In defence of Auckland’s 'incredibly' expensive Christmas tree
Christmas trees, the Nobel Prize in not beating up your kids, stamp-licking and the malls of Christchurch ranked.
Kia ora and welcome to The Weekend with Anna Rawhiti-Connell, filling in for Madeleine
This week I hosted The Spinoff’s Year In Review live event In Wellington. Everything went remarkably well, and you can attend the same (but maybe more refined event) in Auckland on December 11. The welcoming crowd in Wellington even wanted more of an opening bit I thought I’d designed to be deliberately awful and very short.
Hubris got the best of me, and I felt bold enough to slip in a line about it being legal to start playing Christmas music in mid-November. People booed. Only one person in the sold-out Hannah Playhouse agreed with me.
I love Christmas. I know a lot of people don’t, and have good reasons. I respect that but as someone who identifies as a hater, Christmas is when I get to shed the skin I mooch around in for most of the year and find joy by embracing seasonal traditions.
I also firmly believe there’s a bit of Christmas magic that belongs exclusively to children, and my husband and I haven’t been able to have kids. I used to think I was compensating for that in my embrace of traditions, both grand and very silly, but I now recognise it’s a core value, made manifest.
I think that in life, you get out what you put in, and that applies to your work, your relationships and your community. Participating in shared traditions is binding and offers moments of connection. At a time when hundreds of thousands of words have been spilled describing and defining a loneliness epidemic and our sense of each other and the world is delivered secondhand via screens, connecting in real life, even fleetingly and over silly things, feels both crucial and under threat.
All of this is to say that when I heard about the Christmas tree being erected in downtown Auckland, my heart leapt.
That wasn’t how everyone reacted. Because it’s one of those things that cost money, “ratepayer” money at that, and it isn’t made of bitumen, it got “baulked at”, “criticised”, and Auckland Council was accused of “splashing the cash”.
Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance spokesperson Sam Warren told the NZ Herald that the cost raised questions around spending priorities. “There’s no doubt the tree will look stunning - it should, given its incredibly high price tag,” Warren said.
“But considering the state of the books, and how everyone else has had to tighten their belts, it’s hard not to wonder if this is a ‘nice to have’ and not a necessity.”
The tree is going to cost $1.2m. No one clicks on a headline that says, “The council contribution is $400,000, which comes from the city centre targeted rate, a rate collected from residents and businesses in the central city, and not the wider ratepayer base”. “High price tags” for “nice to haves” are good for clicks, so that’s the angle that led.
As deputy mayor Desley Simpson articulated in a LinkedIn post, the city centre targeted rate take can only be spent on things in the central city. Heart of the City’s Viv Beck explained to RNZ that the cost was split three ways and that there is benefit for the many businesses who’ve had a tough year in attracting more people into the city during the biggest trading month of the year. Beck also pointed out that the tree is made of stainless steel and that it will be durable. The tree hopefully has a long life ahead of it.
Even if it didn’t have a bunch of foot traffic KPIs (probably) attached to it to justify its brazen attempt to bring spirit and joy to the city, and was just a “nice to have” that might make people feel a wee bit more connected to each other, I’d still support the tree.
Auckland constantly talks about itself as an international city. It wants to play on the same stage as other big international cities. You know what a lot of big international cities have? A honking great Christmas tree in the middle of town just for looking at and gathering around. I’ve been lucky to have two Christmases in New York, and the streets heave on Christmas Eve as thousands go to look at the tree at the Rockefeller Centre and the lights along Fifth Ave.
Hear me out, but some cities understand that big and spectacular things play a role in making a city feel big and spectacular. Big and spectacular things often beget more big and spectacular things, and weirdly they’re often quite good for making cities richer in more ways than one.
Bring on the tree lighting ceremony on November 23. Desley Simpson says the Auckland Council choir will be there (along with Anika Moa and Tami Nielson), and I reckon seeing that is not a "nice to have" but an absolute necessity.
It’s been a grim and tough year for so many people. A honking great civic Christmas tree isn’t going to magic that away, but maybe traditions, both grand and very silly, have a role to play in manifesting the international city we want Auckland to be.
It turns out that there’s something I love even more than Christmas, and that’s the city centre targeted rate being spent on activating the centre of the city.
This week on Behind the Story
Wellington editor Joel MacManus joins editor Madeleine Chapman to talk about his latest Cover Story, Inside the urgent race to solve homelessness in Aotearoa, and his time speaking to those on the frontline in the fight to solve homelessness once and for all.
Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.
