Letters
Letter – Why I Care About Capability
My earliest memory is walking up Edendale Hill in Southland.
We were staying in a rabbit warden’s house at the foot of it after the house on the farm my parents rented from my grandparents had burnt to the ground.
By good fortune none of my three older sisters, myself, or my baby brother had been home when it happened.
I remember the size of the hill as I struggled to keep up, and the view across the lower Mataura Valley.
That memory has stayed with me.
My next memory is of steering the tractor during winter feeding.
My sister, a year older than me, had started school, so the job fell to me.
The tractor had no power steering or cab.
I remember the cold and the effort of turning the wheel while Dad climbed on and off the trailer throwing out hay.
The following weekend I asked my sister how to steer properly.
I knew from Dad’s laughter there was a better way.
Responsibility arrived early on a farm.
By eleven I could drive the tractor loader and operate machinery for cropping.
My father, younger brother, and I cut, rowed, baled, stooked, carted and stacked hay.
We worked dogs, helped in the shearing shed, split firewood, tended a large vegetable garden, and handled the constant stream of small jobs that keep a farm functioning.
My older sisters rouseyed, cooked for the shearing gang, and helped across the farm and household.
One night when I was ten my sister woke me because she thought there was an intruder.
My parents were out.
I searched the house and yard with my father’s .22 rifle.
No one was there.
When thieves came for petrol, Dad would take me with him and challenge them across the paddock in the dark.
He never gave instructions.
He expected me to understand.
One year three hundred lambs ready for the works were stolen while we were away.
In the 1980s that could determine whether the farm’s overdraft was repaid.
I remember my father and a police detective studying stock books and marks in the paddock.
After that, holidays were shorter, when our Dad was away my brother and I investigated when the dogs barked suspiciously.
By fifteen I could run a neighbour’s farm — check stock, feed dogs, operate machinery, secure the property, and keep things going.
I could fence, build, mix concrete, shear, drench, crutch, and do a lambing run.
That level of responsibility was not unusual in farming families.
We were Catholic.
CCD classes, Church every Sunday, more often during Lent and Easter.
With eleven children, getting everyone ready and transported was a logistical effort my mother managed, with help from my grandparents and our Holden Kingswood and ute.
By sixteen I could see a gap between what we were taught and what I observed, particularly at school.
The children of professionals headed for university were clearly favoured.
Those of us already carrying responsibility were not.
I rejected the church and did not pursue university — partly because I could not finance it, and partly because I had seen what debt could do to a farm.
In a family where problems were not discussed but faced, I decided I would need to become as self-reliant as possible.
I trained physically, running cross-country and doing calisthenics.
I read widely and questioned people, including older, university-educated relatives.
My mother, sensing both scepticism and potential, invited priests and Marist brothers to stay and talk with me.
I challenged them about faith and its practical role.
They cared about what I would become.
Around that time I reached a conclusion that has stayed with me:
I could not rely solely on what I was told, or even what I observed.
I would have to test things for myself to understand what was true and why people behaved as they did.
That search led me into combat sports, where I stayed where there was something to learn.
In Melbourne I found a club defined by intensity and organisation.
Nearly all training time was relevant and productive.
Years later, when I started Massey Grappling and MMA, I tried to reproduce and improve that environment.
I taught by participating fully.
As more women joined, the culture improved — more focused, more disciplined, more cooperative.
Within a few years students exceeded me in different areas, and the club itself continued to improve.
At thirteen I saw my school computer room for the first time.
When I was denied access, I saved to buy my own computer.
I typed code from manuals, dismantled programs, and wrote simple tools and games.
Later, in the fire service as a technical officer, I developed a database to manage fire-safety compliance.
Still later, an associate and I built an information engine before discovering Intel held a similar patent.
Running a software business taught me that organisations often fail not because people are lazy, but because systems are poorly designed.
Information is lost, processes repeat unnecessarily, and people are constrained by the systems around them.
Eventually I returned to construction.
After working for others, I began undertaking site works myself — fencing, concrete, pole sheds.
Construction taught me that building is not just physical work, but the coordination of people, materials, standards, and sequencing under real constraints.
One lesson became clear.
Small businesses grow around capable people who can be trained to lead.
Developing them takes years and investment.
If the environment does not allow that investment to be recovered, businesses stop building capability — and may begin withdrawing it.
Becoming a father has been one of the most demanding responsibilities of my life.
Our children are curious and capable.
We give them space to remain children while they learn.
I built a small hill in our section so they could climb and play.
On rainy days we turn the furniture upside down and build “sofa mountains”.
They come to job sites where it is safe, steer my ute along the driveway, and help stack wood.
I want them to inherit a country that works — where people are competent, cooperative, and responsible for the systems that shape their lives.
What concerns me is whether New Zealand will remain a place where capability is possible.
I see capable people pushed into supervision before they are ready, or leaving to apply their skills elsewhere.
I see decisions made in Wellington and in local government that are often disconnected from the work people actually do.
Teachers, farmers, tradespeople, small business owners, and young people invest years building capability.
Too often, the systems around them treat that effort as expendable.
What actually makes a nation capable?
The essays that follow attempt to answer it.
Ian Graham
Strategic Kiwi
2025