Just to show you how, in the hiring process, New Zealand gives much more weight to identity than to merit, I enclose part of the job description for the position of Chief Operating Officer of Wellington Water, the water utility for the Greater Wellington region (Wellington, a lovely city, is the capital of New Zealand). The document was sent to me by a Kiwi who, of course, wishes to remain anonymous (you are not allowed to point out things like this for fear of losing your job or being demoted).
At the end of the whole job description (I have it on pdf), there’s a “person specification”, which gives both the “essential” and the “desired” qualities of the person to be hired. Note that experience in working in such a water system (“three waters” delivery refers to drinking water, storm water, and sewage) or having established a network in the water sector are only “desired” qualities (including a bachelor’s degree).
But the essential qualities, part of which I’ve outlined in red, include “an understanding and knowledge of te ao Maori, tikanga and the principles relating to Te Tiriti o Waitangi”. Here’s the end of the ad:
I’ll explain the three terms. Teo ao Māori is defined this way by the University of Otago in NZ:
Te Ao Māori denotes the Māori World. While simple in definition, it is rich in meaning and vast in breadth and depth.
Here, Te Ao Māori refers to three key areas:
- te Reo Māori (Māori language)
- Tikanga Māori (protocols and customs)
- te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi)
Together, these three areas will provide you with a broad overview, and hopefully, a better understanding of Māori culture and Māori realities.
“Tikanga” is Māori social lore, defined this way:
Tikanga, or societal lore within Māori culture, can best be described as behavioural guidelines for living and interacting with others. Tikanga tends to be based on experience and learning that has been handed down through generations, also deeply rooted in logic and common sense. While concepts of tikanga are constant, their practice can vary between iwi and hapū. For example, the way in which a hapū greet and welcomemanuhiri (visitors) may differ from the way another hapū extends greetings to its manuhiri. However, both will ensure that they meet their responsibilities of manaakitanga (hospitality) to host and care for their visitors.
Participating in a different culture requires a base level of awareness and understanding, which takes both time and patience. If you are unfamiliar with tikanga, learn as much as you can from as many sources as possible; this will enrich your experiences with the culture and improve your ability to participate more fully, and with greater confidence . Remember, ‘When in Rome, do as Romans do!’
And, finally, to run the water system you have to know the principles of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, regarded as a sacred document in New Zealand and used as the basis of the indigenous people’s attempt to gain power and equity.
Seriously, why do you even need these “qualifications” to run a water system?
Only if you know what’s going on in New Zealand can you see why the qualifications are given this way: identity—that is, Māori descent—is much more important than skills. As my correspondent wrote, quoted with permission:
So woke and DEI still rule in our capital city. The Person Specification is also borderline racist, because it is unlikely that anyone other than a Maori would be deemed to be sufficiently steeped in te ao Maori and tikanga.
The correspondent added this:
Given the required skill set, it will not surprise you to learn that Wellington has the most poorly maintained and least efficient water supply and sewerage system of any major city in New Zealand, and routinely loses more than 50 per cent of the water stored in its supply dams because of an enormous number of leaks in the reticulation system.
When I asked for evidence that Wellington’s water system is indeed in bad shape, the reader sent me a bunch of stuff (too much to post), including this headline from the New Zealand Herald (check the photos, click to read):
As if that wasn’t enough indication of trouble, this is from the Wellington Scoop last May (click to read):
From Wellington Water‘s own website, highlighting the problems; click to read:
Their “story” (again on their website; click to read):
An important aspect of Wellington Water’s story is “te mana o te wai”, essentially meaning “the spirit of the water”. And that, of course, can be divined only by Maori.
Bolding below is mine. Note the prevalence of indigenous concepts involving superstition:
Te Mana o te Wai
As a water services provider, on behalf of its shareholding councils, Wellington Water is required to give effect to te mana o te wai. Te mana o te wai is an expression in te reo Māori of the essential health of water, its significance to Māori, and the obligations everyone has towards water. Te mana o te wai is embedded as a fundamental concept in the management of water under the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, and giving effect to te mana o te wai is a requirement of water services providers under the Water Services Act, overseen through Taumata Arowai.
