Summit not just show this time

By SIMON COLLINS and MICHAEL FOREMAN

Sceptics hung back amidst a generally up-beat mood at the opening day of the "Catching the Knowledge Wave" conference in Auckland yesterday.

The three-day conference, co-chaired by Prime Minister Helen Clark and Auckland University vice-chancellor Dr John Hood, has brought 450 people together to discuss "raising New Zealand's sights to explore new ways to create future economic prosperity and social wellbeing".

Delegates include MPs from most parties, business leaders, unionists, educationists, social agencies and local government, as well as a lineup of top international speakers.

Despite a gloomy message that New Zealand has done badly in economic terms for the past 40 years, the mood was positive. Dr Peter Glensor of Healthcare Aotearoa, who was part of the "low-income caucus" at the Lange Government's economic summit in 1984, said the Knowledge Wave event felt "more real".

"I thought the economic summit in 1984 was just a showpiece that was doomed never to go anywhere.

"This time, both the Prime Minister and the historians said it was not actually easy to change things, and there is the threat, or the challenge, of the outflow of New Zealanders and globalisation and so on.

"I sense that people are saying we can honestly discuss with each other about what sort of a country we want this to be and how we are going to get there."

National Party deputy leader Bill English said he was pleased that the first day focused a lot on culture and attitudes. He warned that concepts of a knowledge economy that made sense to an elite group at the Sheraton Hotel might not mean much to "the hairdresser and the plumber".

"There are a whole lot of people out there who are not too concerned about the historic sweep and technological change. They are after reasonable incomes and reasonable job security and whether they have the opportunity to pick up the skills they need."

Green MP Rod Donald said the conference should not focus so narrowly on the knowledge economy that it neglected more fundamental issues such as the fact that 1.3 billion people did not have access to fresh water.

He said that we should be changing the unhealthy lifestyles that caused ill-health, rather than talking about creating genetically engineered drugs to cure Western diseases.

Mark Thomas, president of Auckland graphics software manufacturer Right Hemisphere, believed any talk about a knowledge-based economy in New Zealand was futile unless cheap, high-speed internet services became available.

The charging structure for broadband services such as Telecom's Jetstream, which charges users up to 20c per megabyte once they have exceeded relatively modest monthly quotas, was unique to New Zealand.

"The internet is our freezer ship," he said. "Our entire economy could hang on this and we are being held to ransom by the monopoly of Telecom on high-bandwidth connections. Until the Government and Telecom gets together to resolve this, all the rest is bullshit."

Mr Thomas said he would be putting these points at various workshops he planned to attend today and tomorrow, but he left the conference after the opening session yesterday.

"I'm going off to work now - to do rather than to think," he said.

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