And so we come to the last show of the year which is often a chance to reflect on the the year that’s been.

But the year that’s been has been one of those years that you stagger through rather than a year you exalt bookended by 2 indescribable tragedies. Christchurch of March 15 and Whakaari White island.

Many have written about these two events because they were so paramount in our attention at the time and they will live on in our history. And because they were such ugly events in a country we all love for it’s beauty and relative peace.

They were out of place and dissonant and jarring and confronting.

And yet humming along behind was the decent New Zealand. The kindness of strangers this year was immense.

The flowers at mosques around the country. Middlemore Burns Centre deluged with messages and donations.

Amongst the dark times the light of a good country glowed.

But there was much unhappiness.

It was a winter of discontent as business and consumer confidence plummeted.

It was a year of a growing distance between the city and the country as farmers felt branded as the bad guys of the environment.

It was the year the generation gap widened as boomers dissed the millennials and the millennials responded by ignoring the boomers. OK?

But it’s easy to hear the headlines and ignore the whole story.

We come to the end of the year with many positive signs in the economy. Commodity prices at highs. Interest rates at lows. Unemployment low. There’s a buzz in the air.

Farmers have never been better to the land with clean practices and new technology helping them get better and better

And we all know that millennials and boomers are no different to every warring generation since history began.

In my job the discussion is often about what we’re screwing up. That’s because fix that and we become even better. It’s not about running down the country but geeing it up.

So this is a good country. We see it every moment in our day to day life but somehow that doesn’t translate into our public discussions on where we’re at.

At the end of this year I feel very positive. We came through a bad one and we’re moving forward. 

Personally as you may or may not know I’ve hit my own stumbling blocks with my health this year but every day I’m feeling better and better.

This year both my children finished their education and are now qualified and employed young men. In March my youngest is 21. Helen and I can look at the quarter century of child rearing with happiness and a lot of pride. We made it and it appears we didn’t screw up.

2020 is an incredible number really. The symmetry of it. The power of it. It feels to me like a big old gate that we’re going throw open and walk through and be better than ever for it.