1984 Quiz Result
(A copy of Kaa-Sandra Chee's powerpoint presentation is available in PDF format here (635k).
When I was first invited to speak here I thought who needs 15 minutes to tell you that I want a job by the year 2020?
I was born in the small rural township of Taumarunui in the King Country where there were limited resources and this is still is a problem there, as it is in many rural areas of New Zealand. My great great grandfather was the first white man to settle in the King Country, where he wed a Maori princess of the Ngatihaua-Ariki tribe. My mother was one of the 1960 Chinese war brides from Malaysia to emigrate and settle in New Zealand. Life was very hard then but the values and goals of life were not that different from today.
What I want by the year 2020 will not differ from what New Zealanders wanted in the past and what we all want now. The values will be the same, the goals will be the same, we will still want quality education, enjoyable employment, excellent healthcare and a safe community, but the environment, in which we will be trying to attain these goals, will be different.
I am privileged, and I acknowledge even just a little spoiled, the decisions which I have made and have been helped to make, were good ones. I was sent to a good school in a smallish city, and now I am a year off from finishing my PhD, debt free thanks to scholarship. I am what they term an "asset" to society. I can contribute to NZ in the future.
But so easily could my life been different. Just by changing a few choices that were made I could have been uneducated, pregnant with my fifth child and living on a benefit with no future ambitions. No longer would I be termed an asset!
Research has shown that people who are well educated tend to also have better health and improved sense of social well-being. Personally I think that it is important to educate or guide people in order to help them make better choices for the future. This will impact not only at the individual level but also have a positive effect at the community and national levels and relieve the strain on state services. Mindsets of New Zealanders need to change regarding attitudes towards government handouts like the Unemployment Benefit and the Domestic Purposes Benefit.
I have not even stepped into the job market and already it looks bleak. My options are to either carry on trying to compete for a place in academia, or try to start up my own business, where the current failure rate is very high, or perhaps travel overseas to explore the possibilities there. Opportunities for me are very narrow within New Zealand. Who is responsible for this state of affairs? Is it myself for being too highly educated to get a job in my home country? Or New Zealand's for not providing the industries that are readily offered in other parts of the world? There is a lot of talk about this brain drain from New Zealand. Do I think it is happening? For sure! Everyone tells you to get your education in New Zealand and stay and work here, but realistically what opportunities does New Zealand offer me?
Education
I have attended university for the past 8 years. I have made full use of the New Zealand education programme and thus I value a good, quality education system. New Zealand is being used at the moment, people are coming here to get an education and leaving because there are no jobs. New Zealand is going to lose and keep losing its top achievers because there is more incentive to move elsewhere.
With the trend now of uneducated people having more children at younger ages we are going to be living in a society with a greater gap between those who are educated and the larger uneducated population. The educated part of society is being drawn from New Zealand while the benefit seekers find that New Zealand is a good place to stay. This will ultimately place a strain on the social structure and economic stability of New Zealand. What does the government have to do to ensure these social issues are addressed by 2020 and beyond?
We are lucky in New Zealand to have equal opportunity for education. We are not like other countries, which have separate education systems due to class or race. Everyone in New Zealand has the same opportunity in terms of access to education. Of course there are good and not so good schools but they all provide opportunity to proceed onto tertiary level institutions. The only things that stand in the way of higher education are social restrictions of certain values and priorities adhered to within particular social groups within New Zealand.
Some of these education awareness issues are being addressed at present. Government and university money is being invested in schemes, which target Maori and Pacific Island students at first year university level to assist them with their course work. One such scheme is the Tuakana Programme at the University of Auckland. There is no doubt that such courses help these students cope with university life, but the government needs to actively target potential students from these social backgrounds way before they reach tertiary level. Surely if more students are to be led into a tertiary institute or post-school training then this has to be encouraged at a young age in order to let them see that the natural progression from secondary school is a higher educational facility.
But this does not address the immigration issue. Will education institutions be able to cope with an influx of English as second language students primarily from Asia? New Zealand is deemed to be the best place to send Asian children for a higher education, these students come to get a tertiary education and leave immediately as the salary is higher in their home countries when they possess a western degree. Perhaps incentives could arise to keep these graduates within New Zealand to help raise our economy.
Easily our education system can become too overcrowded and the teacher student ratio will rise exponentially. The strain on teachers has been apparent recently. The escalation of immigration into New Zealand does not promote teaching as a viable profession, but one of strain and overwork. Perhaps incentives for educators have to be put into place now in order to ensure teaching stability in the future schools of New Zealand.
