Putting values first to make New Zealand a better place

Two months ago, the Weekend Herald and the New Zealand Herald made an editorial commitment to help to lead the country to a new sense of economic, social and cultural well-being.

At a time when confidence was low in the wake of our plunging currency, our dismal Olympic medal tally and concern about the "brain drain," we declared that New Zealand "has what it takes to be an innovative and prosperous country that fights above its weight - but lacks a sense of direction."

Since then, in a series of background articles, news reports and contributed pieces, our "Jobs Challenge" series has examined some of the economic issues that we need to address to become more innovative and prosperous.

But a shared sense of direction and a determination to excel must be about more than mere material prosperity. It needs to grow out of a set of shared basic values, or ethical principles.

Of course there will always be disagreements about many issues. We welcome that diversity. In a healthy democracy, any sense of direction will be constantly evolving in response to the shifting balance of public debate.

Yet unless we try to build a shared sense of where we want to go, we will continue to drift - economically, socially and, with perhaps disastrous consequences, environmentally.

In the new year the Herald will provide a forum for New Zealanders to contribute ideas towards identifying the core principles that make us the people we are and that may help us towards defining a shared sense of purpose.

To kick off the search for that common core, editor-in-chief GAVIN ELLIS and journalist SIMON COLLINS sought out the New Zealanders interviewed on these pages.

THE FARMER


If you're looking for a Kiwi philosophy, the best place to start is with the environment we form part of, says Martin Wallace, a Morrinsville farmer and lifelong environmentalist.

Understand how all elements of the environment depend on one another and you will understand why human beings need to respect the diversity and functions of each part of the environment, rather than exploiting and depleting it.

"I would say that common to most New Zealanders, at least when they don't have their corporate hats on, is that it's absolutely essential to look after the environment."

He believes this ideal is threatened by businesses buying control of resources which used to be freely accessible to everyone: fishing companies buying rights to the seabed and foreshore and then overfishing; water companies lobbying for the highest-economic-value use of water; and landowners claiming absolute rights over forests which are habitats for endangered species.

"I think, for New Zealanders, at least, a common value, if not a common practice, is this real support for our fellow animals and plants, which in a way perhaps is expressed as 'clean and green New Zealand' and how people tend to get incredibly emotional when they see their shores, coming home."

He says New Zealanders value openness and honesty - qualities which sometimes make us look naive.

Parents value small rural schools which inculcate values of caring for one another, rather than sending their children to town schools - even when the town schools have a lot more computers and other resources.

For the same reason, he believes New Zealanders are willing to pay for past wrongs under the Treaty of Waitangi.

"Remedying the inequities of access to education and everything else just has to be done," he says. "All cultures should be given a fair deal."

* Martin Wallace is a former chair of the Waikato meat and wool section of Federated Farmers.

THE JURIST


The question is awesome in its simplicity: why not employ the Treaty of Waitangi as an element of social cohesion?

When Justice David Baragwanath proposed that to a Law and Economics Association conference last month he added that the treaty was seen as such when Maori accepted it in 1840.

He suggests viewing the treaty debate "not as a recipe for bitterness and division, but as it was seen in 1840, as an expression of a common future of all New Zealanders under the single law contemplated by the preamble, recognising the Article 2 values of distinctiveness, of Maori but also of other groups, and the Article 3 values of equality of all before the law.

"Now is the time to examine our consciences and what we can contribute, individually and as a society, to healing the wounds of the past and achieving as a nation the team spirit and common purpose that we so value in the world of sport."

He acknowledges that the community sees the treaty as a vehicle for righting wrongs that flowed from the pressure put on Maori by European colonists in pursuit of land. But the war and deep-seated resentment that followed was not the fault of the treaty so much as the fact that its provisions were not observed.

" If you go back to February 6, 1840, and look at it through the lens the British Colonial Office provided, it is a very prescient document indeed, which had the purpose of protecting all players, including those who are settlers to New Zealand. Their right to be here is ultimately a treaty right."

Is the original concept of the treaty recoverable?

"I believe that it is recoverable and must be recoverable. If it is not recoverable, we are in a very unhappy plight indeed."

As a judge and law commissioner, David Baragwanath's thinking ranges across the spectrum of our society. He sees in our society unchanged values of common destiny and resolve, fair-mindedness and practical wisdom.

He also sees where our focus must go - on the vulnerable (not least at-risk young people); on the silo phenomenon that allows Government departments to treat social problems in isolation from each other; and on the need to "replace the anger and bitterness of the disadvantaged that feeds and is fed by the selfishness of the advantaged."

* Justice David Baragwanath is president of the Law Commission.

THE SOCIAL WORKER


Auckland's City Missioner spends her waking hours helping those at the bottom of the ladder. That does not prevent her from praising those on the upper rungs.

