Talking Cents
November 2017
Talking Cents is an ecumenical group charged by the Anglican Diocesan Council to promote an alternative to current economic and political thought, and to encourage debate within the Church. Ministry Units are encouraged to distribute these articles. This issue is contributed by Kevin McBride of Pax Christi Aotearoa-New Zealand.
Home Thoughts from Abroad (and Home)
Travel broadens the mind, it is said. In my case, it has certainly sharpened my reflections on the state of our nation, lying across the world from where my travels took me: to Portugal, with short stops in London.
Most of my time in Portugal was spent in the small village of Troviscal, near the larger town of Castanheira de Pera set in the hilly region to the south-east of Coimbra. It was in the international news in July as one of the areas most affected by the tragic fires which swept through the region. More than 50 fleeing people perished on the main roads around Troviscal and members of my own family were fortunate to escape by a lesser-known route. The local view is that much of the tragedy could have been prevented by better communication and coordination at the community level; the lack of which left heroic local fire brigades ill-prepared to confront the disaster. It seems that there has been over recent years, a transformation of traditional grazing land into quick-profit eucalypt and pine forest with few precautions taken against their susceptibility to fast-spreading fire.
Since arriving home, I have been catching up with back issues of the Waiheke “Gulf News”, a weekly publication which presents independent views of both island and national affairs. The 17 August issue presented an interesting and pertinent editorial in which editor Liz Waters cast a critical eye at our pretensions to be a “thriving …strong and stable economy”. Ten years on from the Global Financial Crisis, she claims, funds which could have gone into general consumption have been absorbed by financial speculation. This leaves us with “too much debt and overpriced houses and other assets”.
She went on to say: “On the more or less terrifying international debt clock, the national debt of New Zealand was of Monday evening [when she wrote] $85,605,137,440. Just while I typed in the figures, it had gone to
$85,605,144,670. that’s in five minutes. … In 2007, the Government overseas debt was around $15 billion. By 2012, it was $60 billion, having climbed $27 million a day since John Key became Prime Minister. By 2016, said the headlines of the time, New Zealand was sitting on a half-a-trillion dollar debt bomb. Government debt was $95.8 billion, household debt $238.9 billion, which would be those disproportionate financial assets previously known as family homes.” It seems we have had our own ‘out-of-control bushfires’ with more widely-spread tragic results in terms of family health and welfare.
During the short visit to London, I came across an article in the 9 September “Guardian” by George Monbiot which delighted me with the strength of its analysis, something too often missing from our own media. But “How do we get out of this Mess?” provided not only insights into the background of local and national events like those above, and many like them, but also set out some hopeful solutions which could be available to most of us at our local level.
“Is it reasonable to hope for a better world?” he asks. “Study the cruelty and indifference of governments, the disarray of opposition parties, the apparently inexorable slide towards climatebreakdown, the renewed threat of nuclear war, and the answer appears to be no. Our problems look intractable, our leaders dangerous, while voters are cowed and baffled.” He then goes on to examine the two narratives that have dominated developed nations since the second half of the 20th century: social democracy and neo-liberalism.
The first puts its faith in “ a protective, paternalistic state, investing in public projects for the public good, generating the wealth that would guarantee a prosperous future for everyone”. The neo-liberal version sees “heroic entrepreneurs mobilizing the redeeming power of the market [to] fight this enforced conformity, freeing society from the enslavement of the state. Order would be restored in the form of free markets, delivering wealth and opportunity, guaranteeing a prosperous future for everyone.” We can easily recognize the dominance of each in turn over recent years in New Zealand politics through the Michael Joseph Savage reforms of the 1930s and 1980s Rogernomics, to the present day and proposals for further adjustment.
But Monbiot goes on to say that neither can provide a solution to the state we find ourselves in today, and deliver us into a more sustainable and equable society. On the one hand, “a programme that seeks to sustain full employment through constant economic growth, driven by consumer demand … collides headfirst with the environmental crisis”. But on the other, “to accept a vicious ideology of extreme competition and individualism that pits us against each other, encourages us to fear and mistrust each other and weakens the social bonds that make our life worth living.” Are we confident that those social bonds will be be restored in the plans of our new coalition government?
Monbiot claims that contemporary research in a range of sciences – psychology, anthropology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology – has shown that human beings “possess an unparalleled sensitivity to the needs of others, a unique level of concern about their welfare and a peerless ability to create moral norms that generalize and enforce these tendencies.” Amid all the natural and man-made disasters that dominate out media, there is a constant stream of stories that justify these conclusions; the Christchurch and Kaikoura earthquakes provide several close-to-home examples. These stories encourage us to “renew belief in ourselves … to find common ground in confronting our predicaments and to unite to overcome them.”
The key, according to Monbiot, is “to revive community life … invoking our capacity for togetherness and belonging … built around the places in which we live .”
My overseas experience gave two examples of this. While we waited outside the local school near Troviscal, some mothers had formed a group to challenge what they regarded as the extended hours their young children were kept at the school - from 9am to 5.15pm for children under 10. I have no doubt that they will get results. And in London, when we cast our vote in the recent election, we were greatly outnumbered by young New Zealanders intent on having an influence on the future of their country, from the other side of the world.
Back home again, I find that the Waiheke community has established an affordable housing trust supported by community funds ($300,000 to date), though progress has been halted by the refusal of commercial banks (beneficiaries of the current market system?) to accept their application for a mortgage to underwrite the construction of their first house. Another small community in Kaiwaka is developing its own housing project with the help of Northtec. All this shows an ongoing readiness of community groups in this country to get behind local projects. These counter the soaring costs of ensuring the basics of community life to all.
One of the sad sights in Troviscal was the deserted church sitting on a hill above the village. The lack of a sufficient congregation to support a pastor had caused its closure. This removed a traditional foundation of many small communities over the ages, the village church. We might ask ourselves, where we have at least the active remnants of a parish community, if we are making it the kind of community whose work for the common good can create what Monbiot calls “an unstoppable force”.
The above are not charitable solutions but the natural result of strong community instincts towards justice: “Most people are socially-minded, empathetic and altruistic. Most people would prefer to live in a world in whicheveryone is treated with respect and decency and in which we do not squander either our own lives or the natural gifts on which we and the rest of the living world depend.”
It’s up to us to ensure that these stronger local communities develop - indeed, our very survival may depend on it.