Deborah Coddington: Absolutely Positively stick with Hutt City

I live near Eastbourne, and the natives are revolting. They've been restless for some time, and now they want to break away from Hutt City and join Wellington. They've had enough of the cavalier treatment from Hutt mayor David Ogden. They want to worship Kerry Prendergast.

I'm not a genuine local. I married in to the region just 18 months ago. Bona fide locals have owned property long enough to remember successfully fighting off Hutt City's attempts to close their swimming pool and library, and demolish a wharf, low-cost housing and a bus-barn.

Pistols were drawn when Ogden erected signs in Wellington proclaiming: "If we can cope with Eastbourne, we can cope with you."

He thought it might attract new settlers. Ogden may be a bit off-track, but he does have a point. Before the last election, Rodney Hide was guest speaker at the Eastbourne Rotary's big dinner. I was in the audience, and afterwards we agreed this was the rudest audience we'd ever encountered. Rodney acquitted himself well, but I was beet-red in humiliation when the MC, thinking he was hilariously funny, told a smutty, personally offensive joke about me. Then again, our local MP is Trevor Mallard.

A year on, and the natives are not amused by Ogden's joke. They retaliated with a billboard comparing Ogden to Mugabe. Strong on hyperbole but light on aesthetics, it ended up in the Pt Howard tide at the end of my street.

But a replacement commanding us to "Absolutely Positively Secede" is urging 10 per cent of us to sign a petition. I think it's just scaring the resident oyster catchers, which run around the beach like mumbling old women cupping stolen fruit in their aprons and call plaintively into the night when discharging oil tankers disturb their rest.

Pt Howard is the gateway to the eastern bays, not as posh as Eastbourne itself, where even a small extension to the cricket ground was blocked by cardy-wearers arguing that a dog-defecated no-man's-land was more important than interclub sports.

But it's all very serious. An Eastbourne Rights Inc (ERI) has been formed by those with A Sense of High Dudgeon and Determination. There have been public meetings with heckling. Neighbours in Petone and Moera agree the Hutt should be given the bum's rush. But I'm not so sure.

Admittedly, the rebellion has forced Ogden down off his arrogance to apologise, reverse his controversial plans to scrap community boards and promise not to offend Eastbourne ratepayers. Undeterred, the ERI is continuing with plans to join Wellington.

It won't be frying pan into fire, the spokesman says, because deals will be brokered with which Wellington must agree. Excuse me for being cynical, but while the breakaway ratepayers are armed with $28 million in rates revenue, Wellington would probably agree to build a bridge across the harbour if Eastbourne commuters wanted it. Doesn't mean they'd keep their bargain after the next elections, though.

On the other hand, Hutt City admits that losing this income would be crippling.

My sentiments will provoke disgruntled comments from locals, as they fingernail the avocados at the Eastbourne greengrocer, then select lamb and mint or spicy Thai sausages at the Top Shop butcher, but I detect a touch of snobbishness in this little drama. Eastbourne residents write letters to the paper objecting to being called affluent. Whatever. You're lucky to buy a house round here for less than $300,000, and most valuations are up near $1 million. If high rates are driving retired folk away, that's because property values increase, because this is a desirable place to live. Where's the nobility in pretending to be poor? Stop apologising for your success and get over yourself.

Wellington's a mighty fine city, but I like the Hutt, with its baby-chavs, boguns, shazzers, and Sir Robert Jones writing into the night in his book-lined study in the western Hutt hills.

I went to secondary school in Lower Hutt, a private girls' boarding school from which one cold Friday night, 14 years old and dressed as a boy, I ran out the back gate to catch the unit from Waterloo to Wellington, then the train to Palmerston North.

I played hockey at schools all over the valley; learned ballroom dancing with spotty St Bernard's boys; sneaked out of the dorm to cheer the rugby at Hutt Rec; and sat behind Sir Walter Nash and his sisters at St James church every Sunday.

And nearly 40 years ago, just before my husband bought this property, I was a fourth-former collecting limpets and seaweed for a rocky shore study where today I walk my dog and avert my eyes from the ugly "Absolu-tely Positively Secede" sign.

I don't want to see Hutt City brought to its knees, so I won't be signing the petition. Nonetheless, I applaud the seceders' passion and wish them well. Who knows? If they're successful, the Hilton Hotel developers might abandon their Environment Court battle to build on Wellington's waterfront and look at Eastbourne, instead.

Now that would really get the tom-toms beating.