Holiday Road Toll

Read the Herald, the Dom, Stuff, wherever - all the news we ever get over our holidays are news of every single crash and road safety. First, it starts with grave concerns from the Police over expectations the roads will get busy over the holiday busy, then a message from the police warning everyone they're cracking down on speeding and drink driving, then the news pours in of every crash on every road, and then its followed up by debate and outrage.

Are Kiwis shit drivers? Do we speed like idiots? Why does it seem we all get on the piss before driving? Is it Aucklanders leaving Auckland the main problem? Whatever the answer to our road safety blunders is, it's the million-dollar question we all want the answer to. To add perspective, our road toll is high for a developed country, with fatalities twice as likely per capita than Germany; though not high by world standards. With a situation as complicated as this, it's probably a variety of factors. Without a lot of time, a team of crack researchers, a million dollar inquiry budget, and an abundant supply of Pepsi - I can't find out for sure. But we'll have a crack at a few hypotheses.

The Car

New Zealand has an extremely high car ownership rate, often the highest per capita in the world depending on studies, with 3226614 private vehicles at the 2006 census. Our car fleet is almost entirely used Japanese imports (95% of cars in 2006), and the median age of our vehicles was 12 years old. Since most people own an old pre-owned Jap reject, people are probably less likely to have a great deal of respect for their vehicles. Not to say people don't love their cars, but more that people would be much more cautious driving a 2011 dealer-new Lamborghini than a 1996 Toyota Corolla. 

Our standards of road worthiness are high, which says our cars are in decent condition; but a fleet of older cars says their safety features are outdated, and their older engines would need more aggressive driving to keep up on the roads.

The Road

As an urban planning student, I can testify to heaps of roads in New Zealand being designed really really shit. Not just Auckland having crippling transport issues, but our state highway network having many dangerous stretches and areas, with most of our highways simply being retrofitted rural roads. Highways have evolved over time, and their designs and safety features are outdated and often unsuitable for their current use as high-speed cross-country connections. The road leading South of Auckland is built on the old Great South Road, built 150 years ago as a military service route in the New Zealand Wars. The road to the bach in the Coromandel was built on old goldminers' tracks from a similar era. The corners and stretches on these roads were never designed to handle the traffic volumes and speeds required today. The Manawatu Gorge is another example of a road that is unsafe by design, and now it's out - we're forced to drive over the even more unsafe Saddle Road where I got stuck behind someone so scared they were doing 35km/h the whole road.

We have very few dual carriages outside of Auckland and Wellington, which are inherently safer roads. Only driving from Auckland to Hamilton will you spend a significant distance of an inter city journey on a dual carriageway. Western Europe and much of the United States, even Malaysia has most cities connected by dual carriageways.

The Driver

Our driving age has been lower than many other countries for a long time, but it's foolish to think it's young drivers doing all the damage. They're a soft target in our road safety concerns, and there's a lot of sentiment towards them that distracts people from everyone else's driving - and I don't mean old granny drivers, Asian drivers, or woman drivers. Our driver licensing is reasonably lax, especially considering older drivers who went though a far more lenient driving test system. Licenses are not often renewed, and skills are not often retested. Laziness and 'knowing what you'll get away with' on our roads is pretty bad, most of the people that annoy me on roads are those older than me. 

Road safety is worse outside of the cities, implying that road rage is not a major issue. Since most drivers doing the long haul in the holiday period are parents - sober, responsible, experienced adults - it seems the spike in car crashes is not caused by the usual road baddies of speeding young boyracers on their restricted license who've been drinking beer in their illegally lowered Nissan Skylines. 

The Journey

New Zealand, as much as we say is a small country, is still 5 hours driving from Hastings to Auckland, 3 hours from Napier to Gisborne, and the travel times get longer in the larger and more sparsely populated South Island. When we pack up the car and head out, the journey distance is often long, through what becomes montonous farm scenery on winding rural roads. No wonder that drivers get tired on these journeys, or at least tired of the passengers with them, especially as these are usually parents being stuck in the car with the kids for 2-8 hours in a day. 