Wellington Water carries out this duty by working with iwi mana whenua within its area of operations to understand and give effect to their expressions of te mana o te wai. This includes the aspiration to begin long term strategy and planning processes from a position of understanding iwi priorities, through to working with iwi [“iwi” are Māori tribes] on service delivery.
To further support this work, Wellington Water carries out ongoing training for staff on the principles of Te Tiriti, in te reo Māori, and capability building in te ao Māori me nga tikanga Māori. [“The Māori world and the Māori culture”]
“Mana” is, according to the Māori, a supernatural force in a person, place or object”that pervades all objects and gives them “power, prestige, and authority”.
New Zealanders of all stripes should be embarrassed that they so blatantly put ancestry above merit. Perhaps if they prized merit more, the Wellington Water system would not be in so much trouble.
I find the NZ news depressing. I’ll just point out, though, that graduate work is “Essential” but a BA is only “Desired”. I think they were focusing on the wrong thing when they put this job listing together.
It’s truly depressing. If I lived there I’d be looking to leave. They seem hopeless—doomed to slide into mediocrity.
I noticed that too. And not graduate work in engineering.
Two thoughts come to mind :
I’ve been wondering if “DEI” and its varieties are unfalsifiable – such that if the ideology collides with reality in a way that falsifies the ideology, the ideology cannot be blamed because material factors carry more weight.
Here’s a test – let’s pretend we didn’t just read the post above.
What, specifically, does the following statement refer to:
“While simple in definition, it is rich in meaning and vast in breadth and depth.”
It’s like a riddle – what does the it refer to. But of course, the answer is already established – to advance esoteric praxis.
I thought I had “1.” and “2.”.
WordPress Gremlins!
The reason for the leaks is that the water spirits yearn to breathe free and will not submit to the bonds of earthly dams and pipes. I can see why a wrangler with deep knowledge of Te Ao Maori would be needed to corral them.
Either that or call in The Ghostbusters.
Here’s a big problem for the rest of the anglosphere that nobody has brought up yet.
While the vibe shift and moral permission to push back against all aspects of woke is alive and thriving in these US, I expect an OPPOSITE reaction in the anglosphere where anti-Trumpism is so intense it almost glows in the dark.
This is built upon a foundation (I know in Oz and NZ b/c I’ve lived in both) of anti-Americanism in general. It is stronger in NZ than elsewhere: they won’t even let American warships (since the 1980s, some anti-nuclear sand in their panties complaint) and NZ were nearly pushed out of 5 eyes intel sharing lately. Anti-Americanism and anti-Trumpism is cool and powerful there.
So as a reaction to our experience in the US, and Trump, do expect the blast of pro-woke heels in balls out hysteria towards MORE woke. Which includes the sacralization of the indigenous. Just watch…
I read the other day how unpopular Elon is in the UK (seventy something % opposed to him), a version of the above I think.
Sorry kiwi mates, you’re cactus as you say. 🙂
D.A.
NYC
D.A.
NYC
Thanks for the info. I think Canada was somewhat less anti-American, although a strong strain always existed.
I was never in that category but Trump is pushing me there. He doesn’t realize how much damage he’s doing.
You might like to call it anti Americanism but in the case of navy vessels, it was more to do with nuclear powered vessels. We were ok with conventional powered but the US navy would not disclose which were and which weren’t. Fair enough too. All brought on or not helped by France doing their nuke testing in the Pacific and not in their own backyard.
That doesn’t seem as if it can be right. Nuclear power is obvious at a glance from the absence of smokestacks, and no smoke while under way. All nuclear-powered ships in the U.S. Navy have an “N” in their official hull designations, the numerical part they display prominently. USS Nimitz is CVN-68, displayed as “68”. Fossil-fuel-powered USS Sampson, which assisted Kaikoura, is DDG-102. No N. During the Cold War the USN built a small number of nuclear-powered guided missile cruisers designated CG(N), now all decommissioned. In-service cruisers are all CGs. In a pinch, Wikipedia will disambiguate, with detailed public-domain descriptions of the power plants of every ship in the world, it seems. The New Zealand Navy would surely know which American ships are nuclear propelled, to be able advise the Government about allowing or inviting a port visit if it wanted to.
