GOVERNOR Cayetano wants to fix Hawaii's economy, as well he should. Unhappily for him, he is not as lucky as the fixers were in New Zealand in 1984 when money was pouring out of the country like water through a sieve. Consensus needed
to revitalize economyNew Zealand has a one-house parliament that provides the prime minister and cabinet ministers. Get control of the parliament and just about all the levers of government are within reach.
The Labor government that took power in New Zealand in 1984 determined to "act now and build consensus later." It rammed through some of the most dramatic changes ever seen in a free world economy. Deregulation, privatization and liberation of economic activity took it from being a basket case to a nation running surpluses, reducing its debt, drawing in massive outside investment and improving the lot of most of its people.
It is a nation very much worth our study, but there is a major difference between New Zealand and Hawaii.
Cayetano has to reverse the order. He has to build consensus before he acts. Otherwise he never will get his program through two houses of the Legislature, the conference committees that often do the dirty work in a two-house legislature, and steered away from restraints by a state Supreme Court appointed by his liberal big-government predecessor.
For that reason, if no other, we should wish him success with the Economic Revitalization Task Force he started forming this week.
Its members are called "the same old faces" by some critics. But they have their hands on Hawaii's levers of power through banking, business, labor and with the heads of the two houses of the Legislature as co-chairs.
Get them to agree and things really could happen, starting with the 1998 Legislature. Because members will want to protect their power bases and have quite different interests in key matters their agreements are apt to be incremental rather than sweeping.
Their common goal, however, should be to turn the economic tide in Hawaii toward one that raises all boats rather than ebbing and putting more and more on the rocks. Their own self-interests should tell them that it is worth some sacrifices to make this happen.
When a giant cruise liner tries to change course, the old course has so much momentum the turn may not begin for up to a mile from the time the rudder was put over. It will be enough for observers like me if the governor can win pretty broad consensus to keep trimming the size of government, make his departments more financially independent and accountable, improve education, privatize where that can produce advantages and reduce both taxes and government red tape. If we turn toward those goals the early rewards may make the public want to keep going.
Change happens when the status quo becomes more painful than making a change, a sage has said. Hawaii may not be quite there -- not yet enough unemployment, not yet enough defections of talent and capital, not yet enough bankruptcies, not yet enough bad mouthing of us by national magazines. But aren't we close enough? Do we really want to go even deeper into the mire before we try to pull ourselves out, before we all perceive that serving the common interest is also serving our own private interest?
I find encouragement in numerous signs we are waking to this: the Star-Bulletin's 16-page section of July 22 on Hawaii's Economic Crisis ...separate economic initiatives already planned within the Senate and House...the hard consensus-building spadework of the Oahu Economic Development Board...the Advertiser's decision to go ahead with a summit of its own with a broader focus than the governor's and more room for little guys...Dr. Richard Kelley's call for nothing short of an economic revolution...Bank of Hawaii's recent survey of free market successes elsewhere ... and frequent concerned (if differing) commentaries in the forum of the media.
When the Recovery Task Force comes up with a preliminary plan in late October and takes it to public hearings we have our democratic right to critique and try to improve it. But we will be forlornly mistaken to try to gut it and kill it to serve narrow interests.