A house with bells and whistles

You can’t help but have sympathy for young couples today hoping to buy their first home. In our neck of the woods it must be difficult enough, but in Auckland and to a slightly lesser extent Christchurch, it must be nigh on impossible.

I looked up the Auckland real estate websites and found the most basic home will set you back $350,000. Using Sorted’s website calculator I discovered that a $350,000 mortgage, paying back the principal and interest over 25 years, will cost the borrower $519 a week.

I recalled my own situation 50 years ago. First home buyers went cap-in-hand to the State Advances Corporation; government-owned and although we mightn’t have appreciated it at the time, extremely generous. The corporation would lend you 2500 pounds to build your first home at either three or five percent interest. The interest rate was determined depending on your wage bracket. At 20 pounds a week I just missed out on the 3% option and had to pay 5%. You could build a modest 3 bedroom home for around that price back then, ours was a little more expensive, and the difference we made up from savings and help from our parents. As best as I can recall the repayments on the State Advances loan was three pounds a week and as a percentage of my wages this was readily affordable compared to what first home buyers have to come up with today.

Construction commenced on our first home before we were married and was completed while we were on honeymoon. Our greatest fear at the time was that our friends would dress the house up for our homecoming, a regular occurrence in those days. Returning honeymooners would tend to find their new dwellings wrapped in toilet paper, “Just Married” signs scrawled on the windows and plywood, cut-out storks, attached to the chimneys.

But we had a cunning plan. We claimed that we were going away for a three week honeymoon, but returned after just two weeks. To our delight the house appeared untouched. Our friends feigned disappointment that we had returned early and admitted that they had not had an opportunity to make adjustments to the dwelling.

They lied.

On the first night in our new home, at about 1 o’clock in the morning, we were woken abruptly by an incredible noise in our bedroom. It sounded like there was a roaring party taking place around us yet when we turned the light on, the room was starkly empty. The noise however did not abate. There was the sound of  revelry and singing, voices we recognised well,  remarks made that were obviously current, therefore precluding the possibility of a recording being played at us from somewhere, but not a soul in sight. It was surreal.

I concluded electricity was involved so I jumped out of bed and rushed to the switchboard in the porch and turned off the main. The sound of the party did not stop, but now also a very loud bell rang somewhere in the bowels of the house, more deafening than the cacophony of the party, so I immediately turned the power back on.

The party goers, wherever they were, suggested we get dressed as they would soon join us. We did as we were told, the sound soon stopped and within a few minutes our friends arrived with food and drink, insisting that we party with them until daylight.

So what had they done? Well they had conspired with the builder and the electrician and placed a large speaker in the rafters, directly above our bed, behind the plaster ceiling. Wiring from this speaker was run down inside the wall, then under the lawn to the edge of our section. We had built the house on a small farm our meat company owned and the wiring connection was exposed in an adjoining paddock. The revelers then gathered at a stable complex that was part of the farm, two paddocks away from our new home. They ran a cable across the fields to an amplifier in a storeroom adjacent to the stables. The amplifier had a microphone attached. The soiree got underway at midnight and when it was in full swing, at about one o’clock, they flicked the switch on the microphone and we got the full blast of the party from the speaker above our bed, hidden behind the ceiling.

It was a masterstroke in practical joking. Anticipating that I would turn off the power was clever, although it had no effect on the party noise; the power for the amplifier was on a totally separate power system at the stables. Highly illegal for a bell to ring after you’ve turned the power off of course; it meant the supplier, not the consumer, was paying for it.

My friends had used the same clever anticipation to assume that we would have only a two week honeymoon as opposed to the three week one we signaled.

My wife, who didn’t marry my friends, must have wondered at the wisdom of accepting my proposal of marriage some months earlier. To be fair, that’s nothing new; fifty years on, I suspect she is still questioning that decision.

“Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.” - Norman Douglas.

