BB#38-nov-dec-2017

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White Pine Bush . Photo: Tim Whittaker. tim.

N OVEMBER/D ECEMBER 2017

This Month

Features

Hawke’s Bay biodiversity plan unfolds. Labour Government adds tailwind to regional efforts. HBRC resists oil and gas development.

Changing face of primary health care delivery in Hawke’s Bay. Region’s winemaking continues to excel. Alternative homes will stretch your imagination. Plus EIT’s ideaschool producing masters, Xmas food and books, Cranwell’s Himalayan Oaks, Swiss democracy, cricket craftsmanship, special events, and more.

20 / BAY BIODIVERSITY BLITZ / Keith Newman

Cover photo: Tiny House

by Florence Charvin

Technology abounds to digitise and automate our homes.

Massive campaign begins to restore species and eradicate predators.

28 / IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE / Mark Sweet New business model replacing traditional family GPs.

34 / POLITICAL UPDATE / Tom Belford Labour Government. Long term plans. Hastings mayoral candidates.

42 / IS OIL DEVELOPMENT IN HAWKE’S BAY OUT OF GAS? / Tom Belford Regional Council plots to resist water-threatening oil and gas development.

48 / MOVING ON / Mark Sweet Hawke’s Bay’s wine industry moves from strength to strength.

54 / HOW SMART IS YOUR HOME? / Keith Newman

38 NOVE M B ER / D ECE M B E R 2 0 1 7

06 / Bee in the Know /

Lizzie Russell

58 / Ideas & Opinions 58 / FROM ACORNS TO HIMALAYAN OAKS / Bridget Freeman-Rock

70/ Culture & Lifestyle 70 / TAKE ME HOME / Michal McKay 82 / FESTIVE FARE / Michal Mckay 88 / THE NEW MASTERS / Lizzie Russell 96 / LETTER FROM THE COUNTRY / Mary Kippenberger

David Cranwell champions Himalayan Oaks Trust.

62 / COFFEE … ELIXIR OF HEALTH?/ Sarah Cates The health virtues of coffee.

64 / THE GOVERNMENT OF MY DREAMS / Paul Paynter Small and local – Swiss style – is beautiful.

66 / CRICKET CRAFTSMANSHIP/ Andrew Frame Bespoke cricket bat maker Marty Graham.

68 / ADVERTISING WITH ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE / Matt Miller No hiding from the targeting data & tools marketers now have.

Follow us at: baybuzzhb Selected BayBuzz articles are archived at: www.baybuzz.co.nz For editorial enquiries contact editors@baybuzz.co.nz For advertising enquiries contact Tom Belford: tom@baybuzz.co.nz, 027 307 0315 BayBuzz, PO Box 8322, Havelock North. ISSN 2253-2625 (PRINT) ISSN 2253-2633 (ONLINE)

THE BAYBUZZ TEAM EDITOR: Tom Belford. ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Michal McKay. ASSISTANT EDITOR: Lizzie Russell.

SENIOR WRITERS: Bridget Freeman-Rock; Keith Newman; Sophie Price; Mark Sweet; Tom Belford. COLUMNISTS: Mary Kippenberger; Matt Miller; Paul Paynter; Sarah Cates. EDITOR’S RIGHT HAND: Brooks Belford. PHOTOGRAPHY: Tim Whittaker; Sarah Cates; Florence Charvin.

ILLUSTRATION: Brett Monteith. DESIGN: Unit Design. ADVERT ART MANAGEMENT: TK Design. ADVERTISING SALES & DISTRIBUTION: Tom Belford. ONLINE: Mogul. BUSINESS MANAGER: Bernadette Magee. PRINTING: Format Print. SOCIAL MEDIA: Liz Nes. This document is printed on an environmentally reponsible paper produced using Elemental Chlorine Free (ECF) pulp sourced from Sustainable & Legally Harvested Farmed Trees, and manufactured under the strict ISO14001 Environmental Management System.

Harcourts Hawke’s Bay Arts Festival. Photo: Tim Whittaker tim.co.nz

FEATURED CONTRIBUTOR: MARK SWEET

Conceived on the banks of the Ngaruroro River on New Years Eve 1953, Mark is of Titahi hapu, Nga Mahanga descent. His tipuna, John Thomas Blake, was appointed interpreter to the Native Land Court in Hastings in 1889. His father, Barry, a prolific architect, captained Hawke’s Bay in rugby, and was introduced to his mother Gwyn by her cousin, architect John Scott.

Mark’s first publication was Portrait & Opinion a collection of photographs (Richard Brimer) and text on the concept of change, commissioned by the Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust as its 2000 Millenium exhibition. He took up writing seriously in 2007 after selling Pacifica restaurant to

Jeremy and Rebecca Rameka. Previously he had established Two Fat Ladies restaurant in Glasgow (1988) after working as a property valuer in Hong Kong. His first novel Zhu Mao was published in 2011 after being mentored in the Te Papa Tupu writing incubator programme. His next, Going Down of the Sun, set in Hawke’s Bay in the 1960’s, is due for publication soon. With short stories published in Pikihuia volumes 8, 9 and 10 and Stories on The Four Winds (2016) fiction is Mark’s writing passion, but he also enjoys writing history, and journalism. In 2015 he wrote Wine: Stories from Hawke’s Bay published by BayBuzz, and he is a regular contributor to the magazine.

BAYBUZZ REGULARS MICHAL MCKAY Michal McKay has spent most of her working life involved in the world of style. And living in “other” parts of the world.

A year ago Havelock North became her home. The arts, interior design, cooking, travel and a new cuddly canine keep the spark in her eye. So does writing about the same.

KEITH NEWMAN Keith is a journo with over 45 years’ experience across mainstream and trade media. He’s won awards for writing about hi-tech, produced music programmes for Radio NZ and published five books, one on the internet in New Zealand and four on New Zealand history.

LIZZIE RUSSELL Lizzie is writer, project wrangler and arts promoter.

She’s been living and working back in her home ground of Hawke’s Bay for five years, initially with Hastings City Art Gallery and more recently as a freelancer. She also co-ordinates the Wildflower Sculpture Exhibition and Pecha Kucha in the Bay.

TO M B E L F O R D : F R O M T H E E D I TO R

Change ahead!

As I write, New Zealand voters are yet to know the deals and senior MP assignments that will fully define the Labour/NZ First/Greens Government.

However, what is already clear is that the environment and poverty will rank higher on the priority list, and more attention – and hopefully resources and policy discretion – will be given to the regions.

It’s also clear that MPs Stuart Nash and Meka Whatiri will carry immensely more sway than Opposition backbencher Lawrence Yule, who will need all his political nous to remain relevant.

Perhaps the most significant environmental shifts will concern water quality and global warming. A major ‘re-foresting’ of New Zealand, in which Hawke’s Bay should play a major part, is also a possibility.

In each of these areas, the new Government can provide important ‘tailwind’ to initiatives on the drawing boards at the Regional Council. The Long Term Plan (LTP) process is where these issues will play out over the next six months or so. My Political Update article gives a preview of what’s ahead as each of our region’s councils begins work on their LTPs. Our political season isn’t quite over.

Mayoral candidate statements from Bayden Barber, Sandra Hazelhurst and Simon Nixon are inside.

Moving more into the issues, this BayBuzz tackles three key challenges for the region – improving delivery of primary health care, promoting biodiversity, and resisting waterthreatening oil and gas development.

4 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

Mark Sweet looks into the first in Is There a Doctor In the House? Keith Newman takes on biodiversity in Bay Biodiversity Blitz. And in Is Oil Development in Hawke’s Bay Out of Gas? I report on the Regional Council’s plan to curtail oil and gas development in the region.

In shorter pieces, iconoclast Paul Paynter pleads for Swiss canton-style government; Bridget Freeman-Rock profiles David Cranwell and his Himalayan Oaks Trust.

In this edition, some of the most fascinating reading relates to our lifestyle.

Michal McKay visits four ‘alternative’ homes – containers, barns, tiny homes and rammed-earth – that are sure to stretch your imagination. At the other end of the spectrum, Keith Newman looks into the latest in high tech ‘smart homes’. Andrew Frame touts the craftsmanship of local custom cricketbat maker Marty Graham. Lizzie Russell covers the talent emerging from EIT’s ideaschool. And Mark Sweet reports on recent developments and achievements within our iconic regional wine industry.

Plus our usual assortment of brainfood tidbits, events not to miss, artistic kudos, and – given this is our pre-Christmas edition – ideas on holiday food, and books you might want to gift.

[Speaking of gift books, don’t overlook our own Wine: Stories From Hawke’s Bay. See our advert on page 53.

Whether you purchase online - www. hbwinestories.co.nz - or from a local book store or wine cellar, all copies purchased before Christmas Day are $10 off.]

And of course Mary Kippenberger sends us another Letter From the Country.

Finally, as much as I think you’ll enjoy this BayBuzz, I can’t resist touting our upcoming January edition. It’s modeled on last summer’s themed issue, Food … our most praised edition to date.

The theme this summer will be, well … summer in Hawke’s Bay. Featuring all the seasonal activities, places, food & drink, and other ‘stuff ’ we most associate with our spectacular location and climate. And some summer food for thought as well.

To get the ball rolling, I invite you to take our ‘Summer in HB’ online survey.

It’s at: bit.ly/2xexe4b. We’re asking you about the summer stuff you most like to do. And we’ll report on responses in the upcoming issue. But, you need to take the survey by December 4 so we can include your preferences in our report.

Enjoy!

Tom Belford And don’t forget, help us write our summer edition by taking our ‘Summer in HB’ online survey: bit.ly/2xexe4b.

tom@baybuzz.co.nz Tom is a HB Regional Councillor. His past includes the Carter White House, building Ted Turner’s first philanthropic organisation, doing heaps of marketing consulting for major non-profits and corporates. Tom writes an acclaimed blog for professional NGO fundraisers and communicators in North America and Europe.

BEE IN THE KNOW

Photo: Florence Charvin

Ana Apatu To keep communities moving forward requires individuals who are prepared to step up and take on responsibilities, face challenges, and work collaboratively with others. Case in point: Ana Apatu.

Elected as a Hawke’s Bay District

6 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

Health Board member in 2016, Ana represents DHB on HB’s Drinking Water Governance Joint Committee, whose job is to oversee regional cooperation on safe drinking water. She also chairs primary healthcare service Directions Youth Health Centre and the Hawke's Bay Youth Health Trust. Previously she worked as senior population health adviser for the HBDHB. Ana is also having a big impact on the Flaxmere community as chief

executive of the Wharariki Trust – the new incarnation of the U-Turn Trust.

The trust aspires to “weave better lives” for the people of Flaxmere, through partnerships, building skills and independence, and organising practical solutions to better peoples circumstances.

'Wharariki' is the name of a native flax which is resilient and strong when woven together. Sounds to us like Ana is well on the way to becoming a master weaver.

HAWKE'S BAY WELLNESS INDEX Jobs on Seek.co.nz 21 October 2017

Homes For Sale 21 October 2017 (REALESTATE.CO.NZ)

UP 17 FROM AUGUST

UP 72 FROM AUGUST

Homes Sold in September 2017 (REINZ)

Burglaries July 2017

DOWN 34 FROM AUGUST 2017

18 OCTOBER 2017

Assaults (Family violence indicator)

UP 24 FROM JUNE

IN JULY 2017 (UP 26 FROM JUNE)

Napier Port Cargo, Tonnes, August & September 2017

HB Hospital Emergency Department presentations 22 August to 13 October 2017

(UP 86 FROM SAME PERIOD LAST YEAR)

Illicit Drug Offences in August 2017

Lamb price at Stortford, average, per head

(UP 18% FROM SAME PERIOD LAST YEAR)

Visitors to MTG, September 2017, Including FREE children

Visitor nights, commercial & private, year over year ending July 2017

Bay Espresso coffee sold Sptember 2017, kg

Gigabytes of data downloaded, in September 2017 on average, by NOW residential customers

DOWN 4 FROM JULY

Jaffas given away

by Pipi in September 2017

HOT What's Hot Jacinda #MeToo campaign Container homes

&

NOT What's Not Bill Too many Harveys Brick homes

Stuart Nash

Lawrence Yule

Pure water

Plastic bottles

Free MTG Digital homes Hawke's Bay Syrah Threatened birds

$$ MTG Unplugged homes Pretenders Feral cats

BEE IN THE KNOW

UPDATE: TŪTIRA’S LAKE WAIKŌPIRO GETS AIR CURTAIN

Forever Blowing Bubbles?

In BayBuzz #37 Bridget Freeman-Rock reported on the deplorable state of Lake Tutira and the beginning of the combined rescue mission to revive it and the wider catchment area, including neighbouring Lake Waikōpiro.

In a move that forms part of the wider plan, an air curtain is being trialled in Lake Waikōpiro this summer, and if it’s successful a larger air curtain will be installed in Lake Tūtira.

The trial is being undertaken as part of Te Waiū o Tūtira (the milk of Tūtira) project, which is a partnership between Maungaharuru-Tangitū Trust and Hawke’s Bay Regional Council. It is aimed at improving the water quality and habitats in Waikōpiro and Tūtira lakes. The area is one of six identified by the Regional Council as environment hot spots needing attention.

Photo: Tim Whittaker 8 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

A lack of oxygen and the lake water heating up in hotter months have been a major factor causing algal blooms and the death of fish in summer, which have left the lakes largely out of bounds for camping, swimming and boating in the area. Blooms can also turn toxic and pose risk to human and dog health.

Pressurised air will be pumped through a 50-metre pipe tethered close to the lake bottom and across the deepest part, creating an air curtain.

The air curtain increases oxygen levels at all depths throughout the lake by creating a circulation current, much like bubblers in a fish aquarium.

The air curtain has been constructed on-site by HBRC’s Works Group staff and Unison has fast tracked (and contributed) the power supply

installation so the aerator can be running before the lake water warms up.

A similar but unsuccessful attempt was made the 1970s, using older technology.

Advice from Dr Max Gibbs, a specialist in lake mitigation technologies from NIWA, has confirmed the new approach with current technology should be successful.

The same air curtain approach has brought algal blooms under control at several WaterCare reservoirs around Auckland, as well as in Lake Manuwai near Kerikeri.

“We will be closely monitoring Waikōpiro over summer as the air curtain does its job,” said HBRC water quality scientist, Dr Andy Hicks. “and we’ll use the information to make decisions about constructing a larger system in Tūtira.”

Photo: Tim Whittaker

THE

x

FA C TOR

H OW D O Y O U M A KE A G RE AT C AR E V E N B E T T E R? T he a l l n e w C X -5 F h er e n o w and already s etting re c or d s. C o m e in f o r a t es t driv e to day .

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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 • BAYBUZZ • 9

BEE IN THE KNOW

Counting the Cost of Gastro Over a year since the devastating Havelock North waterborne disease outbreak, the economic cost of the crisis has now been calculated at close to $21 million.

On behalf of the Ministry of Health, Sapere Research Group Ltd. worked to determine the costs of the outbreak and recently released its report The Economic Costs of the Havelock North August 2016 Waterborne Disease Outbreak.

The majority of the $21 million costs ($12.4M or 59% of total costs) related to household inconvenience due to having to boil water, buy bottled water and take time off normal activities during the outbreak.

The remainder of the costs calculated were made up of: • Local government costs: $4.1 million.

Mainly relating to investigation and remediation and consequential stages associated with the Inquiry.

• The impact on the business community: $1.3 million. Based on estimates that there was less than ‘normal’ retail expenditure in Havelock North for the corresponding period, with food and beverage and accommodation providers being the hardest hit.

• Health-related costs: $2.5 million.

Sapere says this figure was lower than it might have been in an outbreak of this size, reflecting the prominent role that GPs played in dealing with the affected patients in an efficient and costeffective manner. In addition, the wide array of support services working in response to the outbreak helped reduce the potential for costly hospital stays.

The Board of Inquiry is now digesting evidence presented during Stage 2 of its investigation, which focuses on the systemic issues and will provide recommendations about managing water supply across New Zealand. It will examine the existing statutory and regulatory regimes involved in delivering drinking water to see if improvements can be made.

These could include mandatory treatment of drinking water throughout New Zealand.

Stage 2 of the Inquiry is now due to be reported back to the Attorney-General by 8 December 2017.

10 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

Gastro Outbreak Total Cost

$21 Million $12.4m Household Inconvenience

59% of total costs

Local Government

$4.1m Business Impact

Health Costs

$1.3m $2.5m

Damn You Masterton!

Congratulations to those involved in Hawke’s Bay’s three wins at the recent Keep New Zealand Beautiful awards.

The region had finalists in four categories of the annual awards programme, which celebrates people and communities around New Zealand who "do the right thing and demonstrate environmental excellence in all walks of life".

Havelock North was crowned the Most Beautiful Suburb, Hastings-based Hawke's Bay Farmers Market won the Most Sustainable Business Project, and Flaxmere's Morgan Educare received the School of Sustainability Award.

Morgan Educare won thanks to environmental projects such as installing solar panels, setting up recycling stations, and establishing vegetable gardens and worm farms.

The farmers' market was highlighted due to its recently-introduced waste minimisation initiative. All stallholders have changed their takeaway and tasting packaging to compostable options.

Havelock North was, the judging panel said, "A must-visit destination for anyone travelling to the province they call Wine Country," and had done well to retain its village vibe despite its growth

in recent years.

Finalist Napier missed out on Most Beautiful City to Masterton. Hmmm.

Flaxmere councillor Henare O'Keefe, was also awarded the Local Hero Award.

TASTINGS, VINEYARD & WINERY TOURS Weddings and events created

by Orton Tailored Cuisine

2016 MARAEKAKAHO RD, HASTINGS, HAWKE’S BAY, NEW ZEALAND

W W W. S I L E N I . C O . N Z

Anything Goes

Photo: Florence Charvin

Looking to escape the local preChristmas madness? Then the world of fun and flippant musical comedy could be just the tonic. Consider Theatre Hawke’s Bay’s upcoming production of the Cole Porter classic Anything Goes.

Director Glen Pickering has assembled a cracking cast to transport audiences to the decks of the ocean liner SS American for the classic tale of crushes and capers on the high seas.

“We’ve got an amazing cast,” he says, “a few new faces too – new to Hawke’s Bay in fact, including Alex Richardson, a recent US arrival to the Bay playing the role of Reno, the main character.”

Other pivotal roles in the 26-strong cast are played by Olivia Karlsson, Matt Kidd, Nicole Brebner and perennial local performer

12 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

John Graham.

“The depth of talent in the cast and the crew is representative of where performing arts is at in Hawke’s Bay,” says Glen.

“I think it was strong in the 80s and 90s, and recently it’s really coming back – probably largely in part due to the arrival or return of new people to Hawke’s Bay.” Glen is one of the returnees himself.

Originally from Wairoa, he now works at Festival Director for the Art Deco Trust, sits on the boards of Napier Operatic Society and Hastings-based Theatre Hawke’s Bay and of the National Youth Drama School, and is a co-organiser of Fringe in the Stings.

Glen’s earlier career saw him tread the boards, direct professionally and work in leadership roles with the New Zealand Opera, National Youth Theatre Company and the World Buskers

Festival in Christchurch. So why all this voluntary work now? And Why Hawke’s Bay? “I love people being entertained,” he says. “I love being part of a group that’s creating something and contributing positively to the community. I want Hawke’s Bay to be vibrant and strong in terms of the arts and events, so I’m going to do what I can to help these things happen here.”

This production of Anything Goes exemplifies this inclusive and enthusiastic vision. There’s innovation in set design, a wide range of ages and different skillsets and talents in play, there’s tap dancing and hilarity, and a touch of retro glamour.

Anything Goes runs from 30 November through to 16 December at Theatre Hawke’s Bay in Hastings.

AN INSIDER’S GUIDE TO DENTISTRY WITH WYNTON PERROTT

A whiter, brighter smile can make me look healthier and younger ... but is it for me?

With so many options available, it is difficult for the average kiwi to know where to start. Often people are left with more questions than answers when it comes to tooth whitening.

Plastic Bottle Guilt It could be the fact that many of us have used many more water bottles since the Havelock gastro outbreak. Or perhaps it’s because we collectively don’t love the idea of water bottlers drawing from our precious aquifer. But whatever the reason, Hawke’s Bay people are more conscious about water bottle use than most of New Zealand.

Sodastream recently conducted a nationwide survey that revealed a whopping 94% of Hawke’s Bay people saying they would give up buying single-use plastic bottles if it was socially unacceptable to do so.

The overall stats paint a picture of a national population with an uneasy attitude towards single-use water bottles: • 64% of New Zealanders feel guilty about the single-use plastic bottles they buy and the effect these bottles are having on the environment.

• 72% think there should be regulations or laws for single-use plastic bottle purchase in order to reduce plastic pollution, such as higher costs, taxes or making them less accessible.

• 74% of respondents (compared to Hawke's Bay’s 94%) would be deterred from buying plastic bottles if it were socially unacceptable.

Above: The Filter for Good campaign points out that plastic bottle production consumes huge quantities of oil.

HERE ARE SOME TIPS FROM SMILEHAUS

Who can have tooth whitening?

Anyone who wants a whiter smile, but an assessment with a dental professional is advisable as each person is unique.

Will my teeth look fake?

No, with in-house whitening you can achieve an optimal result while still having a natural look.

Does it damage my teeth?

No, when your teeth are whitened by a professional.

How long does it last?

Results vary but when performed correctly it can last for years.

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Harcourts Hawke's Bay Arts Festival 2017 The Harcourts Hawke’s Bay Arts Festival celebrated its third birthday this year, with a line up of more than 70 events in venues throughout the region. The inaugural ‘White Night’ in Napier’s arts precinct saw more than 2000 people take to the streets for this free, family event, despite the dicey weather!

71

Number of events

Number of people through MTG for White Night

2,200

Number of metres of tape to create the labyrinth in the Village Green

300

Number of artists and crew at this year’s festival

318

Number of volunteers

79

Photos: Tim Whittaker 14 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 • BAYBUZZ • 15

BEE IN THE KNOW

FAWC

Buzz Around the Bay FAWC November 4 – 12 The Food and Wine Classic returns for the sixth year, offering a buffet of delicious and unique food and wine experiences. Good luck snaffling up the last remaining tickets. fawc.co.nz Te Matau a Maui Summer Sailing Series November 10 – January 19 Ever wanted to learn to sail on a traditional double-hulled waka? Well, this spring/ summer you get that opportunity.

Experience Hawke’s Bay from the ocean perspective and learn about traditional Maori navigation, plus try knot tying, sail rigging, and steering the waka. eventfinda.co.nz

16 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

Hastings Christmas at the Races November 12 and December 14 Head trackside with friends, family or colleagues to celebrate the end of the year.

