Mike Moore
ruminates on the influences - the policies and attitudes -
that send high-achieving New Zealanders overseas and keep
them there.
I'm struggling to think of another country in history that
has lost about 20% of its population, unless there has been
extreme poverty, a famine, war or ethnic violence.
Why, then, have so many left New Zealand? Migrants from any
society are normally the most energetic, desperate and highly
motivated of people.
I recently visited the Middle East, went to Holland,
Switzerland, and to the celebrations in Berlin marking the
fall of the Wall.
At every place up came a smart Kiwi with a huge smile and a
hand outstretched.
Why have they left New Zealand and how do we get them back?
Our tax regime is hostile.
We are the only country in the OECD which taxes the movements
on your foreign currency accounts.
Australia now has the same tax advantages as London, Geneva
or Hong Kong.
You are only taxed on the income you receive from the country
you are based in.
New Zealand taxes income from any source.
If you are on $100,000 a year, you pay up to $40,000 in tax;
you can't do much with that.
But if you are on a $1,000,000 a year, you could save up to
$400,000 a year and that's why many on our rich list live
elsewhere.
When I was an MP, I didn't understand this; I'm sure my eyes
would glaze over and I would think; you are earning it, you
should pay your share because tax is the price of
civilisation.
Now I know these policies actually cost the Government
revenue.
However, the Kiwi malaise is deeper than that.
Drill deeper and some darker images emerge.
One bloke explained he came home and saw tattooed faces, and
gangs smoking dope and thought "Hell no".
My emails exploded over Hone Harawira's vulgar outburst.
People know that's his honest opinion.
He once said "browns" steal through need, "whites" steal
through greed.
If what Hone has been saying is not wrong, nothing's wrong.
I was asked: can it be possibly be true that Maori foresters
will get a different deal under the Climate Change
legislation than their competitors; after all Maori fishing
companies pay a lower rate of taxation than their non-Maori
competitors.
If our Government puts up with this, what won't they put up
with? Now, anything goes in search of a coalition deal.
It's forgiven, even praised by our media, as smart politics.
MMP is not an explanation, it's a squalid excuse.
And am I the only person concerned that New Zealand is
borrowing a billion dollars a month to buy political peace
which is the norm with these sordid coalitions?
After participating in the Cambridge Union debate, a Kiwi
asked me why successive governments were so busy telling
people how to live their private lives.
He quoted the great liberal thinker, John Stuart Mill who,
centuries ago, wrote, "The only purpose for which power can
be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised
community is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either
physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant."
He had read my latest book and chuckled about a local paper
that had written a sneering item about it.
I shared the story of a Kiwi who won the Field Medal in
Mathematics, rarer than a Nobel Prize.
Like us all, he sought recognition from his peers.
He went home to the West Coast, stood in the bar and saw some
old school mates.
After a while one of them came up and introduced himself.
"They tell me you have written a book?"
"That's right, mate," the laureate responded with some pride.
"Bloody show off," came the reply.
One successful ex-pat who comes home every summer told me
small countries are always small countries.
At the time of the American Revolution, when great minds like
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and George
Washington emerged, the American colonies had a population
smaller than ours is now.
True, too, of Scotland and their period of enlightenment when
the great economist, Adam Smith, and poets, engineers,
architects and thinkers like Robert Burns, James Watt and
David Hulme prospered.
I wrote a paper for Labour MPs on our constitutional
arrangements because I think our problems are systemic.
It was headed, "Is it our destiny to become just another
couple of Pacific Islands?" A gentle reminder that at the
time the treaty was signed, Alaska was part of Russia, there
was no Germany, and slavery was not to be abolished for
another quarter of a century in the US.
Be proud that we are confronting the demons of our past, but
please don't ignore the lessons and heritage of our European
experience and the age of reason.
• Mike Moore is a former New Zealand prime
minister, former director-general of the World Trade
Organisation and is the author of Saving
Globalisation.
