Gambling with N.Z’s future

Many years ago I was a guest of the Ainsworth Leisure Corporation in Australia. Ainsworth’s make the Aristocrat brand gaming machines at their sprawling factory in Rosebank, a suburb of Sydney. At the time I was the chairman of the New Zealand Licensing Trusts Charitable Foundation. The foundation owned and operated all of the gaming machines in most of the 26 licensing trusts in New Zealand, so in a roundabout, but unjustified sort...

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Reigning in the warriors

Osama bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia, but not of Saudi stock. His father was from Yemen, a desperately poor neighbouring country, looked down on by the Saudi’s, and his mother is thought to have been of Libyan extraction. This meant that his family was not socially acceptable to the Saudi aristocracy, but nevertheless the elder bin Laden made a fortune as a building contractor, getting important government contracts because of...

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It’s about time we abolished MMP

A Jewish name for God is “I am.” When Neil Diamond, a Jew, sings “I am, I said”, he is actually singing out to God. A sagacious barman at the Heritage Hotel in Hamner Springs when Aaron Gilmore asked him: “Do you know who I am?” might well have responded: “yes, you are someone who thinks he’s God.” This week’s Listener editorial said Gilmore’s sins read like a checklist of New Zealanders’ pet hates: immodesty, name-dropping, being over-bearing with service staff, failing to front up when you’ve made a mistake, blaming...

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Advocating for the status quo

In 1995 I was a Masterton District Councillor and we discussed whether or not it might be feasible for our council to take over the role of the regional council. There were two reasons for this brain fade. Councillors always love more power and we considered that we had enough expertise within our ranks to discharge the role that the men and women in the red brick building down the road were fulfilling. But the second reason...

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Re-evaluating a past preoccupation

Last week I emailed Paul Henry. In the subject line I put “Airbrush industry” and then advised him that against all odds I had bought a copy of the latest Women’s Weekly and noted that it had two attractive young ladies on the cover alongside a man who looked like him, only much younger. “Was he perchance,” I wanted to know, “related?” Paul responded quickly. The gentleman in question he said was in fact an older man who he often...

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