Hospitality packages are available and live entertainment too. Plus, the December 14 event is a twilight one. hawkesbayracing.co.nz Peak Trailblazer November 19 The Peak Trail Blazer returns to the trails of Te Mata Peak for its eigth year, with the hotly-contested $500 cash prize for both the King and Queen of the Peak. Return participants love the fact that they can run or walk, there’s a short and a long course, and there’s the ability for people from all ages and fitness levels to take part on either trail. Every year the event donates 40% of the funds raised to two community groups. This year’s recipients are Heart Kids Hawke’s Bay and the Hastings Giants Boxing Academy. peaktrailblazer.co.nz

Greg Johnson & Mel Parsons November 25, Haumoana Community Hall Touring New Zealand with 11 stops, this muchloved singer/songwriter duo are joined by their super-talented hybrid band featuring Ted Brown, Josh Logan and Jed Parsons. eventfinda.co.nz

Sunday Sessions November 26 and December 17 at Te Awanga Estate Wine, live music and sunshine. What better combination is there for whiling away a lazy Sunday afternoon? No BYO booze, but picnics are fine, or indulge in a delicious Te Awanga pizza while enjoying the local musical talent. eventfinda.co.nz

Peak Trailblazer. Photo: Simon Cartwright

Piece-Makers Market December 2 and December 9, Hawthorne Coffee Roasters Shop small and local and al fresco at the Piece-Makers market ahead of Christmas.

All stall-holders offer quality goods they have either made, designed or found, including children's clothing, fresh flowers, furniture, textiles, jewellery and objects. craftanddesignmarket.com Nanogirl Live in Engineering Magic December 5, Napier Municipal Theatre Join Nanogirl and Boris (her trusty lab assistant) for science and engineering as you have never seen them before.

Educational, entertaining and explosive, the show features new experiments – giant sparks, fireballs, and even a real-life bed of nails. See science and engineering come to life on the stage. eventfinda.co.nz

Paul Ubana Jones December 14, Common Room Rooted in primal blues and soul, Paul Ubana’s music has seen him win three Tui Awards and countless die-hard fans around the country. The cosy confines of the Common Room promise a great night of guitar magic. eventfinda.co.nz Fiesta of Lights December 16 – January 7, Showgrounds Hawke’s Bay Time to get festive! Gather the family and head along to experience a fairyland of some 500,000 lights twinkling from 9pm each night (including Christmas night). On New Year’s Eve there’s a family-friendly concert finishing up at 11pm. fiestaoflights.co.nz Avanti Plus Hastings Team Tag Relay December 17, Pandora Pond The course is short and sharp and ideal for some pre-Christmas fun with fancy dress optional but encouraged. Each participant completes all three stints and then tags in a team member. Swim 200m, cycle 7kms and then run 2km – all done and dusted in time to take your teamsters out for lunch. eventfinda.co.nz

Sol3 Mio – Christmas in the Vines December 21, Black Barn The well-loved trio of Pene Pati, Amitai Pati and their cousin Moses Mackay return to the Bay for a special Christmas treat. The show will comprise a mix of opera arias, traditional songs, a selection of hits from their albums, and everyone’s favourite Christmas carols.

The concert in the stunning amphitheater setting is part of a summer tour that marks the first performances in 2017/18 for the trio, who have spent the majority of the last two years developing their individual opera careers. eventfinda.co.nz

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 • BAYBUZZ • 17

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Bay Biodiversity Blitz Hawke’s Bay environmentalists are uniting around the lofty goal of restoring at-risk native species and ecosystems, while planning a massive biodiversity blitz that aims to create the nation’s first predator-free zone.

KEITH NEWMAN “It’s crunch time” for improving our environment and its biodiversity, warns Keiko Hashiba, the Regional Council’s Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan co-ordinator. “We are at a crossroads … If we don’t do something right now it will become irreversible.”

She admits it’s been a long and complex task aligning more than 20 regional agencies and organisations behind the newly-launched Biodiversity Action Plan 2017-2020, which embraces the Predator Free 2050 vision.

While there are different ideas about priorities, Japanese-born Hashiba, a forest and terrestrial ecology scientist with responsibility for Hawke’s Bay Regional Council’s (HBRC) wetlands monitoring programme, says “all are urgent.

“A healthy ecosystem including native forests and waterways are part of a system that supports human wellbeing – it has been compromised and needs to be restored.”

Her goal is to make a difference on the ground and in the way people think.

“Biodiversity is not just about the greenies and little critters in the waterways, it’s fundamental to our wellbeing. The Maori view of the environment really sums it up, if nature is out of balance it will affect all of us.”

Stocktake of needs

Hashiba has developed a comprehensive inventory of the region’s biodiversity projects and helped identify six steps for maximum impact over the next three years.

These include ecosystem mapping and ecological prioritisation; a cultural framework 20 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

Keiko Hashiba. Photo: Florence Charvin

Tutira Restoration Plan: Total $3.6m over 5 years / HBRC $1.6m

Prof Charles Daugherty. Photo: Florence Charvin

“The animals largely take care of themselves if you give them the right protection, which means getting rid of the predators and creating the right habitat…the planting part.”

PROF CHARLES DAUGHERTY

22 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

and survey of taonga (valued Maori sites); establishing the HB Biodiversity Guardians to oversee progress, and the HB Biodiversity Foundation to raise megabucks for the various projects.

A working group will coordinate policy and best practice; a Biodiversity Forum will engage with the public, and there’s a process to involve private landowners.

Connie Norgate, chairperson of the Biodiversity Guardians, is convinced Hawke’s Bay can achieve predator-free status with restored habitats benefitting all species, something that would have been impossible if everyone continued to work to their own agendas.

Norgate, Napier-based operations manager of the Department of

Conservation (DOC), says under the current threat-classification system around 50% of the region’s native species are at risk.

The Guardians will appoint a project manager to deliver on the Action Plan.

“While we continue to support species in pockets, we need to look to the future and consider what we can do on a landscape scale.”

The likely beneficiaries in Hawke’s Bay include whio or blue duck, the kaka (forest parrot), Australasian bittern, black billed gulls, dotterels “and of course the garden variety natives which have already benefited from HBRC’s possum programme – tui, kereru and wax eyes”.

Norgate says freshwater fish

including the koaro and long finned eels, plants such as kakabeak and Hectors tree daisy and “poweliphanta (giant land snails) which have a clade (group) significant to Hawke’s Bay” are being targeted.

Transformation challenge

HBRC’s resource management group manager, Iain Maxwell, says a big challenge in turning things around has always been achieving impact and scale.

“One of the frustrations within environmental communities is that stuff takes too long and if we rely on the old ways and techniques we’ll be having the same conversations in another 50 years. We’re trying to reset it.”

Achieving the turning point for habitat restoration while meeting the significant nutrient and sediment challenges for land and water “requires the massive upscaling of planting the right trees in the right places”.

Maxwell says if the biodiversity partners are to succeed “and not keep tinkering around the edges with small scale stuff ” they’ll need to deliver “widespread activities across big areas relatively quickly”.

An important stake in the ground was securing the leadership of noted zoologist and academic Prof Charles Daugherty to chair the Biodiversity Implementation Planning Group, the predecessor to the Guardians.

He’s earned a reputation as a change agent in getting biodiversity beyond business as usual.

Daugherty, a board member of Zero Invasive Predators (ZIP), came to Hawke’s Bay to retire after 34 years

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as a research ecologist at Victoria University and seven years on the board of Zealandia.

He says Zealandia set the tone for the full Wellington Predator Free Project with abundant birdlife now moving beyond the safety of its mammal-proof fence.

Daugherty says if you get the biodiversity mix right it starts to become self-healing. “The animals largely take care of themselves if you give them the right protection which means getting rid of the predators and creating the right habitat…the planting part.”

The big challenge for Hawke’s Bay, he says, is landscape restoration … “if these projects succeed then the national goals really are attainable”.

Cape to City starter

The darling of the biodiversity dream is the Cape to City project covering 26,000 hectares of farmland between Waimarama and Havelock North, a proven testing ground for broader regional roll out.

It’s modelled on native species and habitat restoration work at Poutiri Ao o Tane, near Lake Tutira; Cape Sanctuary, the country’s largest privately owned and funded wildlife restoration project; and HBRC’s on-farm possum-control programme.

Cape to City, involving HBRC, DOC, Landcare Research, other CRIs, Cape Sanctuary, the Aotearoa Foundation and private businesses, is projectmanaged by Regional Council land services manager, Campbell Leckie.

While some observers suggest Cape to City was an easy target for HBRC

“Biodiversity is not just about the greenies and little critters in the waterways, it’s fundamental to our wellbeing. The Maori view of the environment really sums it up, if nature is out of balance it will affect all of us.”

KEIKO HASHIBA, REGIONAL COUNCIL BIODIVERSITY STRATEGY AND ACTION PLAN CO-ORDINATOR

to get profile and publicity, Leckie says it takes up less than 10% of its biodiversity budget. “We didn’t know how to do widescale predator control, so Cape to City was about getting a template to do this, to fund it, drive it and upscale it.”

Leckie’s team is driving the agenda with Cape to City partners learning much from the 15-20 ongoing research projects, including “what’s going to recover and how quickly”.

Significant elements to biodiversity recovery are pest management, people and planting. “If you take all pests out but don’t reconnect the farmland in terms of habitat, riparian strips and plantations, then native species will be constrained by the places they have to live.”

Finding funding

Daugherty, now chairperson of the HB Biodiversity Foundation, says the

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Part of restoring “abundant, diverse and resilient birdlife” is eliminating feral cats.

“These bird killers now almost certainly number in the millions in the countryside and along forest margins.”

DR JAN WRIGHT, PARLIAMENTARY COMMISSIONER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

whole region and country can learn from Cape to City, the first big-scale project of its kind on agricultural and farmland.

The Biodiversity Strategy is ambitious but “well within present capabilities” if it achieves the right level of funding. “We’ve got really good control programmes underway, the farming community is engaged now, so that’s a good place to start.”

Action Plan co-ordinator, Kieko Hashiba, says priorities will be defined by what is “the best bang for buck with limited resources” and which “actions bring the best social, community or economic outcomes”.

Scientific exercises are underway to create a framework for the sites, species and habitats that should be subject to biodiversity actions over the next five years. Getting that mix right will be imperative to get buy-in from the wider community, says Hashiba.

Guardians chairperson Connie

Norgate says there’s a fine balance between land development, economic development and natural heritage. “You can’t have the best of everything but with a considered effort you can…make it work together.”

She says separate agencies aren’t doing enough on their own so it makes sense having a consolidated effort with “everyone throwing their money into the same pool and seeking more”.

Refining the framework

In May the Transforming Biodiversity in Hawke’s Bay report stated restoration was complex, with some areas needing better integration of policy, statutory frameworks and formal budgeting.

It urged HBRC to transform its own natural resource management functions, potentially combining existing policy drivers like freshwater, biodiversity and pest management plans, science and monitoring, biosecurity, land management, flood protection and drainage programmes.

The report envisaged planting the right trees in predator-free areas to create ‘corridors’ of habitat for native species to colonise, delivering “a substantially better economic outcome for areas of our farmland and in particular our hill country”.

Reducing erosion and the risk of sediment reaching waterways and lowering nutrient levels would improve water quality, thereby benefitting birds, invertebrates and lizards.

The report said Council would also need to ‘sell’ the concept to both urban and rural communities as it would take

years before there were demonstrable outcomes.

Iain Maxwell agrees the Action Plan will require HBRC to realign its activities, rethink internal communication and how the various parts of his organisation work together. “We haven’t done that particularly well.”

A good example, he says, might be using mapping and other tools to overlay knowledge about water quality issues and soil mapping through SedNet, then introduce afforestation and riparian management, biosecurity work and habitat prioritisation.

“This should show us where the overlaps are, help coordinate what the various teams are doing and show up any gaps.”

He says that might reveal rare habitats, perhaps a lowland podocarp forest under threat from canopy collapse or grazing that can be fenced off and protected for biodiversity purposes.

Predator hit list

Big on Campbell Leckie’s agenda is ramping up the elimination of pests, in line with Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) Dr Jan Wright’s biosecurity hit list.

Dr Wright in her report Taonga of an Island Nation: Saving New Zealand's Birds, calls for “sustained control of predators over more large areas” so bigger populations of birds can thrive.

“Small isolated bird populations can become inbred. We must not let our birds drift to the shallow end of the gene pool.”

Part of restoring “abundant, diverse and resilient birdlife” is eliminating

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feral cats. “These bird killers now almost certainly number in the millions in the countryside and along forest margins.”

Cape to City is currently trapping six to eight feral cats for every mustelid (stoat or ferret).

Dr Wright made seven recommendations to Government including prioritising predator-control research, increased protection of bird habitats and expanding sources of funding.

HBRC’s Possum Control Area Programme began in 2000, covering 700,000 hectares, resulting in a 40% reduction in possums; this year the average trap catch is under 3%, or three possums per night for every 100 traps.

Leckie quotes a 2006 survey of 1,000 properties showing significant improvement of birdlife and native tree growth on farms and a reduction in TB. Smart trap network

Now, after two years of trials, Leckie says HBRC’s wireless possum traps have proven ideal for “the initial knock down” in wider scale predator-control targeting feral cats, stoats, rats and rabbits.

The traps, when triggered, report to a hub then out to a smartphone or iPad, resulting in a huge saving of time and

Early targets include Mahia, where Austrian oil and gas firm OMV has offered $200,000 to HBRC, which council hopes will trigger Predator Free government funding taking the total to $600,000 over four years. effort. Traditionally, one person manages 200 traps a day; with wireless one person could manage 1,000 to 1,500.

Work on trap densities and catch rates across farm landscapes has shown 80% of pests are caught by 20% of the traps. “You could reduce trap numbers by 50% in most cases and still get the same result; that’s really significant if you’re doing half a million hectares,” says Leckie.

The Transforming Biodiversity in Hawke’s Bay report proposes 80% of the cost of the large-scale strategic rollout be redirected from individual landowner initiatives.

HBRC will partner with Predator Free New Zealand 2050 for ‘dollar for two dollar’ Government input; farmers will be asked to contribute; and the Biodiversity Foundation will pitch for further philanthropic investment. “It is not realistic for council to fund all of it,” says Leckie.

Early targets include Mahia, where Austrian oil and gas firm OMV has offered $200,000 to HBRC, which council hopes will trigger Predator Free government funding taking the total to $600,000 over four years.

Other predator hot spots with land and water challenges include Whakaki near Wairoa, Tutira’s Poutiri project, Ahuriri Estuary, and Lake Whatuma and Adean’s Bush in Central Hawke’s Bay. The Regional Pest Management Plan Review (RPMP) – awaiting sign-off next year after consultation – will confirm the extent of predator culling as well as plans for marine biosecurity, Chilean Needlegrass, privet, and goat management.

HBRC will also be reviewing its biosecurity policies on myrtle rust, pea weevil, PSA, fruit fly and other threats that could cause “significant economic damage” to the region.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 • BAYBUZZ • 25

Campbell Leckie, Regional Council Land Services Manager.

Photo: Tim Whittaker. tim.co.nz

Any talk about 1080 poisoning remains controversial. Although it’s used less frequently on farmland, Leckie says it is likely to be in New Zealand’s toolkit for some time with “well documented successes” The main concern of farmers, says Leckie, is they don’t want any slackening of possum control. “They’re concerned we could lose focus if we don’t get the resource mix right.”

Part of the Action Plan is to educate and engage with the public. HBRC currently “supports, advises and often works alongside” around 50 community groups engaged in planting and plant and animal pest control.

It’s involved in environmental education programmes with schools and EIT, and its Open Spaces programme seeks to reconnect people to places like Waitangi and the Pekapeka wetlands and to improve the biodiversity there.

Oma rapiti

Some critics have suggested that tinkering with the delicate balance of predators and their natural meals; for example, removing wild cats and mustelids, could result in a plague of 26 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

rats or rabbits heading for Hastings.

Leckie says these perceptions need to be taken into account, as in some cases there may be “genuinely perverse outcomes”.

One concern is that an overly successful restoration of native bird populations could see them target the grapes and fruit in our orchards. “You have to think early on about how to manage that.”

Rabbits also present a further challenge in that Hawke’s Bay has some of the best rabbit country in New Zealand.

All it takes is a warm, dry winter, poor control and farm management practices, and short cropped grass at breeding time. “There are not enough predators to stop rabbit numbers blowing up when that happens.”

Any talk about 1080 poisoning remains controversial. Although it’s used less frequently on farmland, Leckie says it is likely to be in New Zealand’s toolkit for some time with “well documented successes”, including knock down of possums and rats in deep bush areas where there’s difficult access.

He concedes it’s a tall order getting rid of all rats, which have been with us for over 200 years, but he points to Dr Wright’s view that even if the zero goal can’t be achieved, any control that promotes biodiversity “is a win”.

Ridding the mainland of rats will most likely require genetic engineering; “sterility or breeding males out of the population”, but that would need a

10-15-year “social conversation around acceptability”.

More with less

HBRC’s Iain Maxwell gives a tired shrug at the suggestion his Council is underfunded and under resourced for the predator-free, enhanced habitat proposition ahead. “That’s why we have to work smarter and use technology to get three times as much out of what we already have.”

He says there’s a massive disconnect between community expectations and the scale of the wider biodiversity challenges ahead, with people “no longer tolerating what they have in the past”. He concedes rate increases may be part of the picture.

A lot hangs on the Biodiversity Foundation and its ‘high profile’ trustees to be appointed after April 2018. The Foundations will aim for an endowment fund of $50 million for regional restoration programmes.

Potential investors include private philanthropic group the Next Foundation, launched in 2014, which has invested $100 million in $5–$15 million increments for a range of environmental and educational projects over ten years.

HBRC invested $50,000 setting up the Biodiversity Implementation Plan, but it will have to dig deeper for additional staff, resources and funding in the 2018-2028 Long Term Plan if it’s to meet central Government directives and its own commitment to the Strategy it is supposed to be leading.

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Dr Colin Wakefield tends to new patients. Photo: Florence Charvin

Is there a Doctor in the House?

Have you been to ‘the doctor’ lately? Notice any changes? Mark Sweet looks at the changing nature of medical care at the primary level.

MARK SWEET

Old school

Not so long ago the General Practice (GP) family doctor was part of the whãnau. He, sometimes she, would attend to the health needs of mum, dad and the kids, and often grandparents and grandchildren. He would deliver babies, make house calls, and always make room for an urgent appointment.

One such GP is recently retired Havelock North doctor, Colin Wakefield, who joined the practice of Dr Ian Abernathy in 1976.

“Over 25 years I delivered 1,400 babies, and had five clients who I delivered as babies, and in turn delivered their babies.” Dr Wakefield stopped deliveries in 2002 when “the trend was towards independent midwives,” and his patients were aging.

“It was thought a safe GP obstetrician should deliver 30 babies a year.”

Childbirth is but one of many changes that has influenced the relationship between doctors and their patients, and the way in which primary care is delivered has needed to adapt to the forces underlying health care reform, which include a chronic shortage of GPs. “The reasons are complex,” says | Dr Wakefield. “Enough doctors are being trained but not enough choose to be GPs.” High levels of medical student debt ($100,000 plus) and the fact a specialist can earn double the income of a GP (around $150,000) discourages students from general practice. A top surgeon in private practice can earn $500,000 per annum and more.

“As a solo GP exiting, it is near impossible to be replaced by another solo GP. My practice had to be amalgamated with one of the three nearby group practices.”

Another long-standing Havelock North GP, Maurice Jolly, already “had an after hours arrangement with Hastings Health Centre”. And it was they who facilitated Colin Wakefield’s retirement.

“Andrew Lesperance from Hastings Health and Wayne Woolrich from the PHO were wonderfully helpful.”

Dr Wakefield says his choice to be a GP was “an ethical service calling”, and he looks back on his career as “a delight to be involved in the health care of my patients”.

“Over 25 years I delivered 1,400 babies, and had five clients who I delivered as babies, and in turn delivered their babies.”

DR COLIN WAKEFIELD

The health centre

“We wanted to have a presence in Havelock North and we heard Colin was retiring,” says CEO of Hastings Health Center, Andrew Lesperance. The timing was opportune because “it happened at the same time we merged Maurice Jolly’s practice, so Maurice has moved across the road” (into Wakefield’s former surgery).

Originally from Toronto, Canada, Lesperance worked as a specialist cardiac nurse until meeting “a Kiwi girl who bought me home with her as a souvenir”.

Now 20 years in New Zealand, he has held general-manager positions with Southern Cross Hospital in Palmerston North, Cancer Control with the Ministry of Health, and the Marlborough District Health Board, where he was also acting CEO. “Our intention is to have a two-GP practice in Havelock North. A new appointment is arriving in January.”

Until then “a series of locums” will see patients. And he talks of “growing” the practice in the future.

Fundamentally, the Health Centre model sees doctoring run as a business.

The Doctors – with premises in Napier, Greenmeadows, Hastings, and 40 outlets nationwide – is the most obvious corporately-structured health provider in Hawke’s Bay. The owner, Green Cross Health Ltd, also owns the Unichem pharmacy brand, and is listed on the stock exchange with a market capitalisation of $275 million. Doctors and support staff are contracted employees.

Other health centres such as Totara Health, Te Mata Peak Practice, Taradale Medical Centre, and The Hastings Health Centre are limited liability companies. Shareholders are predominantly the doctors involved in the practice, but also include pharmacists, and passive investors.

Hauora Heretaunga Medical Centre in Hastings, which provides health NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 • BAYBUZZ • 29

Chris Ash, Wayne Woolrich and Kevin Snee reshaping HB health care delivery. Photo: Florence Charvin

A particular focus of Snee’s tenure as CEO has been shifting resources from the hospital to the community for health promotion and prevention.

services to enrolled whãnau, is structured as a Trust, with affiliation to Ngãti Kahungunu Iwi Inc. A unique feature of the Hastings Health Centre is its Urgent Care service. “To have ACC accreditation for Urgent Care we’re required to have X-ray service.” This and other compliance requirements like sterilisation standards “comes at a cost,” says Lesperance. And it is only by “consolidating services” that operating “costs are reduced”.

Today’s health centres offer a suite of integrated health services, which standalone doctors, like Colin Wakefield, 30 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

could not provide, and the notion of the doctor being the first call for primary care is changing rapidly.

Integrated health

“In many parts of the world the contact between GP or clinician and patients is only 40-50% of the time,” says Kevin Snee, CEO of Hawke’s Bay District Health Board (DHB).

Appointed eight years ago when the Board was under statutory management, Snee was recruited from the UK, where he trained as a GP, later specialising in public health, spending his early career “in primary care oversight, commissioning of services, contracting and planning”.

One of Kevin Snee’s first initiatives as CEO was to encourage a framework termed ‘Transform and Sustain’. He wrote at the time (2010) this was about “thinking and working differently, and having the time and tools to do this. We must think and act as one system – the Hawke’s Bay Health system – rather than as a DHB, a hospital, or a primary care provider.”

Today, he says, “New technologies and a broadening range of specialist

staff ” means instead of seeing a doctor, we’re more and more engaging with other health professionals. Most health centres have in-house “pharmacists who advise on drugs and drug interaction, and assigned nurses for diseases like diabetes”.

Interestingly, Snee says telephone consultation was being trialled when the Havelock North water contamination crisis occurred. “Necessity being the mother of invention,” health providers “phone knocked” their patient lists for consultation. And considering most of those poisoned were at home, that “worked really well”.

