Joanne McNeill: Rugby brings mass distraction

If only the Rugby World Cup had started sooner, rugby fever might have eclipsed the politically inconvenient mass exodus of asylum seekers escaping from war-torn North Africa and flooding into Europe, says Joanne McNeill.

While justifying stage-managing the breathless announcement of the All Blacks World Cup team at Parliament, Prime Minister John Key said: "The All Blacks are admired by every New Zealander."

I have news for him. I'd much rather watch paint dry than rugby and I know I am not alone, although admittedly a wily PM could score votes by painting himself as the No1 All Black fan boy.

There are only two good things about rugby.

One: Cathartic ritual combat by a handful of branded, thuggish athletes is marginally preferable to the actual war it symbolises and two; when big rugby games are broadcast live there's no traffic.

Assumedly police, louts and ordinary motorists alike are glued to screens, leaving quiet roads free for nervous, isolated old women to drive out and party up large for a change.

Karl Marx (1818-83) said something which translates roughly to, "religion is the opium of the masses". In largely secular 21st century New Zealand rugby is the stupefying drug of choice - a weapon of mass distraction more potent than flag selection.

Sportspeople were appointed to the flag selection panel but no designers, vexillologists or semiotics experts. Then the All Black captain was consulted as to his preference from the underwhelming short-listed designs.

This is like appointing a team of artists, philosophers and midwives to select the All Blacks' World Cup side then asking Lorde to comment on its prospects.

If only the Rugby World Cup had started sooner, rugby fever might have eclipsed the politically inconvenient mass exodus of asylum seekers escaping from war-torn North Africa and flooding into Europe.

As it is though, even beefcake shots of All Blacks in designer undies failed to completely upstage heartbreaking images of dead babies washed up on beaches like so much flotsam, or reports of the Holocaust-like betrayal of exhausted escapees in Budapest, initially prevented from catching trains out of hostile Hungary, finally allowed on board only to find they'd been transported instead to a razor-wired internment camp.

If his official biography is to be believed, Key's mother fled Austria to escape Nazi persecution of Jews in World War II.

Many successful people who transcend earlier adversity (former Social Development Minister Paula Bennett comes to mind too) appear to think they did it all by themselves, forgetting the generous hard-won social conditions - state housing, free education, peace, healthcare and welfare benefits - which subsequently they deny others in their wake.

If our relatively sparsely populated country needs immigrants - which the government seems to believe is the case because it's one way to produce the economic growth capitalism requires (with creative book-keeping, earthquakes are another apparently) - why should wealth be the only entry criterion? This is no time for flag waving, semantic prevarication and patriotic mumbo jumbo.

If it's okay to deploy our armed forces to destroy their countries - thereby cultivating the kinds of grievances and chaos which beget civil wars - it's only right to offer sanctuary to the displaced victims by increasing our refugee quota.

In fact why not send a frigate to help these desperate families escape safely? Now that really would be admirable.