January
What is "Political Instability"? (31 January)
Jenny Shipley really is a democrat (29 January)
New Zealand and Global Free Trade (25 January)
Donations and Donations (24 January)
Just Two Parties? (21 January)
Political Parties need not contest every Electorate (20 January)
Y10K (17 January)
Why the Millennium is Important (5 January)
The Fuss about the new Drivers Licence (5 January)
What is "Political Instability"?
(31 January)Jenny Shipley is telling us that the world is watching us, and is quite concerned about our "political instability". I think we can take it that this is a bit of a beat-up. Obviously the politicians of the rest of the world don't think about little New Zealand very often. And those who are concerned about political instability in the world are much more likely to be looking somewhere other than New Zealand.
Nevertheless, it would help to have some idea about what "political instability" actually means. In "U-Turns, Deal Making, and Political Rejection" I said "the essence of political instability is opposing without proposing". Thus I do see the approach to "opposition" that we have inherited as the most destabilising factor in New Zealand politics. It constantly manifests itself in the speculation about when the next election will be held. Clearly, if we had a fixed term Parliament, we would always know the election date, and we could get on with running Parliament and the Government. Legislation, Select Committee hearings, and Departmental projects would be able to follow an orderly timetable. And the parties could get on with preparing policy and selecting candidates, without expecting prospective candidates to resign their jobs or take leave at a moment's notice.
Equally destabilising, however, is the speculation about changes to the electoral system; in particular about the prospect of a referendum designed to pre-empt the MMP review process, which is set down for 2000-2002 in the present legislation. Ruth Laugesen claims in the Sunday Star-Times (p.A2) today that a referendum will be promised for some time during the next Parliamentary term. Here, Mrs Shipley is responsible for much of the political instability.
If the Prime Minister is really concerned about political instability, she will issue a clear and unambiguous statement to the effect that she is personally in favour of: (i) retaining MMP (albeit with a change to a fixed-term parliament; see "Jenny Shipley really is a democrat"), and (ii) that her government, while seeking to promote debate, will not act to pre-empt the 2000-2002 review.
If we regard our electoral system as something that can be changed at the drop of a hat, or for the short-term political advantage of some party or coalition, then the world will see us as politically unstable. MMP governance will always be much more effective if we start treating MMP as a permanent change, if we stop blaming it for everything that is perceived to be wrong with politics or the economy, and stop the speculation about its immediate future. Constitutional law is the bedrock upon which our political system is based.
In 1992, we established an excellent process upon which all constitutional change should be based. Later that year we held an indicative referendum on whether we should retain our voting system; ie we held a referendum on the first-past-the-post (FPP) voting system. FPP received less than 200,000 votes, about 8% of the resident population eligible to register to vote. At the same time, we held a referendum to determine a preferred alternative. MMP was favoured over STV (single transferable voting) with SM (supplementary member system) and the Australian preferential system coming a distant third and fourth.
In 1993, we created the legislation for an MMP-elected parliament; legislation that would be automatically activated with a simple majority of votes cast in a binding referendum held in conjunction with the 1993 general election. 54% voted for the MMP legislation, so it automatically became law.
Any further changes (except perhaps some that simply tidy up some small problem) must follow essentially the same process: (i) a debate, (ii) an indicative referendum on the legislation that is being questioned, and (iii) a binding referendum for new legislation. The final referendum should held in conjunction with a general election to ensure a sufficient turnout.
The matter of New Zealand becoming a republic should follow this process. So should any proposal to create an Upper House, or a separate Maori Parliament, or a proposal to remove the right of MPs to vote in Parliament against their party line.
In the case of the electoral system, the public debate should be seen as an intrinsic complement to the official review. And the debate must be allowed to continue at least from the period of the publication of the ensuing report until the 2002 election. Thus, any decision to hold an indicative referendum should be made by the Parliament elected in 2002. If such a referendum favours change, then the binding referendum should be held in conjunction with the 2005 election. (Thus we should now be acting in the knowledge that MMP will be the electoral system for the next three general elections.)
If the rest of the world can see that New Zealand conforms to that kind of process every time a major constitutional change is mooted, then there can be no grounds for questioning our political stability. We must stick with the sound and stable processes that we devised in the early 1990s to deal with important constitutional matters such as the way we choose our Members of Parliament.
