Category: Guest Posts
Some little while ago, I was invited to contribute to a study on the social and economic progress of Maori. It was suggested that I might examine the Maori seats in Parliament. A moment’s hesitation and I said “yes”. My decision did not take long. Before me was, as it were, a blank canvass. I had not had occasion to consider the Maori seats and I had no views on whether they should be retained or done away with. So I set about examining the issue and came to a decided (indeed considered) view: that the separate seats compromised the Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP) system and should be abolished.
Most businesses in New Zealand will be unaware of this, but by the end of the month they will be at risk of having their Internet access terminated, if they are accused of repeat copyright infringement. They do not have to be found guilty. They do not need to have been infringing themselves.
In recent months, we’ve all been treated to a steady diet of sermons from those who would have us believe that the international financial crisis is all the result of the banking industry being “free and unregulated”. The former Vice Chancellor of Waikato University, Bryan Gould, is one who has made this accusation, and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has generalized the accusation by a broad attack on what he terms “neo-liberalism”. Others have demonstrated how weak Kevin Rudd’s position is, so let me focus on the kind of arguments which Bryan Gould makes.
One of the tenets of economics is that an increase in the price of something causes less of it to be purchased. It’s a tenet that’s central to the minimum wage debate. The danger for those on the minimum wage is that they can be priced out of the market if the level of the minimum wage gets out of kilter with their level of productivity.
This is traditionally a time of year when we commit to new personal goals. The energy and sense of perspective we bring back from summer holidays, combined with the ticking over of the calendar, put us in the right frame of mind for resolutions. This year I believe we New Zealanders should also make a broader, collective commitment. We should commit to a measurable goal for our nation.
Whenever we try to assess the meaning and significance of particularly horrible cases, such as that of Nia Glassie in New Zealand or Baby P in Britain (between which there are several parallels), it is important to bear in mind that there is nothing new under the sun, that some people have always done terrible things to others, that some humans have always behaved with the utmost cruelty, that there has never been a golden age of universal benevolence and good will to all men, and that no social system will entirely eliminate the human capacity for evil.
When I first visited New Zealand in July of 1990 at the invitation of the New Zealand Business Roundtable, one mission stood out above all. My job was to find some sensible way to stem the ever increasing tide of regulation in Kiwi employment markets. Ironically, the immediate target of that visit was the then Labour Party’s recently enacted, but short lived, system of “pay equity,” which would put the government in the happy position of deciding the relative wages for men and woman in all the different kinds of jobs thrown up by a modern economy.
In the first party leaders’ debate on TV One during the election campaign, Newstalk ZB political editor Barry Soper tackled National leader John Key on the subject of the 1981 Springbok tour. He wanted to know what Key’s position had been.
Thanks to its modest size and geographic isolation, New Zealand automatically is in a position of having to fight harder and work smarter to be competitive. The slowdown in the global economy is going to make that task more challenging, which puts considerable pressure on John Key, the new Prime Minster and leader of the National Party.
In the wake of the Nia Glassie case, New Zealanders across the country are asking “How on earth did this happen?” The death of the gorgeous three year old and the details that have emerged during the trial have left us, as a nation, shaken to the core and in a state of disbelief.
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