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Matua Kahurangi
Just a bloke sharing thoughts on New Zealand and the world beyond. No fluff, just honest takes.
Only in New Zealand could we seriously consider removing a historic crane from the Wellington waterfront because one meth-addled man made the idiotic choice to climb it and leap off.
Jarreth Colquhoun, 33, was not a child. No one forced him to do anything. He was high on P, climbed the SS Hikitia, a century-old floating crane, and jumped into the harbour in front of a crowd during the Manu World Champs. He hit the water at nearly 100 kilometres per hour. He died. That is what happens when you combine meth, ego and gravity.
His grieving mother now wants the Hikitia gone. In her words, it is a “temptation” for young men like her son. The logic is baffling. Are we meant to start removing every structure in the country that someone might decide to jump off? Should we shut down bridges, balconies and buildings too?
This is a personal tragedy caused by one man’s poor choices and a drug problem that was never properly addressed. The overwhelming majority of people, 99.9 per cent, are not so reckless or cracked out on P that they view a crane as a diving board.
The Hikitia is a part of our maritime history. It is maintained by volunteers, it has value, and it poses no risk to the public unless someone goes out of their way to break the rules and behave like an idiot. That is what happened here.
Blaming the crane is like blaming the road for a drunk driving crash. It is lazy, emotional thinking that shifts the responsibility away from the person who made the fatal decision. Somehow, the rest of the country is expected to carry that burden and lose a piece of history over it.
Yeah, her grief is real. Yeah, her loss is tragic. However, public policy cannot be driven by grief alone. The answer to drug abuse and mental illness is not to remove everything sharp from the room. It is to confront the actual causes.
The Hikitia did not kill her son. Nor did the methamphetamine that he puffed. His own actions killed him. That is a painful truth, but it is the truth. We should not be sanitising the country for the small number of people who refuse to take responsibility for themselves.
We need to stop pretending that every tragedy is a public failing. Some people make bad decisions. Some people ruin themselves. The rest of us should not have to live in a padded, history-free world because of it.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
