People who make excuses for our economic decline say it’s only natural we should be poorer than Australia.
After all, those convict larrikins lucked into a continent-sized treasure chest fair groaning with minerals.
As excuses go, it’s plausible enough. Till your mind flicks to a little pinprick up north and a bit to the left.
Singapore. That micro-state that accommodates half a million more citizens than New Zealand, on a rock the size of our biggest lake.
Only Singapore’s ‘lake’ has no water.
Yet somehow its people earn more money than both New Zealanders and Australians.
Which goes to show that when it comes to generating wealth, size isn’t anything.
That convenient excuse also doesn’t explain how, for over a century, we used to be just as rich or richer than our sunburnt neighbours.
And it collapses completely when you realise that we’re no longer just Aussie’s poor cuzzie. We’re now poorer than every single Australian state.
Yes, even Tasmania.
So when John Key and Bill English consigned Don Brash’s 2025 Taskforce plan to the too-hard basket, they seemed to be doing their bit to ensure that New Zealand remains a basket case.
If Allan Bollard is right that we’re now only fit to catch the crumbs from Australia’s table, would it be too ambitious to hope that by 2025 we might have caught up with Tasmania?
John Ansell 
Singapore is in the middle of major trade routes. NZ is miles from nowhere.
And you seem to forget NZ is not Australia, it is a completely different country. And becoming another state of Australia wouldn’t change anything, it would probably make us even more of a backwater. I mean you may as well compare us to the Falkland Islands.
I really think you need to get over this and just accept it. Stop looking at them and start looking at us and the social environments in NZ and the attitudes it’s creating.
It’s the social attitudes in NZ I’m worried about, Been.
So many Kiwis with get-up-and-go have got up and gone – mainly to that country you want to ignore – and far too many of those who are left seem to glorify mediocrity.
You only need to compare the service you get in the two countries’ restaurants and hotels to see how sloppy we are by comparison.
I can’t believe that the Northern Territory is at the top of the list. Who’d want to live in the Northern Territory…. Tassie is much better!
I left NZ in 1987 for sixteen years, forgot about how race-based this country really was….I also left behind the highly contentious treaty of Waitangi whch was dealng with claims from all sectors of the Maori populaton and blaming everybody else out there in the community for their ills.
I came back to NZ in 2006 fully refreshed, fully-armed to the teeth wth wonderful experiences, knowledge and ready to work with all human beings. Anyway that is how i thought.
Optmistically I thought NZ would have moved ahead too, lost this mindset of race-based politics and blame, and would have adopted policies for all human beings regardless of race….
However very little has really changed, the same old mindset still exists today…the same old socio dynamics of Maori and Pakeha policies leaving very little room for any other races to contribute.
What has this got to do with being rich or poor…?
Singapore has moved ahead as a collective force of strength and unity, they are Singaporeans forth most, regardless of what their race might be, and because ‘RACE’ means very little to them.
People here in this country however are of the opposite opinion..
New Zealand seems to run as a a country with separate identities, with different systems in place…two flags, and two completely different agendas, and now an education system that is changing to those requirements.How on earth can we ever work as an economic force when we are all taught to be different?
.
My family are departing these shores soon, in search for a more open-minded society, and an environment that accepts us all as human beings first, let alone what race you are!
I am sure I have only scratched the surface about this but its just my two cents worth….