Phil Rennie: Bad manners to blame politicians

As an exuberant child of the 1980s I had many excuses for my misbehaviours and public rudeness. But I never thought to blame David Lange or Roger Douglas.

Sociology Professor David Bedggood says rudeness and boorishness are increasing in New Zealand society, as a consequence of economic reforms of the 1980s and a ruthless every-man-for-himself attitude.

But is this true? Are we really a more selfish society? And if so, is it all the fault of market reforms?

There's no doubt that publicly acceptable standards of behaviour have changed.

For example, it is no longer rude to address someone you have just met by their first name, but it is considered highly offensive to light up a cigarette in their house. This wasn't the case even 30 years ago.

But proving there has been a definite decline in our civility towards each other is more difficult.

Research by the Centre for Independent Studies in 2002 shows that measuring civility is a slippery task. There are a range of different measures we could look at - things like the rise of abusive language, violence, the level of donations to charity, and membership of sports and voluntary groups - but even then the data can be conflicting and the causes hard to separate and quantify.

Even if we accept that New Zealand is a ruder and more selfish society, it is drawing a long bow to blame things such as road rage and obnoxious behaviour on market reforms.

Bedggood claims that New Zealanders now have a much more ruthless attitude to collective responsibility and the welfare state. But the welfare state in New Zealand is bigger now than it has ever been.

Despite rising prosperity and jobs, we still have nearly 300,000 working-age adults dependent on benefits. This hardly makes us a more caring society.

Anyway, do free-market policies necessarily encourage selfishness and bad behaviour? I doubt it. You don't become successful in a market economy by trampling over people, as the tired old Marxists believe. You succeed through trading your products and/or skills, which entails building good relationships and taking responsibility for your actions.

Bedggood even acknowledges this, when he says the answer is to take more control over our own lives. Unfortunately his solution, rejecting a market economy in favour of collective control, does the opposite.

Frank Field, a British Labour MP and anti-poverty campaigner, blames the welfare state for a decline in the ethic of respect and the rise of Britain's yob culture.

He takes the view that behaviour worsens when people know they won't have to take responsibility for their actions, because they know that the state will support and reward them, no matter what.

Largely though, Field places the blame on family breakdown and the lack of good role models for children. The large rise of single-parent female-headed families means that many boys grow up without mature, responsible male role-models.

It is within family life that people first learn about consideration for others, not from economic policies introduced 20 years ago.

As family life has collapsed for large proportions of our society, so too has civil virtue, says Field.

It's certainly more convincing than blaming everything on politicians.

* Phil Rennie is a Policy Analyst with the New Zealand Policy Unit of the Centre for Independent Studies, an Australia-based public policy think-tank.