My wife and I have often enjoyed holidays in Australia.  A year or two ago, we returned to Noosa, and visited a café where we remembered having had good coffee a year earlier.

As he handed us our coffees, I asked the barista whether he was the Kiwi we recalled having met there briefly on our previous visit.  To my surprise, he stiffened, glared at me and said through clenched teeth, “I’m a proud Australian”, and stalked off.  We drank our coffees and did not return.

It prompted me to wonder, however, what had led him to react as though an innocent inquiry had grievously insulted him?

The incident was, at one level, of little consequence and we had many perfectly pleasant interactions with many other Australians during our holiday.  But it has stayed with me, and I cannot help but recall it when, as has happened recently with increasing frequency, there is some fresh report of Kiwis now living in “the lucky country” being discriminated against and denied the usual rights of citizenship.

My mother, as it happens, was born in Australia and, like most Kiwis, I was brought up with the belief that we and the Aussies were “brothers in arms” – an article of faith reinforced each year as we jointly celebrate Anzac Day.  We are assured constantly by our respective leaders that our close relationship is in our DNA – so where did this apparent hostility to New Zealanders come from?

The question is important, since if one side singles out the other for unfair treatment, what can be left of the relationship we have valued so dearly?  If it is to be preserved, we need to understand what is going wrong.

I think I can have a pretty good shot at identifying what it is that lies behind Australian attitudes – and the answer is not encouraging.   Most societies find it easy to be open-minded and welcoming when things are going well.   But when times are harder, the stresses and strains mean that attitudes change – and the Aussies are no exception.

Even when – by virtue of the boom in mineral prices – Australians enjoyed growing prosperity and full employment, and Kiwis crossed the Tasman in droves in search of well-paid jobs, there was no doubt some resentment at those seen as at best opportunists and at worst as bludgers.  The Aussies learnt to be somewhat contemptuous of their trans-Tasman neighbours.

That sentiment has no doubt changed direction a lttle as the Australian economy has slowed over recent years.  But, when the going gets tougher, the search for someone to blame gathers pace – and anyone who is seen to be not “one of us” is likely to cop it.

And that is especially so when a little dose of Aussie racism is added to the mix.  In many Australian minds, “Kiwi” means Maori or Polynesian – and that, sadly, is likely to be a further cause of hostility.

Paradoxically, the view that Kiwis cross the Tasman to make an unjustified grab for a share of hard-earned Australian prosperity has survived even when the cross-Tasman migration has begun to shift in the other direction.

It is as though the Aussies, having resented what they saw as Kiwi opportunism when the going was good, now resent the fact that Australia’s good fortune has recently diminished – and again, look for someone to blame or at least take it out on.

Whatever the reasons, our leaders must surely have the gumption to impress on their Australian counterparts that discrimination against Kiwis who have made their lives in Australia is doing significant damage to our relationship.

I like to think that, give or take the odd underarm bowling episode, we and the Aussies remain best mates, and that we share the view that everyone deserves a “fair go”.  On this side of the Tasman, we should strive to make sure that that remains the case.  If the relationship has become a little fractious, we must resist the temptation to retaliate.  They might send us myrtle rust, but we should show them what the Anzac spirit means – perhaps by allowing them to win the odd Super Rugby match.  Mind you, it would have to be pretty odd!

Bryan Gould

17 May 2017

Winston Churchill is reputed to have once said that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”.  If he did indeed say that, he was presumably trying to capture a somewhat paradoxical truth – that democracy, at its best, has great underlying virtues that are unmatched by other forms of government, but it can be easily subverted or exploited so that it produces unwelcome outcomes.

The recent US presidential election makes the point well.  If Vladimir Putin’s purpose in intervening in that election was to demonstrate democracy’s propensity to elevate demagogues who are not up to the job, he will have been delighted with his success in producing disturbing evidence of how easily the voters can be misled.

If democracy is to deliver what it promises, it must be underpinned by an informed and thoughtful electorate and it must not allow one body of opinion to be unfairly advantaged over others by virtue of an imbalance in financial resources, or in access to or control of the media.

We do not need to look to a Hitler or a Donald Trump to recognise that the democratic process can lead to perverse outcomes.  Even in our own domestic politics, we are constantly offered instances of both democracy’s strengths and its weaknesses.