Support longform journalism in New Zealand at The Spinoff
As homelessness hits an all-time high, The Spinoff's Joel MacManus’s longform investigation into the urgent race to solve homelessness in Aotearoa is the kind of vital journalism funded entirely by Spinoff members and donors. If it matters to you, and you're able to, please donate or become a member today.
You’re gonna miss the post office when it’s gone
Hera Lindsay Bird works at one of the 800+ NZ post retail outlets. It isn’t just a post office, but a bookshop with a side hustle. Their numbers may be dwindling and services reducing, but they are still pillars of their communities, she argues.
“Working behind the post office counter, I see the change firsthand. I wasn’t prepared for the vast number of young people who have never sent a letter, and need help with what to write on an envelope, and how to affix a stamp. In these heady post-pandemic days, we use a moistened sponge. As a society, the days of stamp-licking are behind us, and not even the new commemorative All Blacks range is enough to induce most customers to extend a wary tongue.”
The Spinoff Essay: The Nobel Prize in Not Beating Up Your Kids
Collectively we celebrate absolute scumbags, like Cecil Rhodes or Harvey Weinstein, sometimes people who are fine but overrated, like Jacinda Ardern or Rihanna, and sometimes they’re true greats doing invaluable work (Helen Kelly, Cormac McCarthy). Our metric, though, is always what these figures add to the world: great novels, fun pop music, a more robust trade union movement, new extractive colonies.
In this week’s essay, senior editor Madeleine Holden asks about the people whose main social contribution is subtractive. The silent sponges who soak up the violence and ugliness that was their sole inheritance, so that no one else is stained by it. Should we celebrate them too?
All 14 malls in Christchurch ranked from worst to best
If we ranked rankings again, this would easily be a podium finish. Joseph Harper’s surprisingly poetic account of all 14 malls in Christchurch is based on several factors, including retail selection, dining options, air quality, rare shops, family friendliness and raw mood. The hardest part of the ranking was determining what is and isn’t a mall. For the purposes of this ranking, he decided that “the malls” needed to have an indoor space shared by several shops, the kind of space where they might pop up a Christmas tree. Malls also need multiple food options, toilets, and a carpark. If unsure, the question he asked himself was, “Could Sylvia Park have given birth to this after an erotic tryst with the Meridian?”
The stories Spinoff readers spent the most time with this week
Joseph Harper ranks all 14 malls in Christchurch from worst to best
Joel MacManus takes us inside the urgent race to solve homelessness in Aotearoa
For the first time on The Spinoff, you can also listen to an audio version of this story read by Te Aihe Butler.
Madeleine Chapman reviews the first Coldplay gig at Eden Park
Our reporters in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch poignantly document the response to the abuse in care apology
Duncan Greive unpicks the story behind the ratings for Stuff’s ThreeNews
Recommended reads for your weekend
Hera Lindsay Bird gives advice on ending a cycle of misery caused by only befriending people nobody else can stand.
Some New Zealanders can’t afford nourishing food. Shanti Mathias takes a look at the data to see who they are.
The Toitū te Tiriti hīkoi reached Auckland on Wednesday, and Lyric Waiwiri-Smith was there, worrying about the wobbly bridge.
Gabi Lardies reports from the sidelines of the orgy involving the four funniest New Zealanders.
Indie-pop darling Heidi Simpson shares her “theatrical, chaotic and romantic” weekend playlist.
Toby Manhire presents ten irrefutable reasons for Trump to exempt plucky little New Zealand from import tax hikes.
Deaf Māori face exclusion from their cultural heritage due to an extreme shortage of trilingual interpreters, reports Liam Rātana.
Carl Shuker, author of new novel The Royal Free, divulges his favourite reads.
In light of Gloriavale’s reluctant acceptance of Winnie-the-Pooh, Claire Mabey argues in favour of anthropomorphic animal literature.
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders relationship with money, a 42-year-old lawyer shares how he and his family approach their finances.
Reader feedback of the week
“I too used to send books to people who like to read and who appreciated good writing. People who liked to read and think about the future, in what are becoming increasingly uncertain times. Friends and recipients used to call me "the country library service." I've stopped doing it. Its too expensive. The last straw with NZ Post (and I was a postman 50 years ago..) was seeing an older woman upset on the streets of Lyttelton because she could not afford to send her sister a birthday present. I wrote to the CEO of NZ Post...and heard nothing back. I guess its hard to live with the shame.”
— Gary McCormick
On the same story
”Love the post office! I need to get back in to writing letters...My friend's supervisor did regularly used to post live bees (on account of studying said bees). She'd frequently get calls from AgResearch asking her to "please come and pick up your parcel IMMEDIATELY, the buzzing is scaring the receptionists.”
Thanks for reading. Madeleine will be back next week.
— Anna Rawhiti-Connell