From his observation of overseas models, and in response to need, Kevin Snee is keen “to develop how mental health integrates with primary care” … where “clinical mental health professionals, behaviouralists, are part of the primary health care team … not an outreach service, or co-located, as they are here, but full members of the (health centre) team”.

A particular focus of Snee’s tenure as CEO has been shifting resources from the hospital to the community for health promotion and prevention. But

it’s not easy. Pressure from Wellington to achieve goals for ‘elective activity’ and funding targeted at particular hospital issues makes it more difficult to dedicate resources to primary care.

It’s a Catch 22 situation. “When there are not enough resources in primary care, people end up in the wrong place – the hospital – and because people end up in hospital, we have to put more resources there.”

Addressing this dilemma, and assisting to integrate health care, the DHB has created a new position, Executive Director of Primary Care, the first health board in the country to establish a dedicated role to primary care management.

Primary care

Chris Ash, who holds that position, first came to New Zealand 20 years ago on a gap year between school and university.

After completing a business degree he entered a management-training program with the National Health Service (NHS), and his last posting was as director of strategy with Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust in Southampton.

“One of the things that attracted me here was Kevin Snee’s very clear vision that the primary care system in Hawke’s Bay could be even better,” says Ash, whose work experience has included managing services for the elderly, and aspects of social housing in a deprived community.

He says his chief executive “understands that there are numerous communities in Hawke’s Bay, that it’s not one size fits all, and you need

services that can respond to the needs of particular populations”.

Communication is key, and Chris Ash says, “The goal is to work with the wider primary care sector, GPs, and nongovernmental organisations, to put in place the right structures and incentives for people to work together around the needs of certain patient groups.”

And he says, “Primary care has to be timely, because if a patient has a care need, but it can’t be met in reasonable time, they are more likely to slip into a secondary care situation, or an intervention situation.”

From his experience in the UK, Chris Ash, observes that, “If you construct a service and people don’t engage, then the root of that problem is the way the service is designed, and not the people who use it.”

In this context he says, “An interesting concept in developing health policy is this idea of the ‘Universal Care Law’, which states that people who need health services the most are the least likely to access them.

It could be cost barriers, it could be distance to access, or the services don’t reflect the need. It could be a feeling you’ll be judged.”

And on the same page as Kevin Snee, he says, “Mental health has been an undeveloped part of primary care globally.”

Chris Ash is responsible for administering $240 million of contracts that sit outside the hospital, from a total DHB budget of $520 million. He says large parts of that are transferred directly as part of nationally agreed contracts, as with Pharmac for

“An interesting concept in developing health policy is this idea of the ‘Universal Care Law’, which states that people who need health services the most are the least likely to access them. It could be cost barriers, it could be distance to access, or the services don’t reflect the need. It could be a feeling you’ll be judged.”

CHRIS ASH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF PRIMARY CARE

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Previously he was commercial operations manager with Green Cross Health providing funding and operational support to managers at The Doctors; experience that gave him “understanding of the complexities and systems of funding, and the models in

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operation in general practice”.

PHO’s are not-for-profit organisations with community and provider representation on a Board of Directors and Advisory Groups.

They were formed in 2002 and their funding from the Ministry of Health via the DHB is based on enrolments (158,993 people in Hawke’s Bay, 97% of population in October 2017).

“Core funding is capitation (per head) with different rates for different age groups and different demographics,” says Woolrich. The subsidy is “bulk funded on estimated visits regardless of how many times a patient presents”.

Prior to 2002 subsidies were paid per consultation. Dr Wakefield recalls being very relieved after capitation funding because “my practice expenses were met when I walked through the door in the morning”, whereas before, “I felt that I worked until two o’clock to pay my expenses, and then I was earning my income.”

As of 1 July 2017, basic annual subsidies ranged from highest for 0-4 year olds with high use cards at $608.69, to lowest for 15-24 year old males with low use cards at $67.55.

The PHO has additional DHB funding streams “to improve access (to health care) for specific catagories”, says Woolrich. Currently, a Whãnau Wellness program is being offered to low decile Mãori and Pacific Islanders.

“We work with medical centre providers to identify enrolled whãnau, and to invite them to join a 12 month program of education, and provide health literacy around various topics that affect them.”

Wayne Woolrich points to “good relationships with general practice and with our DHB colleagues,” as an important factor, “if we’re to make a difference in health outcomes in Hawke’s Bay.” He says, “Part of our culture is to work together on the difficult challenges.”

“A feature of a high performing primary care system is a system in which those involved in the caring talk to each other – physically talk to each other.”

Working together

The Big Listen

“What we’ve tried to do is build relationships with both national and local organisations, like the Police and MSD (Ministry of Social Development),” says Kevin Snee, because “often we’re looking after the same group of people with problems of criminality, and health problems, and mental health problems.”

He says, “The more we can triangulate and work together to help them, the more we get the synergies, rather than working in silo.”

32 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

CHRIS ASH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF PRIMARY CARE

Chris Ash calls this “the intersectoral component” where “the agendas of several public agencies are fundamentally intertwined”. Six weeks in the job and he has already had “great conversations with some principals of secondary schools, who absolutely get the link between health and well-being and educational outcomes.”

“Employers too,” he says, “can be engaged with the health and well-being of their employees, which leads to less absenteeism, which in turn increases productivity.”

With the recruitment of Chris Ash, CEO Snee is looking forward to “setting up an alliance arrangement” with the PHO and other recipients of DHB funding – pharmacy, aged residential care, community services – to create a greater integration among the different funding streams.

“Sometimes,” he says, “funding streams for similar groups of patients, like long term (chronic) conditions funding in Pharmacy and Care Plus, target the same people, but don’t talk to each other.”

Chris Ash says, “A feature of a high performing primary-care system is a system in which those involved in the caring talk to each other – physically talk to each other.” And he says, “Starting in a new job with the clinical services plan and The Big Listen happening at the same time is a massive blessing for me.”

A group of about a hundred gather at the Napier Conference Centre for In Your Shoes, an inter-action between healthcare professionals, and the people who use their services, referred to as ‘consumers’.

The word patient is hard to shake, but its time is over. The root is pati, Latin for suffering, and today’s health care emphasises wellness, not disease.

As Kevin Snee pointed out, “Changing language changes the mind set,” and

shifting the relationship between users and providers of health care in Hawke’s Bay is a focus of the DHB. The core of this gentle revolution is empowering the community to take ownership of health both individually and collectively.

In Your Shoes forms part of a DHB initiative, The Big Listen, which is described as “about the people side of our workplace and our service,” and invites people “to have their say about what it’s like working in the sector as well as receiving care with us.”

Kevin Snee is taking part in the session, as is freshly-appointed Chris Ash. We, the consumers, are paired with health professionals, and my confidants are John and Alan. The convener has made it clear that confidentiality is expected, and “anyone who might gossip about what is said today should leave now”.

At first we play a game of snap. The convener asks our opinions of the health system, good and bad. When our answers coincide, it’s ‘snap’, and that happens often.

Later we share more intimate details of our experiences, and I tell my confidants I feel lucky to have had Bertrand Jauffret as my surgeon.

After he showed me a photo of the “tumor in the mid ascending colon,” I said to him, “Eeew, that’s not very pretty.” Dr Jauffret replied, “It will look much prettier in a bucket.” And he went on to explain in detail the procedure he would perform.

His humour warmed me. His manner gained my trust. And trust is what I needed most, because that was lost when my doctor mis-diagnosed symptoms I’d been complaining of for three years, at one consultation saying my swollen belly was a sign of aging, and I should consider hormone replacement therapy.

Needless to say I changed doctors.

Now, signed up with a health centre, I’m more likely to see a locum from overseas than my designated GP. Usually my health-care needs are urgent – that day – for bronchitis or a leg infection. When I told an Aussie doctor the bite was from my cat, he said, ‘Then shoot your freakin’ cat’.”

We all have experiences both good and not so good with health care, but all residents of Hawke’s Bay can be assured their current and future health care needs are the intense focus of many well qualified and dedicated health professionals.

Illutration: Brett Montieth

POLITICAL UPDATE: TOM BELFORD

Winston the king (maker) is dead; long live the queen!

In perhaps the most significant act of his career, Winston Peters has midwifed the transfer of political power in New Zealand to a new generation …

37-year-old Jacinda Ardern obviously (and Labour’s relatively young ‘kitchen’ cabinet, soon to be real), but also to the Green’s 44-year-old James Shaw (although Peters would deny any pleasure in that).

The policy implications will begin to be seen in action with the Labour Government’s first 100-days plan, but the underlying generational change will clearly outlive this Government’s initial reign.

What does the change mean for Hawke’s Bay and its politicians?

Just looking at the environment (and we could cite regional development or social policy), the implications are huge.

For starters, the Government will NOT have ministers like Nick Smith (Environment) or Maggie Barry (Conservation). That means no minister to cram GMOs down our throat and no minister to swap specially-protected conservation land for economic benefit.

It means no new irrigation funding.

So, in case anyone in the region was still holding their breath, no land and no additional Government subsidy absolutely, positively kills the Ruataniwha dam.

It means planting 1 billion trees over ten years.

It means getting serious about water quality, especially if the likes of David Parker becomes Environment Minister.

And it means getting really serious about global warming, with a national commission on the cards whose

mandate will be to lead New Zealand toward carbon neutrality by 2050.

For our local MPs, the change in Government will be hugely personally significant as well. As I write, ministerial roles are yet to be allocated, and Labour’s commitments to NZ First and the Greens must be reflected.

For starters, the Government will NOT have ministers like Nick Smith (Environment) or Maggie Barry (Conservation). That means no minister to cram GMOs down our throat and no minister to swap specially-protected conservation land for economic benefit.

But in any event, as Labour’s Stuart Nash recently commented to Hawke's Bay Today: “The difference between government and opposition is huge; it's the difference between almost irrelevance, although you can do some good things in your electorate, versus transformation.”

Nash has been named a Minister inside

Cabinet, portfolio yet to be announced.

He has been Labour’s spokesperson on Economic and Regional Development and on Forestry, both highly significant to the Bay. It’s hard to imagine that Labour will not tap Nash’s intellect and political capability in a significant way.

Meka Whaitiri, re-elected as Labour MP for Ikaroa –Rāwhiti and having been named a Minister outside Cabinet, will also hold more power.

The converse is true of MP Lawrence Yule. Despite his political nous, his threat is irrelevance – no power, no $$ baubles to bestow, not even ribbons to cut or ceremonies to preside over.

However, there might be a silver lining in the clouds if National decides, looking toward 2020, that it needs to give prominence on its Opposition benches to new capable faces, instead of old farts tainted with failure.

There’s definitely a silver lining for Labour’s losing candidate, Anna Lorck.

If she opts to stay engaged as Labour’s voice in the Tukituki electorate, she can look ahead to myriad opportunities over the next three years to take part in introducing to the region – shoulder to shoulder with PM Ardern and Labour ministers – the social and other policies she championed as a candidate – ‘sweet revenge’ of sorts.

Can the tailwind from a successful (let’s assume) Labour term featuring Jacinda Ardern deliver the 2,813 votes Lorck was short of in the past election. I wouldn’t bet against it.

In the meantime …

It would be nice to know who the mayor of Hastings is, but that verdict is still a few weeks away as I write, with NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 • BAYBUZZ • 35

voting closing 24 November.

Sandra Hazlehurst would probably be the most ‘comfortable slipper’ for Hastings voters to wear, while either Simon Nixon or Bayden Barber, each in their own way, would represent more radical fashion statements!

Candidates Stuart Perry, Allister Tosh and Waitawhara Tupaea have too little name recognition (among other liabilities) to be viable contenders.

That said, Mr Perry seems a thoughtful fellow, while it’s hard to take seriously a candidate like Mr Tosh whose ideas are so good he insists they remain secret!

Nineteen-year-old Tupaea deserves kudos for caring enough to try.

Over at the Power Consumers’ Trust, two not-so-new faces, Kevin Atkinson and Barbara Arnott, have been elected to the board, joining re-elected incumbents Diana Kirton, Helen Francis and Ken Gilligan.

The campaign for these seats was sharply contested, with different philosophies put forward, and it will be interesting to see what kind of modus vivendi develops as issues come to the table. Unison is not your “grandfather’s” sleepy lines company anymore, and as its shareholder on behalf of the public, the Consumers’ Trust should no longer be simply a passive onlooker.

As for the issues

The best indication of looming issue priorities is probably found in work now underway to scope out the next Long Term Plans (LTPs) that each of our five councils in the region must prepare for the 2018-2028 time frame.

AHA

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36 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

Each council’s LTP articulates its priorities, strategies and programmes, financing and budgets, with most critical detail provided for the three years beginning July 2018. This is where each council proposes its direction, where elected councillors put their vision on the line, and where ratepayers are asked to endorse – or not – the key elements proposed.

Current programmes, projects and spending are under review. New initiatives tabled and costed. Existing organisational structures re-assessed.

Council staffs will be aiming to have most of their ducks lined up, with councillors making key strategic decisions, before the Christmas break.

Unfortunately, most of this will happen ‘under the radar’ in terms of public scrutiny, as much of the ‘guidance’ from councillors to staff will be given in private workshops.

The groundwork for draft LTPs will first surface publicly next FebruaryMarch, then be firmed up and move into public consultation in April-May, and finally adopted by 30 June.

What are the major issues simmering away as LTPs are being cooked?

Regional Council

On the revenue side, HBRC must contend with major new capital investment required to future-proof Napier Port, while at the same time prudently managing the risk posed by the Port already dominating the Council’s asset base.

One way or the other, the Council must curtail its financial risk, provide for the growth needs of the Port, and address its

revenue dependence on Port dividends, which today are used to help subsidise the operating costs of the Council.

Addressing these needs requires a fresh look at Port ownership structure, and a variety of options are under development. Whatever recommendations ensue, they must be tested via a public consultation process, either within or alongside the LTP process next year.

On the spending side, the current Council has made clear its determination to focus on core environmental responsibilities. Resourcing challenges lie ahead with respect to implementing new rules for the Tukituki catchment, fashioning a new water quality and security scheme for the Heretaunga Plains, reducing the region’s very severe erosion and sediment loss, ensuring a sustainable and resilient farming economy, and addressing the health of our marine environment.

With respect to other councils, BayBuzz canvassed a cross-section of councillors to get their thoughts on their councils’ LTP priorities, generally finding consensus.

Napier

The Napier City Council has not shied away from floating ‘big ticket’ initiatives that it will need to test further through its LTP process. It’s hard to imagine NCC will be able to accomplish its goals with only an ‘inflation adjustment’ to rates.

On the table, with some indicative costs (not all NCC): • New civic building and library

Residential New homes & renovations

Commercial New facilities & building improvements

Homestar Certification Sustainable home design & performance

Design & Construction Observation Full service from concept to completion

– $7 million in current budgets will need to be supplemented; • Aquatic centre – $1.5 million initially, possibly $38million in total; • Revamping the National Aquarium – $7 million from NCC toward $45 million project; • Rolling out an Ahuriri master plan – $7 million; • Ensuring drinking water security – millions; • Pettigrew-Green expansion – transfer $4 million intended for velodrome.

Hastings

Not surprisingly, water tops the Hastings District Council list. Said one councillor: “Our major issue is water quantity, quality and restoring public faith in what comes out of the tap.”

Water infrastructure alone will cost HDC over $12 million in the near term.

And one overarching goal according to acting mayor Hazlehurst is “ensuring community affordability”. Ahead for the LTP: • Delivering safe drinking water – including new treatment infrastructure, new pipe infrastructure between Hastings and

Havelock North and a new bore in the Tomoana area. Plus responding to increasing environmental standards affecting storm water and other activities.

• Growth infrastructure – support industrial growth and job creation at Omahu Road and Irongate, and residential growth at Howard Street, Lyndhurst and Havelock North growth areas (will include development contributions).

• Whakatu Link roading project and Opera House strengthening – completing vital projects currently underway.

• Hastings CBD – investing in amenity projects and regulatory changes to help stimulate growth and investment in the CBD. Partnering to facilitate investment, new business activity and inner-city living.

• Housing – provide appropriate green field and intensification opportunities for housing development; partnerships for affordable housing; advocacy for greater social housing.

• Youth employment – continuing programmes assisting youth to enter and succeed in training and

employment.

• Rural roads and bridges – renewal and maintenance focus on rural bridges that are key lifelines for our rural communities as well as key productivity routes for our district and regional economies.

• Coastal erosion – awaiting the HBRC/ HDC/NCC joint strategy.

CHB & Wairoa

According to Mayor Alex Walker, CHB’s big investment priorities are in the “three waters – compliance, resilience and smart growth”. Watchful eyes will be on how CHB intends to come up with and finance water treatment plants that actually work.

Walker credits CHB’s Project Thrive with identifying a strategic vision: promoting smart growth; attracting and enabling business success; strengthening our district and community identity; protecting and promoting our unique landscape; and planning for tomorrow to future-proof Central Hawke’s Bay. No comments from Wairoa … apparently their hands are full trying to compute accurately their current rates.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 • BAYBUZZ • 37

HASTINGS MAYORAL CANDIDATE STATEMENT

In May, when Sky hiked the monthly price of Fan Pass from $60 to $100 and cut subscription options for premier sport, Pilcher says “rugby fanatics went off their nuts” with many discovering lower-cost backdoor or pirated ways to watch their favourite games.

Bayden Barber Strong Vision, New Leadership My vision is for Hastings to be the best place in New Zealand to live and do business. To achieve this, our council needs to be focused on its customers.

For individuals and businesses alike there must be less red tape, a helpful culture and friendly attitude. Consenting processes should be fast, predictable and fair. Not only will this help build a better sense of community, and make life easier, but also attract families and businesses to our region and boost our local economy.

Rates income needs to be spent wisely.

Council must prioritise spending on core services like roads, water, parks and public facilities to ensure they are exceptional, before spending big on projects outside of our core business.

Our water should be the safest in New Zealand. We must get the systems right, the places right and the people right to restore your faith in our ability to provide you with the safest drinking water in New Zealand. Council should to do everything in its power to ensure your drinking water is clean, safe and tastes good.

We can have the highest levels of home ownership whilst protecting our growers.

It’s not a matter of ‘this’ or ‘that’! We can free up land that is less productive for development. There are also some exciting growth models that can be used to support smart and safe community building – an urban sprawl isn’t the only answer to enabling more families to own their own homes.

After door knocking at over 6,000 homes, I am aware there is community concern about water bottling, housing, and education needs. I am confident all these issues can be resolved and many of the solutions are already underway.

Our reputation as New Zealand’s fruit bowl must be upheld and our worldclass food-production soil protected. It is crucial to our local economy, creates jobs and is essential to our long-term prosperity. The fruit and food industry is experiencing rapid growth, which is great for Hastings. To bring skilled workers to our city, however, we need more affordable housing. This will help ensure we attract and keep good people here in Hastings long-term.

I support the reinvigoration of our CBD and villages. We should harness the creative juices of the community to find solutions and create the ‘Hastings vibe’. We must work together with city

landlords, Hastings Business Association, retailers and customers to make it happen. Flaxmere locals also deserve a vibrant village. I would work with stakeholders to bring about the change needed to restore pride, and spark life into the shopping centre. This is long overdue!

Our rural hinterland makes up the bulk of our district area. As someone who lives rurally and has served on the Rural Community Board at council, I feel we must ensure the provision of service to our rural communities is of the highest standard.

In order to achieve this vision, Hastings needs a new leader; a leader who will focus on getting outcomes.

I will focus on coherent, measurable goals around water quality, ease of doing business with the council, and home ownership. Through my leadership the vision will be clear, expectations will be direct, and staff will be empowered to get the best job done to make Hastings the best place to live and do business in New Zealand.

HASTINGS MAYORAL CANDIDATE STATEMENT

Sandra Hazlehurst A Future To Uplift Our People Why am I standing for Mayor?

Because I want to create a better place for our people.

How do we do this?

By building a strong sustainable economy. One which will provide employment, and consequently enhance our community.

I was elected a councillor in 2010. Since then I’ve been a chair of district development, deputy mayor, and currently I am acting mayor.

In those seven short (or long) years these roles have provided me with a fundamental understanding of our district’s challenges. And also of its opportunities.

Water is the life blood of our people and our economy. As a region we have been forced to acknowledge the critical need to improve the quality and sustainability of our natural waterways. To do this we must develop innovative, sustainable watermanagement solutions. So this is my first priority: to provide safe drinking water. The next? To protect and guarantee its delivery.

And then?

A strong awareness of culture and identity gives people pride: a sense of place. By restoring self-esteem in our society we will grow a vibrant, safe and prosperous Hastings district and city. Our Opera House and municipal buildings are world-class venues. Strengthening them offers the

I will lead a council that is customer-focused and has a ‘Can Do’ attitude.

opportunity to showcase our region’s amazing talent and tell our Hastings Heretaunga stories. Plus the power to pull in international performers.

Education and training give our young people’s lives meaning. And are a conduit to employment. By providing these pathways we give them hope.

Investing in our next generation not only helps reduce poverty but offers everyone a better quality of life. By partnering with central Government and other organisations, we are committed to supporting programmes and initiatives that will achieve better outcomes for our young. People with jobs are our future.

We have a housing crisis. It is our greatest challenge. To have a secure, safe and comfortable place to call home, whether you own it or rent it, is fundamental to our community’s wellbeing. There’s no doubt we need more social housing, but we also need central Government to assist us in addressing the issue. Our own Council is currently investigating partnerships

which will realise more social housing for our district. Our ultimate goal is to eliminate the need for emergency housing. Now – not tomorrow.

Land is necessary for urban growth.

Council understands it has to provide this. But at the same time it must mitigate the impact of urban sprawl on our productive Heretaunga Plains – the foundation of our district’s economy.

Through the Heretaunga Plains Urban Development Strategy (HPUDS), which is predicted to make 1,300 sections available over the next few years, land is selected for development with the first consideration being its impact on our fertile soils. Council is mindful of infrastructure investment in new development projects; it must carefully consider infrastructure investment in order to avoid excessive debt costs.

Efficient and effective local government makes a difference to people’s lives and supports economic growth. I will lead a Council that is customer-focused and has a ‘Can Do’ attitude.

As acting mayor, my priority has been listening and working with our community. I am hard-working, passionate and inclusive. As mayor, I will build a united, innovative and transparent Council … a Council that brings new ideas to build and implement a vision for the future.

A future to uplift our people and our place. Hastings.

HASTINGS MAYORAL CANDIDATE STATEMENT

Simon Nixon Our Great Place Could Be Better I am standing for mayor in the upcoming by-election. In June I was voted acting deputy mayor by my fellow councillors reflecting a desire I believe for a different culture and a new direction.

I believe I offer a unique combination of local government knowledge following two full terms as a councillor, plus extensive commercial experience with major companies working in finance, economics, HR, marketing and exporting. I have also been an orchardist and established my own media business.

My initial entry into local government arose from a protracted dispute with the Hastings and Napier mayors over the need for improved air services. I believe the monumental gains that followed Jetstar’s arrival in Hawke’s Bay uphold all that I have ever said on the issue.