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In praise of two magical nights

At the age of thirteen I appeared in a Masterton Amateur Theatrical Society production called “Our Miss Gibbs.” It was presented over eight nights in Masterton’s grand old Regent Theatre. Monday to Thursday one week, then again Monday to Thursday the following week. Back in those halcyon days the Regent 3 Cinemas was just one cinema and owners Kerridge-Odeon wouldn’t give up the lucrative Friday and Saturday night screenings.

The theatre was locked up tight on a Sunday; it was assumed we’d all be at church.

I played the part of a newspaper boy; my dialogue would have consisted of about four lines and I was on the stage for fully three minutes. If indeed there were any talent scouts in the audience then they must have missed my academy-award-winning performance. My acting career finished on the last night of the show.

So I have restricted myself to being an attender rather than a participant to the MATS stage shows over the intervening years and despite not wanting to downgrade past productions I thought this year’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was the best they have ever presented. Over time it seems performers - actors and musicians - have become more and more talented and the technology has improved out of sight. I understand the Majestic Theatre sound system was recently upgraded to the tune of $30,000 and the outcome added immensely to the enjoyment of the evening.

I don’t like to single out people, but there was undoubtedly a star: a gifted lady named Lucy Cruickshank, who was described in the programme as the narrator. This “narrator” sang the part and was on stage for virtually the whole of the evening. Her voice was superb, her acting faultless and her dancing a bonus. Just how she managed the energy to do that night after night with a couple of matinees thrown in to boot was a mystery until I noticed in the programme she is a keen multi-sportswomen and has competed in a number of half-ironman competitions.

Joseph was played by the ideally-named Joseph Raea, a young man who has an assured career in drama if he wants it and accountant Mark Richardson portrayed Pharaoh flawlessly in the image of Elvis Presley. You couldn’t fault any of the leads or those in lesser roles and this was all complimented by outstanding costuming and the best sounding MATS orchestra I have ever heard under the immensely talented tutorship of Craig Thomson.

Still reeling from Joseph I concluded my week of culture by attending the Glen Miller Orchestra concert the following evening. With the rather expensive ticket prices I was surprised to see the Masterton Town Hall filled to the gunwales with swing enthusiasts.

Somehow the Town Hall was the ideal setting. Though perfectly adequate it has a rather 1940’s look about it and the 17 piece retro-orchestra seemed to be entirely at home on the stage.

Orchestra leader, trombonist and narrator Rick Gerber was somewhat less animated than Ms Cruickshank, but there is no doubt he is a very talented musician and his orchestra looked like the original band and arguably sounded even better. Again I suspect thanks to the 21st century sound system.

The band had add-ons. An attractive African-American singer named Wendy Smith-Brune and a Bing Crosby style crooner named Mark Kopitzke performed impeccably. Also two couples, described as swing dancers and who actually came from New Zealand, boogied and tap-danced their way into the audience’s hearts with aplomb. To top it off there were three captivating young American university graduates called the Swing Kittens who looked and sang like the Andrew Sisters. Their rendition of Pokarekare Ana with a fantastic backing arrangement by the orchestra was perhaps the surprising highlight of the evening.

Talk about a night of nostalgia.

After the show the cast were in the foyer to say goodnight to their appreciative audience. Old men who dream dreams and have visions were lining up to acquaint themselves with the stunningly beautiful “Andrew Sisters.”

I of course just passed by, feigning disinterest.

If there was anybody under 65 in the audience, then I didn’t see them. Muldoon’s National Superannuation is an absolute godsend.

“We’ve seen them all on street corners, many of them smoking, many of them on drugs; they’ve got no jobs to go to and once a week we see them queuing for the state hand-outs – or pensions as we call them.” - Harry Hill

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Leaky boats and jet airliners

Last August I wrote a column about how back in 1980 I employed a Vietnamese couple in my meat retailing business. Hoa and My Van Nguyen were “boat people” and had a nine month old daughter named Dyung when they arrived in Masterton. They had been sponsored by our local Rotary club and as I was president of the club at the time I felt that it was my responsibility to find them employment. However it’s not easy to place people when English is not their first language and so in the end I employed them myself, something, as it happened, I never regretted.