Driving to the conditions is important too. New Zealand doesn't have terribly wild or extreme weather, as much as we keep saying we do, but it is very changeable. Driving from Auckland to Wellington for example will see you change through several climate zones and dozens of weather conditions in a 9 hour trip. These weather conditions, especially precipitation can be dangerous, or even sunstrike from low sun at its rise and set; can be hazardous to driving. Being cooped up inside a car all day with the air conditioning and the radio can make a driver oblivious to the conditions outside.

While there's no definitive answer, our unique cars, use of cars, and ways of driving cars on our very unique roads gives us our special place for having an unusually high road toll for a developed country. Our car fleet and road network are unusual for a developed country too, and a variety of factors contribute to our dismal record. Without knowing more specifically the causes behind so many car crashes, it's hard to pick where we should try to fix it. Road safety upgrades occur all the time, but their high price tag often means they're too little too late, such as the billion-dollar Puhoi-Wellsford highway where to government plans to completely rebuild the road. There's no need for pessimism though, there are surely solutions to make our roads safer, but it will require a great deal of strategy from planners, politicians, and engineers.

* Image above a parody of the NZ Herald website front page, made myself. Information for this post derived from Wikipedia - Transport in New Zealand.

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

One of my Christmas presents this year, is this cheeky book...

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, by Ha Joon Chang. The person with the audacity to give it to me is my Dad, who saw someone reading it on the train in London and that made him think of me. Bless. It wasn't mean spirited though, he said it would be good to add another perspective, and food for thought nonetheless.

I will endeavor to read it this summer, even though I'm not much of a reader. Hopefully it will add a little something, maybe a more pragmatic and practical edge to these posts. I doubt it will make me a socialist though, I'm highly open to new ideas and I'm aware capitalism isn't perfect, but other systems are certainly less so.

I've barely started though, I have a book by David Seymour to get through, and an Edward de Bono that I'm still finishing. Maybe I'll post about it again when I'm finished!

Racism Or Reality?

There's a debate going on publicly between AUT professor Paul Moon and Ngāpuhi leader David Rankin, over whether there is a need to distinguish Māori family violence from other family violence. Of course, a grim subject, but nonetheless it has raised interesting points. If you read other blogs, you're probably mindful that Cameron Slater at Whale Oil has already covered this, so I'll try not to duplicate ideas.

Māori Child Abuse Is Racist

“There is no such thing as Maori child abuse or Pakeha child abuse”, says Professor Moon, “there is just child abuse. By putting the word “Maori” in front of it, a stereotype is created which is inaccurate and dangerous”.

The idea in this is that there is no need to discriminate Māori as a separate variety of family violence, as it labels Māori unfairly, branding them all as especially prone to family violence. If you were a responsible Māori parent reading this, surely you'd be upset as being labeled such, so fair call really. 

Māori Child Abuse Is the Reality

‘We come from a warrior race’, says Mr. Rankin, ‘but colonisation has meant that we no longer have any battles to fight and we have too much time on our hands so that violent energy is not used up’.

Interesting statement, knowing the way academics and the general public feel, it won't be taken very seriously. I don't agree with it entirely and the wording is particularly blunt, but there are elements of truth in there. Uncomfortable truths from a Māori community leader, and not ones to brush off so lightly either. The statement above does allude to high unemployment in the words "too much time on our hands," which is not a uniquely Māori issue, but one that is reality for them. I would disagree with the colonization element, or that Māori are genetically disadvantaged as a "warrior race," but those are another issue altogether. 

‘The Government has been throwing millions of dollars into these problems but the situation is only getting worse’, he says.

Well, I did write about exactly that yesterday if you read my post about the 2012 new year. No political party has a strategy or solution for tacking social issues, and the more headlines about these problems that come out, the more money the government throws at things. Headlines create public outrage, which creates political pressure, which just makes scared and nervous throw more money into CYF or something else to calm the public and hope it fixes things. I have always said that if money fixes things, we would have fixed everything a long time ago; David Rankin clearly says that this blind expenditure does absolutely nothing. 

