Last month, many journalists and political observers were reflecting on the fortieth anniversary of the election of David Lange's Fourth Labour Government.
Yes, it seems clear that in 2024, we are in the tender care of the wealthy.
Their wishes being carried out by cynical and complicit politicians, assisted by cadres of spin doctors misleading the public, and swamping the media with a wall of untruth and distortion.
"News broke this week that journalist Rod Vaughan died on 25 August, age 77, after a short battle with cancer. Vaughan, who worked on TVNZ’s Frontline documentaries was one of the tireless fighters against injustice and corruption – the likes we now need more of. Even in retirement, he was still very much concerned about integrity issues."
Gratitude for writing this article, and I hope and wish there are many more with fire in their bellies and courage in their hearts, to do the same and make a difference too.
I came to NZ from Australia to take up an academic position at Auckland uUi at the beginning of Feb 1987, and just before I came, Douglas visited Oz and got a puff piece in the 'Sydney Morning Herald'. As I'd done my doctoral work in Thatcher's Britain, his agenda struck me as strange for a Labour government. I didn't really know a lot about the immediately preceding years here, although of course I have now picked a lot up over the years. But this article and Danyl McLauchlan's pieces have been very helpful. But what stays in my mind about the late '80s in Auckland was that every second place you checked in the phone book had moved (frustrating if you didn't drive), and then the central city got to be full of parking lots after the stockmarket crash. There was also a major theatre demolished overnight in a way I was surprised was legal (if it was?). It was a weird place to be.
Enjoyed reading the article.Knew most of it as we were a 1 income family with 3 kids and just built a house with a housing corporation loan at 7.5% in 1984 then the labour government got in and our interest rate went to 17% as unemployment soared. So lived through rogernomics knowing what they were doing.It still baffles me that so many couldn't see what was happening and then we got National and Ruthenomics and it continued down that path.I was told if Labour got in and Roger Douglas did what he wanted to do it would take 30 years to fix it.Now we have no political party with the policies or the will to do that and so we continue to be affected by those decisions and still people can't or don't want to see how it affects us.Im still waiting for the benefits Roger Douglas promised us
The great deals in buying our public assets was, if anything, even worse under the Bolger and Shipley governments.
Although Labour may have had the largest (in 2024 $) election spend in 1987 of any political party, the recently declared spend on the 2023 election by National ($7,558,909) combined with ACT ($5,456,315) is way bigger. And it is valid to combine the two given the desire expressed by Mr Luxon in the election campaign of coalescing with ACT (only) to form a government.
Which it turns out is trying to surpass the fourth Labour Government and Bolger and Shipley National Governments in mean, short-sighted cost cutting and fact-free ideologically-driven policy.
While we were electing two parties trying to outdo each other with vicious far right economics, the world was stunned at our underhanded transition from one of the most left just societies to one of the most right wing. Now after a period of center right governance, the new government is completing the race to the bottom with new ever more rabid descendants of Douglas in power.
A very depressing read, but one which we need to remind ourselves of time and again. Namely that politicians along with used car salesmen and realty agents are always serving their own interests never ours
Now, now Bryce. We don't do corruption here in NZ. There's been a steady stream of international surveys telling us so. Remember Fay Richwhite and co (including a then recently unseated Transport Minister) preparing the fire sale of New Zealand Railways and the "Chinese Walls" between the buyers and sellers. Those Russian oligarchs had nothing on us. I always liked the line: "Isn't it time Treasury was privatized?" Some things don't change.
I thought Douglas was just parroting some fashionable (at the time) cant that was coming out of a couple of economists at the Treasury / RB who were, I presume, themselves just apeing the mode of Reagan/Thatcher. I've never heard a word out of him that suggests he has any intellectual fibre whatsoever.
Thank you for laying all that out so clearly. I was aware in the years of having babies that Labour was handicapped in elections by its supporters being poorer than National's. What a mercenary route they took to change that.
It had never occurred to me that the sell off of our state assets so resembled what happened in Russia.
I don't vote for Labour until they remove Roger Douglas's knighthood. that would serve as an apology for the exhaustion that followed trying to solo parent very young children on the pay of health worker after we had been shifted from the asset side of the ledger for our skill to the liability side because we had to be paid.
