A Samoan in my cherry tree
29th May 2010
This sudden onset of winter has been like running headlong into a brick wall. I feel dazed and disoriented, I struggle to recall life before the skies blackened. But I must reach back to Sunday to fetch this story, to the antediluvian Sunday, the Sunday before the storm.
It was the Sunday of the Samoan in my cherry tree - not that it was intended to be. When I awoke, late, on Sunday morning I had no premonition of the Samoan, no expectation that at day’s end I would have lost not just the cherry tree but the plum tree too and come within a hair’s breadth of losing the great Leylandii.
The Samoans were gathering while I slept and the first hint I had of their presence was when I stepped out for my run. A middle-aged woman was walking along the footpath wearing a high-visibility vest, holding a bundle of leaflets or cards in her hand and taking an interest in the Redmond’s trees across the street. I thought nothing of it until I met another woman around the corner, and then a third. I imagined they were part of a religious campaign – God’s workers in high-viz vestments.
When I returned from my run a business card was stuck in my door. Southern Tree Services it read, with a list of felling, lopping, trimming, pruning and associated arboreal verbs and, at the bottom, a cell phone number and a name – Danny.
There are moments when things fall into place. I stood outside my door with the card in my hand and my eye fell on the ancient and once-beautiful cherry blossom tree that has been dying on the front lawn for years and which we have talked about removing for years: then a swift realisation that I had passed a gang of men with a truck and chainsaws a couple of hundred metres up the street. Of course – Danny!
I sprinted (well, okay, hastened) onto the street. Gone.
I sprang to the phone and dialled the number and there was Danny’s voice at the other end, measured, Samoan.
Five minutes later Danny was at my doorstep. He seemed slightly older than me and not much taller, but there is something about Pacific Island men, a certain gravity, that makes them enormous, and so Danny seemed to me.
I showed him the cherry tree and an old plum tree by the letter box. I asked for a quote to fell the trees and remove the waste. Did I want the firewood? Yes, that would be nice.
Danny thought for a moment. “$1250.00 for felling right to the ground. But today I give it to you for $1150.00.”
I said thank you and I will be interested to get another quote.
“$950.00,” Danny’s lips barely moved. And what about that enormous Leylandii threatening the house? “For that, another $850.00.”
I said I would check with my wife. Sylvia said I was mad. I accepted on the spot, minus the Leylandii, and asked when could he do it?
“Now,” replied Danny.
I don’t believe he put his fingers to his mouth and whistled but I know within three minutes the truck pulled up and nine large Samoan men tumbled onto my front lawn.
With acrobatic skills to rival Cirque de Soleil they dismantled the plum tree and the cherry. They climbed, swung, looped and dropped. They plied their chainsaws with a dentist’s precision. They heaved and carried. They sawed and stacked.
And all the time Danny watched. He watched from beneath the doomed trees. He watched from across the street. He watched on his knees while remediating an unruly chainsaw.
While he watched he bargained the fate of the Leylandii. “$750.00. No? Okay, $650.00.” I pleaded lack of funds. The Leylandii stayed.
Two hours later the two trees were gone, the paths swept, the brushwood removed and the firewood stacked behind the house.
During this the three women in high-viz vests turned up. We gave them cups of tea and Anzac biscuits.
And my instincts were right after all – they were doing God’s work, a fundraiser for their church youth group in Christchurch. Danny is both arborist and pastor, a man of the Word and, as I looked out across my suddenly two-trees-less garden, truly a man of his word.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Auckland Expands Racial Faultines
15th May 2010
Twenty brown faces turn to me as I walk into the classroom. They see my name tag and the greetings tumble out.
“Hi Peter!”
“Hello Peter!”
“Hello! Hello!”
Miss Fai’alofa is kneeling on the floor with a reading group. She stands and greets me shyly then shushes the children back to their work. I squat by a table where half a dozen six year olds are drawing pictures of volcanoes on computers. An older student helps them to master the drawing programme. They sketch cones and billowing clouds of smoke and select colours from the programme’s palette.
One little girl turns to me and brushes her hand against my hair. “You’ve got grey.”
