Dialogue: Why two mercenary traitors sold out to a bored billionaire

By JOE BENNETT

Are Coutts and Butterworth traitors? The answer is self-evident. Of course they are traitors.

Their actions are the very definition of treason. They have forsaken the interests of their homeland and they have transferred their allegiance to another country and they have done the deed for money. They may pretend - they may even believe - that they are excited by the challenge of Swiss yachting, but if Mr Bertarelli hadn't dumped a fat wad of moolah on the table, they wouldn't have budged an inch.

Coutts and Butterworth are mercenaries and mercenaries are held in low esteem. When the Swiss boat sails into the Viaduct Basin in a year or two, it will be a fine day for the greengrocers of Auckland. For which of us loyal citizens will not be on the wharf with a bag of the best and rottenest, our aims honed by the bitterness of betrayal?

But before we stockpile the tomatoes, let us look a little more closely at the actions of these modern Thanes of Cawdor, Traitor Coutts and Traitor Butterworth.

They have gone to Switzerland, land of banks and cuckoo clocks and quite obsessive neatness, to sail a yacht - a yacht which they hope will travel faster across the Hauraki Gulf than any other yacht in the world.

During the racing, the Swiss, one presumes, will take time off from their banking to cheer them to the rafters of their quaint little brewhouses. Those same Swiss whose idea of yachting on the open ocean is a paddle steamer on Lake Geneva.

For so far in the great public debate, I have heard no one remark that Switzerland is landlocked. The Swiss tradition of ocean yachting resembles the Icelandic tradition of beach volleyball.

Nevertheless, that Switzerland is not known for its yachting is no reason it should not yacht. There was a time when New Zealand had never seen a rugby ball, just as there was a time when American sprinters had never swallowed so much as a single steroid. All traditions must begin somewhere and Coutts and Butterworth are already hanging 24-carat gold cowbells around their salty necks.

But at this juncture we should observe that the dosh which is about to tumble into the pockets of our treacherous sailorboys stems not from the Swiss Government, nor even from the famous bank vaults where the world's dictators have traditionally stashed their loot secure in the knowledge that Swiss bankers ask fewer questions than any other bankers in the world. Rather it comes from the pockets of a gentleman by the name of Mr Bertarelli. He made his billions from pharmaceuticals, presumably by selling Prozac to millions of Swiss maddened by neatness and cuckoo clocks.

And now, in the best tradition of billionaires, Mr Bertarelli is bored. All billionaires are bored. When they are young, the prospect of money consumes and excites them. Once they have it, they mope. So they buy whatever it is that they think will fill the void once occupied by avarice. In Mr Bertarelli's case, he buys a boat and a skipper and a crew to tickle his fancy. And who's to blame him? If billions of dollars can't tickle a fancy, what's a bank account for?

Coutts and Butterworth, like better men and worse before them, had a price and Bertarelli named it. The traitors sold him their services.

In other circumstances, this would simply be called business. For example, if a man knows more about the artificial insemination of cows than anyone else in the world and contracts his services to a foreign company, no-one objects.

We do not see the cow-inseminator as a traitor because we do not give tickertape parades to an inseminator of cattle. We do not turn on our televisions to watch him inseminate. We do not feel that in some way our worth and identity are tied up with his ability to inseminate more efficiently than inseminators of other nations.

The difference between the traitors and the cow-inseminator lies not in their actions but in our perceptions. The story of Coutts and Butterworth is not the story of Coutts and Butterworth. It is the story of us. It is the story of our nationalism, our devotion to sport, our belief that somehow sport is a bloodless version of warfare and that it matters who wins and loses. And it is also a story of our gullibility.

For if we believe that the competition for the America's Cup is anything other than a game of money, we are mugs. The spinnakers alone should convince us that the yachts on the Hauraki Gulf exist solely to promote the businesses of sponsors and to tickle the vanity of the ridiculously rich. That our national identity has somehow been tied into the event proves nothing but the power of advertising.

Coutts and Butterworth are traitors only if we believe that the boats on the water are expressions of national will. They aren't, but we do.