Dr Bob's Blog

During each election the political parties are likely to tell us that this election is the most crucial event in the history of our country. I have no doubt that we will be told the same thing when the full blown election campaign gets underway. This time it might be true. There are a series of forces that are converging upon us and it will be critical for each of us to scrutinize the policies of the different parties to see how well they deal with the challenges these forces are throwing at us.

I think there are six themes that define the challenges that we face. I will be surprised if these issues emerge in any clear cut way in the upcoming election, at least in the form that I present them here. You might like to use my list as a way of determining which set of policies is worthy of your support.

What then are the six significant challenges that we face. This is my list but it’s not intended to be an exhaustive one. I don’t include health care for example, even though it is a critical area of our lives.

For me the most important challenge we face is the dangers inherent in climate change and the threat to our entire civilization. I believe we need a new myth to live by that values the Earth and all living forms within it. Myth is used in the sense of a story about the big questions, such as the purpose of life, why are we here and what does it all mean?  I believe that the religious myths of Christianity, Islam, Judaism and other religions expressed in their traditional form, and the modern myth that science and technology will answer these ultimate questions are no longer able to provide a “spiritual” and ultimate basis for the challenges we face.

This challenge is about reviewing the way we think and define our needs and the things we value. This is not a challenge about legislation and new rules and regulations that might be needed. It’s about becoming different people with a whole new level of awareness. The question to ask here is does the leadership of the political party inspire you to change your awareness of how you understand your relationship to the Earth and how you live your life.

The second major challenges relates to our economy. There are huge challenges for our economic survival based on the forces of globalization and the way in which information technologies have changed and will change the way in which our economy functions. These challenges affect not only macro-economic well being of New Zealand, but each and everyone one of us in terms of how we make a living.

Three main challenges need to be considered. These are the issue of outsourcing and off-shoring, digitization and automation. We are all familiar with manufacturers relocating to China or other places so that they can lower their costs and compete in the global economy. Digitization poses serious challenges for those in the office administration field of work as many back office work simply disappears.

Automation based on advanced robotics also poses serious challenges as more and more routine work is simply eliminated. At this time sheep farming faces serious problems in making adequate profits to be sustainable in the long-term. At this time the industry is looking at reorganizing its supply chain. It is likely that the industry will also look at phasing in robotics eliminating a great deal of physical labour in our freezing works as another strategy to reduce costs. This will have huge implications for heartland New Zealand and employment in those regions.

We now live in a much more connected world with advanced information and other technologies that are transforming the workplace at an accelerating pace. We have seen major changes in the last 20 years, but the pace of change is likely to be much faster in the future. Work practices and skills of today become obsolete tomorrow. This poses serious challenges to the way in which we will earn a living and how we can keep ourselves employable.

The new technologies are eliminating traditional hierarchies and more and more work involves people collaborating without reference to a supervisor or boss. Collaborative work involves the elimination of much of the traditional reliance on physical labour which provided the means of survival for tens of thousands of years of human habitation on the Earth.

Collaborative work is about deciding what to do on the face of uncertainty. We find that more and more of the work that remains after digitization and automation is much more complex than existed yesterday largely because of the need for collaboration. In the hierarchies that arose in the industrial era workers did as they were told, and collaborative capacities atrophied. Employers make it clear that there are skill shortages simply because we have too few people capable of handling the increased complexity of the modern work place.

This challenge is about how a party’s policies are geared to providing infrastructure, good governance provisions and the education systems needed to ensure that the workforce is employable and increasingly productive. High exchange and interest rates figure in the equation but the impact they have is linked to low productivity and low savings levels, which is a lifestyle issue.

The emphasis need to be on better broadband and telecommunications and other infrastructure and fair but not intrusive governance including incentives for innovation and research and development. Government can also play a pivotal role in providing mechanisms to help workers re-order their technical and collaborative skills in order to remain employable.  Education is the critical challenge here and this is the third challenge we face.

I am talking about education for us all, not just the emerging generation, but all workers, as today’s skills will be obsolete tomorrow. I am also talking about technical and collaborative capacities. I believe that one of the most urgent needs is to raise the level of awareness and the communication capacities of all of us if we are going to be able to remain employable in the years ahead and meet the productivity demands of an increasingly competitive global economy. As more and more routine work is eliminated through digitization and automation the remaining work will be more complex and demanding.

One of the major challenges of a rapidly changing work place is helping workers develop a strong sense of identity about what it is that makes them employable rather than having a job with a title in a particular organisation. Part of the equation of being employable will involve having a clear notion of how you add value and what it is about your qualities that makes you unique and valuable to an employer’s customers.

I have few worries about the capacity of our education system to instruct our people in the technical skills. However, I have serious reservations about gaps in the present education system in addressing the development of collaborative capacities and helping grow workers’ level of awareness. There is also a lack of facilities that addresses the way workers deal with the identity crisis that is inherent in a rapidly changing work place.

This challenge is about providing an education system for the emerging generation that gives them the opportunity to become employable for life and also helps the existing workforce remain employable with lifelong learning opportunities. Education is about the whole person not just the technical things we do, but encompasses the cultural, social and psychodynamic dimensions of life. It will be important to examine how each party’s policy programme meets this challenge in the way I have defined it.

The fourth challenge is to integrate the social underclass into the mainstream of social and economic life. We need to recognize that life in the underclass is not very nice. The underclass is populated by people with an impulsive awareness who cannot plan ahead and who live for the moment without any thought of tomorrow. Changing their mindset and integrating them into our social and economic life is a critical and expensive challenge. The cost of dealing with the social underclass through the criminal justice and social welfare system is not cheap either, but it is ineffective.

We need to be able to transform these people into knowledge workers to help bridge the skills gap. We also need to do this as an effective means of reducing crime rates, child abuse and the sheer waste of human lives. We need to accept this challenge in a real way because it is the right way to live the myth of valuing the Earth and all life forms within the Earth.

This challenge is about scrutinizing political party’s programmes to see whether their policies address two issues. First, changing the mindset of the impulsive people in the underclass, and secondly providing them with positive experiences that demonstrate that complying with the social rules actually pays off. At this time they supplement their income with involvement in an underground economy based around drugs, prostitution, burglary and theft. Managing the social underclass through the criminal justice system and the welfare system has been the method used to date to deal with this problem and it has failed miserably.

The fifth challenge that we face is harmonizing race relations. On the surface this might seem fine, but in my view there is an undercurrent of seething distrust and sometimes resentment. Don Brash’s Orewa speech a few years ago was bad enough, what was worse was the cord it struck among middle Pakeha New Zealanders.

This challenge is about seeing how each political party contributes to racial harmony.
The final challenge is about how New Zealand uses its voice in international forums to further the myth of valuing the Earth and all living forms within. We have a proud tradition of being an influence beyond our size in international forums and this influence needs to continue.In order for our voice to be credible we need policies and practices that reflect our rhetoric.