The water cremation floodgates are officially open in Aotearoa
It's the biggest change to the funeral industry in over a century, and there's already a queue forming.
This month, a Christchurch woman named Margaret made history as the first person in New Zealander to be water cremated. 'She had been unwell for some time, and she wanted to be the first,' says Debbie Richards, founder of Water Cremation New Zealand. 'She was a very adventurous woman and a bit of a pioneer, and she'll always be a very special person to me.'
A gold plaque with Margaret's name on it was unveiled last week in the water crematorium at Bell, Lamb and Trotter in Ōtautahi, one of the country's oldest funeral homes. Richards and managing director Andrew Bell then cut the giant red ribbon around the resomator, the giant SUV-sized stainless steel machine responsible for water cremation. A patter of polite applause heralded the arrival of a groundbreaking new technology for people seeking a more eco-friendly option in death.
Despite this being the biggest thing to happen to dying in Aotearoa in about 100 years, the opening ceremony was relatively small. Notable guests included Margaret's family, representatives from Ngāi Tahu, Labour MP Duncan Webb and Reverend Dr Peter Carrell. Before he led the room in prayer, he apologised for not being able to stay for food and drink afterwards. 'As it happens, I have a funeral to go to on the other side of the city,' he said.
Richards, a former midwife and nurse, has been championing water cremation since 2018. During the water cremation process, the body is wrapped in a shroud and dissolved in a 95% water 5% alkaline solution. After four or so hours, all that is left are 'pure white' bones (given to the family as ashes), any implants or prosthesis (which are recycled), and a sterile liquid (which enters the wastewater system). It is 90% less harmful to the environment than flame cremation, which produces 242kg of carbon dioxide (roughly the same amount as driving a petrol car from Christchurch to Cape Reinga).
After the ribbon cutting ceremony, I got chatting to Dean Fisher who was an early adopter of water cremation when working with donated bodies at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and had travelled all the way over here for the opening. He explained that flame cremation is more 'violent' than the watery alternative, which is much closer to the natural decomposition process found in soil. 'We're just gently moving liquid around you, breaking down soft tissue and leaving the bone. More or less, we are skeletonising the body.' A woman offered me a chicken skewer, and I politely declined.
Squeamishness aside, there's an undeniably attractive environmental appeal here – the Christchurch resomator has a carbon footprint of zero at the point of use. 'These aren't putting anything into the atmosphere at all,' says Fisher. 'They're all throughout the US and Europe now, people see the environmental side of this and they just love it.
'I'm so happy for the people of New Zealand, because now you have another choice. It might not be your choice, but it's giving a choice for somebody else,' Fisher adds. Currently around 80% of New Zealanders are cremated by flame (average cost of $5,000), the remaining opting for either plot burials (which costs an average of $10,000) or natural burials (average cost just under $5,000). Water cremation doesn't require a casket and is a slightly more affordable option than flame, arriving at a time where funeral costs are in the spotlight.
Although the environmental benefits are clear, it hasn't been easy for Richards to swim against the tide. The last major advancement in the local funeral industry came in 1909 with the first flame cremation, and prior to that was embalming in 1896. The Burial and Cremation Act was written in 1964 – so old that it still mentions pounds and shillings – so trying to pioneer something new after over a century of stasis was a regulatory 'rollercoaster', says Richards ('I don't want to talk about the council,' she would jibe in her opening speech.)
One of the last and most significant hurdles was securing a water permit from the Christchurch City Council to release the processed liquid into the water treatment system. Richards worked closely with water engineers, had an independent report written by GHD, and crucially secured local support from mana whenua. 'It's always hardest being the first – we knew were always going to be the ones that would be the most closely scrutinised, so we've just had to be completely transparent and share all the knowledge that we have,' she says.
And with Richards having done the hard yards in Ōtautahi with Bell, Lamb and Trotter, the floodgates are now open for more people in the funeral industry to follow suit. 'It's the first in the country, but I believe there's going to be a few people not too far behind us,' says Richards. 'I'm getting emails from city councils around the country, wanting to know what we've done and how we've done it, so they can replicate and be able to offer the process as well. I would like to help people, because I want this to be an option for everybody in New Zealand.'
Reflecting on nearly a decade of work to bring water cremation to Aotearoa, Richards says stubbornness helped a great deal. 'I just hung in there and I didn't give up,' she laughs. 'People have wanted me to go away, and I just haven't.' With people now ringing her from all around the country seeking guidance about council regulations and water treatment, she says that her main piece of advice is staying the course. 'Keep going and don't let them turn you away. You can get there in the end – you just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.'
