It’s not the size of the country that matters.. it’s what you do with it
MY mother recently returned from Scotland, where my gran was born, and brought back her clan tartan tie for me.
Despite never having been to Scotland, I wear it proudly in the New Zealand parliament. There’s a connection between our countries that crosses oceans.
The Sustainable Growth Commission recently released their Scotland – the Case for Optimism report on the economic challenges and opportunities of independence and pointed to New Zealand, Finland and Denmark as models to follow.
It’s flattering for my country to be singled out as doing something right but my message to my long-lost Scottish relatives is: “It’s not the size of the country – it’s what you do with it that matters.”
The No campaign often suggested that Scotland was too small for independence.
As a similar-sized nation, I’d point out we work fine, thank you very much, even if there’s only 4.7million of us.
The SNP’s Growth Commission for independence trawled the world looking for positive examples to follow, and identified New Zealand. But one of their MPs believes we should be careful what we wish for...
We have our own defence forces, trade deals with multiple countries and even sat on the United Nations Security Council.
It’s a red herring to suggest a nation of 5.3million can’t successfully operate on the world stage when plenty of others do.
The real issue isn’t the size of a country but what its policies are and the direction it’s going in.
As the last British Dominion that only received its full independence in 1947, I think New Zealand offers some salutary lessons on going it alone.
Our independence gave us the freedom to go nuclear-free in the 1980s but also to drastically change our economic and social direction. We had our own Thatcher, a man named Douglas.
In my life, New Zealand went from one of the most state-involved economies outside the Communist Bloc to one of the most market-driven and neoliberal.
After our own Antipodean Thatcherism revolution in the 1980s, we went from being one of the most egalitarian countries that one British wit Austin Mitchell described as the “Half Gallon Quarter Acre Pavlova Paradise” to one of the most unequal. In fact, since 1984, we had the fastest growth of inequality in the developed world.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimate this rising inequality has acted like a handbrake and reduced our economic potential by about a tenth.
We’ve seen a dramatic rise in homelessness, precarious working conditions and child poverty. Families with young children are sleeping in garages and kids are being sent to school with no food in their lunchboxes.
For the last three decades, New Zealand has focused on light-handed regulation, a smaller role for the state, punitive welfare reforms and employer-friendly employment law.
As an independent nation, we’ve had the freedom to adopt our own policies. The freedom to make bad decisions. It wasn’t our size that did it, it was government policies. However, since September, with the election of a new government, we have embarked on a new direction.
We’ve achieved the biggest wealth transfer in a generation – towards the poorest Kiwis.
Our national budget will no longer myopically focus on Gross Domestic Product and surplus or deficit but will include genuine progress indicators.
The country has set an ambitious zero-carbon goal by 2050 and a target to have 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2035. We are doubling investment in R&D and supporting science.
The state is no longer leaving housing to the developers and it aims to build 100,000 new homes.
After decades of a trickle-down, austerity-ideology, we’re changing direction. It’s flattering to be looked at as an exemplar but while you look at where we’ve been, please also look to where we are going...