Last week’s opinion poll, showing Labour down and National making ground, should have rung alarm bells and put the government on notice.

They should learn the lesson that, if they want to be re-elected, they cannot just rely on the Prime Minister’s popularity – Jacinda Ardern may remain head and shoulders above other contenders as the preferred Prime Minister, (and it is hard to see the other contenders making up much ground), but the government she heads has to do better.

Too often, her ministers give the impression that they think that talking about something is as good as actually doing it. They need to understand that the time to make a public statement about a policy objective is when it has been achieved, not when it is identified in prospect.

And they cannot afford careless mistakes – mistakes often of a technical nature and committed by their underlings; ministers are responsible for and must answer for everything their departments do.

The Prime Minister must speak severely to her ministers, and point out that it is part of their job description to ensure that they demand and receive proper standards of performance from their departments.

No one can doubt that the government’s heart is in the right place. They have correctly identified those areas of policy, and those parts of society, that are most in need of attention and help. Those in need, and those deprived of the opportunities that most of us expect and enjoy, have good reason to be thankful. But government ministers have sometimes been slow to work out what needs to be done, let alone to ensure that it gets done.

And, it is in the nature of things, and of politics in particular, that even when the right things are done, even those who benefit are likely to complain that it is not enough or is too late – and it is then those complaints, not the improvements, that make the news.

Part of the problem ministers face is that they are in a hurry. Our unusually short three-year parliamentary term means that a reforming government, with a substantial agenda ahead of it of things needing to be done, has only just had time to draw breath before it begins to feel that it is running out of time.

That is particularly true of a government that has set itself a significant programme of reform, and that has inherited a wide-ranging set of adverse consequences from the deliberate under-funding of public services by its predecessor.

Our schools and other educational institutions, our hospitals and health services, our roads and rail and other forms of infrastructure, are all grappling with the outcomes of that under-funding – and they look to the current government to put things right.

The government must realise, if they haven’t done so already, that the public is a hard taskmaster. In the end, they judge on performance, not on ambitions, and they are impatient with excuses.

There are, however, encouraging signs. A government that has up till now given priority to establishing a record of, and reputation for, fiscal propriety has at last decided that it is time to loosen the purse strings and to invest – quite properly and sensibly – in those areas that desperately need it.

The good news is that this will not only benefit the direct recipients of that largesse but will also stimulate the economy as a whole and make us all better off. It will be a real change for the better if the new money coming into the economy is produced by the government and is invested in productive purposes, rather than – as has been the case for too long – created by the banks and applied to house purchase and non-productive asset inflation.

The new spending by government will stimulate more economic activity, producing more jobs, higher wages and more profitable businesses – good news all round!

Bryan Gould
5 December 2019

I gather from some recent television advertising that something called “Black Friday” is the occasion for one-day sales in a number of stores.

I am unfamiliar with any date that we call Black Friday – still less, why it should be regarded as an opportunity to offer cut-price purchases to the public – but I suspect that it is a date that features in the American calendar and is exploited by American retailers, and is then enthusiastically borrowed by their New Zealand counterparts.

My curiosity about Black Friday prompted a train of thought in which I tallied up the various ways in which we are gradually (or not so gradually) being absorbed, as a kind of satellite or colony, into the American sphere of influence, both economically, of course, and – increasingly – culturally as well.

I register, for example, the annual excitement that now attends something called Halloween. When I grew up in New Zealand, Halloween was almost entirely unknown as something to be celebrated or acknowledged in any way. Today, however, the whole paraphernalia of dressing up in frightening costumes and make-up, and knocking on doors with the question “trick or treat”, is commonplace.

New Zealand might as well have been transplanted to the American Mid-West at Halloween time; yet it has no roots in New Zealand culture.

We are of course familiar with the extent to which our current popular culture – film, television shows, popular music – is derived directly from American sources. But these days, it is not just our entertainment that is, to all intents and purposes, American; we seem to be witnessing the beginnings of a similar takeover of our sporting activities.

We now see a great deal of basketball on our screens – a sport that only a tiny proportion of our population is physically equipped to play at the highest level – and we now have a domestic baseball competition, despite our superb international record in the rival sport of softball.

And we should also register the attempts to generate local interest in American football, and the increasing flow of Kiwi rugby players – both union and league – to American football, despite our worldwide pre-eminence in both forms of rugby.

A catalogue of American cultural takeover would not, of course, be complete without some reference to the increasing Americanisation of our language. The American accent is often used to give the impression that a given product is ‘in the swim” or “the latest thing”, with the result that it is often adopted by the impressionable in an attempt to impress.

And I was surprised very recently to hear a TVOne newsreader use the American pronunciation of the word “advertisement”, with its emphasis on the third syllable.

American spellings are increasingly adopted – for words such as “colour” or “through”- despite the fact that their traditional spellings have a perfectly sound etymological basis.