I remain committed to further improvements, starting with more capacity and cheaper flights to Wellington and Christchurch. Longer term we need direct Trans-Tasman services.

Unbridled enthusiasm for spending ratepayers’ money alarms me. A million dollars on the now-abandoned Civic Square project and more on Tehei Heretaunga, $2 million to encourage a chartered clubs merger (luckily rejected), and almost half a million on the abandoned velodrome proposal, and much more.

I will continue to support community-

I am determined to heal the rift between Hastings and the other Hawke’s Bay councils that was amplified during the amalgamation issue.

I also want to see our councils speaking with one voice when dealing with Government. enhancing projects including playgrounds and affordable sports facilities, such as the hockey turf at the Sports Park.

Government must be pressured to correct the deficit in tertiary educational opportunities in Hawke’s Bay, which discourages higher learning, drains money from Hawke’s Bay parents and forces many of our students to take on excessive debt. We are the largest population centre in the country not to have some form of university campus.

The Manawatu Gorge must be fixed to provide efficient connections to the rest of the lower North Island.

Whilst the plans to improve the supply of water to Havelock North are finalised, more effort is needed to repair all the water leaks. I attended most sessions

of the official enquiry into the gastro crises and I believe the community should be braced for the possibility of mandatory chlorination of drinking water throughout the country.

I am concerned the proposed Water Conservation Order on the Karamu Stream and Ngaruroro River will adversely impact on our growing industries, but I still want to hear robust debate on the issue.

We need more jobs and better paying jobs. I will commit to sorting out the hopelessly inadequate supply of sections for new houses which is pushing up prices and causing us to miss out on growth opportunities. We also need to keep encouraging higher-density infill housing.

Whilst I have concerns about spending another $10 million on the Opera House after a $15 million upgrade less than a decade ago, the $4 million from Government plus additional money from Lotteries has reduced some of my worries.

I am determined to heal the rift between Hastings and the other Hawke’s Bay Councils that was amplified during the amalgamation issue. I also want to see our Councils speaking with one voice when dealing with Government.

We live in a great place, but it could be better.

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As co-chair of HBRC’s Regional Planning Committee, Toro Waaka has consistently voiced concern about both the local and intergenerational risks of oil and gas development.

Photo: Florence Charvin

Is Oil Development in Hawke’s Bay Out of Gas? Public concern over potential oil and gas development in Hawke’s Bay has simmered over the last five years, triggered initially by the Government’s awarding of both onshore and offshore exploration permits in our region. TOM BELFORD

Initial feasibility studies projected that as much as $100 million might be spent by oil companies on exploration across the East Coast Basin, and significant production could inject up to $255 billion into the region’s economy over 50 years.

Early exploration wells in both Wairoa and Dannevirke fuelled speculation that commercial quantities of natural gas might indeed be available.

Political response was initially positive, if not drooling, but nevertheless bets were hedged.

Hedged partly because in 2012 the Parliamentary Commissioner issued a cautionary report on the risks of oil and gas development in New Zealand, in which the Hawke’s Bay region was singled out as particularly risky because of its geologic instability.

The report posed these questions: • Given that the area is particularly seismically active, what are the implications for well integrity and the injection of wastewater?

• Has the folding and faulting of the rock layers meant that contamination of groundwater is more likely?

• Will the drilling be vertical or horizontal, as a horizontal well has a much greater likelihood of intercepting vertical faults?

For its part, the Government has excluded from permits in this region any exploration on lands directly over aquifers; however, concerns continue that exploration could still occur on land in catchments that supply freshwater which ultimately makes its way into the aquifers.

• What does the depth of the shale layers mean for proximity to groundwater and aquifers?

• Given that the East Coast is much drier (and frequently suffers from summer drought), where will the water required for fracking be taken from?

• How well would the main waste disposal methods used in Taranaki (land farming and wastewater injection) translate to the East Coast?

In addition, the Commissioner’s report generally criticised the lack of sufficiently protective consenting practices

and precautionary environmental regulations, which regional councils were empowered to adopt.

At the time, the HB Regional Council indicated it would review the Commissioner’s recommendations against its existing regulatory provisions, but was obliged to consider any applications filed.

Sensing concerns, then-mayor Lawrence Yule hosted a day-long ‘oil and gas symposium’ featuring speakers from all perspectives in October 2013.

The mainstream ‘politically correct’ view has been to voice approval, based on expected regional economic benefit – a la Taranaki – but only on the condition that any drilling activities do not occur where they might endanger regional water supplies … specifically, our aquifers.

For its part, the Government has excluded from permits in this region any exploration on lands directly over aquifers; however, concerns continue that exploration could still occur on land in catchments that supply freshwater which ultimately makes its way into the aquifers.

From street protests in 2013 until recently, that has left the most vociferous opposition in the hands of local environmentalists, like Don’t Frack the Bay and Guardians of the Aquifer, and to national voices like the NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 • BAYBUZZ • 43

Photo: Florence Charvin

Green Party and Greenpeace.

While there are numerous environmental risks associated with oil and gas development, in the Bay environmental opposition has been especially focused on fracking, a practice increasingly frowned upon worldwide, and which would present special risks if carried out in the vicinity of our crucial groundwater resources.

Hence the hedging by most local politicians.

So where does the issue sit today?

Global context

Not inconsequential is the question of whether oil companies formerly interested in oil and gas development on the small scale Hawke’s Bay represents will remain interested.

Given one’s perspective, how real is the threat – or opportunity – of development in Hawke’s Bay? Global trends might help provide that answer.

The International Energy Agency recently reported that growth in world oil supply will next year exceed demand (estimated at 100 million barrels per day) for the first time.

Imagine: excess supply. OPEC is collaborating with its major rival 44 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

exporters including Russia to drive inventories down (and support prices).

McKinsey Energy Insights expects oil demand growth to slow down, noting “decreasing oil intensity driven by energy efficiency and EV (electric vehicle) substitution”. OPEC’s own projections (World Oil Outlook) have oil demand growing to only 109 mb/d by 2040, citing the same two factors.

So IEA projects that global oil demand will peak in 2040. McKinsey says 2030 (with light vehicle demand peaking in 2023). These are not ‘greenie’ predictions. Is this the speeding train Hawke’s Bay and New Zealand really wants to hop on?

Many energy commentators note the disruptive adoption of electric vehicles. Says McKinsey: “The total demand for liquid hydrocarbons will play out as a tug of war between growth in the petrochemical sector and declining demand from passenger cars. Petrochemical feedstock will drive 70% of the growth in demand for liquid hydrocarbons through 2035. Demand for liquids, excluding chemicals, will peak and flatten by 2025 because of a decline in demand from light vehicles.”

It is naive to think it’s all over. They’ve started deep-sea drilling again in the Gulf of Mexico. And Statoil has been carrying out seismic tests for months all the way down the coastline from Mahia Peninsula to Canterbury.

PAULINE DOYLE, GUARDIANS OF THE AQUIFER

Consider these recent announcements: • General Motors, America’s largest automaker, plans to release 20 allelectric vehicles by 2023; • Ford Motor plans to release 13 EVs by 2020 and to electrify 40% of its cars worldwide by the end of the decade; • Volkswagen pledges to spend $1.7 billion by 2022 to electrify heavyduty vehicles like trucks and buses; • France and the UK will ban fossilfuelled vehicles by 2040; • Sweden and Scotland will ban them

by 2032, Norway by 2025 (and all new cars launched by Volvo from 2019 onwards will be partially or completely battery-powered); • India will go gas-free by 2030; • China, the world’s largest auto market, aims to produce 1 million EVs by 2020.

With these EV trends, oil’s future is as a feedstock for the chemical industry.

And if mandatory plastic recycling and substitution really take off, watch out!

Considering all uses of all forms of energy, ExxonMobil projects that oil will constitute 32% of the global energy mix in 2040, but assumes only 10% penetration of EVs globally. However, a more ‘independent’ McKinsey puts penetration as high as 30% globally by 2030, reaching 50% in China, the European Union and the US. Are these global trends relevant to us in Hawke’s Bay? First, if you’re under age 70, I’ll wager there’s an electric car in your future.

Second, in April 2016, TAG Oil, the company most committed to development in Hawke’s Bay, announced it was abandoning its East Coast acreage, and later in the year relinquished its permit.

There will not be an ‘oil rush’ in Hawke’s Bay anytime soon.

Still, apprehensions persist, as reflected by Pauline Doyle, Guardians of the Aquifer: “[We] believe that oil and gas development poses a real threat to Hawke’s Bay. It is naive to think it’s all over. They’ve started deep-sea drilling again in the Gulf of Mexico. And Statoil has been carrying out seismic tests for

Greenpeace activists protest covered in oil

months all the way down the coastline from Mahia Peninsula to Canterbury.”

Such concerns have spurred precautionary action.

Regional Council acts

Historically the Regional Council took a passive or reactive stance toward oil and gas development.

The Government decided where

exploration could occur and issued the permits (after public consultation). Therefore, it was not deemed to be the role of the Regional Council to have a view for or against oil exploration in Hawke’s Bay. Rather, it was the Council’s role to make an informed decision on any resource consent application it might receive, applying the

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Photo: Florence Charvin

conditions it saw fit to mitigate the associated environmental risks.

However, the ground shifted in 2016 with the election of a majority of regional councillors more concerned about oil and gas development than their predecessors. Some councillors are simply opposed to any development that would threaten our water sources or cause other localised environmental damage (with fracking being the dreaded ‘f’ word).

For instance, HBRC chairman Rex Graham says: “My primary concern is the threat to our aquifers and water bodies and I simply don’t want any drilling or fracking for oil or gas anywhere near them. Why would we take this risk? We also have a responsibility to the people who will be living in Hawke’s Bay in 200 years and it’s bad enough the mess that we are already leaving them without creating any more.”

Other councillors, including Councillor Bailey and myself are opposed to all oil and gas development in Hawke’s Bay for both local and global reasons, citing our responsibility to address the impact of carbon fuels on global warming.

But whether on regional risk 46 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

“My primary concern is the threat to our aquifers and water bodies and I simply don’t want any drilling or fracking for oil or gas anywhere near them. Why would we take this risk?”

HBRC CHAIRMAN REX GRAHAM

management or global environmental and moral grounds, a majority of the Council is determined to take a formal precautionary approach.

Consequently in November 2016 the Regional Council, with the support of its Regional Planning Committee (RPC, which includes representation from the region’s nine Maori treaty settlement groups) initiated a project to prepare a plan change that would preclude oil and gas development that might endanger our aquifers or freshwater bodies. In addition, to the extent development might be permitted in acceptable areas, the plan would incorporate pertinent consenting and regulatory strengthening as recommended by the Parliamentary Commissioner.

This action puts the Regional Council on a likely collision course with

Government … as well as the oil and gas industry.

In May 2017 the Government’s then-Energy Minister Judith Collins wrote to the Regional Council asserting her jurisdiction over the oil and gas turf. “My general concern is that a prohibited classification is not an appropriate or justifiable way to manage petroleum … Oil and gas exploration is a well-understood activity that I consider can be managed through the consent process.”

But even the consenting process could raise turf issues – what if a precaution-minded Council insisted on consent conditions that an oil company considered too onerous? It could appeal those under the RMA to the Environment Court … or would they simply seek political intervention from

a sympathetic Minister?

Minister Collins noted that, “I would expect to engage in submissions and appeals on policies that prohibit petroleum activities,” adding that, “I am happy to send officials to work through the above with you in more detail…” In other words, ‘don’t go there or you’ll get a spanking’.

The Regional Council, however, is proceeding to develop a plan change “intending to prohibit oil and gas exploration activities within productive aquifers, aquifer recharge areas, surface water bodies and potentially parts of the coastal marine area in the Hawke’s Bay region.” The goal is to bring a recommended plan change to the RPC by year’s end.

The most contentious aspect of the plan will likely be the extent to which it seeks to limit development across the broader catchments feeding our aquifers, as opposed to activities on or immediately adjacent to our aquifers and waterways.

Guardians of the Aquifer recommends: “We understand that there is no “safe distance” for oil and gas drilling. The best way is to prohibit drilling in the water catchments and to

stipulate that any consents for drilling for oil and gas will contain a condition requiring a comprehensive report on seismic faults and groundwater sources in the proposed drilling zone – basically the applicant should have to prove it is safe to drill.”

Adding to the RPC’s concern is that its recent submission seeking to limit the extent of offshore permits for oil exploration – based on possible risks to the region’s coastal environment and concerns about harmful effects of seismic testing on marine species – was essentially ignored by Government when it opened 5,569 sq km of HB’s offshore marine area for bids.

Greenpeace has protested oil exploration off the East Coast, challenging the Amazon Warrior at sea earlier this year, leading to prosecution against Greenpeace leader Russel Norman and others, with a trial date set in Napier for next April.

The plan change initiative has been questioned by Councillors Dick, Wilson and Hewitt. They pick this as a losing battle with potentially high costs.

As Chairman Graham sees it, “The fight is about whether we want to take the risk of drilling for oil and gas... in

our aquifer and in the water bodies feeding our aquifer.” Adding, “We need to show the Government and the oil industry that we intend to control our own destiny on this issue and we are prepared to fight for that right.”

Asked if he’s worried about the costs of battling the oil companies, Graham replies, “The pro oil lobby has very deep pockets and we are going to need a hand if they come after us. I have already spoken to people who have experience in ‘crowd funding’ at an international level and they are very keen to help if we need them. We are ordinary people standing up for our community and our values and there are lots of people, including outside Hawke’s Bay, who agree with this and will help us fight this battle if it ever comes to that.”

But perhaps the oil companies will bow to the larger trends and conclude that Hawke’s Bay is so insignificant an oil and gas resource that they won’t bother to dispute a restrictive plan change.

What do BayBuzz readers think … Is the Regional Council right to be taking a precautionary approach, even if that means doing battle with oil interests and the Government?

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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 • BAYBUZZ • 47

Rod McDonald with a glass of his awardwinnng Syrah. Photo: Lee Warren

Moving On

In October 2015, BayBuzz published the authoritative account of the wine industry in Hawke’s Bay from its beginnings in the 1850s, capturing the social history, personalities and winemaking styles of a century and a half, all richly illustrated in 200 pages. The book, Wine: Stories from Hawke’s Bay, was written by Mark Sweet; here Mark reports on significant recent developments in this iconic industry as it continues to build its world-leading reputation.

MARK SWEET

When interviewed in 2015 for Wine: Stories from Hawke’s Bay, Steve Smith was restless, and ready to move on from Craggy Range.

Over seventeen years, his expertise, and Peabody family money and enthusiasm, created and consolidated Craggy Range in the vision of patriarch Terry, who at the outset said, “Within my lifetime, I want what we do to be recognized alongside the great wine estates of the world.”

Smith has moved on and Craggy Range continues to soar, their latest achievement being the only New Zealand winery to be included in Wine & Spirit magazine’s Top 100 Wineries in the World, 2017. Not sitting still, Craggy is refitting its Cellar Door and Terroir Restaurant, a project to be completed in late November.

Now, with offices adjacent to Malo Restaurant in Havelock North, Steve Smith explains his latest venture. “I’m in partnership with a wealthy Texan who loves New Zealand.”

Brian Sheth is indeed wealthy.

Forbes lists his net worth as $1.39

billion, and he’s only 41 years old.

“Brian’s great loves are his family, environmental philanthropy, New Zealand, and wine,” says Smith. “We first met at Craggy in 2012, then again in 2015, when he said to me, ‘we should do something together’.”

What they did first was form Smith & Sheth CRU brand, in the model of a French ‘negociant’, where grapes are sourced and crafted into fine wines, without owning vineyards.

Next came the “idea of putting together a collection of fine wine estates … concentrating on chardonnay and pinot noir,” with the criterion, “of old vines but development potential”. Aotearoa NZ Fine Wine Estates was born.

Acquisitions so far are Pyramid Valley Vineyards in North Canterbury, with 2.2 hectares planted in grapes, but 80 hectares of available land, described

by Steve Smith as, “one of the greatest Chardonnay sites in the world,” producing “spell binding wines”.

And he should know. He’s the only viticulturalist in the world to achieve a

Master Of Wine (MW) qualification.

For pinot noir, Smith and Sheth purchased Lowburn Ferry Wines in Central Otago, “with 3.3 hectares planted, and room for another 11 hectares”.

And says Smith, “We’ve purchased the last block of bare land, apart from defense department, on Gimblett Gravels, a four hectare parcel owned by the Gulliver family for many years. It’s small and an awkward shape, but based on what we did at Craggy I think there is a great opportunity in the superexpensive end for Hawke’s Bay wines.”

Chief executive officer of the venture is Michael Henley, former CEO of Trinity Hill and marketing manager at Craggy Range. As current chairman of Hawke’s Bay Winegrowers he is a strong advocate of Hawke’s Bay concentrating on syrah, chardonnay, and blended reds.

“Michael and I believe chardonnay and syrah are the future for Hawke’s Bay,” says Smith. “And if you’re going to make a unique statement, syrah is the story.”

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 • BAYBUZZ • 49

Tony Bish's Urban Winery in Ahuriri.

Photos: Tim Whittaker

C L E ARV I E W

ESTATE WINERY

R E S TA U R A N T

2017 HB A & P Show Wine Awards Trophy Celebrations: 2015 ENDEAVOUR 2016 CK MERLOT OPEN 7days 10am - 5pm

Clockwise from top right: Emma Lowe and Marcelo Nunez from Monowai Estate. Photo: Richard Brimer. The team at Te Mata Estate, left to right, Phil Brodie, Marty Wallace, Peter Cowley and Larry Morgan. Tim Turvey from Clearview Estate. Photos: Tim Whittaker

Step up, syrah

Rod McDonald has done just that.

His 2015 Quarter Acre Syrah won this year’s Champion Red Wine at the International Wine Challenge (IWC) in London. IWC claims the most wines entered into competition, and is highly acclaimed. Roughly 13,000 entries are blind-tasted by hundreds of judges in three tasting rounds.

To win the best red wine in the competition is a superb achievement for Rod McDonald, and further enhances syrah’s future as a premium fine wine from Hawke’s Bay. More accolades

At the 2017 New York International Wine Competition, Crownthorpe winery, Monowai Estate, won gold medals for their 2015 Sauvignon Blanc, 2015 Pinot Gris and 2013 Pinot Noir.

Clearview Estate Reserve Chardonnay 2015 won the supreme

award, Champion Wine, at the New Zealand International Wine Show 2016, the biggest wine event in the country. The 2017 results saw Hawke’s Bay well represented with trophies for Champion awarded to Beach House Stoney Beach Gravels Riesling 2017, Linden Estate Viognier 2014, Villa Maria Reserve Gimblett Gravels Malbec 2013, and Church Road McDonald Series Syrah 2015. Winemaker at Church Road, Chris Scott, was named Wine Maker of the Show.

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Simply the best

Te Mata Estate doesn’t enter competitions, but that hasn’t stopped Decanter magazine awarding its top accolade, Wine Legend, to Coleraine 1998 (60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 32% Merlot, 8% Cabernet Franc). It is the only New Zealand wine ever selected to sit alongside some of the greatest wines of the twentieth century, like

dine@clearviewestate.co.nz

(06) 8750150 194 Clifton Rd ~ Te Awanga

RESERVATIONS ESSENTIAL WWW.CLEARVIEWESTATE.CO.NZ

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 • BAYBUZZ • 51

Left: Steve Smith and Michael Henly from Smith and Sheth. Photo: Tim Whittaker. Right: Roger Weiss. Photo: Brian Culy.

Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 1959 and Chateau Haut-Brion 1929, and a fitting recognition for the over 30 years relationship between Te Mata Estate winemaker Peter Cowley, senior vitaculturist Larry Morgan, and owner John Buck.

Mergers and acquisitions

Pask Estate has sold to Wellingtonbased Benton Family Wine Group, which also owns Jackson Estate in Marlborough. John Benton has been a director on the Pask board since 2001.

The sale include the 800 tonne winery on Omahu Road and 58 hectares of vineyards on the Gimblett Gravels, which Chris Pask first bought into in 1980, paying $40,000 for 17 hectares.

Co-owner of Pask Estate since 1993, winemaker Kate Radburnd, became the first woman named a Fellow of New Zealand Winegrowers in 2016, and we can look forward to more outstanding wines from Kate as she establishes her own brand.

Crossroads Winery has changed hands yet again. Founded by Malcolm Reeves and Lester O’Brien in 1989, they sold to Ager Sectus Wine Estates in 2000. Eleven years later Ager Sectus merged with Marlboroughbased Yealands Estate. In June 2017 Crossroads sold to Glover Family Vineyards, whose brand is Zephyr.

Mission Estate expansion took a leap with their acquisition of Ngatarawa Winery brands. Established by Alwyn Corban with land-owner partner Garry Glazebrook in 1981, Ngatarawa production has steadily increased to around 200,000 cases a year, which 52 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

include the brands Alwyn, Proprietors Reserve, Glazebrook, Silks, Country Mile, and Stables.

Eggs, oak, and chardonnay

A bold initiative has been undertaken

by Tony and Karryn Bish in establishing Urban Winery in the iconic art deco National Tobacco Building in Ahuriri.

Feature of the winery, and the Tony Bish Wines brand, is the use of egg-shaped fermenters, inspired by a tour of South America with a group of fellow winemakers. “We saw they used concrete eggs and the wines were fantastic,” says Bish.

He enquired into shipping eggs home, “but they weigh around 2 tonnes and the freight was around $8,000.”

Instead he teamed with Josh Winters, of New Zealand Tanks in Hastings, and after extensive experimentation, 1,600 litre capacity concrete eggs are produced that retail at $14,000.

In the entry hall of Urban Winery, behind a vast glass wall, sits a cluster of eggs, and presiding over them like a giant mother hen is an enormous oak egg, a Taransaud Ovum, imported from France, and one of only 10 in the world.

Carrying the theme even further, Tony Bish is putting all his eggs in one basket, by producing wines from the chardonnay grape alone. “The trade love that I’m specialising and not doing the fruit salad thing. One hundred percent chardonnay helps us cut through a cluttered market. It’s a unique selling proposition unlike anything else.”

Urban Winery cellar door is open seven days a week, and the wine bar will

operate Thursday through Saturday until 10.30pm, offering a range of Hawke’s Bay wines and craft beers, along with snack food and platters.

Obituary

The Hawke’s Bay wine fraternity was shocked and saddened when in September 2016 founder of Elephant Hill Winery, Roger Weiss, died suddenly in his native Germany.

When interviewed for Wine: Stories from Hawke’s Bay in 2015, Roger Weiss said his aim was to “establish a brand, not only with high quality wine, but also with outstanding architecture, and it was also our target to have a high-end restaurant.”

Confirming the ambition of Roger Weiss, on 11 October 2017 Elephant Hill 2014 Reserve Syrah won Top Red Wine of Show at the Six Nations Wine Challenge in Sydney, the latest of numerous awards for Elephant Hill wines. The stunning copper-clad winery is an architectural gem, and the restaurant is consistently highly rated in reviews.

A year before his father died, Andreas Weiss left a stellar career in finance to become CEO of Elephant Hill, and continues the family commitment to excellence.