PS: (2 February) See the Herald's editorial today, "Still too early to judge".
Jenny Shipley really is a democrat
(29 January)After meeting a diverse group of politicians in Germany, PM Jenny Shipley has floated a number of ideas that would strengthen parliamentary democracy in New Zealand. Germany represents the prototype of our new MMP electoral system, and Mrs Shipley has noticed that there is a key stabilising factor in Germany that is missing in New Zealand. In general, that factor is the emphasis on constructive procedures rather than allowing parliamentarians to seek to collapse governments without putting up alternative coalitions.
The central concepts are (i) the need for a fixed term Parliament, and (ii) the need to avoid creating a situation in which, by law, the first loyalty of Members of Parliament is to the parties under whose auspices they entered Parliament. This last point is in direct opposition to promises by Labour and the Alliance to legislate for party loyalty to become the first principle of parliamentary behaviour. Labour has already tried through the failed "Cullen Bill".
The third concept that the Prime Minister is floating, that of a four-year instead of a three-year parliamentary term, makes full sense now that we have proportional representation. Indeed a 4-year term was recommended by the 1986 Electoral Commission as a complement to proportional representation. However, the four-year term was rejected by referendum in 1990 (and 1967) and should not really be on the agenda again until the transition to proportional representation is complete; ie until we stop talking about proportional representation as if it will be short-lived. (The same should apply to the debate about the size of parliament; we need to wait for the transition to proportional representation to be completed in order to ensure that the different constitutional issues are not confused, and that any debates about constitutional change are well focussed.)
In New Zealand in 1997 and 1998, we have faced a number of situations in which MPs faced conflicting loyalties. The parties of the Left (Labour, Alliance) and remnants of New Zealand First are determined to legislate so as to enforce loyalty to the party above all else. These MPs have faced undiluted opprobrium from both the parties that demanded loyalty to the party above all else, and from the media. In practice, that means that MPs willing to accept the responsibility of Government have been roundly abused, while those who simply snipe from the wings and refuse to propose an alternative government receive most of the media brownie points.
The main source of political instability in New Zealand is the Labour Party. They have refused to try form an alternative government, despite several opportunities to do so, on account of the fact that they were jilted by New Zealand First on 13 December 1996. Unlike Labour, National and New Zealand First were able to put personality differences and petty political grievances behind them. Hence it was those two parties who formed New Zealand's first MMP government. If Labour strategists had had any brains, they would have simply accepted that New Zealand First had to make a choice that would displease many people, and should have waited for tensions in the National-NZ First coalition to create a situation where Labour could form a coalition or minority government.
It was because Labour has had only one aim - to collapse the present Parliament - that the NZ First MPs who placed their loyalty to New Zealand ahead of their loyalty to Winston Peters were forced to support a minority National Government. They would have probably been equally happy to form a part of a minority Labour Government. But Labour didn't even try.
It's ironic that Labour's major single grievance remains the decision of Winston Peters' NZ First party to form a coalition with National instead of with Labour. Prior to that, Labour, National's preferred coalition partner, jilted National thereby placing Winston Peters in a position of "kingmaker".
Under the proposal for a fixed term Parliament that Mrs Shipley now supports, this kind of "collapsing the scrum" or "lying on the ball in the maul" (to use two rugby metaphors) will become futile and will be seen for what it is; an attempt to create instability as a route to power. To use a soccer metaphor, that would be to score an "own goal" in the eyes of the voters. With a fixed term Parliament, Labour would be expected to propose an alternative coalition, because it wouldn't be able to create instability as a means of getting an early election.
Voters would finally get what they wanted, a proposing consensus-seeking parliament rather than an opposing parliament. Implicit in such a parliamentary structure, neither governments nor governments-in-waiting (the new name for the "Opposition") would be stupid enough to propose off-the-wall policies (or, to use a baseball analogy, "policies from out of left field") such as the extreme neoliberalism that we got from Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson.
New Zealand and Global Free Trade
(25 January)Ian Templeton says ("Recovery puts Shipley centre stage", Sunday Star-Times, 24 January): "Through free trade, Shipley says New Zealand can break out of the commodity trade trap that had screwed down the living standards of New Zealand's rural heartlands."
