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Queen Street 3: Safe from the Natives | Jan 05, 2006 11:05
All right folks, you can come out now. The mayor has promised that no fine, upstanding European tree in Queen Street will be replaced by a dirty, swarthy native. If any exotic tree has to go it its place will be taken by another exotic, like God intended. The "new primitivism" has been halted in its tracks. We're off Owen McShane's "new road to Serfdom" and the city is safe for decent folk and proper flora. Etcetera.
Further, a trio of independent arborists selected by the mayor and the save-the-trees group (and paid for by us ratepayers) will re-assess all 20 of the trees earmarked for removal. Lesley Max told the Herald she'd have to think about the deal offered by Dick Hubbard - but really, a group of people who didn't bother to participate in the original consultative process but came in at the last minute with a court action that would cost ratepayers tens of thousands of dollars would do well to show some flexibility here.
Bernard Orsman's story goes heavy on the yet-another-council-flip-flop angle. But it might have been useful for him to point out that this project actually began with the last council, under John Banks (which established a dedicated rate to pay for it) and has, until very recently, enjoyed something like universal support. If it was so terribly faulty, you have to wonder why not a single councillor, from any party, thought to blow the whistle.
Nonetheless, it's now fairly clear where the hole in the council's consultative practice is. It's not that the council doesn't consult, but that it seems only to consult at one end of the process. People are asked what they want to see - and more than 200 submissions were taken on this project - but not adequately presented with the conclusions.
It will be interesting to see what becomes of the tree that most of the fuss has been made about: the liquidambar (and no, if you'd asked me a week ago what a liquidambar was I wouldn't have known) outside the Methodist Central Mission, which was to be removed not in favour of a filthy nikau, but to make way for extension of the street canopy up a stretch of Queen Street where there is no shelter from the elements. The desire for extended canopies seems to have come through strongly in the original consultation: it would be rather odd if it were to be turfed out at the last moment to keep the exotic tree-huggers happy.
Anyway, Simon Bidwell remembered his post about Rosemary McLeod's save-us-from-the-natives column, which I mentioned earlier this week. Her crazy rhetoric (people who plant native trees are "fascists") makes a nice match for McShane's. "McLeod," Simon wrote, "has neglected to consult with reality."
Anyway, the Abramoff affair in the US is shaping up as the biggest corruption scandal ever to strike the US Congress. The huge Washington Post story from a few days ago provides a useful backgrounder on the fraud, corruption and murder. Read that first.
Since the bent lobbyist's plea deal was announced, the right-wing blogosphere has been dutifully on-message. Instapundit and the reliably deranged Michelle Malkin have been conveying the White House message that, hey, Democrats were involved too. Amazingly, neither of them think to mention the apparently significant involvement of until-recently House Republican leader Tom Delay, who is already under indictment for his activities in Texas and took no fewer that three overseas junkets at Abramoff's expense.
And in a positively stellar leap away from reality, NewsMax claims that ranking House Democrat Harry Reid is the "most prominent player" in the affair. Reid is among quite a number of congressmen who have returned donations from Abramoff's clients - native American gambling interests, who were royally screwed by him - but Abramoff was always a Republican lobbyist, and the list of those who received disbursements from Abramoff's personal slush fund doesn't include a single Democrat. That's probably not the full story, however: the WaPo's accounting of total donations from Abramoff clients runs about 2:1 in favour of Republicans. Much of that may prove to be just the normal kind of palm-greasing that goes on every day in American politics, and the prosecution seems to be focusing on more obvious examples of corruption involving six Congressmen, the only one of whom to be named so far is Ohio Republican Bob Ney (the moron behind the "Freedom Fries" business), who seems to have been pretty much up for sale. Another notable figure in the case is former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, who emerges already as a lying, cheating scumbag.
The LA Times story is worth reading:
The corruption investigation surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff shows the significant political risk that Republican leaders took when they adopted what had once seemed a brilliant strategy for dominating Washington: turning the K Street lobbying corridor into a cog of the GOP political machine.
Abramoff thrived in the political climate fostered by GOP leaders, including Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who have methodically tried to tighten the links between the party in Congress and business lobbyists, through what has become known as the "K Street Project."
GOP leaders, seeking to harness the financial and political support of K Street, urged lobbyists to support their conservative agenda, give heavily to Republican politicians and hire Republicans for top trade association jobs. Abramoff obliged on every front, and his tentacles of influence reached deep into the upper echelons of Congress and the Bush administration.
The latest Washington Post report is useful too. TPM Café has more.
