Tenants in Our Own Country, Part II

We Became Serfs A Long Time Ago

Prime Minister, John Key has said that he would hate to see a day when New Zealanders were little more than tenants in their own country. This remark was made in relation to the spectral prospect of large swathes of productive countryside being bought by Chinese investors. For most Kiwis, this is chilling.

But why? We view it as a rational outcome to be expected. In fact, it would be surprising were it not to happen. After all, New Zealand is a soft-despotic socialist country. For generations it has prided itself on being “progressive” in the sense of government intrusions to achieve an egalitarian materialistic paradise.A   former Prime Minister, David Lange once infamously said that he would prefer a society where the gap between rich and poor were more narrow than one in which there was a wider gap, but the poor were better off than they are today. No doubt he thought the former more “just”.

The problem with soft-despotic socialism is that eventually, like all forms of socialism, it runs out of other people's money. This is certainly the case now with New Zealand. So, naturally, since society has plundered the cupboard to the extent that it is now bare, the government needs to look elsewhere for fresh pockets to pick. We are now in phase two of terminal socialist decline. Phase two involves borrowing. There are insufficient monies raised from taxes—so, now we are borrowing $250million dollars a week to fund the socialist beast. Not wanting to stir the beast to anger, the government has been unwilling to cut spending and entitlements. But it also knows that it cannot raise taxes. So, borrow. This simply rolls the burden onto our children. It is robbing baby Peter to pay indulgent Paul, his parent.

There are other characteristics of phase two decline. One is a championing of immigration. Soft-despotic socialism reinforces a culture of self-indulgence and entitlement. Populations do not tend to grow under socialism. The more self-reliant and ambitious depart for other jurisdictions. Those that remain want their piece of cake—and having children requires self-denial in order to achieve longer term wealth and blessedness. Children are an interference to achieving the soft-despotic socialist paradise. Immigration becomes the easy answer. There is a gaggle of short-sighted economists who argue for increased immigration as the way to keep our economy expanding and growing. “Others” has long been the socialist mantra.

The government is openly acknowledging that not only do we need immigrants to keep us afloat, we also need foreigners to invest in New Zealand. We need a new phalanx of “other people's money” to fund our way. Ah, but we must be careful, says our Prime Minister. This could be a double edged sword—we do not want to end up as tenants in our own country.

This is truly a “wake up and smell the roses” moment—or more aptly, a “wake up and smell the rotting garbage” moment. We in New Zealand have been tenants in our own country for a long, long time. It is the inevitable outcome of soft-despotic socialism. Consider the matter of land and land ownership. The vast majority of New Zealand land is owned (via one agency or another) by the State. This places the people in a comparable situation to serfs in the Middle Ages. In addition, Maori complain about their relative impoverishment—yet vast swathes of land in New Zealand are owned by Maori tribes and individual Maori are unable to get fee simple titles over the land. It is owned by the collective, which means that individual Maori are nothing more than tenants—and never will be anything more--at least as long as they look to "their" land as a way to earn a personal living. (Once again, the more ambitious and energetic Maori have tended to migrate offshore to get ahead.) Maori concepts of land ownership are a primitive form of socialism, but socialism nonetheless. It has reduced Maoridom to a state of perpetual tenancy—as socialism always does.

Then, consider how an economy of perpetual tenancy has gradually extended by means of a gradual erosion of private property rights. The State has expropriated title to all minerals beneath the surface of all land. By means of the Resource Management Act and its notification and consent processes, it has land owners more like serfs and tenants than owners. The amount of economic development stifled and stymied by self-righteous greenists and nosy neighbours under the aegis of the Resource Management Act and its application by local body governments is incalculable.

In the light of this, what's the problem with a few foreigners coming in to buy up some dairy farms? We have already all been reduced to a state of semi-serfdom in our own country. It is not that this can be reversed. Not without repudiating the soft-despotic socialist doctrines which have produced it. But socialism will not be repudiated without a religious change—a change that begins in the hearts of men and women as they turn away from the idolatry of regarding the government as their god—and look, once again, to the God of their fathers.

In the days of our Lord, the people were under the oppressive burden of pharisaism. It was a kind of “enserfment” of Israel, where people were constrained by a thousand endless rules and regulations telling them how to live and what could not be done with their property and lives. It was in this context that Jesus said, “Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My load is light.” (Matthew 11: 28—30)

New Zealanders will increasingly become enslaved tenants in their own country until it dawns upon us that the yoke of soft-despotic socialism is an unbearable burden. Then, if it pleases the Lord, we will be made to understand that the yoke of our Lord in comparison is easy, light, and life-giving. Then, if the Lord has mercy, we may hear afresh His gracious invitation to come to Him, that we might be released from our serfdom and slavery. In that day it will be as if, once again, we have come out of Egypt. And we will sing, as one awakened out of a dark dream into the sunlight, “I greet Thee, Who my sure Redeemer art”.