Gordon McLauchlan: Blake doesn't rate a mausoleum

Twenty-two years ago I was on an aeroplane talking with an Argentine diplomat who was on his way to Buenos Aires to discover which country the last appointment of his career would take him to. He had grown fond of New Zealand and wanted to see out his time in Wellington and then, hopefully, retire here. But, alas, he told me, his Government had decided it wanted him to move for one last appointment.

As we talked about our countries, I asked him why such a wealthy country as Argentina had never reached the great future so many people in the early 20th century had foreseen.

He thought for a moment and said: "Too many heroes." After I had been in Buenos Aires for a few days I understood what he meant. I went to Montevideo in Uruguay as well and noticed it there, too - monuments all over the place and much larger than life statues of all sorts of heroes, mostly revolutionaries, mostly on grotesquely huge horses.

The streets and the squares were built to hold the statues and the reverential plaques addressed glories of the past.

I thought of a New Zealand writer who said: "Don't let your gratitude to leaders turn to obeisance, your admiration to reverence, your respect to awe. Freedom depends on it."

Two great mausoleums salute past New Zealand leaders - the Massey Memorial overlooking Wellington Harbour and the Savage Memorial in Auckland. After those New Zealand finally grew up during the 1940s as the world shrank and we became indelibly part of it. We understood that our admiration should be sparingly given to leaders of any sort and should not turn to reverence.

Indeed, a distinctive change in social attitudes took place. Stone memorials of previous wars were largely avoided in favour of functional public buildings - memorial halls, libraries, museums.

And, another example, a move to have a major memorial to Sir Keith Holyoake, the third-longest-serving Prime Minister and Governor-General, waned for lack of support.

So the idea of a $10 million glass monument to the memory of Sir Peter Blake makes me wonder if we are not being dragged back into national childhood by two jejune politicians, John Banks and Trevor Mallard. No one I've spoken to recently thinks the concept of such a memorial has any merit, and I believe that Herald columnist Brian Rudman is right when he says it's un-New Zealand.

It seems especially irresponsible to do this thing with public money without resounding support from throughout the country. It could only be justified if public subscription, raising all the money, vindicated the proposal at least to those prepared to pay for it.

And, anyway, why Sir Peter Blake? I write this not to diminish him but to avoid inflating him. He was a superb sailor and we should admire and respect his part in the round-the-world events and the America's Cup. However, invidious though comparisons might be, I am forced into it by the suggestion that Sir Peter deserves a memorial, a kind of statue, greater than any other individual New Zealander.

Where does he stand in the pantheon of great Kiwis? Among those of the past 60 years since Savage, he certainly stands below at least Sir Edmund Hillary, and Lord Freyberg and Charles Upham. Their exploits have been marinated in time and have touched every one of us. I suggest Sir Peter is a few notches below people like Douglas Lilburn, Colin Meads, Janet Frame, Peter Snell, Frank Sargeson, James K. Baxter, Colin McCahon, and, yes, Sir Wilson Whineray - a varied group of people whose relative contemporaneity leaves their place insecure. I'm sure there are more.

Now let's measure Sir Peter against a few all-time heroes who have a permanent place in our national mythology: Rewi Maniapoto representing the great virtues of courage and chivalry; Te Whiti, who tried to be the Gandhi of New Zealand before there was a Gandhi of India; John Ballance, the gentle man who led New Zealand towards the world's first welfare state; Peter Buck, Ernest Rutherford, Francis Hodgkins, Von Tempsky, Katherine Mansfield, Gordon Coates (who put his country before politics) and many more.

When you consider that funds are not available for recreating the great pa at Ruapekapeka, for building a historic living museum at Orakau, for acknowledging the exploits and lives of many other famous people whose reputation has been tested by time in a nation-affirming way, you have to ask yourself about the common sense of building this colossal memorial. Frankly, I think Sir Peter would be embarrassed were he still alive.

So let Banks and Mallard stand aside with their childish enthusiasms and have some other people with common sense and a sense of history find a sensible and practical way to commemorate a great sailor and fine leader.

HAD A CHAT with an experienced businessman friend about the Australian research that suggests the higher a CEO's pay the worse a company's performance. No surprise this, we decided. Extremely high remuneration panders to a CEO's vanity and reduces incentive.

Also, in corporations remuneration rises at the directorate and senior executive level because all concerned have a vested interest in increasing them, including the consultants setting benchmarks. No one has a vested interest in keeping them down or even static.

Among those same people, everyone has a vested interest in keeping workers' pay down because executive salaries and honorariums are seen as an investment and workers' pay as a cost.