As We Would Like The World To See Us: But repeated contamination scandals and a growing international awareness that all is not well in the New Zealand environment is causing more and more people to doubt Tourism NZ's staggeringly successful slogan. New Zealanders must now decide whether they wish to live up to, or abandon, the promise that has, for better or for worse, branded their nation.
NEW ZEALAND was barely half-a-century old when it became a
“Brand State”. Our first government elected under (nearly) universal male
suffrage – the Liberal Government of 1891 – had, within just a few years of
taking office, earned New Zealand an international reputation for being “the
social laboratory of the world”.
The bitter struggles between Capital and Labour that were
tearing the societies of the Old and New Worlds’ apart at the turn of the Nineteenth
Century seemed to have been tamed in New Zealand by the passing of the
Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act. And, while the women of Great
Britain and the United States were staging massive demonstrations in favour of
women’s suffrage, New Zealand women were already marching to the polling
booths.
The potency of New Zealand’s “progressive” brand was only
enhanced by the radical reforms of the First Labour Government. So much so
that, well into the 1950s, the publishers of encyclopaedias were still
accepting introductions to the entry on New Zealand like this one, from the
1958 Edition of the Richards Topical
Encyclopaedia:
“The World’s ‘Model Nation’: How Little New Zealand, Starting
Her Career amid Wars and Many Money Problems, Built Up for Herself a Government
So Sound and Humane that She Came to Be Called the Best-Governed Nation in the
World.”
As The World Used To See Us: New Zealand in 1958 - A "Model Nation".
Between 1984 and 1999 there was a deeply cynical attempt on
the part of the right-wing promoters of the neoliberal economic “reforms”
responsible for dismantling the progressive achievements of earlier generations
of New Zealanders, to appropriate that “model nation” brand.
To no avail. People from other lands looked at New Zealand and
saw the same destructive economic forces at work – albeit in more extreme form
– that had disfigured their own societies. From being the little nation that
marched to the beat of a different, more “humane”, drummer, New Zealand had
fallen into the same, sad, neoliberal lock-step as the rest of the world.
But then, miraculously, in 1999, New Zealand got a second
chance.
Commissioned to come up with a new slogan for Tourism NZ,
the Saatchi ad agency boss, Alan Morden, came up with “100% Pure New Zealand”.
Everyone who heard it sensed they were on to a winner.
Two years later, just a fortnight before Christmas 2001,
things got even better.
Into a world still reeling from the terrible events of 9/11
came the first of Peter Jackson’s movie adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord
of the Rings, and people saw a landscape of unbelievable beauty. In this,
the most far-flung tourist destination on the planet, God seemed to have hidden
the very last, most lovely jewel of his creation.
Overnight, “100% Pure New Zealand” ceased to be merely the
advertising slogan of Tourism NZ and became the motto of a “Brand State”.
Almost accidentally, New Zealanders found themselves bound
to meet the near impossible challenge of 100% purity. But they could not turn
back, because already the magic of the motto was transforming the expectations
of New Zealand’s customers.
The global consumer reads the name “New Zealand” on a label
and, instantly, their minds are filled with the imagery of snow-capped peaks,
sparkling rivers and streams, unspoiled beaches and endless vistas of deep
green pastureland. Surely, they say, the food and beverages from such a land
must be the purest, the safest, the very best
in the whole world! It is difficult to imagine a perception more likely to clear
the shelves of the world’s supermarkets for New Zealand’s agricultural exports.
But the magic works in other ways for New Zealand. Purity,
if it is to go on selling our exports, must be more than a rhetorical flourish
– it has to be real. Our rivers and
streams must be clean all the way from the mountains to the sea. Our green
pasturelands must leave no chemical residues in our food. The milk from our
free-ranging, grass-chewing cows, and the products derived from their milk,
must, just like the slogan, be 100% pure – not contaminated by botulism.
Fonterra’s latest scandal has revealed, in the most dramatic
fashion, the double-edged nature of all magical incantations. We know now that
our 100% Pure designation can just as easily prove a curse as a blessing.
We stand now at a fork in the road. One way leads us to a
future of reduced expectations. To a New Zealand no longer described as 100%
Pure: where open-cast mines disfigure our conservation lands; deep sea oil coats
our coasts; and cow-shit pours into our poisoned rivers and streams.
The other way leads to a New Zealand that dares to live up
to its promises. To a future where intelligence and creativity are enthroned as
our culture’s sovereign lords. And where the purity of our environment is
matched only by the purity of our purpose.
A “Model Nation” again.
This essay was
originally published in The Press of Tuesday,
13 August 2013.
