Excerpt from Senate President Colleen Hanabusa's 2008 Opening Day Speech:
Over the past year, two events came together to show me—in stark terms—the crossroads that we stand at today.

The first was some concern over what we all came to lovingly refer to as “that darn boat.” Love it or hate it, the Superferry was the lightning-rod question of the year.    On its face, the Superferry issue seemed only whether or not the state should have granted an environmental exemption to allow the ferry to operate.  But the Superferry controversy was not about a boat, or a mode of transportation, or the environmental laws of this State. It was about how that single question—like a pebble hitting a rock hitting a boulder—created an avalanche.

It was about people feeling irrelevant, ignored, and helpless. It was about communities dividing, positions hardening, and people losing hope.

Worst of all, it was about fear.  The fear that one’s future was no longer within one’s control.  The fear that tomorrow belongs to them—and not to us. The fear that the ferry somehow symbolized our future, good or bad, and whether we like it or not. The fear of what is the future? What is the Hawaii that we will have in twenty to forty years?

This manifested itself in what we legislators had to deal with in the Special Session.  The questions of Honolulu-centrism. Us versus them. Neighbor islands versus Oahu. Locals versus new arrivals.  And then what was not said but clearly there: Growth versus the status quo. Development versus agriculture. Urban egotism versus rural reverse-elitism.

These labels showed us the division in our community. But how deep or how hardened it is—how long we allow it to remain—will determine how we address the challenge of our shared future.

For those of us who heard the Superferry testimony on the neighbor islands, we asked if we can cure this divide over all of those polarized positions.

But then, just as the Superferry erupted, seemingly out of nowhere, we experienced another phenomenon.  A phenomenon that made it clear that the people of this State can pull together.  The phenomenon of Warrior fever.  The shared experience of watching our football team go undefeated in the regular season. Read more-