Thoughts on earning a living

Last week a New Zealand Herald front page article revealed that after dipping briefly following the global financial crisis the average pay of New Zealand’s top executives is rising once again. The bosses of the country’s largest firms received an average total remuneration - including base salary and incentive payments - of $1.4 million in the 2013 financial year, a 4 percent increase on 2012.

Our highest paid chief executive last year was ANZ’s David Hisco, on $4.1 million, a 14 per cent rise on 2012.

Nice money if you can get it.

The reaction from the Herald readers was swift and vicious and a branch of the ANZ staff, who were in pay talks, threatened strike action. Understandable; I was angry myself when I first read it, particularly when it has been reported of late that thousands of New Zealand children are going to school without breakfast. I remembered too that economist John Kenneth Galbraith once said: “The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.”

These hitherto undreamed of salaries are the preserve of the favoured few, but for the rest of us, perhaps we are our own worst enemies.

I think our problems probably start with all the clichés we’ve been told about money.

As kids we were taught that money is the root of all evil. What the Bible actually says is that the love of money is the root of all evil. And we were told money isn’t everything and that money won’t buy you happiness. In fact to emphasise that belief someone once said: “There is nothing in the world more reassuring than an unhappy lottery winner.”

I’ve often wondered whether these statements weren’t circulated by people who have money, to keep those that haven’t, in their place.

The truth is that money is a warm home and healthy children; its birthday presents and a university education; it’s a trip overseas and the means to help older people and the less fortunate.

There is little doubt that education is the answer to our money woes. In our society, a highly skilled person is worth more money than someone who is not highly skilled and can easily be replaced.

American motivational speaker Earl Nightingale would often quote the disparity of incomes between a janitor and a heart surgeon. He was not suggesting that one person is any better or more important than any other person. The amount of money each will earn will be proportional to the demand for what they do, their ability to do what they do and the difficulty of replacing them.

In a few weeks a person can be trained to clean and maintain a building and replacing that person is not difficult. Meanwhile a heart surgeon spends many years learning his profession, often at great personal sacrifice, and at an extremely high cost, and he cannot easily be replaced. As a result the surgeon might earn as much money in a week as a janitor might earn in a year.

Of course this example is an extreme case, but it shows the relationship of income to demand, skill and supply. You will inevitably find that a person’s income will be in exact proportion to the demand of what that person does, the ability to do the task and the difficulty of being replaced.

In a year a top jockey will earn a great deal of money, which will represent about 5 per cent of the winnings of the horses he or she rides. You might say riding a racehorse serves no useful purpose, but, useful or not, the demand is there. It’s the same with stars in show business like Dolly Parton or sports stars like the All Blacks. Their income will very accurately reflect the demand for what they do.

While this may sound elementary, you’d be amazed at the number of people who want more money, but don’t want to take the time and trouble to qualify for it. And until they qualify for it, there’s no way on earth for them to earn it. It’s like the person who wants a good-looking figure, but doesn’t want to change their eating habits.

When I was a kid there was a poem that in part said: “I bargained with life for a penny, and life would pay no more.” And that’s it in a nutshell. The world will pay you exactly what you bargain for - exactly what you honestly earn - and not a penny more.

People who refuse to do more than they’re being paid for will seldom be paid for more than they’re doing. You may have heard someone say “Why should I knock myself out for the money I’m getting?” It’s this attitude, more than anything else that keeps people at the bottom of the economic pile.

We must however keep money in its proper place. It’s a servant, nothing more.

It’s a tool with which we can live better, see more of the world; it’s the means to a happy, carefree retirement in later years and it allows us to give our children the education they need and a good start in life, but we need to keep it in perspective.

You need only so much food to maintain good health and you really need only so much money to live comfortably, securely and well. Too much emphasis on money reverses the whole picture; then you become the servant and the money becomes the master.

It’s good to have money and the things money can buy, but it’s good too, to check up once in a while, to make sure you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy.

“We couldn’t afford a proper bath. We just had a pan of water and we’d wash down as far as possible and we’d wash up as far as possible. Then, when somebody’d clear the room, we’d wash possible.” - Dolly Parton.

