an abiding dislike for the law which obliged all workers to belong to a trade union. The union delegates matched the management in their arrogance and indifference. My distaste for compulsory unionism was carried into my career in parliament and coloured my view of the Labour Party’s trade union associates.”

David Lange was brought up on strict Methodist principles by a faithful father and a devout mother. Lange describes the Methodist church as the Labour Party at prayer. His mother was an active member of the Women’s Temperance Union and despised alcohol to such an extent that when a Rotarian friend of his father’s sent round a crate of beer for Christmas, Mrs Lange put it on the front lawn and took an axe to it.

Lange admits his own speaking skills were largely developed by listening to outstanding Methodist sermons, particularly in England where he was enthralled by the great evangelical orators in the central city churches in London.

Sadly after a long period of comparative abstinence and community based Christianity, Lange seemed to stray from the narrow path and drifted into alcoholism, perhaps brought on by pursuing an affair of the heart.

Lange’s new love Margaret Pope, was a powerful personality of some intellect and seems to have not only affected their own lives, but to a greater or lesser extent, ours as well.

Thanks to her, it transpires, we never got to know whether Roger Douglas’s flat tax was a viable option or not and on a flight to America to address an ANZAC gathering she and David apparently unilaterally decided that New Zealand was no longer part of the ANZUS alliance, despite a collective cabinet decision to the contrary.

Another surprise entry in the Lange autobiography is his admission that he did not succeed all that well academically at Otahuhu College, describing his examination passes there as no more than adequate. He did however win the speech competition four years out of five and it seems this is where his great strength lay. His predecessor, whom we now know was also flawed in many aspects, had the same oratorical skills.

It would be unfair to conclude that Robert Muldoon and Lange had no other talents than that they could speak well and therefore influence an entire nation, but that certainly was one outcome of their identical gifts.

David Lange was propelled to world prominence by the Oxford Union debate with speech notes largely written by Margaret Pope. The debate is remembered for his own repartee when he responded to an interjection from a young American naval officer, claiming he could smell the uranium on his breath. I never ever thought it was a particularly funny remark, but I must be in the minority here because it appeared to amuse a world-wide audience. His actual opponent in the debate, the Reverend Jerry Falwell, also performed creditably, but seems to have been largely forgotten.

Lange became prime minister when Muldoon’s peculiar brand of financial management had come close to wrecking the New Zealand economy and he was able to institute the radical reforms needed with skilful cabinet chairmanship and words of comfort to a disturbed population. Unfortunately, a distraction as unrefined as an office romance put paid to a statesmanlike career that might have known no bounds.

His public life ended in the back rooms of pubs and cold halls where he and Gary McCormack entertained sparse audiences with their earthy brand of humour.

Finally words failed him and he died a premature death at the age of 63.

It’s a high price to pay for immortality.

(First published August 24th 2005)

“I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him.” -Sir Max Beerbohm

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