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The Spinoff
a day ago
- The Spinoff
The water cremation floodgates are officially open in Aotearoa
It's the biggest change to the funeral industry in over a century, and there's already a queue forming. This month, a Christchurch woman named Margaret made history as the first person in New Zealander to be water cremated. 'She had been unwell for some time, and she wanted to be the first,' says Debbie Richards, founder of Water Cremation New Zealand. 'She was a very adventurous woman and a bit of a pioneer, and she'll always be a very special person to me.' A gold plaque with Margaret's name on it was unveiled last week in the water crematorium at Bell, Lamb and Trotter in Ōtautahi, one of the country's oldest funeral homes. Richards and managing director Andrew Bell then cut the giant red ribbon around the resomator, the giant SUV-sized stainless steel machine responsible for water cremation. A patter of polite applause heralded the arrival of a groundbreaking new technology for people seeking a more eco-friendly option in death. Despite this being the biggest thing to happen to dying in Aotearoa in about 100 years, the opening ceremony was relatively small. Notable guests included Margaret's family, representatives from Ngāi Tahu, Labour MP Duncan Webb and Reverend Dr Peter Carrell. Before he led the room in prayer, he apologised for not being able to stay for food and drink afterwards. 'As it happens, I have a funeral to go to on the other side of the city,' he said. Richards, a former midwife and nurse, has been championing water cremation since 2018. During the water cremation process, the body is wrapped in a shroud and dissolved in a 95% water 5% alkaline solution. After four or so hours, all that is left are 'pure white' bones (given to the family as ashes), any implants or prosthesis (which are recycled), and a sterile liquid (which enters the wastewater system). It is 90% less harmful to the environment than flame cremation, which produces 242kg of carbon dioxide (roughly the same amount as driving a petrol car from Christchurch to Cape Reinga). After the ribbon cutting ceremony, I got chatting to Dean Fisher who was an early adopter of water cremation when working with donated bodies at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and had travelled all the way over here for the opening. He explained that flame cremation is more 'violent' than the watery alternative, which is much closer to the natural decomposition process found in soil. 'We're just gently moving liquid around you, breaking down soft tissue and leaving the bone. More or less, we are skeletonising the body.' A woman offered me a chicken skewer, and I politely declined. Squeamishness aside, there's an undeniably attractive environmental appeal here – the Christchurch resomator has a carbon footprint of zero at the point of use. 'These aren't putting anything into the atmosphere at all,' says Fisher. 'They're all throughout the US and Europe now, people see the environmental side of this and they just love it. 'I'm so happy for the people of New Zealand, because now you have another choice. It might not be your choice, but it's giving a choice for somebody else,' Fisher adds. Currently around 80% of New Zealanders are cremated by flame (average cost of $5,000), the remaining opting for either plot burials (which costs an average of $10,000) or natural burials (average cost just under $5,000). Water cremation doesn't require a casket and is a slightly more affordable option than flame, arriving at a time where funeral costs are in the spotlight. Although the environmental benefits are clear, it hasn't been easy for Richards to swim against the tide. The last major advancement in the local funeral industry came in 1909 with the first flame cremation, and prior to that was embalming in 1896. The Burial and Cremation Act was written in 1964 – so old that it still mentions pounds and shillings – so trying to pioneer something new after over a century of stasis was a regulatory 'rollercoaster', says Richards ('I don't want to talk about the council,' she would jibe in her opening speech.) One of the last and most significant hurdles was securing a water permit from the Christchurch City Council to release the processed liquid into the water treatment system. Richards worked closely with water engineers, had an independent report written by GHD, and crucially secured local support from mana whenua. 'It's always hardest being the first – we knew were always going to be the ones that would be the most closely scrutinised, so we've just had to be completely transparent and share all the knowledge that we have,' she says. And with Richards having done the hard yards in Ōtautahi with Bell, Lamb and Trotter, the floodgates are now open for more people in the funeral industry to follow suit. 'It's the first in the country, but I believe there's going to be a few people not too far behind us,' says Richards. 'I'm getting emails from city councils around the country, wanting to know what we've done and how we've done it, so they can replicate and be able to offer the process as well. I would like to help people, because I want this to be an option for everybody in New Zealand.' Reflecting on nearly a decade of work to bring water cremation to Aotearoa, Richards says stubbornness helped a great deal. 'I just hung in there and I didn't give up,' she laughs. 'People have wanted me to go away, and I just haven't.' With people now ringing her from all around the country seeking guidance about council regulations and water treatment, she says that her main piece of advice is staying the course. 'Keep going and don't let them turn you away. You can get there in the end – you just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.'
