[We can “Toot” to support our workers. Or like Finland, we could actually have governments that don’t bust unions—governments like the current NZ one, which seem undyingly dedicated to lowering the corporate tax rate, helping property investors pay even less tax, and supporting multinational corporate profits. Regardless of cost to society.]
Finland and New Zealand have a lot in common. They’ve both got around 5 million people. We have the same population density, meaning Finland has a relatively large land mass with not a lot of people. And they’ve got nearly the same income as us, measured in GDP per capita.
Finland is certainly no oil-rich Norway. There's no vast wealth here and no oil or gas money to speak of. Trees, fish, and some tech.
It's definitely not got vast wealth compared to NZ. The two are basically sisters. They're alike even in temperament, with a certain stoicism, quietness, and a dislike of showing off.
But in one big way they differ. Like the other Nordic nations, Finland has a sense that government should help people and make society stronger.
You can't really call it socialism because they are a very market-based capitalist society. Just call it a European democracy with enough commonsense to understand that if you make things unrelentingly hard for poor and working class people, your society will become damaged. And that will harm even the rich, in ways far more profound and damaging than a tax bill: homelessness, prisons, and violence.
What you can say about Finland is that for many decades now, they've had a commitment to raising the quality of life for their citizens in a way that New Zealand could only dream of. And in a way that would be wholly unimaginable for your average American.
Take their central public library in Helsinki, Oodi. I've been told it was built within budget, within time frame, and to wide public acclaim; a seemingly unattainable trifecta for a public building anywhere.
In designing a public library, Finland was pragmatic. What do residents of a city really need? It certainly wasn't just a building full of books.
No, since so much reading and research can be done online these days, they needed something that transcended a mere book storage site. They looked at what the community needed, had a vision and went for it. And it's been an enormous success.
The outside is architecturally stunning. With curvy shapes and lots of local wood and glass, it's like a huge piece of sculpture. But it was what's inside that excited me.
When you go inside there are three levels. On the top level is a huge open space with sloping areas for children to play on, caves that kids can investigate and play in, a big open storytelling area for kids, a cafe for parents, and the library’s main book collection, with lots of computers and phone charging stations, and super comfortable seating areas clustered here and there. The furniture doesn't look like something that came from an under-budgeted public primary school. It looks nice and comfortable, like something you might have in your own home.
The third floor begs you to just grab a book, plunk down and read. There's a huge amount of natural lighting, but at the same time there are blinds on the South-facing wall of windows which can be lowered when the angle of the sun gets low.
This is the ideal warm and dry space to come into during long, dark, and cold Finnish winters.
The first floor of Oodi is for meeting. The library gets 2.5 million visitors a year. People attend for conferences, musical concerts, theatre, plays, and even to watch movies in this library cinema which can accommodate 250 people. There are guest speakers or some kind of community event almost every day of the year.
All of this is free. Or should I say “no-cost”. Because as they say, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Just a “no-cost” public service that builds society up immeasurably.
I will say that again for all the politicians whoring themselves out for corporate funding or the hope of a job as a marketer or lobbyist after leaving government, the same politicians who insist on privatising every essential public services they can get their hands on (ie, the bloodsucking rightwing solution that is called “public-private partnerships”):
All of this, in Finland, is free.
Completely free for any member of the public to use and enjoy.
If you think that no-cost public services and public ‘goods’ like this one might have something to do with why Finland is well educated and has a strong information and technology sector, very low levels of corruption and very high levels of public contentment, I'd say you might be on to something.
Did I tell you the movies and the concerts and the plays are all free?
Scandalous.
On the third floor are also the docking stations for three mobile robots which help move heavy stacks of books between the floors. Smart. Cool.
Librarians are scattered around the place, helping people use digital photography equipment, helping them with library research, and being the general fonts of wisdom they are. While people like Brian Tamaki are organising violent thugs to assault librarians and storm book readings in New Zealand, Oodi is nourishing the knowledge and abilities of an entire generation of residents.
Librarians, and teachers more generally in Finland, are valued for their knowledge and their contribution to human society. The comparison with some of our politicians is stark. These people build society up, not incessantly break it down.
The secret to all this is that the vast majority of Finnish workers are unionised (something like 75%, which is among the highest in the developed world) and of course that means they negotiate their pay and working as a union — as a partner with the employer, rather than as an isolated wage slave. In NZ, we instead have David Seymour, Nicola Willis and the Coalition of Corporate Profits trying to break unions, collective bargaining, work safety protections, and minimum wage standards as much as they are able to get away with.
New Zealand needs to wake up and realise that in losing virtually all of their union power, they've handed the control of society over to corporations.
That's been absolutely great for the corporations’ quarterly profits, but not so good for the humans that live in our society.
With the killing off of the unions by corporations and the politicians they own, we have watched our public schools erode, our hospitals crumble, our aged care suffer, our wages stagnate, and our hope decline.
We can do better. Finland’s Oodi Library showed me that.
While there is no minimum wage in places like Finland or Norway, most lower wage workers in the Nordic countries actually earn a living wage, due to the high rate of union membership, collective bargaining, and minimum salary standards in most low wage job categories.
Among the low-wage workers I talked to, who worked a variety of jobs including lawnmowing/groundskeeping, waiting tables in restaurants, guiding, and deliveries, they spoke of earning an hourly wage of around NZD$25 New Zealand dollars in Finland, to about NZD$35 in Norway. With the cost of a friend's studio apartment in Helsinki running NSD$1400 a month, and in Sweden around NZD$2,000, this makes for a decent if not lavish standard of living. We have virtually no union power left in New Zealand, the UK, or the USA. And the results are plain to see: low and stagnant wages for decades.
