A deathly year full of losses and John Key’s resignation
Key's ability to weather any political storm was grounded in a grand deception – his everyman persona. He took the politics out of politics.
Is there a single news story that might somehow sum up 2016?
A year bookended by the deaths of David Bowie and Princess Leia, which concludes with Mark Nicholas, history’s most sycophantic cricket commentator, with an upset tummy and even the Queen feeling poorly, could rightly be labelled tumultuous.
There’s been Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the President-elect’s ‘‘Christmas present’’ to the world – a resumed arms race – and still more celebrity fatalities.
Can we face 2017 without the serene irrelevance that was Zsa Zsa Gabor, Fawlty Towers’ Manuel’s bewildered visage or Severus Snape’s distinctively bitter enunciation?
In catchphrases alone western culture was devastated. We’ll never again hear Gabor’s ‘‘dahling’’, Andrew Sach’s ‘‘que?’’, Alan Rickman’s ‘‘potter’’, or the unprecedented repertoire of he who floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee. To paraphrase Muhammad Ali, 2016 was so bad it made medicine sick.
On the local front, the most obvious big story was John Key walking the plank. Key’s resignation could not come quickly enough for some, yet was lamented by majorities both silent and less so, from the National Party faithful to overseas politicians to the type of ‘‘objective’’ journalism exemplified by Mike Hosking.
Mike told us that Key was the best prime minister of his lifetime, dismissing all other contenders in words of one syllable or less. If popularity were the sole gauge of such things he might have had a point.
Key’s ability to weather any political storm was grounded in a grand deception – his everyman persona. He was so bland and ordinary that he took the politics out of politics.
Whatever the issue, he reassured and underwhelmed in the same breath. Inconsistencies and downright lies were forgotten or just overlooked by a public mesmerised like possums in the headlights by his cheerfully dull banality.
No matter that he told Pike River families one thing yet did another. No matter that he colluded with the likes of Cameron Slater, explained away GCSB illegalities then expanded their powers still further, or toyed with waitress’ ponytails with a sense of playful entitlement, an unconscious or certainly unacknowledged sexual fetish that was at least good for some cheap laughs on late night American television and the international embarrassment that went with it.
The Key government’s biggest failing was far from unique. Variations on the same theme bedevilled politics the world over in 2016, accounting for or influencing both the Brexit result and the bizarre success of Trump the buffoon. Economic inequality, the concentration of extreme wealth, the structural exploitation of an underclass, these are the hallmarks of globalisation that has advanced the relative few at the expense of an impoverished majority.
Multimillionaire wheelerdealer John Key, an exemplar of the system if ever there was one, could not have been more indifferent to trends that put home ownership in Auckland beyond the realm of any but the super rich, or accepted beggars in the street as a somehow natural consequence of the way things are. New Zealand didn’t used to like this.
Egalitarianism is dead. Jack is no longer as good as his master, especially if his master is a CEO. All of which brings me to what could be seen as if not the biggest story of 2016, then a good candidate for the most symbolic.
News that Nigel Murray, the chief executive of the Waikato District Health board, received at least $100,000 more in total remuneration than he did in 2015 somehow summed the world up for me. No amount of statistic quoting, political blather from DHB chairman Bob Simcock could excuse such a differential.
In a year when 13 orthopaedic surgeons signed a petition expressing the belief that Waikato Hospital was ‘‘no longer a safe place to practice elective surgery’’, the system rewards the man in charge with a six figure performance related bonus and his boss stands loyally behind him.
A good friend of mine suffered a botched operation at Waikato Hospital inside the past 18 months, the consequence of which were more than likely pancreatic cancer. While it would be unfair to place the blame for this at Murray’s feet the fact suggests better uses for the $100,000 than lining the CEO’S already well stuffed pocket. More to the point, what might the difference be between his salary and that of the lowest paid hospital workers – the kitchen staff, the cleaners – the folk who really keep the place going? Answer that and you have some idea of what was wrong with the world in 2016.