Latest / Best of Business / Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: We're justified in feeling gloomy about the state of NZ

Transcript

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: We're justified in feeling gloomy about the state of NZ · Best of Business

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks'd be follow
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• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Now Patrick Smelley, Welcome Home. Patrick. Patrick Smelley is a
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: regular contributor to the show, and he's just back from
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  Speaker 2: his long European sabbatical and he reckons we need to
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: cheer up. He's written a piece for Business Desks saying
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  Speaker 2: the headlines that he's seeing here in New Zealand suggest
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  Speaker 2: we're as miserable today as we were back in the
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: early nineteen nineties when Ruth Richardson had Ruth Richardson's recession
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  Speaker 2: back then. And he points out that actually in all
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  Speaker 2: of the nine countries that he'd visited when he was
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  Speaker 2: over in Europe, they all had the same problems, race relations,
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  Speaker 2: violent crime, failing infrastructure, crises, countless crises. Their country is
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: going backwards, but they were dealing with it without the
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  Speaker 2: same sense of fatalistic despair that we have over it
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: in New Zealand. I've thought about this a lot overnight,
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  Speaker 2: because one hundred percent we are extremely gloomy. And I'd
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  Speaker 2: be the first to tell us to give ourselves an
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  Speaker 2: uppercut if I thought we were being unreasonably miserable. But
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  Speaker 2: actually I think that we are justified in feeling as
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  Speaker 2: miserable as we do right now, because look, I can't
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  Speaker 2: speak for other countries and I don't know what their
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  Speaker 2: experiences are, but we have gone through a massive shift
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  Speaker 2: in the last few years. We went from being the
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  Speaker 2: rockstar economy, prosperous and riding the wave of Chinese like
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  Speaker 2: ever increasing Chinese demand to suddenly not having that Chinese
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  Speaker 2: demand has fallen. We've had three recessions and two years now.
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  Speaker 2: Name me another country that we compare ourselves to that
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  Speaker 2: has had three recessions in two years. That is a
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  Speaker 2: tough thing for a country to go through. And Patrick
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  Speaker 2: himself admits it's bad. I mean he as he points out,
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  Speaker 2: we've slipped in a comprehensive UWN measure of everything from
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  Speaker 2: life expectancy and education to economics like it looks at
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  Speaker 2: the whole thing. We have gone down seven places just
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  Speaker 2: between last year and this year. That is how fast
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  Speaker 2: things are going backwards for us. We've gone from being
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  Speaker 2: the safe place that you want to raise your kids
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  Speaker 2: in and that you can raise your kids in to
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  Speaker 2: what eleven or twelve homicides in the North Island and
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  Speaker 2: just over a month a body found burnt out in
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  Speaker 2: a car somewhere today. I think what's made us gloomy
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  Speaker 2: is just the size of that shift. I mean, others
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  Speaker 2: may be experiencing what we are, but I'd be surprised
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  Speaker 2: if they have had the swing from one extreme to
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  Speaker 2: the other quite to the same degree that we have.
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  Speaker 2: And I think that's what makes us feel as bad
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  Speaker 2: as we do, because it was so good before and
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  Speaker 2: now it is so bad and the difference is so extreme.
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  Speaker 2: So yes, we're gloomy and yep, like Patrick, I'm looking
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  Speaker 2: forward to us coming out of this, but I don't
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  Speaker 2: think we're being dramatic and how we feel about this,
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  Speaker 2: I think it's totally justified. And I actually think it's
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  Speaker 2: good to be as gloomy as we are because it
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  Speaker 2: means we don't accept it, and it means that we
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  Speaker 2: are motivated to change it.
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