Mindset

My generation: The 2007 New Zealand Mindset List

As a new class of students enters university this month, a team of New Zealand academics is helping their colleagues understand the historical, social, economic and cultural mindset of their students.
The 2007 New Zealand Mindset List is a very, very serious list, providing academic staff with insight into the events incoming fi rst-year students have experienced, or not.

The list captures a picture of New Zealand and the world in 1988, the year most first-year students were born.

For these students:

• Fast Post has always been available
• The ozone hole has always been a worry for sun-loving New Zealanders
• New Zealanders have never been able to smoke on planes
• Tens of thousands of New Zealanders have always been on surgical waiting lists
• Soviet troops have never been in Afghanistan
• The Iran-Iraq war has always been over
• Bola has always been the name of a devastating cyclone
• ‘Tomorrow’s schools’ have always been a government policy for radical school reform
• New Zealanders have always tried their luck on pokie machines
• Politicians have always been ignoring election-spending legislation, and getting away with it
• New Zealand lighthouse-keepers have always been unemployed
• Japanese import cars have always been cheap and plentiful
• Inflation has always been less than 10 percent
• Employment at freezing works has always been a dead-end job
• Air New Zealand has always been a private corporation
• Roger Douglas has always been a sacked Finance Minister
• Bastion Point has always belonged to Ngati Whatua
• There have always been median barriers on Auckland’s motorways
• There has always been a toll bridge across the Tauranga Harbour
• The average Auckland house has always cost more than $161,000
• Tracy Chapman has always been a hit songwriter
• Ben Johnson has always been a disgraced Olympic athlete
• In New Zealand, Brian Brake (renowned photographer), Louis Johnson (Wellington poet), John Ross Marshall (former Prime Minister) and Cardigan Bay (legendary champion pacer) have always been dead
• Internationally, Enzo Ferrari (car designer), Andy Gibb (youngest Bee Gee), Louis L’Amour (American western novelist), Roy Orbison (rock-and-roll pioneer) and Philippe de Rothschile (French winemaker) have always been dead