This excites their interest.
“Where you from?” inquires a boy.
I tell them I’m from the South Island and ask if any of them have been there. A few heads nod excitedly.
“I been there,” offers one boy.
“Which part did you visit?”
“Aw, the Cook Islands,” he demurs.
This is Point England School in Tamaki, Auckland. Five hundred children attend this school, every one of them Maori or Pacific Islander. This is a tough corner of town, with the school graded decile 1A, which in edu-speak means the bottom of the heap.
“You have to realise,” said Russell the school principal, “nobody in this community is employed, and it goes back 4 or 5 generations for some. The definition of success in Tamaki is getting out.”
Tamaki was the product of post-war social engineering on a grand scale. A framed photo from 1948 shows rows of new-built state houses, freshly formed kerbs and streets cutting into open paddocks. Some of the first residents were members of the Maori Battalion, soldier heroes returning from Europe who found they had outgrown their country kaiks and were drawn to the big smoke.
Auckland was the dream of opportunity but somewhere the dream went wrong and today 20,000 of our least affluent citizens are wedged into an area as big as Allenton. It costs the taxpayers $150 million a year to sustain this community.
In this landscape of poverty Point England school is a beacon. Russell and his staff build hope and aspiration among their students: better still, they build achievement. These children are learning at or above the levels of any kids in Mid-Canterbury. Russell has flooded the school with digital technology, including a student-driven television station that broadcasts daily into all classrooms and weekly into the community. He has multiple programmes in art, sports and music to stimulate children’s interest in learning. Nothing is wasted, every intervention is weighed for its usefulness and everything rests on a foundation of excellent teaching and total commitment to the community.
Twenty kilometres away on the southern boundary of Auckland is Flatbush. Here the bulldozers are again busy, carving into farmland to build a community that will house 40,000 people within a decade. In Flatbush row upon row of grey tiled rooves and double garages mount the slopes and disappear over the ridge. A small remnant of native forest crouches in a gully. This is urban growth on a scale unknown in the South Island.
The brand new Mission Heights School towers over the rooftops of Flatbush. It is intended as a flagship of 21st century school design - the fact that it looks like a cruise ship run aground seems to have gone unnoticed. Its glass and steel galleries are abuzz with innovation, classrooms resemble high street boutiques with a confetti of computers.
But in this place of wonders it is the students that are the greatest curiosity. Almost every one of the 700 children at this school is Asian.
Flatbush, you see, is 21st century Tamaki. Like Tamaki it captures migrants, only this time the migrants are not from the Waikato but from India, China and Korea. Flatbush is becoming an ethnic enclave just as Tamaki did. No doubt this is accidental; to the town planners Flatbush is about roads and houses. In reality it is another social experiment, one that begins with a shiny new school and a thousand dreams of opportunity. We hope it will not end up 50 years from now as a ghetto.
15th May 2010
Twenty brown faces turn to me as I walk into the classroom. They see my name tag and the greetings tumble out.
“Hi Peter!”
“Hello Peter!”
“Hello! Hello!”
Miss Fai’alofa is kneeling on the floor with a reading group. She stands and greets me shyly then shushes the children back to their work. I squat by a table where half a dozen six year olds are drawing pictures of volcanoes on computers. An older student helps them to master the drawing programme. They sketch cones and billowing clouds of smoke and select colours from the programme’s palette.
One little girl turns to me and brushes her hand against my hair. “You’ve got grey.”
This excites their interest.
“Where you from?” inquires a boy.
I tell them I’m from the South Island and ask if any of them have been there. A few heads nod excitedly.
“I been there,” offers one boy.
“Which part did you visit?”
“Aw, the Cook Islands,” he demurs.
This is Point England School in Tamaki, Auckland. Five hundred children attend this school, every one of them Maori or Pacific Islander. This is a tough corner of town, with the school graded decile 1A, which in edu-speak means the bottom of the heap.
“You have to realise,” said Russell the school principal, “nobody in this community is employed, and it goes back 4 or 5 generations for some. The definition of success in Tamaki is getting out.”