I don't know if this an accurate representation of Prime Minister Jenny Shipley's thoughts. But it is an inaccurate summary of the benefits to New Zealand of global free trade. In fact free trade is a means by which we can break in to the commodity trade trap.
The argument generally presented is that we suffer because of agricultural protection imposed by places such as the European Union, the USA and Australia. If that protection disappears, then New Zealand's economy will swing back much more to its 1950s' structure. Such market forces would "signal" New Zealanders to produce more pastoral commodities and fewer manufactures and tradeable services.
New Zealand has successfully diversified its economy since the mid-1960s and especially since the mid-1970s' terms of trade shock. As the world demanded fewer primary commodities from us, we turned to manufacturing, both to save on imports and to export. That was the general experience during the National governments of Robert Muldoon and Jim Bolger. Primary products became relatively more important, however, in the years of the Lange-Douglas-Palmer Labour Government, thanks to a policy stance that was tantamount to the genocide of manufacturing sector in 1985-87.
New Zealand is not in a commodity trade trap at present. We participate in international trade on many fronts, and benefit from our trade. Trade in the real world is not adversely affected by national governments creating marginal advantages to their own producers. In fact, such policies stabilise world trade. (In the late 19th century - the first heyday of world trade - it was the protectionist nations that contributed most to the expansion of world trade.)
It is the barriers placed by other countries on our pastoral exports that have led to our economic maturation; that have forced us to produce value-added manufactures competitively. The removal of foreign barriers to our agricultural exports will lead to: higher receipts for pastoral exports, a higher exchange rate, rich farmers, more imports, a reduced range of employment opportunities, and an increased rate of emigration.
Global free trade would lead to a small number of New Zealanders enjoying a life of imported affluence. It would encourage the majority of the world's population to move from the "periphery" to the "centre", much as New Zealand's population moved from the country to the city during the 1980s' liberalisation.
Even without Mrs Shipley's dream coming to fruition, the 21st century is shaping to be one of mass global migration. The young of the third world will be needed to support the old of the first world, and will support the children and unemployed of their home countries through remittances. The liberal dream of a world without barriers will require landless people seeking employment to move to the relatively small number of huge cities that contain a knowledge sector, a manufacturing sector and a mass market.
The world economy needs some barriers to give it structure and stability. Trade barriers make it easier, not harder, for New Zealanders to find a diverse range of employment in New Zealand. (Of course, too many trade barriers are as great a problem as too few.)
World trade is conducted on a huge scale today; it is not being suffocated by protectionism. There are many more important problems for policymakers to deal with.
(24 January)
In today's Sunday Star-Times (p.F7) there is an advertisement for the Auckland Museum's new "Admissions Policy". Adults are requested to "donate" $5. Students, who are also requested to donate $5, will be exempted after 3:30pm if they can prove that they are students.
The advertisement says that "admission donations will be received at the cashier stations in the foyer". No simple donation box here.
Let's get real. This is an admission charge. And I'm not happy about this. Next thing they'll be charging donations to walk into a public library. Or onto a public beach, or a public park.
Certain kinds of museums are a part of the public domain: Te Papa is one; the Auckland War Memorial Museum is another. Entry into such public spaces should be free. By all means charge for special exhibitions or the fun features that make Te Papa into a cross between a public museum and a theme park. But don't exclude the people from their places; don't exclude us from our places. (Or are public museums to be reserved for "consumers"? See "Does 'The Public' mean all of us, equally?") And don't pretend that you are not charging when you are.
It is not only museums that are subject to such fees (sorry, donations). Our free public schools are subject to "donations"; perhaps our free kindergartens as well.
So is our free maternity care. To attend ante-natal classes at Auckland's "National" Women's (public) Hospital, a "donation" of $60 is required. Bookings are processed once the donation is received!
(21 January)
The editorial in today's NZ Herald ("It takes two in politics") is critical of the double-threshold aspect of our proportional electoral system (MMP).
It says: "A party that fails to gain 5 percent of votes nationwide can gain several seats if it wins just one electorate. That is a peculiarity of the new system that MMP could well do without. ... It's time to question whether parties with less than 5 percent of the vote should enjoy bonuses beyond the electorates they win."
