Charting a future for New Zealand

Press, 29 November 1976, Page 16

Charting a future for New Zealand

The Government has established a long term research group to develop “alternative scenarios for the future of New Zealand (past the year 2000).” Periodic reviews of the work being done are held by the D.S.I.R. This article is based on a report of a seminar held in Nelson. One section of this seminar looked at small and self-dependent communities, these being one of a number of possible futures. The report on this section of the seminar was complicated by a splinter group, whose members did not agree with assumptions underlying the discussion. Those involved in the seminar emphasised that there was a need for vast quantities of research before valid assumptions can be made about the sort of future desirable or possible. OLIVER RIDDELL reports:

The aim of the “small self-dependent communities’’ group was to develop elements of a future based on a number of social, philosophical and economic requirements. Stripped of their sociological and mathematical jargon, these requirements represented a number of judgments about the future — including what is possible, what is desirable, and what the interplay between the desirable and possible might be.

These requirements suggested the formation of largely self-sufficient communities of perhaps 10,000 people each, each partially dependent upon the others but each also partly independent. They involve a strong element of planning within society, although leaving some scope for individual choice within the fairly rigid framework of that society. Thus, each community would have facilities such as an education centre, a community health centre, an arts and crafts centre, a neighbourhood tavern, limited transport facilities, a hostel or marae, and a library. Some communities would provide for facilities for the wider region, such as a university, a base hospital, or specialist medicine facilities. A family would either build or remodel its home (there being an instinctive need to produce and control the immediate environment) with help from family or friends. This would pre-sup-pose some community arrangements for financial help. The group considered

greater flexibility of employment was needed, and the average working week (for producing industrial products) might be much reduced. Training should lead to a total understanding of the workplace, and worker participation ought to be universal.

To provide equality, an excessive concentration of power or money needed to be avoided. This raised questions of ownership, and the group felt participatory community ownership seemed to be needed. It conceded that some major industrial products might be absent in this future society. For example, roofing iron might be replaced with locally-produced long-lasting wooden tiles, and there might be more building in wood, tile, brick and dirt. If the community were to be self-sufficient in food then there might need to be some change in settlement patterns, and a conurbanisation like Auckland could be divided into autonomous communities by green belts. The concepts used by the group bore strong similarities to those of a kibbutz. There was no intention to reject all technology, but to adapt it. Energy sources would be largely local, including solar energy, sewage and wind. Some farmland would be needed to generate foreign exchange, and as domestic resources were relied on to a greater extent, there would be a decreasing need for foreign exchange. Diversity was implied by the group’s programme. Different communities would

have different futures, and individuals might <shift if they wished. The discussion threw up a huge number of topics for future research, and the group conceded that ,it was doubtful if these topics would be adopted by present research agencies and funding bodies. It called for the creation of a new institute for research into alternative life styles, Governmentfunded, but not politically controlled.

This main group said that it did not want to coerce, anyone; it wanted to increase personal freedom and increase the number of choices available. However, a splinter group did tjot agree with the way the main group’s way of achieving this objective, while agree-

ing with the objective itself. Rather than impose the concept of an ideal society on the public, and rather than adopt a set of rules (based on personal value judgments to which the public would be required to conform, the splinter group preferred an “organic” development of society based on people’s choice. It wanted to maximise personal freedom to choose, as far as was consistent with the public good, and set out four requirements for this — the provision of a wide range of opportunities, the provision of economic ability to exercise this choice, dissemination of knowledge of the choices available, and education in the process of choosing. Thus, in its ideal society,

the splinter group would allow a man to use his net disposable income to buy a car if he wanted to, while the main group probably would not. However, he would be allowed to only if the prices he paid for his car, motor spirits and roads, reflected the true costs of those items to the community and not some arbitrarily set cost.

in certain areas of land use, which brought the splinter group closer to the main group. Like the main group, the splinter group set out a wide range of desirable research topics to give a clear understanding of the values involved in its ideal society. Taken together, the attitudes of the two groups show the huge range of different futures that would have to be considered sociologically and mathematically before any indicative planning on possible alternative futures for New Zealand could begin. Failure to study these alternatives is seen by the long-term research group as accepting an unplanned future, which it sees as being even more unacceptable.

In the same way, he would be allowed to choose between living in a block of flats in a city or in a cottage in the country, and to grow his own vegetables or to buy them as he chose. To test the logic of its argument, the splinter group considered land use. It was immediately apparent that the public good overshadowed personal freedom