LIFE WITHOUT LIMITS KAHORE E MUTUNGA KI TE ORA

Blind Low Vision NZ is the only organisation who train and breed guide dogs for Kiwis with vision loss. We receive no government funding for Blind Low Vision NZ Guide Dogs.

To raise funds for building a new and fit-for-purpose kennel for guide dogs in training, Blind Low Vision NZ are launching Paws For Purpose. With the support of some of Aotearoa New Zealand's greatest artists, we have upcycled our old Trudy Dog collection boxes and turned them into one-off, unique works of art. By auctioning off these genuine pieces of Kiwiana collector’s items, we can ensure a greater number of guide dogs graduate each year.

Spot these strikingly artistic guide dogs in shop windows, restaurants, and shopping malls around Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland through the month of March. Around 40 artists from across Aotearoa New Zealand, including Dick Frizzell, Ian Mune, Tim Christie, Shane Walker, Anna Leyland, Francis Hooper, Dame Denise L’Estrange-Corbet have collaborated with Blind Low Vision NZ to help raise funds to have more guide dogs.

While our Trudy Dogs are embarking on a new LEASH of life, our guide dogs in training will grow to become working guide dogs, ready to take on the role of providing independence to Kiwis who are blind or have low vision. tinyurl.com/PawsForPurposeAuction

Why now?

A guide dog gives freedom, independence, and confidence to a New Zealander with vision loss. There are currently 180,000 New Zealanders who are blind, deafblind or have low vision. It’s estimated that due to the ageing population this number will increase to 225,000 by 2028.

Each year, Blind Low Vision NZ breed around 100 potential guide dogs, of which around 40 will graduate. However, each year they also have a waiting list of up to 50 New Zealanders waiting for a guide dog to support them to live independent lives. The current waiting time to receive a guide dog is around two years. The anticipated increased demand over the coming years will extend the waiting time unless more dogs can be successfully trained as guide dogs.

@GuideDogsNZ @BlindLowVisionNZ

Secure your own piece of Kiwiana

Our coin collection dogs are now obsolete, so Blind Low Vision NZ has partnered with Kiwi artists to create one-off, unique pieces of art that will be displayed in venues around central Auckland throughout March. Follow the interactive ‘Puppy Dogs Trail’, finding dogs and sharing via social media to raise awareness.

PLUS join our online auction to secure your own piece of Kiwiana and help raise valuable funds for Blind Low Vision NZ Guide Dogs.

Find out more tinyurl.com/PawsForPurposeAuction

OR scan the QR code to bid. T&Cs apply. Online auction 22/03/23.

Bid

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Auckland Central MP

At the time of writing, we are in a National State of Emergency. Aotearoa New Zealand has been overwhelmingly affected by both the flooding events from the end of January, and Cyclone Gabrielle.

More than 3,000 people are still unaccounted for. The lives lost and livelihoods upended are a tragedy for our communities, whānau and friends.

I want to acknowledge the sheer exhaustion many are feeling. After nearly three years of grappling with Covid-19, the arrival of not one but two climate-change amplified natural disasters can feel totally overwhelming. Human connection, talking through problems, finding some recreation and rest are all seemingly silly but scientifically critical to maintaining mental wellbeing throughout disasters. Family and friends are good to turn to, but please always know you can call or text 1737 for help when you need it.

When light first broke on Saturday morning after the floods, I walked through Ponsonby and the Bays’ backstreets, through our city centre and downtown to check in with locals, business owners and residents. It was clear then that the scale of disruption and devastation would sit with us for a long time. Since then, Cyclone Gabrielle has brought an even larger scale of destruction across the North Island.

Our continuing work must be connecting people to the support and services they need, along with simultaneously rebuilding our neighbourhoods for greater climate resilience while urgently curbing carbon emissions. We must walk and chew gum. Adaptation is crucial, given the amount of climate changing emissions already spewed into the atmosphere, but it cannot come at the expense of mitigating emissions. That’s because, ultimately, you can’t adapt to an unliveable climate.

The “system” wasn’t working before the flooding and it didn’t work during. We can choose whether it works in the future. All of it is political because it’s about the legacy of decisions that have been made on all of our behalf.