And our language is increasingly confused by the American insistence on misusing some perfectly useful words – to “lay” (down) instead of to “lie” (down), for example, and “alternate” instead of “alternative”, which manages to deprive both words of their proper meaning.

I am well aware that these observations will be regarded by many readers, particularly younger ones, as unduly curmudgeonly – to which I would answer that I offer them, not as an expression of disapproval or regret at what is happening, but simply to register that it is, so that we have the chance to decide whether it is what we want.

It may be that further, and eventually complete, absorption into the American sphere of influence is inevitable, given the American dominance of so many aspects of our national life. But it would surely be preferable that such a development should be the consequence of choice rather than drift or takeover.

The riposte might be made that I make no objection to our long-time indebtedness to British influence – but that at least is a legitimate part of our own history and development.

I have some hope that a proper awareness of, and pride in, who we are, and of what makes us distinctive, will help us to maintain a concept of our national identity. That, surely, is worth both preserving and developing further.

Bryan Gould
27 November 2019

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I had the pleasure of attending the annual Senior School prizegiving of Tauranga Boys College. Our enjoyment of the evening was of course enhanced by seeing our grandson awarded a number of prizes.

There were, though, many other aspects of the proceedings which merited our appreciation. There were interesting speeches, not least from the Headmaster, and excellent playing from the school band – but perhaps the most impressive moments of the evening were delivered by virtue of the haka that were performed at various stages of the proceedings.

Judged simply in terms of the volume of sound and the precision of movement, the haka would have scored well as performances – but the intensity and passion of the young men involved would have alerted even the most insensitive observer to the fact that the haka were more than just performances.

And a close observer would have recognised, given the different points in the proceedings at which they were delivered, that they were not all the same or intended for the same purpose.

On occasion, as when the College staff processed into the room in their academic regalia, the haka was intended as a greeting and an acknowledgment and a tribute to those whose mana meant that they deserved such an honour. At other points, as when a prestigious award was made to a young Maori scholar, the haka was the celebration of an achievement on the part of a young man with whom the performers felt a special bond – or was perhaps simply a statement of pride and pleasure.

My wife, who is English in origin, and I, both felt that the excellence of the haka marked the evening out as something that could not be found elsewhere – that they signalled to us and to everyone else present that we were in Aotearoa/New Zealand and that the school recognised and celebrated the Maori contribution to the life and personality of the school. And it was interesting and encouraging that, at some points, Pasifika students made a similar contribution to proceedings and expressed their own cultural heritage in similarly effective ways.

Our thoughts along these lines were of course front of mind because of the controversy that had been generated in some overseas media concerning the All Blacks’ performance of the haka as they started matches at the Rugby World Cup.

The ignorance of those overseas commentators about the subject on which they chose to comment was truly astonishing, as was the arrogance they showed in purporting to place the haka in a cultural context they did not understand.

My mind was drawn to the example offered by a true rugby great, the legendary former Wallaby captain, John Eales. In a match against the All Blacks some years earlier, Eales had advised his players to turn their backs on the haka.

In later years, he felt so troubled by that decision and so ashamed of his action, that he took the time to re-visit New Zealand and to make it his business to learn more about the haka. He travelled up and down the country, speaking to anyone who could offer him guidance, and he made a documentary recording what he had learned.

He emerged with a deeper understanding of what the haka meant. He acknowledged that the haka was not after all intended to intimidate opponents or to provide any other unfair advantage, but that it mattered to the All Blacks as a statement of who they are and where they had come from.

It is encouraging to discover, as our evening with Tauranga Boys College demonstrated to us, that the haka remains alive and well and is an integral part of our cultural heritage. Speaking purely for myself, I can say only that, when I am present as a haka is performed, I feel myself to be at home.

Bryan Gould
20 November 2019

The “lucky” country’s luck has, it seems, run out. The fires that have raged in New South Wales and Queensland have created a major natural catastrophe – with shocking loss of life and property, wild life such as koalas and kangaroos burnt to death, exhausted fire crews, huge economic damage and a continuing threat to the viability of human settlement in large areas of Australia. The country seemed to be, quite literally, burning up.

The pictures shown on our television screens testify to what is surely more than an isolated episode. They took my mind back to a lunch I attended in Oxford in the early 1990s. The lunch was hosted, if my memory serves me correctly, by David Butler, the renowned psephologist, and he had for some reason invited me and three or four young, Oxford-based, Australian academics to join him.

My abiding memory of the occasion is of the pessimism of the young Australians about the future of their country. Their primary concern was the failure of their government to recognise the threat posed by the endemic shortage of water.

Their greatest fear was not that the country would catch fire and burn out of control, as has now happened, but the related issue of the effects of drought on Australian agriculture. They bemoaned what they saw as the government’s apathy and the absence of any remedial action.

