Brian Rudman: If we're poisoning ivy, we shouldn't coddle cats

If the rulebook gets any more complicated I'm going to have to retire from the League for Political Correctness before I trip up and get expelled.

There I was rejoicing in the news that the Census-takers had turned their back on our colonial past and said I can call myself a New Zealander rather than a European in the upcoming Census when out comes a bulletin from the Auckland Regional Council.

I might be allowed to call myself a person of the land now, but certain of the plants my ancestors brought with them are not. Indeed the regional bureaucrats are thinking of banishing english ivy, phoenix palms and agapanthus for fear they do any harm to the indigenous environment.

Then to confuse me even further, ARC chairman Mike Lee, a tireless crusader for restoring native birds to mainland Auckland, came out as a cat-lover, criticising his staff for wanting to add stray cats to its hit list of foreign menaces.

He's willing to accept the eradication of feral cats but says his council's proposal to ban the feeding of stray cats is "silly" and should be dropped.

"There is no doubt that a feral is totally wild and kills so much of our bird life to live while a stray cat needs human company and support."

Now I've always thought a cat is a cat is a cat and I suspect the once thriving lizard and weta families in my backyard would agree. That's if any had survived to tell the tale. The local cats used to leave the corpses on my back patio.

As the keeper at Wellington Zoo discovered a few weeks back, even the best fed and loved cat is hardly the benign beast the chairman paints.

There was more confusion for me at the great debate over appropriate foliage for Auckland's golden mile, Queen St, at the town hall a week back.

Addressing city councillors, tangata whenua representative Pita Turei proudly announced his mixed ancestry, Scottish on father's side, Maori on mother's, then launched into a tirade against non-native trees. He even opposed a plan to plant pohutukawa hybrids that grew tall and narrow, because their genes might spread into the pure pohutukawa stock.

I couldn't help wondering if its okay for humans, why not plants?

Before I go on I'd better declare an interest. My little inner-city section has enough suspect foliage to keep an ARC swat team happy for hours.

Let's start with the oxalis in the front garden which they're more than welcome to. Then there's the ivy growing up the front of the house which I suspect, from the size of the trunks, is now a vital part of the structure.

Out the back, marginally under control, is what used to be called "wandering j*w" while in the little goldfish pond was, until last week, a pleasant, and rampant, little yellow flowered poppy, which has long been on the ARCs banned list.

My excuse for having it was to provide shelter for the fish from stray foreign cats and native kingfishers.

I had a couple of phoenix palms once too. They arrived by bird-post along with a nikau. I was seduced into thinking they were all the latter when they first sprouted up.

To begin they look the same, then like cuckoos, the imposters suddenly erupted in size. I suspected the worst but it took a spine in my finger to convince me to unpack the saw and cut them out.

Mr Lee said his main concern was that the outcry of the cat lobby in defence of strays was diverting public attention away from serious pest and weed problems. But where is the line?

My PC manual tells me if we want native songbirds in the city, we're going to have to eradicate or control four-legged immigrants such as rats and cats, which dine on them and their young. Now there is a serious challenge. So serious and vote-losing, I doubt any politicians will take it on.

Alongside that, a few self-sown phoenix palms and ivy plants seem rather insignificant.

After 160 years of invasion, you'd have thought if they were going to take over the bush, they would have done it by now.