This is going to be spectacular, of that there is no doubt. The hope would be that it will actually prompt real reform of America's awfully compromised legislative process.
And finally, before I go back on blog holiday, the January edition of Harper's magazine notes a document that simply must be appended to recent debates about coffee. It's a petition from 1674 entitled THE WOMEN'S PETITION AGAINST COFFEE REPRESENTING TO PUBLICK CONSIDERATION THE Grand INCONVENIENCIES accruing to their SEX from the Excessive Use of that Drying, Enfeebling LIQUOR. It was published online by Thomas Gloning and Janet Clarkson as part of a collection of early texts about coffee, yea and chocolate and it is absolutely bloody priceless.
Queen Street 2: Die Harder | Jan 04, 2006 10:21
The more I think about the Queen Street tree panic, the more it seems to me that the mayor has exercised remarkably poor political management on his own behalf. To listen to, say, Leighton Smith (and I am not for a moment recommending that you actually do such a thing) you'd think that Dick Hubbard had driven through the entire Queen Street upgrade proposal on his own; perhaps that he had personally volunteered to wield the chainsaw.
The record rather strongly suggests otherwise. The Queen Street concept design was signed off without division by the council's Urban Strategy and Governance Committee in April, with the only rider relevant to the current controversy being that "additional vegetation opportunities … be investigated." A couple of hundred submitters were also thanked for their input in the same motion.
It was announced in City Scene in the same month, and in September was subject to a recommendation from the same committee "that the commencement of the Queen Street project be delayed until detailed design is further progressed and that enabling works be progressed under delegated authority."
That would suggest to me that (a) the relevant council officials have been (and apparently continue to be) unacceptably tardy in providing detailed design plans, and (b) that they were given authority to continue with enabling works (ie: removing selected trees in advance of their replacement). Presumably, officials figured that this "delegated authority" meant that they didn't have to notify the removal of the earmarked trees. It should not have.
The mystery is exactly how this is sheeted home to Dick Hubbard. He isn't a member of the committee, and was not in attendance at either meeting. So why does he keep on stepping up to take the bullet? It would make more sense to refer enquiries to the committee chair, Bruce Hucker, or to the councillors (including councillors from the same party whose members are currently fuelling the tree panic) who unanimously approved the proposal.
Is it an unwillingness to give Hucker any more air? A touching sense of duty? Or has Hubbard been undone by the public impression created by John Banks that the mayor has unlimited executive power?
Whatever: the bizarre controversy continues, with the unloading of various strange philosophical perspectives as an accompaniment. And none stranger than Owen McShane's claim in this Kiwiblog thread that in the Queen Street upgrade we are seeing the "new Urban Romanticism – or the new road to Serfdom," which embraces "the longing for the primitive." Uh, right.
The new Save Auckland Trees blog is rather better earthed.
Anyway, some useful feedback was forthcoming. Anthony Trenwith said:
Finally a voice of common-sense and reason is heard amidst the chatter and noise on the tree debate. They would indeed have to be, as you so neatly put it, the least memorable trees in civic history. I walk up Queen Street every week day yet would have to say that I have paid more attention to the trendy smokers' bins attached to the lamposts than I have to the trees.
There's a reason for this of course: to me, they're just trees. There's nothing special, iconic or eye-catching about them. As a result, the point of the whole debate (assuming of course that one actually exists...) is lost on me.
Personally, I couldn't give a rats what kind of trees are planted there, or if the current ones stay or go. The cost, in the scheme of things, is probably inconsequential. What isn't inconsequential however is the cost of judicial review - particularly over something as pointless as this. Tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money are going to be spent on defending an action that should never have been brought in the first place. Valuable court time (of which, I might add, there is a severe shortage) is going to wasted because Leighton and friends want to wage their opportunistic anti-PC campaign. I hope they realise that if they fail in the attempt, they could be facing quite a hefty bill for court costs - particularly if the court feels that the action was taken frivolously.
True, citizens should be able to challenge their representative bodies without fear of financial backlash. It's also true that Auckland City Council officers are in desperate need of dictionaries so as to teach them the meaning of the word "consultation". Too often, consultations phases are treated almost as mere formalities - a necessary evil to be endured on the way to doing what they want to do. Master plans and policies (the dreaded "p" word) tend to override public expectations and, at times, common sense (traffic lights in Princes Street for example).
That said, this is in no way the thin end of the wedge. All we're talking about are a few trees being replaced by other trees. I wonder if the outraged brigade would be any less outraged if the replacement trees were not natives?