They exhibited three characteristics that an employer only dreams of. They were extremely hard working, they were incredibly intelligent and they were scrupulously honest. They had both been university graduates before the Vietcong banished them to the rice fields to work alongside the peasant class to cure them of their “bourgeoisie” conventions.

Neither of them knew anything about the meat business, but they acquired the skills as rapidly as they learned to speak English. They became very proficient and were a great asset to the company. Hoa’s first obligation was to save up enough money to get his father out of prison in Vietnam. Because he had worked for the Americans the Vietcong had incarcerated him and demanded $US5000 for his release. Not long after the money was handed over and Hoa’s father released he died, due to the constant beatings the Vietcong prison guards had inflicted upon him.

Before the Van Nguyen’s arrived in Masterton our club members and their wives had done up what was previously a derelict house on the corner of Cornwall Street and Ngaumutawa Road loaned to us by stock and station agents Dalgety’s. Eventually they bought their own home; a two bedroomed dwelling in Hillcrest Street. Later they purchased a three bedroomed home in High Street to accommodate a growing family. During their time here they had three more children; another daughter named Hanh, then two boys Minh and Tien. The children were educated at St Patrick’s school in Masterton and Dyung went on to Chanel College before they left my employ in 1993 and decided to resettle in Melbourne.

My’s parents had also managed to get out of Vietnam and settled in America and in 1995 Hoa and My and their family were legally able to join them.

Last week, Hoa and My came to visit. We were of course delighted to see them. They had decided to come back and catch up with those people who had helped them as refugees and it was an emotional time for us all. They now live in Austin in Texas.

Life in America is not easy. Hoa endeavoured to get a job in a butcher’s shop using my deservedly glowing reference, but was constantly turned down; He hinted that there was a touch of racism in the refusals.

He eventually got a job in an engineering shop where he is paid $18 an hour. He said most workers in the US are paid $13-14 an hour. He bought a 20-year-old three bedroomed house for $105,000 but said the neighbours don’t speak. Again I suspect xenophobia. He compared prices dollar for dollar here and thought American meat was a little cheaper, but fruit and veges and indeed most other items were on a par.

My works at the weekends at a Vietnamese-owned beauty parlour where she does manicures and facials.

An expense that they struggle to cope with is the $US600 a month medical insurance, but not to take it, Hoa said, would add huge stress to their lives.

Hoa has been back to see his mother in Vietnam on a number of occasions; he said conditions there under the Vietcong are appalling. There is no freedom as the communist government keep close tabs on all your movements. He understands western tourists think it’s a great place to visit, but living there is a different experience altogether.

They have lived in three countries since they left Vietnam and they sincerely believe New Zealand was the nicest.

It seems to be an Asian trait that life is lived almost solely to oversee improved outcomes for your children. Education is the priority and most Asian parents will strive to ensure their offspring are well tutored.

If leaving Vietnam in a rickety old boat where half the passengers died en-route was to make a better life for children born and those yet to come then Hoa and My can rest easy. Dyung is a lawyer and works as a Trust Officer for the Wells Fargo Bank in Austin, Hanh is a doctor in a New Jersey hospital, Minh has an engineering degree and works for Oracle in San Jose and Tien is about to graduate from university with a degree in biotech consulting.

I guess Masterton’s catholic school system can take a bow.

“Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order. That is what life has taught me.” - Katherine Mansfield 

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A cynical look back to the future

I dusted off the jacket of a book that has been sitting in my bookshelf for years and browsed through its pages. The book is Wimp Walloping, written by Bob Jones. It is a collection of columns Jones composed for Wellington’s now discontinued daily newspaper The Evening Post some years back. Jones’s columns were always worth a read. Outrageous but entertaining; he mixed extreme right wing views with the odd sprinkling of uncharacteristic liberalism which made him hard to categorise. He now writes for the NZ Herald and I scour their website weekly to devour his offerings.

