Dialogue: Waitangi Day with gritted teeth

As national days go, Waitangi is still young, racked by the tears and tantrums of adolescence, says DIANA WICHTEL.

It's 7 am, Waitangi Day 2001.

Drag reluctantly patriotic carcass out of bed to watch the coverage of our national day. Someone has to do it.

I was willing to get up even earlier, but when I rang TVNZ they said there would be no early broadcast, just Breakfast as usual. Mike Hosking live, and, as it turned out, a little grumpy, from the treaty grounds.

The coffee would need to be double-strength this morning.

I tried Radio New Zealand, but it was celebrating the day as usual - by playing terrible music. It wouldn't be interrupting normal programming, said the man I spoke to, unless something unusual happened.

Poor show, I felt. Something unusual always happens on Waitangi Day, even those years when no one gifts the Queen a high velocity wet T-shirt, bares a bottom or spits at the Governor-General.

It's the one day of the year when the past refuses to be another country. For a few hours we confront our tenuous hold on nationhood as Maori and Pakeha eyeball each other over the cultural, political and social divide.

The majority of people I spoke to on the day said they'd prefer a New Zealand Day on which we could all celebrate as one. It's been tried before.

Abandoning Mike Hosking, I turned to the excellent website (www. nzhistory.net.nz/Gallery/treaty/index.htm) which reminded me of Norman Kirk's inaugural New Zealand Day in 1974.

February 6 had finally been declared a public holiday. To celebrate, there was what sounded like a gruelling musical extravaganza. If I ever saw it, I have wiped it from my memory. The high point was, apparently, an enormous moa laying a giant egg on the spot where the treaty was signed.

I'll stick with Waitangi Day, thanks, for all its tension, bizarre symbolic acts and power struggles. And there were signs this year that Waitangi Day could yet become the New Zealand Day many yearn for.

Looking on the bright side, no one laid a giant egg, unless you count Mike Hosking when, in a moment of desperate banter, he referred to his Speedo swimwear as "my nutcrackers".

And Helen Clark came back. I've changed my mind about how she's handled Waitangi since Titewhai Harawira made her cry in 1998. The Prime Minister is never at her best when she's reminded that she has feelings by having them hurt in public (the time she got caught up in the Ansett grounding and her overreaction to criticism of her husband spring vividly to mind).

When she refused to front up in 2000 and last year, I thought she was acting like a big, slightly damp girl's blouse.

With hindsight, it appears she was playing Waitangi like a fish on a line: the tears, the two year-long sulk, the last-minute decision, after much cajoling, to run the gauntlet at the lower marae.

In the end, she had the volatile Titewhai Harawira dancing attendance, almost every one on best behaviour and positively grateful that she did what she was always going to have to do anyway in an election year - front up.

She returned as she needed to, with mana and muscle, thanks to Titewhai and the ever-present scrum of Maori wardens. Interjectors found themselves deflected by novel means - the waiata was begun prematurely, noted one reporter dryly.

The PM wasn't saying much. The symbolism du jour merely required her to be there. But the pained spasm that passed for smile when she greeted Titewhai spoke volumes, as did the stubbornly unresponsive arm she allowed her new best friend to clutch.

The next morning gave new resonance to the term low-key. We barely saw Clark before, after some much reported heckling and jostling, she was bundled off in a car, depriving Mike Hosking of his hoped-for big interview. Not that I'm personally miffed at all, he said, sounding miffed.

It was a brilliant, if chilly, display of Clark doing what she does best - keeping things, including her own feelings, firmly under control. This time, she took interruptions and insults on the chin, which any leader of a free society has to be able to do.

A joyous celebration it was not. But the efforts made by almost everyone to literally save the day were heartening. It spoke, if through slightly gritted teeth, of underlying good will.

As national days go, Waitangi is still young, wracked by the tears and tantrums of adolescence. But this year it felt like a step forward rather than the usual two steps back. Adolescents do grow up, eventually.

It's 10.30 pm, Waitangi Day 2001.

Drag myself out of bed to see what all the banging is about. I can't see much, but from the general direction of the concert in the Auckland Domain comes the sound of fireworks. The sky briefly brightens.

For a hopeful moment I imagine the pyrotechnics are in celebration of Waitangi Day. But no. They're in celebration of the tonsils of tenor Russell Watson.

Never mind. Maybe we'll throw ourselves a proper birthday party next year.