The irony of coming from New Zealand was that while travellers from Europe and North America thought Nordic prices were outrageous, they were actually on a par (which is to say unaffordable) with New Zealand.
This really hit home in grocery prices: New Zealand has a duopoly in food in supermarkets whereby two mega-corporations control almost all of NZ's grocery supply. The same applies to Banks in New Zealand, which are dominated by just a few Australian mega-corporations. We've allowed a situation to occur in New Zealand where we have high cost of living, high inflation, price gouging by corporate monopolies, AND low wages.
This must change if New Zealand workers are to survive with any semblance of a public service system, and any hope of a good quality of life in the years to come.
But I digress. Back to housing.
Housing here in Finland is affordable in part because of government-subsidised housing, and like many other countries—rent controls. By contrast, New Zealand house prices are out of control, with rents jacked up by landlords who control the market, and insanely unaffordable house prices due in no small measure to a lack of capital gains taxes — which means your house is your jackpot (if you can afford the entry fee) while your stagnant-wage job certainly is not.
New Zealand is a wild west where people use houses to get rich, unlike countries with a capital gains tax — which is to say virtually everywhere else in the world.
Back to the Oodi library: On the first floor you'll find Oodi's youth space. The youth space is located in a loft on the first floor. Kids can do their homework, play video and board games, or hang around with their friends.
And on the second floor is….amazement.
Walking around I felt joy for what could be. I felt hope. And also the feeling that it is only politicians and media that keep us in New Zealand from having good things like this.
On the second floor is an urban workshop with 3D printers that people can use for free (the only cost I saw anywhere in the building was for raw materials for the printers: NZD$2 to $25 for sheets of material like vinyl, acrylic, and birch plywood.) There's a laser cutter, a flatbed UV printer for printing things like t-shirts, a large format printer, a vinyl cutter, and several multimedia workstations. All of it is bookable by the hour for free, using a simple online reservation system.
For those who like to sew or want to learn, there were sewing machines and sergers and tailoring equipment. Even a full-size dress-making mannequin. (At other community libraries my friend told me, you can also rent power tools for free. Perfect for that one-off DIY project or repair where you can't justify purchasing a tool.)
There are also a half dozen game rooms where people can play on video game consoles or use virtual reality headsets.
All of this, for free.
There were also classes in the upcoming weeks on how to use all this stuff; whether it's sewing or digital print-making, digital music, languages, or computer programming lessons…it's all free.
On the second floor there's a huge terraced area where teens (or anyone else) can sit on carpets and hang out and talk.
On the day I visited there were probably 200 kids in this area. But rather than a pack of unruly teens, the kids were calm, friendly, and engaged.
There were also lots of adults around, including parents, elderly people, folks in wheelchairs (it's all disability-friendly design). The mix of young and old seemed to help people behave maturely, even collegially.
There are a lot of engaged and invested people using that library , and that promotes sociable behaviour. Even migrants were included in the sense of community, with volunteers in one of the meeting rooms teaching a class of new language learners. There was literally something for everybody.
Which is not to say that this was a panacea. This wasn't some unattainable Paradise. The realities of the world still intruded. Cost of living crises haven't gone away. That was made real for me when I saw a library patron going through the rubbish bin for recyclables — redeemable for cash at the supermarket just down the street. Finland has poverty, it has addiction, but nothing like you’d see on any weeknight in Auckland or even Whangarei.
Overall, my experience of watching members of the public enjoy everything Helsinki’s Oodi Public Library was the most heartwarming stuff I've seen in a while.
It's so wholesome and productive. After a few hours there, it was just so obvious to me that places like this will lead to a better, more functional society . . . in a way that our profit-driven, every-man-for-himself society will always fail.
If we could achieve even 10% of this in New Zealand it would be massively good for the country.
Interspersed between all the things I've described were probably 50 other rooms, meeting rooms that can be booked out at low cost by businesses, or by community groups for free. There were tutoring rooms where kids can help with homework. There were music practice rooms with cork walls to absorb the sound.
There was a even a remarkable musical instrument lending library with dozens of musical instruments: zithers, guitars, synthesizers, mixer — you name it.
All of these could be borrowed or used at the library’s music practice rooms. You guessed it —for free.
Once again, I can't overemphasize the fact that the building was full of people and everyone was interested and engaged in what they were doing, whether it was playing a video game or a musical instrument: I felt the unspoken message that we were all in this together. There was no antisocial behaviour in part I think because if you were loud or obnoxious it would impact on dozens of other people around you.
It was refreshing.
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In New Zealand, I spend some of my working days in an emergency department in a public hospital providing services to patients in need, in a system that is severely understaffed, working with infrastructure (including IT, equipment, and buildings) that is just woeful, in an emergency department the community outgrew 25 years ago.
To see that there can be a better way of doing things honestly made this day the best day of my trip so far.
Helsinki is roughly the same size as Auckland. Finland is roughly the same size as New Zealand. With roughly the same amount of money.
There is no reason that we can't have a public building in New Zealand as good for the community as Oodi.
— Dr Gary Payinda
Don't forget that Finland was just acknowledged as the happiest country in the world for something like the 8th year in a row - we could be like them if we tried.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/19/world-happiness-report-2025-finland-is-the-happiest-country.html?msockid=23cc4460f3d263cb01a2513bf2f86279
You should visit Turanga museum in Christchurch. But you're also right we need the wealthy to pay their fair share of tax and we need unions to protect our more vulnerable workers.