What’s so special about today?

I don’t know if today has any significance in your part of the world, but here in Aotearoa New Zealand  the 19^th of September is a time to reflect on a major milestone in our country’s history.

It was 124 years ago today that women won the right to vote, making New Zealand the first self-governing country where women were able to vote. However it was not until 1919 that universal suffrage was attained – the right to vote and stand for election. So in this regard, New Zealand was somewhat tardy.

While considerable progress has been made since then – for example, 46% of senior position in the public service are held by women, we still have some way to go. Women are underrepresented in Parliament (only 30% of members of Parliament are women) and in senior management roles in the private sector.

There’s still a pay parity gap. Women on average earn 9% less than men. This is mainly because many of the roles traditionally undertaken by women, and where today women still greatly outnumber men, are undervalued and and are paid poorly. For example nursing, childcare, and teaching.

In the legal and medical professions, the majority of graduates since the early 1990s have been women, yet less than 20% of senior legal partners are women, and much the same applies to senior management in the medical profession.

So while we should be proud of the progress made, it’s also a time to reflect on what each of us can to to bring about true equality.

A farm digger cripples the nation

Perhaps cripples is a bit strong, but it’s certainly caused a crisis.

In a country with a relatively small population, the cost of having backup systems in place for everything is simply too expensive – until it’s needed.

And one of those systems that doesn’t have a backup is the supply of fuel to the city of Auckland. For those unfamiliar with Aotearoa New Zealand, Auckland houses a third of our population. Auckland, and the northern half of the North Island  are facing a severe shortage of petrol, diesel and aviation fuel, all because a farm digger ripped through the only pipeline that supplies Auckland with these fuels. In the fifteen minutes it took to shut the pipeline down, 70,000 litres (18,500 US gallons) of fuel were spilt.

The pipeline runs some 170 Km from our only refinery at Marsden Point in Whangarei to Wiri near the Auckland International Airport. It transports the equivalent of 300 road-tanker loads of fuel per day into Auckland. And here’s the problem: The Wiri storage depot can store at best six days worth of fuel. The repair to the pipeline will take at least ten days to repair. You do the Maths.

I don’t even know if there would be 300 tankers in the entire country, but I very much doubt it. However, as many tankers as possible are being moved to Auckland to maintain a meagre flow of fuel into Auckland. Of course, that’s going to affect fuel delivery in the rest of the country. So, being less than a week out from the General Elections, the government has to look as though it is doing something to resolve the crisis, while at the same time blaming the previous Labour administration (that left office nine years ago) for causing the problem. They’ve ordered the navy to use its supply tanker to move fuel from Marsden Point to ports around the country.

I’m not sure how well they’ve thought this through. If every available road tanker is up Auckland way, how is it planned to move fuel from the ports to distribution points?

At this point in time, international travel has been the worst affected. Airlines are being allocated just 30% of their normal daily fuel supplies. 23 flights out of Auckland were cancelled today, stranding around 2000 passengers. While domestic passengers can probably find alternative transport – walking for example, international passengers aren’t so lucky. This situation is expected to continue for a few days until airlines can make arrangements to make a special fuel stop either before arriving at Auckland or shortly after leaving.

So long as there’s enough fuel to truck in supplies to the local supermarkets, the crisis is unlikely to affect me personally.

Unless it goes past the end of next week.

I’m booked on a flight to Japan…

The Last Western Heretic (Part 4)

In this video clip Lloyd Geering reminds us that Jesus wanted his listeners to think for themselves: not to accept without question what was told to them. It seems that it was Paul who elevated Jesus from being completely human to being a divine figure – something that the early church was quick to latch on to.

For those who find a 7 minute clip too long, here’s what I believe to be the important points:

Jesus was not a divine figure. Jesus was a human person.

Jesus as the divine figure is a creation of the church.

Jesus seemed to be able to speak with authority that they were not used to and it was because of that they were led eventually to attribute to him the authority of God.

The first to regard Jesus as divine was St Paul who had never known Jesus in the flesh.

The Gentile Christianity which was promoted by Paul, was a distortion of the primitive figure of Jesus.

It was his teaching that really impressed people. For example the prodigal son and the Good Samaritan were characters that he created and he spoke to people with such freshness and power that they couldn’t help feeling he spoke to them with the authority of God.

