Dialogue: His chainsaw cut into a city's heart

It hurts to see Michael John Smith sauntering in Queen St occasionally, lightly punished by a law he calls oppressive, plainly enjoying the fruits of the capitalism he detests.

I don't know of a suitable penalty for what he did but I know he intended to do much more than damage a tree without resource consent, the only charge he finally had to answer.

He said so himself on that heartbreaking morning six years ago today. He wanted to hurt a million people deeply, and he has.

Until the night that he summoned all his courage and stole up to a defenceless tree with a chainsaw, Auckland had never invested that tree with the slightest political significance.

It was just there, a happy accident of nature. The cold winds and poor soil of the highest peak on the isthmus had left only one tree standing of several planted more than a century before.

Nature selected the pine over natives planted at the same time, and sculpted it to a form that could not be contrived and probably cannot be replaced.

From a distance, the single leaning tree looked sublime up there beside the obelisk. It became one of those landscape features that orient people, excite their pride of place and love.

Smith knew that. "What I did will give people a sense of outrage," he said right after the assault, "and I hope they understand the type of outrage we're feeling."

Well, they can't. Careless or criminal, the dumb destruction of a 250-year-old totara in the mid-19th century cannot, in any sane reckoning, justify the same injury to a community 150 years later.

When Auckland awoke to the news that morning, the chainsaw cut into its heart. It was the ultimate vandalism. Maori as much as Pakeha grieved on the air.

But not all. Dr Ranginui Walker thought it a finely honed act. The late Eva Rickard rushed to Auckland to support Smith, saying the pine tree was a symbol of oppression because it had been planted by Pakeha to replace the totara.

That is not quite so. Sir John Logan Campbell planted the pines as protection for native trees, hoping one of the natives would emulate the totara destroyed a year before he bought the property, according to a historian, retired professor Russell Stone.

But the Rickard summary no doubt will become the accepted version in today's tendentious travesties of history. If a stark example is ever needed of the damage that historical half-truths can do, look at One Tree Hill now.

Michael John Smith, aged 36, unemployed, of Kaeo, was charged with wilful damage on October 28, 1994. From that moment, under our oppressive law, not a word could be said against him until he came to trial.

Newspapers were unable to publish many of the letters from wounded people over the following weeks because they reflected on his action.

But there was no legal impediment to publishing his point of view. One-sided portraits of Smith and his politics soon made him a national figure.

While the wounded awaited his trial, he travelled widely. In Wellington he sat on a panel with Ken Mair, Syd Jackson, Annette Sykes and Tame Iti. Mair said many other "monuments" should come down. A statute of John Ballance in Wanganui was decapitated twice that summer.

Smith's friends made theatre of his case the first couple of times it was called in the Auckland District Court, singing waiata, talking throughout proceedings.

Lawyer Sykes defied Judge Jane Lovell-Smith and got away with it. The defendant said he did not recognise the court's jurisdiction. Supporters laughed and jeered as the charges were read.

Seven months after the event, the case came to a hearing. The police indictment of wilful damage was put aside and the Auckland City Council brought five charges involving damage to a scheduled tree without resource consent.

The prosecution took one day. The defence ran for three. Witnesses for Smith said the summit was sacred because the umbilical cord of a chief's son was buried there 300 years ago and only a tree planted by Maori could satisfy the wahi tapu.

The council said the pine tree had become an icon to the city. Its witnesses may not have used the word sacred but they ought to have done.

The tree was sacred to generations who grew up in sight of it, played around it, married beneath it and took their children to see it.

It is time the rest of us challenged the Maori monopoly on the meaning of natural surroundings. Our attachment to the landscape may be aesthetic rather than animist but that is no less sacred.

Smith was found guilty and faced a possible $200,000 fine or two years imprisonment. Sentencing day came on June 16. Again supporters sang a waiata from the public gallery. Many of them attested to Smith's good character. Selwyn Muru said: "Mike is something of a Mandela to us."

After nearly two hours of that, the judge retired to gather his thoughts. When he returned he gave Smith six months' periodic detention. Last year the tree was attacked again.

This week we saw the last rites, a karakia at dawn and great care taken by the council to protect the middens.

Now, no doubt, they plant a totara which, if it grows tall and straight, would look as incongruous on that cone as a flag on the harbour bridge. But it doesn't matter what they put in its place. It won't be the same. My sacred tree has gone.

Herald Online feature: Tree on the Hill

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