10 events that defined New Zealand in 2000

A MOMENT OF FAME


Pitt Island, a rocky outcrop in the Chathams, was a place unknown to the rest of the world last year. A year into the new millennium, it is a safe bet that most people who noticed it have forgotten again.

But for a moment, when it became the first inhabited part of the world to see the sun rise in the year 2000, Pitt was the centre of international attention.

From Mt Rangaika, just across the water on the main island of Chatham, a Maori cultural group sang hymns which, their leader said, "gave voice to the feeling in all our hearts."

The 55 Pitt Islanders felt shortchanged by the $200,000 they were paid by the Millennium Office for allowing access to their island. They had heard that America's CNN television might have paid $500,000.

Around the world over the next 24 hours, the new millennium was welcomed with fireworks and celebrations dubbed "the biggest party in history."

Gisborne also won its share of fame, with 135,000 visitors trekking there to hear Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and the NZ Symphony Orchestra serenade the millennium's first dawn. The potential television audience was said to be 2.5 billion.

And the best thing was that the world didn't end. Fears of computer failures came to naught, apart from an isolated powercut in Central Otago.

A NATION AWAKES


In this landmark year, New Zealanders woke up to the horror of child abuse.

The issue was given a focus by a hard-hitting report by Children's Commissioner Roger McClay on the death of 4-year-old Hastings boy James Whakaruru.

In his short life, James had 30 visits to various doctors around Hastings. His stepfather, Benny Haerewa, was jailed for four months after beating him in 1996. Police referred the boy to Child, Youth and Family Services for protection. Yet no one stopped Haerewa beating James to death.

Other horrific cases kept the issue in the public eye. In July, 23-month-old Hinewaoriki ("Lillybing") Karaitiana-Matiaha was taken to Masterton Hospital after being sexually violated, scalded and beaten.

In the same month, Whangarei ambulance officers were called out to a 2-year-old girl with severe head injuries, a broken arm, and cuts, bruises and cigarette burns all over her body.

New Zealanders responded passionately. TV star Lucy Lawless (Xena) led a fundraising appeal for a new child abuse counselling and family support centre at Auckland's Starship children's hospital. Almost 600 people marched through Hamilton in August to encourage people who suspected child abuse to do something about it. Hundreds marched in Carterton.

The Accident Compensation Corporation agreed to report all suspected cases of child abuse, and health officials suggested that doctors should have to ask all women patients whether they were being abused.

The Government rejected calls to make it mandatory for all professionals to report suspected child abuse, saying this would only swamp officials. But there is no doubt the public got the message this year: that it is better to intervene than let a child suffer.

BRIEF MAGIC


New Zealanders everywhere shared the euphoria of Black Magic skipper Russell Coutts in March when his Team New Zealand became the first non-Americans to successfully defend the America's Cup.

Hundreds of thousands had contributed to the team's "red socks" appeal. Almost 80,000 lined Auckland's Viaduct Basin to give the team a heroes' welcome. Tickertape parades were held in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

Coutts was hailed not just for his skill, but also for his breathtaking gesture of sportsmanship in handing over the helm for the fifth and crucial race against Italy's Prada to 26-year-old Dean Barker, demonstrating the team spirit of Team New Zealand.

Just 10 weeks later, that team spirit was smashed when Coutts and his tactician, Brad Butterworth, quit to join a new syndicate being put together by Swiss-Italian pharmaceutical billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli. It was for the money, they explained, plus the chance to sail again instead of taking purely management roles at Team NZ.

Other team members, and the public, felt betrayed and said so. A Herald iTouch voteline poll was rung by 85 people who said Coutts should no longer be allowed to carry the Olympic torch during its relay run around New Zealand, and by only 32 who wanted to let him do it. He pulled out.

THREE VICTORIES


An American billionaire, a former Prime Minister and the Gisborne cervical cancer inquiry all unwittingly helped to reassert New Zealanders' rights to free speech in the past year.

The billionaire, 66-year-old Peter Lewis, is president of Progressive Corporation, the United States' fourth-largest vehicle insurer. His name was suppressed when he was discharged without conviction in the Otahuhu District Court in January on a charge of importing more than 100g of cannabis in his personal luggage and on his luxury yacht the Lone Ranger.