A chapter that caught my eye in Wimp Walloping was entitled The Greenhouse Effect and discussed the hot topic of the day: global warming, the hole in the ozone layer and the subsequent outcomes.  Jones expressed great concern. He described Wellington’s weather as being a clear indication that climate  patterns were amiss and suggested four-day southerly storms which had traditionally lashed the capital three or four times a year had become a thing of the past as Wellington bathed in almost permanently all year round balmy weather. Spring flowers he said were appearing two months earlier than usual, heating bills were way down, skin cancer was on the rise and numerous other changes were readily observable. Across the nation he reported temperatures were breaking records and the northern hemisphere had experienced a searing summer resulting in either devastating droughts or in some cases unusual sustained downpours causing large-scale flooding.

There was at the time a great deal of diverse speculation as to the likely future impact of global warming, but Jones did see some good news for New Zealand in the inevitable outcomes. He forecast that our ski industry would benefit because Australian ski slopes would be completely eliminated. Ours he thought would have to be rebuilt at higher levels. Our base agricultural industries could benefit as much of the Northern Hemisphere’s rural regions turned into dustbowls. He particularly foretold of an economic upsurge for the South Island.

All of this was not going to be without a cost. Sea walls would have to be built around our coastal settlements; these would pose particular problems for places like Wanganui and Lower Hutt with their sizable river outlets. Smaller low lying communities like Raglan would probably be doomed he thought, not being of sufficient size or importance to justify the expense of saving. Raglanites would presumably become refugees in their own country. He also opined that nuclear power stations, then unloved because of the Chernobyl disaster, would be back in favour and he forecast widespread construction of these generators.

He called for a government agency to be set up of “damn good thinkers” to monitor the situation and the editor, in a footnote to the column, said the government had heeded his advice and a group had indeed been established.

The column was written in September 1988.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but none of Jones’s predictions, good or bad, have come to pass.
The weather in the intervening twenty-five years has ebbed and flowed, just as it has done for centuries. Since time immemorial we have always had our doomsayers and I’m surprised that Jones fell for the dire predictions, given his disdain for the scientific community as espoused in another of his tomes on my bookshelf, the excruciatingly funny Full Circle.

Wellingtonians would have been surprised to know that they were in for a lifetime of balmy weather and will be disappointed that the spring flowers have resumed blooming in spring. If they bloomed earlier in 1988 then this must have been an aberration, not repeated, as far as I can recall, in the gardens that I fall into.

It might have seemed that global warming had finally reared its head this last summer, but the autumn brought things back to normality and since Jones’s soothsaying column, all manner of weather, good and bad, has been experienced.

In the meantime my heating bills have gone skywards.

The ski industry will be bemused with his predictions. Last time I looked - actually I have never looked - the ski lanes and chair lifts were at the same level and Australia’s snowfields will have continued to prosper. Nuclear power stations, despite their reliability, are still not favoured by most cowed communities.

Jones would not have been the only commentator to have got it wrong. I haven’t scoured my bookcase for other in-depth predictions because there will be a dearth of such writings in shelves reserved for much lighter fare.  A search of the newspaper archives of the day however would show similar forecasts, all wide of the mark.

This begs the question: What dire prognostications are being made now, that will look ridiculous with the passage of time. The widespread use of 1080 and genetically modified food slowly killing us all come to mind and there will be others.

In Biblical times false prophets were stoned to death. Today we are more circumspect. We dare not question the harbingers of bad tidings for fear that one day they may be proven right. The modern prophet meanwhile relies on our poor memory retention, and assumes that we won’t dust off old books in our bookshelves and discover that they knew less about the future than we did ourselves.

“The wisest prophets make sure of the event first.”  - Horace Walpole

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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 of a way, I was seen by Ainsworth’s as a substantial customer.

The factory itself was amazing. It has a staff of 1200. At the start of the chain are sheets of flat steel which are welded together to create the shell. Once this progresses past the paint shop the technology is applied. I was particularly interested in the graphic art department where they dream up the weird and wacky illustrations that grace the machines. In another section a think-tank group sit at computer screens concocting new games to challenge existing players and attract new ones. Then there was computer chip division with rows of employees deftly assembling the driving heart of the machine. Eventually the finished product, worth about $8,000, rolls off the assembly line. It is then tested by teams of people who play the machines for hours ensuring they have no miscalculations. The coin slots are made to accept all monetary denominations. I saw some for rupees, and others that took drachmas.