"We talk about the gap between rich and poor as if there are guilty parties on both sides. Closing the gaps may actually widen the gap because we talk about the rich in a different way and are disparaging about people on a benefit," she says. "You can be marginalised at the top as well as the bottom."

Diane Robertson thinks there is a need for New Zealanders to begin to value the worth of every individual.

"Part of it is not feeling good about ourselves. And if someone stands up and says they do feel proud of themselves, they're put down as a smarmy little toad.

"We lack, as a nation, a real sense of self-esteem and self-worth. If we developed those things in individuals, a lot of other things would simply happen. For example, if you feel good about yourself, you are not likely to be violent toward other people. If you feel good about yourself, you are less likely to put other people down.

"We can talk about values all we like - loyalty, loving your neighbour and all those things - but the reality is that unless you have groups of individuals who believe in themselves and their worth and the worth of their brother or sister, you can't do it. You can't pull somebody up if you're sitting at the bottom of the pile."

The City Mission deals with the homeless - people at the bottom of the pile."The thing that moves them most is being treated as individuals, not as 'a beneficiary'. People value being treated with respect."

The mission also sees the products of violence, and the bottom line for Diane Robertson is simple: New Zealand must stop being a violent nation.

"We are very violent people. We say we are horrified ... when a kid is killed, and yet we condone so much in terms of the everyday events that we will walk past.

"I guess we all believe that we shouldn't be violent and that we would all like to live in a non-violent community, but somehow the translation from what we believe to what we accept is problematic."

* Diane Robertson is the Auckland City Missioner.

THE EDUCATOR


Dr John Hood is a champion of New Zealand as a "knowledge society" - one in which "creating, sharing and using knowledge are key factors in the prosperity and wellbeing of its people." It is not surprising, therefore, that he sees a commitment to tertiary education as a necessity among the country's shared values.

He is aware, though, that many Kiwis view gowns and mortarboards as elitist symbols - an attitude that limits expectation and devalues higher education in the eyes of the community.

"It should be one of the norms of our society that if you have the ability to be educated to the maximum of your potential then you should have the chance to fulfil that capability," he says.

He acknowledges that there are inequities of access to university - that must be addressed - but notes that in the United States, equity of access is recognised not only by government but by society as a whole, and the community's responsibility is reflected in endowments and scholarships.

Education, he says, is also beset by a lack of stable public policy.

"We lurch from one three-year electoral cycle to the next and none of the fundamental planks on education that other countries have accepted as necessary to the success of the tertiary sector ever get laid down and agreed by all."

The seesaw effect extends, in his view, to the very basics of the relationship between the private and public sectors and contrasts us with America.

"It is barely contested in America that Government should get more intrusive, because people understand the power of the private sector. Certainly there is a contest in the political arena around the margins of that - more social equity on the one hand and more market-driven solutions on the other - but these are arguments about mechanisms. It is not about manifestly overturning social structures and social institutions every few years."

Don't, however, see this as solely the fault of Government.

John Hood: "We are a society that pokes all of its problems at the Government - which is totally incapable of dealing with it - rather than a society that looks at its individual members and requires them to look to themselves to resolve the majority of challenges that society has."

* Dr John Hood is vice-chancellor of the University of Auckland.

THE EXPATRIATE


When Mary Quin looked back to New Zealand after completing her doctorate in 1980, the only available job was in the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. It paid $2000 a year more than a secretary in the department earned. She had learned a lesson about her homeland: it failed to compensate for the value of higher education and the unique skills that it gives a person.

"There is still a major issue here for New Zealand: a failure to value education, and parents not giving more encouragement to their children and setting an expectation in their children to go on to the highest levels of education that they are capable of achieving," she said.

"In the United States, there is a society of haves and have-nots that aligns strongly with education. The economy rewards it and you see parents who are not college graduates encouraging their children. You see immigrants coming to America not because of what it will give them but what it will give their children."

Another lesson from two decades spent in the US is our society's attitude to business. This country fails to value its business community.

"More so than in many countries, Americans value or respect business as a profession. That is something that New Zealand does not value in the same way. Being successful is almost something that they're suspicious of, that there is something underhand about it."

Add to that a strong work ethic among Americans. "People who haven't lived and worked in the United States fail to appreciate how hard Americans work. They are willing to put in the hours to achieve.

"I wouldn't say that New Zealanders don't work hard, but in the United States there is a belief that it leads to success. And New Zealanders still have a problem with success - the tall-poppy syndrome.

"New Zealand seems to have a zero sum game attitude: if this person has so much of the pie, there must be less for the rest of us. They don't see the pie as potentially infinitely expandable.

If you don't allow people to rise to the top, they will go somewhere where they can - and the remaining population is the poorer for it."

And, just as New Zealanders have a problem with success, they fear failure - to the point where children are shielded from it in sport and examinations.

"We are sending a message that failure is shameful. America has a tolerance of failure as a valuable learning experience."

* New Zealander Mary Quin is a former US-based vice-president of Xerox Corporation.