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An analysis of what went right

It seems implausible that due to our questionable electoral system a party that was only able to capture 48 per cent of the popular vote gets a win that is described as a “landslide.”

You could express it differently of course. 76 per cent of the electorate did not favour Labour, 90 percent wouldn’t have a bar of the Greens, and 91 per cent didn’t want New Zealand First despite Winston being the darling of the aged and infirm.

In the process Internet-Mana lost its mana and Colin Craig sunk a sizable portion of his large personal fortune into his fledgling Conservative Party only to miss representation by one percentage point.

Much of the blame of the unfortunate outcome for some has perhaps been justifiably foisted upon poor old David Cunliffe.

I know him, not well, but he attended a number of licensing trust conferences over the years and I had dinner with him and his wife one night at Solway Park when he opened a national conference here in Masterton. They were a pleasant couple and I enjoyed their company, but a leader of the people he is not.

His problem started when he needed to court the unions to gain enough support to win selection as Labour leader as his caucus in the main despised him. The unions who almost destroyed this country in the 70’s and 80’ were themselves destroyed by the Employment Contracts Act introduced by National in 1990.

These “bully boys” have never been missed by the general populace.

Cunliffe had to promise a sharp left turn to gain their support and Matt McCarten was brought in to set up a “war room” and maintain the direction set. None of this was going to sit well with the electorate.

Large fortunes were thrown around everywhere and Kim Schmitz - aka Dotcom - was lavish with his own. This is where the news media let the country down badly. Night after boring night the portly German invaded our TV screens and our daily papers did their level best to emulate the adoration. They foolishly built up the momentum to his “Moment of Truth” stage show which turned out to be a moment of “strewth”.

In an effort to destroy his nemesis John Key the German fraudster managed to con Hone Harawira and the Waaka-jumping Laila Harre to join him in his wretched crusade.

They then ill-advisedly added Pam Corkery and John Minto to the mix causing the vast majority of the voting public to sense a radicalisation that went way beyond acceptable limits.

Schmitz brought in Glenn Greenwald, a “Pulitzer-prize-winning” journalist from “America” to tell us our government was spying on all of us. I have put inverted commas around Pulitzer-prize-winning and America because neither of these statements is true.

Greenwald actually lives in Rio de Janeiro with his husband; same sex marriages are illegal in the US. He has never won a Pulitzer Prize; the paper he worked for did, but it was a community award for the whole paper where Greenwald worked as a journalist. If Greenwald could claim he was a Pulitzer-Prize-winner under those circumstances then presumably so too could the janitor and the tea lady.

When the fawning media finally woke up to this towards the end of his visit they began describing him as an “award-winning” journalist.

Fair enough, he did indeed win a Polk Prize for journalism.

On the Monday night before the election the Auckland Town Hall was full of the city’s malcontents who cheered the big screen images of Julian Assange wanted for sexual offences in Sweden and Edward Snowden wanted for espionage in America. These two fugitives from justice and the German fraudster were the toast of the evening. Schmitz however failed to present any evidence that proved John Key was a liar and despite the rapturous applause after each utterance from the top table, when the attendees woke up the next morning they would have realised they had been thoroughly duped.

And anyway, by some quirk of fate the messages from Assange, Snowden and Greenwald were completely nullified when on the Wednesday we found out that Australian-based Islamic terrorists were going to take an innocent citizen off a Sydney street decapitate him or her and show an accompanying video to the world. With potential atrocities being committed so close to home most New Zealand citizens were hoping the GCSB were monitoring us to the extent that Snowden, Assange and Greenwald said they were.

Meanwhile Nicky Hager’s claims of dirty politics didn’t gain much traction particularly when it was clear whose billboards were getting defaced.

And yet despite all the evidence to the contrary the miscalculating political journalists assured us that we were heading for a hung parliament and our fate would be decided by wily Winston who was likely to go fishing for a week or two before deciding who he’d coalesce with.

Worse than that, Russel Norman and Metiria Turei, grinning like a couple of Cheshire cats, promised us that they were going to be our co-deputy-prime-ministers.

That awful thought, for most people anyway, may well have been the straw that broke the camel’s

back.