The Herald spent more than $100,000 on a legal battle through the district court, High Court and Court of Appeal to have Lewis' name suppression order lifted, asserting the principle that justice should be the same for rich and poor.

Finally, in August, the Appeal Court ruled that it was the public's right to receive information of any kind in any form, unless a judge identified real harm from publicity. "Any other approach risks creating a privilege for those who are prominent which is not available to others in the community."

Meanwhile, in June, the Appeal Court ruled that Auckland political scientist Joe Atkinson had the right to say, in a 1995 column in North & South magazine, that former Prime Minister David Lange was lazy, irresponsible and hypocritical.

The court said people should have the right, in a democracy, to criticise politicians, provided they did so without malice and without saying anything they knew was untrue.

In October, Mr Lange went back to the High Court to claim that Mr Atkinson wrote the column with "ill will and improper advantage." But in December he dropped the action, saying the $500,000 spent by North & South publisher ACP in its legal defence had "burned off" his claim.

In another notable victory for free speech, the Ombudsman told the Ministry of Health in October to release a report listing six laboratories which found lower rates of possible cervical cancer in test smears than the rates found by Gisborne pathologist Dr Michael Bottrill. A Sydney laboratory had found that Dr Bottrill misread some tests.

SHOOTING IN WAITARA


Tensions between the police and Maori people in the Taranaki town of Waitara were exposed when a police officer shot former architecture student Steve Wallace dead after he went on a window-smashing spree in the main street on April 30.

Two Maori sovereignty flags were hoisted the next day in the town, where closure of the local meatworks and a car assembly plant in recent years left 49 per cent of the workforce unemployed, more than half of them Maori.

Six Maori MPs were among about 600 people at Mr Wallace's tangi at Waitara's Owae Marae.

Race Relations Conciliator Dr Rajen Prasad, in a September report, said a perception among some people that police treated Maori differently, and were therefore racist, was "of serious concern."

He recommended establishing a Taranaki leadership group to ensure that all programmes, activities and services were non-discriminatory. He also urged the Government to quickly settle Taranaki claims for compensation for land confiscated during the wars of the 1860s.

The shooting had one other long-term effect when the High Court rejected an application by the police officer involved in the shooting to stop the Herald publishing his name. Justices Doogue and Robertson ruled that "there can be no right of privacy in respect of an action by a public officer in the course of his public duties in a public street."

The Herald decided not to publish the officer's name, but asserted its right to make that decision freely.

'FLAGSHIP' DISOWNED


"The minister cannot be effective in his job in a flagship Government programme while allegations, controversy and public debate swirl around him," said Prime Minister Helen Clark as she sacked Maori Affairs Minister Dover Samuels in June.

The "flagship programme" in question was "Closing the Gaps," defined in Treasurer Michael Cullen's Budget speech that month as "closing the social and economic gaps that exist between Maori and Pacific peoples and other New Zealanders." The Budget earmarked up to $258 million a year for the next four years for 72 measures designed to "make a positive and lasting difference to the social and economic outcomes of Maori and Pacific peoples."

At first, most New Zealanders seemed to go along with the programme. But it started to lose support when the Government unveiled a health bill providing for at least two Maori members of each new district health board, and requiring the law to be interpreted consistently with the Treaty of Waitangi.

Dr Prasad said affirmative-action policies targeting Maori, such as hepatitis B programmes, diabetes testing, help to quit smoking and free contraceptive advice, were divisive. He had received complaints from people turned away from hepatitis B testing caravans because they were not Maori.

On October 26, Helen Clark said "Closing the Gaps" was not about gaps between Maori and Pacific peoples and others, but about "poverty."

The health bill was watered down to say that the treaty would be honoured by including Maori in decision making but no one would receive preferential treatment based on race. However, the bill still requires at least two places for Maori on every health board.

All the other "Gaps" policies are still in place. But Helen Clark says "closing the gaps" is now "a phrase I've ceased to use."

BUSINESS BACKLASH


The Government also watered down key clauses in its Employment Relations Bill after a backlash from business sent the country into a short, but sharp, slump.

As introduced in March, the bill proposed six major changes:

* Allowing unions to negotiate multi-employer agreements, potentially restoring industry-wide bargaining.

* Banning "scabbing." Employers would not have been allowed to assign other workers to do the jobs of strikers.

