Why isn’t “New Zealand taxpayers” emblazoned on our America’s Cup boat?

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Team-NZThe cup racing has only just begun but already Prime Minister John Key has announced it’s “highly likely” the government would pitch in and help fund an America’s Cup defence if the New Zealand team wins the series.

Amazing how easy it is for John Key to reward a bunch of wealthy men and their corporate sponsors with taxpayer money.

The previous Labour government voted $36 million to this current cup challenge at the same time they were heavily discriminating against the children of beneficiaries. Unfortunately it was typical Labour government behaviour which hasn’t changed in the meantime as Labour MPs recently wined and dined themselves at the Skycity corporate box.

The argument for funding is always that such a big event in New Zealand will bring jobs and growth which will benefit everyone. It’s a crock of course because the jobs created are temporary minimum wage jobs in hospitality while the real winners are the big corporates such as the hotel owners and telecommunications companies.

The workers just get the crumbs that fall from the America’s Cup table.

Corporate sponsorship of sport is such a big deal these days. I do my best to not be a spoilsport when I see the All Blacks play or get a glimpse of the America’s Cup racing on the news but I still find the advertising which dominates the images seriously downgrades the viewing experience.

It’s hard to admire the design or grace of the big catamarans when advertising trashes the image.

The real question though is why is the New Zealand boat not emblazoned “New Zealand taxpayers” because we are providing the lion’s share of the challenge funding. This message should dominate the hulls and sails but instead we have the big corporates, paying trivial amounts of money by comparison, having their brands beamed continuously into our optic nerves.

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(A few years back when the Owen Glen Business School building was opened I confess I was naïve enough to believe that Glen had paid for the building himself. I felt a fool later to learn his actual contribution was less than 4% of the total cost. It was pocket money to him but he basks in the warm glow of reflected generosity. In reality it was a con job – we sell our knighthoods very cheap these days)

We shouldn’t pay a single cent to the rich man’s race which is the America’s Cup but in the meantime our share should be recognised on the current boat in proportion to our taxpayer contribution.

28 COMMENTS

  1. Absolutely ! The psychopathic Corporation will stop at nothing to have us stroke it’s ego while we pour money down it’s gluttonous throat . The moment you stick an ad on it , it becomes a con job .

    I was watching a rugby game out the corner of my eye the other day and marveled at how the designers of the on-field ads cleverly made them seem to stand up in 3 D to the camera . And then I noticed all along the sidelines there were flashing , presumably LCD screens telegraphing insurance company messages into my brain stem . I quickly turned the tv off .

    Banksy , the London street artist , once asserted that you should always feel safe graffiti-ing ads and signs generally because you don’t ask them for their messages , you get them whether you like it or not so he argued the ads are therefore your property to do with what you like .

    The reason you will never , ever see an ad promoting the NZ tax payer contribution on a racing yacht is because that is , in itself a message . An empowering message to us saying that we did that . We helped to achieve that result and that’s the last thing our uber riche , fascist, neoliberal Over Lords would want us to realize . It is , as you say a con job and I think Sir Tricky Micky Fay would elucidate on that .

    The same goes for motor racing . The cars as so emblazoned in advertizing they look like boxes of noisy , high speed Christmas tree decorations .

    • The reason you will never , ever see an ad promoting the NZ tax payer contribution on a racing yacht is because that is , in itself a message . An empowering message to us saying that we did that .

      And that is a message that the rich cannot afford as it will empower us and make us realise that we just don’t need them. That, quite simply, we cannot afford them.

  2. Totally agree – The taxpayers’ contribution to any thing like this should be always be acknowledged by a logo or whatever. Maybe “With financial support from the New Zealand public” or something like that

  3. Thinking exactly the same thing myself as I caught a glimpse of the race on tv a couple of days ago. Perhaps the NZ taxpayers need a logo.

