Palmerston North Employment Summit
 

Ruma Karaitiana
 

Looking back over the year or so since I left the Palmerston North Enterprise Board (and at the same time left behind any professional involvement in employment generation and economic development) what has changed ?

The answer seems to be that much has changed but nothing has had an effect.

For example, at a national level we have seen the creation of WINZ which theoretically has brought together the central government focus on income (I intentionally avoid using the word employment). I am sure we could find people who would tell us this has changed the administration and resourcing of the organisation. However, I can find no "customers" who will assure me it has done anything to provide better outcomes for them. It is a bit like being laid off in a humane fashion. Humane or not, you are still unemployed.

Similarly, we have seen the dismantling of the Business Development Boards and the introduction of a new raft of programmes intended to stimulate business growth and thereby employment. However, apart from Max Bradford making speeches to business groups (which amazingly seem to have been written by Pete Hodgson) we have yet to see any results.

Even at local community levels we see similar phenomena. In the last terms of office Local Authorities were turning away from direct intervention in economic development and employment generation. Christchurch, Napier and Waitakere were beginning to stand out as the only ones swimming against this tide as once strong models in Manukau, Upper Hutt and Palmerston North faltered. Post local body elections, a new set of councils appear to be looking with renewed faith at the issue, at least temporarily freed from the language of the ideology. However, here too at local authority level there is little positive outcome to point to.

People have tired of new initiatives whose gains are theoretical but which deliver either pain or a void in services which is real. This weariness is compounded by the rapid succession of such initiatives each overlapping to generate the phenomena whereby the theoretical gains are swamped by the next incoming initiative.

All in all there is a distinct sense of lethargy.

Sir Robert Muldoon introduced New Zealand to the principle of Fiscal Drag. We seem to have developed for ourselves a new phenomena, an inertia we find hard to overcome, a distinct lag which threatens to become another black hole in the nation’s employment history.

Some time in the seventies we appear to have come to some whispered agreement as a society that we would accept whole generations of people with low levels of skill and education falling into such a black hole. Back then we chose not to face up to the issue and to hope the consequences would not eventuate. We now live with those consequences day by day but appear to have become too tired and wearied to engage with the issues in a meaningful way.

This lag effect also has a self-perpetuating element to it. Communities’ expectations, as well as those of individuals, are systematically lowered by this lack of action. The appointment of the Employment Commissioners was one such event. When the idea was floated communities responded with enthusiasm in the expectation that a vehicle for a community based strategic response was being created. Many are disappointed by the reality of the roles as they too have evolved as creatures of the lag effect.

This lag has been accentuated by the clumsiness which has come about with the conceptual split of policy from delivery. There are real virtues in separating policy and conceptual development from the delivery of the subsequent programmes. The benefits have largely not been realised for a number of reasons. Some of these are:

• no one seems to understand that the policy/delivery split is not always appropriate and will not always deliver an improved outcome so it is seen as an essential first step which happens without any cost/benefit type analysis
• no one appears to plan and fund the facilitation of the transition. Everything is focussed on the beginning and end with no attention to the middle
• flexibility is absent and there is a fixation with developing `concrete’ entities (agencies, organisations, etc)
• the policy makers and funders are excessively risk averse and control focused.

All of this has the dangerous side effect of increasing our individual, and community, resistance to change. This is based on a perception that change has not brought any positive outcomes.

Yet if we do not achieve positive change we may find the real economic pain of the past two decades have merely delayed the negative consequences of Muldoonism. Once again we stand on the brink of a future as a globally irrelevant and impoverished nation. We risk becoming a poorly educated and low skilled people. We risk becoming a muddled and spiritless culture. We risk becoming nothing more than a Pacific feed lot selling our people on the global service labour market in competition with countries like the Philippines.

A number of other countries have produced successful models of recovery and of positive economic growth which various government agencies have promoted as options for New Zealand to successfully apply. Whilst many have had small incremental impacts, none has truly succeeded in the way envisaged. I offer two contributing reasons for this lack of success. Firstly, I am sobered by the knowledge that New Zealand is seen by many overseas as a model also. I wonder if the people inside the "successful models" overseas feel the same way about their circumstances as many of those here in New Zealand feel about ours.

But mainly those overseas countries (e.g. those in Scandinavia) have largely homogenous populations with cultures which contain elements of discipline absent in our diverse, unruly and intellectually undisciplined population. The lesson we are reluctant to learn is that only a truly New Zealand solution will ever work here in Aotearoa New Zealand.

So what is the way forward. In essence I believe it is about achieving a greater consensus. It is about shaping clearer and more common visions as a nation. It is about greater commitment to common goals, and it is about aligning all our resources and policies towards the view of what we want for our future.

As a first step I believe the Employment Task Force should be re-commissioned.

Their role should be to conduct a review of both their earlier work and of where we are right now, to clearly communicate to the nation our current position.

As a second step I would like to see us abandon all other Millenium projects in favour of a huge nationwide facilitated process to capture the vision of all New Zealanders of our future as a nation.

Then I would like to see us begin to align all of our contributing resources, Education, Employment, Economic Development, Health, Social Policy etc to the achievement of that vision.

An impossible task? I don’t think so. Never been done anywhere else! All the more reason to do it here.

The small incremental adjustments are no longer having an effect. We are due for another "big bang" the equivalent of the arrival of the waka from Hawaiiki or the early european settlement.

What an opportunity to step into a new millennium with a new determination for a positive future. Like all journeys all it requires is to take the first small steps to simply begin.

NO. I am not advocating we stop everything else in the meantime. We must acknowledge and combat the lag effect. Current initiative must be continued and resourced to continue at full steam until new initiatives can be identified and begun. That is another role for the Employment Task Force, to identify those which are working, along with those which are currently stalled and need to be given momentum in the period of reassessment. During this period I believe we should model something else I have talked about in the past, what I have called bio-degradable agencies. Organisations set up to meet a particular need which go out of existence once the goal is met and whose ideas, successes and resources perhaps fertilise the new entity which is propagated to meet the next goal.

Greater alignment of central government should also be begun, at least conceptually, during this period. We recently had public comment that the various arms of our defence forces appeared to all be independently preparing for different sorts of war. Certainly, our government agencies appear to all be preparing the nation for different sorts of futures.

In the case of Education, for example, the different providers within the sector are preparing our people based on entirely disconnected views of the future. Changes in the political hues in government appear to have done little to change this.

The result of this is not intended to produce a bland homogenous society. Local visions would identify local issues and local solutions. The core issue is about alignment of those visions and the distilling out of a national consensus along with a sensible coordination of effort. Out of this can come the identification of our individual and our community responsibilities and a commitment to action and participation.

I mentioned earlier the "big bangs" which were the early migration arrivals. Those initiatives were all about beginnings. Surely it is time we systematically started to make an end to the beginnings and start developing the means to some ends.

Personally, I am tired of stitching around the frayed edges of our social fabric.