Too Big for His Boots

It’s hard to write about Sir Peter Jackson without succumbing to flattery as his achievements are impressive.

The recognition and titular honours Jackson has received for building a billion-dollar film industry in Wellington from scratch are well-deserved as are the Oscars which acknowledge his artistic genius.

Given the scale of Jackson’s achievements, it’s perplexing to see him making waves over such a relatively minor matter as plans to upgrade what Sir Bob Jones has accurately described as “a grotty little bay” on Wellington’s Miramar Peninsula.

The Shelly Bay redevelopment is so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things the only rational conclusion is that Jackson’s virulent opposition shows he has succumbed to the curse of genius: hubris.

Hubris is a toxic cocktail of overconfidence, arrogance and pride fueled by power and success which ultimately causes calamitous consequences for its sufferers.

Ancient Greek myths and tragedies counselled against hubris, warning of retribution meted out by Nemesis, the goddess of vengeance (think Icarus, Oedipus and Narcissus), and in literature the doctors Frankenstein and Faustus both meet sticky ends as a result of overweening pride.

In real life, Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte, who both conquered and ruled vast lands, are good examples of hubris as they overreached, lost everything and died in lonely ignominy.

New Zealanders, in particular, have always given short shrift to anyone who starts believing their own publicity and gets too big for their boots.

There is growing incomprehension and criticism of Jackson’s strangely deep involvement in the Shelly Bay saga, criticism which has even extended to a New York Times story on 15 October entitled ‘Peter Jackson Has a Lot of Power in New Zealand. Some Say Too Much’.

The New York Times reported:

“Mr Jackson helped catapult to victory a mayoral candidate who shared his opposition to a proposed development project near his studios, an unheard-of local political intervention in a country where money, fame and power are most often wielded lightly”.

Jackson certainly does have power and he used it to dragoon the Key government to diminish workers’ rights in the film industry (the so-called Hobbit Law) and recently to persuade the present government against scrapping film subsidies, and now he’s flexing his muscles over Shelly Bay.

The Shelly Bay project proposes replacing rotting, eyesore buildings with a Sausalito-style community replete with affordable housing, retail outlets, restaurants, hotel, rest home, verdant public spaces and a ferry service to the CBD, all of which Jackson has labelled as a “Soviet-style” abomination.

Jackson released copies of a series of sarcastic and factually erroneous emails he’d sent to former mayor Justin Lester castigating the WCC for approving the project and then supported council hack Andy Foster’s anti-Shelly Bay mayoral campaign which Foster won by a 62 vote whisker (which as of this writing could be subject to a recount).

Many in Wellington, as well as the New York Times, are asking, why does Jackson have his knickers in such a twist over Shelly Bay?

Jackson told Stuff reporter Tom Hunt on April 22, he “has every right to comment on local property development as a resident and ratepayer.”

Fair enough, but the question is why has Jackson gone so far beyond “comment” to the extent of mounting social media and publicity campaigns and supporting costly legal action in the Appeal Courts to overturn Shelly Bay’s resource consent and Foster’s mayoral campaign?

There are two possibilities, both steeped in the ethos of ‘my way or the highway’.

The first is that Jackson is motivated by sour grapes and is still beside himself at having been thwarted in his own plans for Shelly Bay which were to build a Movie Museum there.

The late Sir Ngātata Love (the then chairman of the trust which owns Shelly Bay) wanted a $750,000 “consultancy fee” to approve the sale of the land but Jackson claimed he was being suborned and refused to pay.

Jackson then considered a museum site in Cable Street in Wellington’s CBD which despite WCC support ultimately did not meet his requirements and the deal was cancelled in August 2018 (not surprisingly Foster is already talking-up the “need” for a Movie Museum in Wellington).

Although Jackson has announced he doesn’t want to build his museum in Shelly Bay anymore it’s looking like he’ll be damned if anyone else is going to build there either.

The second possibility is that Jackson believes he is so very important in the Miramar area as his studios are located there that any proposed development must have his express approval before it can proceed.

In either scenario, he’s pitting his not inconsiderable weight against the interests of Wellington itself with its paucity of affordable housing and tourist facilities, as well as against Shelly Bay’s owners who have invested millions in planning and obtaining approval for the project.

Jackson’s objections to “Soviet-style” architecture and increased traffic are no more than subjective, spurious excuses as despite numerous offers from Shelly Bay’s owners, Jackson has refused to meet them to discuss changing the project architecture and roading to ameliorate his concerns.

Jackson obviously prefers to go all-in to cancel the project completely, which proves his supposed objections are just smoke and mirrors obscuring a bad case of hubris.

If Jackson and his pet mayor succeed in blocking the Shelly Bay’s development it will be a huge lost opportunity for Wellington as well as a sad sign the New York Times was right and Jackson has got too big for his boots.