1984 Quiz Result
Judge Mick Brown
I thank you for the privilege of being asked to address you because it provided me with an incentive to read a number of excellent issue papers, which have recently emanated from various departments, including Treasury, the Ministry of Social Development and others.
In particular, I was extremely pleased and delighted to receive what seemed to be an excellent summary of what I had been asked to speak of in this most recent Statement of Intent 2002 from the State Services Commission itself. I'll refer to that again in a minute.
Speculating on the Future
When speculating on the future let me read to you one brief excerpt from bulletins that come from Emmanuel Wallerstein at the Fernand Braudel Center in Binghamton University. I stress that this is a copyright matter, but as we're in Chatham House circumstances I presume that's all right. He was talking about Japan as a nation, but he said this because I think it may refer to most, if not all, of the countries in the world.
He said, "The need to adjust to the fundamental cultural reality of the modern world all countries are destined to be admixtures culturally. Immigration is an economic necessity for any serious centre of capital accumulation. The cultural wrench may be the biggest of them all. On the other hand, there have been instances elsewhere of spectacular cultural rearrangements under the pressures of logic and necessity."
He goes on to make this prediction, which may or may not be apt for our situation, but remember that Japan is a country that has in many ways resisted stoutly any mixture of their culture or certainly watering around. He says this: "The Japan of 2025 will be quite different from the Japan of today, but we must remember so will the whole world system. We are living in an era of chaotic bifurcation in the world system. Things will change at a pace and in a manner far more turbulent than anything we have known for 500 years. Japan, like all the rest of us, will be in the vortex of this hurricane and the Japanese, like the rest of us, will have to figure out how to deal with it."
Although it is of a somewhat apocalyptic tone and certainly could be criticised on that basis, I think that is not a suggestion that can be lightly dispensed with. But I did refer to the SSC Statement of Intent. Time doesn't allow me to read to you the particularly relevant pages, among all the other relevant pages. Pages 8 and 9 and the item "Operating Environment" in many ways seem to me a wonderful summary of exactly those matters, which we can foresee. But in any discussion of this nature we must recognise that there will be changes which no one can anticipate or would anticipate. How we adapt to that transition will be determined I believe by how astutely and speedily we as a nation prepare and arm ourselves for that change.
Not only do I say it is going to happen, but that the time to start preparing ourselves for it, is yesterday. That presupposes, in fact, an ability to acknowledge that there will be change. I was interested in the video, because the young ones seem to have at least some sense of future changes, far more than the nostalgic yearning for the good old days, as expressed by the older group.
Looking Back
You would have all been probably just born in the 1980s, but things weren't actually that great. There were changes, but many of them were necessary changes, in fact, dramatically necessary. I don't think we should forget that either. I think, too, any change or preparation for change will depend on our maturity to resolve and discuss the future complexities of that change. I was very disappointed in this most recent election in New Zealand, not to the outcome, but with the fact that it was restricted to such narrow and populist items when so much needs to be discussed seriously.
I think, too, as an eternal optimist it would be a good thing if we can arm ourselves and prepare ourselves, and as much as is possible anticipate the changes so that we could emerge as a stronger nation. I have a great love for this country because it has been very good to me.
Let me go through a very brief maudlin description. As a child I was fostered out for seven months because my mother was ill in hospital and my father was useless. It is a gene that has gone down my line. But I was brought up in this pakeha home, and my mother died when I was aged one. I had a free education. It was the Welfare State at its zenith I suppose. I had ill health and again I had hospital treatment.
I went to university and that was free and for me education was the great emancipation and opportunity that I had. I really would like to see these things replicated in our new society. I'm not sure that the way we have at the moment is the right way. There was a time when people - because most of that generation that brought me up had been through the Depression and then the Second World War was in progress - had that possibility of getting an education, of doing these things, and that was a great time to be alive.
Issues around Change
You can speculate about some exotic things, but some of them are very predictable even now. For example, I think the face of the Christian church in New Zealand with the current immigration patterns will make it quite possible for a future Anglican Archbishop - if they still have an Archbishop in the Anglican Church or they restore one - to be an Asian or an African. That is just one of those observations.
