Editorial - Tuesday October 1, 2013

Peter Jackson, editor, The Northland Age

Glory in defeat

IT'S been said that New Zealanders have a strange way of commemorating their defeats as opposed to their victories, the defeat of the Anzacs at Gallipoli being the obvious example. It is not the fact that that ill-conceived campaign, which cost thousands of lives for no gain, was fought and lost that earned it its unique placed in this country's military history, however. Rather it was notable for the fact that this was the first time that troops from New Zealand and Australia had served under their own flags, as opposed to that of Great Britain, and more importantly for succeeding generations the courage with which those troops served.

Gallipoli is not remembered so much as an unsuccessful attempt to invade another country as a theatre that revealed the character of the young men who pursued a lost cause against an ultimately unbeatable foe with courage and determination, qualities that are lauded every April 25, a day that has come to represent the gallantry and sacrifice for a greater good of all those men and women who have served in defence of New Zealand's freedom. In defeat and in victory, the valour of those who fought for the unborn generations to follow has never been forgotten.

There can be no comparison between those who have been prepared to die for the values they and their country believe are worth defending to the death and an America's Cup campaign, but Team NZ's unsuccessful bid to win the 34th Cup in San Francisco has awakened similar emotions among many New Zealanders. While Team NZ might have been seen to have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, or choked, as some would have it, relinquishing a seemingly unassailable 8-1 lead in the best of 17 races after being cruelly denied the last win they needed by a lack of wind, there has been very little of the vitriolic response that shamed us all after a number of Rugby World Cup disappointments.

John Hart was the most vilified of them all after the All Blacks he coached lost a semi-final against France in 1999, a game the All Blacks had seemingly won early in the second half. Weeks later, when he attended a race meeting back home in New Zealand, he was literally spat upon.

There were signs of a similar lack of grace in the hours after Oracle won the final race in San Francisco, but anger was overwhelmed by a more positive response. The Cup might have been lost, but the majority of New Zealanders, it seemed, did not blame that on Team New Zealand. Dean Barker, Grant Dalton and co were almost universally praised for going so close, and their stoic acceptance of defeat.

That might have owed something to the general perception that 'we' had lost to a rival that had huge, unfair advantages, mainly in terms of money. Grant Dalton has rejected that, saying that Team NZ had not gone broke, and would not have done anything differently had it had deeper pockets. Even so, an American billionaire whose purchasing power not only included technology that for whatever reason was not available to Team NZ but a conglomeration of talent that included a hefty dose of New Zealand skill, on and off the water, made a comforting target for many who had once believed that their team could not lose.

It is a cliche that there is more to be learned from defeat than from victory, but the upwelling of support for a defeated Team NZ skipper has been extraordinary, leading some to suggest that we have 'grown up' at last. That doesn't seem likely, given that a defeated RWC All Black team last came in for ther sort of vilification that is reserved in this country for All Black teams that don't perform as expected as recently as 2007, when France once again wrecked our hopes in Cardiff. What it does suggest is that Dean Barker, Grant Dalton and everyone else who contributed to 'our' 34th America's Cup bid are recognised for displaying qualities that might not have brought victory, but which we can all admire.

This Team NZ campaign was repeatedly, and inaccurately, referred to as a David and Goliath battle. David's role is one that, outside rugby, is almost always ours, which perhaps makes defeat a little easier to accept.

But we have done more than accept it this time. We have embraced it. We are well on the way to making heroes of those who led the campaign in San Francisco. In fact that final race had hardly finished, and the Cup had been restored to Oracle, than a flood of nominations began for the Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year, the majority of them for Dean Barker.

After all the emotions of the preceding weeks, after watching as seemingly certain victory slowly began to slip away, after seeing the by then inevitable happen as the final race was sailed and lost, New Zealanders delivered an outpouring of support for and pride in a team that had been beaten but remained unbowed.

Honours, including the conferring of knighthoods, as was being spoken of somewhat prematurely before the regatta turned to custard, would have been a given had the Cup been won.

Any honours that are granted now, particularly those that are bestowed by the people of this country as opposed to a select few, in recognition of the qualities displayed by a defeated team will have much greater meaning.

Team NZ did not taste victory, but seems to have found glory in defeat, and that says a great deal about the way in which we see our heroes, and continue to value the qualities of courage and dignity.

Tall ordersIt's been a funny old election campaign. One might have thought that the mayoral and district council candidates at least would have been hammering the hoary old favourites of rates, roads, water and sewerage, but they haven't. Perhaps the problem is that too many meet the candidates evenings have featured too many candidates to give any of them the chance to do much more than introduce themselves, but there has been very little if any mention of the rates many Far Northerners are increasingly having difficulty paying, road maintenance and lack of seal extensions, the excruciating cost of council-delivered water or the sewerage systems that are supposedly on their last legs.

The only specific issue that has bubbled to the surface is the harm poker machines are doing in the Far North, a problem that the majority of candidates seem to acknowledge, but which few are promising to address.

Poker machines are just one evil that is harming this community. If they are taken away, one or more of the other gambling options will surely take their place. And that's without even contemplating how much families who have no discretionary spending power whatsoever are spending on drugs and alcohol.

Poker machines are one part of a much bigger issue. The fact that some people who cannot afford to gamble are gambling, at the expense of their well-being and that of their children, is a by-product of poverty, and there isn't much the Mayor or council can do to change that, apart from creating a local government environment that will attract the investment this district needs. Many candidates clearly understand that, but what we need to hear is how they will go about creating that environment.