Day 8: Wednesday, Feb 27, North Palmerston

Just one of the many landscapes we passed through on the road.

On Wednesday we woke up to be hit by the smell of sulfur, a sign that the wind must have changed and we were now downwind of some hot spring. Places here don’t have screen windows. Of all the houses/hostels where we have stayed or visited, only one had screens on the windows. They just live with flies and other bugs, and one person had little decorative mesh covers that they put over the food to keep the flies off the food.

We drove from Rotorua to Wellington with a stop at Palmerston North. Our drive took us up and down and all around. The road was rarely straight for more than a half kilometer. We crossed through what one Kiwi called the “desert road” – basically like driving through a dry sub-alpine area that is an army training base on either side.

Driving here is a pain. A motorway here (their most prominent road, like our interstate) is two lanes undivided. They do have “passing bays” – spots where a third lane appears so you can pass. They typically put these on uphill spots. The idea is that slow trucks won’t be going as fast and therefore it’s a prime time to pass them. It’s a good idea in theory, but our car is blessed with a go-kart engine and a transmission that thinks downshifting is a mortal sin. In addition, Kiwis seem to be very considerate drivers when it comes to using turn signals, turning off high-beams as soon as you see someone, etc., but they have a habit of driving 15 under the speed limit until they reach a passing bay, accelerating to the speed limit, and then drifting back to the slower speed at the end of the passing bay. I really need red shells. I haven’t seen gas prices vary by more than a penny over the length and breadth of the island, which makes me wonder if there is some sort of price control in place. Gas is NZ$1.73 or $1.74 a liter or about US$5.50/gal. Instead of competing on price, each gas chain has a deal with a local grocery, and they are all the same: if you buy NZ$40 or more at the grocery, you get a coupon for 4 cents off per liter at your next gas purchase at a certain gas chain. If you’re cheap, your gas habits coincide with your grocery habits. Gas in Singapore worked the same way except they competed on percentage discounts (and I don’t think the discounts were linked to grocery stores).

Kiwi polish and Brasso in the NZ Army Museum. Some things never change.

We hit the NZ Army Museum on our way down. It was a pretty good museum and highlighted portions of the war that you don’t typically focus on in the U.S. simply because our boys weren’t there or they didn’t seem pivotal to us. NZ had a love/hate relationship with the Marines during the war because Marines landed in NZ to protect from a Japanese attack (since all the NZ boys were already in Europe). They liked the Americans in general but they got the “overpayed, oversexed, over here” rap.

It was then on to Palmerston North. The family we met in Auckland had given us the name of some family friends and had said we should stop by, so we arranged to eat dinner there. This was a family of six (but two boys were grown and gone), and it turned out that William knew their daughter through people he worked with. How weird is that? The dad is from CA, the mom is a Kiwi. They also have several extra foster kids and they had invited another family over for dinner, so it was a full house. The dad kept an eye on politics and had some interesting comments. Apparently the House of Representatives (their unicameral legislative body) is composed of half party representatives. (If you remember from before, each person gets two votes: one for a party, one for a person. At the time, however, I thought there were only 10 or 20 party representative slots.) Also, the party vote doesn’t tell you what proportion of the party representatives you get, the result is the proportion of the total representatives you get. Here’s the way it works:

Before the election each party makes up a list of who it would like in Parliament in order of priority.

1) The people vote (and get their little sticker) and votes are tallied

2) Each party assesses its percentage of the party vote

Now we’ll see how the World Travel Party did:

3) The World Travel Party (better known as WTP) got 20% of the vote. This means that it gets 24 representatives (20% of 120).

4) Several members of the WTP won their individual electorates (like districts). Captain Cook, Edmund Hillary, and David Clayton won their respective electorates.

5) These three get their seats, so 3 of the 24 WTP spots are taken.

6) The WTP then goes down the list that it made up and fills the rest of its seats with people of the party’s choice.

The result is that winning an electorate is only important if you are either low on your party’s list or if your party does poorly in the party vote. If you are number 3 on your party’s list and you win your electorate, it really doesn’t do anything. If your party wins 20 seats, you are number 50 on their list, and you win your electorate, the result is that you get your seat (and count as one of the party’s 20 spots) and the party just has to live with it.

The result is very strict party loyalty. It also results in party hacks and lapdogs being in Parliament. Someone said it sometimes means that the system doesn’t choose good leaders because people advance by being unquestioning followers. You cannot vote against your party without dire consequences (probably they remove you from the party at the next election and you’re out in the cold) unless a vote is designated a “conscience vote.” (I’m not sure who decides this, and it’s rare.) It also makes for some strange outcomes: there is a member of the Green Party who was a professional protester and who was so disruptive that the court issued a standing order that this person was not allowed on Parliament grounds (and this is in a very green country, so the person must have been a real pain). However, they were one of the top people on the Green Party list, so in a recent election they became an MP!

Another thing I had noticed prior to this but was emphasized on the drive was that the Maori language is not only alive and kicking, but it could be a big help to know it. New Zealand’s history really is that of a merger of sorts between the whites (or pakeha in Maori) and the Maori; this is reflected in names. At least half of the places kept their Maori names. This makes it difficult for me because the names of places are (to me) meaningless combinations of unfamiliar sounds. Names in Maori typically have something to do with the place, like Lake of Blue Waters or something like that. However, since I don’t know this, it is hard for me to remember place names. Since I have read most of the names in travel books before I hear them, I frequently don’t understand when people talk about a place because their pronunciation doesn’t match what I imagined in my mind when reading the word.