People in our communities will be fixing their homes and finding new ones and navigating insurance claims and under financial strain for months to come. We can’t keep thinking that all we need to do is rearrange the deck chairs. We need a new boat. It is encouraging that the mayor has announced a proposed additional $20 million in his annual budget proposal for the flood response. There’s still a long way to go to address the decades of infrastructural underinvestment though, which the budget still largely reflects. You see this in simultaneous proposals like stalling the water quality targeted rate, estimated to invest $361 million in major storm and wastewater improvements over a decade. This is very literally happening in our backyard right now, with new pipes separating pipes in St Marys and Herne Bay and St Mary’s Bay and Masefield Beach improvements to reduce overflow from over 100 times a year, to 20 in stage one and 6 in stage two. We can’t afford any more delays.

The decisions made now will exacerbate or mitigate climate change and the impacts we feel from more extreme weather events. We need all levels of governance making long-term, intergenerational decisions that will outlive their personal polling concerns.

You may have seen Green Co-Leader, James Shaw, characteristically reaching across the aisle for cross-party support on the Climate Adaptation Bill which will finally deal to long term, expensive and difficult problems such as managing coastal retreat. You will continue to see the Greens working for a warrant of fitness for rental homes, especially critical in the wake of a crisis likely to make our already-damp homes even damper, and with it greater risk to health of the 1.4million renters in this country. We will continue to fight for more urban food farms, restoring wetlands, density done well, daylighting streams (Waihorotiu Queen Street, anyone?) and to redistribute resources to the community frontlines that responded to these disasters faster and more efficiently than ‘the system’ could ever hope to.

My office, as always, is here to help through the bad times and the good. Don’t hesitate to send us an email or give us a ring if there’s anything we can do to assist you.

(CHLÖE SWARBRICK)  PN

CHLÖE SWARBRICK, T: 09 378 4810, E: chloe.swarbrick@parliament.govt.nz www.greens.org.nz/chloe_swarbrick

ROSS THORBY: NAPIER WHERE THE EARTH MOVES

My grandmother was a nurse in Napier when the 1931 quake struck. Her letter, written in the aftermath, is part of family folklore and now resides in the Napier Museum.

Rostered to work that day, she had swapped her shift with one of her work colleagues. At 10.47 am, while walking along the road, she was tossed like a rag doll to the ground as it rose up to meet her. Buildings around her collapsed and the earth rolled in a series of waves as though she was on a stormy ocean.

She survived, albeit with a few scrapes. Alas, her colleague did not, perishing in the nurses home on the hill that collapsed along with the hospital and maternity home.

With the immediate help from the sailors of the naval ship Veronica, the surviving nurses and doctors set up an outdoor hospital on the local raceway. Nan was built of stern stuff and a little earthquake was never going to hold her back.

But the Napier earthquake had a silver lining for the area. All of the death and destruction aside, what happened next turned the region into a national treasure and one that is celebrated around the world today.

The original seaside town, founded in 1855 and called Ahuriri, had grown up organically. It was a rag-tag collection of Victorian and Colonial buildings, some brick but most weatherboard and all built mainly on a small parcel of swampy land between the sea and an inner harbour.

When the earthquake struck with the force of 100 million tons of TNT, the shop fronts and verandahs all collapsed on themselves. What wasn’t leveled in the quake was destroyed in the fires that followed, completely obliterating the town leaving a ghostly smoking ruin that must have reminded the survivors of a first World War battlefield - smoky, desolate, apocalyptic.

Fortunately for the city fathers, the force of the quake also pushed 4000 hectares of fresh land up out of the sea where the new city could be built and expanded.

The Great Depression was in full force in New Zealand at that time and had hit the area hard, but it had left an available labour force ready and willing to work on the rebuild. The government would pour a massive amount of money into the area - a much needed boost to the economy and mouths of hungry families.

Over the next three years, 111 buildings would rise from the ashes and the saving grace was that it was the period of “Art Deco” - a ten year movement that celebrated maritime and nature, and which encompassed all manners of life - jewelry, art, sculpture, fashion and particularly architecture.

