WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND -- New Zealand is presently doing a slow death march towards open-field release of genetically engineered farm crops, dictated by a government that has relentlessly ignored every reasoned argument for retaining this country's totally GE-free status. With all the subtlety of a rubbish compactor, a government made up of Christian fundamentalists and the tattered remnants of the Lange/Douglas regime that turned this country into an economic basket case in the '80s, is forging ahead with legislation that will pave the way for the end of the present New Zealand-wide moratorium on GE crops on October 29.

It seems an absurd move to make at the present time for a nation which destroyed its local industrial base with market forces ideology in the 80s and is now almost totally dependent for its overseas earnings on the export of conventional or organic agricultural products to Northern Hemisphere markets which not only demand GE-free produce, but have already warned New Zealand that GE contamination of any sort is unacceptable.

To comprehend this apparent economic suicide by an almost totally farm-dependent country you have to understand the weird political mindsets that still rule in the only nation in the world to totally convert to Chicago School economic theories, a move that took New Zealand from its position among the top ten nations in the developed world in the sixties and seventies to its present position as a near economic basket case ranked among the worst performers in the OECD.

For nearly 20 years now, Kiwis (appropriately, perhaps, a flightless bird that digs for worms in the dark) have been asked, by a succession of politicians and a kaleidoscope of ever-shifting coalition governments, to wait for the light at the end of the tunnel promised by the original 1984 Lange/Douglas Labour Government, while experiencing huge social dislocation, dramatic drops in household income and spending power, huge increases in violent and property crime, and the disappearance of guaranteed employment and leisure time.

Regrettably we never seem to learn, having re-elected in the current minority Labour Government many of the very team -- including Prime Minister Helen Clark -- who instituted the disastrous "New Zealand Experiment" in the first place! Clark, it should be added, is a wholehearted supporter of genetic engineering and sees GE as another heady experiment/fire truck to chase, with all the glamour of Milton Friedman's original ideas, plus the added incentive of getting back on side with a pro-GE White House after a 20-year stand-off caused by New Zealand's anti-nuclear policy.

It's an undoubted fact that Helen Clark's adamant position in favour of GE is also a reflection of the hubris and vanity afflicting her following her easy victory over National Party PM Jenny Shipley at the close of the 20th Century. Shipley's "Matron Knows Best" condescension towards her many critics, coupled with her cabinet's epic absence of competence in almost every area of administration, made a Clark-led Labour coalition victory inevitable, and ever since New Zealand's current PM has ridden high on both Preferred Leader and citizen popularity polls.