“Under Helen Clark the Labour party was captured by academics, feminists, gays and tertiary educated leaders of a union movement that never worked a shop floor.” - John Tamihere

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A cheerful chuckling chappie

Back in 1995 my wife and I visited Northern Ireland. We spent a weekend in Belfast, hardly a tourist mecca, but then again, not as bleak a city as it is often painted. Anyway its people not places that make a destination and the Irish overwhelm you with their unrelenting hospitality in both the north and the south of this enchanting country.

But for all that, Belfast was a bit different. It was incongruous for instance to hear people tell you in a broad Irish accent that they were “British to the core,” and yet that is what so many were like in Northern Ireland. Not all of course, hence the aggravation, but those who were pro-British tended to flaunt their stance. Many flew the Union Jack above their homes. Some residents painted the kerbs outside their dwellings red, white and blue; sometimes whole streets were so adorned.

And back then they had these ridiculous marches. While we were there the Apprentice Boys marched. I assumed this would be a group of young lads marching to celebrate that they were employed in a worthwhile trade. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The “boys” were well into their seventies, and were marching to celebrate some remote victory, Protestant over Catholic, that had occurred centuries ago. They teasingly marched into Catholic areas to taunt and provoke. These areas were totally devoid of Union Jacks or painted kerbs I might add. Tensions would mount and sometimes overflow into violence. It all seemed so unnecessary.

On Saturday afternoon we drove our rental car to nearby Antrim and, sitting in a park by a lake, we struck up a conversation with an Irishman who told us in no uncertain terms that he was “pro-British.” He was a bit critical of New Zealand because of our Catholic, pro-republican prime minister at the time, Jim Bolger, but he was an amusing conversationalist and we enjoyed our interlude with him. It soon became clear that his great hero was Dr. Ian Paisley. I expressed interest so he asked me if I would like to meet the reverend gentleman in person. Now I’d never had much time for Paisley, but the opportunity to meet a world figure was compelling, so I agreed that I would. Our man said all we needed to do was to go to Paisley’s church in the heart of Belfast the next morning and we could see and meet the great man in the flesh. He said he would inform the church elders that we were coming.

The church was the Free Presbyterian Church of Ireland and the service was to start at eleven. We arrived at about a quarter to eleven and were immediately conspicuous by our attire. Without exception all the women were wearing frocks and hats, and the men, suits and ties. In stark contrast Marion and I had open neck tops, casual slacks and sneakers. For all that we were made very welcome and ushered to very good seats in this large modern church.

I had expected that the area around the church would be surrounded by British army personnel and that Paisley would arrive in an armoured car; but this was not the case. Everything was calm and peaceful and there was not a soldier in sight. At the stroke of eleven Paisley strode up to the pulpit and warmly welcomed visitors to his church, particularly the couple from “Noo Zealand.”

His service, which he virtually conducted single-handedly, was apolitical, and fundamental in structure. He was a charismatic figure, and with a booming voice that needed no amplification. The sermon was edifying, the singing inspiring, and the hour passed quickly.

After the service I sought him out, introduced myself, and told him that I was the visitor he had welcomed. He extended his hand and with a friendly smile said, “And how’s Noo Zealand?” I had the perfect answer, “The harvest is many,” I said, “but the labourers are few.” “Same here in Ireland,” he retorted “Same here in Ireland,” and for about five minutes we chatted and laughed together; actually I laughed and he chuckled. He had a most pleasant personality.

Eventually I was led to tell him that it seemed to me that he had been misrepresented in the press. I had, in the space of an hour of corporate acquaintance and a few minutes of personal appraisal, decided this man was not the ogre the world’s media had painted him. He chuckled and said that he was used to this distortion, and that it did not unduly worry him.

Soon he was to wish us both “Godspeed” as we went on our journey and I began to wonder if Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot mightn’t have been bad blokes on a one to one basis too. Grossly unfair to lump Paisley with that group, but you know what I mean.

The divisive Protestant firebrand and Democratic Unionist Party leader died a couple of weeks ago; he was 88. Throughout Northern Ireland’s three decades of civil strife he was the most polarizing of politicians, his blistering oratory often blamed for fueling the bloodshed that claimed 3700 lives.

