Essay: Towards shared values

By GAVIN ELLIS, Editor-in-Chief

The writing is on the wall for New Zealand. If we do not take stock of ourselves and arrive at some new goals as a nation, chances are that our country will slide off the First World register. It is time to define ourselves as winners.


You might expect Singapore, that fastidious island state, to have neatly written down the principles to which its citizens should adhere.

In 1988, the Deputy Prime Minister of the day, Goh Chok Tong, formulated the Five Shared Values that every man, woman and child in the country knows by heart. It teaches them to put their country first, value their family and community, respect the individual, seek consensus and live in racial harmony.

In the United States, every child who has passed through elementary school can recite from the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organising its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

They also know their constitution and their Bill of Rights.

How many New Zealanders can recite the first "right" established under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act? For the benefit of the bemused, it states that no one should be deprived of life except on legal grounds consistent with principles of justice.

How many can recite any of its provisions? Indeed, how many even know we have a Bill of Rights Act?

The point is that New Zealanders lack a strong perception of commonly shared values, principles, goals, visions - call them what you will. Perhaps we cling to the myth of the rugged Kiwi individualist and forget that we live in a herd.

This week in the British magazine the Spectator, former Conservative cabinet minister Norman Tebbitt describes humans as pack animals. "Man's truly unique feature is that he is a freedom-loving pack animal. He is at his most creative and innovative in the arts, science, technology or wealth-creation when he is free. When the pack is too restrictive or the hierarchy too powerful and the rules and norms too rigid, creativity withers."

Lord Tebbitt is an arch-enemy of multiculturalism and that damages much of his argument. He is right, however, when he goes on to say that a pack without hierarchy, shared values, a common identity, a single set of rules and a system of punishment for transgression cannot survive.

New Zealand is not a values-free society. We would have a rather one-sided debate with ourselves on the provision of the necessities of life - adequate food, shelter, education, healthcare and personal safety. We would also share a sense of fair play, common decency and respect for the law.

Yet we can also strip each of those needs down to the point where we say to ourselves "that's what I want for me." Our concern is not necessarily for the herd as a whole.

We begin to struggle when considering those things that foster social cohesion and a belief in common goals. The reason is that over the past three decades we have been systematically chipping off the handholds on the foundations of social cohesion.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, religious belief was the tie that bound us together. Irrespective of faith or denomination, each of the great religions embody similar principles of social conduct.

Over the past three decades religious affiliation has dropped and the rate has been accelerating. The number of people who indicated that they had no religious affiliation increased by a third between 1991 and 1996, by which time they made up over a quarter of the population.

Since 1970 we have undergone such sweeping social, economic and cultural change that the only sense of continuity we have is of continual alteration. The need for change is not being challenged here. Rather, it calls for a recognition of the fact that the mass of change has robbed us of the comfort of familiarity.

For familiarity read stability, one of the inherent characteristics of foundations. Our foundations have been either inherited characteristics - from Maori forebears or colonial Europeans - or shared experiences, and they can be undermined.

fxdrop,3,100 T his is, perhaps, why we lack commonly held views in areas that cry out for immutable principles that guide both the public and private sector.

Why, when it takes 20 years to educate a New Zealander to tertiary level, is it not a commonly held view that our education system must have core policies that simply do not change from one Government to another?

Why, when it takes 40 years to work towards retirement, have we not had a non-partisan superannuation policy that politicians dare not touch?

Why, when businesses take years to develop and create employment, are industrial relations able to be turned on their head on the basis of political philosophy?

Administrations such as those in the United States work at the edges in terms of policy change but do not tamper with the core. That gives a sense of continuum that makes political change almost seamless - including coping with electoral chaos.

By contrast, our changes of government can be seismic in the lurches they produce.

Where government should be one of our strongest foundations, that handhold has been damaged. The electoral system has undergone fundamental change that has produced instability. MMP and a deeply flawed list system have left New Zealanders with no certainty of outcome and the prospect of coalitions that may or may not work.

Even law-making has lost the deliberation and scrutiny that should attend one of the most solemn functions of society.

