I voted in the flag referendum today. I didn’t particularly want to, so I did it without great enthusiasm. I did it as a matter of civic duty.

I can see why some people want to change the flag. But I like it, mainly because I know it and it’s familiar and comforting. I’m used to thinking “that’s our flag” and feeling patriotic when I see it. I don’t expect flags to do much more that – I’ve never understood the fervour that some people, particularly Americans, feel for their flag. I don’t expect the flag to be a triumph of design or to burst with significance or to make my chest swell with national pride. A flag is just a flag.

I agree with the current flag’s critics that it suffers a couple of quite significant drawbacks. It’s definitely an oddity that it includes the flag of another nation. The Union Jack is a relic of our past, and even relics have their sell-by date; this one is surely getting perilously close. On the other hand, flags are not logos or brands, requiring to be constantly up-dated. It’s not unreasonable that an important part of our history – one that is almost deliberately played down today – should have made an appearance when the flag was adopted over a century ago and that some reminder of that past should still survive. And, as those of my generation will attest, that reminder was still of some significance during some of the most important moments of our history. In any case, it’s not just a relic; it accurately reflects, like it or not, our current constitutional arrangements and our links with the British crown.

The second drawback is its similarity to the Australian flag. The confusion this engenders can only play to the constant tendency overseas to lump us in with the Aussies in what is a barely recognised “little brother” role if we are lucky. Perhaps it’s the Aussies who should break that particular deadlock and strike out for a new identity?

That brings me to the question of timing. For the reasons I mention, I recognise the case for a new flag and I’m not opposed to deciding on one in the fullness of time. But, while some enthusiasts have been campaigning for a few years, I detected – and still do not detect – an upswell of national feeling that now is the moment – that we must not wait another day before making the change.

There is far from a consensus, in other words, on the need to make what – if and when it is made – will be a momentous decision. It is that absence of a demand for change that leads so many of us, I suspect, to feel a sense of vague irritation that this is a manufactured issue that has been foisted on us – at considerable cost, time and trouble, and at the expense of other more important matters. Why unnecessarily invent an issue that can, at this point, only divide the nation?

There will come a time when the issue of the flag will move of its own accord to the top of the agenda. We can’t foresee exactly when, but we’ll know when it happens, and it could be sooner than is currently thought. In the meantime, there is a strong sense that someone has jumped the gun.

If I were to hazard a guess, I would look to a point when Queen Elizabeth II’s record-breaking reign has ended, and when the move to become a republic has taken its virtually inevitable course. When and if that happens, the case for changing the flag will be undeniable and the public will rightly recognise the need to do so.

This sense that the timing is premature is supported by the fact that efforts are currently having to be made to drum up support and interest – at further cost no doubt – when most people would, at this juncture in our affairs, rather not be bothered. And it is further bolstered by the botched nature of the process that has produced the unconvincing alternative design.

When we finally decide that the time is right for a new flag, we should at least take the design of the new flag seriously. The panel appointed to drive the current process comprised excellent people, but none had any design experience or skill. Public approval for a new design is of course required, but the public does not have the competence to produce properly designed candidates from which to choose.

The shakiness of the process was demonstrated when it took only a minor campaign in the social media to persuade the Prime Minister to undermine the validity of the original short list and to add to an already uninspiring collection a fifth candidate of no particular merit.

I expect – or at least hope – to live long enough to see a brilliant new flag adopted by Aotearoa/New Zealand. But that is not for today.

Bryan Gould

10 March 2016

Many of us have become enured to reports from around the world of terrible crimes against women – not just acts of violence against individuals but damaging and degrading actions against women in general which seem to be expressions of belief systems, cultural or religious, that thankfully have no place in our society.

New Zealand has long enjoyed a reputation, since we pioneered full voting rights for women, as a country where women have equal rights and are full members of society. But if we want to retain that reputation, we need to be vigilant. And, while we are mercifully spared the worst excesses of discrimination and ill-treatment found elsewhere, ­­our current performance suggests that there are good reasons for that vigilance.

We should acknowledge, for example, our distressing record on domestic violence. And we should understand, too, that for every instance of physical or sexual abuse that is reported, there will be others that are not reported – cases of women damaged, often psychologically, trapped in abusive relationships, too frightened and beaten down to do anything about it.

We remain, in other words, a society that fails in important respects to treat women properly. Discrimination against women, here as elsewhere, remains the most pervasive and significant manifestation of unfair treatment to be found worldwide.

One aspect of that unfair treatment is increasingly identified, but not acted upon. Our failure to pay women at the same rate as we pay men may not seem comparable to the serious abuses women suffer in other respects, but it is nevertheless an expression of a deeply entrenched attitude in our society.

The struggle for equal pay will be seen one day in retrospect as equivalent to the battle for women’s suffrage. In the meantime, however, it remains evidence of a refusal to acknowledge that women have the same rights as men, or that a contribution made by a woman is worth as much as the same contribution made by a man.

Women’s pay in New Zealand is still on average substantially below that of men; and, as a recent survey has revealed, that is as true in the public sector as it is in the economy as a whole, with the worst public sector offenders in the State Services Commission and the Crown Law Office maintaining a gap as high as 39%.

A landmark victory was, however, recently achieved in the Court of Appeal. A care worker, Kristine Bartlett, sued her employers, Terranova, for their failure to pay her at the rate that a man would receive for work requiring a similar level of skill and commitment.

