Editorial

By Matt Cooney, October 22, 2008 @ 5:25 pm

Helen Clark has a proven capacity to think creatively. In the age of proportional representation, she has a knack for repressing her coalition partners’ troublesome tics by the judicious application of a plum portfolio. Jim Anderton is the voice of the worker? Give him Economic Development. Winston Peters can’t hold back his xenophobia? That calls for something diplomatic—Foreign Affairs should do the trick.

Yet as Idealog goes to press, there’s little sign of creative thinking in the electoral campaign from the major parties. The Labour hoarding I pass on my way to work each day simply carries Clark’s face and her party’s logo. What, no call to action? Is there really nothing to say but to insist that only Labour can be trusted? Do Labour’s tacticians really think they’re the only people capable of running tiny little New Zealand?

New Zealand has coasted along on a buoyant global economy. To build a better future, we need to invest in and protect our ideas, and the people who create and sell them. They’re our heroes. In this issue we meet a bunch of clueful Kiwis who aren’t yet in the big time—and may never be—but they’re applying their brains to difficult business problems and prepared to take a risk. They share a spirit of adventure and ambition.

If you doubt the challenges they face, reader Allan Main in a letter on page 12 neatly describes how few New Zealand inventions receive effective patent protection offshore. We have the ideas, but we’re not engaging the market on our terms. Too often, we’re short of capital and market expertise. On page 92, innovation specialist Bill Wilmot offers a US perspective of Godzone: “You guys are talented and well-educated. The thing that is missing is realising how competitive the world is.”

These national problems require national solutions. It’s less important that New Zealand companies individually make megamillions—as successive government programmes have promised without success—than to have a nurturing, inspiring country where innovation is valuable and innovators are encouraged.

That means new strategies are required across the board, in urban design, transport policy, national branding, IP generation and protection, economic diversity, and bold moves in taxation, health and education. New Zealand’s character is not set in concrete, and there are many opportunities to improve our competitiveness and standard of living.

Both National and Labour are campaigning as a safe pair of hands. Let’s see some policies that reflect the qualities we actually need: ambition, determination, dynamism and imagination.