This moves us onto the issue of privatisation of education institutions. With overcrowding and under-funding of public schools in the future there runs a risk and a high possibility that private schools will occupy a larger niche than at present. Will quality education only be available to those who can afford it? Private institutions charge the earth at the moment. For example, Kings College charges a base fee of $11,146 per annum that is after you sent your child to Kings Primary school at $8720 per year. Imagine if institutions like this have a monopoly on education! Quality in public schools has to remain high and be raised in lower decile regions. At low decile school like Tamaki College or Hato Petera College there were no A or B bursaries attained last year, and this would not have been unusual. Clearly these schools need more resources to raise their level of achievement. The population in lower decile regions is going to escalate in the future as they are the most affordable places to live for immigrants, this will create a toll on the public school systems in these areas. Careful thought has to be taken to ensure that damage to the youth of tomorrow will not occur. Investment in the schooling of the future's youth, possibly my children and your grandchildren has to be planned now.
Healthcare
Privatisation also applies to healthcare. With the subsequent gap between wealthy and poor, then the quality of care will depend on the amount of money that can be paid for it. Unless public services can compete privatisation is going to rule.
Will healthcare be free for our children by the year 2020? Will the taxes be raised in order to support all of the New Zealanders who are earning less than substantial wages?
With the increase in the average age of the population and the longer life expectancy it concerns me that we will have to work till we are 70 before getting a pension. Will there be a pension?
With the trend in the population indicating more cultural diversity and increasing numbers of elderly then serious thought will have to take place into what health issues may arise in the future. At the moment New Zealand's diabetes problem is reaching epidemic proportions especially in the Maori and Pacific Island populations. If it is these populations that are going to increase then diseases like diabetes will escalate also. New Zealand has to start thinking ahead about the new technologies that are hitting the health market at the moment, which will help New Zealander's in the future, technologies exploring cures for diseases such as diabetes and elderly diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
Technology
An area of particular interest to me is technology and innovation. One apparent issue after the knowledge wave conference was that New Zealand is full of innovation, full of grand ideas, which have not proceeded over the barrier of exposure to the world in order to be successfully marketed. New Zealand is not going to grow if new industry does not flourish. New money has to be injected into New Zealand to help at all levels of society. Can New Zealand keep up with the rest of the world? Technology and innovation are like food to the nation, food which has to be consumed to ensure New Zealand is economically sustained and allowed to grow.
Technology is accelerating rapidly. Recent developments include the blind being able to see with the help of an implanted microchips, development of stem cells to help cure some diseases and slowing down the progression of AIDS with the help of protease inhibitors. Will the New Zealand of the future be able to afford these new technologies? Will New Zealand even allow research like this to be conducted here?
Take an example like stem cell research. Stem cells are what they call pluripotent, they are able to develop into any cell type of the body like pancreatic, muscle and nerve cells. Therefore the advantages of this are massive - by creating new cells there is the potential to fix disease-ridden ones and replace non-functioning cells within the body. For example with diabetes where the pancreatic cells are not functioning properly and not creating insulin, these can potentially be replaced with new and functioning pancreatic cells originating from stem cells. Unfortunately the only source of these cells is from aborted foetuses. Now the debate in the United States is whether President Bush will allow this research to proceed. But in reality even if he does not give his seal of approval, this research will go ahead anyway within privately funded institutions.
Compare this to New Zealand. Here private research institutions are under-funded and without government support research is not as privileged as in the United States. Therefore, for funded research to be carried out in New Zealand this has to have government approved objectives. In order for New Zealand to be in the forefront of worldwide research we cannot still be experimenting on topics which were relevant 5 years or even 1 year ago. I am not saying we should be forgetting our morals and ethics, what I am saying is that we need to reassess where our research and development goals are heading and start to create the person power and positive environment in order to get there. Research and development are the future of our economic growth. We need to invest wisely in them.
Community Safety
Community safety will be a bigger issue than it is today. With the crime rate increasing exponentially, the shortage of law enforcement officers will become even more apparent. I want to be able to let my children walk to school and know that they are going to get there. Safety in New Zealand has to extend right from the richer parts of the metropolitan cities to the rural communities. In order to do this stronger disincentives have to be set out in order to punish law breakers and repeat offenders. New Zealand is regarded as a safe place to live with a relatively low crime rate, this reputation needs to be upheld.
Conclusion
With the growing and changing demographics of New Zealand in the future, strain will show on the public services like healthcare, education and community safety. Will New Zealand be a nice place to live?
There is going to be more population in general especially within the metropolitan regions of New Zealand. This will create problems regarding housing, transport, pollution, and access to resources such as water and electricity. Will New Zealand be a nice place to live?
What I want from the future is to be optimistic; to know that I will be secure in my career, within my community, and the same will hold for my family and friends wherever they are in New Zealand.
I want the confidence that New Zealand will hold its position as a safe and wonderful place to live and work. We must maintain New Zealand's integrity and to do this we must take lessons from the past and present and implement them in preparation for the future. While maintaining stability we must also implement mechanisms to allow for growth. I will leave you with this thought "The only way to ensure the future is to invent it."