The US Navy might be unwilling to disclose officially which ships have nuclear reactors but it is common knowledge that the only surface ships so powered are the eleven big aircraft carriers.
Armament is another story….
To me, it would be more logical to bar ships from France.
You are wrong. New Zealand does not prohibit visits from American warships. Since 1984, nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed ships have been banned from using New Zealand ports or entering New Zealand waters. Under the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987, territorial sea, land and airspace of New Zealand became nuclear-free zones. American warships would be permitted in our waters if their captains declared honestly that they were neither nuclear-powered nor nuclear-armed. However, the NCND policy adopted by NATO means nobody will confirm or deny that a ship carries nuclear weapons. So American (and British) warships cannot visit. French warships, on the other hand, can and do visit, because the French are sensible and happily confirm that the visiting ships do not carry nuclear arms.
New Zealanders are generally anti-Trump because your president is a liar, a bully, a felon and a rapist. We also stand alongside our Commonwealth partners, including Canada.
If the French Navy is willing to declare that its ships aren’t nuclear-armed it just means its ships will be exempted from nuclear-risk combat. Nice work if you can get it. As regards New Zealand, France may be feeling sensitive about her earlier nuclear weapons testing program among her South Pacific colonial possessions. NZ’s Government and public bitterly and noisily opposed it and the French at the time rudely thumbed their noses at them.
As you say, it has long been the policy of the United States Navy to neither confirm nor deny officially that any of its ships carry nuclear arms. That’s a policy that NZ doesn’t have any say in. You do you but it’s not about you. After the fall of the USSR the Navy let it be known it was disembarking nuclear bombs and missile warheads from its surface fleet. Most of these were part of anti-aircraft and anti-submarine weapons for fleet defence rendered obsolete by advances in guidance but the stand-down did include land-attack cruise missiles and bombs for naval fighter-bombers. This is not to say they couldn’t quietly re-embark the offensive weapons in a crisis, to complicate an adversary’s planning in the face of uncertainty….and who knows that they haven’t?
NZ’s anti-nuclear policy seems to have some wiggle room, as any good policy must. To allow a foreign warship to visit NZ waters, the Prime Minister need only satisfy himself from doing his own research that the ship is not nuclear -armed or -propelled. The ship’s commander (nor the navy’s government) doesn’t have to tell him anything. After the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake cut the town off from the outside world, a nuclear-capable Arleigh-Burke-class destroyer (which the PM had allowed under the anti-nuclear policy to visit Auckland to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the RNZN scheduled for a few days later) stood off Kaikoura with warships from other navies, plus auxiliary ships from New Zealand, to provide first assistance in the emergency. The foreign warships supplied the town by helicopter from their own crew stores.
To my understanding the residents were grateful and not terrified of being blown up. Nonetheless the help of the U.S. Navy, whose destroyer was by far the largest ship in the region, was not a topic of conversation among Kiwis in Christchurch and Nelson when we visited three months later. I only read about it after we returned home. It wasn’t exactly old news as the town was still hanging by a thread. I’m sure the NZ government did thank the governments of the participating navies graciously, of course.
It seems if New Zealand really wants a US Navy ship to visit she can allow it without difficulty, politely turning a blind eye if necessary. Fortunately for Kaikoura, USS Sampson (and the small frigate HMCS Vancouver) were already in the neighbourhood by invitation to a party thousands of miles from home.
Our government does not turn a blind eye or make exceptions. The US Government did that.
New Zealand is a sovereign nation and we make our own policy. We do not have a say in the NATO (not US) policy of NCND, and we don’t care. It is not our business. But keeping nukes out of our territory is our business, and you don’t have a say in that.