The gambling bug knows no cultural boundaries.

It was almost incredulous to think that this machine, which you had seen start out  as a piece of flat steel, was now capable of making thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars for its owners. Unlike say a car that could have been made in a similar factory using the same sort of know-how and technology, which at least has a defined and more practical purpose in life.

I had lunch one day in the executive dining room with the company owner, Mr. Len Ainsworth, who back then was well into his seventies. He told me that the factory originally made dental equipment and was established by his father. In the 1950’s they decided to manufacture “these new fangled poker machines” and the business took off. They became world leaders in gaming machine technology.

He also told me of the fierce opposition the machines faced when they were first introduced, the main fear at the time being that the Mafia or a similar form of organised crime ring would move in and take over and control their operation, which is indeed what had happened in Las Vegas.

Other concerned groups envisaged the demise of the retail sector of New South Wales as the hapless citizens poured all their hard-earned cash into the bottomless poker machine hoppers. No other state in Australia was game to license the “pokies.”

According to Len Ainsworth these dire forecasts never materialised. In fact what happened was that the poker machines flourished in the chartered clubs and in turn caused the clubs themselves to flourish. Clubs are run by committees of ordinary citizens, no graft exists, other than the odd manager taking off from time to time with the buxom barmaid and a weeks machine takings. The Mafia never got a look-in.

Ainsworth’s executives took me around Sydney to view some of the bigger clubs. The great majority of patrons at these clubs were working and middle class folk, many of them retired, and the poker machine profits meant that facilities were lavish but affordable. Prices in the dining rooms were exceptionally modest. You could hardly have a meal at home as cheaply.

Len Ainsworth made the point that money is made round to go round and the burgeoning clubs needed tradesmen to erect them initially, and then to continually upgrade them. As a result the New South Wales building industry boomed. He noted too that the retail sector in the state, despite the fearful predictions, was the most buoyant in Australia.

Is there a downside then?

I am sure the vast majority of people who play the pokies do so for the sheer enjoyment of trying to outwit the machine, and are sensible in the amount they allow themselves to fritter away. But doubtless there are people who can ill afford the gamble and are hanging their hopes on taking out the jackpot. None of us can make the judgment or point the finger; what people do with their money is their business.

John Key’s bargaining with the owners of SkyCity means that New Zealand will get a world-class convention center at no cost to the taxpayer. His political opponents do see a cost however, claiming that problem gamblers will multiply. Certainly the New Zealand experience with gaming machines has not quite matched Mr. Ainsworth’s view of the world. This may be because New Zealanders don’t gamble to the same extent as the Australians so our chartered clubs haven’t benefited to the same degree.

In 2004 local authorities were given the power to control the amount of machines in their districts and since then the number of poker machines in New Zealand has decreased dramatically. There were 25,000 at their peak in 2003 down to 17,500 today.

Mr. Key says the SkyCity people can have another 230 machines if they stump up with the money for the Convention Centre.

The odds look good to me.

“The difference between playing the stock market and the horses is that one of the horses must win.” – Joey Adams

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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 a close personal friendship he had struck up with the founder of Saudi Arabia, Abdel Aziz al Saud.

Osama was one of 52 children; his father had ten wives and died - probably of exhaustion - when the lad was just 13, leaving him an $80 million inheritance. It seems that with prudent investments Osama increased this fortune to $250 million and then went terrorising in Afghanistan at the behest of the American Central Intelligence Agency who were backing the Mujahedin against the Russians. Two points to ponder here. The CIA probably have little intelligence and the Mujahedin regarded themselves as freedom fighters not terrorists. But then what’s in a name?

