Island Life by David Slack

Dear Island Life: Where are you? Got any more quizzes planned? How's Mary-Margaret? I'm very well indeed, and thanks for asking. I have this habit of saying "yes" to anyone who asks me to do a job - or at least any job that sounds like fun. Could you write me a speech by tomorrow? Sure. Fancy writing a blog? Naturally. Can you do a book in eight weeks? No worries. How are those deadlines looking, Sparky?

The book? Well, it's an anthology of Terzain poetry, actually. Just kidding. I'll give you a clue - the word "Treaty" appears frequently. Also "Brash", "grievance" and "outrage". It's topical. For sure. If you've been trying to get Dad to understand your point of view on this whole Treaty of Waitangi carry on, it'll be well out in time for Father's Day, and if you're looking for a book to help you in your next argument over a bottle or two, it should do the trick. I promised the good people at Penguin that I wouldn't go putting the whole book in the blog, so for now I'll talk mainly about the business of making it.

I found that I could keep all the balls in the air while I was researching and interviewing, but once I began writing, everything else became an impediment, and got shoved aside. Weeks one through five were excellent. I interviewed all kinds of interesting people, re-acquainted myself with the history of our cheerful little isles, and generally enjoyed the process. The remaining weeks were a bit less even. Young Mother In New Haven got an email in the middle of Easter that captured the mood of the moment - sorry I haven't emailed back sooner - snowed under, it's 10.30 pm and my tape of Sir Tipene O'Regan is busted. Yours, with a screwdriver wedged in a micro-cassette, etc. That story has a happy ending, as it turns out. In one of life's little victories, I managed to transfer the tape to the carcass of a gutted blank, reconnected it, and we were back in business.

Actually, speaking of that interview, there's an observation Sir Tipene made that didn't go into the book, which is too good not to be published somewhere. He was talking about having to sit round reading bloody Morgan ( Gareth Morgan in the Sunday Star Times) sounding off about 'The Maori collective.' Every company that he advises people on shares on is a Pakeha collective, he said.

"I take him back to the Hon Mr. Rees. It's about 1879. It's an appendix to the journals of the House of Representatives. Memorandum - he's getting really uptight about attempts to destroy Maori collective rights and interests - anyway, Mr. Rees observes and opines: it is an extraordinary thing that we, who have spent 400 years developing the concept of the limited liability company, should come to this remote and distant place and here find this structure in its most near perfect form, and immediately set about its destruction."

There's a lot more where that came from, but it's at the printers. Strictly speaking, I guess, the ads should be confined to the top right hand corner of this page, so that's enough of that.

When you're knocking a book out at speed, you make the odd mistk, and miss the occasional. Or, at least, this author does. Tip of the hat to Mr Finlay Macdonald for providing a safe pair of hands to catch those errors, effect some prudent tightening and generally find ways to add some punch when it needed it. We were talking yesterday about how wearing it can be to grind out those words under pressure, and he was reminiscing about an equally short deadline he had for the companion book to the Rugby TV documentary series he worked on a few years ago. The family had a one year old baby and fulltime jobs to go on top of the couple of thousand words for the book he had to knock out each night. There's always someone worse off…

Which is all a long way of explaining why the only sound at Island Life for the past month has been the gentle rustle of those palm leaves. I promised myself a few days off when the book was done, and I will not be denied. There's the odd promised assignment to take care of first, but those are getting dealt to right now, and then I'm looking forward to a few days with the feet up. Am I too late for the comedy festival?

Going back to Wellington has been a little poignant on my last few visits. If you take yourself up Willis Street to the corner of Vivian St, you can see for yourself. A couple of years ago, they brought in some trucks, a digger and a few blokes with power tools and they pulled down the Brunswick Arms.

Actually, that's not entirely accurate; they knocked over the main building that housed the bars, but they left the drive-through bottle store standing, and as of last Thursday, I can report that it was still there, albeit repainted in avocado green and trading as a fruit and vege store. If I were to spend my money there today, I'd be able to get more healthy sustenance than I ever got over the couple of years I worked there, but being healthy wasn't anywhere on my list of 100 top priorities when I was a student.

That pub put me through university. You went up the hill to learn about the law of Contracts, but you could learn plenty about business - and people - just by watching what happened in those bars.