Yet in 2007, at the height of his peace-wrecking power, he stunned the world by delivering the country’s first stable unity government between its “British” Protestants and its Irish Catholics. “Dr. No” as he was widely known finally said yes and his powerful U-turn cemented a peace process that he had previously done so much to frustrate.

Paisley relished his new role as Northern Ireland’s first minister with a relaxed demeanor, most strikingly evident when working alongside his government co-leader, former IRA commander Martin McGuiness. The two men surprisingly formed a genuine, mutually respectful relationship. Joking together at events they were dubbed “The Chuckle Brothers” by a disbelieving press.

“Chuckle” is a hard word to accurately describe, but it’s the one aspect of my meeting with Paisley that remains firmly fixed in my memory.

“Not men and women in an Irish street,
But Catholics and Protestants that you meet.” - William Allingham

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The Pinocchio component in politics

In the film Liar, Liar lawyer Fletcher Reede, played by Jim Carrey, falls victim to his son Max’s wish that his dad won’t be able to tell a lie for 24 hours. For the sake of the plot, the wish comes true. The moral of the story is that we all lie constantly, and not to do so and be brutally honest instead, would get us into a lot of hot water.

And so we have seen politicians of all persuasions tell porkies over the last few weeks which the electorate appear to reluctantly accept, but I’m going to try and sort out the wheat from the chaff.

Have we really got 287,000 starving kids in this country? One in four we are told. Even one child going hungry in this land of relative plenty is one too many, but 287,000, if true, is surely a catastrophe. Assuming that parents would feed their kids first before they fed themselves that means we have upwards of 574,000 starving adults. And yet obesity is one of the biggest problems facing our health services.

I wonder if the counts are taken from some of Auckland’s poorer areas, where it is said, perhaps with equal exaggeration, that one in four shops is a liquor store. Suburbs where English is often a second language, and where drug abuse is rife. It could be that this distressing but selective situation is extrapolated to encompass the whole nation.

Then we have David Cunliffe saying that research from America has shown that raising the minimum wage has no effect on unemployment. First off, I doubt if there has been any “research from America.” If there was, it is flawed. When the Labour government abolished youth rates some years back, unemployment among our school leavers went through the roof.

This should be no surprise. Why would employers take on a kid just out of school if they had to pay him or her the same rate as a more mature and experienced person?

No one in their right mind would argue that increasing the minimum wage from $14.25 to $25 an hour would not create more unemployment. Going from $14.25 to $14.75 an hour probably wouldn’t, but going to $18.80 an hour most certainly would.

Any employer worth their salt would want to pay their staff the highest wages possible, but small business owners have to contend with rapidly rising costs and falling business activity due to competition from GST-devoid internet stores and offshore wage structures where our hourly rate can look like their weekly take home pay.

The NZ minimum wage is already the highest in the OECD compared to the median wage. Increases beyond the 66 per cent level which it’s currently at would undoubtedly have a negative impact on employment.

And then we move on to the environment. Ex-Aussie, righteous Russell Norman, wants the world to know that our clean green image is a crock and our rivers are the dirtiest in the world and are getting worse. And yet a summary of fresh water river conditions issued by the Ministry of the Environment in July 2013 stated: “Of the parameters we monitor, all our rivers are either stable or improving in most monitored sites. Four of our parameters show stable or improving trends in 90 per cent of sites.”

NIWA’s Dr Davies-Colley had this to say about our improving water quality: “The fact that some of our heavily polluted rivers – mostly in dairying areas – have turned the corner in recent years gives us cause for optimism for the future.”

Meanwhile a recent OECD survey measured the major rivers that flow through farmland in OECD countries. Out of 98 rivers surveyed worldwide for cleanliness the Clutha came in first, Waitaki was second and the Waikato was fourth.

And yet on TV 3s current affairs programme The Nation last Saturday the Green co-leader said “John Key will just accelerate the pollution of our rivers.”

Dare I say liar, liar Dr. Norman.

Fibs and straight out untruths are considered fair game during elections, but what long-term affect might they have on our way of life? The Greens have said they want to cap dairy farming at its current level, despite the fact that this industry is the country’s biggest earner and the loss of precious export income would not allow us to afford better hospitals, better schools and a cleaner environment.

