Challenge

New Zealand students appear not to feel the responsibility to give any kind of leadership or to make their voices heard on national issues. Only in an atmosphere of challenging ideas will we get the good leadership we so badly need. We need better people writing editorials, planning housing schemes, organising fisheries, and training our teachers. We need better informed and better educated people running our local bodies and sitting in our Parliament. A society needs leaders: the leaders of tomorrow in New Zealand are more likely to be the Young Farmers and the Jaycecs of today than the students. Of course not all New Zealand's leaders should come from the universities; but students abdicate their responsibility to the New Zealand community if they do not offer some leadership. If students do not feel this responsibility now how much less will they feel it as graduates busy with their jobs, preoccupied with their house mortgages, and using their leisure to wield a concrete mixer. In all aspects of public life—social, cultural, educational, political, economic—this country badly needs strong informed voices. The newspapers show how few of these voices there are.

It is common to hear people cite as a reason for their apathy the low level of New Zealand's politics—as if. Kingsbury said, they can contract out of New Zealand politics! The only political clubs which in the universities seem to be acceptable are those associated with parties unlikely to be successful at the polls. Mast students will vote either Labour or National—but will they try to influence the policies of those parties? A National Club or a Labour Club could hammer out bright ideas for acceptance by the Parly caucus.

It is generally recognised that because of our isolation we very much need the stimulation of other people's ideas and the help of other people. In the past, this outside influence has been supplied largely by the United Kingdom and the "old' Commonwealth. This is valuable and must be maintained, but not to the extent of slavish dependence. New Zealanders must also look at other patterns and other ideas. Our young people should not think only of going to London for overseas experience, but should also think of work in Asia (perhaps with Volunteer Service Abroad); or study at an Asian university, or at a university in Germany, Switzerland, France. Italy, or the Netherlands. Especially, perhaps. New Zealanders should look to the Scandinavian countries. We largely share their social ideals and their economic and political problems, and there is much that we could learn from their achievements.