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.