Brian Easton

The following is an attempt to write down what seems to be known about Sutch and the saving of UNICEF. This was a note which backgrounds pages 133-135 of The Nationbuilders. It was finalised 22 December 2001.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

Sutch at the United Nations

In the mid 1950s, Sutch wrote
“I was New Zealand delegate for three years on the Economic and Social Commission of the United Nationsand was Chairman of the United Nations Social Commission in 1948/49, Chairman of the Board of Inquiry into the United Nations Staff conditions in 1949, Chairman of the Executive Board of the United Nation’s Children’s Fund in 1950 and Chairman of the UNICEF Administration and Budgeting Committee and Committee on Fund raising from 1948 to 1950.”

Listener 15 December, 2001.

Keywords History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy

Prizes for economic achievement are so idiosyncratically given out, that occasionally they get awarded for excellence. This year’s Nobel Prize went to economics to George Akerloff, Michael Spence and Joe Stiglitz, for their investigations into what happens when there is asymmetry of information in market transactions, and the buyers and sellers know different things about the purchased. Their studies show markets do not always function smoothly. For instance, the seller of a second hand car is likely to know more about its defects than buyers, who are therefore suspicious that anything being offered. (Why sell a good car?) Akerloff’s classic 1970 paper ‘The Market for Lemons’ showed how the outcome could be less than efficient. Noone will trade peaches, because buyers suspect them of being lemons.

Revised Paper for the 2001 Conference of the New Zealand Historical Association, December [1]

Keywords: Governance; Political Economy & History

My just published The Nationbuilders is an account of the creation and implementation of the idea of using the state to develop a nation, especially the national economy, but also in a number of other areas such as cultural policy and the environment. The story is told through a series of biographies of New Zealanders who were closely involved in nationbuilding. While I hope the book is a contribution to New Zealand biography, the book’s structure was the best way I could think of presenting the idea of nationbuilding for a general New Zealand audience. Among the alternative approaches would have been a rather dreary academic account of the origins and development of the idea, which would however have had the merit of being able to draw more directly on parallel developments in other countries. Another approach would have been to tell the story through institutions rather than people. Today’s paper is an example of this approach, for it looks at the central role of the Treasury in nationbuilding period, taking material from the book and presenting it a different way. In doing so it sharpens some of the themes, and allows the relating of the Treasury story to some the issues it faces today, reminding us that an understanding of the past can help understand the future.

Listener 1 December, 2001.

Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money

As the chief economist of the OECD recently explained ‘even without further adverse developments, [I expect] an immediate slump and then global stagnation probably until late next year’. He went on to say he ‘is probably optimistic’. The pessimism arises from the splutterings of the three great motors of the postwar economy.

The Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture 2001.

This is a revised version of the paper presented on Tuesday 23 October.

Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Labour Studies; Political Economy & History

I did not know Bruce Jesson as well as many of you in the audience, although I may have known him longer, for we went to the same high school. Bruce was in my younger brother’s class, so I only just knew him then. While I have a memory of him gawky in the dreary school gray, it may be this is re-created because we all looked awkward in the uniform, so it is easy to imagine with hindsight. We did not overlap at university, but I recall being stunned by the occasion in 1966 when Bruce and some friends burnt a Union Jack in front of the governor-general, asking why we were upset about damaging a foreign flag, We were already refusing to stand up in the cinema for ‘God Save the Queen’, but that protest lifted the level of analysis, challenging us to think more deeply about what being a New Zealander really meant. However, it was not really until the 1970s I began to link with Bruce, first by reading his wonderful journal, The Republican , and later visiting him in Auckland.

A revised version of a paper presented to the Friends of Turnbull Library, November 22, 2001

Keywords Political Economy & History;

Towards the end of her life, Elsie Locke asked me – ‘insisted ‘would be a better word. – to reread her prize winning essay ‘Looking for Answers’, published in Landfall of 1958. She was, I think, looking back over her long and productive life, and was reflecting on her period in the Communist Party from 1932 to 1956 which the essay covered. This essay is a response to Elsie’s request.

Review of BATTLE OF THE TITANS: Sir Ronald Trotter, Hugh Fletcher and the Rise and Fall of Fletcher Challenge Bruce Wallace (Penguin $34.95)

Listener 17 November 2001.

Keywords Business & Finance; Political Economy & History

In 1908, James Fletcher, a 22 year old Scot arrived in New Zealand with ‘a few pounds in his pocket’ and carpenter skills which he used to found a building company which expanded into Fletcher Holdings. By 1955, his son, also James, persuaded father and the New Zealand government that not only should Fletchers build the huge pulp and paper factory at Kawerau, but it should own part of it. In 1981, Hugh Fletcher, the son of the son, amalgamated Fletcher Holdings, Tasman Pulp and Paper, and the sprawling Challenge Corporation to form Fletcher Challenge, the biggest New Zealand business amounting at the time to almost a tenth of the capitalisation of the New Zealand share market.

Listener 17 November, 2001.

Keywords Business & Finance; Governance

Why should New Zealanders be abused when a Singapore owned company closes down its Australian operations? That is what happened when Air New Zealand shut down Ansette Australia. Yet, when the New Zealand government privatized the company in 1989, nobody mentioned that there would still be such ongoing attachments. They were certainly ignored in the 1984 Treasury paper setting out the case for privatization of all government trading activities. That paper had a very narrow focus, justifying private ownership using a theory without empirical content and ignoring the practicalities of the real world. Like that Ansette workers disregarded that it was a mainly Singapore owned airline dumping them, and picketed the New Zealand prime minister.

This is the envoy of The Nationbuilders. The book is now out of print and the chapter is published with permission. Other items on Bruce on the website are as follows:
His Purpose is Clear: Reflecting a Life of Thought and Experience (February 1999)
Global Warning: What would have Bruce Jesson have said about APEC (September 1999)
Nationbuilding and the Textured Society (Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture, October 2001)

Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Political Economy & History;

It would be wrong to end this book with the post-1984 colonials. But it is not easy to write about the new millennium nationbuilders for they are still alive and active. Some will try to revert to earlier versions of nationbuilding, with little recognition of the changes which have occurred which make its policies, if not its objectives, obsolete. The significant ones will be those who pursue the aspirations of their nationbuilding predecessors, but recognize the changing economic and social environment. It is for them to tell us about what they mean by their nationbuilding, although they are likely to do so – if their predecessors are any guide – by their actions rather than their words.