New Zealand Listener – June 08, 2019

30 LISTENER JUNE 8 2019

“Machines ... at first reduce the monotony

and enhance the life but, in the end, if used

indiscriminately, they increase the monotony

and impoverish the life of both maker and

user.”

• May Davis, May Davis: Her Story

W

hen Kinley Salmon

was casting around

for the opening

words for his new

book on the future of

work, he reached for

his maternal grand-

mother’s 1990 autobiography.

Salmon’s book, Jobs, Robots & Us: Why

the Future of Work in New Zealand Is in

Our Hands, examines employment in the

face of technological advances, such as

the effect of driverless vehicles on taxi

and truck drivers, and what automated

check-in kiosks mean for hotel workers. It

is, he concludes, as did his grandmother,

May Davis, a trade-off between economic

maximisation and human meaning.

Salmon works in Washington DC as

an economist for the World Bank. His

parents, Guy and Gwenny, nurtured

his many talents – sporting, cultural

and academic – as well as those of his

brother, Erin. They also instilled in their

sons an awareness and passion for the

environment; Guy was a founder of the

Native Forest Action Council. Kinley was

precociously bright, leaving school

at 16 and spending a year in Spain

before studying at Cambridge

University, then later at Harvard.

A consultant at McKinsey &

Company, Salmon has worked in

London and Pakistan, though he

remains a passionate Nelsonian.

Jobs, Robots & Us looks 25 years

or so into the future, at the pluses

and minuses of work for New

Zealanders. Salmon decides that,

on balance, we are a happier,

healthier and wealthier nation if

we are in work. Aiming for a world in

which most people continue to work, he

argues, gives us by far the best chance at

that.

Salmon concedes that jobs that are

neither challenging nor social can be

debilitating. He suggests the best response

is to find ways to make work more mean-

ingful, inclusive and interesting, while

enabling technology to reduce menial,

repetitive or dangerous tasks. He says

New Zealanders and our policy-making

leaders need to get thinking and make

choices: our future is in our hands.

Your book makes it clear that decisions for the

future are needed now, but we’re not always

good at that in New Zealand, are we? We’re

usually hindered by a range of factors, not

least our relatively short three-year electoral

cycle, which was a factor in scuppering the

capital gains tax.

In politics, focusing on the long term

can be hard, but I’m confident about

New Zealand and its future. We are

quite nimble as a country and have a

vibrant democracy. In general, we are

SHELF LIFE

Working on

the future

A Nelson son who left school at 16 then studied at Cambridge

and Harvard has followed his family’s tradition of writing about

the future well-being of New Zealanders. photograph by HAGEN HOPKINS

“I’m confident about

New Zealand and its

future. We are quite

nimble as a country.”

CLARE

DE LORE

Kinley Salmon at a Pacific event

at the New Zealand Embassy in

Washington, and, right, back home

in Wellington.

SA

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