the nearest of horizons...

New Zealand seems to have forgotten there is a future

Our leadership and our expectations of the leadership are slipping and vision seems an absent friend these days. New Zealand has an international reputation for being alternative and forward thinking.

We were the first in the world to give women the vote, and women have been powerful catalysts for change and innovation ever since. The idea of a female CEO, a female principal or indeed a female prime minister is still ridiculous in some countries of the world and we did it early, we did it well and it's just normal.

We (Lord Rutherford) split the atom, a profound step for science...but when the rest of the world sought to use that and subsequent technology for nuclear weapons and power generation, we said "hell no!". We said no because we did not think they were safe, the weapons were too powerful and the ability to generate nuclear power was only two short shuffles for the weaponry aspect. So we just said no as the steinlager ad proclaims, and the horror of the Japanese quake and matters since surrounding the Fukushima nuclear plant maybe proves we had a point.

There are dozens of other examples of where we have done it our way, and we have lost that vision and willingness to be unpopular. The grey-faced National Government are a major contributor to this, with their charisma-free governance that turns on the die of filthy lucre and rubbing their rich mates backs. We seem to have forgotten we have a future, and that the quality of that future is dependant on the choices we make now.

Our leaders make decisions at all levels of government that look to the nearest of horizons, with little regard for what programmes really make a future. Youth development, family support, mass transport and environmental programmes suffer for the sake of major roading upgrades that promise to be largely defunct in the post carbon society that is imminent.

Tertiary education institutions; hotbeds of research and innovation no longer allow their academics and students to focus on original contributions to knowledge. Instead they, like staff at research institutions, must regularly prostitute themselves to private enterprise at the expense of full focus on what they do best.

High schools now grapple with the ill-concieved National Standards that follow the PC bollocks of NCEA that teaches our young that failure can be avoided by repetition and short-sheeting your education. Teachers face the same horrendous class sizes, and their ever growing role in trying to keep the next cohort of sprogs from going to the dogs continues to inflate.

The governance is shallow of New Zealand, and it seems that it is largely because the populous is. We sit back and don't seem to notice our country is being run like a dot.com by suits with the vision of a chopping board. The government would appear to justify anything with money, and that's because it's bloody easy to do. The best ideas aren't always the least costly, the worst ideas often turn the highest profit and maybe, just maybe, a calculator should not be the chief decision making tool.

So what do we need? We need a leader and a political party in charge with VISION...not some hackneyed song book that already buried us in crap two decades ago. The other side have the charisma of a tea towel in large part and should probably let half their gang out to pasture and then try again. The Greens and Maori party are well intentioned, but haven't the numbers, the panache or the resources to contest as a major party. They just get to choose what idiots they work with, hopefully more wisely this time. Oh and Winston Peters might be back (don't cheer too loud) and when Rodney Hide returns from paternity leave (god help us all) he's going to contest too, all yellow jacket and misplaced ego.

Slim pickings folks....slim pickings....

Not that one, or that one either...

I read a report the other day that applied to a proposed development. It was the most tiresome twaddle, that systematically deconstructed an ecosystem and attested to just what parts the other parts could do without. Each component was substituted or substitutable, allow me to demonstrate:

1. Riparian vegetation
Ecologists know the importance of vegetation on streambanks. Its very simple...vegetation grows and holds things together, like soil. Without vegetation, high flows or even normal flows tend to take said soil with them. And the soil is not industriously trucked back by powerful fairies, it is lost to another part of the system.

Further, indigenous riparian vegetation drops leaves (senescence, a great word and neat process of shedding bits you don't need - the diet kings would love to copy it!). Said leaves etc are called detritus and they form the basis of most food chains, which is lovely. Because, in the most academic of terms, you can't have many big things, without lots and lots of little things.

Cretinous report writer however, attested that riparian vegetation removal and subsequent channelisation of a stream would not only 'create valuable space for other land uses' but would also make the site less 'messy'. So there you go, humus = 0, cretin = 1. But wait theres more...

2. Fish habitat
Many of our waterways are choked with all manner of things, including invasive pest fish. But indigenous species hang on in good numbers in many spots. This was one of them. But cretin said we dont need this particular type of habitat and the fish could be removed and located to a stream 4km away. Thereby justifying the fish barrier that the development would install, on top of the channelisation of the stream.

Ok, so we dont need riparian vegetation, and we dont need fish. Right, what else can we shed?

3. Hillside vegetation
A kanuka cloaked hillside is a common site in this country. There are a number of reasons that fragments like it exist. First because some well-meaning citizen, once upon a time, set some aside and decided not to burn/cut or erase in some other fashion all of it down. Nice. Secondly because it is 'just scrub' that got away. Third because the hill is just too damn steep. Fourth because it belongs to DoC or some other means of having reservation status. And finally, purely by accident and subject to change at any time.

Anyway, should it persist it better not have a cretin in charge of writing about it. The git proceeded to explain that it was an 'area of trees' (wow, two points!) that had limited habitat values as there were no endangered species in it. No falcons, no green geckos, no Bengal tigers of any kind. Bugger. Anyhoo, as a result of not harbouring the last population of Great Spotted Giant Things or some such it was, in its 23.4ha glory, all rather expendable having "limited to no value".

And there were other bits and reasons they be removed with a blatant lack of reasonable review, coherent discussion or counter assertions to make the whole report seem robust. But the point was, that you could argue to destroy any one part of any ecosystem. And he did, and he won...and its gone. And that irks me...