Newsroom
04-06-2025
- Newsroom
Jacinda, glossed over
There are gaps, big gaps, in the new memoir by Jacinda Ardern. It is not a book which gives the full political context of her rise and fall, or at least her rise and exit. There's not as much as might be expected on the Covid years. No mention at all of her 2020 election opponent Judith Collins, with very little on other Nats. Bare references to the Covid-era economic borrowing and spending, or of the suite of second-term political quicksands like Three Waters that dragged her government and Ardern personally down. It is a global book, not local. New Zealand politics in the abstract. Yet she opens up in many areas, and avoids the traps of political autobiographies in which the great and good name drop, show off, reinvent history and attack their opponents. There's minimal retailing of conversations with world leaders. She shares observations about Prince William from close quarters, warms to Angela Merkel, reveals her message on the phone to Donald Trump after the mosque terror attacks – for the US (and by implication the President) to show sympathy and love to 'all Muslims' – and recalls Malcolm Turnbull helping her at an Apec security check. No indulgences with Trudeau or Xi or Boris, no Bolger-style 'As I was telling the President'. For someone so studied, prepared and self-aware, it's remarkable how often Ardern just blurted out her most famous lines. 'Let's Do This', the election slogan that helped Labour win power in 2017, was at first a throwaway line on one of her Instagram posts. 'Kindness' came out as the essence of what she wanted her Government to exhibit, in a conversation with John Campbell as she drove to Government House to be sworn in as Prime Minister in 2017. 'They Are Us', the nation's unifying cry after the Christchurch mosque massacres in 2019, was something she said as she downloaded to her friend Grant Robertson in a moment of dread and despair, when about to address the nation. He told her, 'Just say that.' The origins of the phrases are gently revealed among the scores of anecdotes and insights in A Different Kind of Power. In each instance she appears surprised at herself, a 'chronic overthinker' who has realtime discoveries of the mot juste, of the historic. 'Kindness,' she muses after recalling the Campbell conversation. 'It is a child's word, in a way. Simple. And yet it encompassed everything that had left an imprint on me.' The book also peels back the deeper origins of her ability, on the spot, to capture a mood, to distil her purpose and look to inspire – and the origins of her senses of compassion and social justice. It leans heavily on Ardern's personal formation and challenges. It is a different kind of memoir. And that will make it stand out among the reminiscences and revelations of New Zealand political leaders. She writes at some length about growing up in Te Aroha, Murupara and Morrinsville, about her family, and about her life in the Mormon church. The family memories are powerful: The primary school-aged Jacinda coming across her father Ross, the police sergeant in Murupara, surrounded by menacing men 'in leather pants and jackets' outside his station, and being told 'Keep walking Jacinda', unable to help. Her mother Laurel's mental breakdown in the same forestry town. Murupara was tough. Poverty, struggle, gangs, unfairness. Ardern writes that years later, when asked when she first became political, she realised it was there in that central North Island community. 'I became political because I lived in Murupara.' Then in an ordered, chronological way A Different Kind of Power traverses high school, knocking on doors for the church, university, initial political awakenings, OE and the pull of national politics. In every phase there is a building of the picture of a woman who is at once sensitive to a fault, image-conscious, self-conscious, media-conscious and trying to live by her own conscience. Open and closed Ardern can write. No surprises there, with the talent for communicating, messaging and indentifying with her audiences that she showed us over 14 years in politics. She professes herself, in the acknowledgements, to have been a 'speechwriter' since the age of 13, and implies the book benefited hugely from Ali Benjamin who she credits with being 'teacher, editor and coach all rolled into one'. Yet a ghost didn't write this; Ardern's voice is obvious from the opening dedication 'to the criers, worriers and huggers' to the final words. Memoir writing is thinking, lived experience, revelation and anticipation of what the reader might want answered. There was always going to be a mountain of material to sift through. Ardern's answer is to be relentlessly open, personally, and largely subdued and non-controversial politically. In the opening scene as she awaits a pregnancy test result in a friend's bathroom she wonders about the day's coalition talks and her feeling the equivalent of imposter syndrome. 'We were never meant to win. And I was never meant to be leader.' The book's title A Different Kind of Power might betray a hint of a self-help text, a motivational Ted talk or a 'how to win elections and influence history' lecture. It's much more than that. It offers up Jacinda Ardern as a lifelong doubter who through conviction, talent, political accidents and then empathy, rose to international acclaim. What's missing from this book is almost as interesting as what it covers. For example, she doesn't indulge the haters, giving a complete swerve to that daft, ubiquitous, corrosive series of online and social media rumours about her husband Clarke. Her story is not a platform to even scores – not many of them, anyway. The book is clearly for an audience extending beyond these shores, so the detail of domestic politics is relatively sparse. Don Brash, on the other side of politics, is harshly dismissed, and David Cunliffe, on her own, qualifies for the strongest and most detailed dressing down. Ardern plainly has no time for the man who famously declared he was sorry for being a man. There's a tantalising window into Labour's caucus room after Cunliffe's historic defeat in 2014. 