2009: A pig of a year

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The life of Brian . . . Otago University students Simon Rankin and Brendon Harper made the news this year with Brian, their pet kune kune pig. Photo by Stephen Jaquiery.

Fugitives, friendly dolphins, fingers in pies, fibbing Frenchmen, tsunamis, white mofos, sinking ships and shootouts, 2009 had a little bit of everything.

Some were smiling. A Masterton family scooped $36 million in Lotto's biggest-ever prize. It was also the first year in about three decades we didn't have either Helen Clark or Winston Peters in Parliament.

More were crying. New Zealand's Pacific Island communities were hit hard with the loss of 180 lives in the Samoan earthquake and tsunami, which followed on the heels of the Tongan ferry disaster when the ferry Princess Ashika sank, claiming 74 lives.

West Auckland toddler Aisling Symes went missing, and there were more tears when her body was found down a manhole after a week of frantic searching.

The swine flu pandemic claimed 19 lives here and countless people were struck down, quarantined in their homes.

Some people stayed home because they lost their jobs. We were told there was a recession. At a government-initiated jobs summit in February, apart from nine-day fortnights, which flew like a pig, one of the ideas to emerge was a national cycleway.

Those who didn't need a second invitation to get on their bikes were a peleton of politicians who quickly legged it on overseas trips.

Prime Minister John Key piled on the air miles, taking in China and the US, where he had a surprise lunchtime chat with United States President Barack Obama. He also appeared on David Letterman's television show. It was hard to say which had the more positive effect.

Mr Key also decided at short notice to attend the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, after earlier dismissing it as a photo shoot.

Another off-the-cuff trip was made by Maori Party MP Hone Harawira. When he should have been in Brussels he and his wife quietly skipped across for a sightseeing trip to Paris. He didn't pardon his French when subsequently emailed an expletive-filled and double standard-justification explanation for the jaunt.

Other full-fare dodgers included the ACT Party MP Sir Roger Douglas, who was quite happy - under his perks for being an MP last century - for the rest of us to foot the bill so he could take his wife to visit family in England.

The party's leader, former perk-buster Rodney Hide, also took his girlfriend around the world.

They weren't the only New Zealanders heading overseas. Fisher & Paykel Appliances got into bed with Chinese whiteware maker Haier, Moro bars will now be made in Australia, Minties in Thailand, Griffins biscuits in Fiji, and the 018 calls are made to the Philippines.

No wonder many of us head overseas. We want to feel at home.

One man not sure of where he lived was the MP for Dipton (somewhere in Southland), Bill English, who paid the money back after it was revealed he was claiming $900 a week for living in his own house in Wellington.

Another house-proud man, even though he only had the one, but not keen for public servant inspection, was Napier gunman Jan Molenaar.

Molenaar shot dead policeman Len Snee during a routine drug operation. The former territorial soldier had a stash of weapons and let the bullets fly during a three-day siege, before he took his own life.

There was no court case for Molenaar, but there was enough courtroom interest in 2009 with two high profile murder cases.

Both murders were committed in Dunedin years apart but heard in the High Court at Christchurch. After he had spent 13 years in prison, the retrial of David Bain for the 1994 murders of five members of his family both gripped and split the country. Did Bain shoot his family or was it the father Robin? A three-month trial found David not guilty, but did not quell the debate.

Not long after, the trial of Clayton Weatherston saw the smug former university tutor found guilty and sentenced to at least 18 years' prison for murdering former girlfriend Sophie Elliott. He stabbed her 216 times and claimed he was provoked, pushing plausibility levels to the limits, and helping lead to the scrapping of the partial defence of provocation.

Meanwhile, he was no Shane Warne or Tiger Woods, but he could still get in trouble with his cellphone. National Party MP Richard Worth was accused of texting sexual messages to Labour Party member Neelam Choudry.

Charges were never brought, but he left politics anyway.

More unwanted advances included those from Wanganui mayor Michael Laws, who kept the focus firmly on his city in 2009.

It was proudly gang patch-free, but Mr Laws was going to hold his breathe until he turned blue - Wanganui was also going to be H-free, despite what the Geographic Board decided and Otaki primary school pupils thought about renaming it Whanganui.

Comedian Mike King, a former advertiser for the Pork Board, turned his back on bacon when shown a pig farm where the animals were kept, but the biggest porky of the year award must go to rugby player Mathieu Bastareaud.

The Frenchman claimed he was set upon by a group of drunken thugs after a night out in Wellington. However, it turned out he might have actually been thumped by one of his own team-mates.

With rugby still in mind, our biggest city, Auckland, while its rugby teams went backward, rushed toward becoming a super city, all the while fretting over whether it would be ready for the Rugby World Cup.

Just to show how keen Aucklanders are on new infrastructure, thousands flocked to try out the new $385 million Northern Gateway (it's actually a motorway, not a gate), causing gridlock between Orewa and Puhoi.

Auckland will see spent $500m on electric trains soon - whether Aucklanders rush to those will require a bit more imagination than Bastareaud himself.

The nation also continued its obsession with things for sale on TradeMe. The scary washing machine which opened portals to other dimensions and the tractor with a farm attached all spawned copycat auctions.

Meanwhile, marine mammal of the year must be Moko. The apparently dysfunctional dolphin took to stealing flutter boards, surfboards and scaring young swimmers in the waters off the East Coast.

Another playful mammal, Paul Henry, took up the cudgels for gaffe-prone news hosts, with comments about Scottish singer Susan Boyle being a retard, following on from his "moustache on a lady" comments.

One person trying to keep a low profile and failing miserably was William Stewart, or "Billy the hunted one". He managed to evade police for more than three months in Canterbury, living off what he could take from people's properties (allegedly), sparking Facebook fan pages, T-shirts, a song and an international following.

So that was 2009. There were new themes and old chestnuts and as we look forward we could remember American short story writer Eudora Welty, who said; "Never think you've seen the last of anything".

Winston in 2010, anyone?