When we talk about what might happen there are secondary schools in Auckland that already have over 40 nationalities. I don't know how often you go to Auckland - if you ever want to go to Auckland, and why anyone would ever want to go to Auckland - but have a look at the face of Queen Street. I spoke at a tertiary prize giving for the Manukau Institute of Technology, which they have originally given the acronym of MIT, which sounds quite dramatic. There probably would have been about 20 per cent white faces in the graduate group. That is now, I'm not talking about 20 years further down. That is now. It was a beautiful occasion.
I really do think that we have to be aware that we could reach a stage when there may be consequential massive population shifts, each of them with the potential to distort forward planning. We live in a time where there is a current political volatility to the world. None of us can say this afternoon that someone won't do something extraordinarily strange in the Middle East. It will be a headline if they don't, I think.
As Professor Wallerstein said: "Prospects of an era of chaotic bifurcation."What will be the effect of that on New Zealand? These are not matters I believe that you can dismiss. How are we going to deal with this? There will need to be leadership throughout the country. But from your point of view, as the prize crop, as it were, of the New Zealand Public Service, I think that leadership will require great subtlety, including the recognition that the State doesn't always know best. I'll briefly pause while you spit on the ground now.
I think what you need is insightful identification of those areas where the State should keep out, or at least, restrain intervening for as long as you can. I think you need to overcome that silo approach because life doesn't happen in nice convenient compartmentalised manners. Perhaps most important, is learning to work cooperatively and collaboratively with local authorities and the community.
This last mentioned may require some crash courses in meaningful, underlined consultation. I remember once when I was at a hui, which I don't recommend for anybody, quite frankly. But the type of consultation was that three civil servants arriving from the local airport in three different rental cars, all having booked for an early flight back. So there was only going to be a short time. All looked lovely in their three-piece suits and their constantly ringing cell phones. Not a lot of talking was done and they left. But they also left a very bad feeling among the group that they had come to consult, a sense of disappointment. And that is not good, it is not good for you and I don't think it is good for the country. I think, too, that we need to develop a coherent, profound, non-paternalistic liaison with Maori. For the exigencies of change I wouldn't recommend that, quite frankly.
There is this paternalism in our society. I think you have to abandon those overfed triplets: political correctness, monoculturalism and ethnic generalisations and subscribe instead to a philosophy of judging people by their character, rather than the colour of their skins. Perhaps instigating through one or a number of your elements some form of a national conversation.
This is something that I have raved on for many years about, to no avail, so I'm not conscience-stricken that you won't listen to it either this time. But I was very impressed some years ago with an initiative by FoRST or MoRST - I can never quite distinguish - where they ran a Foresight Programme and it was defined as simply a way of thinking about the future. In that case they were using templates envisaging New Zealand in the Year 2010.
The approach of this Foresight Programme was one of constructing a vision of a desirable future and then identifying strategies to take us there rather than projecting into the future with assumptions about how today works. That seems to me to have a lot of benefits insofar as we can - and in your case you can much more than I can - have some control over this exercise.
The issues are extraordinarily complex requiring intelligent input. In some instances we may have to undergo massive attitudinal change. My anxiety is the speed with which we have to implement this type of thinking. This is so that the more sensible and decent members of our community commence these conversations before they are hijacked by single interest groups in the lunatic fringe element, where we end up in oppositional postures, the antithesis of the cohesive model that we are seeking. The terms of reference for such a national conversation I am suggesting could include a truly cooperative environment. It is not us arriving from Head Office with: "What have you got to say?" which I used to do in Court.
Mutually tolerant, wide-ranging, a forum of cultural scholarship which refuses to succumb to that adversarial posturing, academic rivalry, racial prejudice, bureaucratic convenience. Every time I use that word convenience, something comes into my mind. Academic rivalry or racial prejudice, as I said before. But perhaps we would be better informed as to whether we really harbour a genuine desire, clearly manifest for an inclusive society and nation. As I've said before it must be done more than the current basis of officials' consultation.
I think national leaders have a pivotal role in shaping the conversation, but an even more difficult one in manifesting the change necessary. You too have that same role. Hopefully the prize for such efforts would be not only to invigorate your own organisations, but also to determine whether the goodwill and perceptions of the diverse multicultural group that your owners may be in the year 2020 hold you in high regard.
The 1970s and 80s
To help me to try and visualise the changes that I thought might occur in the future I reverted to thinking about the 1970s and 80s and just my own experiences. The State-owned Railways still had the monopoly on transport. A legislative protection enabled them to dominate the transport industry and to cut out competition because there were these rules about so many miles where you couldn't use trucks. In 1984 I was on a Royal Commission for Broadcasting which was running at that stage in parallel to a commission for the third channel. A major player at that time in the submissions to our commission was the New Zealand Post Office, who confidently expected to be the carrier of both TV channels.
