Paul Holmes: Driven by hatred

Hard to see how New Zealand cricket can have even the remotest thoughts that the Black Caps' tour later this year should go ahead. The Sri Lankan team's catastrophe should have given finality to the decision process. Pakistan is a foul, festering cesspit of violence, hatred, resentment, loathing and lies.

Unseen layers upon unseen layers impose themselves on life there. If the Pakistan police do not know what is going to happen next, how can anyone? Actually the Pakistani police might well know what's going to happen next - how would you know?

If Benazir Bhutto could be shot to bits on the top of the bus with the kind of security protection she had, if the Sri Lankans can be fired upon and mortared with the protection they had, then anything can happen in Pakistan.

In fact, the Pakistani team narrowly missed the Sri Lankan attack, and may only have done so because their bus left five minutes earlier than scheduled.

The Pakistani skipper said it would have been a shame for his team to have been attacked because they are young lads just getting established - whatever that had to do with it. As if psychos should wait until a team is at its peak before spraying it with automatic fire. However, people make odd remarks in the frightened minutes after psychos have struck.

Anyway, Justin Vaughan was right in his immediate reaction after the news swept the world. "We will not be going," he said. Then the money boys must have got to him and the burdens of international cricket contracts must have descended upon him because within a few hours Mr Vaughan is suggesting New Zealand Cricket will have to think about it.

Well, India is the big money cricket power house. So if India can cancel a tour of Pakistan, as they did after Mumbai, then we can, too. You cannot send a team of young sportsmen to Pakistan when it is driven by dissent, hatred, fanaticism and is broke and lawless to boot.

I must say, the Indian fans on this New Zealand tour are a joy to watch. Their enthusiasm, the colour, their crying out, their relentless support for their team, are tremendous fun.

Certainly, they brightened up a miserable, wet afternoon in the stands at Napier this week as my mate Peter and I sat for an hour and a half waiting for the rain to stop. The Indian fans are getting plenty of exposure on the television broadcasts, too, thanks to the $25 million Indian cricket is paying for the live pictures.

AND WE can tell Zimbabwe the party is over, too. A New Zealand cricket team touring Zimbabwe gives Mugabe some hope, and allows him to slap governments like those of Australia and New Zealand in the face.

Former Commonwealth Secretary General, Don McKinnon, has met Robert Mugabe "many, many times". The other day, I asked him if Mugabe is mad. McKinnon smiled ruefully. "No," he said. "He's not. Not in the way you mean."

McKinnon says Mugabe manipulates those round him with brilliance to the point where they all think they will succeed him. McKinnon says Robert Mugabe is the kind of man who can remember, off the top of his head, what the third English batsman in the order scored in the second innings in the England versus Western Australia match in Perth in 1974, or whenever.

We have all met people like that and you have to be fast and accurate to beat such people in an argument. Former Labour Party president Mike Williams was the champion of this method of argument at high school. He could floor his opponents.

Mike never wanted to push people off their land and he distinguished his own departure from his presidency by anointing a clear successor.

AS YOU may have read, I am returning to TVNZ, to co-host what promises to be a lively, free-ranging political show on Sunday mornings, Q and A. I am very impressed with Anthony Flannery, the head of news and current affairs, who has done a steady job of shoring up TVNZ's news and current affairs numbers. Anthony is well-liked and has a good sense of, for want of a better word, freedom. He believes in lively television. Suits me.

The reaction of the print media has been interesting. So far I have read three complete pieces of nonsense about me in both the Dominion Post and the New Zealand Herald, things I could easily have assisted to correct if anyone had phoned me. But I must say this, in response to John Drinnan on Friday morning. John wrote: "Friends say it has been hard handing over the NewstalkZB show he held for 17 years." Well I don't know whose friends John has been talking to but mine would not have told him that.

I had a wonderful time, ZB gave me a wonderful send-off, people said the most wonderful things and life moved on. Lying in bed until 7am is actually very nice.

So why am I doing it? I suppose it is the challenge or, as Flannery says, keeping the hand in. I love politics and I like the people I will be working with. There is a broadcasting bug, of course. As an old auntie once said, I was vaccinated with a gramophone needle. We might make an interesting and entertaining hour of television between all of us. It is also quite nice not having the name on the marquee. It takes some of the pressure off.

So I went to Wellington on Wednesday for the publicity photo shoot. A new suit, a new tie, new shirt, makeup, and met Guyon Espiner pretty well for the first time and Therese Arseneau absolutely for the first time. I think we identified a free and buoyant dynamic between the three of us. There was, as they say, a good feeling. So here's to March 22.

It was a gorgeously warm, blue day in Wellington. The downtown area has an even more vibrant presence and appearance than I ever remember; and it was always pretty good. Every new building is carefully thought about, fervent with the new progressive thinking in architecture.

The buses have "Go Wellington" painted on them. Wellington has a real sense of itself, of moving forward. Even Newtown, where we did the photographs, is reborn. Newtown's little painted houses and buildings make it look like one of the Baltic capitals. The new hospital there projects state-of-the-art power and technology.

Auckland does not know what its heart is or looks like. What's more, it doesn't care, which is also kind of nice. Auckland knows it's the best, the richest, the most powerful. Auckland does not need to write Absolutely Positively on its buses.

But I cannot think of a beautiful recently built Auckland building. The waterfront is wasted, an unfocused mess, and the red fence prevents all progress.

Auckland lives without a vibrant, attractive central area, or several attractive central areas that Wellington has, areas frequented by decent-looking, normal folk.

Auckland's central areas are peopled by the confused souls who walk to and from the cruise liners, by beneficiaries aimlessly filling their days and by sundry creatures from the bar scene of Star Wars scoffing McDonald's apple pies with their eyes focused far away.

In Wellington this week I saw how pleasant such areas can be, as people sat on the grass, surrounded by fascinating architecture and good planting.

Having said that, there is something free and anarchic about Auckland's ugly downtown clutter. Auckland, I have felt since I came here more than 20 years ago, from Wellington, and tried to understand the place, is what the English call muck and brass.
Wellington might be Absolutely Positive. Auckland is muck and brass. In Auckland, if you have the brass, you can be as mucky as you like.