“The earth has enough for everyman's need, but not enough for everyman’s greed” Gandhi
The Values view of the future of New Zealand is inextricably linked with the future of this planet and its limited resources. In 1972, a small group of people started to say, “We cannot afford to base our society on the values of the marketplace - consumerism, greed, envy, competition for monetaty gain, and selfish individualism. These may gain us material goods in the short-term. They'll cost us the earth in the long-term.” Values meant something to enough New Zealanders to enable this fledgling political party to field. 42 candidates and attract two per cent of the total national vote in 1972.
This manifesto marks another stage in the growth of the Values Party and its ideals. It takes the concerns of 1972 and amplifies them into a body of comprehensive, detailed policy. Itis a policy which re-thinks our system of economic management; rejects the idolatory of giantism (bigger is better); and is concerned with the needs of people, rather than the needs of the system.
The real tragedy of New Zealand life is not that the Government is ignoring the country’s problems - it is perpetuating them.
While our citizens cry out for government action to make their cities and lives livable, for an imaginative assault on the new social ills that are eroding the quality of their lives, the national leadership continues to over-emphasise economic growth at the expense of both the environment and a more natural pace of life, increasing productivity at the expense of job satisfaction, technology at the expense of human spirit, bureaucracy at the expense of more imagination and more public participation in government, and individualism at the expense of a sense of community.
The Values approach is positive. This manifesto shows how we can regain control of the system and reshape it to work for us. It shows how we can exploit less, consume less, pollute less, plan more, share more and conserve more, Our goal is to lay the foundations for a country which our children will find worth living in.
But Values’ concern goes beyond New Zealand. For the first time in history all human beings live in a Global Village. The problems of each country in the world have become our problems. The fact that 40 million people are starving or likely to starve and a further 800 million are malnourished should worry. every well-fed New Zealander.
This manifesto shows how the adoption of Values’ policies will increase New Zealand's capacity to play a greater role, through trade and aid, in correcting the unfair distributions of the world's resources. The Values Party starts afresh with the economics of enough - enough for all, rather than plenty for the few.
The Values view is a long-term view. We dispense with the myopic focus of the other parties on short-term goals and the short term effect of their policies. We focus in depth on the long-term future of New Zealand and the long-term future of this planet. The Values Party has a dream - not a vision of an unrealisable utopia, but much more simply and practically, a perpetually sustainable blueprint for our survival.
The problems faced by New Zealand and the worid will not disappear just because so many choose to ignore them. Starvation in the Third World, unwanted babies, poverty, injustice, inequality, frustration, despair, crime, aggression, dehumanising technological development, the befouling of our surroundings by industrial pollutants, overtaxed social amenities, are todays problems: They will not be solved by putting welfare band-aids on the raw festering sores within our society while we continue a life-style that is exploitive and polluting.
There is a new set of values emerging in society. The new current flowing in the country shows in the movements for more freedom and justice, in the movements which resist the intrusion of bureaucracy and technology into our lives, in the movements opposing immoral foreign policies, and in the movement by young people to build alternatives before the old system collapses. But protest marches are not enough; individual solutions such as opting out can only be temporary.
The Values Party is asking New Zealand to set an ex- ample to the rest of the world. New Zealand is ideally situated to do so and has done so twice before - under the Liberal Government of the 1890's and under the first Labour Government of the late 1930's.
But both the eras of social reform came in the aftermath of a major world depression. The Values Party hopes that it won't take another depression to produce the next era of social reform. Time is running out. We must take action.
In proposing its solutions, the Values Party begins at today and looks beyond tomorrow.