* Giving unions a monopoly on negotiating collective agreements, and providing that collective agreements would cover only union members.

* Providing for all new employees to be covered by any existing collective agreement for one month, with a right to opt out after that.

* Providing that every collective agreement would continue to cover every employee until the agreement expires, even if the employee's job is contracted out or the business is sold.

* Stating that contractors who are subject to a single employer's control are, in fact, employees.

Business took fright, and the country's economic output dropped despite booming exports.

The Government compromised. The final version of the law, passed in August, allows strike-breaking by existing employees, and even by new workers hired for the purpose if this is required for health and safety reasons, as in a hospital.

The clause about collective agreements continuing until the agreement expires has been dropped. Instead, all collective agreements will have to include provisions covering possible contracting out or sale of the business.

The clause about contractors has been modified so that contractors can now apply to the Employment Relations Authority to prove that they are actually employees.

Although the other main points in the bill remain, the changes, and a Government-business forum in October, may have helped to reassure employers. By year's end, surveys showed that business confidence was recovering rapidly.

FLIGHTLESS KIWI


A soaring American dollar combined with New Zealand's midwinter business blues saw the kiwi plunge from 50USc in March to 39c in October. It recovered to 44c by December.

Farmers have enjoyed their best year in decades, thanks to Strong world commodity prices and the falling NZ currency.

As a result provincial areas are booming. Job vacancy advertisements surveyed by the ANZ Bank in November were up, compared with the previous November, by 14 per cent in the Waikato, 22 per cent in Hawkes Bay, 23 per cent in Manawatu, 31 per cent in Canterbury and 30 per cent in Otago.

But the cities, and especially Auckland, languished as the negative effects of the lower currency - high import prices and a net migration outflow - cut into real wages and depressed the building industry. Job ads were up by only a modest 12 per cent in Wellington, and actually fell by 6 per cent in Auckland, albeit from a temporary America's Cup high.

With the US economy weakening, the outlook for New Zealand appears uncertain unless it can break out of its dependence on commodities and find new, high-value niches where it can do well even in tough times.

YOUNG AND GULLIBLE?


Almost 700 young New Zealanders, mostly in business and professional jobs overseas, put their names to an advertisement in October expressing concern that New Zealand's present economic direction "simply isn't working."

Headed "A Generation Lost?", the ad said: "We must change those things that are discouraging investment, hard work and job creation."

It was well timed, with the dollar seeming to be in free-fall and concern mounting about the "brain drain" of skilled New Zealanders seeking higher incomes overseas. In the year to October, 9260 more people left NZ intending to stay away at least a year than came here intending to stay a year or more.

Some commentators blamed student loans. With business booming in America and Europe, and with the NZ dollar so low, it paid young Kiwis to work overseas to pay off their student debts.

But the advertisement, organised by Auckland stevedoring agent Richard Poole, backfired when it emerged the Business Roundtable lent him $10,000 to pay for it.

Science Minister Pete Hodgson accused the Roundtable of "badmouthing New Zealand."

In December, the Government moved to stem the exodus across the Tasman by starting talks with Australia to stop NZ emigrants being eligible for the dole unless they were granted permanent Australian residency.

Australian figures showed that 31,615 New Zealanders - almost 1 per cent of the population - moved permanently to Australia in the year to March 2000, compared with 5208 moving in the opposite direction.

LOST PINE


Thousands of Aucklanders made a pilgrimage to One Tree Hill in November to see the final hours of the solitary pine that had become an icon of the city.

After the tree developed even more of a lean than usual in heavy winds, the city council decided that it had to come down. It had been damaged beyond repair in two chainsaw attacks - the first in 1994 by Maori activist Mike Smith, who saw it as a symbol of colonisation, and then by another pair of protesters in 1999.

The Herald was swamped with more than 500 letters and e-mails on the issue. The tone was set by Edward Rankin, of Remuera, who wrote: "As far as I am concerned, Mr Smith has committed treason against an icon of the people ... and he should face the appropriate penalty for that offence."

Most correspondents want the tree replaced with a pohutukawa. But the council parks officer who decided to fell the tree, Cameron Parr, said the replacement would need resource consent, which could be granted only after consulting iwi and calling for public submissions. The replacement could be planted by July.

Herald Online features:

2000 - Year in Review

2000 - Month by month

2000 - The obituaries