Tamaki was the product of post-war social engineering on a grand scale. A framed photo from 1948 shows rows of new-built state houses, freshly formed kerbs and streets cutting into open paddocks. Some of the first residents were members of the Maori Battalion, soldier heroes returning from Europe who found they had outgrown their country kaiks and were drawn to the big smoke.
Auckland was the dream of opportunity but somewhere the dream went wrong and today 20,000 of our least affluent citizens are wedged into an area as big as Allenton. It costs the taxpayers $150 million a year to sustain this community.
In this landscape of poverty Point England school is a beacon. Russell and his staff build hope and aspiration among their students: better still, they build achievement. These children are learning at or above the levels of any kids in Mid-Canterbury. Russell has flooded the school with digital technology, including a student-driven television station that broadcasts daily into all classrooms and weekly into the community. He has multiple programmes in art, sports and music to stimulate children’s interest in learning. Nothing is wasted, every intervention is weighed for its usefulness and everything rests on a foundation of excellent teaching and total commitment to the community.
Twenty kilometres away on the southern boundary of Auckland is Flatbush. Here the bulldozers are again busy, carving into farmland to build a community that will house 40,000 people within a decade. In Flatbush row upon row of grey tiled rooves and double garages mount the slopes and disappear over the ridge. A small remnant of native forest crouches in a gully. This is urban growth on a scale unknown in the South Island.
The brand new Mission Heights School towers over the rooftops of Flatbush. It is intended as a flagship of 21st century school design - the fact that it looks like a cruise ship run aground seems to have gone unnoticed. Its glass and steel galleries are abuzz with innovation, classrooms resemble high street boutiques with a confetti of computers.
But in this place of wonders it is the students that are the greatest curiosity. Almost every one of the 700 children at this school is Asian.
Flatbush, you see, is 21st century Tamaki. Like Tamaki it captures migrants, only this time the migrants are not from the Waikato but from India, China and Korea. Flatbush is becoming an ethnic enclave just as Tamaki did. No doubt this is accidental; to the town planners Flatbush is about roads and houses. In reality it is another social experiment, one that begins with a shiny new school and a thousand dreams of opportunity. We hope it will not end up 50 years from now as a ghetto.
Monday, May 03, 2010
A small tale of the Taieri
17th April 2010
In 1980 a short history was published of the small community of Taieri Mouth, which lies on the Otago coast about 30 kilometres south of Dunedin. The history was a community project, the usual account of early settlement, a roll call of personalities and events, with a liberal selection of grainy, black and white photographs.
The authors acknowledged the presence of early Maori in the area before moving swiftly to European settlement, a succession of whalers, traders, gold diggers, sawmillers and farmers. In the early period when roads were uncertain the Taieri was one of those rare New Zealand rivers that was navigable for a fair part of its length, and the little settlement owed its existence to the shipping that came and went through the lower gorge and across the sand bar.
The occasion for the book was the completion of a new bridge over the Taieri River, a streamlined ferro-concrete structure replacing the original wooden bridge that was literally at the point of collapse. To the authors the new bridge was both a leap of technology and a symbol of progress. The book closes with fine expressions of civic pride connecting the labours of the past into an unbroken chain of prosperity stretching far into the future.
This week we have been holidaying at Taieri Mouth, thanks to the friend of a friend who owns a small bach – sorry, crib – at the point where the river makes its final turn towards the sea. I can report that thirty years after its opening the bridge is as fresh and functional as the day it was completed.
The town, sadly, has fared less well. In hindsight 1980 marked the high point of Taieri Mouth’s growth, as it did for most of small town New Zealand. The long unravelling of the 80s and 90s, from the removal of farm subsidies to the collapse of the inshore fishing industry, has reduced Taieri Mouth to a shell.
The school remains, and the hall. A dozen caravans are parked up for the winter at a cheerless camping ground. But there is no store, no café, no hotel, no obvious employment apart from three or four small fishing boats that still work gallantly from the riverside wharf. It is impossible to spend money at Taieri Mouth.
The population appears to have been sucked out on the falling tide. In four days we saw perhaps a dozen people, mostly tourists in campervans.