I sincerely hope this current government is not the 40 - 50 year redirection we would hope for!
Thank you for this - I lived through it all but unfortunately was at a stage of life where it didn't directly impinge on my awareness. I do, however, remember being appalled at the fire-sale of assets and the greed of the Faye Richwhite cabal. Looking back, if I thought about it at all, I think I was captured by the almost Kennedy/Camelot aura generated by what is now seen as spin.
Bryce, this is an absolute gem of an article—really knocked it out of the park with this one! The Pro Bono Publico story about political donations in the 1980s? Mind-blowing. I mean, who knew that one event could have such a massive ripple effect, basically turning our media into an echo chamber of shallow sound bites? It’s like you’ve uncovered the secret origin story of today’s polarizing headlines!
I also really appreciated how you summarized Danyl McLauchlan’s findings. I follow his work closely and always admire how balanced and thoughtfully he approaches these complex issues. It’s great to see those insights tied into your analysis here.
As someone who’s all about questioning our own certainties and stretching our intellectual muscles, this piece really got me thinking. It’s a good reminder that the more we understand the twists and turns of history, the better we can navigate the crazy political landscape we’re in now. And maybe—just maybe—start moving away from the echo chamber mentality that’s gotten us into this mess.
Thanks for another thought-provoking read, Bryce. Keep ’em coming!
The Luxon-Peters-Seymour coalition is propping up the trickle-down status quo, in the same vein that Muldoon attempted to prop up the 1970s interventionist status quo. It may not change much until the real estate bubble pops, whenever that may be. Or if a future govt has the gumption to bypass it with zoning relaxations, & a supercharged Kainga Ora & community housing providers.
Within ten years, Rogernomics and Ruthinasia wiped one hundred years of working people’s struggle and progress off the map. We talked about not “turning back the clock” to that "old-fashioned antiquated regime" of social demcoracy. But we, in fact, turned back the clock even further - to a 19th-century liberal economy based on inequality and greed.
Economist John Kay wrote in the prestigious Financial Times in 1999 that “Since the experiment began”, with National and Douglas in charge, “economic growth in New Zealand has been much slower than in the rest of the developed world". "Productivity and living standards had barely risen while almost all other rich countries have enjoyed sustained expansion.” During this period, suicide rate went up 300%. Crime skyrocketed. Unemployment went up to 11 percent.
Labor unions had since been all but destroyed with the introduction of employment legislation that was fundamentally copied from on USA Texas-style “right to work” laws. The income stream to pay for was slashed with the rudimentary Capital/wealth tax, the NZ land tax was thrown out. Meanwhile, the top income tax level was cut in half and replaced by a regressive GST tax. Taxes were flattened to the point that famously, a cashier pays more per person than a billionaire, creating high tax resentment. And spending was cut so that we spend among the lowest per GDP in the OECD (23rd). Meanwhile, publicly run entities were practically given away to the new oligarchy.
Certainly, reform was needed to weed out the vested interests, but the baby was thrown out with the bathwater in order to “fix” the economy. Instead of a "fix" it went from bad to worse. Other nations at the time, particularly in Scandinavia, managed to keep most of their social democratic institutions intact throughout the global neoliberal phenomenon of the 80's-90's. Their economies were more resilient, inequality far lower and productivity was much higher in part due to investment by their governments with policies the opposite of our new neoliberal dogma that has indoctrinated most of us as.
Thanks Bryce.
Yes, it seems clear that in 2024, we are in the tender care of the wealthy.
Their wishes being carried out by cynical and complicit politicians, assisted by cadres of spin doctors misleading the public, and swamping the media with a wall of untruth and distortion.
Sad days indeed..
"News broke this week that journalist Rod Vaughan died on 25 August, age 77, after a short battle with cancer. Vaughan, who worked on TVNZ’s Frontline documentaries was one of the tireless fighters against injustice and corruption – the likes we now need more of. Even in retirement, he was still very much concerned about integrity issues."
Gratitude for writing this article, and I hope and wish there are many more with fire in their bellies and courage in their hearts, to do the same and make a difference too.