If Act wins one seat and 4% of the vote, and National wins 46% of the vote, then National and Act together will win 60 seats in a 120 member Parliament. If we follow the recommendation of the Herald's editorial writer, National and Act together would receive 56 seats.
Let's try another scenario. Act wins 3 seats, thanks to National not contesting say Wellington Central, Epsom and Tauranga. But, nationwide, Act wins just 1% of the party vote. If National win 46% of the party vote, then under the present rules National and Act would have 56 out of 120 members. But, under the Herald's version, National and Act together would get 58 out of 122. The right would be over-represented.
In practice, where coalitions form before elections are held (as, for example, on the Liberal-National coalition in Australia) the parties must make whatever arrangements they need to maximise the number of seats they will win. (In Australia they "give preferences" to each other.) If we adopt the Herald's recommendation, National would respond by standing down more of its electorate candidates.
In the same newspaper, John Jensen, a National Party coordinator and retired history professor, argues ("Two big parties still hold sway, even under MMP") that shifting to proportional representation may have been a pointless exercise, because it looks like we will continue to have a future of two-party politics.
I have two comments to make. First, the point about proportional representation is that it makes parliament more contestable. Thus, the two major parties know that a third or fourth party faces a 5% threshold, and not the 20% threshold that they used to face. That makes a big difference to the way politics is conducted, even if no minor parties are present in Parliament. Under proportional representation we will never again see the same two parties completely dominate Parliament for 60 years.
Second, we should be wary of drawing too many conclusions from our second MMP parliament about the future shape of MMP parliaments. Many people believe that the transition to proportional representation will end with the 1999 election.
I would argue that we will still be in transition at least until 2002, and possibly until 2008. The swing back to 2-party politics in 1999 can be seen as a reaction to perceived difficulties with the present pluralist parliament. (We cannot stand it when our politicians disagree - that's "disunity". We hate it even more when they do agree! That's "propping up" some other party.) In 2002, we can expect a swing back to having minor party representation, with possibly another reaction in 2005.
Ultimately, given that the 5% threshold is higher than in most other countries with proportional representation, we can expect to have a parliament like the German Bundestag; typically there would be between 3 and 5 parties represented at any one time.
Personally, I would prefer a single threshold of 3% of the national vote to a dual 2% and 5% threshold. (Even better, I would like regional lists with a 5% threshold in each region.) But I accept that New Zealand voters expect small parties to oppose rather than coalesce. Hence the 5% threshold may be appropriate to the New Zealand mindset. I am hoping, however, that by the 2010s if not before, New Zealand voters (and television news reporters!) will have learned to adopt a different attitude to small parties.
Political Parties need not contest every Electorate
(20 January)It was reported in the Herald this morning that the National, Act and United Parties may do "deals" to ensure that there is a single candidate of the right in strategic electorates, for the coming election.
The only reported response from the left, was by Matt McCarten, the president of the Alliance, who said that Labour and the Alliance both "feel that it is more honest" for both to stand a candidate in every seat. I disagree. I think it is more honest result, if there is a clear choice between two candidates, with nobody winning simply because allied candidates split each others' votes.
When political parties choose a new leader, the usual process is for several candidates to enter the contest, but for those who have no hope of winning to withdraw, leaving the vote as a head-to-head contest. The reason for that is that, under first past the post (FPP) voting system, it is always more honest for the two leading candidates to contest the seat head-to-head. The only way of creating an honest electorate result with multiple candidates is to use preferential voting (as is used in Australia), or to use a multiple ballot system (as was adopted in New Zealand in 1908 and 1911). Our new proportional electoral system has retained FPP for electorates, so honesty requires that 'spoiler' candidates should stand down.
(If Labour had stood down in the 1994 Selwyn by-election, Helen Clark would have been able to form a minority government that year, and in all likelihood she would now be in her sixth year as Prime Minister. The National candidate won because of the split in the left vote, which was dominated by the Alliance's John Wright. The Labour Candidate was the spoiler.)
What criteria should parties use in 1999 for standing down candidates?
The left and the right should seek to ensure that every party that might form a part of a left or a right coalition government is able to able to gain representation at the 2% rather than at the 5% threshold. In 1996, the 4.5% who voted for the Christian parties represented wasted votes for the right. Those votes would have been effective had the Christian Coalition won an electorate seat. Then, it was seen that National, United, Act and the Christian Coalition represented a natural coalition of the right. This time, a coalition of the right is emerging around National, United, Act and Mauri Pacific.