One of the great virtues of a properly functioning democracy is that it will compel the rivals for power to compete as to which of them will best reflect the will of the people.  Last week’s budget, for example, could be seen as a welcome, not to say overdue, response to the demands made by public opinion.

The government’s qualitative opinion polling will have told them that New Zealanders are increasingly concerned about the widening inequality and growing poverty in our society, and are particularly alarmed at the unaffordability of housing and the plight of the homeless.

The measures proposed in the budget to address these issues could accordingly be seen as a proper reaction to the wishes of the people – exactly what democracy is meant to provide.

But – with just four months to go before a general election – the budget could also be seen as a cynical attempt to divert attention from past failures, and to persuade people that we can now put those adverse consequences behind us as we enter upon the “broad, sunlit uplands”.

It is in these circumstances that democracy is put to the test.  Will the electorate allow itself to be soft-soaped, or will it demand answers to the questions that should now be asked?

What price has been paid, for example, for the “surplus” that Steven Joyce is apparently now distributing so generously?  Remember that a government surplus does little to alleviate the country’s continuing deficit – the one that really matters.  It means simply that the government has taken more from us in taxation than it has spent on public services or on investment for the future.

It has managed to achieve this by leaving many important areas underfunded.  Those who depend on that funding – the poor, for example, those in need of effective health care, our schools, the voluntary sector, conservationists concerned about water quality, horticulturalists reliant on effective biosecurity, the list is virtually endless – have all suffered as a consequence of “the cuts”, and we are a weaker and poorer society as well.

The budget largesse is, in other words, at best a belated attempt to undo, at least in part and temporarily, the harm suffered by so many parts of our society and economy as a consequence of years of underfunding.

The proper democratic response should be to ask “why were these injuries to our society allowed to happen in the first place” and “why has it taken so long to remedy them” and “is dieting for long periods followed by the occasional splurge the best way to maintain a healthy weight”?

Much will now depend, in terms of the health of our democracy, on whether voters are thoughtful enough to ask these questions.  Should we be dazzled by the offer of a pre-election selection of goodies, or should we consider the unwelcome consequences of another three years of unchanged policies – policies reflecting the conviction that the unfettered market must always prevail, whatever social and environmental deficits might be created?

Bryan Gould

27 May 2017

The success enjoyed by the trade unions recently in establishing that, across the economy as a whole, we can put a minimum value on particular categories of work has been of immediate benefit to thousands of low-paid workers, and particularly to carers, many of whose wages have been held down because of their gender.

But that success has also brought out of the woodwork those who are pathologically hostile to workers’ interests.  The ubiquitous Mike Hosking in the Herald, for example, was quick to decry the unions’ efforts to extend that principle to other categories of work.

The trade unions are hopelessly out of date, he argued.  There is no alternative but to have wage rates set by individual employers since only they can accurately assess the market forces that bear on them and that determine what they can afford to pay.

But every business has to take account all the time of a range of costs for which there is a going rate.  Rent or other accommodation charges, taxes, rates and other levies, interest paid on borrowings, raw materials, power and transport costs – the list is almost endless.  In each such instance, the business simply has to pay (perhaps after some negotiation at the margin) the rate that is set.  And businesses simply get on with it, without any objection in principle being raised by the Mike Hoskings of this world.

So why should it be different when it comes to just one particular, and arguably the most important, category of costs?  Today’s economy does not grind to a halt because individual employers cannot themselves fix what they are prepared to pay for power or fuel, or any other of the going rates with which they are faced.  Why should it be any different in respect of a going rate for certain categories of work?

Hosking says that each individual employer must be free to drive down the wages they offer to the level that suits them.  He seems to see the cost of labour as being different from other costs because the employer’s power in a one-on-one negotiation over wage rates means that each individual employer can have a crack at getting a competitive advantage by offering a wage rate that is lower than that paid by his competitors.

There must also be the suspicion that, as Hosking imagines it, employers see the employment negotiation as essentially a contest between themselves and their workers to decide who gets the lion’s share of any revenue the enterprise might earn.

It is precisely that mentality that underpins the low-wage structure of our economy.  It is no accident that, in New Zealand as elsewhere, the share of profits in the economy has grown much faster over recent decades than the share of wages.

