Kiwi ingenuity key to future
Dunedin man Richard O’Mahony suggests a selfsufficient New Zealand should emerge from the Covid19 pandemic.
The one thing we can be sure of in this new age of uncertainty is that nobody really knows where this is going.
Covid19 has struck like a bolt of lightning and made its mark worldwide. We are all left hoping for a quick resolution, ideally a vaccine that will halt its progress and end the fear we feel for our health and prosperity. No doubt every effort is being made to achieve this goal and we must believe it will happen. In the meantime how long can we hold out ?
The postCovid19 world may be a very different place. Whether it is better or worse is entirely up to us. The pandemic will bring out the very best alongside the very worst in the human race. The lessons learned will shape all of our futures.
As a 60yearold who has been gainfully employed since leaving school in the mid ’70s, I feel lucky and not at all worried about myself. My concerns are for my children and theirs, along with all young people who are facing an uncertain future.
We have, I believe, done a fantastic job so far in New Zealand, aided no doubt by our splendid geographic isolation. This along with our outstanding ability to produce food are our trump cards.
PostCovid we may well be the most desirable country in the world to reside in. Tourism, an industry that has become very important in recent times to New Zealand, is not going to recover for a very long time. On the other hand, the number of successful Kiwis around the world who will want to return must be a potential goldmine for our economy.
Foreign nationals with business skills and finance may also be knocking on the door but we will have to be very careful how we handle that. There will be a lot of shortterm suffering, and exploitation of that is the last thing we need.
What we will need is strong governance and a return to the old number eight wire mentality but with a modern twist. I arrived in New Zealand in 1982 and it was love at first sight. Although in some ways it was like stepping back in time it was an eyeopener as well. As an engineer I worked for various companies, from very large to being a sole employee. The common thread was Kiwi ingenuity that built some amazing products in what was real isolation in the days before the internet.
That spark is still there, we can harness it and go forward. To achieve this we must support each other.
It is vital that we support local business. At present people are rediscovering their own neighbourhoods and actually looking out for each other. Postlockdown everyone will want to return to some sort of normality as soon as possible. There will unfortunately be barriers to that — job losses, business failures and relationship issues.
If we can carry on with some of the kindness we have shown recently it will help.
The leadership shown so far has been encouraging. The general behaviour during lockdown equally so. There are exceptions, there always will be. It will get harder as pressure mounts on incomes and complacency sets in if it seems to be under control.
We can’t take our foot off the pedal, it’s as simple as that. Much as we like to criticise others now is not the time to waste our energy on things that do not really matter. Concentrate on the positives — we are a race apart, we can look after ourselves.
So is the key to the future in the past? A selfsufficient New Zealand that exports its bounty not its people. A New Zealand that is not open 24/7 because it values its lowerpaid workers who turned out to be essential after all. Sounds like Utopia; maybe it could be. We nearly achieved it in the mid20th century but let it slip away in an avalanche of greed.
Every cloud has a silver lining. We can only hope.
The Voices column continues into the level 3 lockdown. If you would like to contribute your thoughts on the lockdown, what your world will look like after lockdown and what we can all do to improve it, email your 680 word column to editor@odt.co.nz. Please type ‘Voices’ in the subject line.