1X
Roth asks David McClain and Murray Bawden whether New Zealand's decade-long economic overhaul holds lessons for Hawaii. McClain, who recently interviewed New Zealand Finance Minister Bill Birch, describes how a Labour government's reforms starting in the mid-1980s transformed one of the developed world's most stagnant economies: unemployment fell from 11 to 6.5 percent, some 130,000 to 150,000 jobs were created, and foreign capital began flowing in at scale. Bawden, whose Fletcher Pacific Construction is a subsidiary of a New Zealand conglomerate, argues that union unskilled labor costs $40 to $45 per hour in Hawaii versus $12 to $15 in parts of the mainland, and says construction costs could be cut by a third. Both guests favor privatization of schools, prisons, and telecommunications, and press for New Zealand's independently audited government accounts. McClain warns that Hawaii's downturn is structural, not cyclical, and will not reverse simply by waiting for Japan or California to recover. Callers raise New Zealand's educational standards, its Employment Contracts Act's effect on worker satisfaction, and the parallels between Maori land claims and Hawaiian sovereignty.
Transcript
Read or download the full transcript (.txt). Speaker labels were assigned automatically and may contain errors.
Companion newspaper commentaries
Commentaries by the guests, published in The Honolulu Advertiser around the broadcast.