The community appears to have vanished but in its place has arisen a modern hybrid – the community of holiday homes. I should not call them homes - they are houses, baches, cribs - the weekend retreats of professionals and retired farmers. Ironically, as the town has crumbled I imagine property prices have soared, in keeping with our enthusiasm for every small vista of sea, lake and river. There are probably more buildings at Taieri Mouth today – and certainly fewer residents – than at any time in its history, and most of the newer ones are large, opulent and empty.
When we lived in England a few years ago there was a village near us that had become a popular destination for holiday makers. Wealthy people from London and elsewhere were buying houses at a rate that caused property to boom. In a short time the village was a tourist town, homes became too expensive for the locals to afford so the resident population began to fall and local infrastructure began to collapse.
In New Zealand large parts of our habitable coastline and lake shores have turned into similar strange modern ghettoes. To somebody unused to our peculiar lifestyle the sight of communities of often monstrously wealthy houses, of new streets and parks and footpaths, all silent for the greater part of the year, would seem bizarre.
To the historians of Taieri Mouth the new bridge must now appear a mixed blessing. It became the means of exit for the locals and entry for the bach owners, changing their town from a community to a silo.
17th April 2010
In 1980 a short history was published of the small community of Taieri Mouth, which lies on the Otago coast about 30 kilometres south of Dunedin. The history was a community project, the usual account of early settlement, a roll call of personalities and events, with a liberal selection of grainy, black and white photographs.
The authors acknowledged the presence of early Maori in the area before moving swiftly to European settlement, a succession of whalers, traders, gold diggers, sawmillers and farmers. In the early period when roads were uncertain the Taieri was one of those rare New Zealand rivers that was navigable for a fair part of its length, and the little settlement owed its existence to the shipping that came and went through the lower gorge and across the sand bar.
The occasion for the book was the completion of a new bridge over the Taieri River, a streamlined ferro-concrete structure replacing the original wooden bridge that was literally at the point of collapse. To the authors the new bridge was both a leap of technology and a symbol of progress. The book closes with fine expressions of civic pride connecting the labours of the past into an unbroken chain of prosperity stretching far into the future.
This week we have been holidaying at Taieri Mouth, thanks to the friend of a friend who owns a small bach – sorry, crib – at the point where the river makes its final turn towards the sea. I can report that thirty years after its opening the bridge is as fresh and functional as the day it was completed.
The town, sadly, has fared less well. In hindsight 1980 marked the high point of Taieri Mouth’s growth, as it did for most of small town New Zealand. The long unravelling of the 80s and 90s, from the removal of farm subsidies to the collapse of the inshore fishing industry, has reduced Taieri Mouth to a shell.
The school remains, and the hall. A dozen caravans are parked up for the winter at a cheerless camping ground. But there is no store, no café, no hotel, no obvious employment apart from three or four small fishing boats that still work gallantly from the riverside wharf. It is impossible to spend money at Taieri Mouth.
The population appears to have been sucked out on the falling tide. In four days we saw perhaps a dozen people, mostly tourists in campervans.
The community appears to have vanished but in its place has arisen a modern hybrid – the community of holiday homes. I should not call them homes - they are houses, baches, cribs - the weekend retreats of professionals and retired farmers. Ironically, as the town has crumbled I imagine property prices have soared, in keeping with our enthusiasm for every small vista of sea, lake and river. There are probably more buildings at Taieri Mouth today – and certainly fewer residents – than at any time in its history, and most of the newer ones are large, opulent and empty.
When we lived in England a few years ago there was a village near us that had become a popular destination for holiday makers. Wealthy people from London and elsewhere were buying houses at a rate that caused property to boom. In a short time the village was a tourist town, homes became too expensive for the locals to afford so the resident population began to fall and local infrastructure began to collapse.
In New Zealand large parts of our habitable coastline and lake shores have turned into similar strange modern ghettoes. To somebody unused to our peculiar lifestyle the sight of communities of often monstrously wealthy houses, of new streets and parks and footpaths, all silent for the greater part of the year, would seem bizarre.