    BTW, I have no problem admitting that I am one NZer that is hoping that NZ will not win the race. Another media-generated frenzy over a sport that is a reflection of a very small demographic of NZers is not appealing.

    • I’m with you. Meantime we have local body elections being buried! Sport is the number 1 panacea of the people these days. Revolting all that advertising on the gear they were in this sport and in others these days.

  4. The thing that irks me most is the way that a figure of xxx million is pulled out of thin air and put forward as “what this event will be worth to the NZ economy”. Sometimes this figure has a basis in fact as the gross turnover that the event will generate. However, as anyone with business experience will tell you, gross turnover is a meaningless concept without the associated costs, which never enter the discussion.

    Other, more important, questions rarely get a mention. Like, what exactly is the NZ economy? And, who benefits from it’s growth? Who pays the associated costs? Does the public ever get compensated for the use of public resources, that go into the event? Is this event inflationary? And, who benefits, and who loses as a result of that inflation?

    The questions could go on all day, but those of you who already know the answers will have got the message, the rest probably never will.

  5. With the cup bid costing in excess of $100 mill it doesn’t seem accurate to say “because we are providing the lion’s share of the challenge funding.” This comment needs further investigation.

    BTW the 2007 bid in Valencia had an economic return of $74 million (and we *lost* that series).

    Yes. This government will be remembered for it’s gift of tax dollars to the wealthy but it seems too easy to be targeting an event that is actually primarily funded by sponsor dollars and is blazoned across all media options.

    Where is the big money really disappearing to? That’s the real story of this government!

    • hmmmm, and where did that figure of 74 mill come from? given that these figures are usually spurious examples of creative accounting. Sources, I’d like to see the methodology.

  6. The reason the ‘public who paid’ logo is not there is that those that ‘gave’ the money probably think it best to not make too much of a song and dance about it for a good reason.

    It’s because then more people will see who paid and then more of the people who see it as cronyism, misplaced resources and at worst a scam will stamp their feet and jump up and down out of step with the pipers tune.
    If in their eyes there was a good reason for it to be there oh it would be there alright – big bold and bloody expensive!

    but wait there’s more – promises of bank rolling the next round should it be won by the team Emirates. A stupendous spectacle expected indeed- Lets brand that event ‘Paid for by the NZ beneficiaries” if any of them are still alive.

  7. What I still find hard to believe is how paying all core government workers a living wage, costed at around $25 million, is “unaffordable” whereas we can still manage to find $36 million for a sporting event.

    Even if we won and hosted the next cup in New Zealand, are we really going to get that money re-invested into the New Zealand economy? You can guarantee that the extra $25 million being given to the lowest-paid government workers will be almost entirely going straight back into the New Zealand economy, as most of those workers will be spending all of their money locally and very soon after earning it.

    So, while the Mainstream Media is fixated with the cost of a living wage being unaffordable to the taxpayer, where are the questions being asked of the $36 million on the America’s Cup being somehow affordable?

  8. The signage on the boat refelcts the financial contribution to the team Emirates are paying more than the New Zealand government. Therefore they get the naming rights and biggest signage. The silver fern emblem and the words “New Zealand” are very promionent on the hull and on the sail. That is a reflection of the not inconsiderable contribution from the NZ government.

    • The cynic in me thinks the words New Zealand are not on the hull and sail to acknowledge financial contribution – rather, it is sop to ensure that NZ’ers still somehow feel this team, and this event is relevant (and part of) our NZ life and aspirations.

      For me, it is neither.

      • ..or perhaps that the crew are all New Zealanders, having learnt to sail in Aotearoa, which is why they named the boat that…

        • In which case Oracle – with 8 members out of the 24 crew being NZers could have come up with at least the abbreviated “NZ” somewhere on the sail.

  9. “…but I still find the advertising which dominates the images seriously downgrades the viewing experience.”

    Really??? How exactly is your viewing experience of the All Blacks seriously downgraded by a couple of small logos on their jersey?

