Our 1955 VW makes people smile wherever we go, including in Kelburn yesterday while I canvassed door-to-door.

 An anonymous enthusiast left a note steering me to the website of John, the expert who restored our Kafer to its pristine condition.

Here’s a gallery page of photos, including one of the commemorative toy that inspired John’s colour scheme. The toy was issued in 1955, the year of registration in New Zealand of our car, to mark the production of the 1,000,000th Kafer.

The car has also attracted the attention of  "skinny" the photographer who noticed the American provenance of the ‘typical kiwi family’ in H Clark’s recent "To-the-Householder. 

 Someone also took the trouble to leave on the car a Kombined VW Club Wellington card.

Cathy was surrounded by VW Beetles in university days (four at one flat). I did the ‘Round Europe OE trip" in a Kombi, and we had a family Beetle for a while, but I had no idea of the depth of enthusiasm they still command.

Before the swim (red shorts)

After the swim.

Must do it more often……not.

Sometimes blog comments demand to be lifted out of their thread. Here is one from Jim McLean, prompted by comments elicited by posts on the Manurewa shooting.

 Chris it seems to me you are on the wrong side of this debate. Since you have given your name and occupation I will give mine. I am an SSO in the Fire Service currently riding in charge of Rescue trucks as I have done for over thirty years. I have acted as an executive officer and liaised closely with Police in many situations including armed offender incidents, nevertheless I speak for myself only on this issue.
I am confident that eventually an enquiry will show that the Police misinterpreted sound principles and this led to inappropriate actions. I agree that ambulance staff should be kept out of harms way until Police have ensured the scene is safe enough for their attendance but initially this is not what the Police did.
Police comcen staff had multiple calls saying that a man had been shot in a robbery and the offenders had fled the scene. Comcen staff can (as you know) call back the callers for more information where there is doubt but in this case, Police were content to wait for senior staff to drive to a safe forward point, arm and instruct the officers on scene and then proceed to the scene.
Let us look at this logically. If the offenders had fled then a man was dying needlessly. If the offenders were still on the scene, then every memeber of the public walking into the scene is at risk. Is the life of an unarmed innocent memeber of the public worth so much less than the life of a Police officer who has sworn to protect them?
Of all the police faults on this occasion none is more egregious than the Comcen operator assuring the victims family that help would be there in minutes when they knew or should have known that this was untrue. They suspected, and subsequent events bore out that the only chance the victim had of survival was if they put him in a car and took him to the assistance that would not come to him. They lied and they did it in circumstances that resulted in loss of life. Worst of all, trusting immigrants to this country believed them and the message to such communities that Emergency services cannot be trusted to tell the truth will take decades to undo.
Stephen Franks considered and eloquent comments on this subject, together with a careful reading of the British Independant Police Complaints enquiry into a similar incident strike a chord of common sense in this entire debate. Your own comments may be heartfelt but in the end a life was lost, without any attempt to save it until it was far too late, and that remains something the Police should have wanted to thoroughly investigate at the outset.
I feel very strongly about this and would invite you to contact me by e mail if you still remain unconvinced and are prepared to debate it with me.  "

No wonder the family of the murdered man want a PCO inquiry.

From comments to me from people in the Wellington Indian community I suspect the public Sikh counter pressure against a PCO complaint is restricted to factions who retain a touching faith in not embarassing  the government, hoping for a reward one day for their blind historical loyalty to the Labour Party.

The tragic loss of Superintendent Steve Fitzgerald at a Petone round-about, and the earlier Upper Hutt death of a cyclist  who ran into a van door being opened, highlight the risks of road cycling. I’m not sure whether either of these particular losses could have been avoided with decent cycle lanes, but until they become a focus these tragedies will help keep people in cars.

The truth is, cars feel like safe cocoons. And in comparison with other ways of being outside your home, especially after dark, or on a per km travelled basis, they probably are much safer. Until that changes, cars will always be preferred by most.

Increasing safety for the alternatives would save the planet more than any amount of public transport subsidy, or advertising rhetoric, or forced concentration into rat-nest housing near "transport hubs".