I came to NZ from Australia to take up an academic position at Auckland uUi at the beginning of Feb 1987, and just before I came, Douglas visited Oz and got a puff piece in the 'Sydney Morning Herald'. As I'd done my doctoral work in Thatcher's Britain, his agenda struck me as strange for a Labour government. I didn't really know a lot about the immediately preceding years here, although of course I have now picked a lot up over the years. But this article and Danyl McLauchlan's pieces have been very helpful. But what stays in my mind about the late '80s in Auckland was that every second place you checked in the phone book had moved (frustrating if you didn't drive), and then the central city got to be full of parking lots after the stockmarket crash. There was also a major theatre demolished overnight in a way I was surprised was legal (if it was?). It was a weird place to be.
Enjoyed reading the article.Knew most of it as we were a 1 income family with 3 kids and just built a house with a housing corporation loan at 7.5% in 1984 then the labour government got in and our interest rate went to 17% as unemployment soared. So lived through rogernomics knowing what they were doing.It still baffles me that so many couldn't see what was happening and then we got National and Ruthenomics and it continued down that path.I was told if Labour got in and Roger Douglas did what he wanted to do it would take 30 years to fix it.Now we have no political party with the policies or the will to do that and so we continue to be affected by those decisions and still people can't or don't want to see how it affects us.Im still waiting for the benefits Roger Douglas promised us
The great deals in buying our public assets was, if anything, even worse under the Bolger and Shipley governments.
Although Labour may have had the largest (in 2024 $) election spend in 1987 of any political party, the recently declared spend on the 2023 election by National ($7,558,909) combined with ACT ($5,456,315) is way bigger. And it is valid to combine the two given the desire expressed by Mr Luxon in the election campaign of coalescing with ACT (only) to form a government.
Which it turns out is trying to surpass the fourth Labour Government and Bolger and Shipley National Governments in mean, short-sighted cost cutting and fact-free ideologically-driven policy.
While we were electing two parties trying to outdo each other with vicious far right economics, the world was stunned at our underhanded transition from one of the most left just societies to one of the most right wing. Now after a period of center right governance, the new government is completing the race to the bottom with new ever more rabid descendants of Douglas in power.
A very depressing read, but one which we need to remind ourselves of time and again. Namely that politicians along with used car salesmen and realty agents are always serving their own interests never ours
Now, now Bryce. We don't do corruption here in NZ. There's been a steady stream of international surveys telling us so. Remember Fay Richwhite and co (including a then recently unseated Transport Minister) preparing the fire sale of New Zealand Railways and the "Chinese Walls" between the buyers and sellers. Those Russian oligarchs had nothing on us. I always liked the line: "Isn't it time Treasury was privatized?" Some things don't change.
I thought Douglas was just parroting some fashionable (at the time) cant that was coming out of a couple of economists at the Treasury / RB who were, I presume, themselves just apeing the mode of Reagan/Thatcher. I've never heard a word out of him that suggests he has any intellectual fibre whatsoever.
Well done Bryce.
Others who've written recently on 1984 and Rogernomics:
Max Harris
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/18-07-2024/revolution-and-nostalgia-what-the-left-and-right-still-get-wrong-about-1980s-politics?
Richard Shaw
https://theconversation.com/a-nation-reinvented-40-years-on-from-its-1984-victory-the-fourth-labour-government-still-defines-nz-232133
Max Rashbrooke
https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/350310864/beware-politician-talking-crisis
https://archive.is/hfzmj
Richard Harman
https://www.politik.co.nz/the-second-crisis-assumption-was-the-mother/
https://www.politik.co.nz/40-years-ago-inside-the-crisis-that-made-modern-nz/
Yip and that began the social decline of NZ.
Thank you for laying all that out so clearly. I was aware in the years of having babies that Labour was handicapped in elections by its supporters being poorer than National's. What a mercenary route they took to change that.
It had never occurred to me that the sell off of our state assets so resembled what happened in Russia.
I don't vote for Labour until they remove Roger Douglas's knighthood. that would serve as an apology for the exhaustion that followed trying to solo parent very young children on the pay of health worker after we had been shifted from the asset side of the ledger for our skill to the liability side because we had to be paid.