Clearly the industry is moving from strength to strength as winemakers take full advantage of Hawke’s Bay’s climate and soils with excellent craftsmanship and entrepreneurial zeal.

Wine: Stories from Hawke’s Bay can be purchased at most Hawke’s Bay bookstores and wineries, and online at www.winestorieshb.co.nz

Wine: Stories from Hawke’s Bay Mark Sweet. Photographs Tim Whittaker

This book is a treasure … I love the photographs, both old and new … all my expectations were exceeded.

Tim Turvey, Clearview Estate Winery

An engaging read that I heartily recommend for the depth and character it adds to the Hawke’s Bay wine experience.

Alwyn Corban, Ngatarawa Wines

A must for those wishing to know more about the Hawke’s Bay wine industry – its history, wine pioneers and current producers and their outstanding wines.

Graeme Avery, Sileni Estates

I heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in a well-researched piece of important wine history, a glimpse into many of the characters who have helped build a thriving wine industry, a winemaker’s view of what makes the region and its wines special, or a beautifully illustrated adornment for a coffee table.

Bob Campbell, Master of Wine

A splendid new book … an extraordinary trove of images.

John Saker, Cuisine

Special pre-Christmas offer $59 • Free shipping in NZ • Order your copy now at winestorieshb.co.nz

Daniel Hopkirk and Tim Price-Walker from NOW. Photo : Tim Whittaker. tim.co.nz

How Smart is Your Home?

The ‘smart home’, once considered a graveyard of overhyped and incompatible products, is re-emerging as a major trend with the maturing of remote access and control technology. KEITH NEWMAN The smart home typically embraces an ecosystem of devices, gadgets and appliances with imbedded chips or sensors that can be managed through a central hub via remote control, web browser, smartphone or tablet.

Before driving home you might draw the curtains, record the TV news and instruct a smart oven to start cooking a pre-prepared meal. You can adjust room temperature, set mood lighting, decide which speakers will play Spotify or iTunes, or which screen will stream on-demand video.

An important step toward revitalising the smart home has been the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), resulting in more appliances being capable of online connection.

Zion market research claims the global smart home market was worth US$24 billion in 2016, projecting US$53.4 billion by 2022, with growth around 14.5% annually.

Other researchers predict an even steeper curve up to US$138 billion (Marketandmarket.com).

According to IHS Markit, 80 million smart home devices – including thermostats, smoke detectors, smart locks, video doorbells and air quality sensors – were delivered worldwide in 2016, up 64% from 2015.

Most of us are already using the smartphone as a controlling device for home entertainment, so it’s not a big stretch to consider management of other appliances.

Bandwidth guzzler

Fast internet and Wi-Fi are the great enablers of the smart home, but the battle for bandwidth can lead to frustration and pixilation if you are living and competing with other digital enthusiasts.

NOW product manager, Tim PriceWalker, says the smart home is a major

“Smart homes are becoming more normalised, and NOW has been working closely with a number of customers as part of its new techspert service to provide help beyond the router. ” TIM PRICE-WALKER NOW PRODUCT MANAGER

driver for faster internet, pushing demand beyond basic copper-line ADSL to VDSL (very fast internet) fibre to the home (FTTH) even beyond the basic 100Mb to its much gruntier 900Mb service.

Just as critical is the base of strong connectivity and a robust Wi-Fi backbone in the home. Rather than accepting standard routers and switches that come with installation, Price-Walker suggests upgrading to next generation devices, including two channel (2.5Gb and 5GB) mesh routers, to compensate for high-end use and low coverage spots.

Smarter, more capable mesh routers often provide better management too, including parental guidance, anti-virus and a kill switch … useful at tea time if certain family members ignore the table deadline.

A few years back, NOW team member Daniel Hopkirk began mixing and matching sensors and actuators to develop his own smart home, simply because he wanted to understand the technology.

He likes the convenience of having lighting, heating and temperature on timers and automatic settings, and being informed about energy use.

A temperature sensor in his server room triggers an extraction fan if things get a little warm. And then there’s his tropical fish aquarium with lighting and heating managed through smart devices that, like all his other technology, he can adjust over the internet Diarmuid Ruddle, owner of Hastings-based Eastek, says designing a smart home is similar to creating a business network where a data room feeds cable out to computers, phones and other devices.

“It’s important to talk to someone who knows about the technology and to be aware that some of it is overhyped – you need good advice to keep it real.”

Ruddle agrees fibre provides the best experience and recommends creating a hard-wired home network with around 10 data points, including one behind the TV, and two quality wireless access points for extended indoor and outdoor coverage.

Powerline extenders that use internal power circuits to connect devices or boost Wi-Fi are another option.

Design thinking

Price-Walker says NOW has started engaging with local architects, developers and building companies in smart home design, as part of adding value for potential buyers.

“Smart homes are becoming more normalised, and NOW has been working closely with a number of customers as part of its new techspert service to provide help beyond the router. While inquiries are growing in Hawke’s Bay for smart home bundles, much of the interest is in retrofitting existing homes.”

Price-Walker says most people start out streaming online content to their TV or sound system, then look at adding security, something many CCTV early adopters have struggled with because they’ve not been given the right advice.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 • BAYBUZZ • 55

“It’s important to talk to someone who knows about the technology and to be aware that some of it is overhyped – you need good advice to keep it real.”

DIARMUID RUDDLE, EASTEK Photo : Tim Whittaker. tim.co.nz

While security used to be the domain of specialists, he says it’s now more affordable and DIY, with companies like Netgear, Arlo, Logitech and others selling weather-proof systems that have motion sensors and are self-managing.

NOW has product partnerships with these companies and can help people learn about them – for example, a motion-sensor video doorbell camera that enables you to have a conversation with a friend who drops by while you’re offsite, instruct a courier where to leave a parcel, or activate an alarm if the visitor looks more like an intruder.

Energy rewards

Price-Walker says energy efficiency is big in the UK where all houses are required to have a points-based energy audit. “They look at your hot water system, heating and whether you have LED lights; the result can affect the sale value of your house.”

You can manage energy consumption with smart plugs, switches, meters and thermostats, and track power, lighting and heating use, including solar systems.

Ruddle says there is technology available that can “glue everything together”, including smartphones and tablets, and voice recognition for the TV and lighting. But he warns in his thick Irish brogue that it’s still overhyped.

“You have to wonder why you would want that and whether it would work with an accent like mine.”

Ruddle says the term ‘home automation’ has had a bad rap. “I’ve met many clients who had it overseas and won’t touch it because it didn’t work for them. It was oversold.”

Smart blinds and lights

Today he says there’s ‘rock solid’ product around, including remotely 56 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

controlled curtains and blinds – a Lutron system, for example, can control 160 blinds and never miss a beat.

In his own home, Ruddle manages lightning and other services via his Control4 hub. “I press a button and my ‘art theme’ lights up all the artwork, or if I want ambient lighting I choose from a range of pre-set levels.”

Starting from 2018, Price-Walker is confident new routers and smart home hubs will connect seamlessly across different frequencies and devices, compensating for the fact so many smart products don’t yet mix and match.

Remote control wireless standards including Z-Wave and ZigBee already talk to each other and with all that’s been learned from retrofitting, he reckons the journey is about to get a lot more enjoyable.

While the Internet of Things is still emerging, he’s confident Logitech, Samsung, TP Link and other major players have developed strategies to handle compatability.

Unless you’re an enthusiast like Dan Hopkirk, or can find a manufacturer with a range of plug and play devices including a central hub, caution and expert advice are still recommended.

“If you don’t know the tricks… there’s a lot of risk. Just because things like smart door locks are out there, it doesn’t mean they’re good or even safe solutions, so it’s important to get expert advice,” says Price-Walker.

times by weight and content do exist.

Voice or gesture commands for your TV, audio, security, or other system remain at the bleeding edge, but maybe not for much longer.

Amazon’s Alexa spoken hub, Google Home voice assistant and Logitech’s Harmony Hub are gearing up to voice enable ‘climate control’ or get specific about viewing options – ‘weather’, ‘news’, or preferred playlists, at your say so.

Already on the market fringes are remote controlled robotic vacuum cleaners and mops, the PetNet Smartfeeder, digital scales that track your weight loss regime, AI-based speakers that double as phones and the Auto Rock ‘n play Sleeper to lull babies baby back to sleep remotely when they’re interrupting yours.

So, what’s next, the smart toilet?

Well, it’s already here with features including nightlights, autoflush, seat warmer, ambient musak, deodoriser and even biometric feedback suggesting health improvements.

In weighing up all these more fanciful options to manage what we do in our homes, perhaps it’s wise for the average customers to get sound advice, start with the more tested and practical, and work their way up the smart home technology curve.

Evolving gestures

Smart home cost and complexity are reducing, and innovative new players continue to deliver on fresh ideas.

Smart fridges that tell you when you are running out of milk and microwaves that automatically determine cooking

NOW sponsors the BayBuzz Technology Series to enhance public understanding of our region’s technology achievements and opportunities. Analyses and views presented are those of BayBuzz and its editorial team.

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From Acorns to Himalayan Oaks BRIDGET FREEMAN-ROCK

Photo: Tim Whittaker. tim.co.nz

In Jean Giono’s beautiful ecological parable, The Man Who Planted Trees, a reclusive shepherd single-handedly, acorn by acorn, plants an entire forest in a remote war-ravaged valley in France. The waters return, the birds, the creatures; one man’s simple, daily act resulting, over decades, in a miraculous regeneration.

So there is some delight in discovering that here in Hawke’s Bay, there really is a ‘man who plants trees’, a man who is making a regenerative difference, literally, acorn by acorn, with his project, the Himalayan Oaks Trust.

For the last two decades, David Cranwell, a well-respected horticultural consultant, has been raising 1,000 Himalayan oak seedlings a year to plant on farms and orchards around New Zealand, anywhere he can find them “a home”, generating funds for conservation and children’s education in the Himalayan foothills of northwest India.

In the early, budding beginnings of spring, I sit down with David Cranwell in his riverside home near the Tukituki and he tells me his story – how his work with the Himalayan oak was more fate than choice, and why this tree is so special.

The plight of the Himalayan oak

It all began in the late 1980s when David spent a couple of days at the Eastwood Hill arboretum in Gisborne. Having what he describes as “an eclectic sort of nature”, David asked himself: “Of all the hundreds of species here, what would I have?” He had never seen a Himalayan oak before, knew nothing about it, but the oak tree that Douglas Cook had planted in the 1950s was the one that David, over the next three years, tried in vain to source for his own collection.

Some years later, working for the Apple & Pear Board as a marketing manager, a role that involved extensive stints in China and travel around the globe, David was sent to India to undertake a feasibility study for a World Bank project in Utah Pradesh.

Warned by a friend before he went, “Just be careful, India gets hold of some people and doesn’t let them go,” he laughed, “That won’t be me,” but it was. For David, it was “a life-changing experience”.

Ranichauri – the steep hill country above the wealthier plains of Utah Pradesh – is called “the postal note state of India” due to the poverty and lack of prospects

that see the men leave for the cities to find work, and the women left behind with seven or eight children, if lucky a cow or a goat, and no social security when the money wired through ceases to come.

As it happens, the region is also home to the Himalayan oak, and what David saw of the tree that had once made such an impression on him, was “nothing short of tragic”.

In the early, budding beginnings of spring, I sit down with David Cranwell in his riverside home near the Tukituki and he tells me his story – how his work with the Himalayan oak was more fate than choice, and why this tree is so special.

Thousands of hectares of oak forest had covered the hills for centuries, explains David, forming a unique, pristine ecosystem. “When the monsoon hits it filters through the leaf litter and subsoil, charging the springs.

But with population pressure, fire, timber harvest etc, all that’s left now is grass – when the rains hit that, it roars off, gouges out the rivers, and the springs are dry.” A river bigger than the Tukituki has now completely vanished.

Above 2,000 metres, the remaining oaks are like “enormous bonsai trees” – they’re “basically defoliated”, stripped for cattle fodder.

Himalayan Oaks Trust

Seeing the plight of the Himalayan oak, David was determined to do something.

He sought permission to take acorns back to New Zealand, to grow and sell the trees to fund conservation work in India. New Zealand’s then Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry agreed he could import, under quarantine, a maximum of 1,000 acorns. So in 1995 under the guidance of Dr Sah, an ecologist at GB Pant University, local children gathered up the acorns and David sent back exactly 1,000.

To keep his “interests alive”, David

put forward a project proposal to the New Zealand Government: India is the seventh biggest apple producer in world; if we help farmers (e.g., with rootstock and pruning demonstrations), they won’t oppose New Zealand for access to the apple market. The Government approved three-years funding, but in reality, this was a 10-year project, with the outcome that in 1999 New Zealand was the first country in the world to gain access to India for apple inputs.

Alongside his apple work in India, David was working on his oaks mission. Recognising the importance of education, he had set up the Himalayan Oaks Trust in 1994 with the initial intention of financing a little school in Ranichauri, the proviso being that a conservation and tree planting programme be included in the curriculum. But his early efforts were stymied by politics – he couldn’t get the money directly to the school – and had to find another route.

Since 2007, the Himalayan Oaks Trust has partnered with the Indianbased Himalayan Consortium for Conservation in the Himalayas (HIMCON), which oversees groundlevel conservation projects, and with Manoj Pande, a trustee and chairman of HIMCON, who works closely with a small group of local women – women in India being key to effective change.

David believes it’s a more credible pathway: “You have to be careful, being middle-aged and white, about going over and lecturing people on what they should do. We step back; let the locals take charge.” HIMCON and Manoj Pande decide on the respective project and design, while the Himalayan Oaks Trust provides funding through the sale of trees in New Zealand. “Over the last 20 years, we’ve made over $100,000, with virtually every cent going to India.”

David propagates all trees at his own cost (including potting mix, etc), so there are minimal overheads, and the registered charitable trust is administered through Langley Twigg in Napier at no charge. The trust’s ethos is to help people who help themselves. “That’s what driving me to strengthen the Trust and get a better cashflow happening. For every tree planted in New Zealand, we get 50 trees planted in India.”

Anecdotally, the Himalayan oak is “one of the few trees in the world whose roots have a hydraulic effect,” says David. “They draw up water to the surface and release it.” He observes that in the Himalayas, “The ground is always NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 • BAYBUZZ • 59

moist around the oak trees; around the cedars and pines, it’s dust.”

In Ranichauri, the villagers have ‘GPSed’ where all the springs used to be, and have worked out that by planting around these areas, they can bring back the waters. The Trust has helped them build a reservoir by paying for the materials, with financial input from the New Zealand High Commission in India.

The next step, says David, is to become an ongoing funder of HIMCON’s newly developed “Sanskar” (a value-based, alternative learning centre). One of the school’s focuses is to teach children and youth groups self-sufficiency within their region, so the young don’t have to leave for Delhi to take up labouring jobs. Part of that is conservation, growing trees. “If we can fund that, so part of their education is growing trees – and not just oaks – we can start to make a long-term difference.”

Himalayan oaks in NZ

Good works aside, the trees are proving to be incredibly successful in New Zealand and David says he has some great local support, with some landowners buying hundreds of the oaks over the years.

“We’ve got trees scattered from Kaitaia to Bluff,” he states proudly, while commenting that his son, who works in conservation, jokes about “Dad and his noxious weeds”.

The landowner across the river planted 80 of David’s Himalayan oaks on a north-west scree slope in 1998-2000, with no irrigation, no support. Five years on, the trees were growing strong and well, which David says convinced him, if nothing else, of the tree’s value for

60 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

Hawke’s Bay’s hot summers and droughtprone, steep hill country.

The trees are tough, resilient, with roots that go straight down, and build a large canopy of evergreen leaves. These factors lend them a real value for soil erosion control and carbon sequestion, David believes, with myriad potential uses. They’re phenomenally fastgrowing, with no diseases as far as he can tell, and “no bad habits”.

We look out at the oaks across the Tukituki gully. There’s a shimmer of silver, as the pale, grey undersides of the leaves catch the light; it’s for this effect that in India they’re known as the ‘white oak’. In spring, they’re covered in little pink shoots, producing a “lovely foliage”, while the prolific, tiny acorns (ready in July) make “good duck food”.

They’ve been trialled successfully as hedges for kiwi plantations – unpruned, they grow “big and bushy”, explains David, which is great for stock shelter, and “they can also be coppiced for fodder in summer if it’s really dry”.

David has done his own experiments and suggests you can grow Himalayan oaks with kānuka and pittosporum between, providing mixed hedging and rich bee fodder. He’s been talking with Marie Taylor (Plant Hawke’s Bay) about using the oaks as nurse trees for natives. “With these summers we’ve been having, a lot of the young natives have been struggling, as they tend to have shallow roots.” But if you plant them beside oaks, their fast growth, companionability, and capacity to draw water to the surface, will offer both protection and nutrient.

David is also working to convince

forestry companies to plant oaks as filter belts for pinus radiata, especially in the gullies; then when they fell the pine trees, the oaks will stay, helping stem erosion. He’s donated 100 oaks to Farm Forestry to help pave the way.

Plant a tree

At 74 years old, David says he’s looking to pass on the baton, and acutely aware that “a lot of little trusts with great ideas fizzle out”. He’s working on a succession plan, but the morning I arrive he seems far from ready to put up his feet. Already he’s been on the phone to truffle specialists in Christchurch, organising to send down 100 acorns.

“I’m always looking for ideas,” he explains, “and just today, I thought, ‘truffles, oaks’…. Truffles do well on limey hills like Hawke’s Bay … buy a Himalayan oak that’s inoculated and you might get truffles! It’s all about trying to get people interested enough to plant the tree so we generate cash for India.

“I drive everybody mad,” he admits, “I’m a bit single-minded!”

Ultimately, he says, he doesn’t care what trees are planted, but the Himalayan oak is “a vehicle to help others. If you can’t grow an oak, because you have no room, you can donate trees to be planted on someone else’s land.

You don’t have to have a home for a tree – buy a tree or three and I’ll get them planted.”

With well over 10,000 Himalayan oaks in New Zealand, David Cranwell has already planted a forest. www.himalayanoakstrust.com

Live Here, Give Here Andrea Barry has recently started a fund with the Hawke’s Bay Foundation. She tells us why HBF appealed to her and her family.

For some time I’d been looking at ways the Barry family and BEL Group could get involved and give something back to support our community. Having been invited to view a presentation locally by the Hawke’s Bay Foundation, I came away convinced this would make the perfect partnership opportunity.

The HBF runs a well thought out and proven business model where the grantee organisations are chosen by a panel of trusted advisers with the community knowledge to know who, what and where the greatest needs are. We know that our donation makes a difference. Dodgy, fake charities are weeded out.

And I like the model of giving where the gift benefits many and the legacy can keep growing through the generations. We can choose to keep adding annually to our donation or take a break … regardless the donation keeps giving.

Also, I was able to target specific areas that had meaning to us, whether it was within education, youth, sport etc., and I could also target the specific geographical location that gained the benefit from our gift, for example, Central Hawke’s Bay. The second generation of the Barry family was all born in the Waikato; however they have all grown up and been educated within Hawke’s Bay, so this is our home community. The HBF credo to “Live Here, Give Here” is a statement that really resonates with us and means we are making a legacy here that will last forever.

What is Hawke’s Bay Foundation?

Hawke’s Bay Foundation is a charitable trust that receives donations of all sizes from individuals and families around the region. These funds are pooled and invested forever.

Only the earnings are distributed annually to support Hawke’s Bay community initiatives and organisations, bringing about positive and powerful social change.

The Foundation is building an intergenerational asset for the community that will support Hawke’s Bay people forever.

For more information about HBF visit hawkesbayfoundation.org.nz

BayBuzz is pleased to support the Hawke’s Bay Foundation

Coffee …

Elixir of Health?

SA R A H C AT E S

“There seems to be so many conflicting views. One day coffee is the best drink ever, the next it’s not. But, I believe if they turned around tomorrow and said coffee is bad for you, I really don’t think we would see a decline in coffee drinking.”

So observed Benny Fernandez, owner of Napier cafe Georgia on Tennyson, as he swirled a glass of freshly brewed, super-rare coffee, closed his eyes and with a sharp intake of breath, literally, inhaled the rich amber liquid.

Judging by the latest research to come out of Europe, Fernandez’s observation will not need to be tested. In August this year, the results of a new study showed that people who drink coffee have a lower risk of dying from a variety of causes.

These include heart disease, various forms of chronic liver disease, diseases of the digestive system and stroke. The study also indicated drinking coffee can reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

The study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine focused on the relationship between coffee consumption and mortality. This study is the largest of its kind with a diverse cohort of participants spanning across 10 European countries. The authors of the study used a broader participant base, followed for an average of 16 years, in order to capture some of the variation in coffee preparation and drinking habits.

The results showed, regardless of country, that men who drank three or more cups of coffee a day had a 18% lower risk of dying from marked causes, and women who consumed the same volume had an 8% lower risk. These figures held true regardless of whether the coffee was decaffinated or not.

The world-famous Mayo Clinic adds that coffee also appears to improve cognitive function and decrease the risk of depression.

Good news for all us coffee drinkers out there!

However the Mayo Clinic adds some cautions. High consumption of unfiltered coffee (boiled or espresso) has been associated with mild elevations 62 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

in cholesterol levels. And some studies found that two or more cups of coffee a day can increase the risk of heart disease in people with a specific — and fairly common — genetic mutation that slows the breakdown of caffeine in the body.

So despite a growing body of supportive evidence, along with a deeper understanding of the biologically active components found within coffee, health professionals are still reluctant to proclaim coffee as the saviour for our modern day ailments. Lead author of the 2017 study, Dr Marc J Gunter from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (part of WHO) said, “It’s plausible that there is something else behind this that is causing this relationship.”

Benny Fernandez has had a hunch that this might be the case along. Sitting in his speciality Napier coffee bar looking out onto Tennyson Street he remarked, “Having a coffee is a break from reality.

Coffee and sugar are our last two socially accepted, unregulated substances, and they are both pretty powerful! Coffee ignites the spirit, it puts a real sparkle in your eye! Surely that’s got to be good for the soul!”

Various longitudinal studies have indicated that there is a link between happiness and coffee drinking. Coffee drinkers, despite confounding variables such as smoking, unhealthy diet and alcohol consumption, are on the whole ‘healthier’ people.

Fernandez continues, “I believe the psychological benefits of drinking coffee far outweigh the reported health benefits due to coffee composition. But, I do feel the quality of the coffee, the skill of the barista, and how it’s brewed, do make a difference. There’s a definite difference between a ‘ahhh’ coffee and ‘ekkk’ coffee!

That aside, I see it in my regulars. The morning ritual. It’s a social thing. Going out for a coffee, meeting a friend, reading the newspaper, being part of the ‘real world’. You have to physically get out of your seat to get a coffee! I feel the coffee shop is one of our last remaining places for real human interaction.”

“Having a coffee is a break from reality.