The natural coalition of the left is between Labour, Alliance and the Greens. It may be that Labour and the Alliance will gain enough votes to govern without the Greens. But they would be foolish to act in such a way that the Green vote was wasted.
Following this criterion, we can expect single candidates for the right in Wellington Central, Ohariu-Belmont, and Northern Maori. We can likewise expect single candidates from the left in Coromandel and Wigram. As some insurance with a view to 2002 and beyond it, would make sense to have a Green candidate contest for the left for a Northland seat (Rodney?), which could not be won by Labour or the Alliance.
A second reason to stand down candidates is to ensure that shadow ministers (on both the left and the right) are not opposed by a candidate from a likely coalition partner. This will not matter in seats where the candidate is already an electorate MP with a large margin in his/her electorate. (Note that I used the word "margin", not "majority". Most electorate MPs do not have majorities; they only have winning margins over the 2nd placed candidate.)
Following this criterion, we can expect single candidates for the right in, say, Otaki, Mafia, and (Rodney Hide) in Epsom. On the left, we would expect Alliance candidates such as Phillida Bunkle, John Wright, Laila Harre and Matt Robson to be free to run head-to-head against the right-wing candidate. The Alliance, in turn, might agree not to stand a candidate against, say, Phil Goff or Annette King.
A third reason for the left or right to run a single candidate is as a response to the "other side" doing so. Thus, for example, Richard Prebble and Peter Dunne should only face one opponent on the left. Otherwise, Prebble and Dunne would be receiving a free ticket into Parliament. Likewise, the right would not want to give Goff, King or Robson a free ticket.
The logical outcome is that marginal seats would typically reduce to head-to-head contests between the rival coalitions. The winning electorate MPs would end up being the same people who would have won under preferential voting or under the two-ballot system. That's honest.
PS. (21 January) In Australian politics, parties "give their preferences" to other parties. That means, a party on the left (such as the ALP) may suggest that people who vote Labor, choose say the Greens or the Democrats as their second preference. Likewise, the right-wing parties give their preferences to each other, thereby maintaining the stability of the Liberal-National coalition. With NZ's non-preferential voting system, the withdrawal of a candidate who has no realistic chance of winning, is the NZ equivalent of giving preferences.
(17 January)
One issue that will dominate the media (and especially the Internet) in 1999 will be the "Y2K" century bug; the computer (mainly software) design flaw of the 1950s and 1960s that failed to take account of the fact that the future years would not always begin with the digits "19". Year fields of "00" would affect the systems that use them in unpredictable ways.
I don't know much about the technical nature of software solutions being applied to the problem. What I do know is that, as a historian, life will most likely go on for many years past 2000, just as it existed for many years before the year 0AD (aka 1BC). (The Y0K bug means that the year -1AD equates to the year 2BC rather than the year 1BC; I am not too sure how computers involved in, say, archaeological research cope with dates before 1AD. I expect they use negative binary AD numbers and then convert them to BC via the formula: YBC = 1-YAD.)
Writing - the world's first software - is believed to have begun about 8,000 years ago in what is now Iraq. That's quite a short percentage of the story of humanity, let alone the story of life.
Let's look forward 8,000 years, to the year 9999. (In 8,000 years time, if there is a loss of historical knowledge, archaeologists might conclude that the Sumerian civilisation in ancient Iraq was destroyed by cruise missiles!)
Our first impulse is to assume that humanity will be extinct by the year 9999. Our second impulse is to assume that our present technology will be extinct by then. Our third impulse is to assume that our calendar will have some new base year; eg in commemoration of some future religious figure.
It seems to me just as likely that software will evolve over the next 8,000 years much as it did over the last 8,000. It's just that globalisation and "path dependency" will make it harder for anyone to invent a new calendar and have it generally accepted. (We still have the QWERTY keyboard, which was not designed with the future in mind.) Indeed, it will not be possible to change the calendar used for international communications unless electronic computing and communications do become extinct.
The greater likelihood is that electronic systems will become increasingly stable and reliable, meaning that fewer people will need to have systems programming skills. Indeed, the fixing of the Y2K problem will help to ensure that much of the rogue code from the very early years of computing will be finally retired.
