Unsung heroes not hard to find

If there was a mastermind who redesigned the Viaduct Basin, Aucklanders could hail their hero of 1999.

At long last the City of Sails has an inviting, living waterfront because somebody has kept the building to a human scale, preserved plenty of public space and imposed a consistent, quite charming character that could change the city.

Who deserves most credit? Is it Auckland City Council project manager Mark Kunath? He defers to a design team of architects, engineers, artists, landscape consultants and others.

Is it the previous chief executive of American Express America's Cup Village, Rob Sutherland, who resigned with the public cost blowing out to three or four times that budgeted?

Or should we hail again Sir Peter Blake who pressed for a Downtown America's Cup harbour?

The guiding organiser of Apec in Auckland, Maarten Wevers deserves an award, too. His taskforce did well. The largest international government gathering New Zealand has hosted ran to perfection with the Presidents of the United States and China in town together and a genuine crisis over East Timor.

People behind the scenes did us a great deal of good this year but so, sometimes, did those out front.

Jenny Shipley brought people together for a day or two at Waitangi. She and Titiwhai Harawira, mother of the radical Maori family, were united. It was a brave move. The Prime Minister's opponents publicly warned her against it.

But she had been quietly talking to Mrs Harawira and Ngapuhi elders for months, negotiating the Crown's return to Waitangi for the first time since the flag was trampled and the Governor-General insulted.

They held a hui under a marquee the day before February 6 and it took the heat. At dawn the next day, Mrs Shipley was able to move hearts with an impromptu prayer in the Treaty meeting house.

Sir Douglas Graham was there. He retired this year as Minister in Charge of Treaty Settlements having done a deal of good.

This included two deals, with Tainui and Ngai Tahu. But, more than that, he had listened to Maori and relayed their story to National Party gatherings, chambers of commerce luncheons and other white-collar clubs. He affected them.

Jonah Lomu did some good when he stayed to shake the hands of the French and showed us all how to salvage some dignity from the most sickening of defeats.

In April we marvelled at the presence of mind of a four-year-old boy, William Kerridge, who led his little sister into the bathroom to escape the choking smoke of their burning house in Te Kowhai. It was the only room to survive the fire, and so did they.

Little Liam Williams Holloway made us wonder about the rights of parents and the legal power of medicine.

In Gisborne a woman pursued her misread tests for cervical cancer and exposed the fearful extent of a pathologist's errors.

The police pursued the killer of Constable Murray Stretch, murdered on duty alone in Mangakino in May. They have been less successful in a year-long hunt for the killer of teenager, Kirsty Bentley, whose body was found on a Canterbury river bank.

But without the bodies of Olivia Hope and Ben Smart, Detective Inspector Rob Pope compiled a case that led to Scott Watson being convicted of their murders after a trial that ran for three months.

John Lawton stood up to the Mongrel Mob, his neighbours in Invercargill, and Herald readers contributed $200,000 to help him to relocate his family.

John Storey was a victim of his own revolution when he was unseated in mid-year but he tried to do good by the dairy industry, devising the merger of the country's largest processors to pave the way for deregulation of the producer board.

Karen Walker did us some good, leading local fashion houses to acclaim on the catwalks of New York and London. "Kiwi chic" was the style of the season, thanks to her label and Nom D of Dunedin, World and Zambezi.

The Greens did well, with the help of genetic engineering and Jeanette Fitzsimons' bearing under attack from National in Coromandel.

But Andrew Ladley was best of all, standing firm and speaking calmly from a United Nations compound in Dili while Indonesian militia exacted terrifying revenge on East Timorese for their independence vote.

Back here he negotiated a coalition government agreement that gave the Alliance room to distinguish itself.

And by the end of the year, a new Prime Minister, Helen Clark, was doing well, promising little more than to keep her word, speaking without airs and giving New Zealanders new hope.