Looking back: Nelson in 2009

Was that it?

Trudging back through 2009 as The Nelson Mail saw it hardly inspires a sense of a vintage year coming to a reluctant and triumphant close, to be fondly recalled for long to come.

Really, the over-riding feeling about Nelson's year is one of fizzers and flops; of things that might have happened but didn't; of things that did happen that somebody thought shouldn't; of unsettled debts and unfinished business; of gloomy outlooks tempered by idle hopes that it could only get better once 2009 got out of the way.

Pessimism – and, occasionally, impending doom – was a familiar companion for long stretches: if the recession didn't get you (and it claimed more than a few), then swine flu would (in fact, it hardly did); or, failing that, climate change might.

In the search for memorable moments – or even a few faintly inspiring seconds – from the pages of the newspaper, the signs were hardly encouraging from the start: "Quietest New Year in years, police say," the Mail's page 1 headline of 366 days ago announced. The next page reported a couple of stingray attacks at the beach. Some symbolism suggests itself: perhaps something to do with diminished expectations punctuated by sudden bursts of pain.

Nevertheless, despite the grimly certain forebodings which emerged in the early weeks of the year and cropped up with numbing frequency thereafter – of dire times for wage-earners, the self-employed, the rich, the poor, the fit and the frail – people did by and large come out of their shells, get on with life, and do stuff. Occasionally, it even gave us memorable headlines. Here are a few.

JANUARY: "Council pays as recycling slumps."

If the message of impending doom hadn't already sunk in, here was a rude awakening to the popping of the economic bubble we had all been merrily bouncing along on for the past half-dozen years: suddenly, our rubbish really was worthless.

Crashing world commodity prices meant that all the bottles, aluminium cans, plastic containers and well-read Nelson Mails we had been diligently putting out for recycling collections each week suddenly had no willing buyers. The world's big industrial consumers of recyclables, principally in China, shut their order books and cancelled deliveries, leaving the ratepayer-subsidised collections here with a rapidly mounting stockpile of unwanted detritus.

The Nelson City Council, forced to cover the losses incurred by collecting the unwanted recyclables, was presented with a range of options, including abandoning collections altogether. It didn't get to that – by September, it was optimistically reporting that demand had rebounded and prices were on the way back up.

FEBRUARY: "Understandable art, please."

As improbable as it might now seem, one of the biggest local fusses of the year was over that hoariest and most elusive of debates: But is it art?

Predictably enough, it was everybody's favourite grouches at the heart of it all, the local Grey Power branch – the niggling, nagging, self-appointed watchdog of civic affairs around Nelson.

Grey Power committee member Daphne Stevens went on the front page of the Mail to pronounce her somewhat trenchant views about artworks in public places. Claiming to be speaking on behalf of the city's 14,000 Grey Power members, she labelled various of the artworks "grotesque" and said the city council should be spending money on more statues instead.

She soon discovered that at least some of those 14,000 didn't agree. Letters flooded the Nelson Mail from members who challenged her credentials to be so commenting; a momentary crisis faced Grey Power's committee, which first defended Mrs Stevens, then distanced itself from her (she resigned as the uproar built), but finally accepted her back into the fold. The group was, ultimately, defiant: as another of its committee members, Alf Newman, put it in an interview with the Mail in the fallout of the public art scrape, if people felt Grey Power was aggressive and attacking, "well c'est la vie".

MARCH: "Community scrambles in wake of job losses."

The economic gloom descended heavily as summer drew to an end: a double whammy of job cuts at two of Nelson's most prominent employers, first Sealord (180 jobs at its Vickerman St processing plant, with threats that the whole factory could close); then Nelson Pine Industries (60 out of 265 positions at its Richmond wood-processing factory, at a time when the company was preparing to celebrate its 25th anniversary). Ironically enough, the announcements came just days after the hype and hoo-hah of the Government's Job Summit.

While it was widely speculated that the Sealord cuts were more to do with a restructuring strategy than the economic climate, the timber processor's problems were directly linked to the collapsing world demand for wood in the construction and furniture industries. Hundreds more lay-offs would hit the region over the coming months – large and small – but early March was the low point. As the Mail itself summed up in an editorial after that dreary few days: "It's been a week that most of us would rather forget. Unfortunately, that means it is the sort of week that many Nelsonians will remember for a long, long time."

APRIL: "Blast wrecks shop."

The gas explosion which wrecked the Milton Street Fish and Chip Cafe just on Easter, badly injuring its owner, Ron Clark, brought high drama to the normally peaceful heart of the Wood – but also demonstrated the strong community spirit that still thrives in much of Nelson, as neighbours and customers rallied to Mr Clark's aid. Many who witnessed the event likened it to a bomb going off, including Mr Clark himself, who staged a remarkable recovery after being treated for burns. "I didn't think gas. I thought, `Someone's dropped a bomb and I'm on fire'," he told the Mail from his hospital bed days after.

While he admitted to being badly affected by the explosion – caused by an undetected gas leak – he was determined to keep serving fish and chips to the people of the Wood, and was back in business in a rebuilt store six months later.

In an entirely different context, fish and chips again made headlines just days later in the Mail: the paper ran an expose on the exorbitant cost of the popular takeaway here compared to many other New Zealand cities. Local fish and chip retailers were defensive of their pricing; hopes of a popular uprising by aggrieved greasie-lovers were in vain. We can only console ourselves with the message from one defiant chippie owner who, comparing his product to the cheaper version available in Christchurch, declared: "Their food down there is s..., to put it mildly."

MAY: "Research burnt in `paranoia'."

