www.geocities.com/nzwomen/AnneElse/200301SundaySuppl.html
The Ghost of Ideology Past
Sunday Supplement script
Radio New Zealand
26 January 2003
When I opened the paper on Monday, I suddenly got a blast from the past. There was Ruth Richardson, defending the sale of the rail network by the National government she once belonged to. Well, she would, wouldn't she. It just wouldn't do to say "I'm sorry, we got it wrong. We honestly believed that private owners would be far better than the government at running the railways. Seeing the mess rail is in now, it seems we were mistaken."
It wasn't Richardson's defence of the sale that I found so scary. No, what made me feel that I'd just seen the terrifying Ghost of Ideology Past was her response to the sorry state of the rail service.
"Normal competitive forces will operate if they're allowed to," she intoned solemnly. "Normal competitive services will fill the vacuum. If one market player is not performing to the satisfaction of their customer base, then new entrants will enter the market."
The interviewer had the temerity to point out that despite the deplorable state of rail services, and the marked dissatisfaction of the customer base, no competitor has actually emerged so far. Why was that, did she think? Ms Richardson's reply: it wasn't her place to "second guess the market".
Perhaps we could help her out here. This is a country of roughly four million people, spread over a complex and often difficult terrain. It was clear from the start that the very existence of a rail network here depended on government intervention, and not on the market. Today it is considerably less likely that a private company will set up a competitive rail network (like, build a new set of tracks and everything) than that Ms Richardson will become Prime Minister.
It's true that we have seen the arrival, and very often the departure, of new entrants to other areas which, just like rail, were once so shockingly controlled by an inefficient government instead of an efficient private sector - for example, electricity and telecommunications. But the funny thing is that for the hapless consumer, the track through these wonderful workings of the market has been plagued with problems. In many cases it has been the providers, and not the consumers, who have ended up with the power to choose who will be supplied with these essential services, and by whom, as well as at what cost. But at least most of us do still get the electricity and telecommunications we need, most of the time (unless we live out in the sticks, where it seems the government does have to step in from time to time to make sure we get them). Whereas when it comes to passenger rail services, either they don't work, or there aren't any - well, not any more.
Britain, too, had a long and passionate affair with the theory of the superior efficiency of market forces and the benefits of competition and private ownership. Margaret Thatcher's government was so committed to this theory that it decided to sell all the various bits of the railways to lots of different private companies. Strangely, there have since been no end of problems there - including a considerable number of deaths in clearly preventable crashes. Now Tony Blair's government is seriously considering buying some bits back, so they can at least make sure it's safe.
So - should the government here step in and buy back TranzRail? Of course not, said Ms Richardson. Apparently without even a trace of irony, she said it was one of the "universal rules of the road" - the market road, that is, the miraculous yellow brick road which, we were assured so often in the 1980s and 1990s, led straight to perfect freedom and certain prosperity - that "the more you suppress competitive forces and the more the state reasserts itself as a controlling owner, then the more detrimental that will be for consumers."
You could just about see her making the market equivalent of the sign of the cross and waving garlic about, to ward off the spectre of state ownership. But I'm pretty sure there's another spectre most New Zealanders would much rather keep firmly at bay, especially when they hear Ms Richardson's smugly recited mantra bringing it all too vividly back to life. It's the spectre of unthinking, by-the-book, there-is-no-alternative, hardline free market ideology which saw so much of our essential infrastructure knocked down at fire sale prices, with such dire results.
Anne Else
Honorary Research Associate in Women's Studies
Victoria University of Wellington
email [email protected]