There never was a sermon on the mount.

The parables are stories which often have an unexpected ending, which were told by Jesus to get people to think for themselves. This was a new way of teaching. In some respects [it] is the key to the modern world: that is thinking for oneself, dealing with the problems, not looking for someone else to find the solutions for you, but to find your own solution.

We should always be questioning our tradition because it’s only by questioning that tradition develops and grows and matures in one’s own lifetime or in one’s own generation.

The Last Western Heretic (Part 3)

It’s been a long time since the previous post in this series. In case you need to refresh your memory, see Part 1 and Part 2.

In the video below clip Lloyd Geering makes the point that we as Human Beings created the concept of God. I agree. One only need to look at the variety of gods that have been created by cultures over a number of millennia, to realise that the likelihood of any of them being true is extremely unlikely.

Some of Lloyd Geering’s comments from the video clip that ring true to me:

I’ve never thought of God as a personal God. Indeed in a sense the word God is really beyond all definition simply because it is a symbolic term.

…and of course that brings us to the point where today we can accept that the term God is simply a symbolic term for all that is greatest and highest in our values.

Is it conceivable that this universe has been created by a rational mind rather like ours? Does it show evidence that it has a clear purpose in being there at all? I would say no purpose for which we can actually give any answer.

What religion is for me is how does one best respond to the various chance events which happen to you in life – how do you make the best of them? And I have found the the whole Christian myth helpful in helping to give me give it shape and supply the kind of values that that one needs in order to live a meaningful life.

Whereas we used to think of God as the Creator, I think it’s better to think of God as simply the process of creativity, which is in us, and is in the universe in an all inspiring way.

The idea that there was nothing once except God, and God created the universe is really a bit puerile now.

The Jacinda effect, or how a week is a long time in politics

Is it a Kiwi thing to name political events after the first name of politicians? For example when Laissez-Faire economics was flavour of the decade in the 1980s, it was dubbed Reaganomics in the US (after Ronald Reagan), Thatchernomics in the UK (after Margaret Thatcher), but here in Aotearoa New Zealand it was called Rogernomics, (after Roger Douglas).

For the past month we have been faced with a new political event named after the first name of a politician – the Jacinda effect, also dubbed Jacindamania. Named after Jacinda Adern, it has turned a what was expected to be a boring and predictable general election into one balanced on a knife edge, with the major political parties leap frogging each other with the publishing of each new opinion poll.

Under our MMP electoral system, party representation in Parliament is determined by the nationwide party vote, and opinion polls can give a very accurate prediction of election results. During election campaigns, support for the major parties do not vary by more than a few percentage points. This year it’s very different.

At the commencement of this year’s campaign in July, the National party was polling at around 47% support while the Labour party was at 25% and falling. Of the minor parties, the Greens and NZ first were neck and neck with 10% each. Other parties were polling at 1% or less. The outcome was predicted to be that either National could form a government on its own or in cooperation with its current allies, NZ Futures, ACT and the Māori Party.

So what happened? First, the admission by Metiria Turei, the co-leader of the Greens that she failed to declare to Work and Income (the government department responsible for handling most social security benefits) when she was a solo mother and university student in the 1990s, that flatmates were contributing to her household income. Surprisingly, this omission, dubbed fraud by her opponents and an economic necessity by her supporters, saw her personal popularity rise, and the Greens rising dramatically to 15% support in the polls, and Labour dropping to 23%. Support for National also rose to 49%, making the election result an almost forgone conclusion.

Then the unexpected happened. With less than two months until the elections, Andrew Little, the leader of the Labour Party, resigned. I guess we’ll never know whether he jumped or was pushed, but clearly the resignation was due to his very poor personal ratings in the opinion polls and the effect that was having on the Labour Party. The party elevated the deputy leader, Jacinda Adern to leader, and the results were astounding.

Within days, the Jacinda effect saw National and Labour polling within a few percentage points of each other, and they have gone on to take turns at being the most popular party. Currently they both sit at around 40% – 43% support, depending on the poll. It seems certain neither party will be able to govern on their own.

The Jacinda effect has not only had a detrimental effect on National. It has had a devastating effect on the minor parties. Whereas the Greens had 15% support and NZ First 12% support – 27% between them, the Greens dropped to just under 5% support and NZ First to 7%.

