The Sunday Long Read - Finding Our Way Back Home.

Right-wing economists are telling us what kind of society we can have. We should decide what kind of society we want, and tell the economists to figure our how to achieve it.

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Yesterday I wrote about the first documentary I ever made. It was in 1987 after Michael Scott-Smith, the then Head of Documentaries at TVNZ, had asked me to investigate why we had become number one in the developed world for youth suicide.

Looking back, it seems to me it was no accident that three years after the introduction of neoliberal economics into our country the rate at which young people were killing themselves was soaring, because our society was in a state of flux.

.Not only had the rules of commercial engagement changed, the economics of selfishness had influenced the way we thought about our social relationships and our moral values.

Our language became more transactional. “Patients” became “clients”, “homes” became “properties”, “personnel managers” became “human resource managers” and “public utilities” became “state assets“, as instutions created in the public good became eroded by private interests.

Competition rather than cooperation was suddenly king, turning a fundamental moral rule of life that had served us for thousands of years on its head, as “Do unto others as you would have done unto you” became, for many, “Do unto others before they do it to you!”

In short, we lost our moral compass.

While it would be too simple to blame neoliberal economics as the sole reason for our young people killing themselves in record numbers, it certainly exacerbated a trend that had become noticeable throughout the 1970’s - a decade which saw the rise of individualism challenge the socialism that had been the underlying ideology of the years immediately following World War 2.

1950’s State Advances “Home for Life” brochure

From the mid 1940’s to the late 1960’s most New Zealanders understood that “The State” meant “all of us”. However as the baby boomer generation entered adulthood, many felt constrained by our State controlled economy, and so they went overseas in droves on their OE ( Overseas Experience). Some never came back, but most did, returning with a very different take on what they wanted from life from that of their parents – especially when it came to buying a place of their own.

For most of the war generation, tired of living in a world of conflict, the first home they bought was “ a home for life”, usually funded by a low deposit, low interest loan from the government- owned State Advances Corporation.

But by the 1970’s our society was becoming more mobile. Son’s and daughters were often no longer living in the same town or city as their parents, and the more educated baby boomers were shifting from place to place to take up better paying jobs.So many of the bonds that had once bound communities tightly together were being broken.

It was also sometime in the early 1970’s (I’m sorry I can’t put an exact date on it) that I was watching a television programme about real estate when I first heard the phrase “getting on the property ladder.” It was uttered by the entrepreneur Ollie Newland and in that moment it became clear to me that the underlying ethos about home ownership had dramatically changed. We were being told we needed to stop thinking about our homes as santuaries for life, but as assets that could be bought and sold for a profit. Keep flipping houses was the message. Keep moving up to a better, more expensive house and you’ll become wealthy.

Today “Getting on the ladder” has replaced “A Home for Life” as the real estate and banking catchcry and, to be frank, the idea of living inside your biggest tax free appreciating asset has proved hugely appealing to New Zealanders, especially as many of us use the value of our house to guarantee our small business loan, or see the value in our property as our retirement nest egg.

The trouble is, with no capital gains tax, no death duties or no sales tax on property transactions, the “property ladder” mantra has inflated house prices in our country to the point where many New Zealanders can no longer get the security of tenure home ownership brings and, as a result, we have been witnessing the corrosion of once powerful concept of Neighbourhood where kids play safely together and folk know and look out for one another.

Difficult as it may be we have to find a way of convincing current home owners, to accept more State intervention in the economy not less, and to see taxes based on wealth through property sales as being in the public good. Because if we want a decent health system, a better education system, less crime and yes, reliable ferries operating between our two major islands, then we ( ie. the State) need to gather the money to realise such things from people who are currently allowed to accumulate untaxed wealth by simply sitting on their assets. ( And no, the reduced brightline test doesn’t do it.)

To accept the logic of the above is also to accept that we need a major correction to our moral compass in Aotearoa New Zealand. We need to dump the ME centred society and find our way back to the more egalitarian WE centred society we once had.

And if you ask me for a good reason as to why we should do that, I suggest you need look no further than the fact that far more New Zelanders die by thir own hand in our country each year, than die in road accidents.

And even more to our collective shame the suicide rate of our young people is still the highest in the OECD.

We really need to take on board what the French Sociologist Emilé Durkeim (pictured below) proved 128 years ago in his study Le Suicide – that when big shifts happen in society some people don’t cope with the change. When social norms and values become loose people can enter a state he called anomie or nomlessness, and this leads to deviance and alienation. In other words when some of people find they can’t cope with with what is going on in society, they disengage from it, and once adrift, may ultimately kill themselves.

Emilé Durkheim

The National Party candidate for my electorate turned up at our door just before the last election taking about getting “back to basics” in education. But I’ll park that issue for another day! Because what I want to say here is that what we really have to do is get “back to basics “ with our economy; because as it currently stands the economic tail of neoliberal selfishness is wagging the society dog.

And the way to accept that we have to dump the economics and politics of selfishness is to ask yourself the question I asked to camera at the end of my documentary 2014 documentary Mind The Gap.

“What is the purpose of our economy? Is it so that a few people can become extremely wealthy at the expense of the many? Or is it to provide the greatest good for the longest period of time?”

I invite you read the political manifestos of the various parties and give your answer on your voting paper at the upcoming Local Elections, and the General Election next year.