There were many reasons that I wanted to go abroad and specifically to New Zealand and the South Pacific area. One of the specific reasons was that I had heard that NZ was particularly progressive, as I had heard of many positive examples of both interactions around environmental preservation (Tom Tietenberg’s environmental economics lectures in Intro to Environmental Studies were fascinating) and around working with indigenous populations (the Maori). I wanted to see a system of government in action (rather than “inaction” as Jon Stewart puts it) that seemed to be thoughtful, progressive, and with everyone’s best interests in mind.
I didn’t get to heavily involved in tracking NZ politics (in my situation, I wanted to get a general pulse of the culture first, which I would say that we did while we were down there), but it was nice to see a parliamentary system where collaborations across party lines had to be built in order to get things done. Thomas Friedman’s column in the Times, http://tiny.cc/kp1vbw, is a nice representation of how things work down under, in NZ and in Oz.
It’s nice to see some of the things that he talks about. Universal health care and an individual mandate and it is working effectively (!). Compulsory voting and receiving fines for those that don’t vote. There is an acceptance (however reluctant) of climate change and a use of incentives to change business practices.
It’s easy to glamorize how other political systems work, especially in contrast to what we’ve got going here. [I, for one, would have loved to seen a democratic primary challenge (although, I would imagine those aren’t too frequent for a sitting president) as well as a rise of a third party.] There are certainly issues in NZ that need to be addressed. But it’s a breath of fresh air to see something different that actually seems to be working, unlike our current system of governance.