I got the job because I was upwardly mobile, and by that I mean I was sick of washing dishes in a restaurant. (Which was itself a step up from McDonalds, Kentucky Fried and Homestead Chicken.) I got up one morning, thought to myself: A pub job would be good, and pulled out the Yellow Pages. Alphabetically, the 1860 Victualling Company was first in the listing. Nothing doing there. Never liked that pub anyway. Next on the list was the Brunswick Arms. I dialled them.

Got any part-time jobs? I asked.

Yeah, they said, one of our bottle store guys is starting his holidays tomorrow. Three weeks' work. Have you done this before?

No, I said.

Okay, they said, come on in.

I pulled on my helmet and I was standing in their office three minutes later. The early biker gets to sell the tequila worm.

What do you do? they asked.

I'm a student I said.

We don't usually hire students, they said.

It's worth a shot, I said.

How old are you, one of them asked half way through an unrelated sentence.

Twenty, I snapped back with as much assurance as I could throw into it.

The two of them glanced at each other: Yeah right

But they needed someone right away and I was standing there. So I got the job.

I knew right away this was the life for me. I had product knowledge, could sell the product with enthusiasm, was willing to trial it whenever required, and the staff discounts were most reasonable.

The most bizarre aspect of the job turned out to be that the fulltime job was much less work than the part-time one. If you were a full timer, you came on at 10 in the morning, worked your eight hours, and finished at 6, just as the place was starting to get busy. Even more bizarre, "Smiler", the guy I was filling in for, was spending his holiday not far from work. He was in the public bar each day. Smiling.

It seemed odd then, but it soon came to make sense. This genuinely was a neighborhood pub. The public bar was a second home for a lot of the older single guys who lived in flats all around upper Willis Street and Aro Valley.

There was a bar upstairs - the sportsman's bar. This was the unofficial headquarters of the Wellington Rugby Club - mostly blokes, mostly over 30.

And there was the Cock and Bull bar - the more expensive, more plush, Olde English bar that was home to, for example, the crowd at Colenso Advertising who were in an office just down the road, and the property valuers across the road, some of whom had sensibly taken shares in the business.

Holding the whole operation together was Mr Bill Brien, who is a top sort, and you tell him I said so the next time you see him. Bill was once a detective in Her Majesty's NZ Police, but he'd left the force and been in the pub business for about ten years by the time I came to be working for him at the Brunswick Arms. He was a shareholder as well as the manager, and he had a pretty good knack for hiring good reliable people who could run a tight ship. It was the kind of place where you behaved yourself or you were out the door - staff or customer.

The assistant manager - who actually hired me - was Mike Hubbard. Everyone had a nickname; he was Mother. He was quick with a joke, could size up people very swiftly, and had the kind of firm and fair manner that could keep the crew happy. We hit it off quite well, which turned out handy, because the bottle store manager, a no-bullshit Aussie decided I was a bloody student from up the Uni who didn't speak his language, never would, and could bloody well piss off back there when Smiler had finished his holiday.

So I settled in for my three weeks in the bottle store, keeping the shelves full of Lion Brown flagons, carafes of Blenheimer (the biggest selling Montana wine in 1979 by a mile), and 2 litre bottles of gin which were on special at such an impressive price that people would drive across several suburbs to stock up on it. We also had a few boxes of Baileys tucked away out the back, but you could only sell them to favoured customers on Bill's instructions. Sophistication came in different packaging back then.

The days could actually drag a little. In the middle of the afternoon, you'd be waiting for the next customer to drive in. There would be the old lady who would pull up at the same time every day, all dressed up in the perm and smart suit. She'd pick up the same 26 ounce bottle of gin, bring it over, pull out her purse, lean in to you and say - it's for my friend, you know.

There was the couple running a dairy just up the street. He'd come in for their first flagon of Lion Brown just before lunch. He or his wife would be picking up their third by late afternoon.

No, it wasn't a procession of people with problems. I just remember ones like those more vividly all these years later, because the fact that I sold them grog pricks my conscience a little harder these days.

For the most part, we were just helping people have a good time. Friday and Saturday nights, everyone who came into the bottle store was happy - they were on their way to have fun somewhere, and the mood was great.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The three weeks were up, Smiler came back to work, and my time was up. I picked up my pay packet, thanked them kindly and said goodbye.

But within a day or two, Mother Hubbard was on the phone. Can you work in the public bar tonight? And for the next two years, I was a regular part timer. The more helpful you are, the more people call on you for help. I ended up working there 30 hours some weeks. Sometimes they left me in charge, cashing up all the registers, stowing away a lot of money in the safe and locking the pub up. Once I forgot to lock the safe. Bill rang the next morning. I could hold the phone several feet from my ear and still hear his...observations.

