Predicting the future of New Zealand

David Slack adopts the positively un-Kiwi stance that we're doing all right. Picture / Martin Sykes

Thirty years from now the Maori Parliament is sitting for the first time, watched by six protesters camped among the trees of Parliament grounds. The "Thorndon Six", relics of the long-forgotten Act Party, have maintained a 16-month vigil against separatist politics.

Or try this scenario: It is 2015, and President Winston Peters is consigning a divisive document to the shadows of history by incinerating the Treaty of Waitangi. Fast forward nine more years, and New Zealand is part of the United States of Australia, with President Lachlan Murdoch about to introduce a 5 per cent flat tax rate.

Yes, David Slack knows how to tweak sensitive nerves in the Kiwi psyche. The Devonport writer and commentator, author of last year's Bullshit, Backlash & Bleeding Hearts, about the treaty and race relations, has released a follow-up, cheerily titled Civil War and Other Optimistic Predictions.

All the issues are there: race relations, the foreshore and seabed, civil unions, the economy, the brain drain, climate change, political correctness. As Slack says in the introduction, this is an exploration of the coming apocalypse, so the book is divided into three parts: war, famine and plague and pestilence.

He explores the issues through interviews with and statements by politicians, commentators and academics, among them Margaret Mutu, Chris Trotter, Roger Kerr, Tim Hazeldine, Brian Tamaki and Jeanette Fitzsimons. Which may sound like the dinner party from hell - except that Slack doesn't think we're headed for hell in a handcart. He adopts the positively un-Kiwi stance that we're actually doing all right.

"We now have more than four million people, and a $100 billion economy - that's not a slight thing," he told the Weekend Herald. "At some point we have to stop thinking this is precariously perched on the edge of nowhere; this is something that is pretty robust and viable."

Which, given our history of boom-and-bust economic cycles, may be a brave or foolish position to take, depending on your viewpoint.

"I suppose my point is not that we don't have problems - and for some, those problems are severe - but if the question is 'is New Zealand's long-term future imperilled?', then the answer is 'no'."

The new book had its genesis in last year's warning by Maori Language Commission chief executive Haami Piripi that the Foreshore and Seabed Act could lead to civil war. Slack says the debate is driven by differing concepts of land ownership and the rights and responsibilities that go with it, but he predicts the new law will make little practical difference.

But what if Maori protest did escalate to the point where Piripi's fears were proved right? What chance that a Navy or Army dominated by Maori would open fire on protesters?

Slack backs Chris Trotter's take on our history. Trotter recalls how close we came to disaster during the 1981 Springbok Tour. He says the potential was there for a spiral of violence - if someone had been killed. He recalls earlier potential flashpoints: 1951, the depression-era Queen St riots and the 1913 general strike, when police and strikers exchanged fire. "No one was killed," he says, "because the bullets just kept on missing - and they kept on missing right through our history, and it's remarkable."

What concerns Slack is the way New Zealanders perceive the issues facing the country and our predilection for wallowing in gloom.

"As a nation we don't brag or make much noise until we pull something off; we keep a bit of reserve and maybe talk down our chances. There's a bit of darkness there, a bit of sardonic realism that we are quite comfortable with. That would certainly explain the whole Dunedin music scene and McCahon art."

He makes the obvious comparison with Australia, a nation that has endured similar peaks and troughs, but which retains a glass-half-full outlook.

So what has Slack, a former Parliamentary speechwriter who works from home, got to be so cheerful about? The trim, youthful-looking 45-year-old shares a comfortable, restored, two-storey villa with wife and communications consultant Karren Beanland and their 6-year-old daughter Mary-Margaret. It's a nice balance but it was not always so.

The Victoria University law graduate was a rising star at Dominion Breweries before a heart attack at 27 caused him to take stock. He answered an ad for a Parliamentary speechwriter with an interest in history, politics and law and ended up working for his former law tutor, Geoffrey Palmer, Minister of Justice in the Lange Government and later Prime Minister.

"Although everyone knew the administration was doomed, there was still a great deal happening."

In 1994 he launched an internet speechwriting service with the canny domain name speeches.com. His mainly American customers pay US$10 ($14) a pop to access a speech builder, which helps them through their wedding/graduation/business speech.

The website's success allows Slack to concentrate on blogging for Russell Brown's PublicAddress.net site, a weekly comment slot on National Radio, and now bookwriting.

He started blogging just before Don Brash's Orewa speech triggered a debate about Maori preferential treatment. The gulf between talkback perception and reality prompted Bullshit, Backlash & Bleeding Hearts. "I thought the issue should be debated in more constructive terms." It sold more than 6000 copies.

An internet questionnaire, debunking myths about treaty settlements and accompanying the book, also scored more than 6000 hits. With Civil War, an internet adjunct allows readers to place bets on possibilities for New Zealand's future, using 1500 imaginary dollars.

What price New Zealand's standard of living being overtaken by Fiji's? National forming a coalition this year with the Maori Party? Gay-friendly policies prompting one in three men to change sexual orientation? As for New Zealand becoming a state of Australia, a $100 bet is paying $308 on and $148 against.

Slack acknowledges that he may not have felt so optimistic 10 or 15 years ago when economic restructuring had thrown thousands on the scrapheap and Jenny Shipley was attacking welfare. But he says even in the hardest of times "we do get through it, for all that it is a catastrophe for an awful lot of people at that point".

It's important to distinguish between the collective and individual mood, he says. "Losing a Rugby World Cup or a timber exporter laying off 1000 people - at that point you might say the nation is down. But I suspect that people don't change their individual decision-making quite as readily as they change their opinion about the direction of the nation."

Place your bets.

www.optimisticpredictions.com