To the historians of Taieri Mouth the new bridge must now appear a mixed blessing. It became the means of exit for the locals and entry for the bach owners, changing their town from a community to a silo.
Singing salmon and other fishy tales
3rd April 2010
I am charmed by the Californian Indian tribe, the Winnemem, that journeyed to the Rakaia River to entice their salmon home with song and chant. If you missed this tale don’t worry, it will reappear shortly as an art house movie, a story of loss and renewal with achingly beautiful cinematography of moccasins and feathered headdresses and big skies over Rakaia.
It is easy to deride the Winnemem for having a childlike grip on reality. Local salmon possess no collective memory of their Californian origin and are unlikely to be charmed by music. But at the heart of this tale is a search for identity. The Winnemem’s pilgrimage sits alongside the journeys of young kiwis to Gallipoli or, aptly, the iconic status Maori give to the foreshore and seabed.
Another tale this week is the government’s appointment of commissioners to run Environment Canterbury. There is something fishy about this story too. Sacking a democratically elected body is not without precedent – Labour did it to the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board – but to enshrine the decision in legislation passed under urgency is suspicious. Something more is happening here than meets the eye.
The assertion of the environment minister, Nick Smith, that the public has lost confidence in ECan is too glib. Cantabrians who consider the scope of ECan’s work will be well satisfied with the progress made to improve air quality, manage waste water, provide public transport and promote environmental education.
ECan’s downfall has been its failure to resolve the water debate. Management of water in Canterbury has not been as broken as Mr Smith and others have been asserting in recent days, but clearly it is the cause of growing frustration.
The issue boils down to a conflict between developers and conservers, those who want to use more water, mainly for farming, and those who want more of it to remain in our lakes and rivers. ECan’s board reflected both interests in about equal measure, a frustrating situation but one that is entirely appropriate if you believe in democratic process.
Water is a fundamental resource for all of us and the big question hanging over this week’s events is whether the new commission will fairly represent all views.
One cause for doubt is the now-famous letter from the region’s mayors which forms the basis of the minister’s argument about public loss of confidence. Who authorised this letter? Was it debated in council before signing? Whose view does it represent?
These questions must be answered to allay a strong suspicion that the letter merely reflected the views of the mayors. Their position is vulnerable because the letter appears to be a Trojan horse for the government, albeit a flimsy Trojan horse for there is so much in this week’s events to indicate that the real drivers are corporate farmers and other development interests. Organisations supporting the conservation side of the debate clearly think so. They have been quick to raise concerns about the decision, while development interests are either supportive or unusually silent.
Conservers of water have reason for concern. The legislation enabling ECan’s board to be replaced by a commission also suspends the normal process of hearing water consents before a tribunal and the environment court. The immediate removal of the Hurunui River consents from this process is a strong indication of how the government wants this to play.
Nick Smith tells us the commissioners will be well qualified to sort out the problems and, anyway, all decisions are finally his to make. If that is so desirable why do we have an environment court? It may be convenient to replace public process with backroom deals and ministerial edicts, but it will not serve our interests.
We must wait at least three years before we can elect representatives to run ECan again. That’s a convenient length of time to get our water resources sorted out – or sewn up. Rakaia salmon might do well to heed the Winnemem’s invitation and get out while they still have a river to swim in.
3rd April 2010
I am charmed by the Californian Indian tribe, the Winnemem, that journeyed to the Rakaia River to entice their salmon home with song and chant. If you missed this tale don’t worry, it will reappear shortly as an art house movie, a story of loss and renewal with achingly beautiful cinematography of moccasins and feathered headdresses and big skies over Rakaia.
It is easy to deride the Winnemem for having a childlike grip on reality. Local salmon possess no collective memory of their Californian origin and are unlikely to be charmed by music. But at the heart of this tale is a search for identity. The Winnemem’s pilgrimage sits alongside the journeys of young kiwis to Gallipoli or, aptly, the iconic status Maori give to the foreshore and seabed.
Another tale this week is the government’s appointment of commissioners to run Environment Canterbury. There is something fishy about this story too. Sacking a democratically elected body is not without precedent – Labour did it to the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board – but to enshrine the decision in legislation passed under urgency is suspicious. Something more is happening here than meets the eye.
