Economics

In terms of economic geography New Zealand is a monoculture depending for its physical living standard primarily on the cultivation of grass; in terms of history it is a colonial country with its social patterns narrowly derived from nineteenth century Britain.

White South Africa's cultural Inheritance began in the Low Countries over three hundred years ago; that of Canada and Australia began later, and New Zealand's later still. New Zealand has more of its origins in the nineteenth century than the others. Particularly in the area of the arts this is a pity: nineteenth century Britain, because of the impact of the industrial and agricultural revolutions, was a suddenly ugly, emotionally deprived place.

New Zealand's latter-day emphasis on the need for the full development of the potentialities of every human being has led logically to the policy of jobs for all and on equality of opportunity in getting and holding those jobs. This in turn has led—tentatively—to economic policies aimed at using more resources than grass as material for living standards. These resources are—on the one hand—other raw materials, whether imported or domestic (such as clay, iron-sands, fish, salt-water, natural gas)—and on the other, the human resources of New Zealanders.

What these human resources are can be seen by looking at what we have done with our country. What they are not can be imagined by examining the achievement of other small countries such as Israel. Denmark. Norway or Finland.

New Zealand is almost at the stage of paying lip service to the idea that human resources can be at least as important an economic asset as grass: if New Zealand with its comparatively small population is to have a more balanced, mature and progressively less colonial economy with high living standards its first economic priority should be the development of the social and economic potentialities of every New Zealander, particularly the young New Zealander.

Today's young New Zealander will at middle age have experienced several revolutions in the techniques of economic life whether it be in agriculture, domestic work, commerce, transport or the use of materials. To master these changes he (and equally, she) will require an education based not on the specialties and attitudes of the past but on the comparatively unpredictable needs of the future.

Obviously, then. New Zealand's first requirement is a wide and deep and longer education so that the young person can be trained to tackle any new discipline. This basic education (and it should continue throughout life) should, of course, cover English, history, geography, science, mathematics, languages and aesthetics. There may be general agreement on these subjects, but New Zealanders may boggle at aesthetics. Yet as Charles Brasch has said ("Landfall," December 1960) "the arts are as necessary to them as food and drink."

If they boggle, then this proves the need. Aesthetics, I should add, cover all the arts and goes beyond them. It is the one training which New Zealand needs above all. The nineteenth century origins, the colonial dependent society and the monoculture are, of course, some of the reasons for this.

In the light of the need for aesthetics let us now look at our economic problem.

We all know that we need overseas funds to pay for foreign travel, for interest and profits sent abroad and for massive imports of raw materials, equipment and finished goods. New Zealand can get more overseas funds by selling tours to overseas people, by exporting greater quantities of and more diversified and processed farm products and by exporting much more manufactured goods. All these we are starting to do.

Much of the expansion of New Zealand's exports will be based on the concept of discretionary income. We are finding that there has already been a consumer revolution in North America which is spreading to Western Europe and appearing in Australia and New Zealand; that is, the spending of non-traditional or discretionary' income on custom built, non-mass produced, individual non-Jones items. These usually come from Denmark. Sweden. Finland. Switzerland. Italy, where design and taste are part of industry. A great deal of the market for New Zealand's future exports will be in North America and the additional items supplied will not be carcasses of meat so much as packaged and processed fine foods (even, as Graham Kerr says, venison cooked in red wine) and special, high Quality goods carrying the individuality of the producer and the characteristics of the country of origin. This is happening already, and there are scores of examples pointing to the trend.

Not for New Zealand the export of mass produced goods. For New Zealand it will have to be individuality and quality. We have no choice.

See New Zealand Listener, Feb, 14 and 17, 1964, "The Cultural Explosion" by Fred Turnovsky.

But what can our towns offer the tourist in individuality, taste, grace or interest? Are our store buyers able to describe and ask the manufacturers to produce well designed products? Would the public buy them?

These questions bring me back to education and aesthetics. If we cannot achieve a climate of discrimination so that customers will ask for the well designed, so that city councillors and their staffs will not outrage sensibilities, so that engineers will take all things into consideration, and so that people will not spoil good raw material by the way they cook and present it, our living standards will be drab and will fall. They will fall if only for the reason that we will fail to develop and export the kind of goods that give high living standards to the Danes and the Swiss.

High density residential buildings mean concentration of people without gladioli to grow. These people (as well as tourists) will need towns with amenities—not only better and more art galleries and museums, but better food and better surroundings, places of entertainment and of community activity. The achievement of these means more and better town planners, architects, writers, composers, musicians, poets, dramatists, choreographers, film makers, scientists, singers, dancers, caterers, actors, entrepreneurs, philosophers and thinkers generally, working in a social and intellectual climate of excitement, discipline and exploration.

Our manufacturers who at the present time are very good copyists or buyers of overseas designs will need to become much more independent of the foreigner. We can't sell him goods if they are made to the same design as his. (For one thing, he usually won't allow lt). This means we must design and develop, for example, our own wallpapers, carpeting, crockery, furniture, foodstuffs, packaging, fittings, equipment, at the same time as we shorten the years of transition from dependence on the genius of the non New Zealander.

To keep up with the better quality of life Increasingly available to the countries with high incomes. New Zealand will have to export quality whether this is in the form of ballet, opera or drama groups or in finished processed goods. The commercial needs of the tourist trade, the increased urbanisation of New Zealand, the need for discriminating customers and a richer social environment for the product of our schools, the need for exports based on the development of our human resources, the need for training to tackle future technical revolutions—all point in one direction. Fortunately it is the same direction as will nourish the human spirit and improve the quality or our life. The way to this is through deeper, wider and longer education especially, in New Zealand in aesthetics. That is why the subject matter of the special issue of this journal is so crucially important.