Racist Reality

The strange thing about this case is they are both right, labeling the ethnicities of the victims and perpetrators of family violence doesn't do anything constructive, but the sad truth is that it is a problem that is worse in Māori and Pacific Islander communities than others. A friend of mine told me that almost all the victims of child abuse that need treatment at Starship Hospital in Auckland are of these two communities. Child abuse is not exclusive to these communities at all, but it'd be foolish to simply disregard these patterns. To prevent blind and indiscriminate spending, the government needs to create a plan to tackle these issues, seeing where correlation ensues causation, such as poverty and child abuse being closely related. 

It would be interesting to see what Paul Moon has to say about tackling these issues, I do get sick of politically correct academics being so quick to criticize but slow to help, whee their 'academic prowess' would be more appreciated. David Rankin is a person with authority in this issue from his community involvement, 

Mr Rankin suggests that whanau take a greater role in monitoring their members. ‘This is a problem for all Maori’, he says. ‘Its time for us to take that warrior energy and deal to these thugs’, he argues.

At least David Rankin has constructive points to offer, saying that Māori need to own their problems better, and work together to solve them. The implication of collective responsibility means that we have a duty to do something about family violence when we are aware of it, which goes for all communities, not just Māori. 

2012 - The Year, Not the Movie

In the last post I wrote here (yes, this is the link to it), I briefly recapped the year that has just been, wild and wacky 2011. This post is the sequel, the guestimates of what will happen in 2012, based on planned and probable events and extrapolations from 2011. With even the rise of the sun not being entirely certain, I will reinforce that this is only speculation from a weird kid who watches King of the Hill, don't even think of taking this very seriously.

Labour - Last Year's Losers

They are in rebuild and repair mode, they've been beaten badly by the voters in the 2011 general election, with the cherry on top being the loss of Waitakere to Paula Bennett at the last minute. Labour needs to do something about their brand, image, policies, outlook, organization, and strategy. Something big. I maintain that the best offense is a good defense, that they need to prove themselves as worthy opposition before thinking they will make worthy government. In the usual swing between National and Labour, leftist parties like Labour win when the economy is working well, and people turn their attention to service provision and social inequalities. 

Their plan of attack will need be economically minded though, with the recession and deficit still burning issues in New Zealand, with the appearance of being fiscally strong and responsible crucial to purporting wealth redistribution and government services. Experience in the private sector is the best way to do this. Their desire to connect back with the 'Waitakare Man' should be through empathizing  with the average worker who is employed in the private sector, and probably worried about their job security and budgeting their income. Shearer picking David Parker for finance is a step in that direction, the man has told me personally that he is a capitalist, and his work in a law firm and other businesses shows he can do the job. 

National - How to Build A Brighter Future

They won the election, and congratulations to them, they deserved it. National was the most inspiring party in the 2011 election, promising the security New Zealanders want in tough times, and rosy plans for better infrastructure and other services. They did alright in the first time by not stuffing anything up, the second term will be about them proving they can do that and more, by moving the country further forward rather than preventing it from sliding back. People demand more from the government in the second term, after extending their trust to them, they want to see if their government can do more. 

All the promises sound great, but what we want to see now is a clear plan and the results that ensue. We want to see headlines telling us how many new jobs have been created, how the government debt is shrinking at an acceptable pace, how infrastructure such as new roads are being built and then are working efficiently. With high public expectation, seeing results will be crucial; good results will see National soar to unprecedented popularity, bad results will see David Shearer the next prime minister at the next election. There is a difference between debt and deficit, spending and revenue need to be balanced to clear deficit in order to pay off debt. 

To ACT, Or Not To ACT

The fate of the party depends on a lot of interesting stuff happening now. It is no secret John Banks does not embrace all of ACT's values, but so far he is proving he can live up to nearly all of ACT policy. There's plenty he agrees on, and as long as he can stick to those issues, the ACT message is being continued. Disagreements on social issues such as alcohol reform, drug reform, and gay marriage are ones ACT people hope he doesn't get hung up on. From working with him on the Epsom '11 campaign, he's committed to our economic policy, and he's capable of pushing this under the ACT banner. 