The assertion of the environment minister, Nick Smith, that the public has lost confidence in ECan is too glib. Cantabrians who consider the scope of ECan’s work will be well satisfied with the progress made to improve air quality, manage waste water, provide public transport and promote environmental education.
ECan’s downfall has been its failure to resolve the water debate. Management of water in Canterbury has not been as broken as Mr Smith and others have been asserting in recent days, but clearly it is the cause of growing frustration.
The issue boils down to a conflict between developers and conservers, those who want to use more water, mainly for farming, and those who want more of it to remain in our lakes and rivers. ECan’s board reflected both interests in about equal measure, a frustrating situation but one that is entirely appropriate if you believe in democratic process.
Water is a fundamental resource for all of us and the big question hanging over this week’s events is whether the new commission will fairly represent all views.
One cause for doubt is the now-famous letter from the region’s mayors which forms the basis of the minister’s argument about public loss of confidence. Who authorised this letter? Was it debated in council before signing? Whose view does it represent?
These questions must be answered to allay a strong suspicion that the letter merely reflected the views of the mayors. Their position is vulnerable because the letter appears to be a Trojan horse for the government, albeit a flimsy Trojan horse for there is so much in this week’s events to indicate that the real drivers are corporate farmers and other development interests. Organisations supporting the conservation side of the debate clearly think so. They have been quick to raise concerns about the decision, while development interests are either supportive or unusually silent.
Conservers of water have reason for concern. The legislation enabling ECan’s board to be replaced by a commission also suspends the normal process of hearing water consents before a tribunal and the environment court. The immediate removal of the Hurunui River consents from this process is a strong indication of how the government wants this to play.
Nick Smith tells us the commissioners will be well qualified to sort out the problems and, anyway, all decisions are finally his to make. If that is so desirable why do we have an environment court? It may be convenient to replace public process with backroom deals and ministerial edicts, but it will not serve our interests.
We must wait at least three years before we can elect representatives to run ECan again. That’s a convenient length of time to get our water resources sorted out – or sewn up. Rakaia salmon might do well to heed the Winnemem’s invitation and get out while they still have a river to swim in.
Cigarette price rise lifts the ash cloud
1st May 2010
As the ash cloud cleared over Europe this week it looks like another ash cloud may be lifting in this part of the world with the government deciding on a hefty rise in the price of cigarettes. If politics mirrors society the almost unanimous agreement in parliament showed how marginalised smoking has become.
Many of us already live in a virtually cigarette-less world. My home is smoke-free, my workplace is smoke-free, the public spaces I move in are smoke-free. My friends and acquaintances are almost all smoke-free. My life has got to the point that when I occasionally get close to a smoker I am acutely aware of the ash tray odour. My rare encounters with smokers are glimpses of strange, refugee-like creatures huddled in the doorways of office blocks, sucking greedy and guilty on their ‘smoko’ fags.
How times have changed. I grew up in a fog of cigarette smoke. My dad was a packet-a-day man who only quit when the habit killed him at 55. In those days smoking was generally regarded as being good for one’s health and almost everybody did it. Our houses, clothes, hair and breath all reeked of cigarette smoke – first or second hand. Halls, pubs and offices were littered with ash trays.
Although we have pushed the cloud to the margins many New Zealanders continue to live in a fog of tobacco. There are groups that seem beyond the reach of education programmes and peer pressure to quit – especially young Maori women, for some reason.
The government’s decision to use price as a mechanism for change is a genuine no-brainer, given that most smokers acquire the habit during those crucial few years of adolescence when we park our brains and operate on hormonal overdrive. With cigarettes now costing nearly a dollar a fag it is going to take just a little more determination for a 13 or 14 year old to start smoking.
Can we foresee the day when New Zealand becomes totally smoke-free? Imagine a world where the few remaining smokers are gathered into zoos for people to ogle and point at; where airlines offer weekend package trips to countries where smoking remains acceptable.
