MoW 2.0 - Shaking-Up Our Thinking.

Architects Of The Public Good: Government architects, along with engineers, scientists, tradespeople and thousands of other workers, were employed by the Ministry of Works - the state-owned planning and construction agency that built so much of New Zealand's infrastructure. In a country plagued by earthquakes and facing the consequences of global warming, isn't it time for MoW 2.0?

 

ONCE AGAIN, New Zealanders are confronted with the raw and unconquerable power of the tectonic forces beneath their feet. Although the rebuilding of Christchurch remains a real and present priority; the nation’s eyes have been drawn inevitably to the earthquake-ravaged landscape of the Kaikoura Coast.

 

The civil-engineering challenges of this latest disaster are daunting. Reconstructing an urban landscape is one thing. But shifting whole mountainsides of rock and clay? That is something else again! Restoring State Highway One and the coastal railway linking Christchurch with Picton will be the work not of weeks, or even months, but years.

 

Our political leaders, prompted by the conventional wisdom of the past thirty years, will undoubtedly look to the private sector for salvation. As the initial damage surveys are completed, civil servants will be tasked with drawing up job specifications and seeking expressions of interest from domestic and foreign construction firms. Every bid received will have been carefully calculated to deliver a healthy financial return to the tenderer’s shareholders – not New Zealand’s citizens.

 

Is this truly the most sensible way to proceed? Wouldn’t New Zealand’s long-term interests be better served by the creation of a large, permanent and state-owned construction organisation? The arguments in favour of establishing a twenty-first century version of the twentieth century’s Ministry of Works are compelling.

 

The first and most obvious advantage of having a large, permanent and state-owned construction force is the ease of its rapid mobilisation. Organised along the lines of the United States Army Corps of Engineers (one of the largest publicly-owned engineering, design, and construction management agencies in the world) this new Ministry of Works – let’s call it MoW 2.0 – would be able to swing into action at a moment’s notice.

 

In much the same way as the NZ Defence Force was able to send the HMNZS Canterbury and a convoy of army trucks to the aid of Kaikoura, the MoW 2.0 would be able to move engineers, construction workers and heavy earth-moving machinery to where they were most needed.

 

Such a force would not only be available to deal with the earthquakes to which New Zealand is so prone, but also to remediate the damage caused by the extreme weather events that are already a disturbing feature of global warming. Violent storms, massive floods, inundating tides and eroding shorelines will become the “new normal” as the planet heats up. MoW 2.0 would take on the lion’s share of repairing the nation’s beleaguered infrastructure and play a leading role in the design and construction of new climate-change protection schemes.

 

MoW 2.0 could also play an important role in managing the New Zealand labour market. As a major employer of unskilled and semi-skilled workers it would soak up a large number of citizens who would otherwise be unemployed. Remedial education and on-the-job training would be an important part of MoW 2.0’s remit and would constitute an ongoing contribution to the public good.

 

Within just a few years, MoW 2.0 would be passing out highly-trained and experienced engineers, architects, scientists and tradespeople to take up new positions in the private sector. A massive public subsidy? Yes. But no different from the huge public subsidisation of the medical profession which we accept quite happily every time we are treated by a young doctor working in our local public hospital.

 

Not all of those inducted into MoW 2.0 would move out into the private sector, however. Many would make the defence, restoration and construction of New Zealand’s public infrastructure their life-long career. In time, MoW 2.0 would build up a formidable body of highly-qualified and highly-creative professionals, dedicated not only to the resolution of present problems, but also to the anticipation of new ones.

 

An historical precedent for this is clearly discernible in the original Ministry of Works, whose planners, in the final years of the First Labour Government, produced a comprehensive blueprint for the growth and development of Auckland. This extraordinary plan anticipated practically all of the problems which are currently taxing the Auckland Council. Everything: from urban intensification to light-rail connectivity; comprehensive public amenities to pedestrian precincts and cycleways; was foreseen and provided for as long ago as 1946!

 

And this is, arguably, the most compelling reason of all for establishing a large, permanent and state-owned construction organisation. Unconstrained by the private sector’s need to be constantly in search of better contracts and bigger profits, it would be able to construct a “big picture’ of New Zealand’s vulnerabilities and needs.

 

Against the blind, overwhelmingly destructive forces of nature, MoW 2.0 would oppose the imagination and foresight of intelligent human-beings. In sharp contrast to the short-termism of free-market capitalism, it would look over the horizon to the outlines of a more appropriately resourced and better prepared New Zealand.

 

A country awaiting only the earthquake of progressive political change.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 22 November 2016.