As for leadership, policy, and organization; Don Brash's departure leaves plenty of opportunity and risk in naming his successor. ACT is prone to pragmatism versus romanticism debates over promoting libertarian values, my personal view is to favor pragmatism to earn back votes, with the key to stay on message but to also be relevant to the current economic situation. The growing feeling within some in the party is also that economic and social issues are not mutually exclusive, and some party faithful are hoping to see a drive for social liberalism led by the next leader. Since ACT performs best in opposition, it may be worth slightly distancing ACT from National to maintain uniqueness as a brand and earn back votes.

A Green Thorn In the Side

Russel Norman and Metiria Turei led the Green Party to an outstanding election result in 2011, largely by siphoning votes from Labour by appearing more relevant and responsible. Most of their success, really, can be attributed to locking their crazies like Catherine Delahunty in a cage, and ridding themselves of controversial Keith Locke and Nandor Tanzcos. They should be hated by Labour for taking a large share of votes that would have been theirs otherwise, while parties like National and ACT already hate the Greens for being opposed to all their plans. The Greens will likely be the thorn in everyone's side, stealing attention from Labour and screeching "NOOO!!!" at every utterance from National and ACT. This term with 14 seats, the Greens will be a very large thorn, in which public support can go in one of two ways. Either the public are disillusioned by their inability to allow the government to get anything done, or the public will be very supportive of how strong they are in in standing up to the government. Russel Norman has ruled out coalition with National, but hasn't ruled out working with National. Time will tell…

Winston First

The headline says it all really, there is no party other than Winston. His performance in parliament will decide the fate of the party, where like the Greens, it all depends on whether people think he's a dick or a hero for the shit that comes out of his mouth. He will plague question time with pathetic comment, being in the way of every party to put himself first. People do got for this behavior under the impression that it "keeps the government honest." His style of  bullshit in government will be judged with that criteria, and he'll be "gone by lunchtime" if his meddling doesn't live up to that standard. Oh, and still waiting for that $158k...

Other Interesting Shit

Since the last post (again, link) was a big list of stuff that happened in 2012, I'll also cover a few bits from that in another list to speculate on 2012.

• Asset flogging: Mighty River Power is first on the block, this will need to go very smoothly and quietly to work, any hiccups in asset sales will cause a huge uproar and probably riots outside John Key's house in Parnell.
• Social issues won't be solved any time soon. More headlines tends to see more money thrown at issues. Not long until there are more social workers than lawyers, as no party has a plan to tackle issues such as alcoholism and child abuse. Money doesn't solve them, real help does.
• The Alcohol Reform Bill is a topic big enough that I'll need heaps of posts covering it. The passion and burning desire to push it through is fading though, with news headlines no longer fueling it and pressuring politicians, the debate will need to be made in the public. A lot of time, money, and effort has been invested in the bill though, and it's not going to magically go away.
• Debt will remain one of the big issues for a long time, private debt far exceeds public debt, so this issue has a plenty of time left.
• The economy is still fragile, and world stability depends on the stability of big players such as the United States, PRC, and the European Union. 
• Especially with the December shakes, the Canterbury earthquakes will remain a big issue in New Zealand, and the recovery very contentious. So far, it is the third most expensive natural disaster ever, and more aftershocks have it gunning for second place.
• The XXX Olympiad, or 2012 Summer Olympics in London should be fun. If New Zealand wins heaps of stuff, the country will feel good and John Key will look good. Will be a bit of a downbuzz after having the Rugby World Cup here, but pubs will be pretty fun nonetheless.
• The United States presidential election is expected in November, the race will be interesting as always.
• Her Majesty the Queen will have her Diamond Jubilee in February. I'm a monarchist, and will be celebrating this. Monarchy may well become a debate again, but support will probably remain strong with the media saying good things about her celebrations.
• The DPRK (North Korea) will have another dictator. Expect nothing new.
• Nerds think mobile phones will have quad-core processors. No idea why making a phone that doesn't drop calls isn't the next priority.
• The Mayans have a calendar that says the world will end in December. If it's anything like that movie, it sure will be. My money on the cause of the apocalypse will still be on Rick Perry becoming president. (Watch this video for the LOLs)

I'm a terrible optimist, so I'm sure 2012 will be a blast! Get the popcorn out and we'll see what interesting stuff comes in the new year. 

