A refuge for refugees

Two words that frequently appear in much of what we read in these troubled times are refugee and racism. Both words appear to be inextricably linked.

The world is overwhelmed with refugees. Many countries are wary of welcoming them fearing outcomes that can be tacitly linked to racism. Some of this will be justified, but most not. Its where to find the happy medium that is concerning for most societies and in the meantime refugees languish in atrocious camps which are a blot on our collective consciences.

I’ve written about this before, but I will endeavour to canvass a new angle. In 1980 our Rotary Club sponsored a refugee family from Vietnam. Hoa (pronounced Wah) Van Nguyen and his wife My (pronounced Me) and their nine month old baby girl named Dyung (Yoong) had left their war torn country in a leaky boat in which half the passengers perished.

They spoke little English which made their employment prospects challenging, so I employed them myself in our meat company. My altruism was well rewarded. They were outstanding employees, intelligent, hard-working and scrupulously honest. They worked for me for twelve years. They saved hard and bought a two-bedroomed home in Hillcrest Street and then a modern three-bedroomed home in High Street to allow for a growing family. Three more children, another girl and then two boys were born in Masterton and educated at St Patrick’s school. Dyung went on to Chanel College.

As far as I am aware they encountered no racism in Masterton; in fact quite the opposite. They were universally admired by our staff and customers and I’m sure were made welcome at school.

But refugees crave mixing with their own kind. When Hoa and My arrived there were a number of Vietnamese families in Masterton, but they moved off; some to Wellington, others to Auckland.

The family decided to resettle in a predominantly Vietnamese suburb in Melbourne. My wife and I visited them there, but sensed that they weren’t happy, despite the cultural environment.

They eventually moved to Austin in Texas.

Hoa and My came back to see us a few years ago and to some extent their life has been a success story, particularly as far as their children are concerned. Dyung is a lawyer and her sister is a doctor. One of the boys is an engineering graduate and the other has a degree in biotech consulting.

Hoa and My have bought a modest home in Austin and Hoa works in an engineering shop where he is paid $18 an hour. He had endeavoured to find employment in the meat industry using my well-deserved reference, but had always been turned down.

He hinted there was a touch of racism in the rejections.

Just one families story, but it tells us a lot.

Asian people are incredibly passionate about ensuring their children are well-educated and subsequently procure well-paying jobs. Hoa and My would have liked their own talents to have been better-recognised, but it was heartening to hear that of the four countries they have lived in, New Zealand, they opined, was where they were the happiest.

"The evil of modern society isn't that it creates racism, but that it creates conditions in which people who don't suffer from injustice seem incapable of caring very much about people who do."  - Louis Menand

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An intriguing year ahead

The English language from time to time throws up a word or a phrase not generally in widespread usage which suddenly becomes popular. I remember some years ago when “punter” which normally described someone who liked to bet, particularly on racehorses, became a name for almost anybody, no matter what their described actions were. About then the phrase “at this point in time” also became faddish.

Linguists were highly critical of the latter, suggesting that it was merely an affectatious way of saying “now”.

A name re-entering the lexicon is “populist.” Trendy political parties are now desperate to adhere to the populist line. The candidates can be leftists, centrists or right-wingers. Populists can mean all things to all people. For instance Jeremy Corbin of British Labour Party fame is a populist and so too is French Presidential aspirant Marine Le Pen from the far right. I’m not going to mention Donald Trump due to overuse syndrome.

John Key was a populist. He could skilfully gauge the mood of the public and would oscillate either way.

Even a swinging pony tail would catch his eye.

Andrew Little sees an opportunity now that John Key has left the building to embrace populism. Replacing his eyeglasses for contact lens I expected him any minute to burst into song with Johnny Nash’s 1970s hit “I can see clearly now”.

Andrew thought he might tread the populist line by bringing Willie Jackson into the fold. Never mind that Jackson is not even a member of the party and by guaranteeing him a high list seat Mr Little is making Labour’s mandatory gender balance more unbalanced.

But what we saw with Brexit and other more obvious political revolutions in the world was that 2016 was the end of the neoliberal political and economic order of the 70s and 80s and 2017 is ushering in the new order of populism.