THE TANGATA WHENUA


For Professor Ngapare Hopa and fellow Maori studies lecturer Miki Roderick, New Zealanders' core values are summed up in the classic phrase, "I'll give it a go, mate."

"Our mentality is, I'll give it a go, give it my best shot, and if I can't make it work I'll die trying," Mr Roderick says.

It's the "No 8 wire mentality" of making do with whatever is available, rather than giving up for lack of sophisticated equipment.

It's also about "mateship." "There is still a willingness to help those alongside you," says Mr Roderick. "Whilst there may be some elitism creeping in recently, overall, the Kiwi way of life is giving it a go, looking after your mate and being humbly proud about what you achieve."

Professor Hopa sees New Zealand as still having lots of the pioneering spirit that brought both Maori and European here.

"The kids go off on their OE," she says. "The challenge is how to nurture that inquiring, venturesome, pioneering spirit which I think is distinctively Kiwi."

She and Mr Roderick see the Treaty of Waitangi as establishing "the rights and privileges of British subjects" for all New Zealanders.

"The treaty has in some way been seen as being set up to address Maori grievances, but the treaty was not about addressing Maori grievances," Mr Roderick says.

"When it was signed, it was a forward-looking document: how can this new nation of two peoples work together? It talked about the protection and development of both cultures. It still does."

He contrasts the way American children learn about their constitution with the lack of education in New Zealand about our basic constitutional documents.

"It's sad that, year after year, we have students coming into our institution who know little or nothing about our founding document," he says.

"There is a lot of misinformation on both sides about historical points of reference, and generally this nation is ignorant of its own history."

* Professor Ngapare Hopa is head of Maori studies at the University of Auckland and Miki Roderick lectures there.

THE MAN IN THE STREET


Children need to learn about what's right and wrong as well as the three Rs, says Bob Lye, "a techie from way back" who now recycles companies' cast-off computers for schools.

"We have to look at teaching the children discrimination in what they see on TV - teaching them to evaluate for themselves what's right and what's wrong."

What's wrong in his book are gratuitous violence, racial or religious intolerance and unloving sexual conduct.

What's right is simple: caring for each other. For Mr Lye, that includes caring for future generations by recycling materials instead of using up all our scarce minerals and just burying them in tips.

"It's all very well us being a throwaway society and living in luxury today, but if this world is going to last another 500 or 1000 years, where are our future generations going to get their resources from?" he asks.

He doesn't mean just oil, which is the basis of our present transport and plastics industries.

Even gold, which used to be picked up in nuggets in streams, now has to be extracted from huge opencast mines which move thousands of tonnes of earth to get a few grams of gold.

He says most New Zealanders agree with recycling in principle but are not prepared to "put the hard yards in" to do it.

He worries that we have let manufacturing and apprenticeships fade away, giving ourselves cheap imported goods but at the expense of having too few trained trades people to keep our gadgets running in the future.

"They [the Government] are prepared to pay the dole to those kids. If they just took a fraction of that, they could subsidise [employers] to take them on as apprentices."

Mr Lye says all people should be treated equally, and the Treaty of Waitangi "should have been buried."

"We are creating two peoples in one land, two sets of rules; it's wrong," he says. "If you want to create harmony, you can't do that when you have that discrimination."

* Bob Lye manages The Ark, a Mt Wellington-based organisation that reconditions used computers and sells them cheaply to schools.

THE CLERIC


Many people have disowned organised religion, but, in Peter Beck's view, there is a huge amount of human energy and interest in what we would call "spirituality."

"People are struggling with what gives meaning and value to their lives. We talk about social contracts and the need for values but how do people find legs to stand on?

"I think it's good that we no longer have a strict, so-called Victorian concept of what is right and wrong that people buy into without even thinking. Now it's about exploring, a journey where you find out about values, about what is important in your life and how we create a vision for those whom we love. Then you move out from that circle of intimacy to a circle of influence and the rest."

He believes New Zealanders have a shared vision, but it is "pretty broken up."

"I think one of the great things about this country is that you have people like Stephen Tindall and the Business Council for Social Responsibility. Doing well by doing good actually works. It works in terms of helping people to prosper financially, morally, socially and environmentally.

"Vision building isn't simply a set of criteria that someone has written down or set upon in a kind of autocratic way, but it is about an on-going process of moving and learning and shifting and growing. It is about adding value to one another.

"What is the heart of this Christian faith that I espouse? It's not about rituals and the paraphernalia, it's about human relationships.

"If you pull all the great religions of the world and put alongside them all the great humanists and philanthropists, they are all saying the same thing: life is stronger than death; love is stronger than hate.

"What might a world look like if I espoused a faith that all that separates and injures and destroys will be overcome by all that unites and heals and creates? Imagine what might a world look like if I took all that on board and said: 'yes'."

* The Rev Peter Beck is a senior consultant with a communications company.