They say it is easier to remember bad memories than good ones. Not only are positive and negative memories treated differently by the brain, we tend to obsess more about negative memories than positive ones.
This is my last editorial for 2024, and as the year slinks into the past, I’m trying to bear this in mind. Did anything good happen? Yes, of course it did, and I have so many bouquets I’m going to run out of flowers. But let’s get the brickbats over first.
The New Zealand coalition government made jackasses of themselves this year in too many ways to list. Handouts to the wealthy at the expense of the poor and vulnerable were supposed to ‘trickle down’ to the rest of us, but switching benefit rates from wage growth to inflation, defunding social services and slashing basic medical services failed to deliver a booming economy, or even one with a distant, hopeful jangling sound. Tens of thousands are now out of work thanks to a recession amplified by the state. The government’s mania for ministry-gutting is driving up the cost of living as squished government agencies like ACC pass on their costs to you and I. Only some of these new costs are financial. Others are physical and mental, like the heightened risk of dying in a medical system which can no longer cope with you.
The government also deserves criticism for its breathtakingly slapdash management style. Changes affecting thousands of people have been made without warning or consultation; in March, for example, disabled people learned of massive cuts to services after their ministry posted a cryptic message on Facebook.
A Newsroom analysis published last month reveals behind-the-scenes chaos. After combing through 84 regulatory impact statements and reports, it found “the majority of new laws and regulations introduced in the government’s first year have been affected by time constraints and a lack of evidence, or evidence that does not support legislative changes.”
The rightwing coalition’s attacks on Māori are legion. Natalie Coates, co-president of the Māori Law Society, told The Guardian that the government was undertaking a “systematic legislative attack” on Māori. That notorious radical, former PM, Dame Jenny Shipley, warned of Act’s cherished Treaty Principles Bill: “The voice of Māori, that reminds us that this was an agreement, a contract – and you do not rip up a contract and then just say, ‘Well, I’m happy to rewrite it on my terms, but you don’t count… I just despise people who want to use a treasure – which is what the Treaty is – and use it as a political tool that drives people to the left or the right… I condemn David Seymour for asking the public for money to fuel a campaign that I think really is going to divide New Zealand in a way that I haven’t lived through in my adult life.”
My last brickbat is reserved for… oh yes, the government again, for its incomprehensible decision to cut humanities and social science research from Marsden Fund grants, the only public source of researcher-driven funding in New Zealand. To the government these grants are a pittance, a tiny sliver of total spending: $3,780,000 for the humanities and $9,863,360 for the social sciences, a total of $13,643,360. This is chump change compared to the billions wasted on cancelling infrastructure projects, as Dame Anne Salmond has pointed out. These cuts, like many government policies, seem designed to force our brightest youth overseas. Interested parties, like universities, were (of course) not consulted. Why fund research into public health, nursing, education, psychology, environmental studies, Māori and Indigenous studies, human geography, social anthropology, public policy, political science, architecture, English, literature, languages, linguistics, religion, philosophy, classics, cultural studies, media studies, art history, film, history and law? You can probably think of a few reasons, like learning more about the history of Aotearoa (bit of a hot kūmara, that one), or the ways New Zealanders respond to a crisis. An epidemic of suicide, or a global pandemic, for example.
But now is the season for heartwarming chestnuts, and one of the best is ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going’. My bouquets go to those who stood up to be counted – and they were a tidal wave.
First: Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, for getting herself on the BBC’s 100 Women list at the age of 22. Second: every person who took part in the hīkoi to protest the Treaty Principles Bill. (I told you I was going to run out of flowers). There were more than 40,000 of you – one of the largest protests in New Zealand history. You brought tears to my eyes.
I’d like to finish 2024 by remembering some of those who didn’t make it to the end: Tūheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero VII, Nikki Kaye, Mike Morgan, Paul Radford, Vern Whitehead, Fa‘anānā Efeso Collins, Rob Barker, Dene O’Kane, Robyn Skelton, Maggie Wikaira, Reverend Peter Stead, Susi Newborn, Bianca Scarlett and Gillian Hale. Thank you for everything.
Rest in power, 2024.
• Jenny Nicholls
© Waiheke Gulf News Ltd 2024
