Heave to

Finance Minister Bill English says New Zealand will need to borrow $250million per week for the next four years (give or take) to stay afloat.

Interest payments alone are a bit wince-inducing, if you can get your head around all those zeros, and then there's the principal... I wonder, is it time to fly the coop and free-range in Oz?

But therein lies the rub.

If our middle-aged, middle earners keep fleeing, how on earth are we to afford 'New Zealand'? Who will pay the mortgage?

It's a big issue for a little country struggling to achieve critical mass in the desirable demographics. New Zealand has an hour-glass figure trending top-heavy with the aged. For a comparatively young nation, we're awfully matronly.

Our socio-political hope is that ex-pat desirables will heed the call of home, especially once they start nesting. But anyone over 20 who has contemplated a trip "home" often prefers the idealization to reality. Bedrooms are always smaller, beds even more so, and then there's the thorny issue of what to say.

Has New Zealand got the pull of the vitally attractive, or is it the nostalgic, sensible, comfortable option?

Well, if our current account is anything to go by, we need to start leveraging the former, and the global recession provides the perfect window.

A decent lifestyle is still pretty cheap here. But that's not enough. Successful, professional, over-achievers, the entrepreneurial movers and groovers, the seriously cashed-up - eventually, they'll want more than beer and bangers on the barbie. The need for self-actualisation will win out.

And this is where New Zealand's real opportunity lies. The world-weary wunderkind are tired of the old regimes.

The abitrary nature of capital markets has never been so exposed, where jumped-up Maserati driving, cut-throat razor shaved twenty and thirty somethings are left to play with the global economy; swarming around hedge-funds and frenzy-feeding off currency speculation. It's gambling for private school boys.

So let's not go down that track. Let's not trot along behind the big boys on our short, chubby toddler legs crying, "Wait for me".

Let's position ourselves as a start-up up-start - a great place for getting away from the BS and trying something new - something fresh and vital - authentic and organic.

Every day, New Zealanders are doing great things, and like attracts like. So it's time we got over the cultural cringe and made more noise. The desirable demographics need to see NZ as the new business frontier.

There are so many cool things going on that are the preserve of sub-cultural cliques. We need to mainstream these stories. It's a challenge for our tradtitional media who are myred in out-moded concepts of newsworthiness and blinded to all but their respective competitors' coverage of the same predictable news packages.

There's a growing awareness New Zealand is on the verge of something if we could only get it together. A Gladwellian 'tipping point' is what's needed, so heave to everyone. Shout out.

Our mortgage repayments depend on it.