Rudman's city: Need an excuse? Hey, it's all September 11's fault

By BRIAN RUDMAN

Auckland Deputy Mayor David Hay really should brush up on his excuses. Claiming to have been out of the room at the time his Auckland Citizens and Ratepayers Now colleagues came up with their election policy to freeze rates for three years is a rather outdated excuse.

These days, when the going gets sticky the fashionable smokescreen for the squirming politician or chief executive is to blame it on September 11.

It's what Auckland Museum director Rodney Wilson - a past master in putting a gloss on awkward figures - used to explain a 22 per cent drop in visitor number last November.

Similarly, across at The Edge, the council-owned entertainment complex, chief executive Greg Innes used "the events of September 11" as part explanation for the projected additional deficit for the year ending in June of $1.36 million.

For a political lead, Mr Hay could have copied the example of Manukau City Mayor Sir Barry Curtis.

Ever on the hunt for the reasons ever-elusive sponsors for his long-dreamed-of Pacific Arena are always just around the corner, Sir Barry in late February came up with a new one: the September 11 terrorist attacks had strained the finances of many businesses, making it harder for the city to get corporate money for this kind of project.

So pervasive has this excuse become that I'm starting to wonder if September 11 is also to blame for John Banks' victory in the next month's mayoral election - voters fearful of leaving the safety of their homes to post their ballots in such troublesome times and all that. It is certainly as plausible as some of the other things being pinned on September 11.

In more God-fearing times we used to give the Almighty the credit - or blame - for anything untoward - the killer earthquake, the plague, the five-legged calf in the bottom paddock. But these days it's only insurance companies and governments that fall back on such an explanation, and then only to avoid any legal obligations that might otherwise fall their way.

With blaming God falling into disuse, we turned our sights on El Nino. This was a strange weather phenomenon, named appropriately enough after the son of God, which none of us really understood. Somehow it quickly became the fall-guy for the woes of the world.

Only last weekend, a weatherologist was on the radio blaming El Nino for our lousy summer. Or was it La Nina? Because it did get a bit complicated when El Nino's baby sister was tossed into the equation, to say nothing of global warming.

Between them, however, they've been the universal whipping boys for at least two decades. Crop failures in Nigeria, bush fires in Australia, New Zealand becoming a Third World country and being invaded by tropical mosquitoes. It was all their fault. Until September 11, anyway.

But with the collapse of the World Trade Centre towers, the heat has gone off the Nino and Nina twins and global warming and onto 9/11, as we September 11-watchers now call it.

Even the Ministry of Education had a go during the zoning row in Auckland, saying it could hardly be blamed for not planning for the rapid increase of students in Auckland resulting from the large influx of migrants in the last three months of the year.

The New York firemen were still excavating bodies from the crash site when the first fingers started pointing at September 11. Overstretched airlines were quick to shed staff and blame 9/11, Air New Zealand among them.

Governments from Moscow to Wellington were quick to use it as an excuse to introduce new methods of spying on the citizenry through so-called anti-terrorism legislation of one sort or other.

In Washington it was the excuse needed to draw up a nuclear hit list of unloved countries; in Tel Aviv it gave the chance to tighten the noose around Palestine.

For the commercial world it was the perfect prop to square away bad results. The conglomerate that owns, among other things, Louis Vuitton and Moet Hennessy, said their disastrous results were the result of plummeting sales post-September in airport shops of champagne and fashion goods.

Across in Australia, Prime TV blamed 9/11 for shaking the already "fragile level of confidence" in the advertising market.

On this side of the Tasman, Tourism Holdings reported profits down 61 per cent for last year, thanks to you know what.

But Shotover Jet reported profits up 52 per cent for the same period, despite September 11.

Meanwhile, down on the Waikato pipeline project which will bring a new water supply to Auckland, contractors blame the "falling New Zealand dollar after September 11" for some of a $16 million budget blowout.

Further afield, let's not forget lonely Oxford undergraduate and, according to recent reports, party girl Chelsea Clinton. After September 11, she says, she has encountered "every day" some sort of anti-American feeling.