'By convention what is said in a caucus room stays in the caucus room, and it's a convention I will always follow,' she writes, nobly but disappointingly limiting herself to describing and paraphrasing tears and anger, fury and despair. Ardern the party leader won two elections from two. In A Different Kind of Power, it's not exactly 'losers get off the stage', but her book describes John Key, the Prime Minister for the first eight years of her time in Parliament in a perfunctory paragraph. It gives his successor Bill English part of one line and a mention about the campaign debates, and ignores her 2020 opponent Judith Collins entirely. The yawning question That year, 2020, and the epoch-defining Covid deaths and lockdowns that followed into 2021, are peculiarly consigned to very late in the book, taking their chronological place from 280 pages in. For the haters who will want to pore over her justifications for the pandemic policies and their grievances, the book will disappoint. Ardern threads accounts of Level 3 crisis decisions at the Beehive alongside home bubble experiences with husband Clarke, daughter Neve and mum Laurel. These brief, fascinating two chapters on the Covid years give a glancing view into a Beehive in the time of crisis. 'It's rare that you can draw a direct line between a politician's decision and whether someone lived or died,' Ardern writes. 'But this seemed to be one of them.' Fitting the minimalist recounting of the Covid days, Sir Ashley Bloomfield rates a one-sentence cameo. Ardern reflects on the later parliamentary protest not so much as a personal or political condemnation as being a systemic lesson: 'Whatever had brought the protesters to Parliament, by the end, it was clear that is was a place and institution they didn't believe in anymore.' Years on, the ex-PM who is now a world away at Harvard, asks herself the yawning question. Does she have regrets about the Covid decisions and years? 'Yes, I think about regret,' she writes, but 'that word regret contains so much certainty. Regret says you know precisely what you would have done differently … We don't get to see the counterfactual, the outcome of the decisions we didn't make. The lives that might have been lost. One thing I am certain of is that I would want things to have been different. I would want a world where we saved lives and we brought everyone with us. Perhaps that is the difference between regret and remorse.' Or the difference between the perfect and the optimal. Resignation and new life If the book's Covid-era brevity seems a little short-changing, it is likely deliberate. After all, A Different Kind of Power is about being able to rise, in spite of your doubts or fears, to the occasion of running the country or handling a crisis – not about the detail of actually running the country or the crisis itself. Its difference is in viewing empathy and kindness, hugs, tears and compassion as political virtues in a world that judges them vices. Ardern is astonished when a social media poster at the time of the Whakaari White island disaster claimed she went to Whakatāne just so she could be photographed hugging people. And that makes her even more determined. 'The post bothered me more than I wanted to admit,' she writes, and then tells of meeting a female ambulance officer who'd helped on the day, the woman hugging her, with the cameras clicking. 'I knew this would only feed my critics, the ones who were cynical about empathy, who thought that everything was somehow a show. That's fine, I thought as I hugged her tight in return. I would rather be criticised than stop being human.' She outlines in the final brief chapters how that criticism, the cynicism, the always-on-alert responsibility of her job, helped convince her to resign. There's the story of a mystery woman sidling up to her at an airport bathroom, pressing in and hissing 'Thank you for ruining the country'. There's Ardern's fear upon being told she needed a scan for a lump in her breast and wondering 'perhaps I could leave' office, a feeling that didn't leave her despite the risk of cancer being ruled out. There are two instances of snapping at or about people – calling David Seymour an arrogant prick and pushing hard against a journalist for asking a sexist question at a press conference with the Finnish PM. And there's Ardern suggesting to her chief of staff that she worried, in 2023 at the start of an election year, she might have become a lightning rod for attack, and could damage Labour's chances of winning and of its policies enduring. And, in that most ordinary of family occurrences, young Neve asks why her mum needs to Work. So. Much. As the book rushes to a close, the announcement of her resignation, the political and public reaction and the accession of Chris Hipkins as Prime Minister to lead Labour forward are largely glossed over. That's a fail, maybe resulting from an American editor scrawling 'who, what, who cares?' in the margins and deleting. There's nothing on The Wedding, and just a mention of moving to Boston, with nothing of the new life. More importantly, also absent are all the issues of political (mis)management beyond Covid – Three Waters, ministerial conduct, law and order failures, stubborn child poverty and emergency housing – that rose up inexorably in Ardern's second term. Remember, Labour burned more political capital in that term – from an outright MMP majority to 27 percent and defeat – than probably any government other than the Fourth Labour Government of 1987-90. But A Different Kind of Power doesn't dwell on the negative or even acknowledge it. Right at the end, Ardern summarises her role-model message to any young woman doubting her right to be in a position or place. Embrace your sensitivity and empathy. 'In fact, all of the traits that you believe are your flaws will come to be your strengths.' That might well be true for Ardern, or for an individual. It's not so for a government. A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin, $59.99) is available in bookstores nationwide. ReadingRoom has devoted all week to coverage of the book. Monday: experts in the book trade predict it will fly off the shelves. Tuesday: a review by Steve Braunias. Wednesday: a review by Janet Wilson.