Farmers have already fenced off 45,000 kilometres of rivers and streams and are doing more fencing and planting all the time. There are river care and land care groups on all the main rivers and many of our smaller rivers and streams across New Zealand. They are spending millions of dollars to improve water quality. They include farmers, Fonterra, Dairy NZ, NZ Beef and Lamb, Landcare NZ, Federated Farmers, iwi, fertiliser companies, universities and regional councils.

By loudly exaggerating problems with our “Pure” marketing brand the Greens have wittingly sabotaged New Zealand’s international reputation. What voters need to remember is that farmers made us a rich country, not the state.

Pinocchio had a big nose because he lied too much.

I was born with mine.

“Our environment is being sold down the river” - David Cunliffe

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Will CGT sink Labour's boat?

Labour’s much-vaunted Capital Gains Tax is starting to look like the old much-despised death duties in disguise. When Labour introduced GST back in 1986 they sensibly resisted calls to exclude certain items of food from the tax. This would be an “administrative nightmare” they quite rightly said at the time. They are not heeding their own advice when on this occasion they have promised to exclude the family home from the new property tax.

John Key made a hit of “show us the money” proportions when he asked David Cunliffe in The Press leader’s debate in Christchurch, “Did the tax apply to those people who have put their home into a family trust?” Cunliffe was unable to answer on the spot, but later, after taking advice, assured voters that it didn’t.

This opened a whole can of worms about the tax and questions were subsequently asked as to when it did and when it did not apply. For instance: When your parents passed on, did the inherited family home attract the tax? The architect of the tax three years ago, David Cunliffe, when he was the shadow finance of minister under Phil Goff, said it would not apply as long as you sold your parents’ home within a month.

Within a month?

Imagine squabbling siblings deciding on a programme of marketing and selling the family home within a month. And could the real estate agent guarantee a quick sale without pricing the property at well below market value?

Later David Parker admitted Mr Cunliffe had got it wrong; a panel would be set up to decide how long you had to sell your parents’ home before the insidious tax would apply.

Let’s say your parents bought their home in the 1960’s for $10,000. It’s now worth $400,000. You would apparently pay a 15% tax on the $390,000 capital gain which amounts to $58,500.

Makes the old death duties look like small change.

Kinda brings tears to your eyes, doesn’t it?

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If you think claims that newspapers show unfair bias is itself unfair then consider this. Last Friday Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater took Fairfax Media, the NZ Herald and TV3 to court endeavouring to take out an injunction to stop them from leaking his private emails, hacked by an individual calling himself Rawshark and published under the by-line Whaledump.

Basically the judge agreed; no more new material could be published. Last Saturday’s NZ Herald headline said: Commission rejects bloggers claims, the Wairarapa Times-Age headline read: Court blocks Slater’s bid to gag the media while the Dominion-Post reported: Court injunction plugs Whaledump leaks.

Is the Dom-Post the only honest communicator?

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I was walking behind two teenage girls in Queen Street recently and I was listening to them talk. Every third or fourth word was an obscenity, and the thing that struck me as odd was that the conversation didn’t strike me as being particularly odd. The girls weren’t angry or excited. They were just talking in a conversational tone. They apparently didn’t think there was anything wrong with the way they sounded. And in a way they were right. Obscenity, the open use of which used to be the mark of lower social strata, has somehow become acceptable in everyday conversation for everyday people.

And yet I am offended - not out of a sense of morality or of prudishness - but because foul language used casually in public comes close to the idea of a violation of privacy.

I know there are some around who feel assaulted by hearing it. I choose that word very carefully; but certain language is an assault on the senses. Those who disagree are probably saying, “After all, it’s only words.” But words are vehicles; they convey messages and to some people the message of profanity is a message of ugliness and aggressiveness and disrespect for civil behaviour.

Obscenity can now be heard in some popular music, on TV, radio - and even magazines and newspapers have begun to print language that would have been unthinkable when I was growing up. The practice is usually defended under the name of “freedom,” but whose freedom is it?

If the language of ugliness becomes so much part of our society that it is impossible to escape, no matter where you turn, then who is free and who isn’t?