We got on well, but I think our signals didn't always connect. He would often come over during the evening when I was on duty in the bottle store. How's it been? He'd ask.

Oh, quite slow, I'd say, meaning - that's handy, I've been able to study this case.

Oh, he'd say, looking a little deflated. Meaning We're actually here to make a profit. A few more punters is what we're after.

Took me a while to get clued up.

Still, my job was to deliver a satisfying customer experience, not that anyone used that language in those days. It just made sense to be cheerful, helpful and welcoming.

You got to know the customers, and it got to be a lot of fun. You got invited to parties, you got invited home, and you had all kinds of, well, satisfying experiences with the customers.

Having hired one student, they ended up hiring quite a few more. Flatmates, friends, friends of friends, a whole lot of us ended up pouring pints there.

For the most part, I did it all responsibly. You never want to drink while you're working. Not with a bar sitting right there in front of you. But I did spin out a time or two. I turned up one morning still tanked, and did a couple of high-revving circuits on my bike in the drive-through. Bill rang down for me to be sent up to his office.

There's something wrong here mate, he said. What's the story?

I don't know, I said, Got a bit carried away.

Well, you need to knock it on the head, he said, or you'll be down the road.

Fair enough I said.

Then he said I'll tell you what, if you can keep off the grog for a month, I'll give you a bottle of gin.

Somehow it made sense. We both kept our bargain.

In the end, I left for another part time job, and if you've been following the blogs, you'll know the story. But if they ever knock down the building where the ad agency was, I won't feel anything like the regret I do when I walk past that corner on Willis Street.

You couldn't fool George Orwell. And it's pretty clear the President of the United States can't fool Christopher Ketcham. He wrote a nice piece last month in which he analysed the degree of duckspeak in an interview with Tim Russert.

He suggested that the President commanded substantial talent as a political speaker, when analysed according to the principles of duckspeak, the language made famous by George Orwell in '1984'.

By those terms, Ketcham judged him to be a doubleplusgood doublethinker.

Duckspeakers need to feel at home with flannel. To do the job well, you should be adept at offering mindless invocations and be able to repeat a few of your favourite slogans as often as you can.

The whole idea of Newspeak is to shrink the vocabulary and eliminate independent thought; if you can't describe it, you can't think it.

Orwell wrote:

Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centres at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word duckspeak, meaning 'to quack like a duck'.

If you click over to the Ketchum piece , you'll see how he analyses the president's words, substituting QUACKS for portions of the sentences that are mostly or entirely meaningless.

I thought this was too good an idea to be applied solely to the leader of the free world, and so I've rigged up a little DuckSpeak translator to assess how the rest of us are speaking. You can click here to use it.

The first thing you'll notice is that it's a little rough around the edges. Why? Because I need to gather more phrases that essentially have no meaning. Yeah, yeah, I know.

Anyway…this is a task I'll be dealing with in spare moments, of which I don't have a great many right at the minute.

What's that you say? You know one? Step right this way. You're most welcome to add a phrase to the database. Just click here, and add whatever phrase you consider to be largely empty of meaning; one that's typically used simply as padding for an argument, be it of the liberal, conservative, Tory or rabid persuasion. We're an equal opportunity outfit here. If we get a decent collection, I'll share it with everyone.

That's all for now; the clocks are striking thirteen.

Just for the record, I'm in the thirteenth year of my first marriage and I have both believed and not believed in God over the 43 years of my life.

At our country school in Kiwitea, we had Sunday school on a Monday in the community hall where we sang songs and listened to stories. I may be mistaken, but as far as I can recall, most Mondays it was the same story about the wise man who built his house on the rocks. These were illustrated with figures on a felt-board. Attendance was voluntary, but typically all the kids except the Roman Catholics trooped across the road each Monday afternoon to get their instruction. In my last year at the school, my brother, sister and I rebelled and chose to bike home instead.

Religion and I didn't see much of each other after that for a decade or two. I got to High School and for a time I acquired the secular lefty trappings for which not everyone seems to have large affection. I wore a black armband for a month when Mao died, and no, I don't feel too clever about that now. Not that there were many takers for that world- view at Feilding Agricultural High School in 1976. That was more or less the point. We read Samuel Beckett and Albert Camus and I decided existentialism and an absurdist perspective on a Godless world was just what I was looking for.

