Dialogue: Good side of our country includes collective effort

Kate Belgrave recently made some assertions, including one which said "collective action, interest and responsibility are simply not part of up-and-coming New Zealand's consciousness," and another that "the old New Zealand is gone."

Belgrave is partially right in her analysis in the first point, but her acceptance of any permanency of this anti-collective malaise is unfortunate.

Our country is relatively young and the development of our essential infrastructure was a product of collective action and social responsibility.

Our roading system was upgraded originally by finance from a 3p-a-gallon dedicated road tax supported by a National Government.

The late Stan Gooseman was angry at the moves to divert further road tax to the consolidated funds. The greatly increased fuel tax has since been misdirected by successive governments to the consolidated fund.

Our rail system was collectively established by the former Railways Department with collectively paid taxpayer money.

Our coalmines, our ports, our public hospitals, our schools and colleges, and communication and broadcasting systems were built likewise by the various Government departments or local bodies using collectively paid taxes or rates.

Although there were clear inefficiencies in their managements, these vital infrastructures of our historical development were a product of collective action, interest and responsibility.

The actions of previous governments in their bargain-priced sale of most of these former national assets to foreign global predators were a complete submission to those foreign corporates.

These actions were irresponsible in terms of New Zealand's national interest.

The oft-quoted phrase "those were the old days - we can't turn the clock back," is a convenient door-slammer for those who are taking and making mega-dollars out of the anti-social economic processes of this period of history.

What was so evil about the years from 1945 to 1984 when we had a good level of employment, good public health resources and adequate education levels, as well as a good state house system? Pleasingly, the last is being restored by this Government.

We are going through a period where the whole of the key processes of ownership and control are dominated by the corporate forces who believe (rightly from their viewpoint) that their structures require a culture of individualism and one-to-one competitiveness.

This anti-collective culture is poured at us via television and the news media and by those employers who can and want to do so. The facts of the recent statistics regarding poverty in this country, the fact of 40,000 children dying in the world every day and of more than half a billion people going to sleep hungry every night are largely ignored in a welter of television glamour and violence. These anti-social and cruel processes are seriously hurting more and more people.

The most significant consequences of the sharp conflict between the mainly Walter Mitty world of most television versus the actual economic and social conditions in real life fall mostly on the young unemployed.

From the important ethnic aspect, most of this burden hits the young Maori and Pacific Island people, who constitute the worst unemployed percentage.

The false side of television (and other media) disaffects these young unemployed who have no hope of realising the television images of flash cars and a fast social life.

The most unfortunate side of this is that a number of these young people resort to drugs and illegal means of obtaining the necessary money to get drugs or go to the glue bag as the cheapest alternative. An alarming youth suicide rate follows.

Few sociologists, senior police officers, duty solicitors or district judges would dispute the reality of the correlation between unemployment, bad housing and youth crime. Not enough politicians do enough about these realities.

The good side of our country includes the collective efforts of those thousands of voluntary workers who staff the food banks, the meals on wheels, the church welfare agencies, the commentators who write from a social consciousness stance, the voluntary sports administrators and coaches and, yes, the workers' union.

* Bill Andersen is the national secretary of the Socialist Party of Aotearoa.