Newsroom
04-06-2025
- Newsroom
New Zealand's invisible children
When Helen Clark's Labour government brought in a law that would create waves of undocumented children, even the immigration experts had no idea of the impact it would have on thousands of lives. The 2006 Citizenship Amendment Act ended automatic citizenship for children born here to overstayers or parents with temporary visas. It was also supported by the National Party. Immigration lawyer Alastair McClymont has been working in the sector for more than 25 years but only recently discovered the fallout from the law. 'It never really occurred to me that this would actually be a problem,' he says. 'It was only really when these children started coming forward that I thought 'This is really unusual, I wonder how many other children are in this sort of situation'. 'It is only recent because these children are now finishing high school and realising that their life has now come to an end, they don't have any options as to what to do.' They are called 'the invisible children', says RNZ immigration reporter Gill Bonnett. They are mainly children of overstayers or temporary visa holders from Pacific countries, India or China. She's known about them for many years but they have been hidden or protected by their parents and communities. 'These people don't want to come forward because they are scared about the consequences of doing so and they don't want to speak up either in the media or necessarily don't want to put their case in front of immigration officials in case it means that they or their parents get deported.' The case of Daman Kumar brought the issue to light, she says, when he bravely spoke to RNZ Asia reporter Blessen Tom two years ago. At the time, the teenager's voice was disguised and he went unnamed for fear he would be deported to India, along with his parents. This year he hit the headlines and his identity was revealed when he was on the verge of deportation. 'He'd been able to go to school okay but when it came to thinking about university or work he realised that he had nowhere to go,' says Bonnett. To further complicate the matter, Kumar's sister was unaffected because she was born before the 2006 law, meaning she is legally a New Zealand citizen. And it is not unique to the Kumar family, Bonnett says. She explains to The Detail what was happening in New Zealand when the law was brought in, including the sense of moral panic. At the time Helen Clark said she was concerned about incidents of people flying to New Zealand for a short time and having babies here to ensure they gained passports, known as 'birth tourism'. Clark said the government would be silly not to look at this, given what other countries were doing. 'They call it the 'anchor babies',' says Bonnett. 'The idea that if your child had citizenship that later on in life you might be able to get citizenship yourself or that you would just be bestowing good privileges on them for later on.' She says there were concerns on both sides of the ledger at the time: one side about birth tourism, where a child born on New Zealand soil would automatically get citizenship, and on the other side concerns about children who had lived here all their lives but didn't have citizenship. It is not clear how many children are undocumented, but McClymont says it could be thousands and the number will keep growing. 'Every year now more and more children are going to be coming out of high school and realising that they can't study, they can't go and get jobs because it would be a breach of the law for employers to employ someone who's here unlawfully. So they can't work, they can't study, they can't travel, they just simply cannot do anything.' McClymont says he has not had a satisfactory response from the Government to his suggestion that New Zealand follow Australia and Britain by giving children birthright citizenship after 10 years of habitual residence. 'Really, it's hard to see what the justification is for punishing these children. Nobody is making the argument that these children have done something wrong and that they deserve to be punished. 'The only potential argument is that these children are being punished as a deterrent for others against having children here in New Zealand,' he says. 'It's just unfathomable as a society that we can actually do this to children and use them for this purpose. There doesn't seem to be any moral justification whatsoever for treating them so badly.' Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here. You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter.
