Good to hear someone calling “bullshit” on Winston Peters, and on his claims to have saved the taxpayer $2.3 billion on the Cook Strait ferries. As RNZ’s Ingrid Hipkiss pointed out to Peters this morning, the ferries we will be getting will cost more to build (by $45 million) and will be smaller. Also, less will be being spent on revamping the port facilities. Apparently, those inadequate, decrepit ferry terminals (on one of our main internal tourism links!) will be with us for another decade or so.
Moreover, as Hipkiss also pointed out, the $4 billion cost for the iRex project that Peters is citing was never an actual cost faced by taxpayers, but a figure conjured up by consultants as a worst case guesstimate at the top end of the range. Also, Peters’alleged savings have been boosted by not counting in the cost ($170 million?) of the contract breakage fee.
Needless to say, Peters’ shonky figures also do not include the daily costs and inconvenience of delaying the arrival of the new ferries from early 2026 ( when the iRex ferries would have been here) and 2029, when his downsized service will finally commence operations. A service delayed is a service denied, and it comes with a price tag.
Soft power rules
This may sound like incredible thing to say in 2025, but there was once a time when the United States was a synonym for cool. Back then, American automobiles had big fins, like the 1958 Chevrolet Bel Air. America had James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, bubble gum and 50 flavours of ice cream. It had Levi’s jeans and Disneyland. Middle class affluence was possible on a single income. If you worked hard, you could still hope to climb the ladder of social mobility. To cap it off, there was rock’n’roll. All these aspects of ‘soft power” served to legitimise America’s march to global dominance.
True, a lot of this cultural allure had already evaporated before Donald Trump came along. Yet it has taken the Trump presidency to finally obliterate any lingering perception of America as being a capitalist Eden. These days, no one in their right mind yearns to experience America first hand, so no wonder inbound tourism to the US is tanking. Trump’s America is a fire in a trash can.
Even so, the US still has the world’s No 1 military machine and is the strongest on the planet. Yet a country’s reputation, image, and artistic output can be almost as essential to maintaining its global position. “Soft power” is the vogue term for the intangible values that oil the wheels of economic and military might. Arguably, it was rock’n’roll music and blue jeans that first set in motion the legitimacy crisis that finally ending up destroying he Soviet Union. As the New York Times recently reported wistfully, there was once a time when young Russians would risk imprisonment in order to get their hands on illegally imported copies of Chubby Checker’s “Lets Twist Again.”
For similar “soft power” reasons back in the 1950s, the CIA had sent many of America’s leading Abstract Impressionist artists on trips abroad to convince Europeans that some Americans were just as sophisticated as the Parisians. Could America truly be such a nation of brutish Philistines if a free, unfettered talent like Jackson Pollock was right at the forefront of the country’s experimental art?
Soft Power, here at home
To be effective, soft power need not strictly conform to reality. New Zealand’s international brand for instance, rests on (a) our “unspoiled” landscapes, (b) our No 8 wire ingenuity (c) our supposed racial harmony and (d) our allegedly friendly attitude to tourists. None of these attributes can withstand much in the way of close and clinical inspection.
The landscape aside…it is interesting that the other three “soft power” components of our national identity are by-products of an egalitarian ethos that is no longer being reflected in the government policy settings. Neo-liberalism and its gospel of individualism killed all of that 40 years ago, and we’ve been coasting on the egalitarian fumes ever since.
To all intents, the coalition government makes policy for the top 5%, at most. Policy for anyone else is secondary, rationed, and conditional. Try turning those values into a “soft power” message likely to attract tourists. Our American visitors have more than enough selfish autocracy waiting for them at home. They come here because misguidedly – and perhaps in the afterglow of Jacinda Ardern – they think that we’re different. Currently, we’re not.
BTW, corporate New Zealand has never given Ardern credit for the economic benefits that her style of leadership earned this country on the world stage. No flash marketing campaign could deliver anything like the positive brand recognition that New Zealand gained during her tenure.
Footnote: Governments that invest in soft power can do very well for themselves. For the past decade, South Korea has been the prime example of the rewards possible from the state investing wisely in soft power industries like the arts, music, television and film.
Led by BTS and Blackpink, K-pop has conquered the world; so have Korean TV shows (Squid Game, K-Pop Demon Hunters) and so have Korean films ( Train to Busan, Parasite, Burning etc.) As a result, soft power industries have been worth tens of billions annually to the Korean economy, with spinoff benefits evident in tourism. To repeat: the so-called hallyu “wave” has been the wildly successful outcome of the Korean state’s deliberate decision to inject significant amounts of development funding into the arts.
