Tracey Cooper column: Keeping riffraff on the other side of the fence (mention + pic)

Still rocking: The statue of Riff Raff in Victoria St remains unvandalised despite the lack of a fence. Photo: TIMES FILE

Accessi-bull: Little Bull at Hamilton Gardens doesn't have a fence around it, so has been climbed over by generations of city children. Photo: TIMES FILE

Closed off: The Rangiriri sits behind a fence on the Waikato's eastern bank. Photo: DONNA WALSH

SOURCE: Waikato Times print edition

31 March 2010

There are fences around Hamilton's paddle steamer Rangiriri and other civic memorials. But there are also city features that aren't fenced. Waikato Times writer TRACEY COOPER wonders whether the fences indicate the city doesn't trust its citizens.

There's a certain amount of irony involved in the words on the plaque beneath the replica Spitfire stuck on a stick in Memorial Park in Hamilton.

The fibreglass model of a war plane sits 7-metres above the ground surrounded by a small garden.

A rock at the front holds a brass plaque with the words: This memorial commemorates the sacrifice, courage and fortitude shown in the air and on the ground by the men and women who served with the Royal New Zealand Air Force in all theatres of war 1939-1945 in defence of our freedom.

Freedom. Ha.

You can read the words if you look between the solid steel bars of the two-metre high fence that surrounds the plane and, dare I say it, restricts our freedom.

There's another fence, equally grey, equally ugly and equally restrictive around the 5.5 inch artillery piece parked nearby and yet another surrounding the hulk of the PS Rangiriri down beside the river.

There's more irony in the description of the Rangiriri, which says it's "one of only two vessels from the era that are accessible on land in New Zealand".

Accessible. Ha.

When we moved to the city 10 years ago, the kids had great fun climbing over the Rangiriri as it sat half buried in the mud beside the river. That's accessible.

It's great to see that's it's been hauled out, restored and put on show, but it sucks that you can't actually touch the thing any more and it's not that easy to actually see it either.

If you look towards the boat from the city side of the river, you can only just make it out through the bars of the fence. Councillors must love it though, since a photograph of a couple of kids frolicking happily in front of the fence graced the front of the last edition of council propaganda mag City News.

Then there's the fence which annually goes up around the fake Christmas tree in Garden Place.

I'm no fan of the tree in the first place but I might view it differently if I could actually view it, instead of having to look at a big, ugly fence.

The wooden waka Te Winika, while it's inside at the Waikato Museum, is not stuck behind a fence and part of the appeal of it is that you can rub your hand along the sides and feel the history in it. There, history is, as it should be, a living thing.

It's interesting to note - Christmas tree aside - that the things which seem to get fenced in are memorials to war. There's probably nothing in that but. . .

Art doesn't appear to qualify for security fencing yet I can't recall Riff Raff being trashed. Quite the opposite, in fact, with people regularly stopping there to take photos.

Nor has Nga Uri o Hinetuparimaunga at the entrance to Hamilton Gardens been trashed, or the farming family in Victoria St, much as I don't like that either.

Perhaps it's about the respect we have for things which go on public display which stops them being vandalised.

Do they worry there's no respect for boats, guns and planes? Certainly, in building big fences around them there's little or no respect being shown for us.

Fences are only there for one of two reasons: to keep someone in or to keep someone out, and what they say to me is that the council doesn't trust us.

I argued against a fence around the school for which I sit on the board of trustees on the grounds that schools are part of the community and should therefore be open to that community.

I listened to the vandalism arguments but don't buy them. The cost in cleaning up tagging is small compared with the cost of sending a message to the school community that it's not trusted.

It was the death of Lois Dear in her Tokoroa school which changed my mind on the school fence. Teachers often stay at school out of school hours and their safety is rightly the top priority for a good employer such as Deanwell Primary.

There are valid places for fences of course, an obvious one being around those tigers at the zoo.

But putting fences up can easily become a self fulfilling prophecy.

If the council doesn't trust and respect us, they'll get little of either in return.