Booing fans spoil crowd atmosphere at Eden Park

I have recently come home after 40 years in England, having watched the All Blacks at Twickenham, the Millennium Stadium, Murrayfield and Stade de France. I toured with the Lions to South Africa, and have been that ‘‘hated’’ minority fan many times.

But nothing prepared me for Eden Park on Saturday night, where the crowd was openly racist, sexist and threatening. I had expected the normal banter, but what my husband (an English supporter) and others around us were subjected to far exceeded anything I have been subjected to when I was in the minority watching the All Blacks in Europe.

We were in good seats, so were not surrounded by the bogans who are normally blamed for this behaviour.

There was also no respect for the opposition. Huge moves have been made around the world to stop the juvenile booing of opposition kickers, behaviour that teaches youth it is okay to treat people like dirt.

The All Blacks should ask their supporters to respect opposition players as they do. They should insist on announcements to the crowd to tell them that they do not like or want it. Maybe that respect would filter down to the way crowds treat the opposition fans. It is good news that our selfless business leaders are seeking to help us all by buying under-used public land.

Queen Elizabeth Square is just one of many areas that could be sold. Currently empty, it could be full of buildings earning rents for our far-sighted businesses, and is only one of the many spaces that blight our city, providing only a home for vagrants and litter dumping.

Maps show other unused land — Cornwall, Victoria, Myers and Albert parks, Madills Farm, Long Bay, the Domain, One Tree Hill and the other volcanoes. The list seems endless.

We look forward to our city’s greatest minds, our principled business leaders like Hawkins or Banks, improving these wastelands while taking only the most modest profits to cover costs.

Eternal corporates like Bridgecorp, Mainzeal, Dorchester or Hanover, with their modern cutting-edge business methods unencumbered by democracy’s hydra, are truly the ones to trust with the future of the city and its wasted land.

A glorious future of monuments like SkyCity, the gilded office towers of Queen St, and many more high-quality spacious apartments awaits us. Or will if we let them do it. Auckland’s transport infrastructure is hampered by its geographical layout and the sprawling 1890sq km occupied by 1.4 million people.

Our coastline and beaches make it nearly impossible to make significant public transport initiatives viable, and if it is not viable and practical, it will not be cost-effective.

Auckland is not Los Angeles, London or Sydney. It does not have 3 million-plus people to validate spending that will send it broke.

Auckland mayors have historically felt the need to leave their mark for posterity, a monument to their visionary ideas. All they ever really leave is debt and misery for ratepayers.

The train and bus upgrades are fantastic, but this is a 40-year upgrade of old and frail infrastructure that was not performing. Before expanding the public transport network further, consideration should be given to the next 40-year maintenance upgrade: water or sewerage. What will it be? for up to 12,000. This would be ideal for provincial rugby and 20/20 cricket. If the NCEA is “robust” and “getting better”, as Waitakere College principal M.P. Shanahan suggests, why is there so little remaining of some of the good systems of the past? Within my lifetime, and that of your correspondent John Binsley, we had a healthy and vital system, in which the aim was to provide stimulation in the arts curriculum.

Where is that energy and inspiration now? Where is the support and encouragement for teachers now? Gone.

Why is it that political change can have such a disastrous effect on an aspect of education that had brought about, for example, the emergence of so many Maori artists in the 1970s?

There were some brilliant innovative teachers, especially in the North, and the opportunity in childhood for creativity to be developed. What has happened to all that was so excellent and inspiring in New Zealand education throughout the 1950s and 1960s? The article headlined “Fracking blamed for health problems” was very selective in its content.

The complainants were not able to and did not produce any evidence that fracking caused them any problems, so the court dismissed all claims related to fracking.

No scientific evidence was produced to support their claims, leaving their case to rely on a “private nuisance” claim. The jury considered the claims in the absence of any scientific evidence or expert evidence about their veracity.

This judgment will likely be appealed against and prove to be a complete aberration through the vagaries of the United States legal system. The High Court has decided that New Zealand’s genetic modification laws require that two new forms of genetic manipulation should be open to scrutiny and not simply waved through.

Vested interests in industry may complain that this is inconvenient, but we need look only at the leaky buildings fiasco to see that industry can get things wrong.

This was a near-miss for our valuable GM-free status and reputation for producing safe food. Even in the United States, where GM foods have been aggressively commercialised, non-GM food is the fastest-growing grocery sector, and close to 30 per cent of the category.

The law must be strengthened to protect Brand New Zealand as a GM-free producer, so we can meet the demands of consumers from China, the US, and Europe, as well as those at home.