Successive Governments have produced more and more legislation and regulation, sometimes with a level of public consultation that would be laughable were it not such a slap in the face of democratic process. Our laws can be changed so easily that, although observation of the law is undiminished, there is a feeling that it lacks an enshrined quality. Contrast that with countries that have bicameral systems or constitutional limitations that mean proposed legislation is subjected to almost exhaustive scrutiny.

The United States is an example of a country that paces the passage of law and much of that is due to its constitution. We lack the immensely strong foundation that the constitution represents to Americans, something that can carry them through war, peace and presidential recounts.

Unfortunately, constitutional documents - enduring or otherwise - are usually the product of pressing necessity. King John signed the Magna Carta because he was staring down the throat of a hostile army. The Act of Settlement preserved the English monarchy after a childless marriage left the country without an heir. The US Constitution was a product of war and the French Revolution produced the first of a series of constitutions for the French republics.

fxdrop,3,100 O n A20 and A21 today two views - one from a judge and the other from a Maori academic - support the noble and legitimate view that the Treaty of Waitangi can and should be such a guiding covenant for all New Zealanders. Before it could do so, however, it would need to shed its perception as solely a tool to right wrongs against Maori. That would take time.

We could write a constitution but lack both the pressing imperative and the common resolve to produce such a guiding document. In any case, it is questionable whether it would serve to move us towards a new common future. That requires a different appeal to our hearts and minds.

There is no lack of people with a passionate resolve to define and pursue a shared vision for New Zealand. The eight people who feature in today's Weekend Review on common core principles are such individuals. Within the community they abound.

In February the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development held a forum that produced findings on a shared vision for New Zealand that were somewhat more pithy than the organisation's title. It produced 14 bullet points that contributed to an adaptive economy, a cohesive society and rejuvenating ecosystems. What more could a country want?

By September other business leaders had picked up the theme of a new shared vision and leadership for New Zealand and began to discuss strategies. They joined with academics and politicians to work on a number of fronts. In October the Herald and Weekend Herald announced the intention to lend the power of the newspapers to a leadership initiative.

All of these initiatives are important and there is an abundance of good ideas. What is lacking is the fusion process. That process will not occur until all New Zealanders feel they can be part of it. When that happens the country can undergo a quiet revolution.

It will happen when everyone believes there is common effort and common reward. To make it happen the country must feel that it possesses a common core.

fxdrop,3,100 T here is a growing acceptance that New Zealand's future lies in becoming a knowledge-based society. It is an ill-defined concept that has yet to capture the public imagination. When it is articulated in terms that do not suggest that geeks alone will inherit the Earth, we may get somewhere.

New Zealanders need to know that there are prospects for everyone when the country uses its brains. It can overcome the tyranny of distance that has blighted us since our first export was put aboard ship. It can break its dependence on primary produce and fickle commodity prices.

It is vital, however, that the community in general has an understanding of any processes of change and that there is a commitment to mutual benefit.

If the past 15 years of economic change have taught us anything it must be this: if New Zealand is to successfully redirect itself it must recognise the equal worth of the four forms of capital it possesses - financial, social, intellectual and environmental. Today, it does not see those things in proper balance.

We undervalue education, we think "successful business" is a pejorative phrase, we have made "elite" an irrecoverable word everywhere except the sports field, we tell our children there are no winners and losers, we live with an unacceptable level of violence, we tolerate social inequity and when we reap the whirlwind that these attitudes generate we expect the Government to put it right.

In black and white those attitudes are seen for what they are - monumentally stupid. They could be confined to the past if we also started asking ourselves why they have been allowed to flourish and how they can be supplanted.

We should not underestimate how ingrained they are or how far they have penetrated institutional thinking. When sports scores are kept from children because they might feel they are failures, we should know how big the reality check needs to be.

It is time to ask ourselves: what defines us? When we can say why we want to be New Zealanders, we can reach a consensus on the direction in which we collectively want the country to go.

We need to take ourselves to the point where we are satisfied with being nothing short of the best. The process can be simple and straightforward - think, then talk, then act.

* The Herald will provide a forum for debate aimed at defining our shared vision for New Zealand. The Christmas-New Year holiday provides the time people need to get their thoughts together. In mid-January, New Zealanders will be invited to submit their views on our common core - the shared values that bind us - and how that can be harnessed to take the country to a better future.