The comments of Sir Russell Coutts in the aftermath of the cancellation of racing on day one of SailGP in Lyttleton should serve as a warning to our country.
For far too long we have had our otherwise massive potential cut down by minority interest groups. People striving for publicity for the narrow little lens through which they see the world and people intent on protecting their own interests. These people are everywhere in this country.
These people claim to represent the birds, dolphins, trees, marginalised communities and ethnic minorities. They are champions of bureaucracy, compliance, red tape and health and safety. They are against everything that the rest of us, the great majority of us, see as desirable or necessary.
You see, none of the above contribute anything substantive to our economic success on the world stage. That is left to our farmers, tourism industry operators, our entrepreneurs and our sportspeople, the latter group which incidentally includes our yachties.
Sir Russell Coutts’ outburst has been a long time coming. Many of us have been hoping that someone would speak up. Someone with pulling power. An achiever. And now, someone finally has.
In case you missed it, Coutts was lamenting the cancellation of racing on day one of SailGP in Lyttleton. Many Aucklanders will remember lining up on the city’s best vantage point, preparing for America’s Cup racing. And then, the disappointment of a cancellation. In those cases, the weather was to blame. Last weekend, the weather was perfect.
Lyttleton Harbour is a wonderful natural venue for SailGP. You only had to look at the television pictures from the following day to admire the spectacle. However, according to Coutts, the world saw only half of the potential spectacle, because of an overreaction to the presence of one or a few dolphins.
Coutts is passionate about ocean racing. He’s one of the best in the world at it. Through his expertise, passion and undoubted competitiveness, he has done some wonderful things for his home country. He won an Olympic gold medal. He also led his country to win one of the world’s oldest sports trophies, the America’s Cup. Twice. He took that trophy away from us too.
When Coutts left Team New Zealand, a nasty side of the Kiwi psyche was displayed by a few high-profile New Zealanders, including some poorly informed journalists. His crime was that he chose to sail for another team. But we eventually forgave him and he forgave us.
That crime was minor compared to that of the current Team New Zealand hierarchy, who, not content with winning the Cup, have chosen to defend it on foreign soil. Their stated reason? Money! But I digress.
Coutts might be about to take something away from us again. SailGP racing. This time it’s of our doing, not his.
With last Saturday’s racing cancelled and a requested Sunday morning practice session also delayed by the authorities, the usually shy Coutts took his place behind the microphone on Newstalk ZB’s Sunday afternoon sports programme. He was clearly frustrated, emotional, and upset as he spoke.
His quivering voice started with the following: “SailGP operates all over the world, and no doubt there are marine mammals in the water in all of the locations we race. We’ve never had an incident in 35 events. Our people and our athletes care deeply about marine conservation.”
He went on: “In addition to our normal marine mammal protocols, SailGP has had this extreme marine mammal management plan forced upon us in Lyttelton, demanded by the Department of Conservation, Ecan and Ngāti Wheke for this event. Otherwise, SailGP would not be permitted to race. Other harbour users, including commercial users, are not subject to such protocols.”
He continued that SailGP had unrequired services forced on them, services that are not required nor demanded anywhere else in the world. The costs of those unrequired services? Approximately $300,000. And that doesn’t count the “11 so-called expert dolphin observers that are being paid... $600 per day each, plus their expenses in a programme that totals $78,000″.
We might not want to admit it. But the great majority of us will accept that Coutts is right. But it’s not just sailboat racing that’s affected by the issues he has raised.
In the aftermath of Coutts’s comments, someone said that SailGP is a commercial venture that should be subject to greater compliance rigour than that of other activities. But cruise ships are a commercial venture too. Some of them have three propellers, each measuring 6m in diameter. Lyttleton welcomes 70 such ships a year in their harbour alone. By the time they arrive and leave that’s 140 movements of a vehicle big enough to kill multiple dolphins, or anything else for that matter, in one revolutionary cycle of the propeller. How many of those cruise ships get cancelled because of the dolphins? None.
Event managers in this country have been hamstrung for some time. But these issues also impact our property developers, entrepreneurs, our once-thriving film industry, our farmers and our tourism operators too.
It’s not a new problem. But it has been getting worse for a long time.
Some of our politicians have tried to draw attention to it. A few of our highly regarded personalities have also had a crack. But the words of the returning sporting hero, attempting to bring something spectacular to his home country, yet frustrated by inexcusable layers of bureaucracy and red tape, cut deeper than most.
Coutts went on to say how difficult it is to get things done in New Zealand. He’s right. There are people who can’t renovate their houses, houses that they own, for the same reasons that Coutts is complaining about. Our wilful bureaucracy is crushing our ability to get things done and with it, our spirit.
New Zealand is overburdened by minority groups who shout louder than the majority. Those minorities seem to be singularly focused on stopping things from happening. We seem to be better at coming up with reasons why we can’t do things than we are at coming up with reasons why we can.
And so it seems that the minorities, the greenies, the environmentalists, the socialists, the compliance officers, the protesters and the woke university activists are the people who decide what we, the majority, can do. They make the noise and they get the airtime. Even though they are often disproportionately supported by their friends in the broadcast media, their causes would seldom gain support from 10 per cent of the population, if asked.
But they make the noise. They stop things from happening. They call the shots.
Sadly, we have become beholden to these minority groups and to rogue individuals in positions of power. We have democratically elected mayors who can’t do what they want to do or need to do for their cities. In their way are organisations and individuals claiming that they are the victims and seeking to protect the tiny pedestal on which they stand.
Those activists will have seen the cancellation of Saturday’s yacht racing as a victory. You see, it’s not about the dolphins. It was never about the dolphins. It’s about minority interest groups and how much noise they can make. It’s about headlines. It’s about stopping things that the majority of us want.
Those on the opposite sides of these debates seldom stand up to them. The reality is that we’re too busy working at our day jobs, raising our kids, volunteering for the school or the surf club, and perhaps hoping to take the family to a weekend sporting spectacular that otherwise would only be seen on a TV screen.
Our only hope should be that that spectacular event will be allowed to occur.
The irony of last weekend was that Melbourne, that event-laden city just a couple of thousand kilometres to the west of us, hosted some 460,000 people at the Formula One Grand Prix over the very same weekend.
Formula One is dangerous, noisy and smelly. It’s environmentally unfriendly. There are protesters in Melbourne too. But their elected officials understand what value such events bring to their city. And they defend it to the hilt. They make it easy. Event organisers meet with city officials who give them what they need to make things happen.
SailGP gets that too, in most of the cities to which it brings its spectacle. Most cities compete for such attention. They go along with it because it brings millions of dollars and hundreds of millions of television viewers to the host city and country. It’s commerce. It works. We had it handed to us on a plate by one of our most successful sons. But we killed it.
In the meantime, we can’t have Taylor Swift concerts because they make too much noise and there will never be car racing at Pukekohe again. Christchurch took 10 years to agree to replace their stadium and Auckland can’t even make a decision to build one. Traffic management plans prevent us from hosting a major sporting event and Auckland Council can’t give permission for a harbourside grandstand from which to watch a yacht race.
And of course, we might never again entertain the remarkable young men and women and the spectacular flying machines of SailGP.
Perhaps we could host a chess tournament.
Bruce Cotterill is a professional director and adviser to business leaders. He is the author of the book The Best Leaders Don’t Shout and host of the podcast, Leaders Getting Coffee. www.brucecotterill.com.
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