COMMENT: Seventy years ago, in 1952, New Zealander Bill Pearson published an essay called Fretful Sleepers, a piece he had largely completed while undertaking his doctoral studies, in London.
The essay was a frank and cutting assessment of Pearson’s fellow New Zealanders and shares the same tone and insightful humour as the writings of Bob Jones, which started appearing almost three decades later – although Pearson lacked the counterbalancing optimism of the Jones writings.
In the essay, Pearson describes Kiwis as a compliant lot who prefer to delegate authority and responsibility to others; who have a love/hate relationship with social status (in that they reject it in others but quite like it when it happens to them); and who crave the praise of strangers to their shores and are offended when visitors don’t gush over how wonderful their country is.
Pearson’s uncompromising bluntness in the essay is often portrayed as an attack on his fellow Kiwis, but the fact that he returned to New Zealand and devoted himself to a career in his home country suggest his ultimate motivation was to improve his country – another trait he shared with Jones.
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It’s Pearson’s insight into our propensity, as a people, to attack those who have “done well for themselves” to which I want to turn my attention in this article. It’s a trait we see all too often in every sphere of our society: a preparedness to allow our fellows to rise up only so far, before we turn on them. We even have a name for it – Tall Poppy Syndrome – in which we celebrate this tendency toward collective bullying as some sort of national virtue, when in reality it’s simply boorish thuggery born of small-mindedness and envy and amplified in the age of social media.
Over the past few decades it’s also a tendency we’ve seen increasingly directed toward those who have done well for themselves financially. Fifteen years ago then Finance Minister Michael Cullen referred to National Leader John Key as a “rich prick” and a “scumbag” for being wealthy. And while the current Finance Minister hasn’t yet resorted to such colourful language, he has made no secret of his disdain for one group in particular, property Investors.
Ashley Church: “The Kiwi obsession with real estate is the foundation of our national wealth.” Photo / Ted Baghurst
Property investors have been attacked by Labour since it came to power in 2017.
Precisely why property investors (and, to a lesser degree, all property owners) deserve such derision is never adequately explained. The claim that such people have closed others out of the market is disproved by the reality that our home ownership rates have actually stayed remarkably stable for almost one hundred years. Similarly, the claim that property ownership and investment adds nothing to the economy can be easily dismissed and the reality is that property is, in fact, our biggest generator of economic activity. Indeed, in a very real sense, the Kiwi obsession with real estate is the foundation of our national wealth and, literally, the basis of all other economic activity.
For me, the overwhelming logical approach to property ownership is to do exactly the opposite of what the current Government and some in the National Party would do. Instead of demonising property owners and seeking to pull them down to the lowest common denominator through capital gains taxes, punitive legislation, and hare-brained monetary policy, we should be celebrating those who have done well from property and setting about to put in place policies and programs which will make the same thing possible for others who also want to own property.
Perhaps Pearson was right and a tendency to begrudge the success of others is an aspect of the Kiwi psyche that we’ll never overcome, but I prefer to think that we can be better than that. Perhaps, in 2022, let’s all add a determination to be less envious of the success of others to our New Year resolutions, and more focused on finding our own success in whatever form is meaningful to us.
- Ashley Church is a property commentator for OneRoof.co.nz. Email him at ashley@nzemail.com