Buildings whose style would evoke the great ocean liners of the time, including elements from nature and mathematics, sprung up out of the destruction - circular windows, clean lines, geometric patterns and pastel colours, all of which helped create the most modern town in the country.

It certainly remains one of the most attractive.

In amongst the Te Mata Estate parks, fountains, swimming pools and BBQ areas in nearby Havelock North, Carlotta and I had set up camp alongside my regular traveling companions, six campers and caravans. But we wanted to do as tourists do and visit the attractions of one of the largest and best preserved Art Deco cities in the world.

Rolling up into the centre of the city, we were struck by the many Art Deco events that were being carried on for our pleasure, and also by the way that the city has embraced its unique perspective. Guides and locals dressed in period costume plied tours of the town's many sights, women in drop waisted dresses, cloche hats and Mary Jane shoes, men in flat caps and tweeds, beckoned shoppers from renovated and perfectly preserved doorways. It was all very atmospheric and extremely photogenic. You could tell the tourists - they, dressed in modern clothing, looked bemused.

Lined up along the waterfront was the local Classic Car Club, displaying their vintage Studebakers and Chevrolets, Fords and Daimlers, with drivers also in costume, ready to take the hapless tourist on a spin.

Between the set pieces and with vignettes all over the town center, I found myself looking for Professor Plum, a candlestick and a body. Where was Hercule Poirot when you needed him?

Seeing our own country from the eyes of a visitor, gives you an appreciation of our distinct place in the world - but I am beginning to get itchy feet for the deck of a cruise ship.

(ROSS THORBY)  PN

UNTIL END OF MARCH

BEDFORD SODA & LIQUOR $20 beer jugs, $8 Sauvignon Blanc, Rose Syrah & Bedford Larger

THE BLUE BREEZE INN $18 Lychee and Lemongrass Margarita & Pineapple G&T

TOKYO CLUB $15 Watermelon Chu Hi BURGER BURGER $35 Aperol & White Sangria Carafes

PONSONBY CREPES $5 Pastis, $13 Kir Royale EL SIZZLING CHORIZO $20 Loaded Fries & Beer

OLAS $25 combo Daiquiri & Tostones BIRD ON A WIRE $15 Buttermilk Fried Chicken Special CHOP CHOP $18 Lychee and Lemongrass Margarita

PONSONBY PARK+ MARCH 2023 UPDATE

As the 20th of the month deadline for this update nears, I sit at my Dad’s dining table in the Manawatu and wonder what to say and even where to begin.

I drove down from Auckland on Thursday 26th of January to scoot ahead of the anniversary weekend traffic. Since then it feels as if the world has been turned upside down with the shocking flooding in Auckland on the 27th, a catastrophic earthquake in Turkey and Syria, and the ongoing grim devastation caused by Cyclone Gabrielle in significant parts of the North Island. All this compounded for me by my Dad having a bad fall on the 30th that resulted in hip surgery and now an uncertain recovery. All these unpredictable events serve to remind us just how precious life is and underline the slender thread on which it hangs.

We now collectively wonder what best to do, how to help, and where our efforts can most effectively be placed. Sitting here in a dry and functioning house, with access to food, communications, being with friends and loved ones seems like an extreme luxury right now. My hope is that we will collectively rise to the challenge of looking after everyone and that we look after them well, for as long as it takes with consideration and empathy.

He waka eke noa - we are all in this together.

It is at times such as these that we are reminded our communities are our lifeline and support. Problems can be solved and issues resolved by finding solutions through creative thinking, adaptability, and perseverance. Our Community-Led design group for Ponsonby Park*, the new civic space at 254 Ponsonby Road wishes everyone well-supported times ahead as we begin to address the mountain of problems we now collectively face. Go well, and stay safe. Arohanui.

He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata. He tangata. He tangata.

What is the most important thing in the world? It is people. It is people. It is people.

* The Community-Led design group will have presented to the Waitematā Local Board an overview of the Ponsonby Park project to date at their scheduled Board meeting on 21 February. Being post deadline, this will be reported back in next month’s update. (JENNIFER WARD)  PN www.254ponsonbyrd.org.nz