The employers offered a familiar defence. The low rate paid to Kristine was not, they said, because she was a woman but was because the job itself commanded only a low rate of pay. The fact that most of those paid at that low rate were women was purely coincidental; it was not their fault that women happened to choose low-paid jobs.

The Employment Court would have none of that argument, and the Court of Appeal agreed. They were clear that the job of a carer required a level of skill and commitment, and provided an economic and social value, that were comparable to other jobs that were mainly performed by men. They found that Kristine’s pay, and that of her co-workers, male or female, was low because the work was mainly done by women, and not because it was of intrinsically lower value than jobs done mainly by men.

The principle of fair remuneration and equal pay as defined in the Equal Pay Act 1972 required, they said, that there should be the same pay for jobs of the same value. Kristine’s pay was lower than it should be, in other words, because her job was wrongly undervalued on the basis that it was mainly done by women.

The decision was of course welcomed by care workers and their union, but was condemned by employers and business more generally on the familiar ground that an increase in pay as required by the Court of Appeal’s interpretation of the meaning of equal pay could not be afforded. A similar objection was made to the abolition of slavery.

The really interesting response, however, came from the government. It has, of course, a vested interest, since the wages paid by rest home operators are funded by government grant. The government’s constant drive to cut public spending means that the grant is kept as low as possible. A move to equal pay as defined by the Court of Appeal would not be welcome.

So, the government decided that it would not allow the Court of Appeal decision to stand. A working party was set up to consider how policy on equal pay should be framed – and presumably how the Court of Appeal decision could be watered down. It will report next month.

The working party comprises four government appointees, four business representatives, and six trade union representatives, thereby providing an inbuilt 8-6 majority for limiting the effect of the Court of Appeal decision. There are no prizes for guessing what the outcome will be. We are still a long way, in other words, from achieving anything that can really be called equal pay.

Bryan Gould

17 February 2016

I was one of the lucky ones. In my day, universities, like primary and secondary schools, charged no fees. With the aid of a scholarship, working in dairy factories during the holidays, and my parents chipping in, I completed my education debt-free.

But, the sceptics will argue, things have changed since then. The numbers going on to university in those days were so small that the cost could easily be borne by the taxpayer. The cost has risen so far today, it is said, that it would be unfair and impracticable to saddle the taxpayer with it.

Paradoxically, however, the case for a free tertiary education has over recent decades actually got stronger, rather than weaker. Whereas in the old days, tertiary education could be easily distinguished from the primary and secondary schools in the compulsory sector by the fact that only a small and privileged minority stayed on the education conveyor belt and went on to university, that distinction is now much harder to maintain.

The fact is that virtually all Kiwis will, at some point in their lives, have some experience of tertiary education. The conveyor belt will still operate for school leavers but it will take them not only to university but to polytechnics, wananga, private academies, apprenticeships and other forms of vocational training.

For those Kiwis who may not go straight on to post-secondary school education, tertiary education will become an option at different and later stages of their lives; nor will their progression through the education world follow a standard pattern. Someone with a Ph.D. may return to education later in life to do a certificate or diploma course in something quite different.

Tertiary education, in other words, is no longer so different from the compulsory sector. It is to all intents and purposes now universal and comprehensive. It is no longer the preserve of the privileged. The case for sparing the taxpayer the cost of tertiary education by applying a “user pays” principle looks pretty shaky when the user and the taxpayer are the same people.

The widely accepted argument that primary and secondary education bring such benefits to the whole of society that they should be publicly funded must, in other words, now be extended to tertiary education as well. Our hesitation about doing so is the product of less than clear thinking.

When I returned to New Zealand in 1994, a body called the Todd Working Party had been set up to decide how the cost of tertiary education should be divided between the public and private purse. The Working Party members spent many no doubt innocently enjoyable hours debating what proportion of the benefits of tertiary education could be attributed to the public good and how much to personal gain.

Some said the proportions were about 50-50. Others favoured one side of the equation rather than another. All persisted in the nonsense that it was a zero-sum game which implied the ridiculous proposition that, the higher the perceived personal benefit, the lower must be the public good.

The truth is that the undeniable public gain from investing in tertiary education can only be achieved through raising the educational levels of individuals, just as it is with compulsory education – the two are necessarily complementary rather than competing. A higher general level of education means better educated individuals but also a better-functioning and more successful society – one able to take a wider and longer-term view and achieve a deeper understanding.

As most people instinctively realise, the great economic and social benefits of education can be achieved only if we are prepared to invest in our future. When that investment is made, the benefits are felt by everyone in society. For an investment that is so important, and whose benefits are so widely shared, what could be more sensible than to fund it through the public purse?

The debate about whether tertiary education should be free (that is, taxpayer-funded) or not resolves itself into two main issues. First, is the ramshackle and problematic student loan scheme the best, fairest and administratively most straightforward way of funding tertiary education? The scheme is administratively complex and requires a substantial bureaucracy to allocate and track over decades the loans undertaken by tens of thousands of students.

It also has a deterrent effect on potential students; and since the debts incurred by virtue of the scheme continue to weigh heavily on individual budgets and to deter expensively educated young Kiwis in particular from returning to New Zealand, so that we are denied the benefits of the education we have funded, the answer to that question would seem to be conclusively in the negative.

The second question is not, as so often suggested, can we afford it, but what priority should we give it? The cost to taxpayers might require us to forego other purposes of public spending (though it would be more than offset by savings to thousands of students and their families). The real question is, can we afford not to ensure that our future generations are educated to the level that enables us – as a society – to compete in an increasingly global environment?

Bryan Gould

2 February 2016