Australia will not be on their itinerary because our cousins hiked their own cigarette prices the day after us, and trumped us by enforcing a 25% price rise compared to our modest 10%. There’s more: Australia will also require cigarettes to be sold in plain packaging with brand names displayed in identical font sizes and types. The reasoning here is that branding is part of the attraction for young smokers. The only decoration allowed on cigarette packets will be the usual horror pictures of gelatinous eye-balls and festering teeth.
Following Australia’s lead there is scope for much more creativity in reducing the attractiveness of smoking. How about placing a small model of a diseased heart or eyeball on a spring under the lid of every cigarette packet? Or fitting all cigarettes with a tiny microchip that plays recorded warning messages when lit? It would take a hardened smoker to puff on a cigarette that’s berating him with comments like “I’m gonna kill ya, buddy,” or simply, “what the f*** do you think you’re doing?”
People who take up smoking never look before they leap but the government’s message is that they can anticipate the price of smokes continuing to rise. May the rise be steep and the grip of cigarettes around our throats become history.
And when we’ve seen off the ash cloud we can get to grips with that other unnatural disaster – the tide of alcohol that washes through our communities like the floodwaters lapping Queenstown’s main street. But that’s another story.
1st May 2010
As the ash cloud cleared over Europe this week it looks like another ash cloud may be lifting in this part of the world with the government deciding on a hefty rise in the price of cigarettes. If politics mirrors society the almost unanimous agreement in parliament showed how marginalised smoking has become.
Many of us already live in a virtually cigarette-less world. My home is smoke-free, my workplace is smoke-free, the public spaces I move in are smoke-free. My friends and acquaintances are almost all smoke-free. My life has got to the point that when I occasionally get close to a smoker I am acutely aware of the ash tray odour. My rare encounters with smokers are glimpses of strange, refugee-like creatures huddled in the doorways of office blocks, sucking greedy and guilty on their ‘smoko’ fags.
How times have changed. I grew up in a fog of cigarette smoke. My dad was a packet-a-day man who only quit when the habit killed him at 55. In those days smoking was generally regarded as being good for one’s health and almost everybody did it. Our houses, clothes, hair and breath all reeked of cigarette smoke – first or second hand. Halls, pubs and offices were littered with ash trays.
Although we have pushed the cloud to the margins many New Zealanders continue to live in a fog of tobacco. There are groups that seem beyond the reach of education programmes and peer pressure to quit – especially young Maori women, for some reason.
The government’s decision to use price as a mechanism for change is a genuine no-brainer, given that most smokers acquire the habit during those crucial few years of adolescence when we park our brains and operate on hormonal overdrive. With cigarettes now costing nearly a dollar a fag it is going to take just a little more determination for a 13 or 14 year old to start smoking.
Can we foresee the day when New Zealand becomes totally smoke-free? Imagine a world where the few remaining smokers are gathered into zoos for people to ogle and point at; where airlines offer weekend package trips to countries where smoking remains acceptable.
Australia will not be on their itinerary because our cousins hiked their own cigarette prices the day after us, and trumped us by enforcing a 25% price rise compared to our modest 10%. There’s more: Australia will also require cigarettes to be sold in plain packaging with brand names displayed in identical font sizes and types. The reasoning here is that branding is part of the attraction for young smokers. The only decoration allowed on cigarette packets will be the usual horror pictures of gelatinous eye-balls and festering teeth.
Following Australia’s lead there is scope for much more creativity in reducing the attractiveness of smoking. How about placing a small model of a diseased heart or eyeball on a spring under the lid of every cigarette packet? Or fitting all cigarettes with a tiny microchip that plays recorded warning messages when lit? It would take a hardened smoker to puff on a cigarette that’s berating him with comments like “I’m gonna kill ya, buddy,” or simply, “what the f*** do you think you’re doing?”
People who take up smoking never look before they leap but the government’s message is that they can anticipate the price of smokes continuing to rise. May the rise be steep and the grip of cigarettes around our throats become history.
And when we’ve seen off the ash cloud we can get to grips with that other unnatural disaster – the tide of alcohol that washes through our communities like the floodwaters lapping Queenstown’s main street. But that’s another story.
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