“It is not right that any matters of sexual immorality or indecency or greed should even be mentioned among you. Nor is it fitting for you to use language which is obscene, profane or vulgar.” - Ephesians 5:3

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What is happening to my country?

Oh how I yearn for the good old days of the wooden ships and the iron men when governments were decided like horse races - first past the post. Surely everyone’s political leanings were satisfied with Labour and National, just like the Americans are happy with Democrats and Republicans and the United Kingdom with Labour and Conservatives. But no, we had to go and throw out a perfectly good system of governance and now look what we’ve let out of the bag.

Despite bring a dyed-in the-wool conservative I’ve never really minded whether I was ruled by Labour or National, but some of these newer entrants scare the living daylights out of me.

Take the Greens - actually I wish somebody would - here is a disparate cabal of wannabes led by the most unlikely pair you could ever imagine appealing to the New Zealand public.

Metiria Turei, formally a member of the Random Trollops performance troupe, first entered politics as a candidate for the McGillicuddy Serious Party in 1993. In 1996 she jumped ship to stand for the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party. Again unsuccessful, but determined to become an MP, she teamed up with the Greens in 2002. Not winning a seat – no Green candidate ever has – she came in on the list and became the co-leader in 2009.

The other half of the dubious duo is Russell Norman whose foray into politics started when he joined the Socialist Workers Party in Brisbane. The Socialist Workers Party is described as a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist organisation. We despise communists and don’t like being bossed by Australians, and yet we are arguably on the cusp of electing a coalition government made up of the Greens and Labour with Mr Norman likely to demand the Minister of Finance portfolio.

Green voters are generally decent folk who care for the environment, but caring for the environment is a two-edged sword. Mother Nature has a toxic side and we have battled over many centuries to keep her tamed.

Green-style policies have often had disastrous outcomes. Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring written in 1962 caused environmentalists to rise up and ban the use of the pesticide DDT. It is now believed that this caused the deaths of millions of people worldwide because DDT was used extensively to kill the malaria-carrying mosquito.

Modern environmentalists now want us to ban 1080 despite the fact that it has been declared perfectly safe by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment after extensive peer-reviewed studies. The widespread use of 1080 has all but rid the country of bovine TB and has hastened the return of our native birds.

Concerns over poisonous substances used to preserve our wood used in timber framed buildings were raised by environmental interests and as a result New Zealand houses were built for more than a decade with untreated timber. The resulting leaky homes saga has cost the government and local bodies over $12 billion to date with many more claims in the pipeline.

Even scarier is the Internet-Mana party. Hone Harawira is a racist who wouldn’t want his daughter to marry a Pakeha, Kim Dotcom is a German fraudster who hoards Hitler memorabilia and by his own admission once hacked the German Prime Minister’s computer and caused him to lose his credit rating and Laila Harre has jumped more ships than Metiria Turei. Add foul-mouthed Pam Corkery to this mix with John Minto hovering in the wings and honestly, what is there to like?

Back in March Hone wanted the purveyors of legal highs to be executed; now the Internet division of his party want to decriminalise cannabis. We also find out that one of the major backers of Kim Dotcoms Mega website was apparently using laundered drug money to buy the shares. Don’t tell Winston, but this man is an Asian.

Winston of course intends to be the king maker. He will be looking for the baubles of office and will accede to the highest bidder. His party has never paid back the $158,000 they owe us taxpayers from two elections back, but that doesn’t worry Winston, nor it seems the electorate.

Words fail me to explain the reaction to Nicholas Hager’s book. Rupert Murdoch’s people at the News of the World have quite rightly been hung, drawn and quartered for publishing information illegally gained by hacking into people’s private emails and phone calls and yet here in New Zealand the news media are Hager’s willing tools and are wreaking havoc.

This will change the whole gamut of how we communicate in the future and NZ Post should be rethinking their downsizing plans as I suspect letter writing will once more become fashionable.

To be perfectly Frankenstein first past the post didn’t always mean we only had a two-party system. There was the rather oddball Social Creditors led by Bruce Beetham and Bob Jones formed the New Zealand Party intending to and succeeding in getting rid of Rob Muldoon whom he considered to be a closet socialist. The end result of that exercise was that David Lange’s Labour government was elected in 1984 and ushered in the most right-wing economic reforms ever embarked upon.

