Up the OECD [2003]
This is what Industry New Zealand said about us on its website in 2002:
"New Zealanders are innovators. We developed the world's fastest motorcycle, disposable syringes, stamp vending machines, childproof medicine bottles and much more.
This website showcases our brightest businesses, entrepreneurs and opportunities. It celebrates our creativity, and it's a gateway to practical information and resources to help businesses, industries and regions develop and grow."
Child proof bottles, syringes, vending machines - such charisma!
These assertions are part of a new orthodoxy and a new vision for New Zealand. We want to lift our game and claw back our place in the top half of the OECD because we are NOT RICH ENOUGH.
But while it would satisfy the collective ego to be back there - not to mention the collective wallet, the signs are not that encouraging.
The circumstances that got us there in the first place have long gone and the emerging knowledge economy seems to be based far more on exporting "natural" units of knowledge (i.e. people) and less on the sale of their production.
At a time when most civic leaders are talking about the need to build large new enterprises to save their city from decline, there are few real opportunities in sight.
There is a real possibility of stagnation. And it's no joke being the international poor relations. Too little money has clearly sapped our national resilience and our ability to fund important services as well as we would like.
There is a thinness here that is not always helpful. But the goal of being back in the top half of the OECD is pretty nebulous. It may specify the desired result but it says nothing about what it would be like when we got there or how we would go about achieving it.
(It's probably easiest to just sabotage the ones directly above us - or annex some of the smaller ones).
Of course money is not a universal panacea. The United States has much more money than us yet not only do we not wish to emulate their society, we are already on the same level as them in terms of measures of social well-being.
So yes we want to be rich but not beggar - in - the - street rich. New Zealand has cultural limits relating to equality of access and opportunity that have stood up to fifteen years of economic rationalisation, battered but largely unbowed.
But there is also a possibility that our would-be rescuers are looking in the wrong place for the solutions. It is a serious issue when the general tenor of the discussion about growth is to denigrate our own culture as inferior in terms of wealth creation (too small-scale, too laid-back) and seek to import overseas models instead (e.g. large-scale high-tech factories).
This is consistent with our tendency to look outwards for solutions, and it is obviously a useful way of raising expectations. As our film industry shows, even temporary exposure to new technologies and industries can lead to larger things, and New Zealanders do have their own way of doing things.
However, the risk is that such imports have no natural affinity with New Zealand and no particular reason for being here, rather than anywhere else. And if only one (foreign) solution is considered appropriate, some very interesting and useful developments in our own social environment may be overlooked.
It is important to balance our view. The sad fact is that if all else is equal, more advantage accrues to those who already have advantage. People with lots of money use it to make more.
People who speak minor languages will neglect them in favour of more widely spoken languages. People in small towns (or countries) will migrate to larger towns (or countries).
Things that can just as easily be done elsewhere, closer to global markets will inexorably move that way.
So even though we might start up and develop internationally competitive businesses here, if the enterprises we establish do not in some way depend on being here, the fruits of that development will almost inevitably be spread more thinly.
We all like the idea of local clusters of excellence, but at the top level, such clusters are global, not local.
In such a milieu, New Zealand can only come into its own when all else isn't equal. The things that have done best here and still do well are things that build on our natural assets and advantages:- farming, fishing, forestry, tourism.
The bulk of our export production can't be produced as easily or as cheaply closer to our main markets. The prevailing wisdom is that we must therefore become adept in the field of biotechnology - improving our trees and animals and crops so they become even more useful.
But there is another angle to consider. If New Zealand's future lies in knowledge (and we must remember to interpret that more broadly than just technology), then our people are our primary form of natural advantage.
If we want them producing those knowledge-based goods and services here, we must develop conditions for knowledge producers that can't be replicated as well somewhere else.
That means making sure we know what our cultural competitive advantages are and broadening perceptions of the kind of business that will enhance them.
It means we must try harder to attract or retain people that want to do business that can be done much better here than elsewhere. A
nd it involves the creation of the kind of (social and economic) conditions that will support people who can make the most of our advantages.
That is a conversation we haven't even begun. But when we do, it is an even bet that the term "number eight wire" will be there somewhere.
"we want to be rich but not beggar - in - the - street rich. ."