I went off to university and made new secular lefty friends, and did plenty of, er, sinning. We sat in Legal System and listened to a great lecturer - John Thomas - offer us a few jaded insights into the typical career trajectory of people such as us. (Actually he first warned us: look at the person on your left. Now look at the person on your right. Only one of you is going to make it into the second year. Even lefties can practice a little Darwinism). He would get our leftist sensibilities all fired up with the injustice of a case and then he'd drop this on us: Ten years from now, you'll charge people a lot of money to take the other side of this case.

Not us, we all protested.

Another terrific lecturer in Jurisprudence, Ian McDuff, offered us this hypothetical dilemma: A house is burning. From it you can save either a baby or a Rembrandt.

As if, we all declared. Or rather all but one. One nice guy called Phil, who was in the territorials, bravely allowed that he'd save the picture.

Ah, but we're older now. I don't think anyone that I recall from that group will have gone over to the Rembrandt side, but I tell you what, the old lefties are thinning out. And I hate to disappoint OtherPundit, but I'm not a through and through lefty myself these days. I have no objection in principle to lower taxation if it's true that it can actually generate equivalent revenue. I think the private prison in Mt Eden seems to have accomplished good things. I believe in encouraging competition in the marketplace - unbundling the local loop seems an especially good example.

And I'm not so secular these days. Believing in God comes in handy when you're teaching your daughter's Sunday School class. I've been doing it for about a year, and I expect to be doing it for a good long while. I regard it as balance in her life against some of the other messages she's going to encounter. The Barbie people, the Mary-Kate and whatever-the-other-one's-name-is people, the cellphone people, Disney, and a few million other grown-ups who ought to know better are all looking for every angle they can find to bombard Mary-Margaret and every other child on the face of the planet with their pitches, and I don't care much for their messages. The emphasis is simple: develop a taste for acquiring things. Think principally about yourself. Preoccupy yourself with your image. Think shallow: shallow is good. Put yourself first and preoccupy yourself with becoming a consumer.

I like the Christian values that encourage selflessness, and consideration, and charity, and forgiveness. I think they make the world a little better. I accept that you can get good moral guidance in other ways too; I just happen to like this option. I like the community we have at our church. I like the good humour and the genuine interest people have in each other. And I like the thoughtful reflective context it offers. You have your choice of services: I like the solemn quiet ones. Faith comes in many packages, I'm still working out what it means to me. So I don't feel inclined to stretch out on the couch today and analyse this in any depth. If you're looking for something in that line, Anne Lamott over at Salon does a nice job of it.

But I'm not here to push it down your throat. You'll have to listen to someone like Dubya to get that.

I drove into the timber yard the other day and realised it was the first time I'd been there in more than a year. There was a time when I used to be in there just about every Saturday. We've been in the same house for 13 years now, and there isn't one corner of it we haven't built, demolished, extended or retrofitted at some point. We got professionals in for the big work, but I did all kinds of smaller projects along the way - flooring, paving, building fences, that kind of thing. At the time, I thought it was quite tiring work, but I was mistaken - we hadn't yet become parents.

There was a routine to it. First I'd get myself set up, then I'd go out to get what I needed from Devonport Timber, or Firths, or Placemakers, or the Resene Shop, or McEntee Hire. Then I'd get back home all fired up and tear into it. Within an hour, there'd usually be a good amount of wreckage piled up, and a cloud of dust, which would vary in colour, but would be pretty consistent in terms of density and dispersement.

The first few times this happened, it created, shall we say, tension in the household. Karren would look across the scene with an expression that suggested something less than unbridled enthusiasm. We differ in temperament in this respect. She'll tell you I have the optimism of someone who can fall from the top of a tall building with his thumbs up as he hurtles past each floor calling out Okay so far! She, on the other hand can sometimes take a glass is half empty and the tonic's flat point of view.

But the story always had a happy ending. I'd get to the end of the day, or weekend, everything would be back in its place and the job would be done, bright and shiny and almost like a bought one.

A ritual developed.
I'd say: Come and look at this.
She'd say: It's great.
I'd say: See?
After a while, the chaos stage acquired its own ritual. She'd get that aghast look on her face and I'd remind her: What always happens? You get that look on your face. And what do you always end up saying at the end?

It looks great she'd say wearily. So she'd walk away with her fingers crossed, hope for the best, and I'd work out how to do the job properly so I could keep my promise.