At the risk of repeating myself, I again recommend Lionel Shriver’s acerbic 2024 novel “Mania”. It is an only slightly exaggerated meditation on what the management of Wellington’s water system represents.
Just downloaded a sample. Looks interesting, thanks.
Please continue repeating; it’s a good read.
Excellent. Lionel Shriver is the only fiction writer I read now.
Mania is one of her best.
Don’t miss her column in the Spectator and her occasional interviews with same on youtube. I’d love her at my dinner parties.
D.A.
NYC/Florida
I second this recommendation. Loved it.
I am no linguist, but to me “te mana o te Wai” reads suspiciously as a construction borrowed form english, where te=the, o= of, and wai=water. This is not the first time I notice western (english) etymologies in maturanga lexicon. This is odd, since I only ever read it here (i.e western words and concepts must be very common in maori speach). I wonder how is it that ancient, deep, all encompassing and culture defining maori concepts are expressed only with the help of western words?
You are not a linguist and you know nothing about te reo. That is obvious.
Which I freely admit. Now, do you have any argument to disprove my hypothesis that word like “te” and “o” are not adaptations of the english words “the” and “of”? If you share them I would be less ignorant, indeed.
When Captain Cook arrived he found the South Island was called Te Wai Pounamu.
This is a camouflaged way of hiring only Maori applicants. It’s racist, plain and simple.
NZ almost certainly has laws against hiring, especially government hiring, along racial lines. By having a “qualification” that is so tailored to a specific ethnicity, it both dissuades white/non-Maori applicants and, should non-Maori water engineers happen to also have experience in Maori religious gobbledygook, it gives cover to why only Maori applicants were considered. It’s the jobs version of a Jim Crow era bathroom sign. “Maori only”
If the same utility posted a job opening and had a required qualification which had zero to do with the job itself, but essentially eliminated everyone but a specific white group (must be fluent in Icelandic, or deeply versed in knowledge surrounding the 1979 Montreal Canadiens hockey team), there would a lawsuit and a media uproar.
Frankly, there SHOULD be a lawsuit, even if the NZ media is too chickensh-t to say word one.
Presumably NZ does have laws against race-based hiring, which is why job postings intending to engage in race-based hiring have to engage in such subterfuge so that race-based hiring can’t be proved. But NZ has no Constitution. Parliament can pass any law it chooses to. If these ads were found to violate whatever law, Parliament could simply repeal the law and render the conduct legal. You see, laws against racial discrimination are really there only to protect minority races. They say you can’t discriminate by race. But what they really mean is that you can’t discriminate against minority oppressed races. If your goal is now to discriminate against the majority oppressor race, the race-neutral law becomes an impediment to progressive progress and must be finessed or amended.
Popular political opposition to a law permitting explicit race-based reverse discrimination might be less vigorous than one might think. Canada’s Constitution explicitly permits reverse discrimination in favour of “historically disadvantaged” groups and no one is rioting. So employers not worried about merit can, and do, say in job postings that applications will be considered only from Black (note upper-case B), indigenous, homosexual, or transgendered people, and other “equity-deserving” groups. (Women don’t always count anymore, especially in the academic, medical, and civil-service fields where they are hardly under-represented.)
Jerry has written about our practice, too. It is perhaps less interesting to a Fact vs. Faith audience because it dispenses with the indigenous spiritual gibberish the NZ policy stinks of and goes straight to the nitty-gritty: power.
Parliament is sovereign, and can pass any legislation it sees fit, because New Zealand is a democracy. New Zealand has a constitution, as recognised by the Constitution Act 1986, the principal formal statement of New Zealand’s constitutional arrangements. The constitution is not a single document but is to be found in that Act and in other statutes (such as the Ombudsmen Act 1975, the Official Information Act 1982, the Public Finance Act 1989 and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990), the Treaty of Waitangi and in conventions.
New Zealand also has institutions to protect citizens’ rights; these include a Human Rights Commission, which employs a Race Relations Commissioner. If race-based hiring occurred, a citizen could make a formal complaint to this person.