Coffee and sugar are our last two socially accepted, unregulated substances, and they are both pretty powerful! ” BENNY FERNANDEZ

Benny’s observations are supported by a growing wealth of material that show quality and quantity of our social relationships affect mental health, behaviour, physical health and mortality risk. He continues, “We do it well in New Zealand. Making coffee, drinking coffee, talking about coffee, meeting for a coffee. Your average Kiwi coffee-drinking Joe Blogg is a connoisseur. Coffee is subjective, different people like different blends, different brewing processes, much like wine! New Zealanders latch on to a trend, they love the heck out of it, and become experts”.

New Zealand is certainly a nation of coffee lovers. The results of a recent survey conducted by Canstar Blue indicated 52% of Kiwis will go out of their way to have a quality brew.

New Zealand has the largest amount of roasters per capita in the world and when it comes to consumption we rank 15th out of the top 20 countries, drinking 0.939 cups a day. Generation X (1961 - 1981) are currently leading the consumption effort, closely followed by the Baby Boomers. On average we spend $13.67 a week in coffee shops, which amounts to just over $710 a year.

On the international scene New Zealand is seen as a sophisticated and well-developed coffee market, characterised by a strong demand for high-quality coffee with sustainable attributes. Our specialty coffee shop market was worth US$375 million in

2014 and continues to grow year by year.

But before you rush out to order that third flat white or cappuccino it is essential you take into consideration how you enjoy your coffee. It’s important to keep it healthy. Health experts recommend the following simple guidelines around coffee consumption to ensure consumers glean the maximum benefits.

If you have difficulty sleeping it is advised you do not drink coffee after 2pm. Caffeine takes an average of six hours to wear off. Do not load your coffee with sugar or artificial sweeteners. If you need a slightly sweeter taste try a sprinkle of cocoa or cinnamon. Choose a good quality blend, preferably organic.

Avoid low fat, artificial creamers, it’s healthier to have a dash of organic cream. If you brew your coffee, use a paper filter. Paper filters remove harmful diterpenes which have been associated with a rise in cholesterol levels.

The healthiest way to take your daily coffee is black, organic and brewed with a paper filter. To maximise the benefits of coffee find a barista like Benny Fernandez who has turned coffee-making into an art form and enjoy it with a friend.

Royston Hospital is pleased to sponsor robust examination of health issues in Hawke’s Bay. This reporting is prepared

by BayBuzz. Any editorial views expressed are those of the BayBuzz team.

Photo: Sarah Cates

www.royston.co.nz

500 Southland Road, Hastings 4122 P: (06) 873 1111 F: (06) 873 1112

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PAU L PAY N T E R : R E S I D E N T I CO N O C L A S T

The government of my dreams I missed the election. I was in Europe and felt quite sad about it.

I didn’t realise how much I enjoy the understated theatrics of election day in the provinces. The ritual of turning up at my old school hall, standing in a short line that would barely qualify as a queue; that moment of nervous ambivalence as you tick the boxes and seal your envelope.

Yes, I love election day, but I missed it.

Casting an early vote is like getting married at the registry office. The electoral officers look bored, as they haven’t seen anyone for 40 minutes.

They put down their novels and take you through the voting process in ponderous detail. Closeting yourself in the polling booth seems a ridiculous thing to do as there is no one there to see who you vote for anyway.

The early vote process made me wonder if there was much point to voting at all. You see, we’ll get more of the same.

it comes to the housing boom and immigration. The trend for new money, and much of it dirty money, arriving to buy real estate in a ‘safe haven’ is well known. The same trend is recounted by taxi drivers in Singapore and other desirable cities in Asia-Pacific.

We can’t be too critical of governments doing nothing. We elect conservative governments because we want them to do nothing. The prospect of a government that has grand ambitions to change the world terrifies us.

No difference

Those that complain there is no difference between Labour and National are quite right. National kept all of Labour’s popular initiatives like Working for Families and interest-free student loans. In opposition they railed against these things and the restraints of the RMA, but once in power they did pretty much nothing about them.

John ‘I’m not ideologically driven’ Key will be remembered for being blokey, popular and knowing when it was time to go. In three terms I can only think of the free trade agreements as notable achievements. Our trade with China has boomed beyond anyone’s expectations.

Now don’t think I’m too critical of John Key. His CV says ‘made a fortune, won every election and exited gracefully’. Yes, he was a master tactician when it came to his career, but his government wasn’t very courageous.

Indeed they dropped the ball when 64 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

Coupled with this was the boom in immigration. In the last year 77,000 people immigrated to New Zealand, requiring some 30,000 homes to come from somewhere. A decent slice of the construction industry is coining it on the Christchurch rebuild, so the supply side hasn’t responded as we would have liked.

Home construction always operates with a lag. Developers who build 50 new homes want to be sure that there are 50 new home buyers or they’ll face bankruptcy.

In many other industries there is excess supply waiting for customers to arrive with the cash. You could go to town and buy 50 TVs any day of the week, but housing doesn’t work this way.

The statistics on house price ‘inflation’ have been clear for some decades. When we go though a strong phase of net migration, house prices go up shortly

thereafter. People arrive and look for somewhere to live. The Auckland statistics show this most clearly because most new immigrants think it’s the only credible population base.

In Auckland you can see the pressure that immigration has put on our infrastructure. The solution was simple – put a cap on immigration for a few years. You can’t turn away returning citizens and you don’t want to turn away foreigners coming to study, but government had to trim numbers somehow in order for the supply of houses to catch up.

Do nothing governments

We can’t be too critical of governments doing nothing. We elect conservative governments because we want them to do nothing. The prospect of a government that has grand ambitions to change the world terrifies us.

One of the good things about being abroad is you get to hear about the problems elsewhere and see how good we have it in NZ. The US always dominates on the news, but they don’t justify their airtime. A couple of Americans I know have left the country because of ‘what’s going on there’. But nothing is going on from what I can see. President Trump is tweeting.

That’s about it. He hasn’t done much at all from what I can see and, apart from maybe bombing North Korea, he won’t.

President Obama didn’t get much done, apart from Obamacare, which won’t endure.

President Bush didn’t achieve many notable things, apart from invading Iraq.

President Clinton intervened quite successfully in Kosovo, but is most remembered for ‘that woman, Miss Lewinsky’.

In the US the separation of powers of government into three branches was put in place to provide checks and balances.

In many cases that’s another way of stopping things from getting done.

After WWII an MMP type system was imposed on Germany to ensure that politically they would be a bumbling bureaucracy thereafter. It’s worked rather well, but proportional systems do allow fringe elements into government.

I’ve mentioned the Alternative für Deutschland (AFD) before. This is a ‘hard right’ nationalist party whose membership is overrepresented by angry young men with short cropped hair. They missed their 5% threshold narrowly at the last election, but this time round they’re the third biggest party with 12.6% of the vote and 94 seats in the Bundestag.

That didn’t quite give them Winston’s ‘king-maker’ power, but almost.

Swiss dream

I was in Switzerland a couple of weeks ago and their style of government is unique and widely respected. The country is split into 26 cantons which are responsible for most governmental activities. The national government handles key legislative functions, the army, international relationships and other boring stuff. It’s so unexciting that no one outside Switzerland knows the name of the President and Swiss politics never make the news. This central government is just over a quarter the size of the New Zealand Government in terms of their spending relative to GDP. The cantons run most of the things people care about day to day. This creates a wonderful thing – competition.

Each canton runs its own education system so they have 26 competing

systems in place. This allows them to try different things and to observe how effective their systems are relative to their neighbouring cantons. They might even find that one thing works better in the Italian part of Switzerland and another in the German part.

Best of all, these education systems are run by and accountable to their local communities – not some ministerial edict from the capital. It’s a system of direct democracy where the individual cantons are empowered and their people more engaged in the democratic process.

The cantons are also able to take quite different approaches to drug and alcohol law enforcement. They can try liberal or conservative approaches and see which works best.

Even better, each canton is able to set its own tax rates which are voted on by the people. In some cantons the tax rate on someone earning 100,000 Swiss francs a year is half what it is in another.

Where the personal tax rates are low, the property prices are generally much higher. Where business tax rates are low, they attract more business investment.

So each canton must decide what level of tax is appropriate to deliver the outcomes they want for their community.

This system should be more costly than a centralised one, but in Switzerland it doesn’t seem to be the case. With 26 mini-governments you’d also think it would be complete chaos and it is. But it’s small irrelevant chaos, mostly in someone else’s canton.

In a centralised system, government says it knows what’s best and standardises systems. We never

really know whether it’s the best system or the worst because there isn’t anything locally to compare it with. In Switzerland, no canton gets it completely right, but they have a fair idea of how they’re performing relative to their neighbouring cantons.

They have a system that incorporates a feedback loop for learning and further refinement based on hard data.

Another wonderful thing about Switzerland is they have a relatively low level of university graduates (but a high level of PhDs). They encourage a higher percentage of students into vocational learning. That is, they produce more plumbers and fewer people with degrees in international relations.

Switzerland has had the most stable government in the modern world and it’s not surprising they have some things in common with the Romans. The Roman empire got too big and so they set up provincial governments, befriending powerful locals to help keep things in order. Rome managed some central planning and the army, but the provinces were increasingly self-governing. The Romans fancied that local issues were most effectively handled locally.

A decentralised government, direct democracy, an engaged community, policy development by limited trial and error – this is a government I dream of.

It might be just a dream if it wasn’t alive and well in Switzerland.

Paul Paynter is our resident iconoclast and cider maker. Sometimes he grows stuff at Yummyfruit.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 • BAYBUZZ • 65

ANDREW FRAME

Cricket Craftsmanship I love cricket. I’ve been playing and watching it all my life.

With Hawke’s Bay days getting longer and warmer, rugby and soccer boots are hung up and the sound of leather upon willow becomes more prevalent as the region’s cricket season gets under way.

Around this time of year I would usually be eagerly looking forward to Napier’s McLean Park being the centrepiece in a number of upcoming international cricket fixtures, as it has been for many, many years.

Unfortunately, as you know by now, Napier City Council’s inability to, or deferral of, fixing the long-standing drainage problems at McLean Park have seen one such game against Australia earlier this year farcically abandoned and, as a result, South Africa’s March match moved to Hamilton.

The upcoming Pakistan game has also been moved to another city, and now the much-anticipated game against England in early 2018 has been lost too, leaving the chance of Napier hosting international cricket matches any time in the foreseeable future decidedly blurry.

It’s not only a disappointment for Hawke’s Bay cricket fans (as well as those that travel to the game from all over New Zealand), it’s also a loss of income for local business and means the region misses out on the festive social vibe that accompanies international cricket matches – especially when England’s ‘Barmy Army’ tour with their side.

Fortunately it doesn’t mean ALL cricket in the region is lost. And some sporting businesses will still thrive.

Senior and junior club, and school cricketers will be taking to the region’s fields and pitches in the coming months in an ages-old summer ritual.

For many, each new season generally starts when the latest cricket gear catalogues start appearing in the mail and online around September. For 66 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

anywhere between a few hours to a few days, ‘cricket tragics’, as we are called, revert to their 10-year-old selves, pawing over the glossy pages, ‘ooh’-ing and ‘aah’ing over the latest bats, pads and gloves.

Ninety percent of cricket bats worldwide are mass machine-produced.

These you will see in the catalogues and big-chain sports stores and come in enough sizes, shapes and weights to suit pretty much everyone.

Except me.

I’m 6’8” tall. Regular-sized bats tend to look like matchsticks in my hands. Taking up a stance at the crease requires me almost to bend in half to touch the ground with the toe of a normal sized bat.

I’m 6’8” tall. Regularsized bats tend to look like matchsticks in my hands. Taking up a stance at the crease requires me to almost bend in half to touch the ground with the toe of a normal sized bat.

I had played like this for many years, but a couple of seasons ago I decided to do something about it – I got my own personalised ‘Andrew-sized’ bat made!

We are very fortunate to have two highly regarded, highly skilled handcrafted cricket-bat makers based in Hawke’s Bay. Laver and Wood (www.laverwood. co.nz), formerly of Otane and Waipawa but now based in Ahuriri, get the lion’s share of attention.

But there is another bespoke bat

maker, Marty Graham – owner of MG2 Cricket (www.mg2cricket.com), who has been making bats in Napier for a decade now.

A fantastic supporter of local cricket, Marty has also made bats for some of the biggest stars in international cricket.

From his backyard workshop in Taradale, Marty makes bats for young and old, professional and amateur, from Hawke’s Bay to across New Zealand and beyond, to places like Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom.

Bespoke bat making by hand is a fascinating process.

Marty keeps you updated on your bat, checking to see if you prefer it this way or that way. Oval handle, or round? Big, thick edges to smash the ball around the park? Or a thinner, more precise bat for longer, tactical innings?

Hand-crafting a cricket bat the way Marty does, using traditional methods and tools (draw knives, spokeshaves and block planes etc.), is a very labourintensive and time-consuming process.

Stage One begins with a raw ‘cleft’ – literally a solid block of willow that Marty sources from overseas. While we have willow trees in New Zealand, they’re not the right type of willow for bat making. Marty checks the cleft and selects which end will be best as the top ‘shoulder’ of the bat and which will be the bottom ‘toe’. Then he starts planing the edges of the block, bringing the thickness of the cleft down to bat width, and planes the front ‘face’ of the bat.

The bat is pressed to make it harder, the ‘splice’ is cut in the top where the handle will go, and the bat’s ‘shoulders’ are formed.

In Stage Two the bat’s handle is fitted and the bat is cut to length and size.

Stage Three involves the finer part of hand-crafting. The bat is shaped with draw knives, spokeshaves and block planes. The handle is rasped to the preferred shape and size. It really looks

Marty Graham – owner of MG2 Cricket Photo: Tim Whittaker tim.co.nz

like a cricket bat now.

In Stage Four the bat is sanded and shaped into its final style and design.

Stage Five is finishing – the bat is polished, the handle is bound with string and the handle’s rubber grip is put on. Labels are applied and the bat is oiled with linseed.

A hand-crafted bat can be made in as little as three hours – this is without glue drying time etc. factored in.

A further hour is usually added for ‘knocking in’ – preparing the bat for a lifetime of hitting hard, leather cricket balls by, well, repeatedly hitting it with hard leather cricket balls (or a mallet) and oiling it with linseed oil.

So, regardless of size or grade, it can take as little as four hours to make a bat!

Hand-crafted cricket bats are

Smarter.

Thinking.

Online.

(2007 - 2017)

generally not made one at a time.

Usually a bat maker would have several bats in various stages to make the best and most efficient use of time and materials. Marty says it’s generally best to be working on anything from 10 to 15 bats at any one time.

Despite MG2’s old-fashioned batmaking methods, most of its customers are sourced from a very modern method – the internet.

As well as operating a website where you can order bats, gloves, pads etc.

MG2 also has a popular Facebook page attracting lots of customers, fans, ‘Likes’ and pictures of Marty’s products in action.

In recent years MG2 has expanded globally, with www.mg2cricket.co.uk launching in 2014.

With a business partner based in Northern Ireland, MG2 has access to the cricketing markets of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Europe and beyond – quite a massive leap for a bespoke bat maker in Napier!

We’re very fortunate to have someone as highly regarded and skilled in the cricketing world as Marty in Hawke’s Bay. While we sadly won’t be seeing any MG2 bats in action at McLean Park this year, but you will likely see many at other cricket grounds around Hawke’s Bay. Andrew Frame is a 40-year-old husband, father, and life-long Napier resident. He writes the www.napierinframe.co.nz website and promotes all things HB on social media.

We are an award-winning full-service digital agency. We provide considered, effective solutions that drive success for our customers. www.mogul.nz

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 • BAYBUZZ • 67

MATT MILLER: DIGITAL TRENDS

Advertising with artificial intelligence Advertising your small business isn’t what it used to be.

In the pre-Google epoch, there was a big yellow book which was delivered free of charge to every home and office in the land. The big yellow book contained the contact details of every business in town.

Even massage parlours.

If you needed the phone to start ringing with customers, you simply bought a bigger ad in the book. Or you could change the name of your business to ‘A1’ or ‘Acme’ or ‘Aaron’s Emporium’ to get that coveted first place in the alphabetically-ordered listings. Or if you were impatient, you could start calling all the numbers in the book to see who wanted to buy from you.

Alternatively, you could put classified ads in the newspaper, a thick wad of printed fish and chip paper that got delivered twice a day to every address in town. Or you could pay big bucks for a 30-second ad on TV. There were only two channels, no mute button, and no fast-forward, guaranteeing that your pitch would be seen by many thousands of eyes. If your ad was especially memorable, funny, or awful, you could end up in Fair Go’s annual ad awards, so there was a good chance your ad would become an integral part of New Zealand popular culture.

But getting your brand in front of your audience is a lot harder now. Your audience’s attention is fragmented across dozens of different content platforms.

The Yellow Pages’ business model appears to have ‘pivoted’ from listing phone numbers to aggressively selling Google Adwords and do-it-yourself websites. The majority of under-40s don’t even know what a newspaper subscription is, free-to-air TV is on life support (this year TVNZ’s annual profit collapsed by 90% to a paltry $1.4 million). Most of your customers’ eyes are buried in the relentless scroll of smartphone content, watching the 68 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

endless social loop of Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram, where marketers compete with cat videos, selfies, celebrity gossip, and fake news for scant microseconds of each user’s attention.

If you’re going to get any cut-through, your content has to be relevant, memorable, useful, well-timed, and easy to understand. Content creation is a vital job in today’s attention economy, but hardly anybody does it well.

“Havelock North is a lot like the satellite towns around Palo Alto in California. It’s the perfect place for a hightech business.”

IAN CHRISTIE

Striding into this bleak landscape is Hawke’s Bay marketing maven Ian Christie with his new venture Boma.

Fresh from an extremely successful launch at Xero’s annual conference in Melbourne, Ian tells me that Boma is the answer to the frustration of small business owners who don’t have the time or resources to do the hard work of creating consistently great content and getting in front of the right person, at the right time, in the right place.

Boma brings an artificial intelligence approach to the problem of content creation and dissemination. Ian’s background suggests that this is exactly where he would end up. In the early 2000s he succeeded Kim Wicksteed (another denizen of Hawke’s Bay) as CEO of ad agency Saatchi and Saatchi in New Zealand, but his ad agency days were numbered.

“In brand advertising at the time, you needed to make a choice – to choose the past or choose the future.

Both are fine, but you needed to make a choice, and you needed to know that you were making a choice. I chose the future.” Accordingly, he went on to work in video-on-demand software and a number of technology and media startups in the UK. Ian’s return to Hawke’s Bay coincided with the return of yet another Hawke’s Bay business identity, Xero CEO Rod Drury. Morning coffees in Havelock North have led to many a fruitful business relationship, and Drury immediately saw the appeal of an automated, intelligent content creation platform and championed the idea with his colleagues at Xero. Callaghan Innovation assisted with a research and development grant, and in September this year Boma was officially launched as an integral component of Xero HQ, a suite of apps for Xero’s army of accountants and bookkeepers.

It’s the perfect way for a technology startup to announce itself, by targeting a specific niche that has a very clearlydefined business problem. In this case, it’s the new breed of accountants who need to articulate the benefit of cloudbased bookkeeping and the new services the Xero platform allows them to offer their customers.

Currently Boma is available only to Xero users, but the company intends to make it available to the general public in the next few months. In its most basic form, Boma offers its users a streamlined way to prepare content for a wide range of distribution, from email newsletters and blogs, to social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The timeconsuming tasks of finding, cropping and resizing images, and writing content to specific word limits are handled automatically. There are 250,000 images that can be searched.

Photo: Florence Charvin

For more advanced users, there is an artificial intelligence feature called ‘smart segments’ which crunches an enormous amount of real-time data from website visits, product views, demographics, time of day, and geographical location. This process happens in the background and the user simply gets to press the ‘send’ button to reach a well-targeted audience. The automation is taken even further for users of Xero HQ, where it automatically adds the accountant’s clients, and offers pre-prepared Xero marketing material, all managed and disseminated automatically. And like any decent

AI, it gets better the more it learns.

So what’s in it for the Bay? Will the gleaming Boma campus be located on the Heretaunga plains? Ian hopes so.

Currently Boma shares an office with Uber in Parnell, Auckland, right next to Xero, but his dream is to attract highly-skilled engineers to Hawke’s Bay. “Havelock North is a lot like the satellite towns around Palo Alto in California.

It’s the perfect place for a high-tech business. And we don’t want to just put a call centre here. The call-centre business is a race to the bottom. I’ve seen it in the north of England and it’s not pretty.”

Ian’s future in Hawke’s Bay seems

assured. He has almost finished building a new house opposite Black Barn Winery and he tells me he’ll be back in the Bay for the weekend.

“We’ll catch up for a beer at the new Black Barn bar.” Sounds good to me. At this rate, it might just turn out to be the local for Boma’s burgeoning high-tech workforce.

Matt Miller co-owns web company Mogul Limited, based in Havelock North, but serving clients around the world, including BayBuzz. His beat for BayBuzz is digital trends and best practice.

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C U LT U R E & L I F E S T Y L E

Take me HOME MICHAL MCKAY. PHOTOS:FLORENCE CHARVIN

For some, the rocketing property boom is a barrier to buying.

For others, it’s merely a challenge. We found four families in Hawke’s Bay whose ideas on what makes a house a home are far from mainstream. With a combination of ingenuity, imagination, and a lot of the unexpected, their solutions offer persuasive insight into the pleasures of living an alternative lifestyle.

“We’re off the grid, have invested in extremely well-insulated windows, with concertina doors opening out to a big wooden deck. Good planning ensures the breezes blow perfectly and the wood burning fireplace heats wonderfully in winter.”

Well contained

For Matt and Ilse Heeringa and their three children, moving from Auckland to their dream home – a five bedroom, three bathroom bungalow in the Bay – proved to be exactly the kind of house they did not want. Of Dutch heritage but brought up in the Bay where her home was a cool in summer, warm in winter straw bale house, Ilse had taken living in comfort for granted.

When she met Matt at a youth camp in Nelson, he persuaded her to move to Auckland; Titirangi his home town.

“Since then we have bought, renovated and sold and I certainly discovered what damp and cold were, along with rotting floor boards,” laughs Ilse.

Returning to Twyford in anticipation of living in their ideal home, with no renovations required, turned out to be anything but. “I was pregnant and hauling wood for the fire, turning on heaters which burned through the bank balance and our downtime was consumed by maintenance. It just made me think ‘Is this how we want our kids to live?’ The upkeep was huge.” After a year they realised what they really wanted was a simple uncluttered life, and a home with eco principles.

Their solution? A 60-square-metre abode built of two encased steel containers with a composting toilet, a bunk bedroom for three kids and a sleeping loft above the dining alcove for Matt and Ilse, built on the land where her parents are cherry farmers. “And this suits us just fine. We’re off the grid, have invested in extremely well-insulated

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windows, with concertina doors opening out to a big wooden deck. Good planning ensures the breezes blow perfectly and the wood burning fireplace heats wonderfully in winter.”

Both are design experts and Matt, who is an engineer with a strong background as a fitter and turner, also discovered during the process that he had a whole new career. Constructing container houses is now his business with Ilse by his side doing the interiors.

For their own home, Ilse did the research. She came up with the concept of converting a shipping container into a home. Matt needed little persuasion.

