Barrie Davis: Rise or Fall of New Zealand

There is increasing evidence that our infrastructure – such as pipes and roads – is decaying and is not being maintained, that the quality of our systems – such as health and education – is reducing and not being controlled, and that our government – local and national – is abdicating their responsibility to any other entity but themselves.

David Round: Thoughts for our Time - Article 2

New Zealand is not the social laboratory of the world. We have, and have always had, the same ideas, the same fashions, the same follies, as everyone else in the West. They may just take a little while to reach us here.

The Treaty of Waitangi madness infecting the mental capacities of so many of our countrypersons is not evidence of some special sensitivities which New Zealanders possess, or even evidence of some special peculiarities of our history. The Treaty madness is just our own localised variant of a much more widespread insanity, which we might call ‘white guilt’.

David Round: Thoughts for Our Time - Article 1

Let us ask ourselves an absolutely serious question.

What are our world, and our country, going to be like in ten years’ time?

Or, for that matter, twenty years; or for that matter, even five?

Very few of us ask this question. Our imaginations are very limited; it is impossible to imagine any future that is very different from the present. It is very easy to confuse the status quo with the natural order of things.