Rowling on the Economy

It is becoming very fashionable these days to talk about New Zealand 'being at the crossroads". Under all the endless wads of official reports on the subject, there is one hard cold fact.

The fat days, the easy days, are well and truly over for New Zealand. We stand revealed as a small, smug, and stagnating country, perched on the end of the world's shipping lanes. Traditional markets are disappearing. The shape and texture of the social welfare state that we have accepted for generations is being questioned and tested, as never before.

It has always been part of the beliefs of most New Zealanders that no one in this country needs to suffer economic hardship unless they bring it on themselves. Most New Zealanders believe in the idea of equal opportunity, and basic rights, and a fair deal for everyone. That belief has been built on a very long-standing foundation; the right to work, and the right of every New Zealander to take home a basic living wage.

Poverty in NZ

Yet, never since the tragic days of the depression of the thirties has that foundation been under such threat from the combined effects of inflation, taxation, and unemployment. The best estimates show that at this moment there are as many as one in every five New Zealanders living in poverty. Not poverty in terms of the back streets of Calcutta, but poverty in terms of being shut out from the normal life that most New Zealanders have always expected and taken for granted.

Some of these people may be in that situation through their own fault. But the majority of them are ordinary. New Zealanders who are desperately struggling to hang on against a crippling economaic tide. They are living in relative poverty, because they are being denied two fundamental rights — the right to work, or the right to a basic living wage. That is what the 'economy' really means.

The economic jargon and arguments that are tossed around might satisfy some. But the guts of any economy is, and always will be how it affects ordinary working people. If there is no security, no opportunity and no hope, among working New Zealanders, the economy is sick.

At this tune, there are at least 100,000 New Zealanders who want to work and cannot. They are far greater in number than those that appear on the fortnightly statistical releases. They include part-timers, married women, and the many younger people who do not even bother to register.

Towards Institutionalized Unemployment

$100 million a year is being paid out for people to [unclear: rot] on the dole. In many overseas countries that sort of thing is accepted. In fact, there are people who say that it's a good thing to have a pool of unemployed. 'Keep the workers in line. It is not a good thing. It is a tragic and wasteful thing. If it continues, and a permanent pool of unemployed is allowed to become accepted, then the whole social and economic structure of the country will be affected.

We are three million people, fighting like hell to survive in an overseas marketing situation that is stacked against us. If we come to accept that a large proportion of our potential work-force can be written off and their efforts and their contributions wasted, then we are virtually throwing in the towel. In that sort of situation, New Zealand will only slide further and further into a stagnant and deeply divided society.

Equal opportunity, equal rights, equal respect and concern for the individual cannot exist in a country that allows many of its people to live in that sort of situation. It flows through into so many other areas. Already, the figures of access to pre-school education, to higher education, to effective health care, show a disturbing weight against those in the lower income groups.

To allow that to continue, is to institutionalise poverty and to turn our backs on the sort of society that generations of thinking and caring New Zealanders have fought for. That decision, whether or not we are going to accept that trend, or do something about it, is the most critical choice that faces all New Zealanders today. There is not one of us that can stand aside from that choice, because we will all ultimately be affected.

That is why the Labour Party is totally pledged to fight for two unshakeable commitments. The restoration of the right to work. The restoration of the right to a basic living wage. It is out of those commitments that we have forged a very radical new taxation policy. Not because we want a batch of election year handouts. There is no room for anything like that, and our policies certainly do not represent that. But because through taxation we can leave real money in working people's hands, we can lift production and get people off the dole; we can break the poverty cycle that is placing a crippling pressure on wage, and price demands.

Real Political Power

The second major choice that faces New Zealanders is to decide where real political power should lie. There is a very strong tradition of independence in New Zealand, of local decision making, and local power. Yet, we seem to have come to a point in our history where that tradition is in danger of being swept away and crushed under the juggernaut of central government.

Parliament is increasingly irrelevant and impotent. The rule of the courts, and the rule of law, are being overturned at the whim of the governing Cabinet. Local Government and local control, is being ground down by the growing central government regulation. Most important, the individual and the small group are increasingly powerless in putting their point of view and in having any influence on decision making.

That shift in power, because that's what it is, is not just an academic thing. It is affecting the lifestyle and the basic freedoms and responsibilities of all of us. Unless that balance is changed, we will have allowed the heart of the open democracy that generations of New Zealanders fought for, to slip away through sheer apathy.

There are a number of practical reforms that a political Party can offer in order to help correct that situation. The Labour Party is going into this election with a very comprehansive platform of reforms in this area. We propose to reform Parliament, to make it more relevant, and more useful. We propose to reform the select committee system to ensure that any legislation is fully presented in open hearings before the public, before final decisions are made.

We will be passing a Freedom of Information Act and repealing sections of the Official Secrets Act, to try and open out much of the day to day decisions of Government, as they affect individual lives. We will be placing all legislation and all regulations under periodic review, so that outdated old laws and red tape don't molder on, long after they have ceased to have any purpose at all.

All those reforms will go a long way towards giving the individual back some real voice in what goes on. Certainly, they will make it a great deal harder for any Government to hide behind walls of secrecy.

Regional Development

But the shift in power that is going on reaches much more deeply than that. The Labour Party has talked a great deal about regional development over the last eight years or so. When we first developed a solid policy, in 1972, it was because we wanted to rebuild an economic future for areas of the country that were in danger of fading away. But it grew into much more than just an economic package. It touched a very real emotional cord in most New Zealanders and touched a shift in political thinking.

Regional development is not just about freight subsidies, or a "Rangitira" sailing from Lyttelton. It's about regions, and smaller communities demanding that they have a real control over their own future, rather than being shoved around at the whim of bureaucrats in Wellington. All over the country, but especially in the South Island, people are literally throwing down the battle lines, and throwing the 'we know best' arrogance of central Government and big industry, back in their faces.

They want to run their own lives. They want to retain the unique features of their own communities, like small industries and shops, schools, community hospitals and small pubs.

It's an important shift, and it's one that politicians will ignore at their peril, because it's the best possible sign that New Zealand is finally growing up. It does not mean that we are necessarily reaching back to the old provincial system of government. But if we have the sense to recognise it and change our entrenched institutions to respond to it, then we will have a much richer and more relaxed society.

Bill Rowling