So, let's imagine a happy and contented global population in the 100th century. Their basic computer systems may have been around for centuries with barely a fault. (Their main concern may be to explain the cancer incidence around 8,000 year old nuclear waste dumps.) After all, computing has a much more promising future than has nuclear fission power.
But how will computers in the year 10000 handle "year" fields of "0000"? It could make a wonderful science fiction story to imagine scenarios, 8,000 years hence, of a Y2K-like bug taking a computer-dependent society unawares.
My most serious point for today, is that solutions for the Y2K problem should not be based on simply shifting the goalposts, moving the problem to some point in the future when all people alive today will be dead. I hope that the computing industry will take the view that the future is indefinite, and that all code that gets anywhere near our communications networks will be compliant in any future century, and not just for the next 80 centuries.
PS [1 February 1999] One situation in which we are dependent today on a standard set 2,500 years ago it that of the standard railway gauge of 4' 81/2". It is the wheelspan of Roman chariots, which rutted the roads of the day and therefore became the wheelspan of all subsequent wagons; wagons that used Roman roads and were adapted to railroads.
PPS [1 February] There are a number of websites that address the Y10K issue, either seriously or flippantly. Try Y10K Unlimited Consulting Knowledgebase.
Why the Millennium is Important
(5 January)Today I read the Newsroom column "Catching The Millennium Bug" by Matthew Thomas (2 January) and once again feel that too many people are missing the point about the millennium.
As an economic historian with a mathematical background, I strongly dispute the claim that the new millennium does not begin until the year 2001. However, the snipe at the actual date is not Thomas's central point, and it shall not be mine here either.
The calendar is important because it measures time, and we organise our personal lives by breaking it up into chunks of time; the most important of which are the "month", "quarter", "year" and "decade". We also organise our understanding of our past and future in chunks of time, the most important chunks being labelled "century" and "millennium". For chunks of time longer than one year, we use the decimal system, which is at least as good as any other system of counting. And the whole world uses the Exiguus calendar, not because it means anything special (we know that Christ, the central icon of one of the world's more popular religions, was born several years before 01/01/0000 [ie before 01/01/BC0001]), but because of a number of accidents of history.
What matters is that we celebrate ("acknowledge" for wowsers) the boundaries that divide one segment of time from another. Likewise we acknowledge boundaries in space, whether they be national borders, mountain ranges, or invisible lines such as the equator, the Tropic of Capricorn, the Arctic Circle or the South Pole. Traditionally, when travelling by ship, there is a "crossing the line" ceremony - I experienced one in 1974 - which involves Neptune, the Roman god of the sea.
Getting back to time boundaries, we always celebrate the New Year, in recognition of the importance of the year in the structuring of our lives. As children we used to celebrate the transition from one month to the next (with a "pinch and a punch"), reflecting the fact that the year is too long a base period for children. In economic, statistical, financial and legislative matters, the end of the quarter is acknowledged. New laws always take effect on such a boundary. And, in the old days before banks got greedy, we would pay bank fees on a quarterly basis at the end of each quarter.
We don't celebrate the boundary between decades much more than we do any other new year. But we do acknowledge those inter-decade boundaries as being especially significant. At the end of a year like 1989, we reviewed not only the year 1989 but also the decade of the 1980s. In 1979 I remember attending a play at Circa (Wellington) called "Decayed Decade".
I am not aware of there being much dispute as to when a decade ends and a new decade begins. There were few celebrations or even acknowledgements of the 1980s during the last week of the year 1990. Likewise, there are few who will claim that the 1990s finish at the end of the year 2000. Wouldn't it be odd if the century boundaries were out of phase with the decade boundaries?
The transition in 360 days time is principally a century transition. Indeed the Y2K computer bug is really a century bug; it's not a millennium bug at all. The century represents the boundary between personal time and historical time, and is appropriately the subject of considerable celebration. It is a New Year like no other, experienced just once in a lifetime.
The century is a significant milestone of time for people of all cultures and religions. Not everyone may care about Christianity, but 99.999% of us have 10 fingers, which presupposes us to the decimal system of counting. That's what the year 2000 is about; counting in decimals. While an accident of history, it is the transition between one large segment of historical time and another. It is a boundary peg; a milestone; a natural time for both historical reflection and futuristic speculation. It is important because boundary pegs and milestones are important.