Women in particular do not want to risk a 300m walk from the bus-stop to home after dark, so public transport is underused outside peak hours.

People stay in cars who’d prefer to cycle. Though some will not cycle because they don’t like hat hair all day from their helmets, for others it is simply a risk assessment.

Yesterday’s deaths might be some impetus to reduce the risk.

I’m sure nowhere can beat Wellington as the best "green city" to live in. It combines the best that nature can offer, with big city buzz:

• Fresh air
• Clean beaches
• Fishing and swimming in the inner harbour
• Logical and well positioned bus and train services (if too stretched at the moment)
• Most people can walk, train or bus to work
• Office workers can walk between meetings (long-time verandah rules help)
• Many can walk from home and back to restaurants, cafes and the theatre (more verandahs needed up-town)
• Lots of taxis
• Reasonably safe streets for walking (needs improvement)
• Bush and walking tracks within a kilometre of most houses
• Bird variety increasing everywhere (thank you Karori Sanctuary)
• Potential for wind, solar and wave power
• Keen recycling residents
• Brilliant close mountain bike tracks (Mount Victoria, Makara Peak)  – but less Council talk more action please, on road cycleways.

  Biking the Karapoti Classic 2008 north of Wellington.

At the top of Mt Vic with friends on bikes as the sun comes up – we feel so privileged – who’d want to live anywhere else? 

But perhaps you have to be ‘greenish’ at least to live here happily? Maybe people starting late on their greening will find the next few years uncomfortable.

And there are greens who will not like the mainstreaming of green values. To keep their feel of an exclusive club, more virtuous and farseeing than the rest of us, they’ll even reject help. For example at this year’s bike-to-work celebration in Civic Square (which I’ve biked to a number of years) I was greeted by a media person with " what are you doing here – this is not for you – this is for Greens"

I was green before we knew the term.. You judge my credentials for yourself.  I suspect your verdict might be at least "greenish". Here they are (in no particular order):

* Joined Forest and Bird in 1974 when I first started work as a lawyer and have been a member ever since.

* Very early member of the Karori Sanctuary. When organisations paid speaking fees while I was an MP, I sent them to the Sanctuary

. Collecting for the Karori Sanctuary this year.

* One of the earliest members of the Wellington Organic Food Co-op 30 years ago. It later gave way to Jim Kebbell’s Commonsense Organics Store.

* I’ve walked, biked or bused to work for 30 years. I ‘ve never had a designated work car-park. Public transport or taxis can do when the weather is too much.

*  My great delight is biking on Mount Victoria or out at the Makara Bike Park.  What a great job the volunteer builders have done.

* Our "bach" for the past 20 years has been four recycled railway wagons, with no electricity, on land north west of Nelson. We rely on a gravity water system, some solar gadgets but must admit to gas cooking and hot water. The wagons were barged to the site but kanuka has now almost hidden them from the coast. We share the camp with another family and we all plant trees nearly every time we go there.

* I’ve always preferred vegetarian food but fit in with my omnivore family.

* Tramping, deer stalking and climbing have been life long passions. I’m happiest out in the hills with friends or my dog. The bird song in the Wairarapa is now magical after getting rid of  most of the possums on our land.

Campaigning with Green M.P. Sue Kedgley against battery hens

* I don’t like battery hen farming or caged pigs and I’ve publicly supported Sue Kedgely’s campaigns against both.  

* I’ve never scoffed at ‘Peak Oil’. I tried to respond helpfully to the hundreds of emails that bombarded me on the topic as an MP.

*   I doubt that any MP could surpass me in the carbon neutrality stakes. Our 2000 hectares of steep Wairarapa hill country is mostly scrub and regenerating bush. We shut stock out of half of it eight years ago and now keep bees on the thick manuka, kanuka and other bush.  2.5 tonnes of manuka honey this year with a 12.5 UMF healing factor will help cover costs.

