The Weekender 09/11/2008

Welcome to the aftermath of the election. Last night it was all on for the NZ general election, and I was glued to the TV (and computer) keeping an eye on it all. It was good to 'see' a couple of you online checking out the results!

Sport

Last weekend the final netball trans-tasman clash saw the Australian Diamonds scrape past the Silver Ferns 43-41 in the dying minutes of the game. Those games are always so close. Australia had a couple of experienced players out through injury and have a young team that are bound to get better. hmmmm.

I'm not exactly sure where to go with this story. Last weekend the Wellington Phoenix hit the bottom after a 2-0 loss to bottom feeders Perth Glory. You see over the past few weeks we've had the inaugural Womens Under 17 Football World Cup running in NZ. The NZ team haven't done so well, but watching them, I've really been wondering if Phoenix coach Ricky Herbert would do better by sacking the entire team, and signing up the U17 NZ women's team. Sure, they're 16 year old school girls, but they can't do worse that the Kingz, Knights & Phoenix - name changes and city moves haven't helped! Of course after thinking this up, this weekend the Phoenix won. A last minute penalty gave the Phoenix a 2-1 upset win over Sydney FC. So if you're on the bottom of the table, isn't any win an upset?
Speaking of the Under 17 Football World Cup, NZ may have been knocked out but their final game was a stunner. Rosie White scored a hat-trick to lead the team to a 3-1 win over Colombia, meaning NZ finished third in the pool behind Denmark and Canada and ranked 12th. On Tuesday I went along to Waikato Stadium to watch the top of the pool clash and although Denmark & Canada drew 0-0, it was a great game to watch. A FIFA recognised game in our back yard for $10 - wow. In other games Korea beat England 3-0, Nigeria drew 2-2 with Brazil, America drew 1-1 with France, and the team to watch Japan, beat Praguay 7-2.

The rugby league world cup has continued, last weekend the Kangaroos thrashed England 52-4, this weekend Tonga thrashed Scotland 48-0. NZ had a meaningless game against England and were doing poorly, down 24-12 at half time, until centre Steve Matai suffered a potentially serious neck injury (actually he's now been cleared). It sparked up the Kiwis who played much better in the second half for a 36-24 win.
Possibly the most bizare rugby league news of the week is that Stacey Jones will be playing for the Warriors next season. He's only 32 and it was only contractural reasons that he didn't play this year, so perhaps he can still make an impact.

NZ gained another world champion last weekend with Lewis Hamilton's win in Formula One. Ok, sure, he's a Brit, but he's driving for McLaren and we all know that it was Kiwi Bruce McLaren who started the team. That's more than enough of a link for me to claim the win! Watching Filpe Massa crying on the podium was a bonus - just don't tell my Brazilian sister in law!
Read all about Bruce below - he's the NZer of the week!

Brendon McCullum was named NZ cricketer of the year, he also won the Walter Hadlee Trophy for outstanding one-day international batsman.

The NZ Breakers lost 96-86 to the Adelaide 36ers after beating them by 20 points last time they played. The Breakers were missing star players CJ Bruton and Phill Jones and now have a record of 7-3 with a tough three games coming up. The first of those games was against the Melbourne Tigers and the Breakers held on after a huge Melbourne comeback to win 86-84.

The All Blacks started their northern tour against Scotland who were hoping to reverse 103 years of all black results. The heavily rotated All Blacks won 32-6.

