How about a Carmen Day?

This year Wellington Mayor Justin Lester called for Matariki to replace Queen’s Birthday as our mid-year public holiday. Two years ago, O¯ torohanga College students presented a petition to Parliament asking for a national day of commemoration for the New Zealand Wars.

Both debates became locked into the choice of whether or not to commemorate each event by way of a public holiday. For Matariki, the answer appears to be a no for now; and it was decided to commemorate the New Zealand Wars nationally, every two years, on October 28.

Observance Days are practised overseas and are most popular in America. There, they have national and regional observance days that commemorate historic events (such as Religious Freedom Day when Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was adopted in 1786), figures who have left their historical imprint in a significant way (such as the African-american rights leader Malcolm X), or a well-deserving cause (such as Child Health Day).

Many of these days are not public holidays but they are elevated to a status that creates an opportunity for the public, and perhaps more importantly, children, to become educated about either the country or region’s history or an important cause.

Already we have ‘‘Observation Days’’ in New Zealand. For example, Mother’s Day, Valentines Day or Halloween, which all tend to be commercially driven and not based upon our history. Potential national observance days might include Sir Edmund Hillary Day, Matariki, Rainbow Warrior Day or Suffragette Day.

At a regional level, Wellington may choose to have a Capital and/or Carmen [Rupe] Day; Waikato, a Sir Colin Meads and/or Waikato-tainui Settlement Day; Canterbury, a Four Ships and/or Antarctica Day; Manawatu¯ , a Military and/or Turbine Day; Taranaki, a Parihaka and/or Mountain Day; Marlborough, a Wairau Affray and/or Picton Day; Timaru, a Jack Lovelock and/ or Phar Lap Day; and finally, Southland, a Bluff Oyster and/or Presbyterian Day.

In New Zealand the ability to ‘‘proclaim’’ an observance day could be performed by a regional authority after consultation with their community.

The Ministry for Culture and Heritage could be the lead agency and engage with the public via an online forum.

Of our 11 public holidays, only four could be argued to be ‘‘home-grown’’. One commemorates our bicultural past, the second Samuel Parnell’s role in establishing the eight-hour working day, another our war dead, and the fourth the day our regions were founded.

Other than Easter, Christmas and New Year, there is only one other public holiday that stands alone – Queen’s Birthday. By declaring Matariki as one of the country’s observance days, nervous politicians could test the waters with the public to see if there is an appetite for the Ma¯ ori New Year to replace Elizabeth II’S official birthday.

Observance days would also solve the problem of trying to settle on one day every two years to commemorate the New Zealand Wars, with regions having their own ‘‘Ora¯ kau Day’’, ‘‘Ngatapa Day’’ or ‘‘Battle Hill Day’’.

The cost of instituting observance days would be minimal, the public would have the ability to determine what historic events are important to them and how many, and the long-term advantages would be of huge benefit to the country as future generations would become more familiar with our nation’s past.

He and his younger brother Jason would often fight until one day Jason had had enough. He loaded their speargun and missed Shane by a foot.

Malcolm Mulholland (Nga¯ ti Kahungunu/ Rangitaane) was the specialist adviser on the Ma¯ ori Affairs select committee hearing the petition for a national day of commemoration for the NZ Wars.

If one cricketer always stopped me from changing channels, it was Shane Warne. No other legspinner has bowled with such fizz that few batsmen could pick whether it was a leg-break, wrong ’un, topspinner, slider, flipper . . . All that kept Warne in check were busted fingers or shoulders as he steered world cricket’s obsession with quicks back to spin.

Maybe Pakistani leggie Yasir Shah, the Black Caps’ tormentor, will continue Warne’s legacy.

After surviving his youth, Warne became firm friends with such moguls as James and Kerry Packer who at one time told playboy Warne to sell his blue Ferrari and lie low.

He and his younger brother Jason would often fight until one day Jason had had enough. He loaded their speargun and missed Shane by a foot, hitting the fence behind them. ‘‘I’d have been dead,’’ Shane writes.

I know all this having digested 400 pages of Warne’s recently published No Spin ,an autobiography in as much as he spoke candidly for 35 hours to broadcaster Mark Nicholas.

A topspinner snared Warne his 700th wicket in front of 90,000 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. He rated it the loudest roar he’d heard there aside from when Mitchell Starc bowled Brendon Mccullum in the first over of the 2015 World Cup final.

That’s one of the few mentions of New Zealand, other than his mateship with Stephen Fleming, when two kids snapped him smoking in Wellington, and playing golf with Ryan Fox at St Andrew’s.

The blond locks come from his mother, Brigitte Szczepiak, a Polish immigrant. Warne might have been a baseball pitcher had they not set sail on the wrong ship, arriving in Australia instead of USA.

On the cricket pitch, as a rookie schoolboy legspinner, he got one to fizz and bounce so profoundly it took out the wicketkeeper’s teeth, similar to The Gatting Ball at Old Trafford in 1993 when Warne’s first ball of the match pitched outside leg and took out Mike Gatting’s off stump.

Warne was his own man. He was mates with Mark Waugh, but fell out with his brother Steve and with Australian team coach John Buchanan, who pushed ‘‘the baggy-green-cap-worship rubbish’’. Warne didn’t like the feel of the cap and wore his sunhat instead.

He had his falls, but was mostly blameless when he unwittingly became entangled with a bookmaker. And when his mother gave him a diuretic pill, which saw him banished for a year, Cricket Australia made an example of him.

Let’s say Warney never went thirsty, but when he walked out to play he blocked out his other world. Very much his own man, he walked out of the Australian academy and Terry Jenner became his mentor instead. He so motivated the Rajasthan Royals they won the first Indian Premier League and he pocketed a cool $480,000.

My wife rather too affectionately refers to Warne as a naughty boy. Nicholas writes: ‘‘Women have been both his fun and his folly’’, and when his countless flirtations and sexting were exposed, his kids usually berated him.

When he arrived to turn around Hampshire in English county cricket, president Colin Inglebymackenzie, in front of 500 people including Warne’s wife Simone, said this: ‘‘And for all the women out there, lock up your daughters because Warne’s in town!’’

Later he met actress Liz Hurley at the Goodwood races in England and when the nowdeceased News of the World ran a double-pager of them snogging, his kids admonished him, again.

Angered by the Australian team’s Sandpapergate in Cape Town last year, he disapproved of the Aussie players’ growing arrogance towards umpires and opponents, but felt the punishments were too harsh. He stops short of condemning the sledging, and wants Australia to play hard and fair, not the New Zealand way.

Mixed messages

Jeremy Cotter put everything into coaching the Manawatu¯ Turbos but, after a poor season, the coach is usually the fall guy. It seemed as if the Manawatu¯ board and chief executive were on one side and the Turbos on the other.

However, players also needed to be held more accountable and in the semi-independent team review, rookies’ views were apparently given too much weighting. All season the playing side considered itself under-resourced.

And a few so-called fans hiding behind pseudonyms harassed Cotter season-long online and then rejoiced in him losing his job. Nice people.

Many are now picking a Wellington coach, with names such as Riki Flutey, Rodney So’oialo, Ross Filipo . . . being bounced around.