Posts by Russell Brown
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Also, this Covec report on the economic impact of the 2005 Lions tour.
Impact on New Zealand
The Lions Series generated a large amount of international and domestic visitor activity in New Zealand. It is not valid to include activity generated by domestic travellers in a national economic impact assessment, so the national impact focuses solely on the economic impacts generated by international visitors to New Zealand.
The Lions Series generated additional foreign exchange earnings of $131.0m which flowed through the New Zealand economy and generated a total GDP impact of $135.2m (including indirect and induced effects). This GDP would not have existed in the absence of the Lions Series. This is a very substantial impact, especially given the relatively short period of time it was generated in ...
The additional GDP of $135.2m supported the equivalent of 2,715 full time employees for one year (including indirect and induced effects). This employment impact would not have existed in the absence of the Lions Series.
The overall economic activity generated, including domestic travel etc, was somewhat greater than that, of course.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Maybe that will compensate for the non-rugby tourists who will give NZ a wide berth next summer. (Rugby is a minority sport in all of the countries that play it except NZ and the Pacific Islands. Outside those countries, it’s a completely marginal sport).
And your point is what exactly?
Also, the RWC won’t be played in summer – it’s in September and October – so I can’t really see it deterring the usual summer trade. And would it really, anyway? The sour and negative view that it’ll all suck balls seems to be one peculiar to New Zealand.
Is there any actual academic evidence that spending public money on glamour projects, like movies and sporting events, actually produces a return? Or compares that return with money spent on education, housing and public transport?
Or hip operations, to bring us back to John Drinnan’s non-argument.
Yes, there’s been quite a lot of research into the economic impact of major events for New Zealand, and a range of opinions as to what works and what doesn’t. MED produced a series of reports on the economic impact of the America’s Cup defences in Auckland, attributing about a half a billion dollars in new economic activity to each defence.
It felt like that in Auckland at the time. Yachting bores me rigid, but it was great to have the regatta in town. Wellington certainly seemed to flourish during the LOTR production years.
The really big RWC money is being spent on infrastructure, and that that will take years to pay back, but at the small business level I know there are people with high hopes of it making their year.
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2:…, in reply to James Bremner,
It seems like the shooter is a left wing pothead who includes the Communist Manifesto as one of his favourite books. Doesn’t seem like the profile of a person who would be motivated by anything Beck or Palin might have said.
Oh really? His recent online ranting about a “new currency” (Rand Paul and the Amero, anyone?) “backed by gold” (Glenn Beck) sounds right up with the the wingnut Zeitgeist.
In particular, it sounds quite a lot like the paranoid view of government ceaselessly peddled by Beck through his championing of Cleon Skousen, who implacably believed Eisenhower was a Soviet agent.
Even if they turn out to have had no direct impact on him, over the last few years these people have mainstreamed and legitimised the same paranoid beliefs that Loughner displayed.
And then there’s the memo obtained by Fox News – so it must be true – revealing that police are pursuing potential connections between Loughner as the American Renaissance group, which is “anti government, anti immigration, anti ZOG (Zionist Occupational Government), anti Semitic.”
OTOH, Loughner’s rhetoric is also very like that of the far-right loon David Wynn Miller and the Sovereign Citizen Movement.
At any rate, he really doesn’t sound like your average lefty pothead.
PS: Any state that lets someone as crazy as Loughner – who by this time had been suspended from school pending a psych evaluation, and rejected by the army – waltz into a store, sign a piece of paper saying they’re not “seriously” crazy, and buy and leave with a gun and two high-capacaity 30-round clips … has some pretty fucked-up gun laws.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to giovanni tiso,
Reassure me that the choice between how to promote New Zealand is more between Keri Hulme and JRR Tolkien, than Tolkien and Power Rangers. Please.
See above re Whale Rider, also a grant recipient. The point was that not all beneficiaries of the large budget production grant scheme have tourism spin-offs, but Tourism NZ seems extremely sure that LOTR/The Hobbit is one that does.
