He's written a piece for BusinessDesk saying that the headlines he’s seeing here at home suggest we’re as miserable as we were back in the early 1990s during Ruth Richardson's recession.
And he points out that all 9 countries he visited actually had the same problems - race relations, violent crime, failing infrastructure, countless crises, countries going backwards, but they were dealing with it without the same sense of fatalistic despair that we have over it.
Now I've thought about this a lot overnight, and I agree that we're extremely gloomy. And I would be the first to tell us to give ourselves an uppercut if I thought we were being unreasonably miserable, but I think we’re justified in feeling like we do.
Because- and I can't speak for other countries - we have gone through a massive shift in the last few years. We went from being the rockstar economy, prosperous and riding the wave of Chinese demand to three recessions in two years.
Name me another country that we compare ourselves to that has had three recessions in two years. That's a tough thing to go through.
Pattrick himself admits it’s bad. He points out that we've slipped in a comprehensive UN measure of everything from life expectancy and education to economics. We've dropped 7 places in one year, that's how fast things have gone backwards for us.
We've gone from being the safe place you want to raise your kids in to having 11 to 12 homicides in the North Island in just over a month - including a body found burnt out in a car somewhere today.
I think what’s made us gloomy is the size of the shift. Others may also be experiencing what we are, but I suspect not with the swing from one extreme to the other that we have - which makes the bad feel so much more bad because it was so good.
So yeah, we’re gloomy. And yeah, like Pattrick, I'm looking forward to us coming out of this. But I don't think we're being dramatic in how we feel, I think it’s justified. And I think it’s good, because it means we don't accept it - and we're motivated to change it.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show HERE - where this article was sourced.
4 comments:
Race relations a common problem. For most other countries associated immigants , over which some control can be exerted. Here it is more the indigenous. Despite many of their poor performances being related to family size, their advocate groups do not campaign for moderation. The wider population are justified in feeling gloomy.
Its because we all have to read and listen to negative rhetoric all the time. Headlines like "Is Wellington dying"; words like "a country of hate and division"; Maori who tell their people they are "oppressed" and "victims" and "second grade citizens". We are told the way we do things "the coloniser way" is wrong and we should all be ashamed for what people 200 years ago did. We are teaching this crap to our children!!!! There is complete disrespect for leaders in NZ resulting in having no one to look up to. And then we have social media which is a cesspit for abuse. People have forgotten how to strive for positivity, decency, integrity, and have lost their manners. No wonder the country feels gloomy. The words and crap that we allow in our heads everyday are poison and people have forgotten that they can take control of their own minds and think, write, and feel in a completely different way if they choose to.
Quite right Heather. Only Just 6 years ago we had the Goldilocks economy and poof in a puff of smoke a few kicks with the back legs a rearing of the front and it was all gone. Not to be seen ever again in this land, well for some decades at least. But don't see any handsom Prince yet.
NZ is where it is today because of years, or decades, of diligent undermining, all while the masses slumbered on. Now the product of that work is apparent to most, to our collective despair. But do we have the integrity, the courage, to recognise the downward trajectory and work diligently and bravely to rescue the culture and the nation? The omens, if we look at our leadership, are not good. Cleaning out all the corruption, in all of our institutions is a massive job, that needs utter ruthlessness to succeed.
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