What’s underpinning the rejection of the neoliberal order is undoubtedly the pervasive ignominy of deepening inequality that began in the 1980s. For us it was presented as Rogernomics. This was the birthing stage of an era when children were likely to grow up to be worse off than their parents. The strong gains in overall economic growth accrued to a patriciate group and those at the bottom have become angry.

The “trickle down” never even dribbled.

Andrew Little got a head start. He opposed the Trans Pacific Partnership free trade agreement despite the fact that his mentor Ms Clark not only initiated the negotiations, but fully embraced the outcome. Now free trade advocates are accused of promoting a system that means gains to one country come at a cost to another.

Not necessarily true of course. Trade in the main is good for all participants, making them better off. Rapidly growing international bartering has been a critical element of the massive reduction in global poverty in recent decades.

So it’s an interesting election year ahead of us. However if I was a punter, at this point in time I 

would still put my money on Bill English to win - by a short head.

“Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to understand that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.” - Ronald Reagan

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Just another brick in the wall

President Trump wants to build a wall - down Mexico way. Some are comparing it with the Berlin Wall though that wall was to keep people in, this one is to keep folks out. And it isn’t really a wall; more like a high fence in keeping with the original, started back in 1994, but never finished.

As of January 2010 the existing “wall” runs from San Diego, California to Yuma, Arizona, there it continues into Texas and consists of a fence 6.4 metres tall with 1.8 metres buried in the ground.

Mr Trump thinks that his completed edifice will stop “criminals, drug dealers, and rapists” who are pouring in from a number of South American destinations. Certainly a percentage of these people will be of the criminal element; just about the same percentage that occurs in most societies.

Others will have more legitimate reasons to risk crossing the border. One commentator reckons the first thing an illegal immigrant sees once he has reached the promised land is a sign that says: CHEAP LABOUR WANTED.

The minimum wage in America is $7.25 an hour. Poor South Americans have learnt to live on less in their countries of origin so they manage to survive on whatever penurious employers pay them and are even able to send money back to their families at home.

The other problem Mr Trump observes, with some justification, is that with the porous Mexican/US border, drugs are flooding into his country at an alarming rate.

The real problem then is that Americans have an insatiable appetite for drugs and cheap labour.

We shouldn’t really judge a country by the movies and television programmes that emanate from it, but you can’t help but assume a large percentage of the American population smoke pot, the southerners drink Jack Daniell’s by the gallon and that the elite in Los Angeles, where most of these images are created, seem to have no compunction about sniffing cocaine in the most public of places.

I’m not going to even try to paraphrase life in the ghettos where it seems anything goes.

Mr Trump’s stunning electoral victory came because he appealed to American blue-collar workers who have seen their jobs being exported to low wage countries thanks to the “global economy” that America once championed and a promise to stop illegal immigrants from taking what few opportunities there might be available.

But we mustn’t get too smug. Our “wall” is the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean. We’ve had factories close too, but thanks to our temperate climate, land-based industries have taken up the slack. Our wages are static and a disturbing number of our populous are hooked on drugs. The evidence of p-house production discovered after tenants have left the building is testament to that.

If I were Mr Trump I would set aside the money he was going to use to build the wall and instead use it for more prisons. I would then sign an executive order to give drug dealers a mandatory life sentence.

If the Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte was running the country of course he would shoot them all.

That may just be a step too far.

“Drugs are the ideal product; the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer to beg to buy.” - William S. Burroughs

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Not always a wordsmith

There have been a lot of column inches published about David Lange of late, mostly due to revelations recently revealed in reluctantly released CIA files dating back to the 1980s. During his tenure as Prime Minister, Lange was pledging to his fawning followers that he would honour the Labour Party’s commitment to ban nuclear weapons and nuclear propulsion. Behind the scenes however he was assuring our two ANZUS treaty partners that he would skilfully withdraw any legislation that might seek to authenticate the proposition.

It reminded me of an incident back in the early 1990s when a friend of mine in Australia rang and asked if I knew of any good speakers in New Zealand. Mr Lange had just spoken to an annual conference of the New Zealand Licensing Trust Association at Solway Park and I considered his address to be exhilarating, full of wisdom and not without humour.

