State of the Nation address on behalf of the Honesty Party

"My fellow New Zealanders, whether citizens, residents or those just passing through en route to Australian pastures, it gives me little pleasure to deliver this State of the Nation address on behalf of the Honesty Party because the State of the Nation is, to use a variety of technical terms, knackered, stuffed, buggered.

"While I am sure many of you use far more less technical terms, we can all agree, in the spirit of total honesty that this great party proudly stands for and embraces, that the country is not what it was nor indeed what it claims to be – and hasn’t been for decades.

"The Honesty Party recognises that our problems and issues as a country predate Rogernomics and Ruthenasia. Muldoonism was a failed experiment in populist authoritarianism and economics that failed to adjust to a rapidly changing world. What was once the (if briefly) wealthiest country in the world had already begun its decline and fall. The long snooze of the Holyoake years had set the tone of a ‘steady as she goes’ mentality, one that too often has meant the ship of state has steadily gone aground on the rocks of despair and desperation.

"The basis of our economy is one that no other first world nation has decided upon. A primary-production exporting economy to which we have added tourism, an overinflated housing market and high levels of immigration sets us apart, for a reason. New Zealand used to be the social laboratory of the word; today in all honesty we could say New Zealand is the economic laboratory in how to over promise and under deliver. ...

"New Zealand has suffered from low productivity for over half a century because of the economic, societal and educational basis of our nation. When we had a Productivity Commission to determine what we could do, we decided to ignore it and then disestablish it because what it suggested was deemed too problematic and too politically unproductive.

"But just as we were declining and failing under a First Past the Post electoral system, there is no indication that our shift to MMP has actually improved things in the areas that count. ...

"The state of the nation is one that all of us need to take responsibility for, but we too often prefer not to."

~ Dr. Mike Grimshaw from his post 'State of the Nation Address: The Honesty Party (An exercise in political honesty)'

"...New Zealand could hardly have developed as a high-income country."

 

"[I]f enterprise in 19th century New Zealand had operated under anything comparable to the legal requirements regarding conservation [and the environment] imposed on it today, and had it been confronted by comparably eager 'watchdog' groups [or political parties] anxious for their pound of flesh, New Zealand could hardly have developed as a high-income country. One need only reflect that the process of farm formation over much of the North Island, which involved burning down a large proportion of the bush cover, would have been quite impossible."

~ John Gould, from his 1985 book The Muldoon Years: An Essay on New Zealand's Recent Economic Growth

"It is sometimes forgotten that New Zealand is a securely post-Enlightenment society..."

"It is sometimes forgotten that New Zealand, as a neo-European society, is a securely post-Enlightenment society... a very particular example of post-Enlightenment experimental practice…. The thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment … [argued] that men were governed by interest if not reason and that those interests could be orchestrated for beneficent purposes….
    “[W] e still live in a world first codified then, a world seen as 'a unified and self-sufficient Nature, governed by orderly laws, and including man within itself as part of Nature'….
    “Such a view underwrote 'the autonomy and sovereignty of knowledge'…. Thereafter the world was to be located and constituted through knowledge….
    “By the last quarter of the nineteenth century economic and moral progress would be widely considered fruits of knowledge. The myth of the Garden of Eden, where knowledge brings the Fall, had been stood on its head.”

~ Erik Olssen, from his article 'Mr Wakefield and New Zealand as an Experiment in Post-Enlightenment Experimental Practice' [NZJH (Vol. 31, No. 2, October 1997), pp 198-200]

"Histories" without respect for history

 

Last week Labour's Minister of Education announced the compulsory "histories" that young New Zealanders will now be taught in government schools. 

Oddly enough, says historian Michael Bassett, the "histories" curriculum (for that is what it is) displays the authors' ignorance of some basic historical facts.

For example, far from rushing to add New Zealand to the British Empire, Britain was extremely cautious before dispatching William Hobson; the Colonial Office was seriously worried that the Musket Wars between Maori had reached the stage where nothing short of military intervention would protect Maori.

This is combined with an emphasis on three "big ideas" that don't so much summarise local history as sanitise it:

Translated, the first ["big idea"] is that Maori history is fundamental to understanding everything about New Zealand. 

Nothing, in other words, about the ideas and technology brought here by later settlers that we all now enjoy. 

The second one, translated, is that the consequences of unstated, but implied, wicked colonisation continue 'to influence all aspects' of our history. 

As if New Zealand's first and second settlements are the only "histories" to tell about this place, and grievance over the latter the only mode of recounting them.

The third is that colonists’ power exerted over the years has invariably inflicted damage, injustice and conflict on Maori. Nothing about economic development which lifted New Zealand after the Treaty from a state of anarchy ... The development of the modern economy is [also] of no account in the Ministry these days where no one seems to give a thought to where their salaries come from. 

This is the historic equivalent of a cost-benefit analysis that refuses to even acknowledge any benefit.

And, as I predicted, there’ll be no mention of the Musket Wars in the new curriculum. The government is intent on sanitising our history, presumably in the hope that henceforth we’ll all 'be kind.' ... 
    Unless someone has the intestinal fortitude to challenge this new proposed curriculum, history is a doomed subject. Certainly there is nothing in it to enthuse today’s students who prefer action, learning about the wider world, new ideas, wars and international affairs. 

You know, like explaining all those things that give the context to the history of this small island nation.

Bassett heaps blame for the mess:

Superficially, we can blame those ... devising this mumbo-jumbo curriculum, but I think the rot goes far deeper. This report follows on from those recent ones about falling literacy and numeracy in our schools...
    There is a pattern here. Educationally, New Zealand has lost its way.... Coming on top of the alarming reports about our educational performance overall, what is proposed is just another piece of evidence that substantial segments of the country’s bureaucracy, and the ministers who control it, aren’t fit for purpose.

This may be the most relevant local history that the next generation of students will need to learn: the gradual decay of learning in this place.

NB: A former minister himself (though not of education) Bassett studied history at the University of Auckland back when History was the University's third-largest department. He has three degrees in history, was a senior lecturer in history and a member of the Waitangi Tribunal. He has published 13 history books and authored four biographies for the Dictionary of NZ Biography.

[Hat tip Point of Order, from whence comes the short Bassett bio.]

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The Eight-Hour-Day dunking (8/2/1840)

Those who aren't self employed are allowed a public holiday today by courtesy of the government.

It's useful to recall the that today's holiday, Labour Day, commemorates the campaign to introduce the Eight Hour Day -- and that as a central part of that campaign, recalcitrant tradesmen and workers who refused to comply with campaigners' demands to cease work at the appointed time risked "being dunked in the harbour."

Thus, right at the beginning of this country's industrialisation, the local labour movement adopted as a weapon of policy the imposition of force against others -- and that, rather than the "ruling classes," it was other workers who they threatened.

Rather punctures the traditional story of class conflict as the basis for union activity.
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