Mr Oram's Revolution

Must Try Harder: Business commentators like Rod Oram (above) are constantly berating New Zealanders for their failure to grasp the nettle of neoliberal "reform". Mr Oram is now demanding a "cultural revolution" to "help us build a business one". But New Zealanders have been living through a Rogernomics-inspired cultural revolution for twenty-seven years - yet still the Neoliberal cry is for more of the same. Perhaps its time to stop criticising the patient's failure to improve - and start questioning the cure.

A CULTURAL REVOLUTION? Rod Oram wants one. Writing in The Sunday Star-Times of 20 February, the respected business commentator laments the state of our nation. "We are locked into a low-growth trajectory thanks to misdiagnosing our challenges, misjudging our opportunities and poor execution of our few good ideas."

Mr Oram attributes these failures to five crucial deficiencies in our national character: Complacency, Delusion, Distrust, Distraction and Frustration. His prescription: "We need a cultural revolution to help us build a business one."

Angry denunciations of Kiwis’ manifold deficiencies by business leaders and commentators have become something of a fixture on the business pages of this country’s newspapers. Clearly we are a bitter disappointment to the arbiters of change – so much so that nothing less than a cultural revolution is required to correct the errors of our ways.

I thinks it’s a little late (and more than a little cheeky) to demand a cultural revolution from a nation which has spent the past quarter-century passing through one.

The economic and social reforms unleashed by the Fourth Labour Government in 1984 have not only transformed New Zealand, they have profoundly altered New Zealanders.

For those born and raised in the dark cavern of Rogernomics there can, of course, be no memories of the sun. The deeper tragedy, perhaps, is that those New Zealanders fortunate enough to grow up in a country bathed in sunshine have somehow convinced themselves that the magic lanterns responsible for Neoliberalism’s deceptive shadows are a preferable alternative.

We have forgotten so much – and swallowed so many extraordinary lies.

Foremost among these being the lies about public ownership and the inefficiencies of the State.

How many times, over the past 25 years, have we been fed the image of the lazy employee of the "Ministry of Jerks", leaning on his shovel at the side of the road? Who now remembers the elite Ministry of Works construction teams who built New Zealand’s world-beating hydro-power schemes on time and under-budget?

Did anyone pause to wonder why the huge snowstorm that cut the power supply to so many thousands of Cantabrians a few years back didn’t wreak more havoc on the region’s energy infrastructure? No. Because we take the excellence of its engineering and the gold-standard quality of its construction completely for granted. It never occurs to us that a privately owned construction company – mandated to provide a healthy rate of return to its shareholders – would never have provided this nation with such a robust and reliable system.

The Rogernomes couldn’t get rid of the Ministry of Works fast enough – and for very good reason. Far from being a fiscally draining make-work scheme for New Zealand’s most indolent and unintelligent drones, the Ministry of Works, from its inception, had been home to some of this country’s most innovative and creative civil engineers, architects, town planners and designers. Indeed, it’s probably not drawing too long a bow to suggest that the Ministry of Works highly-motivated public servants embodied the practical wisdom, quiet self-confidence and understated patriotism, for which New Zealanders are so universally admired.

That’s what made it so dangerous. In the eyes of the Neoliberal revolutionaries the Ministry constituted that most dangerous of threats – an alternative source of ideas and explanations. For a regime whose slogan was: "There is NO alternative" the Ministry was anathema. It not only had to be destroyed, it had to be defamed.

So, perhaps Mr Oram is right. Perhaps we do need a cultural revolution. A revolution dedicated to rooting out the five deforming "character" deficiencies Neoliberalism transmits to the populations it infects.

Complacency: The complacent ideological assumption that the market knows best.

Delusion: The delusion that a nation of isolated and disconnected individuals (the Internet does not equal intimacy) will ever summon-up the collective energy to identify (let alone pursue) the public good.

Distrust: The distrust of the past as a source of solace, strength and inspiration; of intellectuals, artists and anybody else who dares suggest that a more generous existence lies beyond Neoliberalism’s cave; and of the scientific method - with its power to expose the fads and fallacies of dogmatic ideologues.

Distraction: The need for constant and socially divisive distraction – to prevent the population from ever accurately identifying the true source of its insecurity and despondency.

Frustration: The creation of massive levels of personal frustration in order to maintain the social tension required to keep Neoliberalism’s victims angry and divided.

Since the premiership of Julius Vogel (1873-76) wise New Zealanders have understood that their country is only viable as a national economy if its best and its brightest, rather than being dispersed by the anarchy of the market, are concentrated and empowered under the protection of an active and innovative state.

Executing that "good idea" really would require a revolution.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 22 February, 2011.