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TOP cat,
TOP cat,

PoliticsNovember 4, 2016

A few early thoughts on Gareth Morgan’s new political party

TOP cat,
TOP cat,

Just a few thoughts, writes Toby Manhire, that’s all.

And so the cat is out of the bag. Gareth Morgan has long been an influence on politics, but there is more than one way to skin a cat, and today he bared his Cheshire grin to announce the formation of The Opportunity Party.

While no one could ever say the cat got Morgan’s tongue, he can at times appear a sourpuss. Today, however, it was less grimalkin, more bright eyed and bushy tailed moggy who fronted the press. Look what the cat dragged in, reporters said, their ears pricking up as he pounced on Donald Trump as a model. Morgan swiftly hissed at the grubby American pussy-grabber’s campaign, but there is no doubt he sees the anti-establishment platform as the cat’s pyjamas.

TOP cat,
Gareth Morgan, the TOP top dog, prances nature’s catwalk. Photo: TOP site

Untempted by coat-tails, the party will be list-only. The Greens, NZ First and Labour will be arching their backs – if not having kittens and spitting furballs as they exhort Morgan to keep his paws off their base. National, meanwhile, will be purring at the thought of reprising that TV ad with the motley opposition crew in a boat, squashed tighter than the owl and the pussycat, hardly room to swing a cat. Morgan insists, however, that his party would not be co-opted by any coalition, but remain independent – call it a kind of parliamentary ginger group; the toughest tom in town; the tail that wags the furry animal.

For National, the perfect outcome is the TOP team take votes off Labour, NZ First and the Greens, get decent backing but fail to reach the 5% by a whisker.

Morgan joins a litter of rich-white-guy party-starters who sought to claw their way to power – from Bob Jones to Colin Craig to Kim Dotcom. Some will say recent similar failures suggest a cat in hell’s chance, but as an economist he will hope an apparent rush to join the party is more than a dead cat bounce, and proves a stroke of genius.

There are no specific policies yet, but Morgan has pointed to the environment, housing and the gap between the rich and paw.

If nothing else, less than a year out from the next election, Morgan has put the cat among the pigeons. After all, curiosity never killed anything. The new party could prove catnip to blue-greens, but it risks, too, chasing its own tail. My advice to Gareth? Turn your face to the moonlight. Let your memory lead you. Open up, enter in. If you find there the meaning of what happiness is. Then a new life will begin.

And if for some inexplicable reason the public prove allergic, or he’s hoist by his own petard, Morgan can always just flag it.

catflag
The new party’s logo.
Keep going!
The Waikato River in full flight. Photo: Colin Bush / EyeEm
The Waikato River in full flight. Photo: Colin Bush / EyeEm

SocietyNovember 4, 2016

Are New Zealand’s scientific experts really dead – or just resting?

The Waikato River in full flight. Photo: Colin Bush / EyeEm
The Waikato River in full flight. Photo: Colin Bush / EyeEm

The row over Jacqueline Rowarth’s strange suggestion that the Waikato River is one of the world’s five cleanest reveals a need for more scientists to be heard in public, not fewer, writes Shaun Hendy.

In post-Brexit Britain, failure to heed the warnings of economists on the risks of leaving the EU has spawned many a thinkpiece on the death of the expert. Indeed, experts might be forgiven for ending it all after a British scientist who pointed out that the moon causes the tides was called out by a UKIP MP and accused of fear-mongering. Britain may have once ruled the waves, but now finds itself ruled by folk who find waves a little bit confusing.

Here in New Zealand, we know full well that the tides are caused by the decision of the previous Labour government to extend daylight saving. And with minds untroubled by tidal forces, Kiwis have had time to contemplate a deeper question:

Why are our rivers full of shit?

Traditionally Kiwis worry less about whether their experts are dead than whether they left a forwarding address before they moved to Australia. Sure enough, when more than 5,000 people became sick thanks to the contamination of Havelock North’s water supply in August, our experts made themselves rather scarce.

The Waikato River in full flight. Photo: Colin Bush / EyeEm
The Waikato River in full flight. Photo: Colin Bush / EyeEm

When Hawke’s Bay Regional Council chair, Fenton Wilson, was asked by Radio New Zealand about his Council’s reports concerning the woefully unhealthy state of the nearby Tukituki river, he said “I don’t have any of that information to hand.” When it was put to him that recent flooding may have driven contaminated water into one of the town’s aquifers, Wilson speculated that “speculation is not helpful at this time”.

Did we really not have any scientists who could speak knowledgably on whether contaminated surface water could have gotten into Havelock North’s groundwater?

Remarkably, science confirms that remnant populations of such scientists do still reside in New Zealand. They work for the government, and as I wrote in Silencing Science earlier this year, they are the sorts of experts we almost never hear from.

Check them out in happier times, speculating wildly at their Te Papa workshop last year on “Groundwater-Surface Water interaction”. Unfortunately the last thing a government scientist is allowed to do is to speak – I mean, speculate – about something that actually affects the public.

And who needs an expert when helpful prime ministers can always find you another with a different point of view?

Cue Jacqueline Rowarth, the newly minted chief scientist at our Environmental Protection Authority, who, before taking the job, was telling the public that the Waikato River is “one of the five cleanest rivers in the world”.

Rowarth, previously a professor of agribusiness at the University of Waikato, was hired by the EPA to use her “expertise to explain our science, so people can have trust and confidence in the decisions we make”, according to EPA chief executive Dr Allan Freeth.

This may have sounded like a good plan at the time, but Rowarth’s stance on water quality has had other experts increasingly alarmed.

New Zealand Freshwater Sciences Society president Marc Schallenberg said that Rowarth’s “comments concerning the condition of the Waikato River are not only false, but distract from the important work being done to improve water quality in New Zealand”.

Bryce Cooper, a water quality expert at NIWA, said, “Water quality in its [the Waikato River’s] lower reaches ranks in the bottom half of 500 sites nationally for key indicators such as nitrogen, phosphorus, E.coli (a measure of faecal contamination) and water clarity.”

If you are predisposed to think that the science of tides was fabricated 400 years ago in preparation for Project Fear, then you may also be tempted to dismiss these water quality experts as having a vested interest in spreading alarm in order to keep themselves employed.

But if you actually want to be better informed about our rivers, you do need to hear from scientists like Cooper and Schallenberg – and, yes, Rowarth too. Because this is how science works. Scientists make claims, present their evidence, and wait for the judgement of their peers.

Better that we know how Rowarth views the evidence than not. Now those views are in the open, they can be scrutinised and critiqued.

Rowarth herself has now gone quiet, joining the ranks of New Zealand’s silent scientists. When Rowarth was asked to comment on her views by Radio New Zealand, the EPA replied, saying, “it would be inappropriate for her to comment on statements she made while employed in a previous role.”

So New Zealand’s experts aren’t yet extinct. Not quite.

On a calm day, if you listen very carefully, you can almost make out what they are saying.

But wait there's more!