I sincerely hope this current government is not the 40 - 50 year redirection we would hope for!
"I sincerely hope this current government is not the 40 - 50 year redirection we would hope for!"
Far from it. They're attempting to preserve the status quo. like Muldoon did in 1975-84.
Yes true
I do hope you're fire-proof, Bryce!
Thank you for this - I lived through it all but unfortunately was at a stage of life where it didn't directly impinge on my awareness. I do, however, remember being appalled at the fire-sale of assets and the greed of the Faye Richwhite cabal. Looking back, if I thought about it at all, I think I was captured by the almost Kennedy/Camelot aura generated by what is now seen as spin.
Bryce, this is an absolute gem of an article—really knocked it out of the park with this one! The Pro Bono Publico story about political donations in the 1980s? Mind-blowing. I mean, who knew that one event could have such a massive ripple effect, basically turning our media into an echo chamber of shallow sound bites? It’s like you’ve uncovered the secret origin story of today’s polarizing headlines!
I also really appreciated how you summarized Danyl McLauchlan’s findings. I follow his work closely and always admire how balanced and thoughtfully he approaches these complex issues. It’s great to see those insights tied into your analysis here.
As someone who’s all about questioning our own certainties and stretching our intellectual muscles, this piece really got me thinking. It’s a good reminder that the more we understand the twists and turns of history, the better we can navigate the crazy political landscape we’re in now. And maybe—just maybe—start moving away from the echo chamber mentality that’s gotten us into this mess.
Thanks for another thought-provoking read, Bryce. Keep ’em coming!
The Luxon-Peters-Seymour coalition is propping up the trickle-down status quo, in the same vein that Muldoon attempted to prop up the 1970s interventionist status quo. It may not change much until the real estate bubble pops, whenever that may be. Or if a future govt has the gumption to bypass it with zoning relaxations, & a supercharged Kainga Ora & community housing providers.
Within ten years, Rogernomics and Ruthinasia wiped one hundred years of working people’s struggle and progress off the map. We talked about not “turning back the clock” to that "old-fashioned antiquated regime" of social demcoracy. But we, in fact, turned back the clock even further - to a 19th-century liberal economy based on inequality and greed.
Economist John Kay wrote in the prestigious Financial Times in 1999 that “Since the experiment began”, with National and Douglas in charge, “economic growth in New Zealand has been much slower than in the rest of the developed world". "Productivity and living standards had barely risen while almost all other rich countries have enjoyed sustained expansion.” During this period, suicide rate went up 300%. Crime skyrocketed. Unemployment went up to 11 percent.
Labor unions had since been all but destroyed with the introduction of employment legislation that was fundamentally copied from on USA Texas-style “right to work” laws. The income stream to pay for was slashed with the rudimentary Capital/wealth tax, the NZ land tax was thrown out. Meanwhile, the top income tax level was cut in half and replaced by a regressive GST tax. Taxes were flattened to the point that famously, a cashier pays more per person than a billionaire, creating high tax resentment. And spending was cut so that we spend among the lowest per GDP in the OECD (23rd). Meanwhile, publicly run entities were practically given away to the new oligarchy.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/27/new-zealands-millionaires-pay-lower-tax-rates-than-cashiers-its-time-to-fix-the-system
Certainly, reform was needed to weed out the vested interests, but the baby was thrown out with the bathwater in order to “fix” the economy. Instead of a "fix" it went from bad to worse. Other nations at the time, particularly in Scandinavia, managed to keep most of their social democratic institutions intact throughout the global neoliberal phenomenon of the 80's-90's. Their economies were more resilient, inequality far lower and productivity was much higher in part due to investment by their governments with policies the opposite of our new neoliberal dogma that has indoctrinated most of us as.
We are #5 in median wealth, yet we spend 23rd in the world while we are “so poor” that people with disabilities have benefits cut, mothers go without toast due to budget free fall, and 1000 people die a year due to inadequate cancer care. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/top-10-countries-with-the-highest-wealth-per-person/ and https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/511249/about-1000-fewer-cancer-deaths-in-nz-every-year-if-patients-lived-in-australia-study
Rogennomics version 2.5