[Delivered as a quick-fire presentation at a 'PechaKucha' night as part of the CtrlShift conference in Wellington, on 5th of July 2007]

I want to use these 6 minutes 40s to make a case for the re-establishment of the New Zealand Company. For the foreigners amongst us I will need to explain: the first incarnation of the company; what it's most useful intentions were; how they screwed up, (which they did spectacularly); and what tasks remain for the company in its reincarnation

 

The first incarnation of the company
The NZ co. was founded by this man: Edward Gibbon Wakefield in 1840. He observed that the difference between living on the streets of London holding your starving children was not as appealing as gathering around a hot bowl of kumara soup on the other side of the world. Emigration, he said, was a remedy.[slide]

 

He therefore focused his attention on the English working class, some of whom would presumably get the opportunity to serve him dinner.[slide]

 

Applicants would be young, already married and be pretty good with their hands. It says here that:

 

"strict enquiries will be made as to qualifications and character" which is bollocks, because I am the descendant of at least two criminals: one sheep rustler who was caught thieving animals from his father's farm and putting them on an island in the Firth of Forth until his father made his application for NZ residency for him, and the other who's failed attempts to run a bank saw him jogging down the wharf with a line of creditors on his coat tails. Anyway, don't believe everything you read in the papers. [slide]

 

I guess for the Australians in the room: we might be criminals too, but at least we didn't get caught: smart criminals. Successful applicants would have their passage paid to New Zealand on boats named Ajax, which is an odd name for a dirty boat. [slide]

 

This is how excited they were to leave - you can tell by the size of the flag. [slide]

 

The company was a good idea, we have to believe that really - unless we leave. It is hard to disagree with Wakefield's observation and we should congratulate him for seeing it as a business opportunity.

 

Useful intentions
He was undoubtedly a man of some vision:

-he imagined these beautiful young woman collecting biofuel on their days off [slide]
-he imagined these three cows in their own 100 hectares of lush grass and forest [slide]
-he imagined an aesthetically pleasing Hutt Valley [slide]
-and he imagined good weather, warm water, peace[slide]

 

He reminds me in many ways of the McGilligarty Serious Party a few years ago who almost won my vote with their vouch to make all hills downhill for cyclists.

 

Not only did he imagine this perfect ecology, he imagined that it would gather an economy that would thrive by operating as a plug-in to the London economy which would fund this experimental paradise.

 

I think his vision is excellent, but his execution poor. What ensued was decades of war, bad weather, cold water, disease, and bad housing - which we still live in.

 

Re-establishment of the New Zealand Company
I propose we resurrect the NZ Company with an equally ambitious constitution but with a delivery plan:

 

-a concerted effort needs to be made to gradually replace all the bad and mostly temporary buildings we have leftover from the company's first attempts with buildings fit for the 21^st, and 22^nd centuries.
-Perhaps we could start with any of the Hutt Valley that doesn't get flooded by sea level changes.
-Reinstate many of the great forests that were mistakenly removed for benefit of mustering and re-privilege the gathering of good clean bio-fuel.
-Continue the campaign for immigration of skilled workers: though we need craftspeople with the kind of cultured hands that Kengo Kuma manages to find in the back blocks of Japan.
-And by doing so we would restart, in earnest, the greatest Enlightenment project of them all with beautiful people frolicking in fields of green in a multi-culti paradise of wealth and prosperity.

 

It's too easy.