* As soon as it’s economic, I’ll put in our own micro-hydro electricity scheme in the Wairarapa. I’ve identified the source. It won’t be long.

* And, yes, we make compost, grow vegetables and recycle, all a bit haphazardly on our small town section (though I wish I’d planted the fejoas when we first moved to our current house in 1984). We’re better at it in the country.

I am not a religious environmental activist.  I prefer science to superstition, hearsay or guilt.  So maybe I’m a pragmatic green. I like Transition Towns’ positivity. There’s a neat summary on TT’s Wiki home page  "we used immense amounts of creativity, ingenuity and adaptability on the way up the energy upslope, and that there’s no reason for us not to do the same on the downslope".

I have only one minor quibble with this. We aren’t necessarily on an energy downslope. We’re on a fossil fuels downslope. Given the right incentives we can access more abundant energy sources, with much lower environmental impacts.

In the meantime there are practical things we can do. As an MP I tried always to offer solutions as well if I had to criticise. So, for example,  I worked constructively with Green MPs despite our differences. I co-authored with Rod Donald the dissenting minority report on the first Bill we considered together (the Waka hopping Bill). Nandor Tanczos, Keith Locke and I cooperated to change other Bills at late stages in the House.  I admired the way Green MPs mostly stuck to their causes, though I think it’s shame they’ll put their socialism before practical environmentalism. Some of their ideas are downright mad, like supporting the Tuhoe would-be "terrorists".

I don’t believe in the guilt the radical greens try to force on us. I have faith in human intellect and our ability eventually to overcome climate challenge. The answers will come from inventiveness, not a return to the past. We will devise substitutes to deal with scarce and expensive resources. We will adapt.

But it wont happen by accident. We can’t sit and wait for someone else to do all the thinking and the changing. As lucky inheritors of a rich country our lives will change.

And we can’t afford another debacle like the bio-fuels frenzy that went into our legislation last year. People are starving while food is turned into fuel,. That’s why I’ve always opposed simply turning slogans into law.

Slogans are not often solutions. In Parliament. I’ll try to ensure  action is practical . I’m looking forward to helping in the constructive Green side of National.

I was glad to hear John Key telling yesterday’s party breakfast meeting that re-ordering the priorities of the public service would not involve "arbitratry moves".

Asked how he would approach MED for example, he talked first about TEC as a body that had grown from nothing and was doing ‘quite a lot of little value’ to anyone.  Returning to MED he said he would want to see Ministers working with the CEO on changes and not just making arbitrary moves.

I had been wondering whether Wellington’s National MPs would feel alone in a caucus pressed by the people in the rest of New Zealand to make showy cuts in Wellington. From the breakfast response, and John’s clear earlier assurances that National would cap growth in the bureacracy, not slash it, I believe we will have powerful support in defending the importance of a competent public service.

An argument against permitting embryo screening for sex selection has been the risk that the cumulative outcome could be massive gender imbalances.
Yesterday’s post considered evidence that we have a man drought without any “artificial” interference.
If choice in NZ followed some overseas patterns to favour boys at least for us it would not exacerbate our problem.
I’m pleasantly surprised to hear the head of the Bio-ethics Council on radio this morning stoutly defending parental choice but look forward to reading the report

Fran O’Sullivan reports on man drought warnings by Bernard Salt, a Melbourne-based KPMG partner described as a demographer.

If he offered any choreography for a rain dance, Fran’s report does not mention it.

Wellingtonians have been thinking about these issues for longer than most New Zealanders. We should be ahead on cloud seeding to end man droughts. Whether we are or not there will surely be plenty of rain dancer proposals to come. Salt seems to have considered the proposals from the forum were not much better.

This time the drought warnings are for New Zealand as a whole, not just for the women of Wellington. Fran is one of them, despite most Wellingtonians not seeing her work. She’s in her own league combining serious business/political journalism.

The online Herald has not reproduced a graph from the article. But even without it the article is sobering for those of us who’ve until now found the ‘man drought’ idea vaguely reassuring (value being entirely a function of scarcity etc etc).