It was a fast transition. Into Ilse’s parents’ garage! The big house sold in a nanosecond and “although my parents did have space, we wanted independence,” Ilse admits. They had intended to buy land and build. “But instead we opted to move onto land near my parents. And we very quickly got the fundamentals going – a loft, children bathing in a bucket, and barbeque cooking. It wasn’t easy!”

Ilse laughs.

They were meticulous in their use of graph paper to work out the exact measurements which would allow for easy living flow (“We’ve graduated to 3D CAD scaled templates now,” comments Matt.) No detail was missed – even down to omitting handles on cupboards (drilled holes instead). With 18 solar panels converting into underfloor batteries, gas hot water plus a low power-usage fridge, Ilse says they live normal utilities, like a freezer and a washing machine and the

very joyful Japanese bath “which we can put all three children in” with shower above. “Our bills are minimal!” she comments; a complete reversal from the big house.

The interior reflects a passion for fossicking – in demolition yards, auction sites and of course Trade Me. They acquired beautiful doors from the old Albert Hotel, salvaged wood from her father’s pulled down wool shed, stripped and stripped beams “there are still bits of woolshed paint but it adds to the character inside. The copper sink was a hot water cylinder that Matt recycled.

The beautiful – and enormous sofa – a find on TradeMe. This house has soul,” says Ilse with satisfaction.

The kitchen is part of the open plan living space – “We love to cook and entertain so it was vital we have a place to sit down and eat”. The interior is of laminated ply; the floor is a feature of the steel container.

“Our parents were part of the project,” says Ilse. “It’s a system which works beautifully. We see each other all the time, the children spend probably as much time with them as with us. And when Bella – the eldest (seven) – needs peace and quiet from the boys, she just goes off to grandma.”

They know this is not their forever home. “Soon Bella will need her own room,” Ilse explains. “So the plan is to start again; maybe something different. But always with the principles of how we live in this house. And Matt can’t wait.” www.ottoengineering.co.nz

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They comment that the floor is full of Hawke’s Bay wine bottles – 5,000 in total.

“We had to resort to nicking from the Boy Scouts as we were 500 short.”

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Down to earth

Julie and Tony Maurenbrecher have owned Blakcat Berries in Haumoana – their boysenberry and raspberry farm – for 25 years. But much of their lives have been spent living overseas, not necessarily in the most conventional of homes. “We lived on a yacht for a year-and-a-half located in Sabah and Malaysia,” explains Julie, “where Tony developed a strong aversion to paint.”

Not necessarily the paint itself, rather the principles of it. Toxicity particularly.

His attention was also captured by the construction of timber houses and what he discovered rang alarm bells – “toxic materials, treated wood etc.” So when they happened to visit a relative in Nelson who mentioned earth houses, Tony was hooked.

“In Turkey we then came across adobe brick and I came back determined to build a rammed-earth home.” They had also observed that there were a lot of rammed earth homes in Nepal.

“And earth breathes. There’s no paint, no condensation, no smell of plastic,” he explains.

With advice from an engineer in Whangarei and an expert from Taihape, both of whom specialised in rammed earth homes, they built in Hawke’s Bay. “It’s only the second. There ARE others which are some decades old, but to the best of my knowledge we are only one of two. I was working overseas when we started on the walls, which took about five weeks and it was just six months to get the basic structure. We had a cement mixer; the earth is mixed with cement to strengthen the mix. Necessary because of our seismic area. And steel

reinforcing rods are required within the 300 millimetre thick walls.”

Obviously with such weight the foundations have to be dug deep.

“It’s actually very quick to build – four experienced builders could put up the walls of a 2000 square foot house in six days. Most of the time is taken in setting up and removing forms.”

Of course it is also extraordinarily strong. “The council – who by the way were totally unphased by a request for planning permission – came to test the first panel and accepted it. They beat the hell out of it and it didn’t make a dent.

Although we have made mistakes, it was a real pleasure building even though you are limited with what you can do with the structure.”

Julie and Tony’s house is modelled on an Australian bush style home – two storied and 200 square metres.

However, Tony is quick to explain that rammed earth is not a cheap way to build.

“Including our own labour it is pretty much that of a conventional house. But the plus is there are no ongoing costs, no paint – walls are unpainted inside and out. And of course they don’t wear out or look shabby.

“We operated on the KISS principle – especially after our experience with boats – and kept it simple. The inside timber is all local – recycled beams we found at auctions. We just collected them, stripped them and used them. The walls are as the day we first built and of course the insulation is incredible.” And says Julie, “We have one fireplace for the entire house. It can be a little chilly on a cold winter if the fire hasn’t been started, but it soon warms up. And basically it

stays the same temperature winter and summer.”

They comment that the floor is full of Hawke’s Bay wine bottles – 5,000 in total. “We had to resort to nicking from the Boy Scouts as we were 500 short,” Tony laughs. They form an alternative to under-floor heating, with concrete on top. “I’d love to have tiles,” Julie remarks, “and eventually we will. But I was also looking after the farm and children, and they loved roller blading on it!”

Julie relates that she moved into the house when it was actually “only half a house, and I had a four-year-old and a sixmonth-old baby. We did have a toilet and I used rugs we had brought back from our travels as dividers for rooms upstairs.

We’ve of course got running water hot and cold; a windmill pumps the water.

And we’re experimenting with solar.”

Tony, originally from Jakarta, lived in Borneo for eight years and has spent time working in India, so there have been containers shipped back full of carpets, doors, all manner of wooden artifacts … all from recycling shops. “We would love to have an online business sourcing from India,” says Julie (who is from Hawke’s Bay – they met at university.) And Tony, who is a surveyor, is also interested in working with people who want to build rammed-earth houses. “People who want to take responsibility for what materials they are using when they build.

Mentoring, working with architects with a show-me-don’t-tell-me approach.”

Always investigating the new, Tony has a new cabin house (tiny) lying nearby.

Obviously a new project is in the wings.

“We love this life,” they both agree. blakcatberries.webs.com

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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 • BAYBUZZ • 75

“We kept finding structures we never knew were there. A secret garden has just recently come to light (it was completely covered in ivy) and an outdoor bath has been set up alongside it … an olive tree that someone has suggested might be at least 100 years old.”

Barn find

Admitted ‘serial movers’ Sarah and John have lived in many places and in many home variations – including a shipping container, long before they became really popular as housing options.

“We were living in Wellington at the time and I decided I wanted to get some farm boots on,” Sarah laughs. “Johnny is a city bloke but he was persuaded that nothing ventured.......! And I was determined to find a barn.” It took them two years to find what they were seeking “I think the agents thought we were crazy,” Sarah remarks. “And when an agent finally found the barn we are in, he was really reluctant to show it to us because of the state it was in. Well, it did need a lot of care and nourishment! But we just loved it and we could see loads

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of potential. There was no garden – well not one we could see – but there were some trees. The stature of the barn was beautiful. Architect Raiford Gardiner had done some initial designs of the conversion from barn to home.” Including floor to ceiling windows soaring sky high in a living area, with superb spatial structure.

“We spent time getting to know the place before embarking on any renovations,” explains Sarah. “Then we tackled the bathrooms and made the kitchen workable. We replaced doors and put in skylights. We had help sourcing the shutters in the living area which are just stunning. When we bought them we just rested them against the wall for a couple of years and finally designed the French doors around them.”

Sarah and John knew no-one when they arrived in the Bay. “But people have been amazing and we found trades people who understood what we wanted to do. Our living room windows were a challenge. They were and still are single-glazed and there were so many gaps you could hear the wind whistling through! There were times I did think, what the hell have we done?,” Sarah wryly remarks.

Though the barn retains its integrity architecturally and spiritually, there are parts that Sarah renovated for practical purposes. The bathrooms and kitchen have been completely modernised – double-glazing included.

John did the painting. They both came up with the ideas for the interior renovations, floor coverings, wall

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colours and light fittings. “And we love lights,” she comments. And though “I’m a bit of an instant gratification person, doing this home has taught me a lot of patience. I have learned to let things evolve.”

The mezzanine areas (two of them, with separate staircases) include the main bedroom plus bathroom in one, and a library. Both have sensational views of the countryside. And as passionate arts lovers, Sarah and John have hung some pretty interesting works on their walls.

It’s their enthusiasm for the garden that is boundless. They have also done everything pretty much themselves outside. Sometimes Sarah’s twin sister and her partner, both landscapers from Otago, come to help and they go and help them sometimes. The garden has been

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totally created from materials that were already onsite; everything is recycled.

Considering much of the land was covered in ivy – “which they told me I would never be able to get rid of” – Sarah says that the exploration of what lay beneath has been a joyful journey of discovery. “We kept finding structures we never knew were there.

A secret garden has just recently come to light (it was completely covered in ivy) and an outdoor bath has been set up alongside it … an olive tree that someone has suggested might be at least 100 years old.”

A beautiful area affectionately called ‘the Lake District’ is now filled with a lightreflecting pool of water and the living area looks out directly to this scene of serenity. Some of the new garden fences

“give a sense of scale and dimension”.

Doyenne du Comice pears and cypress bring balance to the macrocarpa and fig trees. “And we have also created a food forest. We pick and pick; this is what we wanted from the land.”

Of the 10 acres, seven-and-a-half are leased for grazing. There is also a stunningly statuesque big barn nearby which houses hay. That still leaves a lot of garden for things such as Arataki bee hives, of which they have usually around 12 - 15 in the paddocks. They bring around 40 pots of honey a year.

And though Sarah says John still needs visits to Wellington for his cultural fix, their life in Hawke’s Bay living in a barn obviously suits them. They’ve been in it nine years “and that’s the longest we’ve been in one spot!!”

“Francois owns four T shirts, a pair of jeans and two pairs of shorts, five undies, seven pairs of socks and I’m pretty much the same,” laughs Sarah-Lee. “We live by the mantra: what we use is what we love.”

Little houses

The Tiny House – or The Millennial – has had a lot of publicity recently. Many regard it as the new way to counteract not only the housing crisis, but also climate change. Also they are cheaper to build and their principles offer an environmentally conscious option which again keeps the bills low and an awareness of the need to keep the country clean and clear.

Francoise Guittenit understands these facts very well. French, and trained as a master artisan through studying cabinet making joinery with Les Compagnons du Devoir, he spent the next seven years shop-fitting, boatfitting, and doing traditional French joinery, carpentry and cabinet making.

A CV that equipped him well to start his tiny house business.

He came to New Zealand because he had the travel bug. Six months into his working visa he met Sarah-Lee when she had just finished her BA in Design.

“And we just fell in love.” They also found they thought alike about living in small spaces. Both are minimalists. “Francois owns four T shirts, a pair of jeans and two pairs of shorts, five undies, seven pairs of socks and I’m pretty much the same,” laughs Sarah-Lee. “We live by the mantra: what we use is what we love.”

So five years ago when their rental in the Mangawhai Heads was sold, deciding what to do next was not hard.

They already owned the land where their business was set up - with an outlook to the sea on the Napier coastline. The obvious followed. Their tiny house dream became a reality. Within six months!

Francois points out that because of the

size – 7 metres long, 3 metres high and wide – it is possible to use the very best materials available – an exterior of cedar with American cedar windows and an interior of American ash. The floor is oak.

Inside the house has an air of superbly finished excellence. And simple elegance.

The cupboards, doors and design are sophisticated and polished. It might look tiny, but it is magnificent in its execution.

“We have a bunkroom for the three children – Poppy, LouLou and Francis – with storage under the beds, and upstairs is our mezzanine bedroom.

Sheep-wool insulation ensures a dry warm winter. Expert ventilation provides a cool summer. “We went from a $400 monthly power bill to $25 a month.

Sometimes in winter it gets too hot (a wood burner sees to that) and we have to monitor the size of the logs we use.”

The bathroom has a shower and composting toilet. “You’d be amazed at how much water is used flushing a conventional loo,” remarks Sarah-Lee. “And composting toilets are really simple to maintain.”

A sliding ranch door opens out to a deck with four flourishing built-up garden beds from which they pick daily, according to the season. “Spinach,

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carrots, beetroot, kale, cavalo nero. We are vegetarian so we have huge salads,” Sarah-Lee explains.

The house is immaculate. Hard to maintain with three small children? There is a secret. “We have no TV; we watch documentaries and anything we feel is of interest on the computer,” Francois reveals. “And we have another tiny house where I do my work; another for Sarah-Lee to do her pottery, another for the laundry. That way we reduce clutter and we go to a designated house for a specific reason. Also most tiny houses are built to go on a trailer and are transportable.” Even the dog has its own home; almost a replica in miniature of their own.

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As this is also part of his business, Francois is well versed with the ‘what is possible and what is not’ of the small home. “Affordability is the attraction.

And simplicity. But that is deceptive too. There are more challenges in building small houses because of the space and keeping it uncluttered.

Simplicity is what comes across in the aesthetics, but there is a lot going on underneath.”

Houses come in a flat pack with the trailer, and it is their aim to keep them affordable. “A shell can be $25,000.

Our house was $90,000, but you have real quality and though they might not be for everyone, they have some huge advantages.”

Their intention is to home-school the children and when they are bigger, they plan to put the house on a trailer to travel around the country so they can see and experience all parts of New Zealand and still go to school. “And,” says Francois with enthusiasm, “think about when they are at university. All they need is their tiny house on a trailer which they can live in, save money and so be able to get a deposit for a house that is not going to be sky high.”

‘Small spaces are not a new concept,” says Francois. “Billions in fact have no space but sadly they also have no conveniences. We are fortunate that we have the best of both.” www.leworkshop.co.nz

C U LT U R E & L I F E S T Y L E

festive faRe

MICHAL MCKAY. PHOTOS:FLORENCE CHARVIN

Counting down to Christmas, the big question is what to cook for friends and family. Who better to ask than those in the Bay who produce fabulous casual food?

You can ďŹ nd recipes for each of their special Christmas dishes at baybuzz.co.nz

Clockwise from top left: Jordan Davis & Eshla Wright , Wright & Co; Kristy Isaacson MYLK; Sasha Williams, Abi Featherstone & Camille Homan, Picnic; Katie and Stuart Green, Maina.

Katie Green Maina The delightful old Post building of Havelock North buzzes daily with food fans who frequent Maina regularly.

The name itself gives the clue. Maina, renowned for her spirit of hospitality, was chef Stuart’s mother, and baker Katie’s mother-in-law.

Stuart became imbued with the same spirit at an early age, managing to burn his mother’s kitchen down twice in the process. Cooking became his passion. His foundational cooking technique, Katie swears, would get flavour even from a stone! And his standards are high.

Katie is the baker. As a wee tot she would bake a special cake every Sunday for the family, a talent she says she inherited from her mother and her grandmother. “To me it’s a love language. Knowing the time and love that has gone into a home-made biscuit or cake makes me feel good!”

They came to the Bay at the end of 2014 with a plan to work for others, drawn by its renowned seasonal produce and wine. But the old Post building lured them; so they bought it. After an eight-week whirlwind renovation they opened in April 2015.

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Stuart’s bistro style is one he feels is the simplest and most appreciated way of effortlessly embracing seasonal produce. Great all-round food, equally as popular feeding a big family or dinner for two.

The sweet side is Katie’s domain, influenced by the Dutch bakers of the 1950s immigration for whom she worked. A course at the NZ School of Food and Wine in Foundational French Cooking as well as a London City and Guild’s Patisserie at Christchurch Polytech provided the final touch.

They change their menu every three months. Their suppliers are gold to them – Gourmet Meats, Hawthorne Coffee, Holly Bacon, Origin Earth Milk, Te Mata Mushrooms, Blakcat Berries, Onekawa Fruit and Vege, Epicurean Herbs … “an amazing list of locals”.

Before Christmas all the decorations come out. Christmas menus are planned for functions and the traditional Christmas baking. A big tree is put up which the community outreach ‘Faithworks’ decorates with gift tags for local

children; people bring gifts that match the tag and put them under the tree. They are distributed to families who struggle financially at Christmas. A Maina tradition.

Christmas at home is in traditional style “with all the usual trimmings”.

That is after Stuart has cooked for the Age Concern Community Christmas Dinner on Christmas Day. When living in Sydney they would often have 20 or 30 people to dine; as they did when living in the South Island.

But with Maina – their first owned restaurant – it is mainly family on Christmas day. Katie says she does the “usual Mum thing. Decorate the house, cook the meal, wrap the presents etc. Now the kids are grown it is more for me, but we do love our day together. And we both love to prepare a lot of different dishes with everyone helping themselves. BUT I’m in trouble if I don’t put Pork Belly into the brine on Christmas Eve. The kids love it (slow roasted) and it’s amazingly tender and delicious.” www.maina.co.nz

Jennifer Le Comte Smith’s Eatery, Picnic, Opera Kitchen, Albion Canteen Describing herself as “just a glorified errand person”, Jennifer says she got into the catering business really through saying, “Yes, I can do this.”

She studied law at university but had always loved food and restaurants and went over to visit friends in New York in the summer (some time back, she laughs), stayed six years and went to cooking school.

“Being a chef had become a very glamorous occupation. No-one ever suggested I should, but I became obsessed by food production, came back to Auckland, started as a restaurant chef, then went into catering. Then I set up a cafe as well.”

Her husband was consequently transferred to Australia. “It was the first time I had never worked. But I had two children, sons Jasper and Hugo. We came back to Hawke’s Bay because Steven thought he might buy a farm,” she laughs. It was about that time Prue and David from Mr D came to the Bay and I did a year with them. I ended up doing corporate catering, but I really wanted my own business. So I started Opera Kitchen with partners.”

As if that weren’t enough, Jennifer

then opened Smith’s in Ahuriri. “First it was just at nights. We thought we’d challenge ourselves! And I loved the idea of having Aroha next door. They are great friends and we worked together to make it a destination.

Which it has become.”

Albion came next. “I’m always driven by space and with the three I thought we could do Picnic, which operates on a slightly different principle. Bakers are pretty well taking over the space; it’s bread that is the specialty.” And stunningly sophisticated sweets which look like works of art.

The underlying principle of all the cafes though is “casual, healthy, light.”

We have chefs at each and we are really lucky with how talented they are.

Nick Haszard for instance is the typical transition chef who moved to the Bay and so Picnic has a very different customer. But all of them are really what the new Hawke’s Bay eating scene is about.”

Jennifer has a list of reliable suppliers with whom she has built up a strong relationship for ingredients – orchardists, seasonal producers and others who ensure the four restaurants

are constantly providing the best. She likes to push her chefs to think outside the box. “Quince are an example. Noone seemed to even consider them; I preserve bucketloads because they are absolutely delicious. One of my crusades is to constantly question and look for new growth (pun not intended)!”

As Steven’s mother is English, Jennifer says the Christmas dinner is pretty traditional. “Turkey, chipolatas etc. I’ve really changed though. It always used to be crayfish for me; I do still buy them and they are still very special. Now though we’ll have it in the morning – a real treat – and then a really late Christmas lunch. But I’ll do a roast salmon with lemon stuffing, asparagus and new potatoes.

“And we do alternate families every year. We have a beach house this year, so there will be a lot of nieces and nephews. I’m not a big sweet person, so I often just get something and have a lot of strawberries.” Or a Christmas desert from Picnic. www.eatdrinksharehb.co.nz

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Eshla Wright Wright & Co. The newest cafe in The Village, and Eshla’s namesake, is a busy hub, open seven days a week for all three meals of the day. It hums with an easy atmosphere and a focus on classic favourites, plus healthy alternatives. The big drawcard is catering for everyone from the early-bird tradies in search of a good coffee and bacon buttie, to those wanting something green and lean, but perhaps a tad more sophisticated in the later twilight hours.

Eshla – one of four partners – runs the business front of house. Her career path was always focused on starting her own café, so while at Hugo Chang one night she chatted with Nick Neilson and Clint Toomer, who along with Liv Reynolds are also owners of Hugo Chang and Mamacita. In 2015 the cafe opened, the added plus having the restaurant named after her.

Now two years on, the cafe has found its niche. Clint runs the kitchen with two head chefs, for night and day. Eshla has a strong input on the ideas and whether things are do-able. “And we try to keep up to date with trends that fit within the ethos. There’s a tri-seasonal change with minor tweaks to favourites which remain.

We look for local producers where we can form a brand association like Holly Bacon

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and Bostock. And we like to be right up with the play which is evident in the clientele we have – a lot of foodies who like eating out,” she smiles.

“It’s an exciting time in hospitality, specially for Hawke’s Bay with our restaurants being recognised with awards,” comments Eshla. She is, however, swift to point out that good results come from long hours and a good team. “We are meticulous about who we hire; only those who understand our philosophy.”

A menu for Christmas functions is high on the list currently. “We do hire out our space, which has a nice calm vibe to it.

The interior as Eshla describes it is “very Wright & Co-esque. Liv did most of the decor with its soothing golds and coppers and her husband Pat did the woodwork.

He’s very talented and it is exactly how we wanted, but it was he who made it happen – just like Santa Claus!!”

And for her own Christmas entertaining she relies heavily on her husband Ben Harwood, who “is an amazing cook”. Both of their families alternate for the pleasure of Christmas entertaining.

“We do have the fairly traditional day – breakfast of cold ham and poached

eggs on toast with good coffee while contemplating the rest of the day and what to do. Then at lunch time we have hoards of kids in the family bursting to open presents.

“So Ben and I start the lunch with an aged Scotch Fillet roll on the barbeque, a Holly Ham (the best so it’s essential to pre-order) in the oven – which I do with apple cider vinegar, honey from Ben and his father’s farm, and wholegrain mustard – for half an hour so the glaze goes sticky. Forget crackling. Too hard!!

There’s always a couple of salads, fresh and seasonal; often a potato salad chucked in with YaBon bread. I’m not really a pudding person but my sister and sister-in-law fortunately are, so we’ll have loads of cherries, truffles and anything else they dream up.

“We eat outside with bean bags strewn around under a gazebo. It lasts a long time with a few beers and bottles of bubbly. We crack the bubbly round 11am – always Veuve, Mumm or Moet – and then local wines. The table is very casual; maybe a vase of lilies and that’s it. The food is put out and everyone serves themselves. We do have crackers for the kids with those mad hats though.” www.wrightandco.nz

Kristy Isaacson MYLK Most of Kristy’s adult life has been spent cheffing; twenty years of it overseas. But upon her return when working at a cafe in Kekerenga – a remote part of the South Island – she started doing take-home meals as a sideline. And found it had legs.

The Canterbury earthquakes spurred her to return to the Bay. “I needed family support with my 18-month-old baby and it just seemed a great business idea. I wanted to go back to cooking, but have nights and weekends free. And besides, no-one else had a homemade-dinner delivery service as their main business here. My aim was to make life easy, not only for busy working people, but also those who love food and have no time, inclination or ability to cook.”

Three years ago, after having found the original MYLK site in Parkvale (the name stands for My Little Kitchen), she set up shop. And outgrew it within six months. She now has a retail site in the same vicinity for take-home food along with the café, plus her main production site in Napier.

