Garth George: Just leave the Cup to the mugs who can afford it

That overrated icon, the America's Cup, is on its way to deepest landlocked Switzerland and the nation gives every appearance of being in mourning. I don't know why. When you consider our size and limited resources, we were lucky to have had the thing in the first place.

And the last thing we should do is to go after it again. Instead we should take a leaf out of the Australians' book and flag it away once and for all.

That's what they did after holding it for a season; we were fortunate to hold it for two. Now it is time to move on to other things - preferably things which have more meaning to the economic and social well-being of all New Zealanders.

But first we need to learn a few lessons from the thrashing we took from the Swiss billionaire and his crew of internationalists, including that much-maligned pair Coutts and Butterworth.

The first lesson is that because of our small population and limited resources we will never be able to foot it financially with the rest of the developed world, particularly since we also seem to be afflicted as a nation with a parsimonious nature, best illustrated by our penny-pinching public services and miserably low wage and salary structure.

An example: I bless the Herald for running the appeal to buy a couple of indispensable medical microscopes for Middlemore Hospital to replace worn-out instruments, but I cringe that such a thing is necessary because the Government-run health service won't spring a measly $300,000.

I have never been able to understand why we take comparisons with other OECD countries so seriously and why we always seem to be striving to climb up its ladder of wealth. It has always seemed to be comparing apples not with oranges but with peas.

What on earth has New Zealand in common with OECD countries in the Northern Hemisphere? How can this group of tiny islands thousands of miles from anywhere and anyone else and with a population substantially less than any one of the world's major cities be compared with, say, Germany, with its vast population and even vaster markets right on its doorstep?

We can't compete - and nor should we try. We need to find our own economic comfort zone and live within it.

There is no doubt that the main reason we lost the America's Cup was that our campaign was seriously underfunded - the Swiss and some other syndicates had nearly double the amount of money available.

How significant it was that on Sad Sunday both the chairman of the Team New Zealand trust, Ralph Norris, and the syndicate head, Tom Schnackenberg, made a point of saying that lack of money had not contributed to the campaign's failure. Which, of course, means that it did, otherwise neither of them would have mentioned it.

Said Mr Norris: "This wasn't about shortage of money, it was about a shortage of time." How many more years did the team need to get ready?

Another lesson to be learned from the cup defeat is that age and experience will invariably beat youth and enthusiasm. In a nation where anyone over 45 finds it difficult to get a job, it's about time we took a look at the cost of our "younger is better" employment philosophy.

One of the reasons our businesses - big and small - haven't been and aren't doing so well is that many of them are overloaded with twenty and thirty-something youngsters in managerial positions who are chock full of academic theory but pretty much empty of any practical experience or people skills.

The same goes for Government-funded businesses that run health, welfare, insurance, education, justice et al.

Considering that we are allegedly an ageing population, perhaps it might be a good idea to put into management more people who have the years of practical knowledge and experience to make things work better for all concerned - provider and customer alike.

The third lesson from the cup fiasco is that there is one achievement of which this country can be extraordinarily proud, yet is the one we seem universally to denigrate - the export of people.

And not just ordinary people, but men and women who make their mark internationally in science, in business, in bureaucracy, in diplomacy, in sport, in the arts and who exhibit that spirit of adventure which is endemic to most New Zealanders.

Lord Rutherford, Ed Hillary (did anyone complain because he was a member of a British team?), Peter Arnett, Inia Te Wiata, Kiri Te Kanawa, Peter Snell, Mike Moore, Don McKinnon, John Wright, several rugby coaches - the list is long and distinguished - all grew up and were educated here.

But the time came when they felt the need to throw off the confines of this small, restricted and isolated society and spread their wings on a bigger, more challenging and wealthier stage.

Kiwis are still doing that - doctors and teachers, businesspeople and sportsfolk (including yachties), diplomats and missionaries, journalists and authors and all manner of others of almost every persuasion and calling.

Instead of moaning about the so-called brain drain, we should be proud of them.

* Email Garth George

Further reading: nzherald.co.nz/americascup