Gordon Campbell on the nation’s gift of a plastic waka to Ngati Whatua
There’s a something wrong with putting the words ‘giant plastic’ and ‘authentic Maori culture’ in the same sentence, but almost everything about
the plastic waka deal signed off by government sounds bizarrely wrong. To start with the obvious – genuine indigenous
culture is not plastic. In fact, the process of re-packaging culture for the benefit of tourists usually goes out of its
way to avoid being seen as plastic. And if the plastic waka is mainly going to be a prop at Party Central… isn’t that
the sort of thing that is usually counted as gross exploitation when beer companies do it?
On paper, the deal is exceptionally generous to Ngati Whatua o Orakei. They are being given $1.8m of taxpayers' money, and will put up only $100,000 of their own
money for a $2 million object that they will own entirely, once it has been built. Reportedly, the related costs from
the management, transport and storage of the waka mean that the entire enterprise is being budgeted – right from the
outset – to lose money. Which raises the interesting prospect of whether the giant plastic waka has also been created
from the outset as a tax write-off.
Will the projected loss qualify as a cost that can be legitimately written off against the owner’s other tax liabilities
– and if so, what’s the net cost going to be to the taxpayer beyond the $1.8 million paid upfront? And how many other
deliberately loss-making Rugby World Cup ‘promotions” are going to be similarly allowed to diminish the country’s tax
base in the wake of the tournament – an event that is, in itself, being budgeted to lose around $40 million? (That’s not
counting the benefits that will accrue to the hotel, accommodation and tourism operators from this generous (and rare)
form of taxpayer subsidy.)
The whole episode with the plastic waka is not a good look for Maori entrepreneurship. Surely, someone in the Maori
bureaucracy must have asked whether the most visible icon of Maori culture related to the Rugby World Cup should be a 60
metre long plastic canoe ? Even back in the 1960s film The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s character Benjamin Braddock was given one word of advice by the businessman Mr McGuire: "Plastics".
It was a bad word back then – a synonym for phoniness and in-authenticity – and its an even worse word now, given that
plastic waste is choking the very oceans over which Maori claim a guardianship role. One would have thought the Greens
would have opposed the project on all the above grounds – and not complained (primarily) because this idea wasn’t put
out to tender. That’s the least of the concerns.
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Pike River Puts Its Hand Out
Just as incredibly, the receivers for Pike River Coal are now– in effect – asking for legal aid to participate in the Royal Commission inquiry into the tragedy. The families of the victims receive legal aid, and that’s entirely
appropriate. The contractors – some of whom were involved in training and safety procedures at the mine as well as
others who were supplying essential gods and services – have been advised they will not receive legal aid. Nor, it
seems, will they be exempt from subsequent legal liability for any testimony they give about procedures at the mine.
All of this threatens the breadth and integrity of the Royal Commission process. One would have thought such issues
would have been sorted beforehand, rather than the contractors being told about the lack of legal aid (and lack of
safeguards against self-incrimination) on Monday of this week, just as the Commission began its hearings.
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