I am decidedly middle-aged. Despite the fact that I run 100 kilometres or so a week, and can still knock out a half-marathon in under 90 minutes, the reality of chronology is that, unless big pharma comes up with some massively life-extending drug in the next few years, I am certainly towards the far end of middle age. The mirror confirms it most mornings, usually at about the same time my hamstrings start complaining about decisions I made in the 1990s.
In addition, I am also decidedly white and male. Put all of these attributes together, and you have a demographic that is well known for its privilege, its sense of entitlement and its propensity for delivering reckons with reckless abandon. This is not meant to sound self-deprecating so much as it is an acknowledgement that the next several hundred words are going to read like they were written from a position of comfort and security. Because they were.
That said, I felt the familiar urge to once again opine on a thought piece written by my fellow correspondent, Verity Johnson. In her column, Johnson suggested that New Zealand now exhibits all the traits we normally associate with people like me. Tired. Self-satisfied. Somewhat indifferent to the future. In her framing, the country has stopped caring about anyone under 55 and is making decisions that suit those who will not be around to deal with the consequences.
It is a clever metaphor, casting the nation as a snoring, middle-aged partner blissfully unaware that the house is slowly filling with smoke. Johnson points to our retreat on climate policy, our chronic underinvestment in energy generation and our frankly bizarre housing settings as evidence that we are eating dessert first and assuming someone else will do the dishes. It is hard to argue with much of that. Anyone who has tried to insure a house near water, pay a winter power bill or explain to a twenty something why a million dollars for a damp bungalow is normal will recognise the pattern.
Where Johnson stops short is on the question of how we fix any of this. Her prescription is more of a plea. Think longer term. Care more about those who come after us. It is hard to disagree with the sentiment. It is also, if we are being honest, not much of a plan.
The uncomfortable reality is that long-term thinking costs money in the short term. Building new generation capacity means either higher power prices now or lower dividends to the Government. Serious climate adaptation means rates rises, taxes or both. Reforming housing almost certainly means some people seeing the value of their biggest asset go sideways or even backwards for a while. These are not politically attractive propositions, particularly in a country that prides itself on low taxes and affordable everything, even when neither is really true anymore.
Johnson is also right to point out that young New Zealanders are leaving in large numbers, chasing higher wages and better opportunities offshore. That creates a nasty feedback loop. We want more investment in infrastructure and services, but we are reluctant to tax more. We want to keep taxes low, but we need a growing, productive workforce to fund the system. When those workers leave, the burden falls more heavily on those who remain, which makes leaving even more attractive.It is tempting, particularly for people in my cohort, to shrug and say that this is someone else’s problem. We did our bit. We bought houses when they were cheap, paid off our mortgages and now just want a quiet life. That is exactly the mindset Johnson is criticising, and she is not wrong to do so. A society that consumes its future to protect its present comfort is not a particularly admirable one.
But nor is a society that simply lists its grievances and waits for someone else to solve them. A generation ago, John F Kennedy challenged Americans to ask not what their country could do for them, but what they could do for their country. It is a line that has been overused and abused, but the underlying idea still has some merit. Long-term change requires sacrifice, and sacrifice is rarely popular.
That applies to all of us, not just the mythical middle aged bloke with the comfortable life. Younger New Zealanders want affordable housing, cheaper power and a liveable climate. Fair enough. They may also need to accept higher taxes, denser cities and fewer short term perks to get there. Older New Zealanders want stability and security. Also fair enough. That may mean accepting that the status quo cannot be preserved indefinitely without doing harm to those who come next.
Which brings me back to that image of lying awake at three in the morning, staring at the ceiling and wondering how things ended up this way. The danger is not that New Zealand has become middle-aged. Middle age, as I am discovering, can be a time of reflection and recalibration. The danger is that we stay asleep, snoring away, convinced that tomorrow will sort itself out.
Eventually, the alarm goes off, whether we like it or not. The question is whether we wake up and start doing the hard, slightly uncomfortable work of planning for the future, or whether we just hit snooze and hope someone else deals with the smoke.