I suggest you do some reading before you make claims about this country.
You are correct in your very important objection that New Zealand, like all Parliamentary countries, has a constitution made up of unwritten Westminster conventions and various statutes and other documents that define who does what. That was my mistake to say it has no constitution.
What New Zealand does not have, and Canada has only imperfectly, are constitutional limits on the degree to which the state can use majority rule in Parliament to constrain individual freedoms or treat its people unequally before the law.
Rather, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is, as you note, only an Act of Parliament, which means Parliament can repeal or amend it any time it chooses. Not only that, the Government (in the person of the Attorney-General) can notify Parliament that a proposed bill directed at some other purpose is likely to violate the Bill of Rights, and then pass it through Parliament with its legislative majority if it really really wants to. (I presume this provision is used only rarely.)
Section 4 seems to say that the Bill of Rights doesn’t have any teeth: no law shall be declared invalid or unenforceable solely because it contradicts it.
As you agree, New Zealand’s Parliament can amend or repeal by simple majority vote any law that is inconveniently worded for the purpose desired by the Government of the day. Parliament could abolish the Human Rights Commission, disemploy the Race Relations Commissioner, or change the terms of his remit, to side only with oppressed-race complainants, say.
But it doesn’t have to go to all that trouble to allow race-based hiring. Under Sec 19 (2) of the NZBORA, reverse discrimination in the form of affirmative action already does not constitute discrimination that would be otherwise illegal under the Human Rights Act. So, yes, a citizen could make a complaint to the Race Relations Commissioner about being on the short end of race-based hiring but the Commissioner could choose to say Yes, you were discriminated against but it was legal because you are white.
This was really my point. NZ does in no way, not even in its Bill of Rights, protect all its citizens from unequal race-based treatment before the law.
https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1990/0109/latest/DLM224792.html
You are talking in hypotheticals. None of what you are imagining happens. And Sec 19 (2) of the NZBORA does not work the way you think it does.
The situation in New Zealand has been covered extensively on this site over a fairly long period, with plentiful evidence. So any claim that all’s right with the country is more likely to add denial to the long list of supposed troubles than to convince anyone.
To me, the most damning fact is the insistence of Prof. Coyne’s informants to remain anonymous. In a truly democratic society, citizens voice their experience and opinions without fear. The wish to hide one’s identity reveals a cancel culture. Americans have already been there; and after years of being unable to say loud what they thought about men in women-only spaces and incompetent people promoted because of their pigmentation, they resorted to the extreme measure of electing the president you like so little.
You have one source for opinions about a country. You do no research, ask no questions. When someone from that country rejects those opinions, your reaction is hostile. You dismiss his views on the grounds that your source is extensive and long-established. You have no curiosity, nothing to ask him.
Maybe you are in denial.
Maybe Coyne’s informants wish to remain anonymous because they are talking bollocks. Maybe if you looked at job advertising in New Zealand, you would find requirements of the kind discussed here are commonplace, unexceptional. Maybe if you asked New Zealanders, they would tell you they have never heard of anyone being rejected for a job because of such a requirement. Maybe nobody knows of a case where such a requirement has been used to ensure Māori are preferred.
Maybe if you looked at the employment statistics, you would find that Māori are not overrepresented in management positions. But you wouldn’t do that, would you?
Maya, Paul Litterick said,
Maybe if you looked at job advertising in New Zealand, you would find requirements of the kind discussed here are commonplace, unexceptional.
I think that is your very point, Maya. Only a few people do find it exceptional and those are the ones who write to Jerry. How can it be bollocks if the job posting contains the words the correspondent says it does? Is Paul accusing the correspondent of doctoring the job ad, and not wanting to be caught out? Well, no, because Paul says these ads as written are commonplace and unexceptional.
Maybe if you asked New Zealanders, they would tell you they have never heard of anyone being rejected for a job because of such a requirement.