I know this is the silly season, but surely there's a limit lying somewhere well before the point we're at now!
From far-off Singapore, Greg Wood reports that reading of the tree panic:
… makes me want to come home just so I can drive around town with a huge PA over which I can plead "People, please, get a LIFE. Recognise you live in what could be the most unique country in the world, respect that fact, and use it; perhaps pull your heads out of your arses and expend some energy on creating something good instead of complaining about other people's efforts, you bloody CORONATION STREETERS..."
Sorry, ranting... but seriously, every day, I get in a taxi and talk to some poor old Uncle who's sentenced to live and die in Singapore by a system that locks his life's savings up in a tricky government scheme, and when he asks "Where you from ah?" and I say, well, originally New Zealand, there's always - *always* - a sigh from him and a palpable wistfulness. That's the country I want to return to: vibrant, green, original, open, exciting, interesting, dynamic, accepting, forward-looking -- not some Leighton Smith ratings-driven bullshit-spaghetti-junction where everyone is too PC to take a crap, yet so un-PC it gives me the shits.
[sings, "We don't know how lucky we are..."; goes to work.]
Euan Mason, Associate Professor at the University of Canterbury's NZ School of Forestry was more circumspect:
Personally I'd welcome more indigenous greenery in our landscapes and cities, but there are aspects of this that look like shades of gray. Firstly, Graham Platt is probably closer to the truth than Graham Ikin.
We cannot know whether or not Mr Ikin has been influenced by a desire to get the tree replacement contract, but it would be wise to seek opinions from truly independent people.
Secondly, Mr Platt is right to point out that it takes time to acquire trees of significant size, and large urban trees are often valued very highly indeed. However, it appears that people are using the issue to snipe at Dick Hubbard, and with that objective they'll reach for just about any ammunition they can find, no matter how unreliable the source might be.
Lastly, we are losing sight of the real issue, which is, "What sort of urban landscapes do we want, and what are the costs of change?" One of the costs of change would be a reduction in greenery while native trees slowly grew, and I suspect the artist's impressions of the development, uninspiring as they are, would not be realised for several years. Some sort of phased conversion to native plants, if that's what people want, would make better sense.
And Nat Curnow, who knows a bit about trees, said just this:
The council planners need to consult a gardener and Leighton Smith needs to consult a therapist.
And finally, thanks to Adam Bogacki for drawing my attention to this admirably concise explanation of what's wrong with the Blair government's out-of-control Anti-Social Behaviour Order system, which is effectively a scheme for creating new, bespoke criminal offences, on demand. Communitarianism always sounds nice in principle: it can just very easily get creepy as hell in practice.
Exile on Queen Street | Jan 03, 2006 11:49
I popped into town for a cruise down then up Queen Street this morning, to refresh my memory of the 20 trees earmarked for execution in what Leighton Smith has memorably dubbed "the Queen Street Massacre". And I needed to, because many of them are possibly the least memorable trees in civic history.
To listen to the furore, to read the 200-odd letters to the Herald, you would think that the golden mile was to be denuded of all its foliage by cold-eyed lunatics. Which would, indeed, be a serious matter, because Queen Street has a hell of a lot of trees. At this time of year, healthy green canopies stretch up the hill from the Mayoral Drive, and some surprisingly substantial specimens spring from the paths from Wellesley down to Queen Elizabeth Square.
But for the moment, there is no imminent danger of them being cut down: just 20 of the 36 trees in the short stretch between Wellesley and Mayoral, to be replaced in the first part of the $30 million Queen Street renewal programme; most of them scrawny specimens that have virtually no impact on the city experience. I frankly doubt that half the people who have written to the Herald actually know what they're trying to save.
In general, of course, a tree in the ground is to be treasured. Why remove one just to plant another? The Herald brought in another arborist to examine the condemned specimens, and he duly expressed the utmost optimism in the prospects of nearly every one.
But for Leighton, and those who have applied for an injunction to stop the redevelopment, it's not so much about the existing trees as what's planned in their stead: natives. The spectre of native foliage brings out a bizarre response in some people. Rosemary McLeod wrote a silly column for the Dom Post last year bemoaning the advance of the grim green army; arguing that if we were to be an open society and welcome the exotic foods and colourful clothes and costumes of immigrants, surely we should embrace their colourful plants too. Or something.
