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PoliticsSeptember 14, 2022

A bittersweet farewell to The Spinoff Covid tracker

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Goodbye to daily Covid-19 updates and goodbye to The Spinoff Covid tracker.

The Spinoff’s Covid trackers were built with the generous support of Spinoff Members.

Today there will be no Covid-19 update. No daily case numbers, no hospitalisation rates, no seven-day rolling average. For more than 900 days, New Zealanders have checked their site of choice (including thespinoff.co.nz) to find out the latest numbers in our ongoing fight with Covid-19. But not today. Today there will be no Covid-19 update from Jacinda Ardern or the director-general of health or the Ministry of Health website. There won’t be one today and there won’t be one tomorrow and there won’t be one on Friday.

Next Monday there will be an update, and thus will begin the new weekly update cycle.

The Spinoff will continue to update Covid numbers as they are made available (weekly) and will visualise them as needed, but given the need for the Covid tracker data to be broken down by day, not week, the tracker will no longer be accurate or able to update as it has for the past year.

So it’s goodbye to daily updates and therefore goodbye to The Spinoff Covid tracker.

The very first iteration of The Spinoff’s Covid tracker was published on March 31, 2020 under the headline: Covid-19: Every New Zealand case, mapped and charted. The article, by datavis extraordinaire Chris McDowall, included stunning graphs that provided the framework for our Covid-19 data visualisation. Back then, during a nationwide level four lockdown, the numbers were low and the interest was high. This is what the first Spinoff daily reported cases graph looked like.

Every day at 1pm, McDowall would listen to the latest numbers, add them do his data set, update the maps and graphs, and publish a new and beautiful article. This continued daily and on May 4, the much-anticipated zero day arrived, with Toby Morris at the ready.

Illustration: Toby Morris

By May 8, the curve had been flattened and McDowall’s graphs moved from their own standalone pieces to a daily set in live updates. Being able to see Morris and Siouxsie Wiles’ original and hypothetical “flatten the curve” graphic be rendered very real in our daily cases graph was a constant reassurance to readers. There was still much anticipation around 1pm and new numbers, but for days, weeks, even months, it was met with relief and an idyllic visual.

The graphs continued to be updated, even when there were very few numbers to report. There were blissfully quiet times (summer 2020/21) and times when McDowall returned to daily posts (August 2020 Auckland lockdown). When there were cases to report, thousands of readers refreshed both The Spinoff live updates and the homepage, desperate to know what was happening. And in August 2021, with the country’s second nationwide level four lockdown announced, the need for accessible and accurate data only grew.

‘Love The Spinoff? Its future depends on your support. Become a member today.’
Madeleine Chapman
— Editor

So, the Spinoff’s head of data at the time, Harkanwal Singh, created, through sheer determination and likely little sleep, the Covid tracker 2.0. These graphs took the same information and auto-updated it, meaning one location for the latest numbers, no matter the time or day. Launched on August 24, the new tracker would go on to paint a much scarier picture than its predecessor’s gentle curve. Instead it would draw a mountain, peaking at 23,894 cases in one day (March 8, 2022).

During the long lockdown, the Covid tracker had thousands of visitors a day. But much like the loosening of measures and the social cohesion fatigue, interest in the graphs waned as people “returned to normal”. The 1pm updates no longer stopped people in their tracks.

When the government announced earlier this year that Covid numbers would only be released on weekdays, the tracker moved to more manual input to fill in the days. It could stay updated, but not on a daily basis. Such a tracker was designed to be updated every day, plotting data points in that rhythm.

Now, with daily case numbers trending downwards (though still more than 1,000 most days) the latest Covid numbers will be announced only every Monday. We’ll continue to include these numbers in our live updates, but will no longer be able to update the Covid tracker accurately without a daily breakdown from MoH. Here is how it currently looks, updated to yesterday, September 13, 2022.

Made with Flourish

And that is how it will stay unless catastrophe strikes – let’s not even think about that. As sad as it is to farewell The Spinoff Covid tracker (and whatever your thoughts on the evolving response), I think I speak for many when I say I hope we are never forced to resurrect it again.

Farewell, Covid tracker, thank you for your service.

Keep going!
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PoliticsSeptember 14, 2022

The ‘McMāori’ saga and the business of te reo

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Following the launch of Whittaker’s miraka kirīmi block, former race relations commissioner Joris de Bres remembers when he started a nationwide debate by suggesting businesses use more Māori words.

When I was asked by the Dominion Post in early 2003 to comment, as race relations commissioner, on the use of te reo in the public sphere, I chose to focus on the private sector, noting that companies were lagging behind the public and community sector. I said it would be good for their business, good for the language and good for the image of the country if more companies used it. “Using Māori in publications, having a Māori company name and using Māori wherever possible alongside English would be good for companies,” I said.

At the time it was hard to find any product with a Māori name or any use of te reo by private companies. I said the only examples I could find were the health warning on cigarette packets and the Māori name on the banner of the Gisborne Herald, Te Nupepa o Tairāwhiti.

