People should always be our bottom line

grant.shimmin@fairfaxmedia.co.nz

People matter. That’s a fairly simple statement on the face of it, and I’m picking most people who read it will be quick to agree, in principle.

But think about it, because there’s a lot packed into that brief assertion.

In fact, what’s not there is probably most instructive.

It’s a phrase most of us have heard, read, somewhere along the line, perhaps with variations.

For me, it’s a reminder of a talk I heard one evening at university, close to three decades ago.

It wasn’t a political speech, which abounded in the late 1980s in South Africa, but were also closely monitored by the ‘‘authorities’’, but it could just as well have been.

The speaker, name long forgotten, had been invited by one of the Christian societies on campus. I have a feeling his topic might have been love, but his focus was on ‘‘loving your neighbour as yourself’’.

That’s an idea most people, however tenuous their associations with organised religion, will have encountered at some point.

It’s certainly not an exclusively Christian concept.

The thing that has always stayed with me about that talk, though, is the signs.

No, not celestial signs; triangular ones, actually.

They were simple, designed to be placed where people would encounter others in the course of their daily lives. Desks, in offices or reception areas. Shop counters. A chef could conceivably place one on the pass in a restaurant.

They had a simple message on the front: ‘‘People matter here’’. That’s what clients, customers, wait staff, and the like would see.

On the other side there was a second message, aimed at sign placers, and those who might share their space: ‘‘People matter here too’’.

Simple, really. And yet challenging. Putting one of those signs up was not only about doing your best for others, but about selfcare, and, depending where it was placed, telling staff, colleagues they mattered too.

For me, the overriding message, looking back, is simply that, on both sides of the sign, people matter. End of story.

And that’s a powerful thing when you start thinking about what that phrase doesn’t say. Because it’s not a phrase that passes judgment. It’s not accompanied by any terms and conditions.

It doesn’t say people have to conform to a cookie-cutter image of who society says they should be to matter. That’s a message sectors of our society sometimes project. But it’s not there. There’s no space in a two-word phrase to read that between the lines.

It doesn’t say people matter more if they were born with silver spoons in their mouths, that somehow they’re more worthy for that accident of good fortune.

And it certainly doesn’t say those who have less matter less.

It doesn’t say those born into difficult circumstances who have managed to haul themselves up by their bootstraps matter more than those who haven’t. It passes no judgment on that, or, for that matter, on whether those who did manage it pulled the ladder up after them to make it more difficult for others. It doesn’t say those left at the bottom matter any less.

The context of that university talk is somewhat ironic, because despite the fact that the Christian church at the time widely pushed the idea, and still does in some quarters, that phrase doesn’t say people matter any more or less depending on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Wallabies superstar Israel Folau may differ on that score, because that’s what he’s been taught to believe, as I was, growing up. But it’s not true, and it’s downright cruel; it’s a teaching that has caused far more than its share of deep and unnecessary suffering for far too long.

It doesn’t say people matter more if they went to better schools, or live in leafier suburbs, or have better jobs. It doesn’t say they matter because they have a platform to tell people what they think. It just says they matter.

At the time, I thought the shape of those signs was simply a question of convenience, like those fold-out desk calendars. But now I think there’s something more to it.

An equilateral triangle is a stable, balanced shape. Sat on one of its three equal sides, it’s certainly harder to tip over than some other shapes would be.

But if the other two sides aren’t equally strong, there’s a fair chance the whole shape could fall flat.

And for me, that makes it a good metaphor for society. People have to matter on both sides of the sign.

Not surprisingly, I got to thinking about how people matter this week as news of the huge shortfalls in our health sector ramped up, encapsulated in the mould and sewerage problems at Middlemore Hospital.

Genuine ‘‘responsible economic management’’, to use the term new Opposition leader Simon Bridges has been erroneously trotting out, does not mean people matter less than surpluses.

People always matter more. And their genuine needs are always more important than what it says at the bottom of a balance sheet.

There was a headline this week that made me wake up thinking about that talk from long ago. Former Prime Minister Sir John Key’s biggest regret from his time in office was not changing our flag. That saddened me.

Yes, he did point out it wasn’t the most important issue of his tenure, but said it was ‘‘the one I feel I definitely failed on’’. I guess it depends on your criteria.

I hope, as he watches our medallists honoured at the Commonwealth Games, he thinks more about the athletes on the podium, and those back home whose background shouldn’t prevent them getting there too if they have the talent, than the flag above them.

People matter. That should always be our bottom line.