Does that mean what the job posting says the job requires, knowledge of Maori ways of knowing, is therefore not really a job requirement and is just in there for window-dressing, like a land acknowledgement? Something is in there as a job requirement but no one is ever rejected for not meeting it? What do Maori people think about that? Are they being patronized and laughed at behind their backs? Or maybe non-Maori know when they’re not wanted and don’t even apply?
Paul goes on to say,
Maybe if you looked at the employment statistics, you would find that Māori are not overrepresented in management positions.
I’ll concede that might well be true. But that’s the whole point of DEI, and its perniciousness. It is invoked when the under-representation of a target group (Maori in this case) is ascribed to racism. Remedial measures, some overt, some sly, are taken that set merit aside in order to hire more of that race. That is what DEI just is. You don’t look for the best candidate. You look for the best Maori candidate because you have to make your numbers. And as long as you never get to parity, the DEI program and its administrators live long and prosper.
Paul has insisted that the plain words of NZ legislation don’t mean what they say. OK, that’s often how the law works. But is that also true of job postings that ordinary laymen have to understand?
Finally, Jerry’s correspondent said,
“So woke and DEI still rule in our capital city. The Person Specification is also borderline racist, because it is unlikely that anyone other than a Maori would be deemed to be sufficiently steeped in te ao Maori and tikanga.”
Does Paul disagree with this interpretation of what the hiring authority is looking for?
And when you go there, don’t drink the water! (Bada boom)
This reminded me of an old Russian joke: “Water does not quench thirst, I tried it once” (rhymed in the original).
This is what the kids call a “hot take” but I’ll toss it out there. Woke activists are very similar to communists in this respect…they don’t understand and are not interested in how things are made. By “things”, I mean the production of wealth and advanced knowledge. They tend to believe that these things just occur and are unfairly controlled by the oppressor class, and therefore must be forcibly taken and redistributed.
The early communists like Lenin believed that operating a business was an easy bookkeeping exercise, which the fat capitalists did while the laborers did all the real work. He quickly found out that running an operation was much more complicated than it looked.
Similarly, the woke tend to believe that producing and maintaining scientific knowledge and advanced technology is a dawdle…anybody can do it. South Africa has experienced this in the past few decades as large scale farms run by white famers have been taken from them and suddenly given to the indigenous population, with disastrous results. I actually heard a liberal academic defend this practice, claiming that running a farm is just “throwing some seeds into the ground” and therefore refused to blame these failing farms on the lack of knowledge of their new owners.
The woke are great at pulling down structures, but not so great at building them up.
+++
youtube has just posted a brief piece from heretics.clips, which you may well have already seen, in which Richard Dawkins has his say on all this. Mainly echoing everything that you have been posting for months now. But always good to hear his take on this subject.
You should give the link, even if it means embedding the video in a comment. Thanks.
https://youtu.be/GWLF1RD0UfU?si=7TdFROqeEuMio2KO
This is the link for Dawkins take.
Excellent!
Thanks for linking to that. It’s quite ironic, really, how particular veins of the “two sides” have dovetailed. This is why people like Dawkins and Sam Harris are despised by the woke, the religious, etc. The more truth they tell the greater the number of interest groups who hate them. I’m thinking back to when I still lived in midtown (the region of Tucson near the University) and I’d pass people’s houses with the signs– we’ve all seen them– “this house believes no person is ever illegal”, written in English, Spanish and Arabic. Or, “We believe in science”. The list of pretentious, performative declarations goes on. Meanwhile, most of the houses posting such signs in their yards had very high brick walls with locked entrances. Too much stupidity and hypocrisy to list…
Re Wellington’s water woes, AIUI a big problem is that water there isn’t metered. That’s right. There may be no free lunch, but there’s lots of free drink.
A further problem is that Wellington, being our capital city, is disproportionately populated by woke-leaning civil servants and elects left wing councillors with faith in the inexhaustible supply of other people’s money. In the last national election it was the one region to resist NZ’s modest lurch rightwards.
Even knowing the parlous state of their under-maintained water system, local councillors readily spend money they don’t have on visible nice-to-haves rather than on need-to-haves.