The food she produces is “more home-style to appeal to a wide range of customers. I have another chef who helps me innovate and develop. Of course there are the ‘must never leave off the menu’ dishes (chicken pot pie for instance), but

the menu is different every week, with selections of entrees, mains, soups, salads, some side dishes. And all come in multiple sizes to suit singles or families.”

Seafood Chowder, Pumpkin Risotto, Venison Bourguignon and Chocolate Pudding certainly sound tempting. Kristy has developed a simple ordering system – either by stopping by the Napier or Hastings shops, or online. The menu is updated every Thursday; Tuesdays for last orders and delivery on Fridays.

She finds many of her customers will multiple-order delivered meals. “It’s a fabulous system for the elderly. I have one friend who has regular meals sent to her father-in-law when she knows she is unable to cook for him herself. That way she has peace of mind and knows he is well nourished.”

She now has five staff including herself in Napier, a part-timer and a casual one afternoon a week, and in Hastings four fulltime and one casual. Kristy pays tribute to a special list of suppliers – “Pacific for instance –those who I know won’t let me down. Most are local. All meals come frozen. But it’s hardly complicated – simply a matter of defrost, cook and serve. We deliver as far away as Bay View and Waipukurau.” With around 2,000

take-home meals a week it’s busy and “we often sell out by Thursday lunchtime”.

Christmas for Kristy this year is being done differently, “to take the stress out of it”. Unsurprisingly she puts a lot of work into preparing the Christmas menu. “Together with my graphic designer we produce temptation – puddings, tartlets and savoury options, slow cooked pork, terrine, salmon, brandy snap baskets; scrumptious salted caramel and raspberry coulis. And of course hundreds of cakes. The new kitchen has certainly made it easier.”

Such a schedule means Kristy is barely at home. She confesses her aunt takes charge of the family Christmas dinner. “I will bake of course, but it’s a real break for me. She loves doing it and it is always a surprise. Maybe pickled pork, chicken and Christmas cake. The table set with crackers and all the trimmings, but summer style. There are usually about eight of us. Lunch rolls into a barbeque at night. And the night before Christmas I go through all the ritual of wrapping presents, with different paper for Santa.

And leave food out for him and his reindeer. Then I take two weeks off and take my son for a holiday. This year it’s a Pacific cruise. Bliss.” www.mylkfoodstore.com

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C U LT U R E & LIFESTYLE

Susan Mabin, Pita Kire and Raewyn Tauira Paterson. Photo: Florence Charvin

C U LT U R E & LIFESTYLE

The New Masters EIT’s art and design division – ideaschool – has this year produced its first cohort of graduates from the newly established post-grad programme, the Masters of Professional Creative Practice / Te Hono ki Toi (Poutiriao).

Raewyn Paterson, Susan Mabin, Pita Kire, Tara Cooney and Sophie Watkins finished up with a group graduation exhibition ,Traces, in July and are now working and making art here in the Bay, adjusting to their post-study lives.

Programme co-ordinator Dr Mandy Rudge oversaw the first group and is working with current and prospective Masters students. She says that this programme differs from others at the post-graduate level around New Zealand due to its heavy focus on exhibiting, and emphasis on linking up with what’s going on right here, right now.

“The structure enables students to develop their creative practice in a way that has strong connections to the contemporary context and is relevant for them. Additionally, the experience of creating work to a professional standard for two exhibitions (one in the Honours year and one for the Masters) is also a key to its success. I know of no other Masters programme that does this. It is by making work, engaging in critical reflection and understanding the contemporary context of your work, that your work becomes stronger.”

Dr Rudge is full of praise for the founding cohort, and what they are already bringing to the wider Hawke’s Bay creative scene.

“It’s been really exciting to see what our first graduates have achieved beyond the programme. They have numerous exhibitions planned (at MUSE, HCAG and MTG), are engaged in developing their own arts and designbased businesses, and all of them are furthering their own business networks and creative practice. This confirms the value of the programme and its name (Te Hono ki Toi: the link to the arts). What

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C U LT U R E & LIFESTYLE

Anything Goes

Photo: Florence Charvin Sophie Watkins. Photo: Florence Charvin

our graduates have already contributed to our communities and what they will contribute in the future, is significant.”

Dr Rudge says that the current students are working on their end of year show, and that applicants for next year’s intake for the 18 month programme are looking strong. Word seems to be getting around that this a challenging and productive option for artists and designers keen to push themselves. No doubt the increasingly positive reputation is largely down to the work of these first five:

Raewyn Tauira Paterson

Raewyn‘s Masters project investigated the use of Maori visual pattern in suburban domestic spaces to create an immersive experience like that of the wharenui and marae.

She points out that Maori visual patterns – whakairo, tukutuku and kowhaiwhai, the visual culture of the wharenui – are strong, and yet Maori generally live in homes that are of a western architectural style and decoration, with perhaps a few Maori art pieces. Her project asked and answered the question, “How might a suburban home look immersed in Maori aesthetic?” Raewyn’s installation ‘Whare Sweet Whare’ consisted of wallpaper panels, lifelike realisitic

90 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

photographs of fully patterned house settings and a doll’s house.

So, where to, now that the programme is over? “As an artist and designer, I feel that generating ideas and creating and refining the work really is only half of the job,” Raewyn says.

“The next step for me will be promoting my work and designs through galleries and competitions, investigating manufacturing options, and creating a marketing and business plan. I want my work to be accessible to people, as for me, this is a main reason why I make it.

“I also want to find the right people with whom I can collaborate. And of course, the study has generated many other ideas that are just itching to be developed further … these are churning away in the back of my mind.”

Tara Cooney

Tara’s work is focused on research into the field of memory and design object, which began during her undergraduate studies at ideaschool. She says the Masters programme was a chance to continue this in more in-depth and focused space.

In her Masters project she created what she termed ‘Scentefacts’ – anthropogenic artefacts of olfactory origins, usually relating to emotional

memory. These pieces form part of an ongoing investigation into the multi-sensory experiences of personal olfactory memories.

Since finishing the programme, Tara has been busy working on several design collaborations – one with studio Faculty (with an exhibition at Tennyson Gallery), and another as a graphic designer for Newton Espresso. One of her Master’s sculptural works, 00093, was selected as a finalist in the prestigious Wallace Art Awards for 2017.

“But I have still have plans to develop the nature of my research – memories, story-telling – into a formal business by documenting family stories and photographs too,” she says. “I guess one of the major benefits for my own practice, having done the Masters, is that it’s given me several pathways to explore across both my sculptural and design outcomes.”

Pita Kire

For Pita – a painter working mainly in oils – the Masters programme was an opportunity to delve further into his painterly fascination with angels, spiritual entities and Kaitiaki (guardians), leading in turn

into exploring both Maori and European influences on a journey of identity.

The course itself has been tough going, Pita says, but worth it.

“It has been extremely stressful at the best of times – studying while juggling things with family and life, especially being the only male in the group, and there were times where I felt like quitting. But with the support from my wife and family, and the inspiring work ethic of my fellow colleagues, I was able to see it through.”

Pita is currently in the process of reworking and fine-tuning works produced during his time at EIT. He intends to exhibit next year for the general public.

“I’m also looking into the possibility of more studying to teach art to our rangatira (youth), which has always been a personal goal of mine.”

incredibly important creatures to us, and they are leaving us.

“As a society we can make the choice on aiding or fighting the cause, but efforts may seem effortless when the entirety is realised. Mothers and sisters are lost and ill, and within this heart thinking is the imagination, inspiration and intuition; and through representation we may allow the truth to be known.”

In the Traces exhibition, at the end of the Masters programme, Sophie’s installation was minimalist and without actual bee imagery, reflecting the loss of bees and the sparseness they face.

Sophie is continuing to make a mixture of 3D object work, including light, sound, smell and interaction based on her bee research, while juggling paid work and collaborative projects.

Sophie Watkins

Susan says she took on the Masters programme for the challenge, and because she felt it could support a new direction she had found in her work since finishing her undergrad art studies at ideaschool.

“I felt that the new programme would give me access to the support and to

Sophie Watkins put the humble honey bee and its colony collapse front and centre during her Masters project, using it to explore concepts of materialism, social sculpture, heart thinking and environmental issues.

Bees, Sophie says, are such

Susan Mabin

‘minds’ that encourage, question, and constantly challenge you and your art practice, and this would be beneficial to my own understanding and ability to express verbally and academically what I was doing creatively, which in turn would be good for progressing my practice outside of EIT,” she says.

This new direction saw Susan develop a Masters project investigating processes of poiesis in art. She used found detritus, both manmade and natural objects, collected primarily from Napier beaches, to explore issues of agency (human, living and nonliving objects) and the environment, by aesthetic engagement with these materials. The sculptural installation Susan presented as a result of this work aimed to engage viewers with recognisable materials in a gallery setting that could change the perspective of those materials, and throw light on global environmental issues from a local viewpoint.

Susan has established a shared studio (Studio 206) in Hastings with fellow artist Robyn Fleet, where they run artworks and classes for adults and children, as well as making their own work.

She’s also preparing for an exhibition at Hastings City Gallery next June.

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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 • BAYBUZZ • 91

At a recent The Arts Society Hawke's Bay workshop, antique furniture expert Janusz Karscewski-Slowikowski discusses with Jeanette Kelly and KA Halliday the history of one of the member's chairs. Photo: Florence Charvin

Anything Goes

An Artful Change MICHAL MCKAY

As the Decorative and Fine Arts Society celebrates its 50th anniversary next year, it well understands the need to ensure and broaden its connection to all those with a love of the arts, including a younger generation whose values and ideals align with those of the current establishment. So this year a major rebranding will occur as NADFAS becomes The Arts Society with the refreshed organisation

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reaching out to more – and younger – people in more places.

A pioneering group of young women eager to be educated about the arts founded the Chiltern Antiques Society in the UK in 1965. Just three years later 11 similar groups formed the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies (NADFAS), which expanded rapidly across the UK to Europe, Australia and ultimately

New Zealand where the first society was started in Christchurch in 2001.

Today there is a global network of some 385 societies with more than 90,000 members who share a curiosity for the arts and its heritage.

In New Zealand there are eight local societies with around 1,400 members nationally.

Its activities include regular lectures from specialists sharing their

John Benjamin, famous as part of The Antiques Roadshow, will not only lecture on jewellery but will hold a half-day workshop for members at which time he will also evaluate pieces of jewellery they've brought in to assess. knowledge, but also preservation of the arts through volunteering and grants.

The Hawke's Bay division, founded in 2013, has around 220 members and hosts eight lectures annually covering a vast range of arts topics including architecture, design, glass, fashion, porcelain, ceramics, art and art history, sculpture and literature.

“The New Zealand membership probably has a younger, more dynamic membership than that of the UK," president of the Hawke's Bay branch, Jeanette Kelly explains. "But in the UK, because it was founded just on 50 years ago, there was a strong feeling the image of NADFAS needed refreshing to attract a younger generation. The Arts Society is probably the largest and most influential of the arts organisations worldwide and it was important to ensure its longevity. Most of the New Zealand branches have taken on the new name - including us - and we do think it will broaden the appeal."

The Bay’s Katherine (K.A.) Halliday, national co-ordinator for New Zealand, organises the lecture programme. Selecting the lecturers who will visit all the branches in the country is complex, from planning the logistics of travel for the overseas speakers to ensuring a balanced range of topics for the eight lectures.

All lecturers are internationally accredited and have awe-inspiring CVs testifying to their expertise in their chosen fields.

But it isn't only their knowledge that is taken into account – delivery is a vital component. Anyone who has suffered a dull teacher will immediately agree. Arts Society lecturers need to be informative, entertaining, amusing, even have a certain irreverence. And are definitely not academic.

"But it’s a real ‘Rubik’s Cube’ exercise trying to get a good mix

of lecturer areas of expertise and then aligning their availability to our dates," comments KA. "For 2018 we have a wide range of topics from some very well known personalities.”

John Benjamin, famous as part of The Antiques Roadshow, will not only lecture on jewellery but will hold a half-day workshop for members at which time he will also evaluate pieces of jewellery they've brought in to assess. Globally recognised Sarah Cove, a fellow of the British Association of Paintings Conservator-Restorers, and of the International Institute for the Conservation and Preservation of Historic and Artistic Works, will discuss picture restoring. And Simon Rees, who received his MA in English Literature from Trinity College, Cambridge, and studied at Dramaturg, Welsh National Opera in Cardiff, working with set, costume and props designers and now a freelance novelist (including the award-winning The Devil's Looking Glass) will talk about theatre illusions.

“And that's just a taste,” remarks KA. The other side of The Arts Society Hawke's Bay is its philanthropic arm. "We give around $60,000 as a New Zealand group to help fund arts-associated initiatives," Jeanette comments. "Like the international research project into Frances Hodgkins led by Mary Kisler, senior curator at the Auckland Art Gallery.”

Locally the Society’s funding has related to the decorative arts side of the performing arts, supporting the Prima Volta Charitable Trust to help meet the cost of costume design in Festival Opera’s production of Carmen.

The Society also helped the Hastings City Art Gallery with their first Artist in Residence project, which involved the photographer Edith Amituanai and Kimiora Primary School and resulted in the wonderful "Keep on Kimiora" exhibition at the Gallery.

And donations have been made to MTG Hawke's Bay for purchases of works to include in their collection as well as for educational programmes and learning experiences for lowdecile schools. Donatons have also been made to Massey University to cover post-graduate Museum Studies Course fees for a Hawke's Bay based student.

Certain proof that The Arts Society Hawke's Bay is fulfilling its mission to enrich people's lives through the arts. www.dfasnz.org.nz

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C U LT U R E & LIFESTYLE

Hawke’s Bay Foundation launches Art Fund Hawke’s Bay Foundation has established its first specific ‘field of interest’ fund: The Hawke’s Bay Arts Fund.

The HBF trustees have recognised that funding for the arts at a national level is an ever-decreasing proposition with little prospect of change. Their attitude is that if Hawke’s Bay is to have a thriving arts scene, then Hawke’s Bay is going to have to fund it as a region.

Like the broader work of the Hawke’s Bay Foundation, the Arts Fund will operate on an endowment model. This means that the capital of any donation into the Arts Fund will be preserved, and invested and grown for the long term. Only the earnings generated on the invested funds will be used to fund arts projects in Hawke’s Bay. This initiative is already off to a well-publicised start, with audiences at the Harcourts Hawke’s Bay Arts Festival given the option to donate when purchasing tickets for this year’s shows.

If you missed out then, but you’re keen to help the Hawke’s Bay Foundation support the growth of our regional arts offering, visit hawkesbayfoundation.org.nz.

94 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

Get Yor Deco On The programme for Napier’s iconic heritage celebration, the Tremains Art Deco Festival, has been released and organisers are excited by the enthusiastic rush on ticket sales for the 30th year.

“It’s a great achievement to have a festival celebrating its 30th anniversary. At its heart, the festival is a celebration of the community's spirit and resilience,” says Art Deco Trust GM Shane Gorst.

“We're not only commemorating the 1931 community's resolve following the devastating earthquake, but we're celebrating today's community, who we are and what makes us special.

“In 1989 when the Art Deco Weekend was first launched, there were seven events with 14 vintage cars in a parade and the Gatsby Picnic had fewer than 30 people attend. Now, 30 years on, we will have 300 vintage cars in the parade, over 250 events and the Gatsby Picnic attracts over 5,000 people,” said Mr. Gorst.

This year’s festival promises to be bigger, better, faster, stronger, and there’s a specific focus on music. Top Kiwi artists including Moses MacKay, of Sol3 Mio fame, and renowned jazz musician Nathan Haines will be among a number of performers who will provide more than 200 hours of music across the event showcasing the 1920s and 30s era.

“Music wise we’ve got everything, from big name stars right through to local youth talent,” says festival

Nathan Haines

director, Glen Pickering.

“We've managed to attract some great Kiwi headline acts with the likes of Moses and Nathan, and we're in discussions with more musicians and will make further announcements later this year.”

Highlights of the 2018 festival include new events like the opulent Great Gatsby Party at Mission Estate, the Masquerade Ball at the Napier Function Centre and the Late Night Jazz Club at The Cabana.

“This is a festival for Hawke’s Bay, to celebrate and remember our past and our heritage,” says Pickering. “We’ve worked really hard to put together the most exciting and inclusive programme of events in the festival’s history.”

We recommend getting in fast to purchase tickets. And make sure your out-of-town friends are quick off the mark booking accommodation. The Tremains Art Deco Festival runs from February 14 to 18. The programme is at artdeconapier.com.

C U LT U R E & LIFESTYLE

Books

French House Chic

The Sixteen Trees of the Somme

Aotearoa: The New Zealand Story

Another mouth-watering book from the Australian Francophile Jane Webster, author of At My French Table and French Ties.

It is more than 12 years since Jane Webster, the poster girl for selling up and following your dreams, bought Chateau Bosgouet, a derelict chateau in Normandy and moved her young family to France.

In those years, Jane has established an internationally renowned business; she has shepherded her children through their school years both in France and in Australia; she has made long-lasting friendships in her adopted home; and she has spent countless hours observing French style.

French House Chic is a glimpse inside the most private of French residences, from supremely elegant Parisian apartments to lavishly upholstered sitting rooms in French country estates. From le salon to la salle de bain and every room in between, here is visual inspiration to achieve the most French look in any space. Or just to be momentarily immersed in all that Gallic flair.

This is Jane's very personal story of a lifetime of cultivating an eye for style and bringing it to life in the home – a style that can be emulated with just some simple guidance. It is a book for rethinking. One that will make you want to rearrange your copper saucepans, reupholster your sofa, or book the next flight to Paris.

Lars Mytting authored the phenomenally specific bestseller, Norwegian Wood, a beautifully produced book on how to chop, stack and dry wood. His love of trees inspires The Sixteen Trees of the Somme, a novel that revolves around a group of walnut trees given mythical status in this tragic tale.

Edvard is a mystery to himself. He lives in Norwegian isolation with his grandfather, his parents having died when he was three.

Their deaths are immediately intriguing.

Why were they in the area of the Somme?

What happened when little Edvard went missing in the four days after their death?

Why was his grandfather’s coffin, made from the flame birch woods growing on their land, delivered to the funeral director years before his death? What is the connection between Edvard’s mother and his uncle, Einar?

The plot takes us from Norway to the desolate Shetlands, where there are few trees and an excess of extreme weather; a dramatic passage describes a storm, a furious storm and a storm there is no name for!

Edvard’s investigations lead to France and the threads of his story begin to bind together as he relentlessly pursues the truth that may destroy him and those around him.

The Sixteen Trees of the Somme is the tale of two world wars, a complex family history and the trees that connect them. If you read only one novel this summer, make it this one.

The perfect Christmas present for all the family this year is the new illustrated visual history book from the awardwinning author and illustrator Gavin Bishop.

This book has big ambitions to tell the story of Aotearoa/New Zealand from the big bang to the future, and everything in-between. Text and pictures are wellbalanced, but the sumptuous illustrations tell the story. It is a large format hardback and each double page has a theme, from myths to names, nature, famous people, immigration and more. As you move through the pages, the social history of New Zealand unfolds through topics such as food, housing, employment and the environment.

It is easy to get drawn into a page and the story it tells, and one of the book’s delights is finding the little facts sprinkled within the bigger story. Aotearoa will lead to great discussions and a desire to find out more. The last pages are a call to action over our environment and a look into the future. All in all a very satisfying package.

While it is a picture book, it brings enjoyment and knowledge to any age.

Every house should have a copy; it would be great to share at the bach.

Pam Bennett, Poppies

Louise Ward, Wardini Books

By Jane Webster (Thames and Hudson, RRP $65.00)

By Lars Mytting (MacLehose Press, RRP $37.99)

By Gavin Bishop (Penguin Random House, RRP $40)

Megan Landon, Beattie & Forbes Books and Post

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 • BAYBUZZ • 95

MARY KIPPENBERGER

Egg White Fantasy

Butterflies of the stomach variety are, for me at this grand age, often missing in flight.

I don’t count the days to my birthday, but I do love vicariously watching other butterflies dance as the grandies mark the calendar til Christmas or wonder at the tooth fairy’s ability to collect teeth.

She’s been getting far too many of mine lately and doesn’t bother to pay; so personally, if the choice were mine, I’d give her a miss.

I’m in Christchurch for four hours to look at a food caravan. I am a little puzzled at the churning stomach, and in fact there could be some who are just puzzling at the idea of a food caravan full stop. And I say good point, well pondered.

The official version is that we have a venue called RUMPY where we hold musical events and this becomes our commercial kitchen; but the butterfly version is that I make giant meringues.

It’s the only thing I have left. I used to do a fine date loaf and no one could beat my pumpkin muffins, but now it’s just giant meringues. Poor souls who venture for a night out at RUMPY are cajoled, some might say forced, to partake of the giant free-range, creamed, passionfruit-dripping towers of heart-stopping badness.

So yes, the world will be told that this is a sensible buy to support our musical endeavours, but only I can see the picture of me chug chugging around the motu, my own little slightly batty travelling circus, selling meringues to the masses.

The inner sensible ‘make something healthy’ voice will be ignored a little while longer and I will enjoy my eggwhite fantasy for a few more days yet.

The problem with my Christchurch dash was that it clashed with Pukehou’s kapahaka performance at the magnificent CHB Municipal Theatre, so I went to 96 • BAYBUZZ • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

Photo: Danny Priestley

How many organic vegetables do you think it would take to cancel the effect of one giant cream-covered, passionfruit-dribbled meringue?

A cabbage and three carrots should do it. dress rehearsal instead. The hall was empty but for the senior school, including three of my mokopuna, ngā kaiako and me. Waiata and haka swelled the room, piupiu swished, poi beat a rhythmic air and boys’ chests reddened as the power of the haka hit their goosebump mark.

Passion and grace. Discipline and respect.

Sitting on that school bench, just me by myself, I felt an overwhelming desire to cry. It caught me by surprise.

These children, these beautiful children.

Together Maori and Pakeha alike.

Friends. For a moment in time a world without divide or prejudice. As it should be; as it could be.

Te Reo is such a beautiful language and has the power to bind us as a nation.

I love hearing it drift more and more into everyday language. I look at my stunning grandchildren and wish for them a world where they are not judged by the colour of their skin but rather by the size of their hearts. This generation will be the flag bearers.

Some years ago, before she met her Danny, our Kate returned home,

escaping a difficult relationship. EIT were offering a free year-long Taha Maori course. Three days would see the opening so there was little chance of application acceptance, but they did accept her. Bless them forever. They took my girl, wrapped their arms around her and loved her happy again. One year fully immersed into this beautiful culture, respectful of land, soul and song, gave Kate her voice. Literally and figuratively.

Walking together. Not a bad recipe.

Enough musing, time to get into my glasshouse. Last year I collected seeds and now we have seedlings everywhere.

It is so exciting. Great eruptions of giant sunflowers, row upon row of capsicum, tomatoes and basil. I may have overdone the celery. Gooseberries, melons, garlic, brassicas, carrots, the list goes on. We can’t give seedlings away fast enough.

How many organic vegetables do you think it would take to cancel the effect of one giant cream-covered, passionfruit-dribbled meringue?

A cabbage and three carrots should do it.

I could be in business.

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