There is no recognition of the price we all pay as a result of this disparity or of the great benefits – economic and social – that would accrue if wage settlements were not always the subject of often acrimonious individual negotiations, but were based on a generally acknowledged economy-wide value for particular types of work.  If that meant a higher overall wage level, that would boost purchasing power in the whole economy, to the great benefit, not least of businesses, as well as other parts of the economy. We would all be better off if the low-paid do better.

Even more importantly than the economic arguments, there is no understanding of the fact that wages are quite different from other costs, in that they have a huge social significance by directly impacting on the livelihood and living standards of many thousands of New Zealand families.

Low wages, along with unemployment, are the principal cause of poverty, and especially child poverty, in our country.  That poverty creates miserable conditions, stress and blighted lives for the hundreds of thousands affected, but it also means a whole range of social ills that cost society time, effort and money to deal with.

A more orderly and agreed process for setting wage rates, based on a full appreciation of the value of labour, would be a step in the right direction, both for the economy and for society.  The unions should be supported in their efforts to achieve it.

Bryan Gould

27 April 2017

When I was a child, we lived in Palmerston North.  Our favourite picnic spot was a few miles away, at Raumai, on the banks of the Manawatu river.  It was in the river there that I learnt to swim.

Like many of my generation, and many others as well no doubt, I was shocked to see television pictures the other day of what has happened to our rivers.  What we saw on our screens looked like footage of polluted sewers and drains, with large clumps of discoloured foam floating along the surface of what was once a pristine river.

We could not see the e-coli but the commentary assured us (if that is the right word) that they were there in very large and dangerous numbers.

There are those who choose to deny that climate change is brought about by man’s activities.  But there can be no doubt about who or what is responsible for the despoliation of our waterways.

It is not necessary to single out dairy farmers or any other group to recognise the truth.  There can be no more graphic illustration of what happens when the “bottom line” always takes precedence – when “turning a buck” or “making a profit” or “staying in business” or “increasing production” is always seen as good enough reason and excuse to destroy our environment.

Are we pleased with and proud of what we have done?  Of how we have been fortunate enough to live in the most beautiful country in the world, one of whose greatest treasures is its sparkling, clean waters?  And that we have then, within a few decades and by giving free rein to market forces, succeeded in transforming that treasure into dross?

We are told that, so bad is the damage we have wreaked, we will never be able to restore our aquifers and waterways to an acceptable condition, and that it will take decades before young Kiwis can swim safely in our rivers.  What a legacy to leave!

Will we learn any lessons?  I doubt it.  The drive to make more money and the conviction that the market must always prevail are now so deeply entrenched in our psyche that we will shrug our shoulders and carry on – to drive species to extinction, to exhaust our reserves and resources, to contaminate anything that gets in the way of “progress”.

Will we even pause to consider what else we might be placing at risk?  If we are prepared to sacrifice our environment (in other words, where we live – and swim, if we are lucky), what other sacrifices are we lining up?

The environment at least has the advantage that it can, in many of its aspects, be depicted visually, so that we can at least see what we have done before shrugging our shoulders and motoring on.  But what of those other forms of damage we are doing to ourselves, that cannot be so easily viewed on our television screens?

The same lack of care, the same greed, the same drive for material goods, the same selfishness and short-sightedness are certainly doing us great damage of another kind – damage of which we are constantly made aware but that many of us choose to ignore.

That damage is to the fabric of our society – and the analogy with our destructive treatment of the environment is, sadly, all too clear.

The health and integrity of New Zealand society was once, like our environment, the envy of the world.  But our concerns for our fellow citizens, for ensuring that everyone has “a fair go” in the sense of being properly equipped with good health, housing and education to face the challenges of life, have fallen away as we focus more and more on “getting ahead”, on the “rat race”, on that bigger and better house or car.

We have become a “me first” society, indistinguishable from those in “less happier lands”.  Our pride in the fact that we once led the world in terms of giving proper and equal value to every one of our citizens has faded away.  We have instead hastened to fall into line as adherents of the hard-nosed, Anglo-American version of capitalism, and we are undeterred by the widening inequality and increasing prevalence of poverty that now mark the way we live.

The unacceptability of the damage we have done, and continue to do, may not be so graphically demonstrated as it is in television pictures of the disgusting state of our rivers – but it is no less real.  The rivers, and what we have done to them, matter hugely in their own right, but they should also be seen as a metaphor for what we have done to ourselves.

Bryan Gould

30 April 2017