Originally published July 21, but it daily still has resonance. Since I wrote it, Australia has become the only OECD member not to fall into recession, while in New Zealand the finance minister continues to delight in his “demoralising trudge” of layoffs and cutbacks.
One of life’s curiously interesting delights comes with being away for a while and returning to discover all at once what has happened during the entire length of one’s absence. I’ve just had such an experience.
Whoever would have imagined, for example, that becoming a celebrity fawned over by the media would ensure a jury would acquit you of mass murder, despite overwhelming, forensic evidence of your guilt? But David Bain managed it.
Or that National’s Melissa Lee could lose the Mt Albert byelection, despite David Farrar cunningly setting her up for victory? But even David couldn’t have foreseen their government announcing it would cut a motorway through the heart of the electorate rather than building the previously planned tunnel. It was a piece of political self-destruction up there with Rob Muldoon increasing the Auckland Harbour Bridge tolls a week before the 1980 East Coast Bays byelection to ensure Don Brash failed to win what had been a blue ribbon safe seat, and seemed just as deliberate. Nor would anyone have foreseen that Lee, an elegant Korean television journalist, would make bizarre racist attacks on the good people of South Auckland, ensuring a media frenzy.
Nor, deliciously, that the most uninspiring member of Parliament ever to have been elected to (and then lost) a safe seat, Richard Worthless, would be forced by the nice Mr Key to resign over – I could hardly believe it – a minor sex scandal involving at least two women. It was utterly depressing when this bore took over the Epsom seat from the distinguished Sir Douglas Graham, a man of enormous mana. It was no surprise at all that Worthless lost the former blue ribbon seat to Rodney Hide at the 2005 election, but shameful that he snuck back in on the party list. Good riddance at last to this lazy trough-feeder who demonstrably found his private business interests of greater importance than his ministerial duties and who, if he is remembered at all, it will be for his disgraceful tour of Cairo’s tourist spots rather than attending the commemorations for the Maori Battalion’s memorable part in the El Alamein battle, which taxpayers had funded him on as a member of a solemn New Zealand delegation.
Or that, astonishingly, a Corrections Minister was boasting how she had locked up more New Zealanders than ever before and kept promising to lock up still so many more that she intended to “house” them in shipping containers? Or that the Chief Justice would be attacked by the “Justice” Minister for raising the issue of the futility of imposing longer and longer sentences, thus causing the jails to bulge beyond capacity despite the crime rate actually falling for years?
The latter reminded me of Sir Douglas Graham telling me in the late 1980s – when he was a member of the National Opposition whose other MPs were attacking the Labour Government’s plans for a Bill of Rights Act – that he would rather have his rights protected by judges than by politicians.
Today I saw the dear old Business Roundtable, bless him, calling for the domestic purposes benefit to be abolished, to stop young women getting pregnant. At least the Roundtable drumbeat has been consistent since 1985, though pity that the authors whom dear Roger commissions for his predictable reports are becoming ever less authoritative. To hire an unqualified, beneficiary bashing talkback ranter like Lindsay Mitchell, when previously he engaged luminary academics from prestigious international institutions, suggests even the Roundtable is running out of money.
But all of this would just be a hilarious “welcome home” if it wasn’t for the appallingly sombre, helpless, despairing view of New Zealand as depicted by our own government.
In Australia, where I have had the opportunity to have travelled about these past few weeks, everyone except the media (which anywhere, always, promotes doom and gloom) is constantly upbeat about the state of the economy and the country’s outlook. The Polyannas include not just Kevin Rudd’s Labor Government but also Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberal Opposition. Yes, of course, the Opposition in Australia constantly attacks and carps on about the Government, but it does not attack and carp on about Australia.
Indeed, the most worrying thing about the Australian economy is that their media – after wallowing in doom for two years like ours has – have woken up to the fact that disaster has not happened, whether from the mildest flu strain for decades or the most-hyped recession since 1929. Today’s Melbourne Age predicted all might be well, that the economy is set to defy the destruction predicted for the last two years by… um… every media outlet in the world including The Age. Being a sceptical journalist, I full well know that neither journalists nor economists can accurately predict anything at all, but whatever we do predict invariably comes not to pass, at least not in the extreme form always forecast. So I pray desperately The Age is right for once in its predictions.
Numbingly, in New Zealand, it is our Government that is constantly attacking New Zealand and running down its fortunes and prospects at every opportunity. Chief among the Jonahs is the dour Finance Minister, Bill English, who constantly claims we face a “decade of deficits.” Even worse, at the New Zealand Herald’s annual platform for predictable corporate moaning, its Mood of the Boardroom breakfast, he said all we can look forward to is a “demoralising trudge”.
And then people were surprised that New Zealand’s still very strong economy was immediately put on credit watch. If your finance minister so publicly and continually rubbishes your country and takes as much delight in company closures and layoffs as this one does, then the ratings agencies will sit up, take notice and act, especially since they failed utterly to predict the collapse of the banks and other corporates they supposedly watch over.
Shame on your name, Bill. You have such a lovely wife. You need to let her cheer you up. A smile does not hurt. Having confidence in New Zealand would not be a sign of weakness; it would actually be a strength. Stop being such a dreary miseryguts.
I would not try to argue that the grass is always greener elsewhere, especially the grass in Australia, which is almost non-existent in some places I have been, thanks to the usual droughts which that huge desert continent experiences.
But, my god, there is no constant running down of Australia’s prospects by its political leaders, who are united in their determination to keep unemployment low and the economy ticking along very nicely thank you. You do not hear Australian cabinet ministers boasting how many public servants they are sacking.
New Zealand went into this world recession – caused by the corporate greed which some people in New Zealand think is admirable – with among the lowest unemployment and public debt in the developed world. The latter was thanks to former finance minister Michael Cullen’s determination to use his budget surpluses to repay debt rather than splurge on the tax cuts loudly demanded by National through all of Labour’s term. Cullen’s Scroogeness meant New Zealand can afford the modest deficits that would be expected in such an international downturn. Instead we are back to the slash and burn of 1991, when unemployment hit 11 per cent amid similar applause from the same cheerleaders.
Australia entered the world downturn similarly low in public debt – though with slightly higher unemployment – and there is little talk there of a decade of deficits. In fact, Australia is yet even to experience technical recession, as there has been just one quarter of negative growth, not repeated, since the Greed is Good parasites destroyed the world’s financial system.
I fear for a country being as constantly bad-mouthed by its government as New Zealand is, for the constant denigration is likely to bear the fruit that could be expected, as demonstrated by the negative credit watch, which the cheerleaders who looted New Zealand applaud from their tax havens in Geneva and elsewhere.
I fear for this country not for myself but for my children. All three of them talk of moving to Australia for work and education. Even from a distance, the allure of a country whose leaders do not constantly denigrate it is apparent to them. Having had a good look around a lot of Australia in recent times, I can understand that allure.
New Zealanders are not a bunch of losers, but many of our political leaders give more than the impression that losers are how they see us and a failed state is what they want us to become, even if unwittingly. They look like the losers. Maybe they should piss off to North Korea or Nauru or some other failed state that would welcome their mediocrity, and let a few people with confidence take us boldly and confidently into the future that so scares them.
That’s assuming we still have anyone with such confidence willing to take over the reins.
The 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin making the first Moon landing reminded me I’d completely overlooked another anniversary as close to my heart as that long ago great leap for mankind. Shamefully, it is not being celebrated and indeed has not even been mentioned anywhere except on this blog, belatedly, today .
This is what Wellington is missing out on, why it is not the world-class city it should be. This is a modern tram in Melbourne running on Route 96, the busiest of that city’s many tram routes. 