Quite a lot actually; the Mujahedin later morphed into the Taliban

Young bin Laden saw the fight to the end; the Mujahedin won against all odds. The odds were improved in their favour a little though by the billions of dollars the CIA covertly provided. After the conflict Osama moved back home to Saudi Arabia where he offered the ruling Royals his expertise and his band of highly trained freedom fighters to ward off the Iraqi’s who had invaded Kuwait. He was furious when his offer was spurned by the Saudis who instead invited the Americans on to their soil to initiate the gulf war.

Osama noted that the American soldiers smoked pot, had pictures of naked women in their barracks and played rock’n’roll music. Even more degrading to his Muslim sensitivities was the fact that they brought women soldiers with them, mainly as drivers, and they wore battle fatigues with shirts undone enough to reveal cleavages. He began to understand why the Mullahs in Iran had declared America to be “the great Satan.”

When bin Laden began to publicly denounce the Saudi regime for their lack of Islamic purism they banished him to Jidda. He fled there and went to live in the Sudan where he used his wealth to build roads and set up military training camps for young rebel Muslims. After outstaying his welcome he moved these camps to Afghanistan.

In 1993 eighteen American soldiers, who were part of a humanitarian mission to famine-struck Somalia, were killed by street fighters in Mogadishu. It was suspected that some of bin Laden-trained Afghani’s were involved and the end result saw America withdraw from the area. This reaction, it is said, was the turning point in bin Laden’s career. Noting that the Russians could be humiliated in Afghanistan and that the “soft” American were driven out of Somalia simply by an assault by a ragtag bunch of street fighters, he concluded that that superpowers were vulnerable and that a holy war, Moslems against Christians could see a victory to the side that on paper anyway, seemed least likely to win. 

It was hoped that his assassination in Pakistan at the hands of America’s superbly trained Navy Seals would see the end of his reign of terror, but his legacy lives on in the hearts and minds of the tens of thousands of dissidents that have been indoctrinated through his training camps over the years and who will continue to do battle in his memory.

The Obama administration were cock-a-hoop over his death and were reluctant to admit that his successors killed their ambassador and three of his aides in Benghazi in September last year and even went so far as to blame a you-tube video maker for the assault on the embassy refusing to admit that it was a well-planned terrorist attack which they ought to have foreseen and repelled.

Incredibly, they are now on the verge of stepping in to offer aid to the rebels who are attempting to topple Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, despite these people in the main being of Al Qaeda descent.

For many strategically-placed Americans, war is an aphrodisiac. Huge shifts of resources with total disregard for efficiency and all paid for by government-funded cheap debt does wonders for their vital military-industrial complex. We’ve recently been told of the billions of dollars that the CIA delivered in suitcases to Hamid Karzai’s corrupt regime in Afghanistan.

Obama came into power looking for all the world like a peacemaker. He was going to talk the Iranians out of becoming a nuclear power and close Guantanamo. Instead his drones continue to roam the skies over Pakistan indiscriminately killing insurgency leaders and often innocent bystanders in the process and therefore undoubtedly creating a succession of suicide bombers for future missions.

These are not holy wars.  Holy men on both sides of the religious divide would quickly point out that waging war and killing innocent people is not part of either doctrine.

Christianity is pretty clear on this. Forgive those who trespass against you, it declares. If someone strikes you, turn the other cheek, is a further instruction. And the founder Himself said: “Love your enemies.”  I gather Islam and the Koran express almost identical sentiments.

A genuine holy war would be a worldwide war against poverty and injustice, against bigotry and mistrust. It would have the potential to stop terrorism in its tracks and could change the world forever.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for the people who make the decisions, east or west, to grasp the mantle.

“The most persistent sound which reverberates through men’s history is the beating of war
 drums.” - Arthur Koestler

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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 your mates, qualifying your apology.

Despite this, I was prepared to forgive him his trespasses. Many people say things they regret the next day after a few drinks and Gilmore is only human after all. Subsequent revelations about past indiscretions however were unforgivable and there would have been a huge sigh of relief at National Party headquarters when he finally fell on his sword

Democracy was supposed to be about electing people by a majority vote, but the list system produces a cacophony of humanity with few responsibilities and is I suspect peppered with people who have bludged their way on to the party register by fair means or foul.