At that stage the Post Office had I believe 35,000 employees. It had a social club, which everyone contributed to at about 20¢ a week, but it had baches, accommodation, beach and ski resorts - perfectly legally. But the investment represented a mindset of permanency, which didn't eventuate. There are no doubt numerous similar examples of displaced confidence that everything is going to be the same and we'll just have to change a little bit and perhaps pick up a couple of words of Greek or Abyssinian or whatever.
Maori and the Education System
A preparedness to see change and undertake change is incredibly important and whether you have it or feel that you can do that. Let me just read something else. In 1988 there was a report of the Royal Commission on Social Policy which was a major work. There must be somewhere hundreds and hundreds of copies of that report. It said among other things this: "While you read these lines thousands of Maori children attending New Zealand schools are being subjected to a 10-year process of schooling that very effectively atrophies their potential growth as people."
The question could be asked, given the universal and superficial availability of free education indeed compulsory: Are Maori children treated unfairly by the education system or are they merely unfortunate accidental casualties of essentially equitable processes and procedures?
Another quotation from that same Commission said this. I'm not asking it in some sort of weepy waily way; I'm challenging you with this.
"A Maori five-year-old new entrant enters a rather frightening new world where he or she is ushered into the hurly burly of his or her new classroom. The majority of teachers are middle-class and monocultural, know little of things Maori, consider pakeha culture superior to Maori culture, speak only English and do not consider the Maori language important."That report was 14 years ago and we must ask ourselves, while we're being all macho about how we're going to fix it and we'll be able to handle this in the future, let's have a look at what we've done so far.
This morning in the Dominion Post, which is a document to which I don't normally refer to, and it just reminded me this morning, why. But there again was a senior Maori educationalist saying those same things. It is still happening. Is this just grizzling and whinging, is this just Maoris going off mad again, or is it better?
Part of my time and what I laughingly describe as my retirement, is spent at Waikato University, which is half the week and then the other half I'm the Acting Pro Vice-Chancellor Maori at Auckland. Both institutions have the same concerns about the low number of Maori still. It is increasing, and certainly Waikato has got an advantage over Auckland, but there still is that under representation.
I have some figures. I'm not able to disclose them because it might offend the sensitivities of some of the Auckland schools. When you have a look at graphs of those who start in the third form and go right through to the bursary year and gain bursaries there is this dreadful falling away.
The danger is we are creating already a permanent underclass. If you impose on that factors such as major immigration then you have a built-in guerrilla force of people who are just going to feel that they are being further pushed down. It is happening in the United Kingdom with the disaffected bovver boy type of mentality. It is happening in France. Germany has this. I don't think it is any coincidence the extraordinary rise of Monsieur Le Pen. I don't know how you pronounce it, but it is that Right wing flick, which is partly dependent on that type of phenomena, that huge immigration entrance, and the disaffected lower-class people and the unskilled.
We keep emphasising all the things that we need in society with the knowledge wave - this is what we need, this is how we're going to do it, this is what we've got to do. It seems to me these things are dependent on us producing as many as students as possible who are literate, numerate, and emerging from the system capable of critical analytical skills.
It would be nice also if we could ensure that those young people, whatever their varying abilities, are decent citizens. Since about 1980 (I was appointed to the Bench in 1980) I've had this interest in juvenile affairs. Since that date I've been writing and speaking - again to no avail - of this phenomena where children are arriving at school, bushy-tailed and bright-eyed at five. Then I see them in Court at 14 and 15 and they haven't been to school since they were 10, essentially since they left primary school.
A year or two ago I did a review of Child, Youth and Family. My concern is that it is now an intergenerational thing. Mix failure - non-achievement as we say nowadays because no one fails - with a very dangerous, toxic element such as alcohol abuse and drug abuse. You then have a nation that I don't believe is capable of taking the steps and getting us to that situation where we can accommodate these external inflows and influences that will affect us in 2020.
Have a look too at our own character. It always worries me that in New Zealand if we have a problem we have a technique where we look for someone to blame. Then we can generally agree and identify whether in the most recent weeks it's the Correspondence School or Child Youth and Family. We all blame them and we think we've fixed the problem. That is not the intellectual approach that is going to be needed for the advances and the changes in the next two decades.
