My column last week dealt with the integrity of oral tradition as compared with cold hard print. This week, I‘d like to focus on the common denominator that conveys meaning: words.
As New Zealanders, we’ve come to be distinguished by many of the words in our common vernacular, such as “No 8 wire”, “resourceful”, “multi-talented” on the good side and, on the opposite side, by words such as: “cultural cringe”, “short-sighted” and Sir John Key’s most recent offering: “hermit-like”.
But also, for as long as I can remember in my almost 93 years, there’s the term “She’ll be right!”. Not directed at feminism, and certainly, nothing to do with the fact that it took us until 1990 for us to have our first female Governor-General (Dame Cath Tizard) or until 1997 for our first female Prime Minister (Jenny Shipley); just a general indication usually founded on hope more than certainty, that whatever was wrong would come right. (When you think of it now, more of an assertion that any trouble must have been the fault of the fair gender – a most unfair assumption!).
Nothing more strikingly reminds us of the habit of history repeating itself than the current resurrection of the words used by Robert Muldoon in 1975 to cause the defeat of the Labour Government led by Wallace (“Bill”) Rowling, whose policies were described by Muldoon as “borrow and hope”.
These exact words have been revived to discredit the reactions of the current Labour Minister of Finance to the financial challenges posed by the pandemic of Covid-19.
Whenever we are eventually freed from the current scourge of Covid-19, one thing seems certain: New Zealand, like the rest of the world, will never again be the same as it was pre-Covid.
One change that looks very likely, at least here in New Zealand, will be to the working habits and hours of the bulk of the population, with the prospect that the traditional working week of five days, Monday-Friday will reduce to four; an appropriate topic for thought with our annual Labour Day holiday occurring next Monday.
Whether it happens or not, there is little doubt that many businesses and their employees who have got into the habit of doing some of their work from home during Covid lockdowns will continue to do so. In turn, this will impact related issues such as road traffic congestion, patronage of public transport and, indeed, as has been found in Auckland’s CBD and elsewhere, the profitability or even survival of small hospitality sites such as cafes.
Hopefully, another change will be away from the pessimism that Covid has afflicted us with, as well as our apathy towards the threat to our democracy from the false claim that the Treaty of Waitangi is a “partnership”. It is a false misrepresentation that confers 15% or so of the population a 50% right to co-governance of our country, and a separate authority not just to control their own health but with a right of veto over health policies affecting the rest of us, as well as shared control of the vital resource of water. All of this is part of a plot called He Puapua, being sneaked into effect piecemeal while we are all distracted by Covid.
How ironic that there’s a new word to describe this behaviour: woke. Time was when “woke” referred to being awake and alive to what was happening around one. Nowadays, it has a second meaning conveying the very opposite.
So what needs to change? “She’ll be right” will no longer work for us. We need to lift our sights. Especially our shortness of sight.
Let’s look more closely at short-sightedness: One current manifestation of that is the rising clamour for an extension of our Parliamentary term from three to four years.
Back in the 1960s, when I was a regular attender at Dominion Conferences of the National Party, features of such conferences were spirited and lively debates among delegates of even the most controversial of political topics, which today’s party mandarins disallow. I can remember a remit calling for a four-year term. I knew that my then (and still) political idol, Keith Holyoake, favoured four years and so did I. Back then the late Tom Shand spoke up and reminded us that even three years was too long for an incompetent government and that a good government could expect not just three years, but six or nine. That convinced me to stick with three years.
Shand’s summation is true in this year of 2021. Three years of this Marxist Labour government is too much: the sooner they are gone the better, and we can get back to being one, united, democratic New Zealand.
This all leads me to suggest a change to what has become our national term of warning: “Look out!”
How often, when confronted with the imminent possibility of harm from some sudden and unforeseen cause are we told with urgency: “Look out!” As if the sudden averting of the direction of our gaze will do anything more than alert us to change direction or dodge whatever threatens our safety.
What we need as a country and as a people, is to become longer-sighted, to acquire the virtue of vision; to look further ahead to what we need to do to restore hope for future decades and future generations.
So I propose a new Kiwi term, instead of (or as well as) “Look out!”: “Look Beyond!”
It will require us when confronted with problems not just to devise an immediate solution but to think through the long-term consequences of our intended solutions and to apply the principle of cui bono? (who benefits?). Unless there are long-term benefits to the whole of our Kiwi society, we need to pause and think it through further.
Applied to our current political morass, “Look Beyond!” demands an urgent and searching review of the consequences of allowing this Ardern-led Government to go any further with its stealthy integration of He Puapua into our governance; rejection of over-centralisation of our health administration coincident with an antipathetic split into two separate authorities – one for Maori and another for the rest of us; and abandoning the intended filching of control of our vital water resources.
Cui bono from He Puapua? No one apart from the selfish, self-selected coterie of grasping greedies promoting its adoption. Certainly not the bulk of our population who are forced by circumstance to depend on our own efforts to achieve comfort and happiness in our lives.
So what should we have as our new watchword, to replace the wistful shoulder shrug of “She’ll be right”? How about each of us closes our right hand into a fist, bangs it into the open palm of our left hand, thinks deep and hard about what we need to do for the long term and how to get there, and says with new zeal as a proud and determined New Zealander:
“Get it right – first time!”
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