The millennial boundary is important relative to the century boundary in much the same way as the decade boundary is important relative to the annual boundary. It calls for no more celebration, but a little more reflection.
As a corollary, the whole period from around 1995 to 2035 can be regarded as an important anniversary of the life of one of the world's most important religious figures. In a sense it is fitting that the anniversary of Christ's birth came before the millennium, just as the celebration of Christmas (both a contrived anniversary - as is the June celebration of the monarch's birthday - and a recognition of the solstice) comes before the celebration of the New Year (a completely arbitrary point on the calendar but nevertheless of more practical significance in our lives than Christmas).
The Fuss about the new Drivers Licence
(5 January)One of the ongoing issues of 1998 was the introduction of legislation to replace lifetime drivers licences with shorter term licences with a photo and digital coding. The proposed new legislation was passionately opposed by many New Zealanders.
I believe that much of the reason for this opposition was misunderstood. Finlay MacDonald's editorial in the NZ Listener of 9 January ("Here's looking at you") is a case in point.
There are in fact three issues: that of privacy, that of conspiracy, and that of cost. MacDonald emphasises the first two.
I don't believe that many New Zealanders really care about privacy; we are happy to dob in as benefit fraudsters our sole-parent neighbours who might have company from time to time. We are the world's biggest users of EFTPOS (electronic money) and other devices that serve as modern-day tracking devices. We are more than happy to have police cameras in public spaces, because we fear crime. The only place that we don't like police cameras is on our highways, checking on how fast we drive and fining us if we commit the crime of driving too fast.
It is true that New Zealanders are fond of conspiracy theories; so are most other people I suspect. Certainly, we are suspicious of any use of technology by government departments that might be construed as an attempt at social engineering in the service of a privileged elite. On the other hand, we tend to be very slow to be aroused by social engineering where the controlling agent is abstract rather than digital; ie such as Chicago School economics (we were an easy touch).
Jane Clifton (the Listener's political columnist) got it right earlier this year when she noted that New Zealanders don't care about the sexual activities of their politicians, as the British and Americans seem to. Rather, New Zealanders have an alternative obsession; an obsession about the spending habits of our political representatives. We see our politicians as congenital kleptomaniacs; not satyrs. Combining our obsession with personal property rights with a propensity for conspiratorial explanations, we suspect that politicians forever want to put their hands in our wallets so that they can lead comfortable lives enriched by travel to wherever they or their spouses might want to go (jaunts and junkets). Mrs Robertson's petition to reduce the number of MPs is a reflection of that mentality, as is the passionate feeling about "revenue-raising" through the use of speed cameras.
The opposition to the new drivers licences is, I believe, almost entirely about the charge, not about the photo or the digital bar-coding. We, who bought life-time licences in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, are being told that we are going to have to pay once more. The easiest way to arouse a Kiwi is to tell him that he will have to pay once again for something he has already paid for.* (The amount of the payment is not at issue; the issue is the principle of only paying once.)
The final sentence of Carl Rofe's letter (NZ Listener, 9 January) says it for all: "The new more expensive drivers' licences (replacing the lifetime version we already possess) are perhaps just another small indication that a 'citizen's card' cannot be far away." Methinks that Rofe is more concerned about the breaching of his present contract with the former Ministry of Transport than he is about the possible introduction of another card with a number on it. The stated concern about privacy is little more than a covering device; New Zealanders, while concerned about monetary contracts as a matter of principle, always try to avoid being seen as merely stingy.
New Zealanders (Kiwis), generous when acting of our own volition and happy to fund a properly accounted social wage, are very sensitive to attempts by authority figures to forcibly part us from any of our property, including even the smallest amounts of money. We see the new drivers licences, like speed cameras, as essentially a revenue-raising exercise; a conspiracy to pickpocket the public. The controversy will abate if ever the decision is made to issue the new licences free of charge to existing 'life-time' licence holders.
* This is also the reason for the excessive passion about New Zealand Superannuation; the public pension. Many of our retired population are convinced that they paid for their present pension via a 71/2% levy on their past incomes, and that any attempt to means-test their pension is double-charging. [back]
© 1999 Keith Rankin