NZ News

Winston Peters may have been cleared by the police of the final charges against him, but it didn't help his political future. There were quite a number of huge changes in NZ politics yesterday and one of the loudest political voices has been silenced with NZ First failing to reach the 5% threshold. Winston Peters and NZ First are no longer in parliament. Many thanks to all those who voted for NZ First - but due to the 5% threshold, they basically just gave their votes to National.
With Helen Clark calling John Key around 11pm to concede the election, she also announced (without warning) that she was standing down as party leader. She will still be around but the Labour party will be radically different. News just to hand is that Finance minister and deputy PM Michael Cullen is also going to resign.
A couple of big names in Labour have lost their seats and weren't on the party list so won't be back. Judith Tizard lost the Auckland Central electorate to young National Nikki Kaye, and senior Labour MP Harry Dynhoven lost to National's Jonathan Young.
While ACT improved their party list count, United Future are down two MP's compared to last time (so only Peter Dunne with his 'safe' seat). I put that down to a direct backlash from United Future switching to join the Labour government at the last election. I think that lost them quite a bit of support.
The joke party of the election was the Bill and Ben Party (from the Pulp Sport TV show), whose quote was, "putting the party, back into election party". Ignoring the 5% threshold they actually got enough votes to get a seat!
Either before election day or during the evening, National had already agreed in broad terms to an election deal with ACT and United Future, so when John Key made his announcement, it was clear that the combination of those three had enough seats to form a government. In these changing times it was great that he could already clearly state who would be in government. It was a welcome change from weeks of negotiations that previous elections have ended with.
One thing that came up from a number of sources, is that lots of people want to see National work with the Maori party. And National has committed to doing that. Despite the fact that National can almost lead alone, National is taking steps to work with the minor parties. Impressive.

It's a long and winding road, and if you have hundreds of inconsiderate cyclists racing on 'non-closed' roads, challenging each other, milk tankers and other vehicles for position - well someone is gonna get hurt. And they did. Last weekend a rider suffered serious injuries in a pile-up on a Coromandel Pennisula road. There has been more "he said" - "she said" than an election campaign but the cyclists have blamed a Ute driver who overtook a bunch of them (even though he got safely past them), and police have verified that at times the cyclists were using both lanes of the road. I used to cycle lots, and I knew that as a cyclist I needed to keep out of the way of vehicles, cyclists these days seem oblivious to the fact that a 1 tonne car at 100kph is something to avoid, not challenge.

A former Search & Rescue helicopter pilot was himself the subject of a Search & Rescue when he failed to arrive. Some wreckage was found in Lake Wanaka, but the temperature of the water and depth of the lake (94m) made searching difficult. After a few days, they tracked down where the helicopter was, and eventually the recovery team were able to pull out the mans body and parts of the helicopter.

The Numbers Game

4: times Helen Clark used the term "strong, proven leadership" during the TVNZ Agenda show interview. John Key repeatedly promised to "make communities safer"
4.2: % unemployment for the September quarter, climbing from 3.9 in June
8: % drop in international travel on the same period last year
10: hour rescue was required for an injured caver who was stuck in a cave near Waitomo
50: firefighters from all over the Waikato were needed to put out a fire in the toi toi and grass above Raglan's popular Ngarunui Beach
81: fraud charges have been laid against a visiting couple from Singapore for credit card fraud
162.9: c/L for 91 as petrol prices continue to plummet - luckily the, well over $2/l is a distant memory. The new price is at a 12-month low
200: lightning strikes around eastern NZ as we've had some bizare spring weather. Also huge hail stones, and severe frost have been on the menu this week
612: expat Maori votes last year (out of 136,000 Maori electorate votes) - apparently Expat Maori are less likely to vote that other expats
6,000: $ fine for a Northland milling company for felling native trees
17.2m: $ spent betting on the Melbourne Cup last year
500m: $ over four years promised by National (before the election!) for school building programmes

Finance NZ Dollar

GBP 0.3772 (+0.0157)
EUR 0.4640 (+0.0072)
USD 0.5904 (+0.0088)
AUD 0.8742 (+0.0040)

The Weekender NZer of the week

Bruce McLaren
DRIVER ENGINEER CONSTRUCTOR
Team McLaren drivers have taken the chequered flag at 123 Grand Prix events. Aucklander Bruce McLaren was a brilliant driver with vision. He became engineer, inventor, constructor, tester and created one of the greatest motor racing teams in history.
http://www.nzedge.co.nz/heroes/mclaren.html

Joke of the Weekender

One Call
The two teenagers were arrested. The police sergeant told them they were entitled to a phone call. Some time later a man entered the station and asked for them by name.
The sergeant said, "I suppose you're the lawyer?"
"Nope," the chap replied. "I'm just here to deliver their pizza."

Weekender Photos

Check out my photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/dunwich42

Darren Harrison: darren@harrison.gen.nz
The Weekender: mailed weekly (Sunday nightish)
Website: www.dunwich.co.nz/weekender/
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