Last Straw

Today I received a copy of Great New Zea­l­and Argu­ment: Ideas about ourselves, which was sur­pris­ingly quick. Pre­sum­ably it was dis­trib­uted from within the UK some­where. Edited by Rus­sell Brown, it’s a good look­ing book; the cover appears as if it might be a pic­ture of Rus­sell and his kid walk­ing down a coun­try road (I’ll have to ask him). Well chosen fonts, a good lay­out and obvi­ously metic­u­lous edit­ing make it easy on the eye too. I only wish I’d been able to get a hard­back ver­sion as this is a book I’d like to last.

Set to ques­tions such as, “What is spe­cial about the char­ac­ter of New Zea­l­and, both the place and its people? How have we changed and what kind of place do we want to become? What are our great national ques­tions?” Great New Zea­l­and Argu­ment is described as bring­ing “together essays and speeches span­ning nearly 70 years, by some of New Zealand’s best writers and opin­ion lead­ers. Their work is by turns thought­ful, vis­ion­ary, pro­voc­at­ive and amus­ing. Much of it is either pre­vi­ously unpub­lished or long out of print.”

I got it at work and as soon as lunch time arrived I delved into Russell’s intro, which, like much of his writ­ing, man­ages to hit the sweet spot.

This year, on Pub­lic Address, the web­log site where the Great New Zea­l­and Argu­ment pro­ject began, I invited our many expat­ri­ate read­ers to com­ment on the latest round of the ‘brain drain’ debate that has recurred through our national his­tory. The replies came flood­ing back. They talked about wages, stu­dent loads and edu­ca­tion. But over­whelm­ingly, they spoke of the land, sea and sky. It was this that would bring them back—and this that defined them.

One response Rus­sell received was this gem from someone named Dar­ren, who was com­ment­ing on his arrival back in NZ after five years in Aus:

On the morn­ing that I returned, I remem­ber driv­ing back from the air­port in my brother’s Fal­con ute. There was a small patch of moss on the inside corner of the wind­screen. There were ferns grow­ing out of the cracks on his drive­way. The local indian dairy was selling taro. I don’t think unique is a stong enough word.

It reminded of a time when a friend of mine, Anna Pier­ard, pulled out a book of New Zea­l­and land­scapes and poetry while I was at her place some­where in Cam­den, Lon­don. I’m a little ashamed to admit that I star­ted cry­ing! Hav­ing spent a couple of years or so in the con­crete jungle that is Lon­don it hadn’t occured to me how power­fully rooted we can be in those islands we call Aotearoa New Zealand.

Russell’s intro includes many quotes from out­siders, includ­ing this pearler from French intel­lec­tual André Siegfried in his 1904 book Demo­cracy in New Zea­l­and:

The colo­ni­als, moreover, are gen­er­ally men of mingled strength and sim­pli­city. Their strength makes them uncon­cious of obstacles, and they attack the most del­ic­ate ques­tions much as one opens a path through a forest with an axe. Their out­look, not too care­fully reasoned, and no doubt scorn­ful of sci­entific thought, makes them incap­able of self dis­trust. Like almost all men of action they have a con­tempt for the­or­ies: yet they are often cap­tured by the first the­ory that turns up, if it is demon­strated to them with an appear­ance of logic suf­fi­cient to impose upon them. In most cases they do not seem to see dif­fi­culties, and they pro­pose simple solu­tions for the most com­plex prob­lems with aston­ish­ing auda­city. At heart they are prob­ably con­vinced that polit­ics are not as com­plic­ated as they have been made out to be, and that a little cour­age and decision are all that is required to accom­plish reforms of which Europe is so afraid.

On the bus ride home I man­aged to devour most of David Lange’s 1985 speech, Nuc­lear Weapons are Mor­ally Indefens­ible. It is an extraordin­ary speech. I don’t recall ever com­ing across the words, which were first said on the day of my 9^th birth­day. I do, how­ever, recall how much Lange was liked for hav­ing the balls to join New Zeal­anders call­ing for a Nuclear-free New Zea­l­and in the face of U.S. oppos­i­tion, with such vora­city and intelligence.

Rus­sell Brown’s first book gets a thumbs up from me. If someone doesn’t give you this book then go out and find a copy. If you’re not in NZ, you can pur­chase a copy from this online store. Well done Russ, I’ll leave you the last word:

I hope that this col­lec­tion will make for a bet­ter debate and that it is but the first of its kind. I hope many people will read it and talk about it and that per­haps, in three dec­ades’ time, someone will pluck it down from a high, dusty shelf and find it use­ful. And not just because in thirty or fifty years we will be grap­pling with many of the same issues, but because—you would hope—we will still have plenty to talk about.