KEY POINTS:
Determinism is the bane of useful debate. When a government takes an important decision there is an inclination to believe, then and ever after, that the chosen course was inevitable. The decision makers find it politic to assert they had no alternative, commentators can explain the decision more easily if they believe circumstances left no choice, historians of a Marxist bent attribute events to impersonal forces rather than optional acts, and just about everyone derives a certain comfort from the idea that whatever happened was bound to happen.
But it is almost never true. Very few courses of action have been forced on us. Almost everything that has happened in history is the result of deliberate decisions that leading people have made when they could as easily have acted differently. Some examples from our past are discussed in a book, New Zealand as it might have been, extracts of which were carried in the Herald each day last week.
The "What-ifs" of history are of more than academic interest. The realisation that things could easily have been different is a powerful tonic to those who would like to make them different today. What if the Treaty of Waitangi had been made a few years earlier than 1840 when officials in London and Sydney envisaged colonies comprising little more than the settlements on the periphery of tribal domains? What if New Zealand in 1901 had accepted the invitation to join the Australian colonies in their new federation?
Of course there are as many perils in conjecture as there are in determinism. Some of those invited to speculate on what might have happened were unable to resist the temptation to describe what they would like to have happened. It is a moot point whether things would have been much different had New Zealand not gone to war in 1939, or if the All Blacks had not won the final test in 1981. And the consequences if Ruth Richardson had not delivered her "Mother of All Budgets" in 1991 might not have been as pleasant as they are described today.
If it is possible to under-estimate a recession as recent as 1991, and overlook entirely the recovery rapidly generated by complementary monetary and fiscal settings at that time, how much more is missing from the reconstructions of pivotal moments further back? Those who believe chiefs made the wrong decision in 1840, or did not make the decision translated, overlook the musket wars and Maori knowledge by that time of Britain's impartial law and imperial reach.
And those inclined to think that Seddon's Government made the wrong decision on federation forget perhaps that in 1901 this country was not envious of Australian wages, quite the reverse. New Zealand was the wealthier country then. In fact, it had one of the world's highest living standards and was envied just as much for its social arrangements. The aged had pensions, workers had unions, Maori had political representation and women had the vote. Who needed Australia?
All these decisions might be different if we were making them today, and in a sense we can. The benefit of this exercise is to be reminded that nothing in history was predestined, no decision was cast in stone and nor is it still. Drastic corrections are always possible if need be. To recognise that fact is to take responsibility for the course we have maintained. We are not helpless products of our past, or carried along by currents we cannot control. We can change the decisions of our forebears and if we do not it is because they were right at the time and, all things considered, they are still right. On balance, the country is better than it might have been.