The keynote event this year will be the Rugby World Cup. Tourism NZ has been suggesting to people in other countries that that might be an ideal reason to visit our country for about 18 months now.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to recordari,
My impression was they already had. I certainly have. And even with the new film (s), whether or not they succeed, in whatever sense you choose, my (almost certainly naive) wish is that Boy will do more to attract people to our shores over the coming years than a bunch of hairy… whoops.
Nope. Boy is a film for us. Whale Rider on the other hand probably did attract visitors.
The Tourism NZ site has a good page on the film and the culture it embodies, quoting Niki Caro:
"Traditionally, in the Maori culture, an important meeting or hui would often involve visitors staying on the marae. Firstly you are welcomed onto the marae in the traditional manner - the powhiri - then everybody gathers to do a mihi, which is a short speech about who you are, where you come from, who your parents are, your whakapapa (ancestry) and what you are interested in. It's very moving."
Marae stays are an option for visitors to New Zealand who want an altogether authentic experience of Maori culture. Tasks like food preparation are shared, then you eat together, enjoy an evening of kapa haka entertainment and sleep as a group in the meeting house.
One of the most moving scenes in Whale Rider was Paikea's song during a school kapa haka performance. The term kapa haka encompasses a wide range of Maori performance arts - from peaceful waiata-a-ringa (action songs) and waiata tawhito (ancient songs that tell of historic events) to poi dances (a poi is a swinging ball used to train for dexterity) and haka (war dances).
These people aren't idiots, you know.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to giovanni tiso,
What about the spin-off negatives? Like fostering the perception that our employment protections laws are for sale, and that we can be held to ransom on little more than a pretence? What about the long-term sustainability of branding the country as a Middle Earth knock-off, a derivative, tacky remake of old England? Quite beside how dispiriting it all is, for a country that no longer than fifteen years ago boasted a tourism interested in Maori and Pakeha culture, it could have fiscal consequences as well when the narrative becomes exposed for the fraud that it is, as it most likely will.
I'm not sure the reality is as you describe it. The same Tourism NZ that hitched onto the LOTR buzz has also played its part in a flowering of Maori tourism ventures, run by Maori, over the past decade -- and the Maori Tourism Council was founded and helped produce the Rough Guide to Maori New Zealand. The sector is bigger, more diverse and more sophisticated.
I don't think there's any evidence that taking advantage of the awareness driven by LOTR harmed indigenous tourism. The two were complementary. Tourism NZ certainly seemed very keen for The Hobbit to stay.
What LOTR helped sell was the same thing New Zealand has sold in tourism for more than a century -- our scenery. I think there's room for debate as to how effective cinematic tourism is, but I would think LOTR/The Hobbit is more likely to bring visitors than certain other recipients of the large budget grant scheme: Power Rangers, for example.
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to giovanni tiso,
And perhaps the best chance for success of a botched police case is to find or chance upon one of those.
OTOH, the party best placed to call bullshit on a highly technical police case might be a judge. I disagree with the decision, but I take Kyle's point above that it could be seen both ways.
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to Sacha,
The suppression of the reasons for the decision is at the request of the defendants.
Are we allowed to know/say that?
I think so. The judge's post-teleconference ruling unsuppressing the fact of the original decision doesn't seem to be suppressed itself.
The reasoning for the original decision presumably includes evidence that might be prejudicial to a fair trial for the defendants, whose counsel wanted only the fact of the decision to be unsuppressed. The Crown wanted more to be revealed.
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 1: Beach…, in reply to giovanni tiso,
They don't call redheads fiery for nothing.
Actually, they do.
OT, but almost the only thing I can recall from the "Italian Unification" unit of UE History is that Garibaldi was a ginge.
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 1: Beach…, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Which pretty much proves that no-one really believes that irascible bloodnut stereotype.
My sainted mother falsifies the theory every day.