2004 for New Zealanders: David Slack

David Slack

It was the year in which David Slack came back to New Zealand. Not that he had ever left. But in the virtual world he inhabits, most of his existence was in the United States.

"For the last decade or so I've been working here, but in my mind really I've been in America because speeches.com draws most of its customers from there and I've written the [how to write a speech] site with Americans principally in mind." The return began in January with an invitation to write a guest blog for publicaddress.net, a collection of Kiwi bloggers.

"I thought it would be interesting to write from my point of view and not for someone else - which a speechwriter does so routinely that you end up wondering whether you have any opinions of your own." His first blog, Morbid Tourism, was a version of "what I did on my holidays" - revisiting Dargaville Hospital where, as a 27-year-old, Slack was treated after having keeled over with a heart attack.

It was on that holiday - and in the wake of Don Brash's Orewa speech - that Slack got the idea for a blog that would take him off the net and into the realm of the book author. "There was a mood about Treaty issues that I thought was a little perturbing." The mood crystallised at a dinner when someone got to their feet and made a toast to "one law for all New Zealanders". Everybody but Slack, who remained pointedly seated, stood up. "There was something vaguely unsettling about it that reminded me about nothing so much as 1930s Germany and I just didn't like it."

The next morning Slack blogged again - A Sense of Proportion - including his Treaty quiz. To date some 6000 have taken the test and well over half struggle to get a pass mark. The web reaction caught the attention of Penguin and within eight weeks Slack had written Bullshit, Backlash and Bleeding Hearts: A confused person's guide to The Great Race Row, published in June. The book reached number two on the local best-seller list and has almost sold out of its second print run.

Has the backlash since died down? "I think the fever has dissipated, but I'm still hearing some of the same propositions I was hearing last summer. Such as: "The best thing we could do is stick that treaty in the bin." He thinks the one-law-for-all-New Zealanders argument, while appealing in its idea of fairness, is simplistic and misleading. "Fairness in the modern world sometimes requires us to be a bit more elaborate in our laws and our policies."

Slack will explore these and other vexing questions in his next book, due to be published in May. It has the working title The Worried Person's Guide to New Zealand's Future and looks at doomsayer predictions made in relation to issues of race, immigration, morality, the economy and the environment. "People have been predicting the imminent demise of New Zealand for over 100 years and oddly enough we still seem to struggle along each day."

In 2005 he hopes to find time to implement a new feature on speeches.com - an interactive program that helps jog the memory for anecdotes to work into speeches. He'd like also to see another of his blog ideas come to fruition - an underground travelator or "trottoir" - "possibly on the seabed with a Kelly Tarlton perspex tunnel to make it interesting for the tourists" between Stanley Bay and the bottom of Queen St (Slack lives just above Stanley Bay). "I know it's ludicrous, I know it's fanciful, but it would be just terrific."

And while his thriving web business keeps him globally busy, he's liking having his feet firmly on home soil. "I've enjoyed getting more actively involved in the place I live. It is a more satisfying way of spending your time - being properly connected."