I recall that they made a comment which I have since heard repeated many times. “If we could only prepare for our summer heat as well as the Canadians prepare for their winter cold,” they said, “ we would be in much better shape.”

I have often thought since that their pessimism and concern have been amply justified by events. Long before the bush fires filled our television screens, we saw grim evidence of the toll taken by drought conditions on farmers and orchardists – thin sheep searching in vain for something to eat on dry and grassless plains, and crops wilting in the heat.

If ever we needed evidence of the impact that climate can have on human activity and that, even in an advanced country, the authorities struggle to deal with its consequences, the Australian droughts and fires should settle any doubts.

The Australian experience is a particularly dramatic illustration of the damage risked and suffered if warning signs are ignored. And we in New Zealand should be careful to avoid feeling smug or complacent as we watch the travails of our trans-Tasman cousins.

We are also at risk, though not perhaps so obviously and dramatically. For us, global warming will not necessarily mean direct economic loss but rather a more diffuse deterioration in our environment and ecology. It will mean less acceptable air and water quality, it will require us to adapt to new climatic conditions in respect of land usage, it will produce a range of destructive weather events, and it will threaten the survival of endangered species whose contribution to our ecological balance is hard to measure.

Our government may not be receiving the same messages of impending disaster as were delivered to the Australian government, but we should not merely sigh with relief at our relative good fortune and then subside into inaction. We are kidding ourselves if we think that we can escape, relatively cost-free, the ravages of climate change and global warming.

As the Australians are now discovering, possibly too late, the early evidence of damage due to global warming should not be ignored. We are – failing any positive action – quite possibly next in line. The notion that we can deal with the threat on a “business as usual” basis could prove to be a calamitous delusion.

The news that a new political party, called Sustainable New Zealand, has been formed, with a supposed commitment to protecting the environment while at the same time (and improbably) prioritising “business as usual” policies and activities, is not encouraging. We have some hard choices to make if we are to escape the worst consequences of global warming. Deluding ourselves that we can carry on without making fundamental changes will not cut it – as we will quickly discover if we continue to bury our heads in the sand.

Bryan Gould

11 November 2019

New Zealand, as we all know, is a small country – not just in terms of our population and physical size, but in economic heft as well – and, from the viewpoint of the rest of the world, we are a long way away. There have even been instances when our very existence is forgotten by international map-makers.

The danger for us is that we are not front of mind and are easily overlooked when decisions affecting us are made – that we are, in effect, no more than a cork bobbing on an ocean governed by currents and storms of which we have little knowledge and over which we have no control.

This makes it all the more important that we should have a voice that is listened to in international forums, and that, when leaders overseas get together, we have a presence that is recognised and welcomed.

A New Zealand Prime Minister, in other words, has responsibilities that go well beyond the domestic environment and faces problems in being heard on the international stage that are greater than those faced by most other world leaders.

Our leaders have, accordingly, seen it as important that they should develop an International profile. In recent times, both Helen Clark and John Key have made their presence felt in international affairs – and Jacinda Ardern has been brilliantly successful in doing likewise.

Her most recent foray, at the East Asia summit in Bangkok, has been capped with a resounding success. We have secured an updated trade agreement with China, our most important trading partner, and have helped to lay the groundwork for a wide-ranging multi-party trade agreement, embracing countries that account for about half of the world’s trade.

Critics at home will of course complain that time spent overseas is wasted and is a distraction from pressing domestic problems, but these are views held only by the short-sighted and narrow-minded. The government does not grind to a halt when the Prime Minister is overseas – but only the Prime Minister can speak for our country when significant international meetings are held and decisions are taken that affect us directly.

Nor is it the case that it is only when our own national interest is directly affected – as in the case of trade relations – that the Prime Minister should bother to attend International gatherings. New Zealand has an important interest in helping to shape the developing international agenda.

On issues like climate change and the fight against terrorism, small countries are at least as much, if not more, at risk as our larger friends. New Zealand, having developed a voice that is listened to with attention and respect, can have a valuable role in using that voice to speak for and to champion other countries that have difficulty in being heard and whose fortunes are likely to suffer if damaging mistakes are not avoided.

And, it is sadly the case that the Pacific is increasingly becoming an area of contention and tension between the great powers. We – and our smaller friends and neighbours – need to do all we can to avoid becoming collateral damage as the big boys push and shove each other.

Our chances of surviving unscathed are much increased if the big players have become accustomed not only to the fact that we exist but also that we are worth listening to. It is very much in our interests that we have a Prime Minister who has earned the respect of her International colleagues and that she is able to show them that their views of issues and events are, on occasion, too narrow and self-focused.

We can all feel a sense of pride as New Zealanders, if our small country is able to take its place as of right when matters of great significance are being discussed by the world’s leaders. And, we can all derive some comfort from the knowledge that our particular perspective will be brought to bear on issues that will affect the future of us all.

Bryan Gould
5 November 2019