More details of the strange world of Philip Whitley emerged – the Richmond man who claimed to have developed a world-changing piece of technology, to compress data allowing its storage and transfer with virtually no loss of information.

Whitley has been facing various investigations after his claims started to unravel around 2007 – most serious a Serious Fraud Office prosecution, alleging he had made false statements in promoting his business. Investors who believed his claims had stumped up more than $5 million to develop the technology.

The SFO case was put to a depositions hearing in May, setting out in detail for the first time the case against Whitley.

The story included that he had suffered a brain disease while in the final stages of first developing the technology, and had taken years to recover and retrieve his secrets; that he had attracted backing from a group of Nelson businessmen who believed he could be sitting on a hugely valuable breakthrough; that multinational companies were expressing interest; that funds from his company were used to help pay for a multimillion-dollar house, eight cars and household furnishings and appliances; and that Whitley eventually destroyed his plans after becoming paranoid that "the Russians" were after them.

The depositions hearing ended with Whitley's lawyer conceding that there was a case to answer when it eventually goes to trial, expected to be next month, but adding: "He will vigorously defend the charges at trial."

JUNE: "Nineteen isolated as flu spreads."

If swine flu was one of the great anti-climaxes of 2009, it wasn't for want of trying. Its effects might have been widely reported to be unspectacular (some of its victims reported it to be not much worse than a heavy cold), its spread underwhelming, but it was still officially declared a global pandemic and health officials here swung into action with carefully prepared pandemic plans, to stave off a potential calamity. Perhaps they did, despite the cynics who smelled yet another media beat-up of over-stated threats.

Most of the effects locally were felt by people who had travelled back to Nelson from areas where they may have been exposed to the illness and found themselves in quarantine at home. But there were other consequences: principally the depressing revelation of how many adults needed to be reminded of the lessons from their kindergarten days, about washing their hands after going to the toilet, covering their mouths when they sneezed, and blowing their noses into tissues.

At last report, the actual number of cases of the flu (H1N1, as the authorities like to call it) confirmed in Nelson had not topped 100.

JULY: "Fresh push for council merger study."

The council amalgamation debate may have hung around for longer than most people care to remember, but Nelson city councillor Aldo Miccio still managed to find life in it, with his petition calling for an inquiry into the future of local government in Nelson-Tasman – widely seen as an attempt to force a merger of the Tasman District Council and Nelson City Council. While Mr Miccio claimed purity in his motives, saying he wanted nothing more than for an impartial body to look at the matter, his campaign quickly proved the question was as divisive as ever.

He had some predictable backing in Nelson, including from various businesspeople and the MP, Nick Smith; as predictably, the response from some in Tasman, including Tasman District Council, was openly hostile, with that council's mayor and chief executive running interference on the idea, with various allegations about the costs Mr Miccio would be opening the region up to.

Even his own council was at best lukewarm about his tactics; inevitable speculation followed that Mr Miccio was lining himself up for a tilt at the mayoralty in 2010.

Still, he got his signatures, eventually – the 10 per cent of registered voters in both Nelson and Tasman needed before the Local Government Commission will consider the petition – although again, his critics were unimpressed, pointing out it took four months to get past the threshold. The petition forms after passing scrutiny will be sent to the commission next month. If it agrees to conduct an investigation, public hearings will be required and any proposals for change put to a referendum, a process which will take many, many months.

AUGUST: "Not too late to save night class funding."

Sleeper issue or political beat-up? Whatever the true significance of the Government's decision to slash funding for "hobby" night classes, it became an on-going irritation for Education Minister Anne Tolley and her colleagues, as those affected by the cuts to Adult and Community Education protested loudly. In Nelson, the Mail seized the issue and found no shortage of people willing to complain. As the wife of one night-school tutor put it: "It undermines the effort and passion that people put into running these. It is an insult to them and an insult to the people that do them."

Labour's Nelson-based MP, Maryan Street, got stuck in, too, fronting a 50,000-signature petition demanding the cuts be reversed – and giving the National Party the excuse to dismiss the backlash as a political ploy. Mrs Tolley might have been on the defensive, but she wasn't budging. "I don't believe that the $16 million [being cut from night schools] is going to completely drive the country into the ground," she insisted. "There just isn't the money to fund hobby courses."

SEPTEMBER: "City sites in treaty package."

If one event in 2009 is likely to shape the Nelson region for decades to come, it is surely the announcement of the terms of the Treaty of Waitangi settlement between the Crown and the top of the south's various iwi. First announced in February, a year-long process was then triggered towards getting a deed of settlement signed (expected to be in February this year) for the $300 million compensation package. In September, some details emerged of the shape and extent of that compensation, in a briefing prepared by the Office of Treaty Settlements. The commercial elements included rights in various forms to many dozens of Crown-owned properties across the top of the south, including numerous schools and government offices; and purchase rights to 78,000 hectares of Crown forest land.

As Wakatu Incorporation general manager Ropata Taylor put it: "The landscape is changing as we know it. We are going through a transformation in the top of the South Island."

OCTOBER: "Sign up and save our team."

Nobody could claim that the Tasman Makos have enjoyed a sparkling run through rugby's premier provincial competition. After its well-canvassed financial crisis and internal ructions in 2008, including squeaking out of being removed from the Air New Zealand Cup, the Makos' parent union faced a new threat – the New Zealand Rugby Union and its ambitions to restructure its provincial competition. Four teams faced relegation to a second-tier contest. It looked like the Makos' number was finally up.

What the NZRU apparently didn't count on was a three-pronged fightback: on the field (with the Makos playing some impressive rugby, including a historic win over Auckland); through legal channels (claims of written undertakings made to the Tasman union by the NZRU); and via a public mobilisation.

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