My friend was the international president of a professional association at the time and he was organising their annual conference to be held in Hong Kong some months hence.

Taking my advice he subsequently rang Mr Lange to see if he might consent to be a guest speaker at the convention.

Lange acquiesced and suggested my friend fly out to Auckland from Sydney to formalise the arrangements. They met at the Auckland airport and for his trouble Mr Lange wanted first-class air travel to Hong Kong, to be accommodated in a five star hotel and a speaking fee of $3000.

This was readily agreed to.

This information was passed on to me and so I was amazed to see a news item in The Dominion a few weeks later where a National member of parliament accused Mr Lange in the house of dereliction of duty. He claimed the member for Mangere was hardly ever in parliament, was neglecting his electorate and was “swanning” around the world giving speeches for which he was paid handsomely. Lange at that stage had stepped down from being Prime Minister, handing the reigns over to Geoffrey Palmer. He admitted that he was much sought-after as a guest speaker on the world stage, but claimed he did not charge for his dissertations.

I cut the item out of the newspaper and sent it off to my Aussie friend who was surprised given he’d agreed to pay a $3000 speaking fee. However he was not too concerned; he said that with an ex-New Zealand Prime Minister giving the keynote speech at the conference registrations were pouring in from all around the world.

A few months later, just after the conference, I rang to see if Mr Lange had been well received. It seems he was great disappointment. “His speech was lacklustre” I was told.

When my friend drove him back to the airport Lange apologised for his performance, citing that he hadn’t been feeling well. As he alighted the car at the Hong Kong terminal with his $3000 speaking fee securely ensconced in his bank he said: “I owe you one.”

I gather this offer was never taken up.

“When you’re abroad you’re a statesman when you are at home you’re just a politician” - Harold McMillan

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Through rose-coloured glasses

To those of you who are mildly interested I was born in 1940. Not long after the event Churchill was to announce to the world: “This was their finest hour” - and I thought he was talking about my parents. When I was born Mum and Dad tried to collect on their accident insurance. They kept me hidden during most of the war due to my Jewish nose. Mind you, if my father hadn’t been so shy and retiring I’d be two years older than I am now.

I’m so old I can remember when it used to take seven hours to drive to Auckland. Now you can fly there in less than an hour. Mind you it takes two hours to drive to Wellington, an hour getting checked through airport security, an hour to find your luggage at Mangere, another hour to find a taxi driver in Auckland who can speak English; then it takes him two hours crawling in gridlocked traffic to get you to your final destination.

The progress has been fantastic.

It’s the same with cars. I note that people are lovingly restoring the forties and fifties models like Zephyr Sixes, Morris Oxfords and Rovers and getting admiring glances as these graceful and solid autos glide by. Their Japanese successors are stacked meters high at a scrap metal yard in Ngaumutawa Road.

When I was a youngster we had three grocer’s shops within spitting distance of where we lived at the bottom of Opaki Road. There was one on each corner of Opaki Road and First Street and another one on the corner of First and Cooper Streets. Amongst these there was Tommy Newland’s butcher’s shop. In each store you were personally served by the attentive owner or a member of the family. How dreadfully inconvenient. It’s much better now to be able to drive into town, fight for a carpark, navigate your way around a crowded supermarket and queue up at the checkout.

My first chore in the morning was to bike down to the Lansdowne bakery situated in the building that now houses the A1 fish shop, Bodymind Pilates and the Trust House rental housing division and get us that day our daily bread. I tried not to be led unto temptation and scoff chunks of it on the way home. The aroma from the warm crust was potentially evil delivering.

Before I set off I’d take a flour bag out of the hot water cupboard where they sat in a neat pile having been washed and ironed and available for a myriad of uses. Our folks used them to carry groceries and other parcels. They also made great cleaning cloths and could even be shaped into undergarments.

Now we have the wonderful plastic carry bags that litter our streets and strangle our dolphins. How much better they are. I’m told that worldwide the plastics industry uses more oil in its manufacturing process’s than all the petrol and oil used in cars.

I read a headline last week that said after Trump’s inauguration the world will never be the same.

Well it never has been.

