Profits, Dividends or Customers?
The Herald made a valiant attempt to explain last Friday how Air New Zealand had managed to produce a record $663 million profit. They quoted the Chief Executive, Christopher Luxon, as attributing the result to the tourist boom, the fall in fuel costs, improved cost control in general and the efforts of a dedicated staff – all of which no doubt had a part to play.
He was not reported, however, as mentioning another significant factor – the pressure exerted by the government to maximise profits (and therefore the dividend the government is paid), even at the expense of neglecting Air New Zealand’s responsibilities as the national carrier.
This latter factor is of particular significance to a large number of hitherto loyal Air New Zealand customers, who would willingly remain loyal given half a chance, but who have been left high and dry by the withdrawal of services from various less populated parts of the country. Those erstwhile customers include me and my friends, neighbours and family, whose service from Whakatane was arbitrarily withdrawn a year or so ago.
It is not only individual travellers who suffer the consequences of this decision. The local economy takes a hit as well, since the inability to fly to other parts of the country and back will deter many others from living in a spot which suddenly seems to have become so inaccessible.
We are, on the whole, well served by the providers of national services, most of whom recognise and discharge their responsibilities to the further-flung parts of our country. Power and telecom companies do their best to disregard and overcome the problems of remoteness. The Post Office continues to maintain their excellent rural delivery service. But Air New Zealand pulled the plug in the interests of maximising profits; they seem to operate on a rather restricted definition of what it means to be the “national” carrier.
It was not that there was insufficient demand. The direct flight to Wellington once a day had already been cancelled but the three or four daily flights to and from Auckland in a small 20-seater plane were usually pretty full. The problem seems to have been that a small plane is less economical to operate than, say, a 50-seater – and there wasn’t enough demand to justify that larger plane. Rather than settle for less than optimal profits and run the risk of disappointing its government shareholder, Air New Zealand was prepared to abandon its Whakatane customers – though no doubt expecting a non-reciprocal loyalty from them when it came to choosing an airline in which to travel overseas.
That would be bad enough. But when the small airline, Air Chathams, stepped into the breach and provided a very welcome substitute service, Air New Zealand again showed how little the interests of the customers they had deserted actually mattered to them. They showed no interest in co-ordinating schedules and ticketing arrangements with Air Chathams, with the result that passengers arriving at or departing from Auckland on their way to or from Whakatane are treated as though the trip between Whakatane and Auckland has nothing to do with Air New Zealand. The fact that passengers fly Air New Zealand from Wellington to Auckland only as part of a journey to Whakatane is of no concern to our national carrier; when we step off the Air New Zealand flight, they wash their hands of us all over again.
It is not possible, for example, to get a single ticket for the journey from Whakatane to Wellington or vice versa. Nor is it possible for those whose membership pf the Koru Club has been paid for or earned as frequent flyers to use the Koru Lounge In Auckland if they fly Air New Zealand to Auckland then and have a long wait for the onward Air Chathams flight to Whakatane. They are refused access to the Lounge because they do not have an onward Air New Zealand ticket. It is not only, in other words, the Whakatane flight that has been withdrawn but also any consideration as an Air New Zealand customer.
Air New Zealand may care little about their customers but they do have the comfort of pleasing not only their own Minister but also the Minister of Finance. The half billion dollars they have contributed to the government’s coffers may have been earned at the expense of hitherto loyal customers but will have earned golden opinions from Air New Zealand’s ministerial owners who seem equally unconcerned about those living in less populated areas of the country. Perhaps Christopher Luxon has a little more explaining to do about that $663 million.
Bryan Gould
29 August 2016
Is There Something Wrong With Aussie Sport?
Is There Something Wrong with Aussie Sport?
The news that Australian Olympians returning from Rio have been given a hard time by the Australian media and public for the alleged paucity of their medal haul will, sadly, have come as little surprise to Kiwi sports fans. It is further evidence that there may be something wrong with the Aussie attitude to sport.
Sporting success for our trans-Tasman cousins is no longer, it seems, something to be welcomed and celebrated when it comes along, but is rather to be expected, even demanded. And when the demand isn’t met, those who were the best the country could put forward, but whose best wasn’t quite good enough to top the world, are pilloried as failures.
This is the latest addition to what is becoming a distressingly substantial catalogue of apparent Aussie failures to understand what sport, and being a “good sport”, is all about. Kiwis will not need reminding of the infamous underarm bowling episode – the classic instance of winning at all costs – but there are more recent instances that also give cause for criticism and concern.
