1965: TEAL Tiki
April 1, 2025
By AHNZ
Today in history, 1 April, 1965, Tasman Empire Airways Limited (TEAL) changed its name to Air New Zealand.
These plastic Maori tikis used to be in high circulation decades ago, sort of like the little Pizza Hut pencils used to be. I think I just figured out where they came from after all these years of wondering.
TEAL had been a state airline partly owned by the Australian government and the New Zealand government. Curious to know why National 2.0 re-organised the arrangement at this time.
Air New Zealand, for a time, retained the styalised logo of TEAL that depicted a flying fish (maroro) which represented the early history when our planes took off and landed on water. Initially I assumed they did this due to lack of airports on land or due to technical limitations. Another reason I now suspect that the first aircraft were seaplanes is that cargo and human transport was initially in the strong grip of maritime unions and interests.
Being able to take that business to anywhere a runway could be built was transformative and disruptive to the political status quo so had to be stopped by the powers that be. The concession was that aircraft would be suffered provided they operated at the maritime precincts, I suggest. Something like Christchurch International Airport (1950,) a National 1.0 Ministry project, must have made the old unions protected by Labour governments howl in protest. As people and freight shifted to land-based flying transport the power of those old ‘essential’ workers lost their hegemony. Likewise, the increased use of capital in the form of shipping containers and all that handle them shifted the balance from labour. This old ‘working class’ once held a similar role of the red blood cells in the human body but to the corporate organism that is the nation; Now they were dethroned and replaced. That hurt. By the early 1980s even the so-called Labour Party recognised their old base were a spent force and pivoted to Victimhood. Ref. 1988: Labour Goes Full Victimhood, AHNZ
To really understand TEAL and Air New Zealand it will be necessary to know things about how our Pacific Empire works. Why, for example, was Mike Pero obstructed from providing a new air service and strengthening our ties to the Cook Islands? Ref. 1899: The Ranfurly Bridge, AHNZ
How much of Ian Wishart’s conversations from Great Sax in Berlin: an American Spy (2022,) are true? It paints a picture of corruption in the Pacific that New Zealand and our airline are at the heart of. Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, “I’m not in the hamburger business. My business is real estate.” Apparently our airline is, likewise, not doing what we think it is. Laundering money is apparently what’s going on said this podcast. Moving drugs? The other stuff is a front. In that case they’re simply a more sophisticated version of the Mongrel Mob or Black Power but with wings, folding tray tables, and airpoints.
Damn Generation X spooks, Pero and Wishart, for complicating a simple story about a plastic tiki.
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Image ref. MOTAT collection
2 thoughts on "1965: TEAL Tiki"
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Tying in Wishart with BP and drug runners, are you aware of the recent revelations of the Scott Watson case?
There’s been a deathbed confession by an involved party, steps out exactly what happened to the young couple disappeared, pretty gruesome in itself.
But there’s been Cocaine trafficked through NZ, in far greater quantities than for domestic use.
And I venture there is involvement on high political persuasion to turn the investigation away from these criminal investigations, and blame it again on a ‘lone gunman’.
The guys been in jail 26 years and there’s a seeming conspiracy to limit the terms of, and delay the appeal.
I say there’s some serious shit going on here, at high levels, I watched the Sopranos, you don’t move that volume of drugs through a country without paying off somebody.
Have not followed it up but I think you’re right.
I know enough not to attempt a comprehensive article about TEAL or AirNZ because I don’t know what I don’t know. If I were writing for The State and mainstream media or for a school exam it would be so easy. Just believe the encyclopedia and newspapers! Can’t do that.