Which brings me around once again to our friend Dr Brash. Look, I'm not down on him, really I'm not. Ask any of my friends. I was saying two years ago that he'd make a good leader for the National Party. How they laughed. But look at him go now. That doesn't mean I buy his Treaty argument, though, and there's nothing in the Northern Club speech that's changed my point of view.

The more I look at this one law for all New Zealanders line, the more it disturbs me. What it's really saying is my way or the highway. It's playing on the growing anxiety people are feeling about the whole idea of biculturalism. The more they see changes being made to the old familiar hierarchy, the more nervous they get.

They don't like, to quote Dr Brash, such things as:

Cultural safety in nursing
Bilingual rebranding of the public sector
Treaty issues getting tangled up in health and safety audits
Claims of taniwhas being used to block developments
Consultations with iwi being required in relation to resource management consents, and even to scientific research in universities
The anomaly of Maori Parliamentary seats being expanded into local body politics and now to the representation on PHOs

I'll look at these individually in a moment, but first, I want to consider the broader context. This is what I think is happening: The floorboards have been torn up, there's dust everywhere, and while some of us are happy to tear into the job, Don's Army are looking at the upheaval and saying: I liked it the way it was.

This is the kind of thing I imagine John Tamihere was describing when he talked about the hard yards of nation building. If you look just at the upheaval, you might get the idea that things are in chaos and will only get worse, but if you do, you'll be ignoring the prospects that when the job's done, things will actually be better than they were at the start.

You can get grudging acceptance from most Pakeha about the justice of Treaty reparations (although I wouldn't want to overstate that, either, judging by some of the emails I've had in the past few weeks) but once you get on to other Treaty obligations, you strike a whole lot more unease.

I think the unease is unwarranted. Moreover, to take this position, you have to choose to ignore what the law says, and what morality asks of us.

Dr Brash asks:

Can we really believe that this simple 19th century treaty, which focused on sovereignty, property rights and citizenship, also has something to say about today's SOEs and national parks, today's schools and universities, how we go about approving or declining building permits, what science we should study, or how we should regard the new frontier of genetic science?

Let's answer that with another version of the same question: Can we really believe the United States Constitution had something to say about airline travel, stem cell research, or American Idol ? No. But if you wind up in the Supreme Court in litigation to do with one of those aspects of contemporary American life, and find a reason to invoke some right or another under the constitution, the court won't say Get outta here. They weren't thinking of that when they wrote the constitution. Their constitution contemplated the need for people to work together harmoniously in a civil society, as did this document. That is not to say the Treaty is a constitution, but it's hard to claim that it didn't have in mind the harmonious cooperation of the two signatories to the treaty, in circumstances unforeseeable in 1840.

What does the Court of Appeal have to say about this? In essence, that the Government has a specific legal and historical partnership with Maori. Maori hold special rights under Article 2 of the Treaty. The Government has a duty of care and, arguably, a duty to consult with Maori on matters that could not be known in 1840. Colin James ( in a very interesting lecture here) mentions the interpretation by Michael Cullen that Article 2 protects more than a "list of possessions". It protects taonga. "That makes the Treaty a living document where new applications or implications may arise as circumstances change."

That last point seems to rattle Don's Army: a moving target. And yet that's what we have going on in our courts every day. Old common law principles get applied to new situations. Government enacts new laws to keep our practice in line with undertakings we've made under international treaties. Circumstances change, and as they do, we adjust our laws according to longstanding and continuing obligations. Scary stuff? Not really, just something you have to get used to, and become familiar with. Old institutions are familiar and cosy, new ones are unsettling.

For the largest part of this country's Treaty history, one partner has had a great deal more voice than the other, and a great deal more power. It's easy to claim you're a proud supporter of a partnership when your side's calling most of the shots, and has control of the wheel most of the time. The test comes when the other partner gets a hand on the wheel. Once people start to see that Bicultural can mean handing over some of the power you held all to yourself, you see them getting uneasy.

Where will it end? People ask, thinking to themselves: They want to run the whole show.

I think they should fret less. The partners to the Treaty just want a fair shake. We've made some good progress. Giving more voice to the other partner and sharing more power has brought about some impressive changes. Maori business, Maori culture, Maori language, are all much stronger than they were one and two decades ago. The renaissance has given many Maori a new sense of purpose and possibility and they're taking advantage of it. Why would you want to undermine that?