It is, after all, Australian cricketers who have made an art-form out of “sledging” – perhaps they even invented the term as well as the practice? The abusing of opponents in the course of a sporting contest in order to unsettle them has been so much normalised by Aussie cricketers that it is now regarded as an essential and justifiable weapon in their armoury – to the extent that skill in sledging is now regarded as a badge of distinction and a distinctive feature of Australian determination to achieve success by any means, whether fair or foul. It is surely a practice that has no place on a sports field.
Its close association with Australian sport was exemplified in the last Cricket World Cup when New Zealand’s failure, or rather refusal, to follow the practice was regarded as a deliberate ploy and underhand tactic to unsettle their Aussie opponents – the Kiwis, we were told, were “too nice”.
Perhaps the most extreme example of the tactic came, however, in a different sport, though the perpetrator was another Australian. The promising young Aussie tennis player, Nick Kyrgios, perhaps misled by his elders, has already earned a reputation for bad behaviour; his charge sheet – for smashing rackets and abusing umpires – is already shamefully long, but he excelled himself on an infamous occasion by going out of his way to divulge to his opponent as they crossed at the net a piece of personal and private information about his opponent’s girlfriend.
The aim could not have been other than to gain an advantage by upsetting his opponent. What sort of sport or sporting ethic would foster or sanction such behaviour or believe for a moment that winning was more important than treating people decently? The worrying aspect for Australian sport is that such behaviour does not arise in a vacuum; it reflects standards that have been set by others and that encapsulate the belief that sporting success trumps any other consideration and is earned by those who are “tough” or “hard-headed” or “dinkum Aussie” enough to forsake ordinary norms of decent behaviour.
Rugby, inherently a game which rewards a “take no prisoners” approach, is refreshingly free from such attitudes – give or take the odd sneak attack on a Richie McCaw or Dan Carter. We hear occasionally, especially from the Northern hemisphere, that New Zealand’s success in rugby is attributable to our “physicality” and that we can be matched or beaten only by teams that show a similar imperviousness to the risk of injury or disregard for the rules. Fortunately, we are able, in most minds at least, to show that it is our skill and strategic understanding of the game, and not any greater willingness to break the rules, that underpins our success.
We should encourage our Aussie cousins, with whom we share so many sporting and other ties, to re-think their attitudes to sport. Yes, we – and they – are right to feel pride in our sporting achievements, but they are all the more meritorious if combined with a truly sporting attitude. Their value is diminished if a price is paid for them in terms of a departure from the widely recognised principles of fair play.
And when it comes to measuring success or failure, we should remember that the performances of our sports people are theirs alone and not expressions of some kind of national superiority. If we select our best performers and they do their best, but do not win, they may disappoint themselves, but they have not let us down. A sports competition is exactly that; it involves competitors and we have no jurisdiction over how good other competitors may be. We can expect no more of ours than that they do their best, in their own interests and not ours. To be good enough to represent their country is success enough.
No one doubts that Australians have a wonderful record of sporting success. But being Australian does not exempt sports people from the possibility of defeat or the demands of good sportsmanship. In both countries, we should be quick to say to our Olympians and to all those good enough to be selected to represent us in international competition, “Well done!”
Bryan Gould
25 August 2016
What Happened in the End?
Politicians and political journalists enjoy (if that is the right word) a symbiotic relationship. A state of respectful and mutual dependence is not always easy to maintain – as I should know, since I have been both.
Journalists depend on politicians to make the news – or at least part of it. The politicians are glad to oblige but are often displeased by what they see as the slant put upon what they do and say by the journalists. They depend on the journalists, on the other hand, to disseminate the news, while the journalists in turn are inclined to doubt that they are always given access to the full or truthful story.
The politicians are often inclined to agree with Stanley Baldwin who famously described the role of the press as “power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages” – a stinging remark he is said to have borrowed from his cousin, Rudyard Kipling.
Whatever the finer points of this somewhat testy relationship, we can surely agree that a free, fair and effective press is an essential element in a properly functioning democracy. And we should not accept Baldwin’s judgment that the power of the press can or should be exercised without responsibility. In particular, the role of the press is not just to raise issues, but to pursue them and explain them satisfactorily to the public.
A case in point is the story that recently hit the headlines. New Zealand steelmakers were reported as complaining that the Chinese were dumping sub-standard steel in our market, and thereby unfairly undercutting New Zealand producers. We were not alone in raising this issue; similar complaints have been made in a number of other countries.
“Dumping” is a practice that is outlawed by most trade agreements – both bilateral and multilateral. It is not hard to see why, since it means that a supposed trade “partner” can inflict great damage on another country’s industry by selling its product in that country at lower than the cost of production.
The Chinese reacted adversely to this criticism and threatened that they would retaliate by imposing sanctions on New Zealand exports to China if the criticism were pursued – at least, we were told that that threat had been made, although it was initially denied by the government and the Prime Minister. The media did their job, however, and it was eventually conceded that the threat had been made; this was confirmed by the agencies – such as Zespri – whose products had been mentioned as being vulnerable.
The next step in this saga was that exports of kiwifruit to China were halted for up to a fortnight. It seems that a fungus was discovered in a shipment of kiwifruit and Zespri decided to suspend exports until procedures for checking for the fungus had been improved and they could assure the Chinese that there would be no repeat – and, presumably, deny the Chinese any excuse to stop the trade themselves.
Any connection between this development and the earlier Chinese threats of retaliation were of course immediately denied, and it may be that there is indeed no connection. But the story seems to have died and the trail has gone cold. That means, one assumes, that – quite coincidentally – there has been no action by the government to deal with the dumping issue. If there had been, we would surely have heard about it and know something of the outcome.
We are entitled to ask whether the Chinese threat, whether or not followed up by the hiatus in our kiwifruit trade, was enough to deter our government (which never seems very keen to take on powerful interlocutors) from acting to investigate the complaints and protect the interests of New Zealand steelmakers? And, if no action has been taken, even just to investigate, why not, and why has this not been reported? Why, in other words, has the story been left hanging in the air?
The media, which did such a good job in bringing an important story to public attention, cannot duck out now. We need to know whether our most important trading partner is prepared to use threats of retaliation to deter even an investigation into, let alone action on, allegations of dumping; and we need to know whether our government will allow us to be bullied in this way. The responsibility of the press extends beyond simply reporting; we need investigation and explanation as well if we are to make sense of what is being done in our name.
Bryan Gould
16 August 2016
Not So Much Fun Now
The American Presidential election has been dominated over recent days by speculation about the mental fitness of the two main candidates. First, Donald Trump has picked up on a stray remark by Hillary Clinton that she had “short-circuited” a process over her e-mails when she was Secretary of State so as to suggest that “she wasn’t all there.” On the other side, and perhaps with rather more substance, there is an increasing chorus of voices, including a number from the Republicans themselves, concerned that Trump is “unfit to be President”.
Of even more immediate concern to the Republicans, however, must be the growing evidence that Trump is not only not fit to sit in the Oval Office – he’s not even fit to be a candidate. What’s more, his deficiencies in this regard are likely to be increasingly exposed the longer the campaign goes on.
It is not so much a case of mental illness as of personality type. It is clear that Trump has a very unusual personality, perhaps best described as narcissistic. Those with this kind of personality are entirely self-absorbed. They establish an image of themselves that is often at variance with reality and they use all their energies to try to build and conform to that image. They have no regard or concern for others, except to the extent that they support the image.
The narcissist goes to extreme lengths to feed his ego. He not only welcomes but demands flattery. He is prepared to embellish the truth and to invent stories that show him in a good light. He invents and endlessly repeats complimentary remarks made about him by others, and if others do not this in sufficient numbers, he will do so himself. He insists on being seen as successful, rich and a great lover, even if the facts do not support such opinions.
For Trump, the primary elections were a godsend. They were tailor-made to feed his need for fame and recognition. They allowed him endless television exposure every day across the whole country (and beyond). He had adoring crowds at his rallies, waiting to be roused to anger, amused and above all shocked by the unexpected things he would say. And, best of all, he could confirm his self-image as a winner.
In state after state, he could take on a series of challengers – lesser mortals – who, one by one, were vanquished and fell by the wayside. He took risks, exhibiting a behaviour that would normally have condemned a would-be President as unbalanced, and got away with it – indeed, his supporters rewarded him for it. And then, with only a couple of hiccups at the Convention, he was nominated – quite clearly against the wishes of the Republican hierarchy – as the Republican Presidential candidate. What greater evidence did he need that he was indeed unique and unstoppable?
But the American Presidential campaign is very long. There are still three months to go. And insulting one opponent is not as much fun as insulting sixteen. Nor does it command so many headlines and popular support.
And what does a narcissist do when events contrive to suggest that the self-image is at risk? What does Donald Trump do when the polls begin to show that he is significantly trailing behind his opponent – that he looks more like a potential loser than a winner? What does he do when even some of his own side indicate their reluctance to support him?
What he is most likely to do is to return to the behaviours that earned him such success in the primary elections. But to make yet more outrageous statements, to alienate opinion – even friendly opinion – by showing that he would be prepared to insult and trash friends, allies, neighbours, war heroes, would only confirm in the correctness of their judgment that growing number who regard him as unfit to be President.
