KEY POINTS:
For those of you still fuming about missing out on a New Year's gong, I did warn you this time last year that if you'd set your heart on an Order of the Kakapo, Second Class, then pack your bags and move to Wellington pronto. Ploughing through the
latest honours list, it remains true - if you want to hit the honours jackpot, migrating from Auckland will greatly improve your chances.
The one factor that has changed is you now have an alternative choice of address.
So if you really can't stand the thought of setting up home in the absolutely fabulous place, then Christchurch has emerged this year as a reasonable off-course substitute.
What remains true, though, is that Auckland is certainly not the place to live if you are pining for a gilded letter and shiny medal from HM. This year we Aucklanders had only a one in 26,061 chance of getting the royal nod (last year it was one in 27,591) compared with nationwide odds of one in 21,088.
The poor old Wellingtonians have slipped badly from last year's one in 10,278 to a one in 16,034 chance - perhaps by now they've all got one apiece anyway. But regardless of this year's slump in luck, they're still well ahead of us. The great improvers are the Christchurchians, up from one in 24,513 a year ago to one in 17,421 this time round. Beware, though, on past performance, this might well have been a fluke.
Wellington is still the place if you're after one of the grand titles, even if it only scored half its last year's bag. With only a third of the population of the Auckland region, the capital lifted six of the top 18 honours. Auckland got five - six if you count the top ranking (Order of New Zealand) of London-domiciled Aucklander Don McKinnon, the Commonwealth Secretary-General.
Christchurch picked up four. This contrasts with Wellington's bag of 11 out of 20 top honours last year, Auckland's three and Christchurch's none.
But don't be deceived. Not only did the Wellington bureaucrats who drew up these lists manage to ensure that Wellingtonians did three times better than Aucklanders in the top medal count, but those of a suspicious mind could draw the conclusion they've padded the bottom levels with Aucklanders to make the overall statistics look fairer than they are.
Of Auckland's 50 gongs, 19 are Queen's Service Medals, the lowest level, and another four the next layer up, QSOs. Contrast this with the Wellington medal haul of 28, only 11 of which are lowly - all QSMs.
As an aside, medal-hungry academics should be alerted to the fact that both years, two professors from Palmerston North ended up in the rarefied upper layers. Then again, locking yourself away in a remote campus on the Manawatu Plains in the hope of a retirement gong does seem to be taking hunt-the-title a little far.
Last year, when I queried the bureaucrats on the Wellicentric slant of the honours list, they were most affronted at any suggestion of bias. I was told the bad old days when honours were automatically granted to senior judges and senior civil servants had long gone.
Dave Baguley, director of the honours secretariat, said the only automatic honour was one for a Governor-General on appointment if he didn't already have one. And that was because by statute the G-G was principal companion chancellor of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Other than that, he said, "everyone is considered along with everybody else".
There's obviously something in the water, then, that makes Wellingtonians more honourable as a bunch than the rest of us. Why is it that a disproportionate number never leave the capital city or the surrounding retirement enclaves?
