Posted on 4-1-2004

2004: She'll be right, mate

GRAHAM REID considers the New Zealand nation of 2004

This is the month named for Janus, the Roman god of gates and doorways who had two faces. Thus he could both look forward and back.

Long weekends like this, when statutory holidays bump conveniently into a weekend, allow us that rare luxury, time, to consider the year just gone and to speculate what 2004 might bring for this small nation basking lazily under a Pacific sky.

Most of us think things will work out well.

A NBR-Philips Fox poll about our expectations for 2004 showed a convincing 58 per cent thought it would be better than last year, fewer than half that thought it would be worse. Nine per cent believed things would be no different.

So we're an optimistic bunch.

Some will say this sunny attitude is mindlessly naive. The portents of gloom are apparent: rising interest rates; house prices like telephone numbers; an ageing population we cannot afford; racial tension stoked by political opportunists; Richard Long no longer on the small screen ...

One certainty is that racial issues will remain high on the agenda. The foreshore debate will simmer in the summer heat. Don Brash has bannered issues of race and identity as priorities and Winston Peters has immigration and race as New Zealand First's main - some critics might say only - platform.

Last month, in the wake of the treatment of Ahmed Zaoui and the Peters pamphlet, our race relations were scrutinised by a Guardian columnist under the heading "Not-so-nice New Zealand".

Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres is untroubled by such a perception - "newspapers are responsive to controversy" - and says issues such as the Holmes affair which gathered media attention last year were not a true reflection of where we're at.

"Some of those incidents involved a significant number of people speaking up. It's encouraging that a large number of ordinary New Zealanders were prepared to say, 'This is New Zealand mate, and we don't do things that way'."

De Bres, a self-confessed optimist, doesn't expect the foreshore issue to be as divisive as some predict. What concerns him is how debates are conducted.

"We have had a reasonable degree of consensus about some key issues like the treaty and immigration for some time, but some of that is fraying a bit. Probably, with the exception of one party, there is still consensus on immigration - but there is definitely a developing disagreement about aspects of the treaty. That's a mainstream difference on a critical issue.

"There's always a risk debate will descend into racial stereotyping, and there is a real responsibility on politicians to keep [it] at a level that neither promotes nor encourages racist reactions."

De Bres believes the suspicion of outsiders is abating in Auckland, although there seems to be an urban versus provincial divide.

"It's that thing of being threatened by the unfamiliar. Aucklanders have come to grips with their diversity. They've done it through the urban migration of Maori to the migration of Pacific Island then Asian peoples, and the majority probably relish the fact Auckland is a multicultural city.

"If you are in the backblocks of Central Otago, that may seem a very strange picture of New Zealand."

That we need migrants is accepted by most political parties and by a large number of citizens.

De Bres: "The debate about the number of people coming is legitimate. A debate about whether they be Asian or British is an inherently racist debate. We tend to forget people who come here are being recruited because New Zealand needs people. The broad consensus is that immigration is necessary for the economy. Where the debate goes sour is when it turns into, 'Should we base it on qualifications, experience and suitability for employment, or should we base it on race, colour and ethnic origin?"'

Ordinary people have largely observed the unspoken protocols on race, and increasingly those in areas of high immigrant populations are accepting that people stick to their own kind. When we go to London we see our Kiwi friends because we have some commonality of culture. Why would Samoans, Taiwanese and Koreans be any different when they come here?

So we are increasingly accepting New Zealand is not simply a melting pot and this year we might be talking among ourselves. The arrival of a Maori television channel will stimulate an internal dialogue among Maoridom, but it could marginalise Maori and te reo to a channel others don't watch.

Media commentator Russell Brown: "In the ideal world it would be compelling enough. It would woo people on its own merit. Maybe Tau Henare's chat show is going to be that good, people will come over and watch it."

Brown sees the arrival of such programming as emblematic of the way television is following the model of the internet in catering to niche markets.

On pay television there has been the spawning of niche programming: in the past month the History and Disney channels have started. In March a dedicated arts channel begins. With greater viewer choice the challenge will be for the mainstream channels, already undergoing major changes, to match that drive for diversity.

"Niches are becoming more and more important in the modern media landscape," says Brown. "If you think back to the early 90s a lot of people in television took the view that there was really only one market, the middle, and niches weren't worth bothering about."

Brown cites Marcus Lush being once considered risque and young at 27. Now we have passed through the age of Havoc to Eating Media Lunch.

"People are different now," says Brown, "and there is a much greater scatter of identities. The question [for public broadcasters] is, 'How do you serve all those identities?"'

We can, perhaps, expect a subtle change in the way we view our media this year. The invasion of Iraq with "embedded" journalists alerted many to the fact that the media was not as objective as they might have believed. TV3 poster boy John Campbell uses the phrase "advocacy journalism", a style he wants to explore.

For those who have been in countries where the newspaper you read reflects your vote, the concept of journalism from an identifiable political perspective is not new. We have it already in varying degrees - "The National Business Review which has all the measure and balance of a back issue of Broadsheet," laughs Brown - but we may see real flickers of it at home. If we have a home.

Climbing property prices have put home ownership beyond the reach of many. Apartment projects in Auckland will mean suburbs on the city's rim will change rapidly this year as their populations and cultural diversity expand.

It's the cynic, not the optimist, who says every cloud has a silver lining: if house prices rise along with interest rates, we'll see mortgagee sales soon. Some now shut out of the market might be able to get in. An ill wind blowing good.

In the long view, however, the baby-boomer bubble is moving through the demographic and the top end is starting to collect superannuation. Baby-boomers are a broad church but those with Botox, Viagra and a gym subscription are in denial of their age.

A University of Queensland researcher, Dr Malcolm Johnson, says it is common for 50-year-olds now to act, think and feel like 40-year-olds. Which is okay for their cognitive health, but will have a disastrous impact on their retirement plans.

"The denial of ageing may subconsciously postpone the recognition of a need to plan for retirement, resulting in insufficient income at a time when they really want to explore new lifestyle options."

Johnson's research showed fewer than 20 per cent of baby-boomers expected to have the income they required on retirement. If something similar holds true here - although we are more financially conservative than our transtasman whanau - we will increasingly see a drain on government super. Fewer than 15 per cent of our labour force belong to workplace super schemes.

At the other end of the age spectrum, don't expect to be invited to too many weddings of people under 25. We are still marrying later and the proportion of people at age 40 who haven't married has increased dramatically. Six years ago 13 per cent of 40-year-old males were unmarried, now it is 18 per cent. For females of the same age, that figure shifted from 9 to 14 per cent. Of course statistics are a snapshot through a narrow lens.

Those figures don't tell us about ratios of de facto relationships. According to the Department of Statistics, they have been going up, although many couples refuse to acknowledge the nature of their relationship.

So this year, you will see fewer of your twentysomething children getting married but a number of your thirtysomething friends becoming first-time parents.

What else can we expect? Smokers standing outside restaurants and bars; a miserable winter; traffic problems in Auckland; no tax cuts; the usual stuff like droughts and floods and business confidence up or down; politicians jockeying for position ...

Regardless of what New Zealand is like, there is one statistical - if not actual - certainty: a greater number of us will make it through. New Zealand males now live to an average age of 76 and women to 81. Up three and two years respectively on a decade ago.

That's the good news - but in a country with "sub-replacement fertility" (not enough of us having kids, basically) we need a workforce to keep us viable.

Which brings us back to immigration.