Back in the 1950s a worker’s chant was: “Joe for King and a protestant Pope.” “Joe” was Joseph Stalin.

I suppose politics have always been a bit weird.

“But suppose there are two mobs?” suggested Mr Snodgrass. “Shout with the largest,” replied Mr Pickwick. – Charles Dickens

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Prosperity is where the mouth is

A young part-Maori woman quit her job at the Whangarei branch of KiwiYo last week because the manager of the shop would not allow her to greet customers with “Kia Ora” insisting instead that she say “Hello” as prescribed in the company manual. The usual rent-a-protest crowd assembled outside the company store chanting and displaying placards and the KiwiYo’s franchise owner was forced to capitulate and apologise, suggesting his manager may have interpreted the rules too rigidly.

Uncharacteristically I have some sympathy with the 17-year-old shop assistant, Monet-Mei Clarke. When we go to English-speaking Hawaii we don’t have any difficulty with being greeted with “Aloha” particularly when it is expressed by a captivating young native-Hawaiian female at the airport as she seductively places a fresh flower lei around your craning neck.

We use Maori cultural ceremonies when and where it suits us to make us look attractively bi-cultural and we have a sense of great pride when the All Blacks do the Haka, particularly at overseas arenas.

But at other times we are a shade petulant.

Recently there was a call to make teaching Te Reo Maori compulsory in schools. However, perhaps sensibly, this suggestion was considered a step too far by both major political parties.

Sir Robert Jones, writing in the Wanganui Chronicle, had even stronger views. He was utterly opposed to the promotion of everyone learning to speak Maori which he said we are wrongly told is part of our cultural heritage. He reckoned that millions of dollars of taxpayer’s money had already been spent, with abysmal results.

“Even the Maori King can’t speak Maori,” claimed Sir Robert.

“The sole purpose of language is communication and romanticising obtuse virtues about it is pretentious nonsense. Artistic expression such as poetry and prose is not about individual words which in themselves have no special merit, but instead their placement. The Welsh endured this foolishness by their zealots and vast sums were spent promoting their redundant language, all pointlessly as the Welsh sensibly ignored these efforts,” Jones wrote.

In his 2006 book How the Language Works the noted Welsh linguistics Professor David Crystal observed that linguistic nationalism invariably promoted separatist political demands, causing resentment and an unnecessarily divided community. This sounds frighteningly familiar.

Whereas most languages can number their words at around 200,000 the Maori dictionary only contains somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 words. Contrast this with the English language which has more than a million words and is still growing. English literature from Chaucer to Elliot, from Shakespeare to Hemingway is the richest and most extensive on earth.

So when you’re studying English, you’re studying one of the world’s greatest languages and the most interesting subjects.

There is no doubt that from the earliest times the favoured group of people has always been the educated class. They can make themselves recognised instantly, anywhere, by the simple expedient of speaking a few words. In can be argued that our language, more than anything else, determines which rung we position ourselves on life’s ladder of success.

Many years ago a graduating class of a large American university was given an examination in English vocabulary. The test scores were graded into groups of 5 per cent – the top 5 per cent and so on to the bottom. At regular intervals during the next 20 years, questionnaires were sent out to the surviving graduates asking them their occupations and their incomes. Without a single exception those who had the highest score on the vocabulary test were among the top income group, while those who had scored lowest were in the bottom income group.

A person may dress in the latest fashion and present a very attractive appearance. So far, so good, but the minute they open their mouths and begin to speak they proclaim to the world the level of their potential competency. George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, which was later adapted into the musical comedy My Fair Lady is an extreme example of this.

Our use of our language is the one thing we can’t hide.

To learn a second language, be it Maori or Mandarin, will be a satisfying, mind-expanding experience. Ms Clarke says that Maori is spoken constantly at home.

If her family takes English just as seriously I have no doubt she will soon move on to a vocation more fulfilling that selling frozen yoghurt cones.

Haere ra.

“If one cannot discriminate between grammar and solecism, sequence and incoherency, sense and nonsense, one has no protection against falsehood, and believes all lies one is told.” - A. E. Housman

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