That's the Way It Goes 2011

With 2011 and it's election done with, what can we expect to see in 2012?

Recap 2011

• Christchurch Earthquakes (and all the darned aftershocks!)
• Voting system referendum proves MMP a winner
• General election, returning a strong and stable John Key led government
• Cancelled census
• Rugby World Cup, and New Zealand's glorious win
• Alisdair Thompson
• Don Brash and John Banks took Rodney Hide's job
• Shifty people in the Green Party vandalized National's billboards
• Tomatoes reached $16 per kilogram
• Rena
• Ports of Auckland Ltd strike
• Pike River Mine, ctd
• Dictators Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Gaddafi, Kim Jong Il and Steve Jobs died
• Europe's economy is swirling around in the toilet thanks to Greece, Ireland, and Italy to name a few
• Peter Dunne, King of the Uncool, got Kronic and other legal cannabinoids banned
• Tupperwaka!
• Planking swept the nation for about a week
• Japanese earthquake with the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Reactor incident
• "Happy Feet" the penguin was rescued by DOC probably to get eaten by a whale
• KFC served the Double Down for a little while, just to troll the health Nazis
• 'Occupy' protests began in New York City, then solidarity protests emerged here
• The royal wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Kate Middleton
• A disruption in service for BlackBerry users almost plunged the world into chaos
• Roger Kerr passed away
• US Politics became more interesting with Democrat incumbent Obama against a range of Republican candidates including the good Ron Paul, the bad Rick Perry, and the ugly Herman Cain
• That awkward handshake...
• The Arab Spring
• Cold weather brought snow as far north as the North Island, but not Auckland, as much as everyone thinks it was
• The Russian election with a 140% turnout giving Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev another term of corruption
• Darren Hughes
• Carl's Jr opens in Takanini and Glen Innes in Auckland
• A TV ad with "ghost chips," space head," and "Leeeeeegend."
• Osama bin Laden
• That stupid volcano in Chile with its ash cloud creating problems
• Charlie Sheen
• South Sudan splits from Sudan
• Winston Peters returned to parliament with a vengeance, bringing with him the Clown of Campbell's Bay and the Failed Weatherman
• A helicopter epic failed putting up a Christmas decoration in Viaduct Harbor, Auckland
• Barack Obama finally ends the War in Iraq, but leaves it still a shithole

Overall, a year of contempt for the status quo for some, and to the rest of us a year of random unpredictable shit happening pretty much because "fuck you, that's why." A clear difference between New Zealand and the rest of the world and an interesting pattern of how the two are connected, in many interesting and bizarre ways. Our economy seems entirely at the mercy of government expenditure and the whims of economies overseas, especially without biggest trading partners being China, the United States, and Europe. On the other hand, we've bucked the trend by not following the rest of the world in big austerity measures, big rioting and public backlash to economic policy, or losing rugby games!

People in New Zealand have been fairly content with their lot this year, as reflected in the 2011 general election results, with social issues being fairly low key, and people having good faith in the re-elected National government. We've been brought down by grounded ships, economic downturn, devastating earthquakes, and kept on edge with uncertainty; but we've had some positive stuff too, like hosting and then winning the Rugby World Cup, being comparatively safe from the global recession with business mostly as usual across the country, getting even more deliciously unhealthy food in Auckland, and getting a glimpse of a winter wonderland with snow as far North as Palmerston North. (It did not snow in Auckland, I was there when it allegedly happened, and I would know snow when I see it!)

The next post will be on predictions, expectations, and hopes for the new year 2012. Coming soon!

*Image above: http://taramuller.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/meme_faces.png