On the wider issues raised by Jerry’s post, a real estate agent has just lost her court case (with serious consequences for her career) to be exempted from compulsory professional training in Maori language, culture, and the Treaty of Waitangi – training she considers irrelevant to her job and inconsistent with her religion. For more detail, read
https://www.times.co.nz/news/real-estate-agent-janet-dickson-loses-court-fight-over-maori-course/
The judge’s quoted explanation includes that the real estate licensing authority’s rules state that agents “must also avoid any conduct that would bring the industry into disrepute”. Wow. As if the blatant unfairness and unreasonableness of the authority’s mandatory indoctrination (in the guise of Professional Development) doesn’t do that all by itself. (And the repute of the industry in general is already pretty dis, no?)
I recommend that readers take the 5 minutes needed to read the linked article, if you have the time and the stomach for it.
You should see all the hardly used bike lanes in Wellington. They paid and built them over our pipes and the Botanical Gardens, a popular place is now somewhat denied to those with limited access as there are so few parks for cars now. And yeah, water is on so many roads.
Oh, god. The compulsory bike lanes. Where no one rides bikes. Like the slum I live in. The City Councilman forced it in, had photos taken to prove how they’re “taking care of the marginalized” and they left. Nobody rides bikes down here. Well, maybe on the sidewalk, riding against traffic as they’re escaping a crime. And the weeds have grown over the bike lane and the empty beer bottles and cans pile up. Build it, take a photo, get credit, leave!
Well, at certain times of the day they get some modest use and a few in major arteries do.
So, a few were well planned, most weren’t.
Meanwhile, our water/sewerage pipes are breaking, the public transport has issues (getting better) and old people can’t see the flowers.
Yes, I took off on a tangent with my bike lane rant which in the example I gave had nothing to do with the water management discussion.
Misdirected resources and engineering much of the time regardless.
If any readers are interested in applying for the COO job you can do so here, where the full job description may be downloaded:
https://jacksonstone.co.nz/job/bh-11192-chief-operating-officer/
Te Mana o te Wai is a curious one. It was first made part of the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management in 2014, in a fairly minimalist way. It seemed to amount to little more than a recognition of “the importance of fresh water in supporting a healthy ecosystem”, much as people talk about the rivers as the “lifeblood of England”, although even then with animistic overtones eg “Iwi and hapū have a kinship relationship with the natural environment, including fresh water, through shared whakapapa.” In subsequent versions of the policy in 2017 and 2020 the scope of the notion was dramatically expanded, with a significantly expanded governance role for Māori – eg “Tangata whenua are actively involved in freshwater management (including decision-making processes), and Māori freshwater values are identified and provided for.”
For a sample of Advanced Thinking in NZ on the topic, there is this – “Te Mana o te Wai. Relating to and through the charisma of water”:
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003218272-11/te-mana-te-wai-dan-hikuroa-billie-lythberg
Talk of cycle lanes and the decaying water infrastructure here reminded me of this, which probably shouldn’t have amused me, but it did:
https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/360555876/water-gushes-out-thorndon-quay-cycleway
Not to worry about things of this sort. If water floods over a bikeway, doesn’t that enhance its whakapapa?
In the “Our story” page, replace all mentions of anything maori with feng shui, and see if it has any more merit, or if the council members would agree it is equally essential to maoris in NZ.
Since the 1960s even earlier, it is the Kiwi ethos, Kiwis have been devaluing professional culture and education. It has produced generations of to quote an American saying, “engineers with grunts”. That is technically very smart but intellectually very stupid. A once first world country is getting a reputation as a joke country. I have been a prophet in the wilderness and only now are the Kiwis waking up.
Context that is completely missing here is that whilst the applicant is required to ‘understand and respect’ the principles of the treaty of Waitangi —- there is no actual written definition of any principles. They change and evolve continuously depending on which person you talk to or what the subject is.
Seems like a feature, not a bug.
I suppose if a Maori candidate for the water job is interviewed they won’t ask him about it. They’ll take one look at him and assume he’ll just know. Like jazz.