  10. The only good thing to come of this competition is that it has meant Mallard is out of the country while the Labour leadership primary is in progress. Imagine the face-palm fest it would have become if he’d been around to co-ordinate the activities of Curran and the ABCs.

  11. I am a keen, but not-rich sailor. My boat is only a 12-foot sailing dinghy. So I am interested in the sailing aspect of Team NZ, and suspect that the govt does get some return on the money it puts in. But Bread and Circuses sums it up perfectly. And I totally agree that boats, cars, or fields/team-strips all festooned with ghastly commercial logos, etc., make appallingly ugly that which might have looked impressive. Sad to say, commercialism is rife, has corrupted everything it has touched – look at our mass media – and our insulated little NZ community has come to know nothing else, and to accept it as normal. I agree with John Minto.

  12. It just seems really unfair, while we work our butts off to keep our heads above the water in N.Z this oversized windsurfer gets zillions of dollars to whizz around a harbour overseas… With old farts clinking glasses at another corny victory… Yeee bloody haa! All the while I’m being told on the news it’s all so good for us… Also the uniforms the sailors wear looks like X Men. It’s all so ridiculous I just can’t get into something when the money came from people who need it here…

  13. Couldn’t agree more, John. I didn’t vote for the bloody things, which would probably not even be any good to fish off. It’s hardly even a sport, with everything being decided in courtrooms anyway.

  14. The “America’s Cup” does and will only serve a few elite interested entrepreneurs who put millions into this, and who create the facade and mirage, that this is in the interest of the people from the various countries, from where the consortiums running the sailing show originate.

    This sailing competition is nothing but a rich bastard’s game, and those voluntary “gladiators” they “buy” to man their various “yachts” that are now even anything but traditional yachts, but twin hull sailing machines, only designed for ultimate racing, are bought mercenaries, none else.

    We have their sails and hulls plastered with advertisements, with the images of the promoters and financiers, we have the shit media present live coverage, recorded coverage, with selected high profile “reporters”, even one traitor Labour MP, one Mallard or that sort of name, is there, to self promote and indulge in his self entertainment.

    What a load of crap, I hate the America’s Cup, I know that if they bring it back to Auckland, only a tiny fraction of NZers will “benefit” from it, while most will be told to watch and listen, and have NO benefit at all, but having their minds conditioned.

    Sadly too few understand it, and instead of all these now so highly commercialised sporting events, maybe bring back the true spirit of the early Olympians, which has been totally lost.

    They voted in a German boss for the Olympic committee or whatever it is called now, that organises and oversees the Olympics, who is known to have endless ties to big business, who now sponsor that, same as many other sporting events.

    Welcome to the “Roman Empire” with all its corruption in 2013.

  15. The logo of the silver fern beside the words New Zealand is the NZTE logo, reflecting the Crown/taxpayers contribution, the size probably about proportional to the contribution. A quick trip to the NZTE website would have told you that Minto.

  16. So I assume that if John got to be mayor of auckland he’d refuse to support the AC by way of any public money input. In other words our waterfront would be the development realm of big business not the council? Advertising is a fact of life nowadays, it’s up to the individual how much they do or don’t notice it. For example I just found out that Camper makes shoes! As for Q-Bert, the NZ sponsor logo is very obvious at the RHS of the principal sponsors emblems. I would imagine to, that most people watch tv so accept advertising over TV licensing, and are happy to fork our for sky and don’t complain when the lotteries commission give money to their local school etc etc etc. Fine tune your BS detectors and enjoy the amazing sailing skill and design technology on display from NZ and celebrate that, if not the sponsors support.

  17. A truly kiwi team would have involved a Bert Munroe style response – make it fast; make it work; make it win. Instead we have rich millionaire kids funding their hobbies at our expense. Don’t think the World’s Fastest Indian required any taxpayer dollars – certainly not $40 million’s worth. We’ve been robbed again by the rich, for the rich.

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