I didn’t think the Dominion Post would give my comments a lot of space (if it published them at all) but the story appeared on the front page with the heading “Firms urged to adopt Māori names”. An accompanying cartoon had a McDonald’s sign changed to “McMāori” with a customer being asked “Do you want fries with your hāngi?”

Dominion Post front page: March 6, 2003 (Image: Supplied)

They were obviously hoping for a reaction, and they got it. National MP Murray McCully issued a press release saying I was “taking political correctness to new extremes”, that my comments were “unsolicited and no doubt totally unwanted by the nation’s private sector businesses”, and that I should “let the private sector organise its own affairs”.

That afternoon he raised the issue in Parliament’s question time. He was supported by New Zealand First MP Dail Jones and United Future MP Marc Alexander. Jones said I should stick to my responsibilities rather than giving advice about how businesses should run their business. Alexander called my comments a “jaw-dropping initiative” and asked whether I would lead by example and change my name to “Hone de Bres”.

The Dominion Post duly reported the debate the next morning with some further comment from the MPs. Alexander was quoted as saying: “You have to wonder if Mr de Bres has a secret agenda to deliberately sabotage race relations in this country. We are a multicultural nation and, frankly, business is there to do business, not run flaky social agendas for the pleasure of Mr de Bres and his ilk.”

The NZ Press Association picked up the story and it appeared in other newspapers, including Hawke’s Bay Today, who featured it prominently and made it the subject of their daily editorial under the heading “A dose of unrealism”. They said I had “advanced the unreality [my] position seems to foster by saying private businesses ought to use Māori names”.

“The idea is daft, not because using the Māori language is inappropriate, but because it is unrealistic. There has been no impediment to private firms using Māori in their names. But the point is that business knows best what’s best for business, without being told what to do by someone whose background is conspicuously lacking in any hands-on business experience.”

Dominion Post front page: March 7, 2003 (Image: Supplied)

The response from business people approached by the Dominion Post was less hysterical. Montana Wines spokeswoman Zirk van den Berg merely said using Māori was a marketing issue. “So far there are not enough people who speak Māori that we feel it necessary to put it on our bottles.”

Telecom spokeswoman Allanah James said essential information in the front of the phone book was translated into Māori, Cook Island Māori, Sāmoan, Tongan and Chinese.

Air New Zealand spokeswoman Rosie Paul said there was “no formal policy on using Māori culture, language and people but it’s just something that follows – if you’re promoting New Zealand as a destination, then our whānau becomes part of that promotion.”

There was one business executive who was interested in further exploring what I was suggesting. Ted van Arkel, managing director of Progressive Enterprises, owners of Foodtown and Woolworths supermarkets (now Countdown), arranged for me to speak at his Rotary Club in Parnell. I got a good reception there. On the basis of that, Ted invited me to address the company’s annual store managers’ conference in Auckland later in the year (they had over 160 stores throughout New Zealand).

I assembled a small group including Lana Simmonds-Donaldson from Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori, Ana Tapiata from Te Puni Kōkiri, Kallon Basham from the Human Rights Commission and designer Jenny Ralston from JR Design to strategise and work on the presentation. We met at the Backbencher and the resulting powerpoint was a virtual journey through a re-imagined Woolworths supermarket with te reo used throughout, from a parallel name (Te Whata, proposed by fellow human rights commissioner Dr Merimeri Penfold) to a store welcome, trolley advertisements, products with bilingual signage and a till receipt with a Māori message.

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Duncan Greive
— Founder

There was demographic information to support the proposal and other reasons why it made good business and social sense to use te reo. After the rumpus earlier in the year, I was very nervous before the presentation but it was very positively received by the store managers.

A highly productive partnership ensued between the Human Rights Commission, Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori and Te Puni Kōkiri, to promote te reo to all New Zealanders in Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori each year. Progressive Enterprises became a supporter of that campaign, initially by producing a bilingual version of its weekly grocery mailer for Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori and then by adopting bilingual signage for all the departments in its supermarkets. This week, they have launched te reo as a self-checkout language option. Independently, their shelves began to fill with more and more wine and food products with Māori names.

It’s difficult to imagine today that te reo was almost completely absent from the business sector a mere 20 years ago. The now widespread use of the language in the media, in branding, in business and workplace communication and in advertising is welcome, but when it is not accompanied by a genuine commitment to the revitalisation and normalisation of the language it risks being merely tokenistic or appropriating the language simply for business gain. Te Taura Whiri recommends that with appropriate advice businesses develop a te reo policy and plan and regard their use of te reo as a continuing journey.

It’s sad that there are still racist objections when a chocolate company produces and promotes a single product with a wrapper using te reo alongside English. But perhaps the objections of this noisy minority are even more hysterical because the use of te reo in business is now simply a fact of life in Aotearoa. The challenge now is for businesses to promote and use it in a manner that reflects a genuine commitment to reo and tikanga, avoids tokenism and cultural expropriation, reflects genuine engagement with tangata whenua and involves a commitment to continuing innovation.

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