When you look at Ngai Tahu trebling the value of their Treaty settlement, do you feel excited about that or not? When you see greater numbers of Maori students in the tertiary system than ever before, do you feel more or less confident about the future? When you see a flourishing Maori culture in our schools, and kids engaged by it and more motivated to learn, do you see that as a good or bad thing? Wouldn't you like to see that expanding throughout Maoridom?

This hasn't happened in a vacuum. Power sharing has helped to make that happen - it's given Maori more confidence and fresh purpose. I'm not meaning to romanticise this: any power sharing takes a lot of work and negotiation. But when you push this one law for all New Zealanders line, you're really saying: Hands off the wheel, pal. We don't want biculturalism and we don't want to share any power with you.

What is unreasonable about Maori asking as partners: Support our identity, reflect our cultural values and practices, try to speak our language.

What is unrealistic about asking: Let us create our own institutions. Let's look at some of the things these power-mad Maori have got up to. Kaupapa Maori education, from pre-school through to tertiary levels, is making huge advances. In health, there are now over 70 iwi and Maori organisations funded specifically to provide mental health services. Child and family services that place children who need care and protection with members of the whanau are also growing. Some of these services end up dealing with the most difficult cases, the ones that mainstream providers can't cope with.

These kinds of initiatives promote self-sufficiency and independence - that's power sharing. How is it not a good thing?

Now, you can deride Cultural safety in nursing, but if you do, you're saying you don't accept that it might ever be helpful for nurses to have an understanding of national and local issues and their impact on health. Maori would like government agencies to engage with them on their terms. Cultural safety programmes make that possible.

You can deride Bilingual rebranding of the public sector, but if you do, you're saying you don't accept that a simple means of making people more familiar with the Maori language might enrich our culture a little. Being unnerved by a logo seems to me a bit of an overreaction.

You can mock Claims of taniwhas being used to block developments, but in doing it, you're making a pretty big deal out of something that was, as Russell has correctly identified, quickly remedied. Moreover, if you want to be ideologically consistent, you'd better be ready to approve 24-hour trading over Easter, brothels being set up next door to churches and tearing down any white crosses that get in the way of roadworks.

And then we have these questions of Treaty issues getting tangled up in health and safety audits, and Consultations with iwi being required in relation to resource management consents, and even to scientific research in universities. At first blush, you can see the point. I got a thoughtful email from a reader a couple of weeks ago, which said:

In my field we make transgenic organisms. The HSNO act applies to our work and ERMA manages our work. Local panels assess planned experiments to determine safety and to ensure the work is done in a responsible ethical way. Those panels include Maori representatives. Do you have any idea why - because I don't.

As you might expect the Maori are uninformed about the work they are assessing so we ran a day long seminar to inform them, something we are happy to do for anyone. They still remain relatively uninformed yet we are required to have them at the meetings and to pay for their travel…

It's not the resolution of inequities that bothers me. I'm as puzzled and disturbed as anyone by the dearth of Maori scientists and anything that can be done reasonably to resolve those issues should be done…

There is now an assumption that the opinion of the Maori matters in every issue above and beyond their opinion as humans like the rest of us - that bothers me. In some cases that opinion is enshrined in the bureaucracy (not necessarily in law) and sometimes that position is being abused...

There are a few elements to this. The first, I think is that any new process takes some bedding in. If it's abused, that needs to be called to account, and I think with an ever-ready media looking for scandal, you can guarantee a watchdog function.

Secondly, there is the principle of the thing as so many of the foam-flecked emails I've had on this subject like to remind me. Well, how about this principle: the Crown has obligations to its Treaty partner which it is able to discharge in part by asking you, as a recipient of its funding, to collaborate with iwi. But that's taking the negative point of view. There are some interesting examples of Crown organisations who've spent some time thinking about making the most of the partnership and finding a productive way forward.

Take a look at this work by Landcare Research. What becomes clear as you read it is that once they find themselves having been brought together, the participants ask: how can we find a way to make this productive for everyone involved? And as soon as you ask that question, you start coming up with interesting answers about building capacity, identifying employment and training opportunities and sharing insights to name just a few.

This kind of collaboration breaks new ground. I don't think you can say for certain what will come of it in the long run, but the sense you get from reading that material is that it's quite likely to produce some worthwhile results. I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who's been involved in a process of this kind - stories of success or failure. The REPLY button's just down there.

John Tamihere is right - we are putting in the hard yards of nation building at the moment. This really is no time to quit.