Oh how I long for the good old days before the insidious MMP system of governing was instigated; when the two-party system was clear-cut and MP’s on both sides of the house were decent and dependable.

In 1972 Ben Couch was selected to contest the Wairarapa seat for National. I was a member of the local executive of the party at the time and it fell to me to take Ben Couch down to meet the Prime Minister.

Ben, ex All Black and Maori All Black, was a shearing contractor and lived at Pirinoa. He told me he would get a lift into Featherston where I could pick him up in the main street at around 2 p.m. so we could meet the Prime Minister at 3. The Prime Minister was John Marshall. He greeted us warmly and invited us to sit with him in comfortable lounge chairs around an ornate mahogany coffee table. Pleasantries were exchanged and tea was served.

I vividly remember Ben and me holding the exquisite Royal Doulton china teacups with our little fingers perched at right angles looking for all the world like this was a natural pose and one that we were used to daily. I was a shade disconcerted though when John Marshall kept referring to Ben as Mr. “Cooch” as in the grass, rather than “Couch” as in the sofa we were sitting on. I was wondering whether I should correct the Prime Minister over his grammatical failings when Ben came to the rescue and suggested that he could call him “Ben.” The PM responded and allowed that if we liked, we could call him “Jack.” We thanked him graciously for encouraging the informality of the gathering, but I noticed we both continued to call him “Sir.”

And this was some years before he was knighted.

After about half an hour of small talk our allotted time was up and the “Jack” wished Ben well in the upcoming elections and we were on our way back over the hill. I offered to drive Mr. “Cooch,” a name which from then on I took great delight in calling him, back to Pirinoa, but he insisted that I need only drop him off in Featherston at the Martinborough Road intersection and he would hitch-hike back home.

As I watched him walking off down the road I couldn’t help but think what a wonderfully egalitarian country we lived in. The greasy butcher and the Maori shearer had just had afternoon tea with the Prime Minister of the nation and to cap it off the shearer was now hitch-hiking back to the lanolin-scented shearing shed. A society where Jack is as good as his master, or in this case where the workers were as good as Jack.

Ben didn’t win his first election, but did so the one after, in 1975. By then Sir John Marshall had been dethroned as National’s leader, quite possibly because of his inability to correctly pronounce surnames and Rob Muldoon had assumed his mantle. Muldoon recognised Ben’s talents and soon had him in cabinet. In the interim the Beehive was built and Ben rang me from Wellington one day and said that I must come down and see his new office. Ben was Minister of Maori Affairs and when he invited me into the new abode I was spellbound by its magnificence. I have been into a number of minister’s headquarters since, but I think the decor of the Maori Affairs office surpassed them all. Native timbers and ornate Maori carvings interspersed with contemporary Maori art, all done with pronounced panache. As Ben proudly showed me around the suite I recalled the day we went to see the previous Prime Minister and I suggested to him that from the shearing shed at Pirinoa to this magnificent office in the Beehive was one giant leap for mankind. It would have sounded even more profound if Neil Armstrong hadn’t used a similar expression some ten years previously.

Ben and I were both teetotalers so we toasted the new office with a celebratory cup of tea, cocked small fingers and all.

The great aspect of Ben’s selection and then election was that he came from a reasonably conservative electorate populated predominantly with white Anglo-Saxon voters. And, as we now know, this was no aberration. Some twenty years later Georgina Beyer again showed that Maoris don’t need to have separate seats or the MMP-inspired Maori party to get into parliament. They just need the confidence of the electorate. Skin colour and hereditary characteristics have no bearing, and nor should they.

To a great extent the running of this country has now been taken out of the hands of ordinary New Zealanders. Many cabinet ministers are actually list MPs themselves and the Aaron Gilmore’s of this world sneak in to parliament thanks to a flawed system of government that should never have been introduced.

The shearers and the sausage makers, it could be argued, have lost their influence entirely.

“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.” - Margaret Thatcher 

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