Under MMP, a party gaining less than 5% of the party votes is ineligible for any party seats unless it also gains an electorate seat. That could mean that the Greens might not make it to the next Parliament. That would be a shame, as that leaves NZ first as the only potential government partner. And there’s nothing that Winston Peters, the leader of NZ First, likes better than being seen as the “king maker”.

What’s the problem with that you may ask. Look at it this way. Think of Donald Trump as Winston Peters on steroids. While he’s nowhere near as egocentric as Trump, he’s the most xenophobic, nationalistic politician we have. The name of his political party – New Zealand First – gives a clue to where he stands. And when I say his party, I do mean his party. Winston created it, leads it, and when he eventually leaves politics, so will NZ First.

What I like about our political system is that under MMP no party has been able to govern on its own. The major parties must rely on minor parties to form a government. Typically these are not coalitions, but agreements on matters of confidence and supply. This means that the governing party is not able to railroad legislation through Parliament, but must negotiate support for each bill, and not necessarily from their supporting partners.

It also means that other parties don’t automatically oppose every piece of legislation that comes before the House. I like to think that legislation is more considered and debated rationally as a consequence, instead of the “It’s good because we wrote it” and “It’s bad because they wrote it” mindset that occurred in the days prior to MMP. In those bad old days, it was not uncommon for bills to pass though Parliament without amendments, only to be found wanting after they came into effect.

Our unicameral legislature inevitably means that some poor legislation sneaks through, but these days, the lack of absolute power in Parliament for the governing party, and scrutiny that legislation undergoes through our select committee system means as it’s nowhere near as common as it once was.

The problem with Winston Peters is that he’s likely to demand full coalition instead of the more loose arrangements that have become more or less the convention. If he has a talent (apart from the ability to spend ten minutes not answering an interviewer’s question), it’s getting what he wants in political negotiations. While he makes politics in this country interesting, I really wouldn’t like Winston and his party to be the tail that wags the dog.

As to where my party vote will go, that’s no-one’s business but my own. But I will say this: I have voted every three years since 1969, and not once in all that time has my vote gone to a party forming the government. The odds are that it’s not going to be any different come the 23^rd of September. So no matter which party or parties form the next government, it’s unlikely that I voted for them.

The Orange Guy

All Americans know who the orange guy is, and for that past year, so does most everyone everywhere who is not a cave dwelling hermit. It’s the guy to the right.

For most of us he’s the butt of jokes and provides current affairs programs with something to fill in time when news is otherwise in short supply.

But there is another orange guy who’s been around for for several decades here in Aotearoa New Zealand. As far as we know the guy doesn’t have a name, so is only known as the Orange Guy. The Kiwi orange guy is very different to tRump, except that he too is fake.

Our Orange guy is a gender-neutral, ethnic-neutral, political-neutral amorphous blob that appears for a few months once every few years and then, unlike tRump, completely disappears. The guy has been around for a couple of months now and I quite certain we’ll see no more of the person after the 23rd of this month.

Personally, I think our Orange Guy is much more likeable than the other orange guy. I can’t find any recent clips of the Orange Guy, but here’s one from 2014.

How I know yesterday was Father’s Day

1. My daughter phoned to wish me a happy Father’s Day.
2. My son dropped in give me a cordless drill set as a Father’s Day gift.
3. Ads on TV promoting all kinds of gifts from socks to stuff for DIY projects to massive armchairs with beer chillers in the arm rests suddenly stopped appearing at every commercial break.

Here in Aotearoa New Zealand Father’s Day is celebrated on the first Sunday in September, but in this household the celebrations are really about the respite loved ones get from being made to feel guilty for not buying their father expensive gifts they can’t afford and he doesn’t need and doesn’t want. It also means that those same commercial interests that had attempted the guilt trip on loved ones also stopped trying to convince me I’m unloved because my children haven’t lavished me with extravagant gifts.

Of course it will start all over again in a few months time as Christmas approaches.

Actually I told a porky above. My son didn’t call in to give me a cordless drill set like the one I’ve been hoping he’d give me ever since the one he borrowed came back with a burnt out motor and a broken gearbox. In fact he didn’t call in at all.

Oh all right. He didn’t even call. Or what’s App. Or text.

I wonder if he’s still alive…