That said, a lot is still riding on the return – after four years of mandatory military training – of the K-Pop juggernaut, BTS. Four years is an eternity in a genre based on youthful beauty and creativity. Come the release of their comeback album in March 2026, we will all find out whether BTS is still the same musical, cultural and economic force it has been for the past decade.
Footnote Two: In contrast, our government is launching a new school curriculum that downplays the role of the arts. Think about it. Over the last 40 years, New Zealand has made its mark on the global stage via the “soft power” achievements of our athletes and artists. Those artists have included Keri Hulme, the raft of musicians that created the Dunedin Sound, Peter Jackson, Eleanor Catton, Lorde etc. At crunch, people idealise New Zealand because of our natural environment, and because of our artists. It is incredibly short-sighted of the current government to be endangering the well-being of both.
Limbless in Gaza
In Gaza, the genocide continues. In the calendar month after the Gaza “ceasefire” on October 10, Israel reportedly killed 242 Palestinians, broke the terms of the ceasefire agreement 282 times, bombed Gaza 124 times, and demolished 52 of the shelters being used by Gazans as relief against the oncoming winter.
Talking of the arrival of wintry conditions in Gaz , UNWRA reported recently on the dire situation:
…Heavy rain has affected over 13,000 households across the Gaza Strip, with hundreds of tents and makeshift shelters affected across the Strip. Immediate needs include winterization items including blankets, mattresses, tarps, jerricans, winter clothing, and tents. Many families temporarily sought refuge in UNRWA schools-turned-shelters after fleeing flooded sites… As of 10 November, the Site Management Cluster estimates that about 1 million people, out of a total population of 2.1 million, are residing in 862 displacement sites across the Gaza Strip. Among them, about 79,000 people are estimated to live in 85 UNRWA shelters and their surrounding areas.
RNZ has also reported on the flooding. Dr. Thienminh Dinh of Medecin Sans Frontieres told Checkpoint that since the October 10 ceasefire, the aid flow has still not improved. As she put it, the aid being allowed in by Israel is “wholly inadequate to meet the needs of people who have undergone and who, in my opinion, are still undergoing, a genocide.” As Dr. Dinh added:
“We continue to lack basic [medical] supplies. So we have run out of vital first-line anti-biotics.. To put things into context, what we have seen, and what we’re seeing. is the largest generation of child amputees. One of our patients at the moment is a 10 year old triple amputee. She was walking along with a cousin when a drone spotted them and dropped a bomb. She woke up to find that she had lost both legs and one of her arms, and that her cousin didn’t make it. Despite this, and despite creating hundreds and hundreds of amputees, the Israelis are still restricting mobility aids.”
Given the scarce number of wheelchairs, a child’s loss of only a single arm or leg is insufficient. “We can only give wheelchairs to children who have lost both legs..because the Israels are restricting them.” All of this is happening with nary a word of criticism of Israel from the New Zealand government.
Trump’s plan for Gaza
This week, the UN Security Council passed a resolution on Gaza based on President Donald Trump’s 20 point peace plan. It is an entirely y one-sided plan. It demands the unconditional disarmament of Hamas and the subjugation of Palestinian political autonomy, without any binding conditions whatsoever being placed on Israel and its military forces.
Basically, the US-led UN resolution seeks to set up an international “transitional” governing body to rule Gaza, while empowering an international military force to police the territory. As yet, there is no clarity about which foreign dignitaries or whose foreign troops will comprise those two bodies. For starters, Israel has already said it won’t accept Turkish forces being part of the military mission on the ground in Gaza.
Needless to say, a Palestinian state barely figures in the Trump scenario. In the unlikely event of a Palestinian state surviving an Israeli veto, the Trump plan dictates that any progress towards statehood will be dependent on the Palestinian Authority (PA) reforming itself. Really. Yet who is to decide what reforms of the PA are necessary, and who is to be empowered to certify that those reforms have been satisfactorily completed?
In essence, the Palestinians are being forced to jump through many, many hoops to prove they are fit for self-rule, sometime in the distant future. No requirements and no timetable are being proposed to end Israel’s illegal, ultra-violent presence in Gaza and on the West Bank. All along, conformity with UN resolutions and calls for compliance have been directed of only one side of this conflict.
Footnote: Gaza has long been an open air prison. Behind the actual prison walls, Israel’s violent abuse of its Palestinian detainees has been just as barbaric.
That weird old Christianity
In recent months, the UK-based musician known as SVN4VR has been issuing a series of odd, haunting singles with an overtly Christian message. For a prime example, here’s “Stop Talking To AI, Talk To God”….
And here’s an even more overtly Christian message. Originally released in 1979 under the name “Myriam Frances” this album by the Australian nun Sister Irene O’Connor has just been re-released. Here’s the title track: