What Piha's fight for our campground reminded me about courage, risk, collective responsibility, and the kind of country we still have it in us to be. By Jenene Crossan.
This time last year I was licking my wounds from a different kind of affliction. I had fought and lost for something I wholly believed in and had thrown my whole self at. I was forced to walk away from something I knew to be true, that I could pull off, and that those who most needed me to succeed agreed was the path to take. But for those who held the power, the perceived risk outweighed the possibility of reward. They opted to shrink, rather than expand.
There is something particularly galling about having to close the door on something that feels fundamental, as though you’re giving up on a core belief. It rattled me. I certainly was not used to giving up on a good fight. The spirit in me that I’ve come to know felt extremely let down, and the internal conflict lasted well beyond the measure of the battle.
Every other week or so, someone party to this small window of my time picks up the phone or sends me something - the embers of the loyalty they felt from me to their plight still simmering away. I guess that’s the sign of your heart being in the right place, that even after the dust has settled and the armour has been hung back up, there are those who remember how together you stood up for something. Winning was the goal, but even in the loss, the solidarity endured.
The little town where I live, Piha, was bracing for a similar outcome. Up against the Goliath might and bureaucracy of council, it felt inevitable that the fate of our beloved campground was predetermined, and unsticking the tape an impossible task. Our expectations were being managed accordingly.
Those among us who have tried to change a broken system (like my aforementioned example), or manage change in a heavily hierarchical, politicised environment, will know that navigating the mundane is difficult enough, let alone trying to dissolve and repair an order that has come from within to ‘reduce risk’. It’s like trying to catch an echo. It bounces from wall to wall, never really knowing where the cry began.
In these moments it is easy to let outrage be the driver, and indeed our hood has had plenty of that as fuel. The fate of the campground has been the basis of many conversations at the store, the beach, the bowler, the RSA and online, in our forums and back channels.
Rare it is to find such a groundswell of common ground, especially in a place that prides itself on opinions held firmly and delivered with gusto. Piha is legendary for many things, and having an opinion-to-go is one of them. Here it is important to be sure of yourself before espousing one. There is always someone willing and able to remind you of what is believed to be true, and their version of it.
I say that with a very clear appreciation of why I actually love that about our community. I think it is what makes us an interesting, loving, dedicated, a survivalist-instinct kind of place to be. Come here for the community, it has a mighty heart.
I often point to the upside of living in a place where people are rescued (from the surf), which is that you get to live in a place where rescuers live. They put themselves at risk for strangers as a matter of duty, but also out of service and kindness. Their relationship to risk is inspiring. I have witnessed many times in my six years of living here the lengths people will go to in order to bring back someone’s loved one, it reminds you of humanity and how powerful it can be.
That same spirit saved our campground.
At the heart of it, our camp mother, Fiona Anderson. She stood up and spoke clearly, plainly, specifically and calmly about what the facts of the matter were. In doing this, her leadership became an anchor, pulling towards her the community who listened, asked questions, offered additional guidance and support, then hitched their wagons to hers.
Those of us with platforms, voices and capability started to crank up our own echo machine, ensuring that the essence of the situation would be heard well. Retelling a position is notoriously difficult, as it changes hands and channels, it often loses its essence or veers from the point.
Our community asked others beyond the Waitākeres to imagine the broader ramifications of allowing the campground to close. That the tea leaves for other council-owned assets would be read, and managed retreat by proxy would have begun. Something deeply familiar to kiwis was invoked - our way of life, our childhood memories and the nostalgia of camping holidays.
Again, the cries were reasonable, the fight was pretty clean and the voices were clear. The pressure did not let up, even when it felt hopeless, the chances of success seemed too slim and the odds were stacked too greatly towards ‘the fear of risk’.
What I know about risk is that our collective appetite for it has waned.
Once upon a time we were a nation of she’ll-be-rights, what-could-possibly-go-wrongs and let’s-give-it-a-go-anyhows. The concept of number eight wire mentality is that we are able to make do with very little and turn it into quite a lot. Our capacity for innovation is directly related to our bravery, creativity and self-belief. It was born out of necessity and geographic isolation, and over time became embedded in our wairua.
Some may say that tall poppy syndrome is to blame for our reduction in devil-may-care attitude, and perhaps it’s true. When a local newsreader this week became front-page news due to not paying his rent on time, I did wonder if it was a signal of how far we have wandered from our core. Whilst it is easy to point to the media and say “this is on them”, the media relies on a symbiotic commercial model that involves your eyeballs. Without them, they have no story - that is the attention economy at play and you’re in the game.
Whether we like it or not, Aotearoa New Zealand has fallen for the same trickery that the rest of the world has, where clickbait outrage is now how we jump from moment to moment. Our news cycle is faster than ever, and little pause is given to broader consequences, longer-term implications and the other side of the coin. We see, believe, buy into and debate at speed, chewing up and spitting back out, and onto the next drama. It’s exhausting and depressing. No wonder we all feel a bit meh.
And I wonder whether this constant appetite for outrage that we have allowed into our rhetoric has made us simultaneously more fearful of taking risks and less willing to stand behind those who do. Is that too harsh? I don’t think so. We can all recognise it in ourselves. Is it too late? I don’t think so either.
I think it is entirely possible to come back from the ledge of seeming inevitability and recognise that we do still hold some power to have our distinctively unique New Zealand-esque nature shine through. I look to the power of the people who stood up and fought for Piha and won as a brilliant example. A parable for our upcoming election, perhaps.
On Thursday, one hundred and fifty Piha’ians made their way to Titirangi and calmly explained the facts of the matter. Six and a half thousand of you signed the petition, showing that we were not just some small town being typically noisy - that it mattered beyond our sanctuary and impacted many more. Twenty-six people stood up and spoke clearly and concisely, laid bare the facts and demonstrated with reason what must be seen to be true. Pride brimmed.
The elected officials for our community listened, took it on board and voted in favour of what their community asked them to do. They voted against the legal weight of risk, a pressure so forceful that most would refuse to hold it up and could reasonably say, “that is not worth it for me”.
Personal risk, where their decision becomes one they must carry, and sleep at night with, through storms, bad weather and the minute possibility of a negative outcome. They nonetheless said, okay, I’ll carry that with you. How brave they were to do that. Would you? Could you? It’s a worthy ask of all of us. Because if, for whatever reason, we cannot, we rely on others to do so for us. That is our social contract.
But they did so knowing that with them were our first responders, our community leaders, and our systems and processes already in place, checked, balanced, considered and practised regularly to support them so they did not carry it alone.
The fire station that practises drills every Monday. The committees that meet and go over the conditions, what may change and how they may handle it. They are the lifeguards beyond our beach, keeping an eye out on conditions as they change and adjusting accordingly. They are not simply governed by a blanket of ‘too much risk, avoid at all costs’. They are driven by a balancing of risk versus reward, and managing it accordingly.
And perhaps that’s the part we have been forgetting. Courage is not the absence of risk, nor is it the reckless dismissal of it. It is the willingness to understand it, prepare for it, share the responsibility and then, when the case is strong enough, act bravely together.
All of this is to say, Aotearoa New Zealand can, and I hope will, do the same.
In the face of an election that is dividing people into a rugged individualism that we should not have bought into, whereby looking after self is more important than caring for the collective, I believe we don’t have to continue down the path we’ve been on that will make us just like everywhere else.
It is entirely feasible that we can actually do something magnificent and brave here in Aotearoa, and stand up for what we believe to be our nature. To vote in a direction that is opposite to the world’s trends. That says it is not just reasonable, but expected, that people who live here care for the greater good as they go.
We are strong-willed, we are brave, we are creative, we are kind, we are the kind of people who want to fight for each other and hope someone will fight for us when the time comes. We are the kind of people who turn up and help out, spin a yarn, offer a lift, welcome someone in. Listen carefully to what those who seek your vote are saying about how we should show up for those who need it most.
We should be a nation that takes risks on people and gets behind them, willing them to succeed, not fail. We love to cheer for the underdog and fight as mighty.
This is still our heart. We have not drifted too far from it. We can actually course-correct and come back to kindness as central to our wairua. That kindness is not weakness; it is, in fact, the opposite. And in a world determined to be nihilistic, we can be the glimmer of hope that it could still turn out okay. Imagine that.
Here in the little town that could, Piha has shown us that it's still possible. You do actually have more power, than you think.