As Tim Selwyn points out in an interesting post, the save-the-trees campaign is really more in the nature of an opportunistic anti-PC backlash by people who think the planting of native flora is the thin end of the wedge:
And is it not hypocritical for the sort of anti-RMA people (who complain about the authorities having to consult the public at all with things like motorways) to now be whining to the council and using the RMA to hold things up? What happened to "just get on with it" and "too much useless talkfests" etc? Oh how they change their tune when they have a chance at an anti-PC crusade. This is what it is isn't it?
Tim also points out something I'd forgotten: that the QEII Square redevelopment under the Banks council took out a row of quite substantial pohutukawa. Perhaps it was unavoidable as part of the transport development, but it was rather more in the way of a massacre than what is proposed for Queen Street.
But the people complaining now didn't complain then. They didn't complain about the so-called Birch Report, which proposed gutting tree protection regulations in the city (which resulted in a shambolic period of council indecision, during which street trees were destroyed or damaged without permission). They didn't complain about the same council's surprise decision to dump pensioner housing. Just so long as no one's planning to sneak in a cabbage tree, apparently.
On the other hand … there are, in fact, already cabbage trees and nikau palms on Queen Street, and most of them look lonely and shabby. I love cabbage trees - the one in front of our house sheds like a bugger but adds an iconic touch you wouldn't get from anything else - but I really have my doubts about their worth as urban street trees.
Yet if you go up to Karangahape Road you can see what a stand of maturing nikau in a well-conceived street garden looks like. It's not just attractive, it's quite exciting. The palms now tower over the shop canopies. It couldn't be anywhere else in the world.
Why council officials can't present a similarly attractive vision for Queen Street, I don't know, but the official artist's impression is singularly unconvincing. The council's planning department needs to consult earlier and more widely and stop presenting its ideas as a fait accompli.
But I feel sorry for Dick Hubbard. This whole affair is much less about the trees than it is about an opportunity to scrag him for his alleged high-handedness and arrogance (which, when you consider the way his predecessor behaved for three years, is a rather odd allegation to make) - witness the entry of that newfound friend of the trees, Aaron Bhatnagar, and angry allegations from right-wing bloggers who don't appear to be at all familiar with Queen Street. (Check out the first comment under this post - these people shouldn't be allowed off their meds.)
And, of course, we have Leighton Smith declaring: "If Dick Hubbard allows the Queen Street Massacre I will make it my personal responsibility to see him removed from office." Oh, the pomp of the man.
So on one hand, we have a planning department that needs to listen, and on the other a bunch of hypocrites, nutters and opportunists. It all makes Waiheke Island, where we just spent a few days' holiday, look quite good.
I always come away from Waiheke thinking that I could stand living there. And then I mull over what the sale of our inner Western suburbs house would fetch us on the island. At best, it would be a straight swap. Maybe later in life.
I did the usual things: swam, hit the Ostend market for tarts and olives, and visited Harry's Bookshop, which proved to be a fruitful source of the kind of funny old books that I buy. I left with Election '81: An end to Muldoonism? (written by a gallery journalist and a Victoria lecturer, but effectively a Social Credit pamphlet in drag - things were weird back then); Towards Nationhood, a 1969 collection of speeches by Norman Kirk; Bill Cooke's intriguing Heathen in Godzone: Seventy Years of Rationalism in New Zealand, which includes a cautionary tale about letting Marxists control anything bigger than a cake stall (although I would reiterate a previous point that the embarrassing Marxists of our own era are the more wild-eyed conservative bloggers) and a handwritten inscription from the author to Brian Edwards "with respect"; Perspectives on Religion, an interesting collection of essays presented to a colloquium at Auckland University in 1974, just as Christian fundamentalism began its ascent; Best of 'Life After Closedown', which collects Tom Frewen's amusing columns for the Waiheke Gulf News between 1982 and 1987 (I figured $3 for a book with a picture of Tom in his Y-fronts on the cover was a bargain).
But the book I actually took with me to read was Trek out of Trouble, Noel Holmes' famous account of the 1960 All Black tour to South Africa, as endorsed by Warwick Roger and others. It is, indeed, a frank and fascinating work; an illumination of its time, but above all a rugby book. The best rugby book ever written here? Possibly.
And, in conclusion, I must testify that I came away from the island with three jars of Waiheke Island Herb Spread, a "gourmet blend of traditional and wild seasonal herbs and flowers" that is almost endlessly useful. It looks like (and can be used as) pesto, but I have also employed it to marinate boneless chicken thighs before finishing in my new Anuka electric smoker, and stuffed it, Jamie Oliver-style, under the breast skin of a roast chook. Brilliant every time. Those hippies know what they're doing.
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