New Zealand Story: Our Shared Story

Steven Joyce’s Budget 2013 announcement says that his ‘New Zealand Story’ project will be all about innovation and resourcefulness, our Maori heritage, and a ‘welcoming, friendly’ approach.

The New Zealand Story is a ‘shared story about New Zealand for international audiences’, beneath which education, trade and enterprise, and tourism will all be marketed:

“The Story will:
• Communicate New Zealand’s values and personality
• Feel and be authentic
• Feel different to other countries’ stories
• Move us beyond place (our landscape)
• Be a foundation story from which other stories can grow
• Support growth in export earnings.”

‘100% pure New Zealand’ claims now lie exposed, as an embarrassment and a risk to our Government.

This is a problem for Steven Joyce, because it doesn't matter how he tries to dress it up: the Emperor still has no clothes, and nowhere to hide. His new claims are equally false.

As the story now goes, ‘100% pure New Zealand’ - Tourism New Zealand’s world-leading brand for the last 14 years, valued by Interbrand in 2005 as worth US$13.6 billion - was never about the environment really. It has, according to the Government, been distorted and used by environment groups and advocates in a ‘deeply unhelpful’ way.

Blogger Wayne Linklater reports on a complaint recently successfully defended before the Advertising Standards Authority, in which Tourism New Zealand ('100% purely evasive') explains:

“100% Pure Zealand is not an environmental statement or promise and never has been.” It’s about: “how our landscape, people and activities combine to deliver a visitor experience that is unique to New Zealand”.

But according to Linklater:

“At lunch on the a busy street outside the University of California yesterday I asked my new circle of work friends what '100% Pure New Zealand' means to them. Unspoilt and pristine environment were the replies. Poor TNZ. They invested 14 years in the ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ campaign only to find that some in one of their markets, California, still don’t understand what it really means.”

New Zealand’s Story is more than landscape. It’s the people, and our attitudes and values - our approach to challenges, and to life.

On this, we're all agreed. But Joyce and his Government are rewriting New Zealand’s story, in ways that sell our country short.

• ‘Innovation and resourcefulness’: Drilling for oil, mining minerals and coal, fossil fuel subsidies, MOAR COWS. A 'vision' in which we will mine, slash, burn, milk our way to prosperity, like our great-grandfathers did.

• ‘Maori culture’: This is not Maori culture, it’s 100% purely colonial. Co-opting the haka, or ta moko, without care or consciousness that the health and spirit of the people, or tangata whenua, depends on the health of the land, because they are as one.

• ‘Welcoming, friendly approach’: Code surely for weak laws, laws for sale, including oil anti-protest laws, and our public conservation lands. Conservation Minister Dr Nick Smith, signing his deal with coal miners Bathurst Resources on the bonnet of a car. Energy Minister Simon Bridges, entertaining Shell on Valentine’s Day.

Or, to put it in terms of 100% pure New Zealand’s ‘landscape, people and activities’:

• Government-backed water extraction and dairy expansion - talk of doubling dairy production - in landscapes where 90% of our lowland rivers are already unsafe for swimming - turning brown lands green, replacing trees with centre pivots, crop circles and black-and-white cows.

• Reform proposals that will "significantly and severely weaken the ability of the RMA to protect the natural environment and its recreational enjoyment by all New Zealanders”.

• A culture of contempt, in the land of Kate Sheppard - this “remorselessly democratic country” - but a country of sleepy hobbits, too.

The irony is huge: selling what is great about New Zealand at the same time as trampling all over it, calling it ‘our shared story’, at the same time as shutting democracy down.

On behalf of New Zealanders, we’d like to join in.

We accept the invitation to share the New Zealand story: 30 years ago, we helped write it.

We think we can tell one that is better - perhaps a story less flattering to our Government, but true to our people, our values, and Aotearoa, our battered but still beautiful place.

ENDS

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