“I was born in very sorry circumstances. My mother was sorry and my father was sorry as well.” - Norman Wisdom.

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Be wary of the doomsayers

The famous American satirist and cultural critic H. L. Mencken reckoned that: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populous alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Perhaps inevitable then that back in 2008 Green Party demigod Russel Norman would proclaim that petrol would be $10 a litre within a decade. “Petrol at that price would make the Government’s entire motorway building project a white elephant - modern day Easter Island statues. Our new motorways would be monuments to short-sightedness and profligate waste of resources,” Dr Norman said.

In 2008 the average price of petrol was $1.82 a litre.

I like keeping records of these typical hobgoblin-style statements to look back on. I have for instance a copy of an article dated the 12th of July 1988 printed in the once-popular Wellington daily The Evening Post which informs its intrepid readers that global warming has arrived.

It says in part: “The severe four-day southerly storms which traditionally smashed the capital three or four times a year have become a thing of the past as Wellington bathes in almost permanently year-round balmy weather. Spring flowers are appearing up to two months earlier than usual and heating bills are way down.”

The article goes on to caution that sea levels were rising and sea walls in Lower Hutt and Wanganui would need to be built. The author however thought some smaller towns such as Raglan were probably doomed as they were not of sufficient size and importance to justify the expense of saving.

A year before this, in 1987, the engineers on the Wairarapa Catchment Board warned that the sea at Riversdale was encroaching landward at the rate of a metre a year. They told the Masterton District Council that a hazard zone should be put in place as a large number of dwellings were under threat. I was chairman of the Riversdale Ratepayers Association at the time and we were determined to fight the council over this zoning bye-law given that it would lower the value of many properties and possibly even make them unsaleable.

We engaged legal counsel at considerable cost, but lost the case when the hazard zone was eventually put in place in 1996. By then I wasn’t on the ratepayers association, but was a district councillor - voting against the proposal of course, but to no avail.

I was a member of the Riversdale Surf Lifesaving Club in 1957 when the original clubhouse was opened and I viewed the glorious vista from the balcony. Last week I stood on the balcony of the splendid new clubrooms built on the same site and I have to report, surprise, surprise, that sixty years on the sea is still lapping the shores in exactly the same place.

At the time of writing this column Gull’s Masterton service station was selling petrol for $1.88 a litre and the beachfront homeowners at Riversdale and the 3000 people who live and love in Raglan all still had their heads above water.

“When I look back on all these worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened.” - Sir Winston Churchill

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My predictions for 2017

The three Wairarapa Councils will continue to have talks re amalgamation. Nothing will happen.

Just as many celebrities will die in 2017 as in 2016.

A massive magnitude 8 earthquake will occur, centred on Masterton. The Town Hall will remain intact.

Bill English will call a snap-election and Winston Peters will be elected Prime Minister. English will plead for a role in cabinet and Winston will hold up a card saying NO.

Jacinda Adern will win the NZ Dental Association’s award for model of the year.

Donald Trump will admit at a Bruce Springsteen Concert that he wasn’t born in the U.S.A. and is actually a half-brother to Vladimir Putin.

In a new poll Britain will vote to remain in the European Union and the rest of Europe will decide to leave.

The price of petrol will go up and the road toll will go down.

All those people in America who reckoned they would come and live in New Zealand if Trump was elected President will remain where they are with the exception of Serena and Venus Williams who will both buy permanent homes in windy Wellington.

Peter Leitch and Michelle Boag will ask Bear Grylls to locate them on some remote island.

John Key will replace Benjamin Netanyahu as prime Minister of Israel (son Max will win Israel’s Got Talent and daughter Stephanie will be in the centrefold of the Jerusalem edition of Playboy.)

Murray McCully will become our ambassador in Venezuela.

Kim Dot Com will fly voluntarily to America.

Gareth Morgan will open a cattery in Kandallah.

Lyn Paterson will dye her hair blonde and Bob Francis will go bald.

The publishers of the Wairarapa News will be presented with a long-overdue, well-supported petition pleading with the editor to ensure the long-suffering readers will no longer have to put up with the long-winded views of the author of the Long View.

“If you can look into the seeds of time and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear your favours nor your hate.” - William Shakespeare

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