"… the god of demography is certainly not smiling on [Australia or New Zealand]: Particularly New Zealand which faces a major contraction in the traditional working population (15-64 years) by 2022 and is also experiencing a "man drought" as more young men stay overseas longer than their female counterparts to pursue international opportunities.

When the man drought first emerged, news stories focused on the difficulties young women might experience finding a male partner. But the workforce effect is more profound.

As the graph indicates there are 10 per cent less men than women at age 35 – the time when many are coming into their peak earning and tax-paying period. … too many New Zealanders and Australians are now spending their best taxpaying years overseas, thus providing little return on the 25 years of taxpayer funds that have gone into their education and upbringing."

John Key mentioned the problem in answer to a question at a breakfast meeting this morning "There’s no future for New Zealand in being a giant training school for overseas"

The article goes on:

"New migrants are being attracted. But the people both countries are losing are among the best and brightest.

A number of avenues were suggested by [the wekend’s Australia New Zealand leadership Forum] participants for reversing the trend….

Salt contends those "tactical responses"  will not be enough."

Fran’s report ends on that note.

In my opinion our Council was on the right track several years ago in looking at what makes cities attractive to the kinds of people who attract others. They drew on the ideas of Richard Florida ( he’s long been on my blog roll) as to what makes decision makers want to live in a particular place.

Essentially they want to be where there are others like them, where they are challenged, inspired, valued, and amused by and with their peers.

Porter’s cluster theory is consistent with the Florida theory (explaining that industry leadership is most often associated with clusters of competing and complementary specialist businesses – not the "critical mass" fanatasy of those who want a Meat Globalco, or another Fonterra).

We’ve got most of the physical things that these dynamic enticers like. Our ranking in the city liveability scales show that. So what is the missing ingredient for the kinds of people that our entrepreneurs and leaders in science, the arts, etc want to be around?

I’ll venture some suggestions on the things we need to work on – appetite for risk, the gamble of new ventures, excitement over change, confidence that problems can be overcome, that risks will not overwhelm, respect outweighing envy for success.

The unlikely and unexpected success of cities and people and companies in out of the way places (Austin – Texas, Denver -Colorado, Portland – Oregan, Helsinki) seems to me to have had a lot to do with their good fortune in each having for a time had a "gold rush" period, which drew in the kinds of people who can stare down the status quo naysayers. Bold people are needed to outweigh the kinds who bury projects and proposals under precautionary procedures and risk aversion.

We’ve had some great gold rush moments recently in Wellington – like while the harbour development was free of the dead hand of the Council, the success of Gareth and Sam Morgan (primarily Trade-Me), Lloyd Morrison with Infratil, the Peter Jackson spawned industry. They all inspire, showing the rewards of giving good people scope to innovate.

We must ensure such people are not worn down by a climate of petty restrictions.

There is an old common law principle that extracts from wrongdoers any profit from their wrong. The principle discourages crime where the official penalty may be lower than the profit to be gained.

Will the people be kicked out who’ve benefited from what is alleged to have been misuse of Immigration Service powers, or perhaps corruption?

Has anyone heard anything to indicate our official attitude to residency queue jumpers (Ms Thompson’s relatives?) or more recently the people whose lies were ‘overlooked”?

As the charity known as the English Speaking Union does not have its own website here are the details of the seminar they have organised for Saturday fortnight.

ESU MAGNA CARTA IN THE ANTIPODES
Constitutional Seminar Brentwood Hotel Kilbirnie June 29th
REGISTRATION CLOSES JUNE 20TH.
SPEAKERS AND PANELLISTS INCLUDE.
His Excellency William. P. Cormick United States Ambassador.
Justice David Baragwanath.
Professor Noel Cox.
Professor Ngatata Love.
The Hon. Peter Dunne.
Dr.Malcolm McKinnon.
Graham Butterworth.
Stephen Franks.
Wayne Mapp M.P.
Keith Locke. M.P.
For information brochure and registration jim.barbara@xtra.co. nz
Or ESU 39a Whitemans Road Silverstream.