OPINION
According to the inflation calculator on the Reserve Bank website, the $1 on “decimal currency day” in 1967 is now $20.85. To put that another way, our currency has been devalued by 95% since its creation a mere 55 years ago, causing huge damage to our economy and nation as a result. The reason for this constant devaluation of our money is simple – successive governments have printed money in order to buy votes.
The problem with this economic insanity – pork barrel politics as Chris Luxon described its latest incarnation Wednesday morning – is its 100% failure rate. If such obvious vote buying actually worked as a political strategy, the Holyoake Government, first elected in 1960, would still be in office. Everyone has done it and everyone is either out of office or heading for the door. In many cases, those who engaged in pork barrel politics spent their retirement as bitter, disappointed men unable to comprehend how they ended up losing.
Yet despite the damage done to New Zealand, economic and social – where the rotten harvest is around us every day with ram raids, that 18-year-old charged with murdering a dog walker, high prices in the supermarket for basic items – and where numerous other chaotic once unthinkable events have become commonplace, those who cause the problems are entirely blameless. Be under no illusions, dear reader, the aftermath of 1970s inflation has a direct cause with chaos today: however odd that seems.
It is what I call the Ozymandias syndrome – that because politicians ensure you have beer in the fridge, sport on television, pop stars at Western Springs, and you can hear motorway traffic in the distance, you presume western civilisation is still out there. What you don’t do is remember people like Keith Holyoake, Rob Muldoon, Bob Tizard, Geoff Palmer, Jenny Shipley, or even Helen Clark in the way you probably should; they are simply part of the mosaic of events in your life that mattered at the time but are quickly forgotten. Like your high school PE teacher.
As I write this the NZ Herald is running a story where a mother is concerned that her 14-year-old daughter will be “coming home in a box” due to her wayward behaviour of stealing cars and taking part in ram raids. To suggest that Sue Bradford is responsible due to a certain piece of legislation – and this mother having been patted on the head and told not to be a big meanie as a parent – simply would not compute with most people, any more than suggesting Bob Tizard devaluing the dollar by 15% at the stroke of a pen in 1975 (akin to pouring petrol on a forest fire in terms of inflation) sowed the seeds which you’re reaping at Countdown (literally!) today.
It was too long ago, and most people aren’t exactly “students of history”. So due to forgetting about them rather quickly once they’ve departed, and the domination of the news by successors, nobody is ever held to account for actions which cause severe and lasting damage to our nation. The guilty are deemed blameless, despite all the evidence.
It’s all part of the political game whereby setting a precedent – clapping certain people in irons, putting them on trial, and having a national raffle to see who gets to flog them on the steps of Parliament, for instance – never occurs no matter what they do and how much damage they cause. What a strange country we live in.