Let's go fly a kite, Mr Key

I rarely take a political line in my role as Dean (or any ecclesiastical role). I spent too many years in Melbourne where I saw the damage, all but irreparable, that was done when the Roman Catholic Archbishop Daniel Mannix took a stand against Communism in 1954, splitting the Labor (sic) Party and condemning the Left of politics to the wilderness for thirty years.  As a side-effect of his action he raised much public ire against the Roman Catholic Church, so that it, too, was marginalised in many social circles. Clergy for Rowling was small bacon compared to Mannix’s venture into politics (though just three years ago I was asked to take the funeral of a man who had never revisited a church since Clergy for Rowling).

This is not to say I will not speak out on issues of political significance, whether they be the politics of left or right. I have long muttered about the rights of West Papua to independence (a cause vigorously ignored by govern­ments of Left and Right), about homosexual law reform and its successor marriage law reform, about ecological and economic issues and about others matters of social justice.

But when I find Prime Minister John Key suggesting that he might use taxpayer money to bail out SkyCity’s $140+ million shortfall in building a convention centre I am almost – almost – at a loss for words. Mr Key, if media are to believed, has indicated that Sky City’s calculation has left them with two alternatives:

Option one would be to say to Sky City, 'Build the convention centre exactly at the price that we all agreed, on the conditions of the deal that we agreed', but it would be smaller I think than we had hoped and less attractive.

"Or the second option is to see if there's any way of filling that hole and to identify how big that hole is, and that's the process we're going through.”

I suggest a third option: SkyCity are an epiphytic (parasitic) organization who contribute to the destruction of the lives of those who cannot control their gambling. If out of the sheer monstrosity of their profits SkyCity can’t find a paltry $140 million then leave the tax-payer alone. It’s time SkyCity made a useful contribution to society, redress for lives sucked dry. They should pull out of the project and hand the vacant or under-developed block of prestige inner-city land to the Government. They in turn  should be duty-bound to give it back to the people: as a park. Green it over. Put a water feature in. Invite some birds to sing. Fly a kite, like Mary Poppins. Perhaps discretely place a budgeting / financial counselling centre there, but otherwise turn it to a park. Build space, build peace, build room for meaning and for the ingredients of truth so lamentably absent in public discourse.

There let human beings find peace and space amidst the chaos of commerce gone mad. At the taxpayers’ expense. I’d buy that.