The Asus2 legend lives on from the Em Chippewa on down Of the G big lake they D called "Gitche Asus2 Gumee." The lake, it is said, never Em gives up her dead When the G skies of Nov-D-ember turn Asus2 gloomy. This Asus2 is an old song but the Em legend lives on In the G voyage of our D good ship the Asus2 Rena With its cargo of pine and of Em Astrolabe wine Meat G patties and D chemical Asus2 cleaner Our ship was the pride of some Greek family's side Working out of a port in Australia As box feeder ships go, it was older than most With a crew who enjoyed bacchanalia We were all rugby fans to the very last man And we followed the All Blacks with ardour We'd a great silver fern on the flag at our stern And black smoke when we steamed out of harbour For our captain's birthday we had spent all our pay On a party that went on forever We got girls from the docks to come dressed as Springboks Such sport we had rucking together Our games were kept primed with meat patties and wine But for food from the sea we were wishing So to Astrolabe reef where rock cod swim beneath We detoured for a quick spot of fishing. When our cod had been caught we were due to turn port  But a blindside ruck took us to starboard Our boat went aground with a great tearing sound  Its bottom ripped open like cardboard. Instrumental  (quietly) They've been painting things up for the Rugby World Cup Everywhere that a black paint brush reaches It was fun backing Black 'til our ship's hull did crack..... (pause) (slowly) .... and we painted all Tauranga's beaches. The 2011 Rugby World Cup The RWC was held in New Zealand in October 2011. The NZ government promoted a carnival atmosphere to help drew rugby tourists to New Zealand. Flags of competing countries, and All Black silver fern flags were flown all over the country. Many iconic objects were painted black, and young women dressed up in the colours of the team whose players they fancied. The Rena The Rena was an aging container ship, known until the previous year as the Andaman Sea, and before that as Zim America. It was 21 years into its 25-30-year lifespan. It could carry the equivalent of 3300 20-foot containers. It had been recently sold by Ofer Brothers of Israel to a Greek firm Costamare who hired inexperienced Philippino seamen to crew it and then leased it to an Italian firm MSC. MSC sent it down to Australia and then around the New Zealand coast transferring a couple of hundred containers at each port. It was intended that it would then return to Brisbane where its boxes would be transferred to a larger container ship. In July 2011 it was detained at Freemantle, Western Australia after the Australian Maritime Safety Authority found the vessel had not been maintained between surveys. The hatchway cover latches were cracked and rusted, and containers were not secured properly. In September, during an inspection in Bluff, its captain was warned about problems with its safety record. Its safety checklist was not working effectively, and consequently equipment failures were not being picked up. The Maritime Union warned that the Rena did not have proper navigation charts. Union members noted that its GPS screen would show coastal details, but when a GPS screen is zoomed out to view a large area, small details such as reefs are not shown. On October 2, the oil tanker Torea had to swerve out of the way as the Rena overtook it at high speed. Wednesday, Oct 5 2011, was the 44th birthday of the ship's captain. His ship had almost finished a voyage up the coast from Napier to Tauranga. At 1.20am on Wednesday morning, when it was about 30 nm from Tauranga, it suddenly changed course and headed straight for the Astrolabe Reef. It went aground on the reef an hour later. Despite the Rena being beached in New Zealand’s territorial waters, authorities were not allowed to board the vessel to breath test the crew to ensure drunkenness was not a reason for the accident.  Five days later, the Rena's hull cracked and hundreds of tons of bunker oil started coming ashore on the pristine surfing beaches arond Tauranga. Thousands of summer holiday makers went elsewhere, causing havoc for dozens of small businesses near Tauranga - motels, restaurants, surfboard shops, cruise launches, fishing boats, dive tours. Deregulation disasters The Rena oil pollution disaster was only the latest in a series of avoidable disasters. In the 1990s right-wing NZ governments removed protective regulations from the alcohol retailing, building construction, mining and coastal maritime industries. This allowed some rich entrepreneurs to get even richer, but there have been a whole series of disastrous consequences. Epidemic of alcoholic teenagers. Alcohol was once bought and drunk in glasses in hotels, by adults 21+ years old. With deregulation, any 18 year old could buy unlimited amounts of alcohol from a wide variety of shops. Leaky homes. NZ houses were once built by registered builders with rot-proof tanalized wooden frames, rainproof overlapping wall cladding, and overhanging roofs. With deregulation, shonky builders sold thousands of jerry-built houses, mostly in Auckland, that started leaking and rotting, making them uninhabitable. The Christchurch earthquake. Although Christchurch has been struck by earthquakes regularly, with cathedral spire having been shaken down 4 times previous to the 2010 earthquake, suburban houses were built on drained swampland, without any piles going down to bedrock, with brittle concrete slab foundations, and brick walls that had no reinforcing. After the 2011 and 2011 earthquakes, thousands of these now have to be rebuilt. The Pike River Mine explosion. Government mine inspectors and Miners Union representatives lost their powers, and coaal mine safety was left to the mine owners. At Pike River mine, concerns about inadequate ventilation and the lack of an escape tunnel were ignored, and a methane gas explosion killed 34 men. Songlist - Home Page placed onto the NZ Folksong website, October 16, 2011