And can he really contemplate three months of public attention while someone who demands adulation and who “likes only winners” slowly and painfully comes apart, with only the ability to shock as the last weapon in his armoury? Campaigning was fun while he was knocking out his opponents; but can a Donald Trump personality really bear to go through three months of purgatory while he – and the world – watch the polls turn against him so that ending up as a loser becomes inevitable?
The Republican Party must be asking itself these self-same questions. Many Republican leaders no doubt foresaw this scenario. Their concern will not be for Trump’s psyche but for the damage that his unravelling could do to Republican candidates in this and future elections. The very existence of the Party itself as a contender for political power could be in jeopardy.
So, stand by for some interesting further twists in this saga over the next three months. What is likely to unfold is not quite a Shakespearean tragedy – Trump has significantly more than one fatal flaw – but it is by no means certain that he will last the distance. What is unclear is precisely who will pull the rug from under his feet – his so-called supporters or the man himself.
Bryan Gould
10 August 2016
Whose Interests Count?
The imprisonment of hundreds of New Zealanders in notoriously unpleasant and dangerous detention centres by the Australian authorities, and their eventual deportation back to New Zealand, is hardly what we should expect of our Anzac brothers in arms. Yes, these are convicted criminals who have served jail sentences; but they have done their time and would, if they were Australians, be free to re-enter society and earn a living like any other citizen.
A clear case of discrimination in other words. People who, in many cases, have lived and worked most of their lives in Australia have been ill-treated (and the recent instances in the Northern Territory show just how “ill” that treatment in Australian detention centres can be) and thrown out of the country with their families, not because they have criminal records but simply because they are not Australians but New Zealanders.
Legal specialists and a handful of commentators in both countries have raised objections but, so far, the issue has attracted little attention from the wider public, perhaps because sympathy is in short supply for convicted criminals. But a New Zealand government that is truly concerned to ensure the proper and non-discriminatory treatment of all its citizens would surely have raised serious objections with their Australian counterparts to this obvious breach of human rights.
Yet our Prime Minister seems to have let the issue pass him by. He claims to have raised the issue with Malcolm Turnbull but, if so, it has had no discernible effect. His ineffectualness has reinforced a pattern that has become all too familiar.
In complete contrast to the usual Kiwi attitude of being ready to right a wrong no matter how powerful the wrongdoer, our government is very careful about the issues and opponents it is prepared to take on. It’s impossible to imagine John Key ever initiating a nuclear-free policy against American opposition. He would rather duck a confrontation, if public opinion allows it to do so, than take the action needed to set things right.
It is keeping in with public opinion, rather than its responsibilities to serve the national interest, that dictates how the government behaves. They have made an art form, through focus groups and qualitative polling, of tracking how that opinion develops on issues that might cause concern. Only when the level of that concern rises to threaten the government with public disapproval does it see the need to respond.
In those circumstances, the government has developed a range of responses, carefully calibrated according to how much notice it needs to take and what level of reaction will see the problem resolved. We see constant instances of this syndrome.
The problem of New Zealand detainees in Australia has apparently not so far breached the threshold that requires a government response. As the level of concern rises, however, the government will first deny that there is any basis for disquiet. The concern about foreign trusts and tax evasion, for example, was met initially by a simple assertion from John Key that our rules were exemplary and that concern was misplaced. He was confident that his assertion alone would be enough to resolve the issue. It was only as the facts emerged, and the polling presumably showed a rising level of disapproval, that concessions started to be made.
Similarly, the response to the reported threat of Chinese retaliation if a complaint were to be made about the dumping of Chinese steel in our market was initially to deny categorically that any such threat had been made. It was only little by little that the truth emerged and, typically enough, a junior minister was left to carry the can.
Examples of this syndrome can be multiplied many times over. We see another unfolding before our eyes with reports that the European Union is to investigate New Zealand’s alleged readiness to accommodate tax evasion. Time and again, the government’s preferred strategy is first to deny all knowledge of a reported threat, and then to take a carefully gradated series of steps until it believes it has done enough to allay public concern.
Underlying this pattern is the government’s constant concern not to alienate its own supporters or its powerful partners while at the same time appearing to be responsive to public opinion. So, in matters of safety at work for example, the interests of farmers or the forestry industry are protected, even if the price to be paid is the lives of workers. If the issue is equal pay for equal work, or decent remuneration for home carers, or paid parental leave, the trick is to appear to be sympathetic but not to prejudice employers’ interests. It is not a coincidence that it is the interests of the powerful, and usually the economically powerful, that are given priority; it is much easier to do the little that is necessary to placate the powerless.
A government worthy of the name would not allow its agenda to be decided according to the relative muscle and importance of the interests involved. Nor would it act to meet the wider national interest only when political considerations indicated that it would be advantageous. We are all entitled to an equal share of the government’s care and consideration.
Bryan Gould
2 August