The Next Two Decades
I have so much to tell you and so little time. If you want to go through a predictive jaunt over two decades there probably are two scenarios. One is projecting scenarios from the present domestic New Zealand society point of view, from what we know.
The second is examining potential repercussions from external and international factors over which we will have little if any control. Obviously each of those categories has an infinite number of subdivisions. But unless we demonstrate some hitherto invisible sense of coherent, cohesive attitudinal change the result is likely to be reactive, ad hoc, knee-jerk stumbling from one crisis to another and this country deserves better than that.
Let me give you some very quick examples. Originally when I was asked to speak, it was who will be the future servants of the State service, or the future owners of the New Zealand Public Service? Who are they likely to be? Perhaps we should first of all say, we're thinking about the future and who is to say there will be a Public Service in 20 years' time?
I think that we need to look at our domestic institutions. I know it wasn't intentional when this proposition was put to me, but I understand the conventions that are the foundation stones of the Public Service culture are its professionalism, integrity and political neutrality.
Ultimately they provide the major contribution to any country's fiscal credibility, and also their reputation for stability. Of that I have no doubt. When I use the words "professionalism" and "integrity" and "political neutrality" I'm sure even Sir Paul in his days as the leader of the Anglican Church would have admired those qualities in his own clergy. Certainly one would like to see it in the legal profession. But those conventions of themselves require that not only the people adhere to them who are the Public Service, but that others agree that they are desirable.
Our current society is one riddled with so-called opinion makers who are disdainful of conventions. It's similar to the legal profession, which has many historical conventions, but they're not always observed and in the end there is a sort of an erosive effect, when they can be washed away.
That is one of the great challenges that you face as a profession. You see you're vulnerable because you're a huge organisation. The lady at the counter in Lower Hutt or Whangarei at this moment is representing you and the public perception of you and that is a huge responsibility and risk.
Again there is this potential for attack. The conventions used to be understood by the politicians. I don't think they are by many of them. God forbid there may in the future be some rogue MP who may bound over, ride over those conventions. So I think it is not enough that you just say this will always happen because it is highly desirable.
Immigration - well there are two types, of course, by and large there are two groups, legal and illegal and then refugees can fall into one or other of those. I could go on about that, but I'll tell you it is not possible. There are monstrous problems already and I don't think we are equipped as a nation, and I don't think we have sorted out how we want to deal with this. I don't think we've got control of it.
One area that concerns me is this phenomenon of foreign students. I'm not opposed to that, and I can see it as highly desirable. But epithets such as a bonanza and in 10 years' time $4 billion or $5 billion to New Zealand is obviously important. It gives rise to the branding claims that go on, the world-class education in New Zealand, the safe environment. How valid are those claims? How sustainable are those attractive features? How accurate are those brands and the capacity for our vulnerability in that area and the social problems?
The phenomenon included in that is how different nations and nationalities adapt, how quickly some are able to adapt and how others don't. There are all the problems of health, education and pensions. These are matters which I think really should have been thought through before we started this, rather than going off in that ad hoc way that we have.
There are impediments to progress and perhaps the Lord has intervened and stopped me being able to talk to you about it, because I don't think that you've got it right at the present moment as far as our bicultural - whatever that means - relationship is concerned.
I'm not trying to allocate blame, because I think it lies in both areas. There is a very interesting academic analyst, Hans Vaihinger and his illuminating work on fiction in which he traces the ideational shift from fiction to hypothesis to dogma.
I have this terrible feeling that we're in a dogma phase and that we do things because it seems to be right, that we're attempting in some ways to bureaucratise the ritual rather than letting it take place on its own.
Sir Christopher Wren's tomb in London, has this lovely inscription: "Si monumentum requiris circumspice", and for those few of you in this distinguished assembly who are not Latin scholars, I understand it translates as: "If it is monuments that you seek look about you." Of course, in London if you look about you, you do see these magnificent monuments.
I commend that to your sector as you embark on this exercise of futurity. I think the architectural metaphor is appropriate because the change, some of it dramatic, requires that a robust Public Service is there to weather the infinite variety of scenarios that suggest themselves. I think, too, that a further one is that a valid, credible, respected Public Service, one that may have to put up with just being admired rather than liked, is a foundation stone. In 2020 I hope that people will be able to point to the Public Service and say with pride, circumspice.
